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Happy Ascension!

Depending on where you are in the world, this greeting may be reaching you a few days early. This is because the Ascension, like Corpus Christi, is celebrated on Thursday in some countries and dioceses and on Sunday in others.

It is inconvenient having half the world celebrating a feast on the wrong day – “the wrong day” meaning “on a different day from me”. But it is a good opportunity to remind you that Universalis has a great many local calendars in it, so almost wherever you are, you can set Universalis to use your own local calendar. That way you will get the right feasts on the right dates. You may well also get some local feasts specially relevant to you: ones that no-one else celebrates.

We now have a web page explaining how to set your local calendar. It covers all the Universalis apps and programs, and our web site as well.

Pentecost and the “theological season”

Pentecost follows soon after the Ascension.

Pentecost turned the disciples from a rabble of trainees listening to their Master, and sometimes understanding him, into a group of Apostles fired from within by the Spirit who gives all understanding.

Pentecost is often called “the birthday of the Church”. It also marks the start of a short but intense season of what you might call “theological” feasts. Apart from Pentecost itself they include Jesus Christ the Universal High Priest (in some places), the Holy Trinity, and the Body and Blood of Christ. These feasts teach us that our religion is not only a matter of feeling but of understanding, not only of the heart but of the mind.

Characteristically, the Church concludes this mini-season with the feast of the Sacred Heart, reminding us of the opposite fact: that our religion is not only of the mind but of the heart as well.

It all makes sense. Every one of us has a tendency to simplify and become one-sided, and these feasts between them give us balance.

The Universalis podcast

The short theological season following on from Pentecost is well worth taking seriously. If you haven’t already tried the Universalis podcast, do, because it may help. It appears once a week and is about 15 minutes long. The podcast contains reflections on the week ahead, which many people have told us are valuable and stimulating (thank you for saying this!). It also talks about the Liturgy, the way it came about, the way it is structured and how best to use it.

This page has links to all the podcast episodes as they appear. If you are using a podcast app such as Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you can subscribe to the podcast in your app. That same page has instructions.

“The Creed in Slow Motion”

Talking about thinking about theology, don’t forget the book The Creed in Slow Motion. It continues to have an impact among the people who have bought it, and read it, and re-read it. The Creed in Slow Motion is not a textbook. It does not tell you what to think. It tells you to think, and offers ideas and inspiration to help you do so. This review of the book is impressive, and humbling.

Thank you all for using Universalis. If you have trouble or questions, or suggestions, do write to us at universalis@universalis.com or use the Contact Us button in one of the apps.

Let us all keep one another in our prayers, as always.

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Happy Easter! He is truly risen, alleluia.

If you look at the Lauds and Vespers pages this week, you will find that the psalms are the same every day. That is not a bug. The Church is drunk on the Resurrection and can’t stop celebrating it. Let’s let ourselves go, after the self-control of Lent, and do the same!

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We are just over half way through Lent, and Laetare Sunday has just celebrated the fact. The vestments at Mass were not a Lenten deep purple, but paler and whiter: the books call the colour “rose”. The opening antiphon at Mass didn’t tell us to repent or be sad: it said “be filled with joy”. Laetare Ierusalem, it said in Latin – which is how this Sunday got its name. Even the short reading at Lauds (from the prophet Nehemiah) hammered the point home:

This day is sacred to the Lord your God. Do not be mournful, do not weep. For this day is sacred to our Lord. Do not be sad: the joy of the Lord is your stronghold.

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Welcome to Lent!!

The Gospel for Ash Wednesday neatly summarises the three pillars of Lent: fasting, prayer and almsgiving. When most people think of ‘giving things up for Lent’ they are thinking in terms of the disciplining of body and spirit, which comes under the broad category of ‘fasting’. So let’s leave fasting to one side and look at the other two: prayer and almsgiving.

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After last year’s leisurely four-week Advent the hurried nature of this year’s Advent comes as a bit of a shock. Only three weeks and a day! A lot of activity has to be compressed into a small space, so please accept this short newsletter as our “Happy Advent” and “Happy Christmas” message combined.

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November is traditionally the month of the dead, beginning as it does with All Saints and All Souls. Particular religious orders and particular regions often add to these: All Saints of Ireland, Deceased Clergy of Southern Arabia, Deceased Friends and Benefactors of the Order of Preachers, to give just three examples. November is the right month to assign to these commemorations because it comes at the end of the Church’s year when she contemplates the Last Things, the end of the world, and (at Advent) the Second Coming.

By the same token, November is the month of resurrection: of death as the moment of entry into eternal life. This can feel encouraging; or it can feel quite the opposite. If Judgement consists in God’s telling us, ‘Whatever you have become through your own actions, that is what you are’, then that makes immortality terrifying. We need all the help we can, from God especially, to become something that we can tolerate being: permanently, definitively, for ever.

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The liturgical calendar gives us what you might call spiritual weather. Ordinary weather sets the tone for the day. I am a different person on rainy days, on sunny days, on humid days or windy ones. Or rather, I am the same person but I build my life on a different foundation each time: and so does everybody I meet, because the weather is the same for all of us.

The spiritual weather is the same not just for the people we come across in the street but for almost everyone across the world. Like rain or sunshine, it is a foundation for life. The day is built differently when it is built upon a martyr or a teacher, upon a contemplative or a saint who went out and did things. It is different when the saint is someone like me, whom perhaps I ought to emulate, and different when I feel able to stand back and admire from a safe distance.

(This is why we have the About Today pages in Universalis: and in the apps and programs you will even see pictures to set the scene more clearly. If you are on Instagram, follow the handle universalispublishing.)

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This newsletter took a break in August, but behind the scenes we have not been idle.

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Happy July – and for the Northern Hemisphere at least, happy holidays!

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Happy Eastertide!

The air all around is full of Alleluias, and in the Android and iPhone/iPad apps you even have an Alleluia button which, if you press it, plays you the word ‘Alleluia’ spoken by users of Universalis across the world.

The carpenter and the crown

On Saturday 6 May the people of the United Kingdom will be having a new servant anointed for them: a King. The location is the abbey church of St Peter in Westminster. The name reminds us that it is at the basilica of St Peter in Rome that the servant of the whole people of Christ is anointed: the Pope.

What makes this coincidence fruitful is that on Monday 1 May we celebrate the memorial of St Joseph the Worker. These dates taken together give a clearer perspective on the nature of work and of service.

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