Liturgical Calendar

Feast of Saints Philip and James, Apostles:
St. Philip: St. Philip, whose Greek name means "lover of horses," was a Galilean from Bethsaida, the same hometown as Sts. Peter and Andrew. Philip was one of the original Twelve Apostles chosen by Jesus in Galilee from His seventy disciples (Lk 6:12-16). When he first met Jesus, Philip invited his friend Nathaniel to meet the one about whom Moses wrote in the law and also the prophets (Jn 1:45). In Jesus's first miracle feeding in the Gospel of St. John, Jesus tested Philip by asking him where they could purchase enough food to feed the crowd of people who had come to hear Him preach. Philip was stunned by the question, but St. Andrew pointed out a small boy with five barley loaves and two fish from which Jesus miraculously fed over 5,000 people (Jn 6:5-14). However, on Wednesday of Jesus's last teaching day in Jerusalem, before His crucifixion on Friday, Gentiles came to Philip to ask him to help them meet Jesus. At Jesus's Last Supper Discourse, Philip asked Jesus to "Show us the Father," to which Jesus responded, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (Jn 14:8-14). The rest of Philip's story is told in "The Apocryphal Acts" and in "The Golden Legend," according to which Philip died a martyr's death, stoned, and then crucified at Hierapolis in modern Turkey. Christian art depicts Philip with a tunic and pallium, and sometimes with a cross or dragon (see Mt 10:3; Mk 3:18; Lk 3:1; 6:14; Jn 1:43-48; 6:5-7; 12:21-22; 14:8-9; Acts 1:13).

St. James: The memorial feast of St. James the Less is also traditionally celebrated on May 3^rd. St. James, known as "James the Less," to distinguish him from the Apostle St. James Zebedee, was probably the son of Alphaeus. He is often confused with St. James the Just, the first Christian Bishop of Jerusalem, who was a relative of Jesus and not one of the original twelve Apostles like James the Less. The Apostle James son of Alphaeus preached the Gospel in Syria and founded the Syrian Church. Like all the Apostles, except for St. John Zebedee, St. James suffered martyrdom for the faith. Christian art depicts him wearing a tunic and pallium or staff. Christians invoke his aid against the sufferings of the dying (see Mt 10:3; Mk 3:18; 15:40; Lk 6:15; Acts 1:13). The Church has celebrated the feasts of the Apostles Philip and James together since the 6^th century when their relics were brought to rest in the Church of the Twelve Apostles in Rome.

The optional memorial of Our Lady of Fatima: May the 13^th commemorates the first appearance of the Virgin Mary to three shepherd children at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. The Virgin appeared to the children six times, performing several miracles and issuing several prophecies. During the last appearance on October 13^th, our Blessed Mother announced the end of World War I.

Feast of St. Matthias, Apostle: The memorial feast of St. Matthias is traditionally celebrated on May 14^th unless preempted by a Sunday of Easter. The eleven Apostles chose St. Matthias to replace Judas Iscariot immediately after Jesus' Ascension (Acts 1:15-26). It was St. Peter's first Apostolic Act as the Vicar of Christ. Matthias had been with Jesus since His baptism by John the Baptist at the Jordan River and witnessed Jesus' Ascension (Acts 1:21-22). He was probably one of the 70/72 disciples Jesus sent to preach the Gospel in pairs in every city of Judea (Lk 10:1-20). According to the early Church historian Nicephorus (Eusebius, Church History, 2.40), Matthias preached in Jerusalem and then in Aethiopia, the region of modern-day Georgia (the Caucasus region of Eurasia), where he suffered martyred for professing Christ, perhaps by stoning (see the Coptic Acts of Andrew and Matthias). A marker in the ruins of the Roman fortress at Gonio in the Georgian region of Adjara claims it is the site of St. Matthias' grave. He is the patron saint of engineers and butchers.

The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord: When it falls on a weekday, this Solemnity is a Holy Day of Obligation requiring attendance at Mass according to the Church's precepts. It is the oldest yearly festival of the Church, in addition to the celebration of the Lord's Resurrection. This feast remembers the day Jesus's disciples witnessed His Ascension into Heaven from the Mount of Olives (Acts 1:9). For forty days after His Resurrection (as the ancients counted with Resurrection Sunday counting as day #1), Jesus taught His Church and gave instructions to the Apostles and disciples before He ascended to the Father (Acts 1:1-3). At dinner with His disciples, the post-Resurrection Jesus instructed them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:4-5). Then, standing on the Mount of Olives, on the fortieth day after His Resurrection, Jesus gave His disciples the mission of His New Covenant Church. He told them, "... you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit which will come on you, and then you will be my witnesses not only in Jerusalem but throughout Judaea and Samaria, and indeed to the earth's remotest end" (Acts 1:8). After the Lord ascended into Heaven in a cloud, the disciples returned to the Upper Room in Jerusalem and continued in prayer. The 120 faithful disciples of the New Covenant people of God prayed for nine days with the Virgin Mary in preparation for the promised coming of God the Holy Spirit, who will fill and indwell the Church and give them the continuing Divine Presence of Christ (Acts 1:12-15).

