Help using St. Joseph Weekday Missal

[MichelleTherese]

I’m so utterly confused.

Ok, long story short: The government doesn’t have enough money to give us adequate maternity facilities here locally so I have to spend the last month of my pregnancy in a hospital in some strange city hundreds of miles away, totally cut off from my husband and child and family and church. (Husband can’t just ditch the farm for a solid month… and we live on an island so he can’t exactly hop on the freeway and drive down.) I’m crippled and having to face the possibility that I won’t get anywhere near a Catholic church while I’m down in the hospital. They don’t have internet or even normal phones! (Costs $2.40 a minute to use the weird phones they have!)

So I’m trying to organize spiritual books that will help keep me somewhat sane while I’m down there. One thing I’m trying to do is make it so that I can read the daily mass readings while I’m there (in January) so I purchased the St. Joseph’s weekday missals and I cannot figure out how to use them to save my life!

I look up the week that we’re in but the readings never match what is read at church or what I can find on the internet, EWTN included.

The book is divided into “Year One” and “Year Two” … I thought that we had a three-year-cycle of A, B, and C???

Does anyone know how to use this missal? Like I said, I’ve looked up “32nd Week in Ordinary Time” in both Year one and Year two and they don’t match any of this weeks readings! Help!! And thank you.

ALSO: Are there any better books for reading the daily and Sunday mass readings? I don’t like anything too “hippie” but if there is a better way to do this I’d be thrilled!

 

[japhy]

I purchased the St. Joseph’s weekday missals and I cannot figure out how to use them to save my life! … The book is divided into “Year One” and “Year Two” … I thought that we had a three-year-cycle of A, B, and C?

The Sunday readings are on a three-year cycle, but the weekday readings are on a two-year cycle. (Go figure.)

We are in Year I (with the exception of the weeks of Advent and Christmas, odd number years are Year I, even number years are Year II, since the liturgical year starts with Advent) and today is Thursday of Week 32 in Ordinary Time. The readings can be found here.

I don’t have the missal you do, so I don’t know offhand if and how you might be using it incorrectly.

 

[FrDavid96]

The St. Joseph series are very reliable.

This question gets posed here quite often, in one form or another: daily Mass readings in the book don’t match what’s done in church. There are often several different options for the daily readings (especially on weekdays in Ordinal time). The priest has the option of either following the scheduled readings for the week (which is generally preferred), or doing the readings for the saint of the day (which might even be more than one), or even other readings if he’s doing a votive Mass, Mass for the dead (esp. in November), or another of the Masses for special needs or occasions. Especially in this current week, there are a lot of such options, so it’s easy to see how they might not match.

The weekday Missals will usually only list the readings from the weekday cycle, with occasional references to some of the saints’ days.

In January 2010, we’ll be using the weekday cycle II (even year, even number). Since you’re not able to attend Mass, even if there is a conflict between what you’re reading and what’s actually proclaimed at any particular Mass, that won’t matter because you won’t notice the difference anyway, and you will still be reading what’s in the Church’s calendar for those days.

I’m not sure how there could be a conflict between what’s in your weekday Missal and what’s posted on EWTN’s site because as I read my own St Joseph’s guide, they are the same.

Perhaps if you give an example or two of when they’re in conflict, we might be able to identify what’s happening.

 

[EasterJoy]

Have you talked to your own pastor? If there is a priest or parish remotely close to where you will be, they may be able to arrange for someone to bring you Holy Communion some time over the course of the month.

The other possibility that occurs to me is to download and print out homilies for the Sundays you anticipate being gone. The internet is full of them. Here’s one, for instance:
blessed-sacrament.org/homily.html.

That particular parish doesn’t have the weeks covered that are coming up, but if you e-mail them (and other similar sites) and explain your special situation, they may be able to point you toward the resources you’re looking for. They might even e-mail you past homilies that are no longer posted on their web site, since you’re only asking for four or five of them.

Fr. Don Talafous is a Benedictine priest who posts very nice daily reflections on the internet (saintjohnsabbey.org/reflection/). If those seem good to you, he has also written books of reflections based on daily Mass readings that are availabe through Amazon.

You might also shop bookstores online for other books written by excellent homilists. Again, your pastor might be a good resource in terms of separating wheat from chaff.

Oh, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has a Daily Mass Reading finder that could possibly help you figure out your St. Joseph books. It is at usccb.org/nab/.

 

[MichelleTherese]

The mystery is solved! Thank you for your help japhy ~ now I understand the ABC cycle and the year I and II cycle.

And thank you FrDavid for the explanation of why sometimes the readings just don’t match up and that I’ll still be ok reading through my missal even if what I’m reading is not the same! As for my book not matching up with EWTN’s website, I have no idea how I got that wrong. I just looked up “Thursday of the 32nd Week - Year I” in my missal and it matched perfectly with EWTN.

But then again, I’m not myself these days! Been ill and I have a bad heart + I’m dreadfully crippled in the hips and pregnancy with twins absolutely makes all of these things much worse. It seems that I can’t get my brain to work right these days even with the most basic things! Let’s just say I keep my husband highly amused

Thank you so much for your help! Uh… is there a St. Jospeh Sunday missal?? Hmmmm…

 

[MichelleTherese]

Thank you, Easter Joy!

 

[FrDavid96]

The mystery is solved! Thank you for your help japhy ~ now I understand the ABC cycle and the year I and II cycle.

And thank you FrDavid for the explanation of why sometimes the readings just don’t match up and that I’ll still be ok reading through my missal even if what I’m reading is not the same! As for my book not matching up with EWTN’s website, I have no idea how I got that wrong. I just looked up “Thursday of the 32nd Week - Year I” in my missal and it matched perfectly with EWTN.

But then again, I’m not myself these days! Been ill and I have a bad heart + I’m dreadfully crippled in the hips and pregnancy with twins absolutely makes all of these things much worse. It seems that I can’t get my brain to work right these days even with the most basic things! Let’s just say I keep my husband highly amused

Thank you so much for your help! Uh… is there a St. Jospeh Sunday missal?? Hmmmm…

Glad we could help!

As for the Sunday Missal, yes, there are a few different ones. I am particularly fond of the paperback annual St. Joseph Sunday Missal because it’s very easy to follow (the “real” dates are given because it’s reprinted every year), and it costs just under $2 US. The publisher doesn’t ship overseas (I just did my annual order a few hours ago, by coincidence), but you might find them from other sources.