Friday, 21 December, 2007
Ember Friday in Advent (II)
Day of Fast (traditional).

Collect: Stir up Thy might, we beseech Thee, O Lord, and come: that they who trust in Thy loving kindness may be the more speedily freed from all adversity: Who livest and reignest with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end.
Lesson: From the Prophet Isaias, 11:1-5.
Gospel: Continuation of the holy Gospel according to St. Luke, 1:37-47.

St. Thomas, Apostle (III)
“St. Thomas doubted the Lord’s Resurrection. But invited by our Lord to place his fingers into the Holy Wounds, he passed suddenly from incredulity to ardent faith, exclaiming: ‘My lord and my God!’ He became one of the greatest Apostolic missionaries and died in India in the first century.”

Collect: Give us, Lord, we beseech Thee, a share in the glory of today’s festival of Thy blessed Apostle Thomas: and grant that we may be uplifted by his patronage and drawn with fitting devotion to equal him in faith. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Who livest and reignest with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end.

Epistle: From Bl. Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians, 2:19-22.
Gospel: Continuation of the holy Gospel according to St. John, 20:19-31.

Remarks are abstracted from The Daily Missal and Liturgical Manual, from Editio Typica of the Roman Missal and Breviary, 1962
(Baronius Press Limited, London, 2004, in conjunction with the Fraternal Society of St. Peter, www.baroniuspress.com)