Born Francisco Febres Cordero on November 7 in the city of Cuenca, 7,000ft up in the Andes in Ecuador, he belonged to a family heavily involved in the dangerous politics of that country.

His father, who earned his living as professor of English and French at the seminary college in Cuenca, inclined to despair when Francisco was born with crippled legs.

His mother, however, retained her faith in the boy’s destiny and educated him at home before sending him at nine to the school which the Christian Brothers had recently established in Cuenca, their first in South America.

Francisco immediately felt at home. “From the moment I entered,” he later wrote, “God gave me a burning desire to be clothed in the holy habit of their Institute.”

His family thought otherwise, and packed him off to the seminary of Cuena. There, however, Francisco’s health deteriorated to such an extent that he was allowed back to the Brothers’ school. 

On March 24 1868, still only 14, he officially joined the Institute, taking the name of Miguel in religion.

He proved a brilliant teacher, and at 19 published a Spanish grammar that became a standard textbook. With the help of President Moreno of Ecuador the number of pupils in the Brothers’ school topped the 1,000 mark in 1879.

In 1888 Miguel represented the Ecuadorian branch of the Christian Brothers at the beatification of John Baptist de La Salle in Rome.
Back at home a new Spanish grammar consolidated the academic respect in which he was held. In 1892 he was elected to the Academy of Ecuador.

For a while he taught at an Institute for Adult Education which the Brothers opened in Quito, but this closed after opposition from the now anti-clerical government. Miguel, for all his reputation, was quite content to return to primary school teaching and preparing children for their First Holy Communion.

Sent again to Europe in 1907, Miguel was too modest to make any impression in Paris, where he was set to translating French textbooks into Spanish.

A spell at Lembecq, the Institute’s mother house in Belgium, did nothing for his health, and he was sent to recuperate on the coast of Spain near Barcelona.

Forced by riots to abandon his lodging Miguel returned to find the statue of the Virgin which he had placed in the window still standing guard. 

His health, though, continued to deteriorate, and he died on February 9 1910. 

In 1937, to avoid depredations during the Spanish Civil War, his remains were returned to Ecuador, and taken in procession to Quito. Several miracles were reported along the way.

Miguel Cordero was canonised in 1984.

Divine Office Week I

Sunday, February 5: Fifth Sunday in
Ordinary Time
Job 7:1-4 & 6-7; Ps 147; 1 Cor 9:16-19 & 22-23; Mk 1:29-39
Monday, February 6: St Paul Miki and Companions, martyrs
1 Kgs 8:1-7, 9-13; Ps 132; Mk 6:53-56
Tuesday, February 7: Weekday in Ordinary Time
1 Kgs 8:22-23, 27-30; Ps 84; Mk 7:1-13
Wednesday, February 8: Weekday in
Ordinary Time or St Jerome Emiliani;
St Josephine Bakhita, virgin
1 Kgs 10:1-10; Ps 37; Mk 7:14-23
Thursday, February 9: Weekday in
Ordinary Time or St Teilo, bishop (in Wales)
1 Kgs 11:4-13; Ps 106; Mk 7:24-30
Friday, February 10: St Scholastica, virgin
1 Kgs 11:29-32; 12:19; Ps 81; Mk 7:31-37
Saturday, February 11: Weekday in
Ordinary Time or Our Lady of Lourdes
1 Kgs 12:26-32; 13:33-34; Ps 106;
Mk 8:1-10

Extraordinary Form

Sunday, February 5: Septuagesima Sunday
1 Corinthians 9:24-10:5; Matthew 20:1-16
Monday, February 6: St Titus, bishop and confessor
Ecclesiasticus 44:16-45:20; Matthew 25:14-23
Tuesday, February 7: St Romuald, Abbot
Ecclesiasticus 45:1-6; Matthew 19:27-29
Wednesday, February 8: St John of Matha, confessor
Ecclesiasticus 31:8-11; Luke 12:35-40
Thursday, February 9: St Cyril of Alexandria, bishop, confessor and doctor
2 Timothy 4:1-8; Matthew 5:13-19
Friday, February 10: St Scholastica, virgin
2 Corinthians 10:17-11:2; Matthew 25:1-13
Saturday, February 11: Our Lady of Lourdes
Apocalypse 11:19-12:10; Luke 1:26-31

Compiled by Gordon Dimon, Senior MC of the Latin Mass Society

Honesty is surely Job’s first lesson. Often we hide our bleakest thoughts, possibly thinking that we should cope with life and its many reverses. Job made no such attempt. With excruciating honesty he spoke of life as pressed service and drudgery. He named his delusion as the very foundations of faith seemed to totter. He spoke of restless and endless nights, of days that vanished without a shred of hope.

