Catholic Family Devotions

Understanding the Day

Season

Lent

Week

Week 4 of Lent

Rank

Feast

Lent is a season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that prepares Christians for the Paschal Mystery; placing this feast in Lent encourages integrating Frances’s example of charity and prayer into Lenten practices. The canonical rank “Double” indicates a liturgical celebration of notable importance: it has its proper prayers and antiphons and takes precedence over simpler memorials, yet it does not displace the central observances of Holy Week or the Paschal Triduum. There is no octave or vigil attached in the provided context.

Daily Prayer

The Introit for this day has not yet been generated.

Weekly Prayer

Weekly prayer content will appear here once it is scheduled.

Weekly Formation

Beatitude 3

The Beatitudes

Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.
The blessed mourners grieve chiefly for sin—their own and the sins of the world—and bear unavoidable trials in union with God. Their promised comfort is not mere earthly relief but the consolation of grace and, finally, eternal joy.

Saint & Feast

Principal celebration

Frances of Rome

St. Frances of Rome, Widow

Italian mystic and religious foundress

Born: 1384-00-00 · Rome
Died: 1440-03-09 · Rome

Francesca Bussa de' Leoni, known as Frances of Rome, was an Italian Catholic mystic, organizer of charitable services and a Benedictine oblate who founded a religious community of oblates, who share a common life without religious vows. She was canonized in 1608.

Learn more about Frances of Rome

CommemorationCalendar title

Customs & Fasting

Traditional fast

Traditional Lenten fast.

Today in Church History

No Church history reflection has been prepared for this date yet.

Catechism

Catechism of the Catholic Church

In the life of Christ, every moment—from his hidden life at Bethlehem and Nazareth to his Death and Resurrection—continually teaches us. As families, we can look to Jesus’ obedience to Mary and Joseph and his humble work in Nazareth as an example of holiness in daily family life and work. At Bethlehem, we are called to kneel before the manger and adore Christ, hidden in the weakness of a new-born child. Jesus’ Transfiguration strengthens faith in anticipation of his Passion and reveals the hope of glory, while his voluntary journey to Jerusalem leads to the Passover of his Death and Resurrection, through which the Messiah-King accomplishes the coming of the kingdom.

In the Catechism, we learn that Jesus’ descent into hell means that he truly experienced death and, in his human soul united to his divine person, entered the realm of the dead. He went there as Savior, proclaiming the Good News to the spirits imprisoned there. He did not descend to free the damned or destroy the hell of damnation, but to deliver the just who had gone before him and were awaiting their Redeemer. In this final phase of his messianic mission, Christ’s redemptive work reaches all who are saved, across all times and places. By his death, Jesus conquered death and the devil, who held the power of death, and he opened heaven’s gates for the just. This is a powerful source of hope: the risen Christ holds the keys of Death and Hades, and the dead who hear the voice of the Son of God will live.

¶ 564

By his obedience to Mary and Joseph, as well as by his humble work during the long years in Nazareth, Jesus gives us the example of holiness in the daily life of family and work.

Today's Mass Readings

Open the day's Sancta MissaDivinum Officium · Divino Afflatu - 1954View readings