St. Paul wrote to the members of the Church at Ephesus that Christ is the Head of the Church; He is the fullness of the One who fills all in all (Eph 1:23). We celebrate the spiritual fullness of Christ on the Solemnity of the Ascension. At the end of his Gospel, St. Matthew records that Jesus told His disciples, "I am with you always" (Mt 28:20). The Feast of the Ascension is not about Christ's absence but His continual Presence among His people. The local bishop or bishops' council can transfer this Solemnity to the nearest Sunday instead of traditionally celebrating it on a Thursday, the fortieth day after the Resurrection. Check your local diocese's website

The Solemnity of Pentecost: It was on the Old Covenant Feast of Weeks (Shavuot), known in Greek as "Pentecost" (fiftieth day), fifty days after Jesus' Resurrection from the dead, that the Holy Spirit took possession of the New Covenant Church (Acts 2). The Old Covenant feast (see Lev 23:15-22) was celebrated fifty days after the Feast of Firstfruits. God ordained that Firstfruits would fall on the day after the Old Covenant Sabbath (Saturday) during the holy week of the Feast of Unleavened Bread on the first day of the week we call Sunday (Lev 23:9-11). In AD 30, the Jewish feast of Firstfruits was the same day Jesus rose from His tomb as the "first fruits" of the dead, on the first day of the week, Resurrection Sunday. Counting fifty days from the Sunday of Firstfruits, as the ancients counted with no zero-place-value, was the Feast of Weeks/Pentecost, also on the first day of the week, our Sunday (Lev 23:15-16). These are the only two of the seven God-ordained annual festivals that did not have a prescribed date. Their annual day of celebration changed each year for all the other feasts (see Lev 23:5, 6, 24, 27, 34). However, Firstfruits and Weeks/Pentecost always fell on the first day of the week, on a Sunday. The two feasts prefigure two significant events in Salvation History: the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on the first day of the week (Sunday) of the holy week of the Feast of Unleavened Bread in 30 AD (Mt 28:1; Mk 16:1-2; Lk 24:1-3; Jn 20:1-2), and fifty days later the coming of the Holy Spirit on a Sunday to take possession of the New Covenant Church (Acts 2:1-3). In the first century AD, Jewish priest/historian Flavius Josephus (39-100 AD) recorded that at some point, Jewish religious leaders altered the day for the celebrations so that they no longer fell annually on the first day of the week (Sunday). This alteration separated the link between these two Old Covenant feasts and their fulfillment in the New Covenant (Antiquities of the Jews, 13.8.4 [252]). See the document on Pentecost.

The Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church
At the conclusion of the Third Session of the Second Vatican Council in 1964, St. Paul VI declared the Blessed Virgin Mary the "Mother of the Church" to all Christian people, including the faithful and the pastors, who call her the most loving Mother and established that "the Mother of God should be further honored and invoked by the entire Christian people by this tenderest of titles."
On February 11, 2018, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments inscribed a new obligatory Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Mother of the Church into the General Roman Calendar. This memorial is celebrated every year on the Monday after Pentecost. This date is appropriate since Mary was also present in the Upper Room for the birth of the Church when God the Holy Spirit came to fill and indwell the assembly, praying with her. This devotion is intended to "encourage the growth of the maternal sense of the Church in the pastors, religious and faithful, as well as a growth of genuine Marian piety."
The decree reflects on the history of Marian theology in the Church's liturgical tradition and the writings of the Church Fathers. The decree states that Saint Augustine and Pope Saint Leo the Great reflected on the Virgin Mary's importance in the mystery of Christ: "In fact, the former [St. Augustine] says that Mary is the mother of the members of Christ because, with charity, she cooperated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church, while the latter [St. Leo the Great] says that the birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, thus indicating that Mary is at once Mother of Christ, the Son of God, and mother of the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church."
The decree states that these reflections result from the "divine motherhood of Mary and her intimate union in the work of the Redeemer." It declares that Sacred Scripture depicts Mary at the foot of the Cross of her beloved Son of God (cf. Jn 19:25). There she became the Mother of the Church when she "accepted her Son's testament of love and welcomed all people in the person of the beloved disciple as sons and daughters to be reborn unto life eternal."

The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary: According to the Gospel of St. Luke, Mary of Nazareth traveled to visit her elderly kinswoman, Elizabeth, after the revelation of the Annunciation (Lk 1:39-56). St. Elizabeth, a descendant of the first high priest, Aaron, the brother of Moses and the wife of a priest named Zechariah (Lk 1:5), lived in a Judean village near Jerusalem. The elderly St. Elizabeth was also miraculously pregnant with the child John (later known as "the Baptist"). The angel Gabriel, the same angel who announced the birth of Jesus to Mary, announced the birth of St. John to Elizabeth's husband, the priest Zechariah. When Mary entered Elizabeth's house and greeted her, the child in Elizabeth's womb leaped with joy, hearing Mary's voice. Inspired by the Spirit of God, Elizabeth proclaimed that Mary was the "mother of my Lord," meaning the mother of God. She said: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb (this declaration was to become the second line of the "Hail Mary" prayer). Mary responded to Elizabeth's testimony with the beautiful hymn of the Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55). Initially, the Church celebrated this feast on June 2^nd, but now, the Visitation usually concludes the Marian month of May.

Ordinary Time: Ordinary time begins the day after Pentecost. It isn't a season but a way to describe the weeks between the seasons. The word "ordinary" means regular or plain, but it also means "counted." Ordinal numbers are 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, and so on. We call it "Ordinary Time" since we count the weeks between the Church's seasons in ordinal numbers. The weeks of Ordinary Time number thirty-three or thirty-four depending on the year and are divided into two parts of the liturgical year. The first part of Ordinary Time begins on the Sunday after Epiphany (although the first Sunday is perpetually impeded by the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord) and continues until Ash Wednesday. With the date of Easter varying every year, the first part of Ordinary Time may include as few as four weeks and as many as nine weeks. Part II of Ordinary Time begins the day after Pentecost and continues to the Saturday before the 1^st Sunday of Advent. On Monday, May 29, the Church returns to Part II of Ordinary Time.

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