Job’s outpouring was indeed bleak, but it was honest. His words articulated the universal condition of sinful humanity as it seeks to come to terms with its pain and suffering, its lost hopes and temptation to despair. The same honesty demands that we ourselves, when darkness inevitably comes our way, should acknowledge our wretchedness. Often, like Job, we long for explanations that will make sense of our pain. Job received no such explanation in the normal sense. He never ceased to pray, even though his prayer was frequently in the form of complaint. “Remember that my life is but a breath, and that my eyes will never again see joy.”

Ultimately the answer to Job’s suffering was not an explanation, but the assurance that God was with him. Our greatest fear is not so much that we might suffer, but that we might suffer alone. Job represented that desolate cry at the heart of sinful humanity, a cry that longs for healing, that aches to be rescued from its isolation.

The same longing greeted Jesus at the beginning of his ministry. At the beginning of Mark’s Gospel Jesus healed first the man possessed of an unclean spirit and then Simon’s mother-in-law. The description of the latter, though brief, has a touching intimacy. “He went to her, took her by the hand, and helped her up. And the fever left her and she began to wait on them.”

Each and every healing speaks of the God, who, in Jesus, reaches out to a broken world. Job had longed to break through the isolation of his pain. Christ, as the healing of the Father, embraced that pain throughout his ministry. The response of the crowd, reflecting our own brokenness, was immediate. “That evening, after sunset, they brought to him all who were sick and those who were possessed of devils. The whole town came crowding round the door.”

At the beginning of his ministry Jesus reached out to the multitude attracted to Simon’s house. Here, at last, was the Messiah who would bind up the broken hearted. By his life, death and resurrection, Jesus would bring that healing to the whole world.

Job had been assured that the Lord would be with him in his suffering. Whatever darkness we experience in our lives, the Risen Lord is the assurance that God is not only with us: through his death he embraces that pain and, in his resurrection, brings the promise of healing.

Although Aquinas had little knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, as a theologian he was unrivalled in intellectual power, capable of dictating to four secretaries at the same time.

Yet he showed absolute single-mindedness in pursuing his fundamental aim: to use Aristotelian methods of scientific rationalism to support the doctrines of Christian faith and revelation.

The son of the count of Aquino, which lies on the ancient border of the papal states, mid-way between Rome and Naples, Thomas could claim kinship with the kings of Aragon, Castile and France, as well as with the Emperors Henry VI and Frederick II.

When, at 19, he joined the mendicant Dominicans his family was so shocked that his military brothers kidnapped him. Released after a
year, Thomas studied in Paris and Cologne. A contemporary described him as “tall, erect, large and well-built, with a complexion like white wheat, and a head which early grew bald”.

“We call this man a dumb ox,” said his teacher St Albert, “but his bellowing in doctrine will one day resound throughout the world.” Yet Aquinas the man always remained modest and unassuming, as rich in spirit as in mind.

From 1252 he taught in Paris. There is a story of him dining at the court of Louis IX (St Louis) and passing the meal sunk in abstraction while the social butterflies gossiped around him. Then suddenly Thomas concluded his lucubrations, brought his great fist crashing down upon the table, and declared: “That will settle the Manicheees.”

In 1259 his superiors sent Aquinas back to Italy, where he remained for 10 years, organising Dominican schools, and teaching in Anagni, Orvieto, Rome and Viterbo.

Around 1266 Aquinas began his Summa Theologica, the systematic expression of his mature thought. Although he never finished this work it became over the centuries, pace the Scotists, the bedrock of Catholic orthodoxy.

From 1269 to 1272 Aquinas was again in Paris, before being recalled to Naples. There, in 1273, he experienced a vision of such intensity that he abandoned writing.

