Catholic Family Devotions

Understanding the Day

Season

Time After Pentecost

Week

Week 23 of Time After Pentecost

Rank

Sunday

The Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost falls in the liturgical season called the Time after Pentecost (sometimes known as Ordinary Time). This long season follows Pentecost and focuses on the ongoing life of the Church: growth in faith, discipleship, and living the Gospel in everyday life. “Semidouble” is an older liturgical rank: in plain terms, it means this Sunday has its own prayers, readings, and antiphons that are given clear liturgical priority, though some simpler celebratory elements (like certain repeated antiphons) may be reduced compared with higher-ranking feasts. There is no octave or special vigil attached to this celebration in the provided context, so the Sunday is observed on the day itself with the usual Sunday Mass and the signs of the season.

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

Gluttony and Temperance

The Way of Darkness

Gluttony
Gluttony is an unreasonable attachment to eating, drinking, or similar bodily satisfactions. Its disorder lies not simply in quantity but in allowing appetite to rule reason, damage health or duty, or place bodily pleasure above the good of the soul.

The Way of Light

Temperance
Temperance moderates attraction to pleasure and keeps the use of created goods within the order of reason. It does not condemn bodily goods, but prevents appetite from ruling the person or crowding out health, duty, charity, and spiritual good.

Saint & Feast

Principal celebrationCalendar title

Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost

A biography or feast reflection has not yet been prepared.

Commemoration

Raphael

St. Raphael the Archangel

archangel featuring in Book of Tobit

Raphael is an archangel first mentioned in the Book of Tobit and in 1 Enoch, both estimated to date from between the 3rd and 2nd century BC. In later Jewish tradition, he became identified as one of the three heavenly visitors entertained by Abraham at the Oak of Mamre. He is not named in either the New Testament or the Quran, but later Christian tradition identified him with healing and as the angel who stirred waters in the Pool of Bethesda in John 5:2–4, and in Islam, where his name is Israfil, he is understood to be the unnamed angel of Quran 6:73, standing eternally with a trumpet to his lips, ready to announce the Day of Judgment. In Gnostic tradition, Raphael is represented on the Ophite Diagram.

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 sexual pleasure is morally disordered when it is sought for itself, apart from its procreative and unitive purposes. It identifies lust, masturbation, fornication, pornography, and prostitution as serious disorders of sexuality that harm chastity and the dignity of persons. Sexual union is ordered to the good of spouses and to the generation and education of children, and the full meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation is achieved in the context of true love and marriage. Pornography and prostitution particularly reduce people to objects of pleasure or profit, while rape is always an intrinsically evil act that gravely violates another person’s freedom, dignity, and integrity. As we reflect together, we can uphold chastity, respect the dignity of every person, and remember that personal circumstances, such as anxiety, habit, immaturity, destitution, blackmail, or social pressure, can lessen moral culpability in some cases. We should also be mindful of the grave harm done to vulnerable people, especially children.

The Catechism teaches that homosexual acts are contrary to the natural law and cannot be approved (CCC 2357). At the same time, men and women with deep-seated homosexual tendencies are to be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity, and every sign of unjust discrimination should be avoided (CCC 2358). Homosexual persons are called to chastity and can grow toward Christian perfection through self-mastery, disinterested friendship, prayer, and sacramental grace (CCC 2359). Sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman; in marriage, the spouses’ physical intimacy signifies and pledges their spiritual communion (CCC 2360). This self-giving love is lived through the acts proper and exclusive to spouses, within their total commitment to one another until death (CCC 2361). The spouses’ union serves both their own good and the transmission of life, calling conjugal love to fidelity and fecundity (CCC 2363).

Today's Mass Readings

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