This is the second volume of a three-volume set for Ordinary Time in the Christian Year. For the weekday readings at Mass there is a two-year cycle: Year A and Year B. Over the two years there is a different first reading from the Scriptures whilst both years share the same Gospel readings. On Sundays there is a three-year cycle.

Ordinary Time has often been described as the growing season in the Christian Year. After having celebrated the major observances in our Lord's life over the span of five months or less, the rest of the year is devoted to our Lord's ministry rather than to events in his life. It is a time to discover how the early Christian communities remembered the teaching and preaching of the Lord in light of their own experiences.

That preaching and experience we can read about in the earliest Christian documents in the genuine letters of St. Paul in the New Testament. At the centre of his preaching was Christ's death and resurrection, in which the baptised shared. Paul wrote his letters to deal with problems that arose in those first Christian communities. When we read the Pauline Letters we realise that not much has changed. Human nature is still basically the same and as a result the same problems that arose two thousand years ago we still have today. Hence St. Paul speaks also to us.

As well as the Pauline Letters, Ordinary Time covers many other parts of our Bible, both the Old and New Testaments. By meditating on the daily set readings, our lives as Christians are enriched as we come to a deeper understanding of Scripture.

This is the last volume in the set for Ordinary Time in the Christian Year and it completes a series of meditations for the whole year. For the weekday readings at Mass there is a two-year cycle. Over the two years there is a different first reading from the Scriptures whilst both years share the same Gospel readings. On Sundays there is a three-year cycle with the Gospel readings taken from Matthew, Mark, and Luke respectively.

One of the ways we grow in our faith is by knowing the Scriptures well. Even if we do not attend Mass daily we can always meditate on the set readings. When we do this it will lead us into parts of our Bible that hitherto we may not have ventured. If digested properly they will undoubtedly prompt questions and raise topics for prayer and further research. This book is designed to help you to understand your Bible better and how it unveils the work of salvation by our loving God, beginning with the call of Abraham and His relationship with His chosen people. When the time was right God sent His Son into the world to continue God's redeeming love for all creation.

So the Old Testament prepared the way for the coming of the Christ that is recorded in the New Testament. It is this part of the Bible that is particularly interesting for Christians today as it gives insight as to how those first Christians came to believe in Jesus as their Saviour and were baptised into His death. It also reveals many of the problems that beset the first Christians over morality, worship, and obligations. These are still relevant today. Thus we need to heed the advice of Paul and other Christian writers of the first century in how we live out the teachings of Christ.

This is the first of three volumes for Ordinary Time in the Christian year. For the weekday readings at Mass there is a two-year cycle: Year A and Year B. Over the two years there is a different first reading from the Scriptures while both years share the same Gospel readings. On Sundays there is a three-year cycle. Each year concentrates on a different synoptic gospel: cycle A, Matthew; cycle B, Mark; and cycle C, Luke.

During Ordinary Time we can focus more on knowing the Scriptures and how they inspire and teach us. There is not another book that has such a collection of history, drama, prose, poetry, autobiography, folklore, pathos, joy, achievement and loss as our Bible. There is always some passage that will suit our need and emotion every day.

Meditating on the Scriptures opens the door to search for more knowledge about it and what it reveals of Jewish history and the beginnings of Christianity. "Angels Celebrate" will help you undertake a wonderful and fascinating journey to discover more behind the scenes. You will discover how much of Scripture is dictated by various editors in the Old Testament and the authors of the New Testament books from their living experiences within various Christian communities.

This series for Ordinary Time completes the series of daily meditations for the entire Christian year by author Marianne Dorman. The series begins with "Angels Rejoice" from Advent to Lent, followed by "Living Lent," and then "Angels Welcome" from Easter to Corpus Christi.

The Christian year begins with Advent, a short preparatory, but also an exciting time for the greatest event in history the coming of Christ. As the angels rejoice both heaven and earth are united in the incarnation of the Son of God. In the words of the Johannine Gospel, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that who ever believes in him, shall not perish but have everlasting life (3.16).

This book, the first in a series of daily meditations, covers the Christian year from Advent Sunday until the beginning of Lent, which has its own book, "Living Lent."

By keeping Advent in the right spirit and not allowing ourselves to be dominated by the tyranny of the commercial Christmas, we commence the Christian year in a healthy way that will enable the committed Christian to keep the rest of the year in a Christ-like spirit.

"Angels Welcome: The Risen Lord" is the third in a series of meditations for the entire Christian year. This book focuses on the great fifty days that celebrate the empty tomb and its significance.

About the Author

Other books by Marianne Dorman include: "Angels Rejoice: The Christ Has Come Mark Frank: (1612-1664) His Contribution to the Caroline Church Living Lent Lancelot Andrewes: Teacher and Preacher"

Mark Frank has been one of the most overlooked of all the Caroline divines. It is author Marianne Dorman's hope that this book will partly rectify this. Frank's sermons, with their polished style, are the high-water mark of preaching amongst the Caroline Divines in the seventeenth century.

At a time when the faith of old is sometimes hard to experience, Mark Frank, who was one of many faithful priests ejected from their livings during the English Civil War, is an example of loving perseverance in the faith he cherished.

This extract, preached at Easter during the Interregnum, gives a glimpse of the grief he and many others felt when the Church was dismantled.

"The body is the Church; and to have that taken from us, the Church, that glorious candlestick removed, and borne away we know not whither, what good soul is there that must not necessarily be perplexed at it? What way shall we take when they have taken away the pillar of truth, and should lead us in it? Whither shall we go when we know not whither that is gone, where they have laid it, or where to find it? Poor ignorant women, nay, and men, too, may well now wander in uncertainties."

"Mark Frank" thus presents that Catholic faith lived out and preached by Frank, especially during the Cromwellian regime. We do not know where he preached, but preach he did during this time. Hopefully it will enable the reader to discover the beauty of his prose and the depth of his theological insights of the Catholic faith with all its wholeness, wonder, and worship.

Ideally the way we live Lent should be the way we live the whole year, but one way or another we often lapse here and there--not being so constant in our prayer time, forgetting about acts of self-denial, not keeping the other fast and abstinence days of the Christian year, neglecting the needs of our brothers and sisters, losing the vision of our true humanity, and so on. Keeping a good Lent may encourage us to continue living in such a manner all year.

In writing this revised edition of "Living Lent," author Marianne Dorman provides a helpful tool to help Catholic Christians become more aware of the importance of Scripture in their daily lives, while meditating on one aspect of the Christian faith with each day of Lent.

"It is essential to understand there should be no separation between the holy and the human as divinity and humanity are one through Christ."

--Marianne Dorman

"Lancelot Andrewes: Teacher and Preacher in the Post Reformation English Church," contains catechetical lectures and sermons by Lancelot Andrewes from Lambeth Palace Library Ms. 3707. As well as transcribing, editor Marianne Dorman has endeavoured to link the contents with his other lectures and sermons. The lectures reveal a great similarity with "The Morall Law Expounded," published in 1642, while the sermons have common material with some of the Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter sermons preached at the Jacobean Court.

Lancelot Andrewes' life spanned four monarchies from Mary I to Charles I. His teaching career began in Cambridge when he was appointed catechist at his college, Pembroke. During the reign of James I, he was the principle preacher for the main Christian feasts and fasts at Court.

Lancelot Andrewes' life as a bishop spanned almost the length of the reign of James I. He became a regular preacher at Court for this monarch, as he had been for Elizabeth I. Indeed, James had some of Andrewes' sermons published shortly after hearing them in order to study them closer. This book contains a cross section of doctrinal and religious themes from Andrewes' sermons for reading and reflection.