“All I have composed,” he said, “seems to me like so much straw compared with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.”

Summoned to the Council of Lyon in 1274, Aquinas died at Fossa Nuova, south of Rome. Let G K Chesterton conclude his mortal history: “He confessed his sins and he received his God; and we may be sure that the great philosopher had entirely forgotten philosophy. The confessor ran forth as if in fear, and whispered that his confession had been that of a child of five.”

Divine Office Week IV

Sunday, January 29: Fourth Sunday in
Ordinary Time
Deut 18:15-20; 1 Cor 7:32-35; Mk 1:21-28
Monday, January 30: Weekday in
Ordinary Time
2 Sm 15:13-14, 30; 16:5-13; Ps 3; Mk 5:1-20
Tuesday, January 31: St John Bosco
2 Sm 18:9-10, 14b, 24-25a, 30; 19:3; Ps 86; Mk 5:21-43
Wednesday, February 1: Weekday in
Ordinary Time
2 Sm 24:2, 9-17; Ps 32; Mk 6:1-6
Thursday, February 2: The Presentation of the Lord
Mal 3:1-4; Ps 24; Heb 2:14-18; Lk 2:22-40 or Lk 2:22-32
Friday, February 3: Weekday in
Ordinary Time or St Blaise; St Ansgar
Sir 47:2-11; Ps 18; Mk 6:14-29
Saturday, February 4: Weekday in Ordinary Time
1 Kgs 3:4-13; Ps 119; Mk 6:30-34

Extraordinary Form

Sunday, January 29: Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 8:23-27
Monday, January 30: St Martina, virgin and martyr
Ecclesiasticus 51:1-8,12; Matthew 25:1-13
Tuesday, January 31: St John Bosco, confessor
Philippians 4:4-9; Matthew 18
Wednesday, February 1: St Ignatius, bishop and martyr
Romans 8:35-39; John 12:24-26
Thursday, February 2: Purification of Our Lady
Malachy 3:1-4; Luke 2:22-32
Friday, February 3: Feria
Readings of Fourth Sunday after Epiphany repeated
Saturday, February 4: St Andrew Corsini, bishop and confessor
Ecclesiasticus 44:16-45:20; Matthew 25:14-23

Compiled by Gordon Dimon, Senior MC of the Latin Mass Society

Ancient superstitious practices, laughable to a scientific age, cannot be entirely dismissed. Each and every age longs for a voice, a revelation that will speak to the heart, thereby guaranteeing the future.

Through Moses the God of Israel gave such voice to his people, a voice that named them as his very own, that it gathered them together in a covenant of love. Moses took the promise further. He promised that the Lord would raise up for Israel a prophet like himself, a prophet that would speak to God face to face, as to a friend. That promise was unfulfilled at the death of Moses. The Book of Deuteronomy is concluded with unfulfilled expectation. “Since then, never has there been a prophet in Israel like Moses, the man the Lord knew face to face.”

The gospels reveal Jesus as the fulfilment of this expectation for a prophet like unto Moses. They had longed for a prophet raised up from among their brothers. Through the incarnation the Son of God became their brother, like unto them in all things but sin. They had longed for a prophet, who, like Moses, spoke to God as to a friend, face to face. As Son of God, Jesus shared with his people the intimacy of the Father.

The early chapters of the gospels spell out in action a dawning awareness of Christ’s significance. Like many before him, he taught in their synagogues, but here was teaching with a difference. “His teaching made a deep impression on them because, unlike the scribes, he taught them with authority.”

The authority for which they longed was not the authority of power, but an authority that comes from the heart. They longed for words that instinctively acknowledged the truth of their broken lives, and yet, at the same time, promised hope and redemption.

They witnessed, as in today’s Gospel, the deliverance of those possessed by unclean spirits. The more they witnessed such wonders, the more they began to acknowledge the saving Presence that had come into their lives. “Here is a teaching that is new and with authority behind it: he gives orders even to unclean spirits and they obey him.” The crowd’s reaction to Jesus leads us to reflect on our own lives. Like them, we are searching for meaning and purpose. Today, as in the day of Moses, there are many false prophets. They promise salvation through health and beauty, prosperity and celebrity. The list is endless and disappointing, and yet we continue to give ourselves to false hopes and dreams. Let us acknowledge Jesus, embracing in him the promise made through Moses.

