Welcome to October, the month of the Rosary and of Our Lady, and also, this year, a special month because on Saturday the 3rd it is the 800th anniversary of the death of St Francis in 1226. All Franciscans will be celebrating his feast with special vigour this year. The rest of us won’t be, because the feast of St Francis of Assisi is on the 4th, which is a Sunday this year. St Francis will be amused.

A new podcast strand: the Seven Deadly Sins

Sin is failure to love, which means that a right contemplation of sin will teach us to love better. Dante Alighieri is one of the greatest poets in world literature and an expert in the theology of love, so in August a new strand started in the Universalis podcast: the Seven Deadly Sins, following the way Dante sees each of them in terms of love.

“Resurrection Is Now”

Dom Aelred Watkin (1918-1997) was a wise and respected Head Master of Downside from 1962 to 1975. He wrote a book called Resurrection Is Now about death and resurrection, about the reality of death and the reality of the salvation of God. It talks about how everything dies and is renewed: the natural world; and love; and human life; and the universe itself. It talks of what happens after death: judgement, heaven and hell, the resurrection of the body, and how through the sacraments we can prepare for our own death and resurrection.

Ever since Resurrection Is Now was put into the Universalis apps as a Daily Book, people have been asking how they can get a printed copy, for themselves or their friends.

Now at last they can.

A new edition of the Divine Office

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has announced that a new edition of the Liturgy of the Hours will come into use on Ash Wednesday 2027. The new edition will match more accurately the latest official Latin edition, and features new English translations of many of the texts.

We have been told that we will be allowed to provide this new edition through Universalis. Along with other electronic publishers, we are waiting for the USCCB to finalise the details of this – both technical and commercial. As you can imagine, they are run off their feet at present, preparing all the texts for the printed books.

Corpus Christi is today (or on Sunday if your bishop has decided that’s better). It’s one of a cluster of theological feasts which began with Pentecost ten days ago and will end with the Immaculate Heart of Mary in just over a week’s time. You can think of this “mini theological season” as us having finished commemorating all the events of salvation history, and now sitting down and thinking through what it all means. Because it all means something.

We will all be celebrating the Ascension in a few days’ time. The event is a joyful feast for us, who know what it led to, but it must have been grim for the disciples, who knew that they they would never again see Jesus on earth. Who was this mysterious promised Advocate?

God preserves our freedom by not telling us exactly what he has in store for us, and God can always be trusted. Nevertheless, it is hard for people who find themselves in a situation where, like the disciples after Ascension and before Pentecost, they can do nothing but pray and wait. Let us remember them in our own prayers.

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Lent has been going for two weeks now, so we really ought to have settled into it. By a pleasing coincidence, March this year ends on the Tuesday of Holy Week, which makes it easier to get an idea of how far through Lent we are.

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The Christmas season definitely, finally finished yesterday with the feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, and by now all the cribs will have been taken down and put away. It’s a pity that we don’t have installations like the crib to mark other seasons of the year, but in just two weeks’ time it will be Ash Wednesday and the churches will be a dark and sombre purple: so we will once more see at a glance what season it is.

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Welcome back to Advent! Glory is on the way. The liturgy is full of the prophecies of Isaiah, which were first given for consolation to the Jews 2,700 years ago (the same sort of time as the legendary foundation of the city of Rome). They were fulfilled once over in the first century BC when the Son of God became man as the baby Jesus – and still those prophecies speak to us of the Second Coming of Christ.

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