Understanding the Day
Season
Eastertide
Week
Week 2 of Eastertide
Rank
Weekday
Eastertide is the fifty-day season from Easter Sunday to Pentecost, a time when the Church celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus and its life-giving effects. The rank “Feria” (a weekday) means this day is an ordinary weekday of the liturgical cycle rather than a feast of a particular saint or solemnity. Because it falls within Easter Week 2, the readings and prayers will continue to focus on post-Resurrection appearances and the new life Christ brings.
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 7
The Beatitudes
Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God.
Peacemakers establish the tranquility of right order by reconciling persons to God, to truth, and to one another. Christian peace is therefore more than avoiding conflict; it rests on justice and charity and does not purchase quiet by cooperation with evil.
Featured Saint
Modern saintFeatured saintCalendar title
Thursday of Week 2 of Eastertide
Saint Paul VI
A biography or feast reflection has not yet been prepared.
Today in Church History
No Church history reflection has been prepared for this date yet.
Catechism
Catechism of the Catholic Church
The Catechism teaches that through Baptism, Christians become the People of God and share, each in their own way, in Christ’s priestly, prophetic, and royal office. All the faithful have equal dignity and cooperate in building up the Body of Christ, according to each person’s condition and function. The Church’s diversity of ministries serves her unity and mission: ordained ministers teach, sanctify, and govern in Christ’s name, while the laity have their own assignment in the Church and in the world. Christ is the source of ministry in the Church, and sacramental ministry is a service, modeled on Christ who took the form of a servant. As we reflect together, we can give thanks for the different ways God calls the faithful to serve the one mission of the Church.
Christ established the Twelve as an apostolic college, with Peter at their head. Peter, the rock of the Church and shepherd of the whole flock, received the keys of the Church; the apostles’ pastoral office continues in the bishops under the primacy of the Pope. As Peter’s successor, the Pope is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of unity among the bishops and the whole company of the faithful, with full, supreme, and universal power over the Church. United with the Pope, bishops serve as visible sources of unity in their own particular Churches, caring for their people with priests and deacons while also sharing concern for all the Churches—especially the poor, those persecuted for the faith, and missionaries. This structure shows the Church’s unity: many local Churches and bishops gathered under one head.
¶ 879
Sacramental ministry in the Church, then, is at once a collegial and a personal service, exercised in the name of Christ. This is evidenced by the bonds between the episcopal college and its head, the successor of St. Peter, and in the relationship between the bishop's pastoral responsibility for his particular church and the common solicitude of the episcopal college for the universal Church.