Sacred Calendar
The Roman year ordered for memory, penance, feasts, saints, and the daily pilgrimage of the faithful.
Calendar standard
Pre-1955 Roman usage
The calendar follows the universal Roman year under the rubrics of Pope St. Pius X, with the Roman Martyrology preserved as a distinct daily witness.
The day is presented for prayer, recollection, study, and perseverance in the City.
Daily observance
Today in the City of God
The Church keeps this day in holy time. The Pilgrim's Companion gathers the feast, daily quote, Martyrology, meditation, prayer, and related chapters into one daily path through the City.
Choose a date
Daily observance
13th Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, August 23, 2026
Season: Time after Pentecost
The day is set within the Roman year so its feast, Martyrology, daily quote, prayer, and reading path may be received together without blurring their proper sources.
Today's pilgrimage
13th Sunday after Pentecost
Rank: Semi-Double Sunday
Color: green
Vigil: Vigil of St. Bartholomew, Apostle.
Impeded feast: St. Philip Benizi, Confessor. The temporal observance has precedence. The precise commemoration rule remains tied to the relevant proper and rubric.
Quote for the day
St. Francis de Sales
“It is a work of charity to shout: 'Here is the wolf!' when it enters the flock or anywhere else.”
Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, Chapter 29
The pilgrim's devotional rhythm
Keeping the month and the weekday in prayer
This chosen devotional rhythm does not change the feast, rank, or obligations shown above. It gives the passing days a steady intention, helping the pilgrim honor God, intercede for souls, and carry one Catholic practice into the day. It is a household aid to devotion, not another law of the Roman Calendar.
August intention
The Immaculate Heart of Mary
The Immaculate Heart of Mary is wholly ordered to God: pure, recollected, obedient, and steadfast beneath the Cross. Entrust this month to Our Lady and ask her to teach you to keep the words of Christ, hate sin, and remain faithful when fidelity costs you.
Intention
In reparation for offenses against Our Lady; for the conversion of sinners; and for purity, recollection, fidelity to Catholic truth, and perseverance beneath the Cross.
A faithful act
Offer all your daily duties to God through Mary before beginning them, and guard a short period of silence in imitation of her recollection.
Prayer
Immaculate Heart of Mary, take this month's prayer, work, and suffering into thy hands and lead us faithfully to Jesus.
Sunday remembrance
The Most Holy Trinity
Sunday belongs first to the worship of God and the commemoration of the Resurrection. Adore the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, from Whom every grace descends and to Whom the whole Christian life must return.
Intention
For the worthy worship of God, fidelity to Sunday Mass, and the restoration of Christian observance of the Lord's Day.
A faithful act
Protect the day from unnecessary servile work and give God an unhurried period of worship, doctrine, or spiritual reading.
Prayer
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, now and forever.
Roman Martyrology
Roman Martyrology - August 23
The vigil of St. Bartholomew, apostle. — At Todi, St. Philip Beniti of Florence, confessor. He contributed greatly to the growth of the Order of the Servites of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and was a man of the greatest humility. He was numbered among the saints by Clement X. — At Antioch, the birthday of the holy martyrs Restitutus, Donatus, Valerian, and Fructuosa, with twelve others, who were crowned after having distinguished themselves by a glorious confession. — At Ostia, the holy martyrs Quiriacus, bishop, Maximus, priest, Archelaus, deacon, and their companions, who suffered under the prefect Ulpian, in the time of Alexander. — At Egsea, in Cilicia, the holy martyrs Claudius, Asterius, and Neon, brothers, who were accused of being Christians by their step-mother, under the emperor Diocletian, and the governor Lysias, and after enduring bitter torments, were fastened to a cross, and thus conquered and triumphed with Christ. After them suffered Donvina and Theonilla. — At Rheims, in France, the birthday of the Saints Timothy and Apollinaris, who merited to enter the heavenly kingdom by consummating their martyrdom in that city. — At Lyons, the holy martyrs Minervus, and Eleazar with his eight sons. — Also, St. Luppus, martyr, who, though a slave, enjoyed the liberty of Christ, and was likewise deemed worthy of the crown of martyrdom. — At Jerusalem, St. Zaccheus, bishop, who governed the church of that city the fourth after the blessed apostle James. — At Alexandria, St. Theonas, bishop and confessor. — At Utica, in Africa, blessed Victor, bishop. — At Autun, St. Flavian, bishop. — At Clermont, in Auvergne, St. Sidonius, a bishop distinguished for learning and sanctity.
