Saints and Feasts

May

The Seventh Week of Easter leads us through the culminating days of the Easter Season. We finish the week this year with a series of saints foundational to our Benedictine and ecclesiastical history. Bede the Venerable, himself a historian of great influence, stands as one of the most influential Benedictines in our church’s history. Gregory VII was steadfast in his defense of the authoritative role of the Church in doctrine and in church life. And Augustine of Canterbury is one of the secondary patrons of the English Benedictines, a monk sent by Gregory the Great to England to firmly establish the Christian faith. Commemorations of these pillars of the faith prepare us well for the great ecclesial feast of the Pentecost, which coincides this year with the graduation of the class of 2023, an event that gathers many from our extended community of faith.

Portsmouth Ordo
Sunday, May 21: Seventh Sunday of Easter
Monday, May 22: Feria
Tuesday, May 23: Feria
Wednesday, May 24: Feria
Thursday, May 25: Bede the Venerable, priest & doctor
Friday, May 26: Gregory VII, pope
Saturday, May 27: Augustine of Canterbury, bishop
SUNDAY MAY 28: PENTECOST SUNDAY

St. Gregory Icon & Baptismal Font

The Sixth Week of Easter presents us this year with commemorations of Pachomius, early monastic father, as well as several bishops important to the 10th-century’s monastic reformation of the church in England. A fourth-century Egyptian, Pachomius the Great is considered the founder of cenobitic monasticism. These feasts remind us of our monastic and English heritage, as a house of the English Benedictine Congregation. In the Ascension, we celebrate Our Lord’s “return to the Father,” the Second Glorious Mystery of the rosary, and the harbinger of the culmination of the Easter Season.

Portsmouth Ordo
Sunday, May 14: Sixth Sunday of Easter
Monday, May 15: Pachomius, abbot
Tuesday, May 16: Feria
Wednesday, May 17: Feria
Thursday, May 18: The Ascension of the Lord
Friday, May 19: Dunstan, Ethelwold, Oswald, bishops (Mass)
Saturday, May 20: Feria