SAINT OF THE DAY

About Today

Year: C(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Green.

In other years: St John of Capistrano (1386 - 1456)

He was born in Capistrano in the Abruzzi in 1386. He studied law at Perugia and for some time held the office of a judge. He joined the Friars Minor and was ordained. He travelled throughout Germany, Poland, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Russia, leading an apostolic life, strengthening Christian morals and combating heresy.
    When the Turks were invading Europe in the wake of the fall of Constantinople, they laid siege to Belgrade, then a border fort of the kingdom of Hungary. John preached a crusade against them and took part in the battle on 22 July 1456 in which John Hunyadi, his army and John’s peasant crusaders lifted the siege and defeated the Turks, keeping Christian Europe safe from Turkish invasion for the next 70 years.
    Plague spread through the camp and John died of it, at Ilok, in what is now Croatia, on 23 October 1456. He is the patron saint of military chaplains.
   

 Saint Ethelflæda (10th century)


Romsey

Ethelflæda was the daughter of Æthelwold of Wessex. She joined the Abbey of Romsey under the abbacy of Morwenna, and eventually became abbess herself. She practised an austere life, and on her death was buried in the Abbey beside St Morwenna.

Portsmouth Ordo

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Liturgical colour: green

The theological virtue of hope is symbolized by the colour green, just as the burning fire of love is symbolized by red. Green is the colour of growing things, and hope, like them, is always new and always fresh. Liturgically, green is the colour of Ordinary Time, the season in which we are being neither especially penitent (in purple) nor overwhelmingly joyful (in white).