About Today
Monday 19 January 2026
Monday of week 2 in Ordinary Time
Let us rejoice in the Lord, with songs let us praise him.
Year: A(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Green.
Other saints: St Wulstan (1008? - 1095)
England
St Wulstan became a Benedictine monk at Worcester Cathedral priory, and later was made prior. He reformed the monastic observance, and became known as a preacher and counsellor.
In 1062 he became Bishop of Worcester and combined effectively the tasks of monastic superior and diocesan bishop. He is the first English bishop known to have made a systematic visitation of his diocese. Together with Lanfranc he was instrumental in abolishing the slave trade from Bristol to Viking Ireland, and later he supported Lanfranc’s policy of reform. He built parish churches and re-founded the monastery at Westbury-on-Trym. He insisted on clerical celibacy, and under him Worcester became one of the most important centres of Old English literature and culture. He was known for his abstinence and generosity to the poor.
After the Norman Conquest he remained one of the few Englishmen to retain office. In the Barons’ Rising he was loyal to the Crown and defended the Castle of Worcester against the insurgents. He was buried in his Cathedral, and his cult began almost at once. He was canonised in 1203 and his feast was widely kept in monastic and diocesan calendars.
In the Chapel of St Oliver Plunkett at Downside Abbey, a stained glass window depicts a less official story concerning Wulstan: that one day, whilst celebrating Mass, he was distracted by the smell of roast goose, which was wafted into the church from the neighbouring kitchen. He prayed that he might be delivered from the distraction and vowed that he would never eat meat again if his prayer were granted.
The modern world needs stories like this more than it realises. The watered-down puritanism that serves so many of us as a moral code today equates pleasure with evil – cream cakes, the advertisements tell us, are “naughty but nice”.. or even “wickedly delicious.” Messages like this are a libel on the name of God, who created the pleasures, and on his Son, whose first recorded public act was turning water into wine. There is nothing wicked about delicious food in itself, or in any other pleasant or beautiful thing. Let us enjoy God’s creation all we can and rejoice in its creator as we do so, and if, like Wulstan, we have to deprive ourselves of something for our spiritual or bodily health, then let us suffer our deprivation cheerfully, blaming the weakness in us that made it necessary. Let us never devalue our sacrifices by denigrating the things we sacrifice, or the sacrifice will be pointless. Let us remember what God did, day after day, as he was creating the world: he looked at it, and saw it, and behold: it was very good.
Other saints: St Faolan (8th century)
Dunkeld
The fact that the saint’s name can be spelt Fillan, Filan, Phillan, Fáelán or Faolan says everything about the difficulty of disentangling the records of early Gaelic saints, and even their identities. This is nothing to worry about: saints are real people, and they remain real even when most of the facts about them have evaporated. It will happen to us.
This St Faolan appears to be St. Fillan of Munster, the son of Feriach, grandson of Cellach Cualann, King of Leinster. He received the monastic habit in the Abbey of Saint Fintan Munnu and came to Scotland from Ireland in 717 as a hermit along with his Irish princess-mother St. Kentigerna, his Irish prince-uncle St. Comgan, and his siblings. They settled at Loch Duich. Fillan later moved south and is said to have been a monk at Taghmon in Wexford before eventually settling in Pittenweem (‘the Place of the Cave’), Fife, in the east of Scotland later in the 8th century.
Other saints: Saint Henry of Uppsala (-1156)
Denmark, Finland, Sweden
Henry was a medieval English clergyman who came to Sweden with Cardinal Nicholas Breakspear (the future Pope Hadrian IV) in 1153. He was probably designated to be the new Archbishop of Uppsala, but the independent church province of Sweden could only be established in 1164 after the civil war there, so Henry would have been sent to organize the Church in Finland, where Christians had already existed for two centuries.
It is said that Henry entered Finland together with King Saint Eric of Sweden and died there as a martyr. But documentary evidence of this period is virtually non-existent, and all that can be said for certain is that his veneration has been established since at least the 14th century. The Catholic Cathedral in Helsinki is dedicated to him.
