Thursday of week 15 in Ordinary TimeOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(Saint Kenelm (-821))

Saint Kenelm was the son of Kenwulf, who was King of Mercia from 796 to 821. There is a strong local tradition that identifies a particularly steep and narrow valley in the Clent Hills as the place where Kenelm was murdered. The site is marked by a medieval Church dedicated to him. A two-line Anglo-Saxon verse, which probably represents the folk-memory of the event, can be translated:On the Clent Hills · Kenelm is therein the cow valley · born to be kingunder a hawthorn tree · a headless corpse lies he.An eleventh-century Life of St Kenelm in Latin contains many fanciful legends but reflects the belief that the Prince was killed as the result of dynastic quarrels within the Mercian royal family; in fact his uncle Kelwulf succeeded to the throne. In an age when politics were conducted according to the maxim: “Kill or be killed”, it is probable that Kenelm’s reputation for holiness came from his refusal to adopt such methods to obtain power. He was remembered by the people of the West Midlands as a faithful follower of Christ in particularly difficult circumstances. Kenelm was buried with his father in the crypt of St Pancras’ Abbey at Winchcombe (Gloucestershire), which became a place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. In the nineteenth century, Cardinal Newman was eager to encourage devotion to English saints; he would walk on pilgrimage from the Oratorian house at Rednal to St Kenelm’s Church on the Clent Hills.Birmingham Ordo

Wednesday of week 15 in Ordinary Time, or Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Office of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | Mass(The Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel)

Saint Bonaventure, Bishop, DoctorOffice of Readings | Morning Prayer | Evening Prayer | Night Prayer | MassSt Bonaventure (1218 - 1274)

Bonaventure was born at Bagnoregio in Etruria in about 1218. He became a Franciscan in 1243 and studied philosophy and theology at the University of Paris. He became a famous teacher and philosopher, part of the extraordinary intellectual flowering of the 13th century. He was a friend and colleague of St Thomas Aquinas.At this time the friars were still a new and revolutionary force in the Church, and their radical embracing of poverty and rejection of institutional structures raised suspicion and opposition from many quarters. Bonaventure defended the Franciscan Order and, after he was elected general of the order in 1255, he ruled it with wisdom and prudence. He is regarded as the second founder of the Order.He declined the archbishopric of York in 1265 but was made cardinal bishop of Albano in 1273, dying a year later in 1274 at the Council of Lyons, at which the Greek and Latin churches were (briefly) reconciled.Bonaventure wrote extensively on philosophy and theology, making a permanent mark on intellectual history; but he always insisted that the simple and uneducated could have a clearer knowledge of God than the wise.He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1588 by Pope Sixtus V.See also the articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia.(St Swithun (- 862))