Highlighted saint
13th Sunday after Pentecost
The grateful leper returns.
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost gives the healing of the ten lepers, of whom only one returns to give glory to God.
The day teaches gratitude, faith, and the danger of receiving mercy externally while failing to return interiorly to the Giver.
Gratitude is not only polite feeling. It returns to Christ, gives Him glory, and refuses to use His gifts while forgetting His rights.
Virtue to practice
Grateful faith.
Error to resist
The ingratitude that receives cleansing and walks away from Christ.
For the pilgrim in exile
Be the one who returns. Gratitude keeps mercy from becoming merely a benefit consumed and forgotten.
Imitate today
- Return thanks for concrete mercies.
- Let gratitude become worship.
- Avoid using gifts while forgetting the Giver.
- Thank God aloud for the mercies you usually pass over.
Sources
- Luke 17:11-19, Douay-Rheims.
- St. Andrew Daily Missal, Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
From Matins
Leprosy as a figure of false doctrine.
Matins - Third Nocturn - 13th Sunday after Pentecost
St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Gospel Questions
“There is no false doctrine but hath some truth mixed up with it.”
Doctrine taught
- The Breviary reads the lepers as a figure of souls disfigured by mixed doctrine, where truth and falsehood are confused together.
- St. Augustine teaches that false teaching often keeps fragments of truth while corrupting the whole by disorder and mixture.
- Christ the Good Master cleanses doctrinal leprosy, but the diseased soul must stand afar off and cry for mercy.
For the pilgrim in exile
Do not be impressed by error because it contains some true words. Ask Christ to cleanse the whole mind, not merely improve its language.
Full Breviary lessons
Seventh Lesson - St. Augustine on the Ten Lepers
The Lesson is taken from the Holy Gospel according to Luke (xvii. 11.) It came to pass, as JESUS went to Jerusalem, that He passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And, as He entered into a certain village, there met Him ten men that were lepers. And so on. Homily by St Austin, Bishop [of Hippo.] (Bk. ii. Gospel Questions, ch. 40.) The ten lepers "lifted up their voices and said: JESUS, Master, have mercy on us. And when He saw them, He said unto them: Go, show yourselves unto the Priests. And it came to pass that, as they went, they were cleansed." Question: why did the Lord send them unto the Priests, that, as they went, they might be cleansed? Lepers were the only class among those upon whose bodies He worked mercy, whom we find that He sent unto the Priests. It is written in another place that He said to a leper whom He had cleansed: "Go, and show thyself to the Priest, and offer for thy cleansing according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them" (Luke v. 14, Lev. xiv. 1 et seq.) We ask then, of what leprosy was a type, whereof they that were ridded were called, not "healed," but "cleansed." It is a disease which doth first appear in the skin, but destroyeth not immediately the strength, nor the use of feeling and the limbs.
Eighth Lesson - False Doctrine Figured by Leprosy
By lepers, therefore, we may not absurdly suppose such to be figured as have not the knowledge of the true faith, but do show forth divers parti-coloured teachings of error. They hide not their witlessness, but do use all such wit as they have to make it manifest, and proclaim it in high-sounding phrases. There is no false doctrine but hath some truth mixed up with it. A man's discourse then, with some truths in it unequally mingled with falsehoods, and all confounded in one mass, is like to the body of one that is stricken with leprosy, whereon all manner of foul colours do appear in this and that place along with the true colour of skin.