Here is a prophet raised up from among ourselves, who leads us to the Father, the source of all knowledge and life. He speaks with authority, the power to change broken lives. He alone heals broken lives. Every other hope is sorcery by a different name.

Divine Office Week III

Sunday, January 22: Third Sunday in
Ordinary Time
Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Ps 25; 1 Cor 7:29-31;
Mk 1:14-20
Monday, January 23: Weekday in Ordinary Time
2 Sm 5:1-7, 10; Ps 89; Mk 3:22-30
Tuesday, January 24: St Francis de Sales,
2 Sm 6:12b-15, 17-19; Ps 24; Mk 3:31-35
Wednesday, January 25: The Conversion of St Paul
Acts 22:3-16 or Acts 9:1-22; Ps 117; Mk 16:15-18
Thursday, January 26: Ss Timothy and Titus
2 Tm 1:1-8 or Ti 1:1-5; Ps 96; Mk 4:21-25
Friday, January 27: Weekday in Ordinary Time or St Angela Merici,
2 Sm 1:1-4a, 5-10a, 13-17; Ps 51;
Mk 4:26-34
Saturday, January 28: St Thomas Aquinas
2 Sm 12:1-7a, 10-17; Ps 51; Mk 4:35-41

Extraordinary Form

Sunday, January 22: Third Sunday after Epiphany
Romans 12:16-21: Matthew 8:1-13
Monday, January 23: St Raymond of Peñafort, confessor
Ecclesiasticus 31:8-11,12; Luke 12:35-40
Tuesday, January 24: St Timothy, bishop and martyr
1 Timothy 6:11-16; Luke 14:26-33
Wednesday, January 25: Conversion of St Paul, Apostle
Acts 9:1-22; Matthew 19:27-29
Thursday, January 26: St Polycarp, bishop and martyr
1 John 3:10-16; Matthew 10:26-32
Friday, January 27: St John Chrysostom, bishop, confessor and doctor
2 Timothy 4:1-8; Matthew 5:13-19
Saturday, January 28: St Peter Nolasco, confessor
1 Corinthians 4:9-14; Luke 12:32-34

Compiled by Gordon Dimon, Senior MC of the Latin Mass Society

The Prophet Jonah’s mission to Nineveh, the great city, underlines repentance as the first step in discipleship.

Nineveh represented to Israel everything that was incompatible with a life dedicated to the service of God. The vast city was synonymous with sin and self-indulgent arrogance. Jonah’s mission was to proclaim the repentance that alone could prevent the judgment that was to come.

It would be foolish to deny that there are parallels between Nineveh and the more materialistic aspects of a modern life-style. If we are serious about a faith that is not only proclaimed, but also lived as a disciples of Jesus Christ, we, like the citizens of Nineveh, must take the first step. That first step is repentance. “And the people of Nineveh believed in God: they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least.”

Repentance, a willingness to change sinful attitudes, leads to what we could never achieve of ourselves. Throughout the gospels Jesus called his disciples first to repentance and then to the faith that had the power to transform their lives. “The time has come and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.”

That our response to God’s call can never be a purely intellectual exercise is demonstrated in the call of the first disciples. Walking by the Sea of Galilee Jesus encountered Simon and Andrew, James and John. It was a moment of grace that demanded commitment. The time had come. “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

It is amazing that such a seemingly casual encounter was the prelude to life-changing decisions. “At once they left their nets and followed him.”

This moment of grace, seized by these first disciples, opened their lives to the grace of God, a grace that would make them apostles and foundations of the faith.

Let us pray for the humility to recognise those moments in life when the Lord is calling. Rather than let such moments pass us by, letting us respond to them in prayer. It is in such moments, with those first disciples, that we encounter the God who can bring about in us, and within his Church, infinitely more than we could ask or imagine.

Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians, while at first challenging, describes an important aspect of discipleship. He counsels that those who have wives should live as though they had none, those who mourn should live as if there was nothing to mourn, and so the list goes on.