Other saints: The Jesuit Martyrs of the Reformation in Europe
19 Jan (where celebrated)
Saints John Ogilvie, Priest; Stephen Pongrácz, Melchior Grodziecki, Priests, and Mark of Križevci, Canon of Esztergom; Blessed Ignatius de Azevedo, Priest, and Companions; James Salès, Priest, and William Saultemouche, Religious, Martyrs
Today we commemorate Jesuits who were killed for the Catholic Faith in the sixteenth century, after the Reformation. John Ogilvie ministered clandestinely to persecuted Catholics in Scotland. Stephen Pongracz from Hungary, Melchior Grodziecki from Poland, and Mark Krizevci, a local diocesan priest, ministered to the abandoned Catholics in Koscielny (Slovakia). Ignatius de Acevedo and thirty-nine Jesuits he had recruited from Portugal for the missions were massacred at sea by French Calvinist pirates while en route to Brazil. James Salès, a French Jesuit, ministered to straying Catholics in the Aube as, with his companion William Saultemouche, a Jesuit Brother.
Other saints: Bl Andrew of Peschiera OP (1400 - 1485)
19 Jan (where celebrated)
Dominican Friar and Priest.
Blessed Andrew was born at Peschiera, Italy in 1400 and entered the Dominican Order in a reformed priory of the Congregation of Lombardy. Itinerant preaching was his life’s ministry, especially in the Valtelline region of the Italian Alps where he labored for forty- five years. Traveling on foot and living with the poor, he reconciled many to Christ. He died at the priory of Morbegno on January 18, 1485.
No one puts new wine into old wineskins.
Gospel: Mark 2:18-22
At that time: John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to Jesus, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins — and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.’
Reflection on the Ancient Roman Sculpture
In today’s Gospel, Jesus refers to himself as the 'bridegroom', a title that may sound a little unusual to our ears, yet it echoes a deep biblical tradition. The prophets of the Old Testament often described God as the bridegroom who lovingly binds himself to his people, Israel, forming a covenant that is both intimate and faithful. By using this image for himself, Jesus reveals that God’s promised bridegroom has now arrived in human form. His love is no longer directed only to one nation but offered to all who welcome the Good News; it is a true wedding invitation extended to the entire world. Saint Paul later builds on this by calling the Church the Bride of Christ: a community united to the Lord not by duty but by love.
This marital imagery speaks to the kind of relationship Jesus desires with each of us: committed, faithful, loving, wholehearted. Even when our love falters, his does not. As Paul reminds us, “He remains faithful”, the steadfast spouse who never gives up on us. This unfailing love isn’t meant to make us careless so we can 'just do what we want, as God will forgive us anyway'. Rather, it should strengthen our trust when we fall. And when we do fall, like in any relationship, we should truly repent, and ask for forgiveness. Christ’s love is like new wine we read in today's Gospel: always fresh, always active, always seeking space to grow within us. The task for us is to become new leather wineskins, able to expand and expand our souls, as more and more graces flow in.
Our sculpture was discovered at the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum. It is named after its unique library of papyri scrolls, discovered in 1750. The Villa was considered to be one of the most luxurious houses in all of Herculaneum and in the Roman world. Its luxury is shown by its exquisite architecture and by the large number of outstanding works of art discovered, including our sculpture. It depicts Silenus riding a wineskin. Silenus, in Greek mythology, is the jovial old companion and tutor of Dionysus, the god of wine and festivity. Often depicted as rotund, bearded, and delightfully unsteady on his feet, Silenus embodies the comic wisdom (and foolishness) that comes with too much wine. One popular artistic interpretation shows him riding not a horse but a wineskin, clinging on with tipsy delight as if wine itself were his horse. In our sculpture we can see how large these ancient wineskins could be. Legends further portray him as both drunken and profoundly wise: when captured by King Midas, Silenus was said to reveal deep secrets about the nature of life: that endless pleasure leads only to sorrow, and that true happiness is beyond worldly desires. Silenus reminds us that joy and insight sometimes come wrapped in laughter, vulnerability, and the odd stumble along the way.
Silenus riding a wineskin, Fountain figure,
Replica after the Statue of Silenos riding a wineskin from the Villa dei Papiri, Herculaneum,
Original 1st Century BC
© The Penn Museum, Pennsylvania, USA
Monday of week 2 in Ordinary Time
Let us rejoice in the Lord, with songs let us praise him.