Ninth Lesson - Cleansed by the Good Master
Such men as these are banished out of the walls of the Church, to the end that haply when they stand afar off they may lift up their voices and cry to Christ for pardon, just as those ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off, outside the village, lifted up their voices and said: "JESUS, Master, have mercy on us." That they styled Him Master, by which title I know not if any besought the Lord for bodily healing, I think doth sufficiently show that leprosy signifieth false doctrine, whereof the Good Master doth cleanse us.
Sources
- The Roman Breviary, translated by John, Marquess of Bute, 1908, vol. IV, Autumn, Third Nocturn for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost, lessons vii-ix, printed pp. 325-326.
- Bute 1908 is used here as an accessible pre-Pius X Breviary witness and is cited distinctly from the 1936-1937 Benziger / Burns Oates edition.
Breviary Witness
Only one returned to give glory.
Matins - 13th Sunday after Pentecost
Breviary witness
- The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost gives the healing of the ten lepers and the gratitude of the one who returned.
- Its witness teaches that grace received must become thanksgiving, worship, and deeper faith, lest mercy be used and forgotten.
For the pilgrim in exile
Return to give thanks. Gratitude keeps the soul near the Giver after the gift has been received.
Sources
- Roman Breviary, Matins lessons for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
- Luke 17:11-19, Douay-Rheims.
Gospel of the day
And he was a Samaritan.
13th Sunday after Pentecost - Luke 17:11-19
“Were not ten made clean? and where are the nine?”
What Our Lord teaches
- Christ heals ten lepers, but only one returns to give thanks.
- Gratitude completes the movement of mercy by returning the soul to the Giver.
Virtue to practice
Give thanks specifically for graces already received.
Error to resist
The entitlement that receives mercy and forgets the merciful Lord.
For the pilgrim in exile
Return and thank Him. Gratitude is one of the simplest ways for a healed soul to stay near the Healer.
Sources
- Luke 17:11-19, Douay-Rheims.
- Traditional Roman Gospel for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost.
Meditation
The Church Made Public
At Pentecost the Holy Ghost strengthened the apostles to preach Christ publicly and carry the Gospel to the nations. His work is not private excitement separated from doctrine, worship, and the authority Christ established. The faithful should ask Him for zeal that makes them more obedient to revealed truth, more constant in charity, and more courageous in Catholic witness.
Related paths
Walk the day through the City.
Today's chapters
Read with the feast.
Prayer
The day should become prayer.
O Lord, give me holy fear before Thy altar. Preserve me from casualness, invention, and every worship that weakens faith in Thy sacrifice.
Thought for the pilgrim
False worship wounds souls because worship forms belief.
Practice
The day should become obedience.
Show reverence for the Holy Sacrifice in thought, word, and conduct, and pray for souls misled by false worship.
Source notes
Universal Roman Calendar under the rubrics of Pope St. Pius X
Fasting and abstinence according to the laws observed in 1952
Daily quotations and pilgrimage excerpts ordinarily come from eligible Catholic sources issued no later than December 31, 1954: Scripture, Fathers, Doctors, saints, Roman Pontiffs, traditional catechisms, approved devotional works, and received liturgical texts. Legitimate additions promulgated under Pope Pius XII may be retained when identified precisely; this does not adopt the reformed Holy Week or later rubrical changes.
The Roman Martyrology, Baltimore, 1916, published by John Murphy Company; the local 1916 text is displayed and traceable to its source lines.
- St. Andrew Daily Missal, Liturgical Calendar, p. xv: the third through twenty-third Sundays after Pentecost are semi-doubles; the twenty-fourth Sunday is fixed at the end of the cycle.
- St. Andrew Daily Missal, Liturgical Calendar, pp. xiii and xv: the remaining third through sixth Sundays after the Epiphany are restored before the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost as the year requires.
- St. Andrew Daily Missal, Liturgical Calendar, pp. xvii–xxviii.
- St. Andrew Daily Missal, Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, O.S.B., 1953 edition, Mass of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, pp. 1520-1524.
- Luke 2:19 and 2:35, Douay-Rheims.
- St. Andrew Daily Missal, Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, O.S.B., 1953 edition; proper Mass or devotion named in this entry.
- Matthew 28:19, Douay-Rheims.