Catholic Family Devotions

Understanding the Day

Season

Time After Pentecost

Rank

First-class feast

Our Lord Jesus Christ the King is celebrated at the end of the liturgical year in the Time after Pentecost to focus our minds on Christ’s sovereignty over all creation and history. There is no octave or vigil required beyond the usual norms for great feasts unless the local calendar adds one, so preparations are liturgical and devotional rather than extended by eight days. This celebration matters because it gathers Christians to acknowledge that every aspect of life—work, family, politics, and faith—falls under Christ’s loving rule.

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

Envy and Brotherly Love

The Way of Darkness

Envy
Envy is sorrow at another person’s good because that good is viewed as diminishing one’s own excellence or advantage. It opposes charity by resenting what should be welcomed and can lead to detraction, hostility, or pleasure at another’s misfortune.

The Way of Light

Brotherly Love
Brotherly love rejoices in another person’s true good and acts to promote it. It opposes envy by seeing another’s gifts, success, and holiness not as a personal loss but as goods that can serve God and the whole community.

Saint & Feast

Principal celebrationCalendar title

Our Lord Jesus Christ the King

A biography or feast reflection has not yet been prepared.

CommemorationCalendar title

Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

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 marriage calls spouses to a faithful, total, unique, and exclusive love, honoring the equal personal dignity of man and woman. Polygamy, adultery, divorce, and free union offend the dignity of marriage, while incest corrupts family relationships. Sexual abuse of children or adolescents entrusted to adults’ care causes grave harm to the young and violates the responsibility for their upbringing. Love is the fundamental vocation of every person, and Christ is the model of chastity; every baptized person is called to live chastely according to his or her state of life. Within marriage, spouses are called to faithful and indissoluble love, to receive fecundity as a gift and good of marriage, and to practice responsible parenthood through morally acceptable means.

¶ 2391

Some today claim a "right to a trial marriage" where there is an intention of getting married later. However firm the purpose of those who engage in premature sexual relations may be, "the fact is that such liaisons can scarcely ensure mutual sincerity and fidelity in a relationship between a man and a woman, nor, especially, can they protect it from inconstancy of desires or whim." Carnal union is morally legitimate only when a definitive community of life between a man and woman has been established. Human love does not tolerate "trial marriages." It demands a total and definitive gift of persons to one another.

¶ 2392

Today's Mass Readings

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