Fundamentally, Paul was stating that the disciple can never become so engrossed in his own world that there is no space for the life that is Christ and his kingdom. He asks the disciple: what is the fundamental preoccupation of your life? Do you see in each moment only what concerns yourself?

Is there any space for the will of God?

The Venerable Bede records that Fursey experienced a vision, in which angels carried him out of his body to a great height. Looking down into a gloomy valley, he saw four fires. The first, an angel explained, was Falsehood; the next Covetousness; the third Discord and the last Injustice. Gradually these fires drew together into one mighty conflagration.

Fursey became alarmed. The angel, though, reassured him: “It will not burn you because you did not kindle it; for although it appears as a great and terrible fire, it tests everyone according according to his desert, and will burn away sinful desires.” Fursey did not entirely escape, for one of the demons who tortured fallen spirits in the flames thrust a victim against him, causing him to be burnt on his (presumably ghostly) shoulder and jaw.

Fursey recognised the man, and remembered that he had appropriated some of his clothes after he died. Restored once more to his body, he found that he had a permanent scar on his shoulder and jaw.

Bede heard this story from a monk who had met Fursey. His informant recalled that, although it was a bitterly cold day when he saw the saint, who was but thinly clad, the holy man was sweating profusely – “either”, as Bede suavely observes, “because of the consolation or the terror of his recollections”.

Around 637 Fursey crossed the Irish Sea to begin his life as a missionary. His first field of endeavour was in East Anglia, where King Sigbert wanted to restore Christianity after the depredations of the pagan Redwald.

Inspired by another vision, Fursey built a monastery on some land given him by Sigbert at Cnobheresburg (Burgh Castle in Suffolk). Soon, though, he turned over the administration of the monastery to his brother Fullan, and went to live with another brother, Ultan, who had become a hermit.

After he had spent some 10 years in East Anglia the kingdom was attacked by the paganissimus Penda of Mercia. Fursey fled across the Channel, where he was welcomed by the Frankish King Clovis II.

The King’s wife Balthild was an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat who had been sold into slavery in Gaul. Whether or not through this contact, Fursey was able to found another monastery at Lagnac, near Paris on the River Marne, before dying on a journey in 649.

Disputes over where he should be buried testified to the high regard in which he was held. Finally he was laid to rest in Péronne, where his cult continued to grow.

Divine Office Week II

Sunday, January 15: Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
1 Sm 3:3b-10, 19; Ps 40; 1 Cor 6:13-20;
Jn 1:35-42
Monday, January 16: Weekday in Ordinary Time
1 Sm 15:16-23; Ps 50; Mk 2:18-22
Tuesday, January 17: St Anthony, abbot
1 1 Sm 16:1-13; Ps 89; Mk 2:23-28
Wednesday, January 18: Weekday in Ordinary Time
1 Sm 17:32-33, 37, 40-51; Ps 144; Mk 3:1-6
Thursday, January 19: Weekday in Ordinary Time or St Wulstan, bishop (in England)
1 Sm 18:6-9; 19:1-7; Ps 56; Mk 3:7-12
Friday, January 20: Weekday in Ordinary Time or St Fabian, Pope, Martyr, St Sebastian, martyr
1 Sm 24:3-21; Ps 57; Mk 3:13-19
Saturday, January 21: St Agnes
2 Sm 1:1-4, 11-12, 19, 23-27; Ps 80; Mk 3:20-21

Extraordinary Form

Sunday, January 15: Second Sunday after Epiphany
Romans 12:6-16; John 2:1-11
Monday, January 16: St Marcellus I, pope and martyr
1 Peter 5:1-4,10-11; Matthew 16:13-19
Tuesday, January 17: St Antony, abbot
Ecclesiasticus 45:1-6; Luke 12:35-40
Wednesday, January 18: Feria
Readings of Second Sunday after Epiphany repeated
Thursday, January 19: Feria
Readings of Second Sunday after Epiphany repeated
Friday, January 20: SS Fabian, pope, and Sebastian, martyrs
Hebrews 11:33-39; Luke 6:17-23
Saturday, January 21: St Agnes, virgin and martyr
Ecclesiasticus 51:1-8,12; Matthew 25:1-13

Compiled by Gordon Dimon, Senior MC of the Latin Mass Society