calendarium ordinis praedicatorum

THE CHRISTMAS PROCLAMATION Today, the twenty-fifth day of December, unknown ages from the time when God created the heavens and the earth and then formed man and woman in his own image. Several thousand years after the flood, when God made the rainbow shine forth as a sign of the covenant. Twenty-one centuries from the time of Abraham and Sarah; thirteen centuries after Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt. Eleven hundred years from the time of Ruth and the Judges; one thousand years from the anointing of David as king; in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel. In the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad; the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome. The forty-second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus; the whole world being at peace, Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming, being conceived by the Holy Spirit, and nine months having passed since

NOVEMBER 03, NOVEMBER Saint Martin de Porres At Lima, in Peru, Saint Martin de Porres, friar of the Order of Preachers. Saint Martin de Porres was born in Lima, Peru in 1579, the son of a Spanish nobleman and a black freedwoman from Panama. At first the father abandoned his little family and Martin’s earliest years were spent in dire poverty. Later, his father’s conscience smote him and taking the two children to himself, gave them at least the rudiments of an education. As a boy was apprenticed to a barber –surgeon to learn from him the unlikely combination of skills expected in those days of a man who wielded a straight razor. Thus he was launched on his life long career of healing and solacing which would embrace all the sick who came his way. Martin was received as a servant at the priory of the Holy Rosary in Lima. In this capacity, he gave himself to the lowliest duties in the house. It was only after several years that, seeing his evident good will and holiness, his superio