Catholic Family Devotions

Understanding the Day

Season

Time After Pentecost

Week

Week 17 of Time After Pentecost

Rank

Sunday or semidouble observance

This day falls in Ordinary Time after Pentecost (the Time After Pentecost in older calendars), a season focused on the growth of the Church and living out Christ’s teaching in daily life. The rank “Semidouble” indicates a celebration of notable importance: the feast’s prayers and readings take precedence over regular weekday observances, but it does not outrank the major solemnities and privileged ferial days. There is no octave or vigil attached here, so the celebration is observed on this single day without extended liturgical repetition.

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

The Fruits of the Holy Spirit

Charity
Charity as a fruit is the mature delight of loving God and neighbor under the action of the Holy Ghost. It is called a fruit because supernatural love has become not only right but spiritually fruitful and pleasing in its exercise.
Joy
Joy is the spiritual gladness that follows charity’s union with the beloved good, above all with God. It can remain beneath sorrow and suffering because its deepest cause is God’s possessed or hoped-for goodness rather than favorable circumstances.
Peace
Peace is the tranquility produced when desires are rightly ordered within the soul and charity unites persons in the good. It is more than quiet or lack of conflict, since true peace depends on union with God, justice, and ordered love.
Patience
Patience bears present suffering without abandoning the good or surrendering to disordered sorrow. As a fruit of the Spirit it gives steadiness under trials whose end may not yet be visible.
Kindness
Kindness is a gracious readiness to treat others with warmth and to make charity evident in manner and action. It removes needless harshness and makes the good attractive without compromising truth.
Goodness
Goodness is the active inclination to do what is morally good and beneficial to others. As a fruit of the Spirit it reflects an interior uprightness that readily expresses itself in worthy deeds.

Saint & Feast

Principal celebration

Saints Cornelius and Cyprian

Sts. Cornelius, Pope and Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs

Cornelius was bishop of Rome from 251 to 253 and died after exile during imperial persecution.

Cornelius was bishop of Rome from 251 to 253 and died after exile during imperial persecution. Cyprian was bishop of Carthage, an influential early Christian writer, and a martyr; the Roman calendar commemorates the two together on September 16.

Learn more about Saints Cornelius and Cyprian

Commemoration

Euphemia

Ss. Euphemia, Lucy and Geminian, Martyrs

Christian virgin and martyr saint

Born

Today in Church History

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

Catechism

Catechism of the Catholic Church

In these Catechism readings, the Ten Commandments, or “Decalogue,” are presented as God’s “ten words,” revealed to his people within the covenant. They are connected with the Exodus, God’s great liberating event, and they express the implications of belonging to the God who made this covenant with his people. The commandments are more than isolated instructions: in making his holy will known, God reveals himself. They are given as a gift and as part of the dialogue between God and his people. As we reflect together in our homes, we can receive the commandments with gratitude, remembering that they show us God’s will and call us to live faithfully in covenant with him.

The Ten Commandments offer a clear expression of what is required in love of God and love of neighbor. The first three commandments concern love of God, while the other seven concern love of neighbor. In fidelity to Scripture and the example of Jesus, they have held a predominant place in the Church’s catechesis since St. Augustine, and catechisms have often used their order to explain Christian morality. They are not simply separate rules: the Decalogue forms a coherent whole, with each commandment referring to the others and to all of them. As part of God’s revelation, the commandments express our fundamental duties toward God and neighbor and teach us about true humanity.

¶ 2060

The gift of the commandments and of the Law is part of the covenant God sealed with his own. In Exodus, the revelation of the "ten words" is granted between the proposal of the covenant and its conclusion - after the people had committed themselves to "do" all that the Lord had said, and to "obey" it. The Decalogue is never handed on without first recalling the covenant (“The LORD our God made

Today's Mass Readings

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

Understanding the Day

Daily Prayer

Weekly Prayer

Weekly Formation

The Fruits of the Holy Spirit

The Fruits of the Holy Spirit

Saint & Feast

Saints Cornelius and Cyprian

Euphemia

Today in Church History

Catechism

Catechism of the Catholic Church

Today's Mass Readings

Baltimore Catechism No. 3