Year: A(II). Psalm week: 2. Liturgical Colour: Green.
Other saints: St Wulstan (1008? - 1095)
England
St Wulstan became a Benedictine monk at Worcester Cathedral priory, and later was made prior. He reformed the monastic observance, and became known as a preacher and counsellor.
In 1062 he became Bishop of Worcester and combined effectively the tasks of monastic superior and diocesan bishop. He is the first English bishop known to have made a systematic visitation of his diocese. Together with Lanfranc he was instrumental in abolishing the slave trade from Bristol to Viking Ireland, and later he supported Lanfranc’s policy of reform. He built parish churches and re-founded the monastery at Westbury-on-Trym. He insisted on clerical celibacy, and under him Worcester became one of the most important centres of Old English literature and culture. He was known for his abstinence and generosity to the poor.
After the Norman Conquest he remained one of the few Englishmen to retain office. In the Barons’ Rising he was loyal to the Crown and defended the Castle of Worcester against the insurgents. He was buried in his Cathedral, and his cult began almost at once. He was canonised in 1203 and his feast was widely kept in monastic and diocesan calendars.
In the Chapel of St Oliver Plunkett at Downside Abbey, a stained glass window depicts a less official story concerning Wulstan: that one day, whilst celebrating Mass, he was distracted by the smell of roast goose, which was wafted into the church from the neighbouring kitchen. He prayed that he might be delivered from the distraction and vowed that he would never eat meat again if his prayer were granted.
The modern world needs stories like this more than it realises. The watered-down puritanism that serves so many of us as a moral code today equates pleasure with evil – cream cakes, the advertisements tell us, are “naughty but nice”.. or even “wickedly delicious.” Messages like this are a libel on the name of God, who created the pleasures, and on his Son, whose first recorded public act was turning water into wine. There is nothing wicked about delicious food in itself, or in any other pleasant or beautiful thing. Let us enjoy God’s creation all we can and rejoice in its creator as we do so, and if, like Wulstan, we have to deprive ourselves of something for our spiritual or bodily health, then let us suffer our deprivation cheerfully, blaming the weakness in us that made it necessary. Let us never devalue our sacrifices by denigrating the things we sacrifice, or the sacrifice will be pointless. Let us remember what God did, day after day, as he was creating the world: he looked at it, and saw it, and behold: it was very good.
Other saints: St Faolan (8th century)
Dunkeld
The fact that the saint’s name can be spelt Fillan, Filan, Phillan, Fáelán or Faolan says everything about the difficulty of disentangling the records of early Gaelic saints, and even their identities. This is nothing to worry about: saints are real people, and they remain real even when most of the facts about them have evaporated. It will happen to us.
This St Faolan appears to be St. Fillan of Munster, the son of Feriach, grandson of Cellach Cualann, King of Leinster. He received the monastic habit in the Abbey of Saint Fintan Munnu and came to Scotland from Ireland in 717 as a hermit along with his Irish princess-mother St. Kentigerna, his Irish prince-uncle St. Comgan, and his siblings. They settled at Loch Duich. Fillan later moved south and is said to have been a monk at Taghmon in Wexford before eventually settling in Pittenweem (‘the Place of the Cave’), Fife, in the east of Scotland later in the 8th century.
Other saints: Saint Henry of Uppsala (-1156)
Denmark, Finland, Sweden
Henry was a medieval English clergyman who came to Sweden with Cardinal Nicholas Breakspear (the future Pope Hadrian IV) in 1153. He was probably designated to be the new Archbishop of Uppsala, but the independent church province of Sweden could only be established in 1164 after the civil war there, so Henry would have been sent to organize the Church in Finland, where Christians had already existed for two centuries.
It is said that Henry entered Finland together with King Saint Eric of Sweden and died there as a martyr. But documentary evidence of this period is virtually non-existent, and all that can be said for certain is that his veneration has been established since at least the 14th century. The Catholic Cathedral in Helsinki is dedicated to him.
