Lenten Station at the Church of The Twelve Apostles

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Text taken from The Saint Andrew Daily Missal for Friday of Ember Week in Lent

Station at the Church of The Twelve Apostles

Indulgence of 10 years and 10 Quarantines

Violet Vestments

 The Church of The Twelve Apostles, Rome

On the Friday in Ember Week, the Station was always made in the Church of the Twelve Apostles, situated at the foot of the Quirinal, for the examination of candidates for ordination. Thus were the future Priests and Deacons put under the protection of the whole Apostolic College.

This Basilica, one of the oldest in Rome, was built shortly after the time of Constantine by Pope Julius I, on the occasion of the translation of the bodies of the Apostles Philip and James the Less, which rested there. Pope John III (561 A.D. to 574 A.D.) made of it a Votive Monument for the freeing of Rome from the Goths of Totila.

Interior of the Basilica of Santi Apostoli, Rome

Addressing herself to the public penitents in the first centuries of Christianity, the Church told them, by the mouth of Ezechiel, that God was ready to forgive them because they repented (Epistle). Like the sick, who assembled in the porches of the pond situated on the North of the Temple in Jerusalem, they waited at the doors of the Church, and on the great day of the Sabbath, which is the Feast of Easter, Jesus cured them, as He healed the paralytic, spoken of in the Gospel.

Our Souls, washed in the waters of Baptism, but since fallen back into sin, must atone for their faults, and Jesus, through the instrumentality of His Priests, will pardon them in the holy tribunal of Penance.

The excuse, “I have no man”, will not avail us, for if we remain stricken with the palsy of sin, it is because we do not have recourse to the ministry of Priesthood, which is always at our disposal.

Let us pray to Almighty God to “receive us with His kind assistance” (Collect), that our vices being “cleansed away” by Penance (Postcommunion), our Souls may once more be shown “the light of His grace” (Prayer Over The People).