Perhaps it brought boredom to clerics having to read their Office all over again, but I must say I wish the duplication of feasts hadn't been suppressed in 1960 or thereabouts: it seems to me that the great saints of the New Testament are well worth having more than one look at each year.
Consider how sensible it was to have the Octave Day of Christmas on the 1st of January, then the successive Octave Days of St Stephen, St John Evangelist and the Holy Innocents filling up the time until the 5th of January, kept as Vigil of the Epiphany, and then the Epiphany itself. Now we have instead ferial days of Christmastide. Hmmm.
In any case, it's a chance for me to further fete St Stephen, my confirmation patron, in my private prayers at least.
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In other news, it's been quite unseasonably cold ever since I returned to Tasmania, and the wind-chill factor has made it chillier - for instance, yesterday we went off on a pleasant enough daytrip round the North-East, through Scottsdale and Lilydale (stopping off at Piper's Brook winery, now owned by Kreglinger Wine Estates), but the temperature didn't even crest 19°C; to-day I'm driving down to Hobart (one always drives down to Hobart and up to Launceston), yet the State's capital will reach only 16°C - and this is supposed to be summer! I hadn't packed for this sort of weather... Brrr!
3 comments:
Joshua:
I'm no expert, so what actually happened when you had an Octave inside an Octave (a friend of mine was asking today, you see)? Would you end up with lots of commemorations?
16 degrees!? That's positively balmy! ;-P
God bless,
Mark
Now, I'm no expert, but at some times and in some places that was more or less exactly what happened - but there were all sorts of complex rubrics governing all this; I think you mentioned having the Marquess of Bute's old translation of the Roman Breviary, which would include such details...
So how's the weather in Scotia?
Ah, actually no, I have the "Anglican Breviary". I realise my question might be a bit stupid, because it itself tells me what is happening on the individual days, but I dare say there are special rubrics, somewhere...
The weather is okay, but the days are short. Too short!
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