Other saints: The Jesuit Martyrs of the Reformation in Europe
19 Jan (where celebrated)
Saints John Ogilvie, Priest; Stephen Pongrácz, Melchior Grodziecki, Priests, and Mark of Križevci, Canon of Esztergom; Blessed Ignatius de Azevedo, Priest, and Companions; James Salès, Priest, and William Saultemouche, Religious, Martyrs
Today we commemorate Jesuits who were killed for the Catholic Faith in the sixteenth century, after the Reformation. John Ogilvie ministered clandestinely to persecuted Catholics in Scotland. Stephen Pongracz from Hungary, Melchior Grodziecki from Poland, and Mark Krizevci, a local diocesan priest, ministered to the abandoned Catholics in Koscielny (Slovakia). Ignatius de Acevedo and thirty-nine Jesuits he had recruited from Portugal for the missions were massacred at sea by French Calvinist pirates while en route to Brazil. James Salès, a French Jesuit, ministered to straying Catholics in the Aube as, with his companion William Saultemouche, a Jesuit Brother.
Other saints: Bl Andrew of Peschiera OP (1400 - 1485)
19 Jan (where celebrated)
Dominican Friar and Priest.
Blessed Andrew was born at Peschiera, Italy in 1400 and entered the Dominican Order in a reformed priory of the Congregation of Lombardy. Itinerant preaching was his life’s ministry, especially in the Valtelline region of the Italian Alps where he labored for forty- five years. Traveling on foot and living with the poor, he reconciled many to Christ. He died at the priory of Morbegno on January 18, 1485.
No one puts new wine into old wineskins.
Gospel: Mark 2:18-22
At that time: John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to Jesus, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins — and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.’
Reflection on the Ancient Roman Sculpture
In today’s Gospel, Jesus refers to himself as the 'bridegroom', a title that may sound a little unusual to our ears, yet it echoes a deep biblical tradition. The prophets of the Old Testament often described God as the bridegroom who lovingly binds himself to his people, Israel, forming a covenant that is both intimate and faithful. By using this image for himself, Jesus reveals that God’s promised bridegroom has now arrived in human form. His love is no longer directed only to one nation but offered to all who welcome the Good News; it is a true wedding invitation extended to the entire world. Saint Paul later builds on this by calling the Church the Bride of Christ: a community united to the Lord not by duty but by love.
This marital imagery speaks to the kind of relationship Jesus desires with each of us: committed, faithful, loving, wholehearted. Even when our love falters, his does not. As Paul reminds us, “He remains faithful”, the steadfast spouse who never gives up on us. This unfailing love isn’t meant to make us careless so we can 'just do what we want, as God will forgive us anyway'. Rather, it should strengthen our trust when we fall. And when we do fall, like in any relationship, we should truly repent, and ask for forgiveness. Christ’s love is like new wine we read in today's Gospel: always fresh, always active, always seeking space to grow within us. The task for us is to become new leather wineskins, able to expand and expand our souls, as more and more graces flow in.
Our sculpture was discovered at the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum. It is named after its unique library of papyri scrolls, discovered in 1750. The Villa was considered to be one of the most luxurious houses in all of Herculaneum and in the Roman world. Its luxury is shown by its exquisite architecture and by the large number of outstanding works of art discovered, including our sculpture. It depicts Silenus riding a wineskin. Silenus, in Greek mythology, is the jovial old companion and tutor of Dionysus, the god of wine and festivity. Often depicted as rotund, bearded, and delightfully unsteady on his feet, Silenus embodies the comic wisdom (and foolishness) that comes with too much wine. One popular artistic interpretation shows him riding not a horse but a wineskin, clinging on with tipsy delight as if wine itself were his horse. In our sculpture we can see how large these ancient wineskins could be. Legends further portray him as both drunken and profoundly wise: when captured by King Midas, Silenus was said to reveal deep secrets about the nature of life: that endless pleasure leads only to sorrow, and that true happiness is beyond worldly desires. Silenus reminds us that joy and insight sometimes come wrapped in laughter, vulnerability, and the odd stumble along the way.
Silenus riding a wineskin, Fountain figure,
Replica after the Statue of Silenos riding a wineskin from the Villa dei Papiri, Herculaneum,
Original 1st Century BC
© The Penn Museum, Pennsylvania, USA