- December 3, 2023
2024 Spring On-Air Appeal – May 6-10 – Call 1-877-711-8500!
2024 Spring On-Air Appeal – May 6-10 – Call 1-877-711-8500!
Today is Holy Saturday. The Soul of Our Lord Jesus Christ has descended into hell, separated for a brief time from His Body, though both remain united to the Second Person of the Trinity. It is a time of mourning and yet also of great hope, for Our Lord is harrowing hell, bringing joy to the souls of the just that died under the Old Covenant; the saints that have waited in limbo for the promised Messiah, including His holy ancestors; from our first parents, Adam & Eve, to Ss. Joseph and John the Baptist, the last Patriarch and the last Prophet.
From The Liturgical Year, by Dom Prosper Gueranger:
Now, at last, we understand what sin has done: By sin, death entered into the world; and it passed upon all men. Though Jesus knew no sin, yet has He permitted Death to have dominion over Him, in order that He might make it less bitter to us, and, by His Resurrection, restore unto us that eternal life, of which we had been deprived by sin. How gratefully we should appreciate this Death of our Jesus! …The sight of this Tomb, wherein His Body lies lifeless and cold, teaches us something far more important than the power of death: it reveals to us the immense, the incomprehensible love of God for man.… Let us, then, love this sacred Sepulcher, which is to give us Life.
AT Rome, on the Appian way, the martyrdom of blessed Quirinus, tribune, baptized with all his household, by pope St. Alexander, who was imprisoned in his house. Under the emperor Adrian, he was delivered to the judge Aurelian, and, as he persevered in the confession of the faith, his tongue was plucked out, he was stretched on the rack, his hands and feet were cut off, and the sword terminated the course of his martyrdom.
At Thessalonica, the birthday of the holy martyrs Domninus, Victor, and their companions.
At Constantinople, the commemoration of many holy martyrs of the Catholic communion, whom the heresiarch Macedonius, in the time of Constantius, put to death by unheard-of kinds of torments. For among other tortures, he cut off the breasts of Christian women by pressing them between the lids of chests, and seared the wounds with hot iron.
At Senlis, the demise of St. Regulus, bishop of Aries.
At Orleans, in France, St. Pastor, bishop.
At Syracuse, St. Zosimus, bishop and confessor.
On Mount Sinai, St. John Climacus, abbot.
At Aquino, St. Clinius, confessor.
℣. And elsewhere many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.
℟. Thanks be to God.
