Holy Spirit Roman Catholic Church

Today is the Optional Memorial of Saints Cosmas and Damian (d. 303). According to tradition, Saints Cosmas and Damian suffered martyrdom in Syria during the Roman persecution of Diocletian. Not much is known about them, but tradition holds they were twin brothers and medical doctors, never charging a fee for their medical services. Their names are in the Roman Canon of the Mass and they are honored in both the Eastern and Western Church and highly celebrated in Italian communities.

The Roman Martyrology commemorates St. Finbarr (550-623), bishop (and patron) of Cork, Ireland. He was a native of Connaught, and instituted a monastery or school at Lough Eirc, to which such numbers of disciples flocked, that it changed a desert into a large city. This was the origin of the city of Cork, which was built chiefly upon stakes, in marshy little islands formed by the river Lea. His baptismal name was Lochan; the surname Finbarr, or Barr the White, was given to him after. He was Bishop of Cork seventeen years, and died in the midst of his friends at Cloyne, fifteen miles from Cork. His body was buried in his own cathedral at Cork, and his relics, some years after, were put in a silver shrine, and kept there, this great church bearing his name to this day. St. Finbarr's cave or hermitage was shown in a monastery which seems to have been begun by our Saint, and stood to the west of Cork.

The Memorial of Our Lady of Walsingham was reinstated to the liturgical calendar in England in 2000. The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter is entrusted to Mary under this title. This feast day celebrates the shrine in Norfolk, England, which was a popular medieval pilgrimage site. In 1061, the lady of the manor of Walsingham, Richeldis de Faverches, was instructed by a vision of the Virgin Mary to build in her village an exact replica of the house in Nazareth in which the Annunciation had taken place. The original house was destroyed by Henry VIII, but by 1897 the chapel was reconstructed and pilgrimage was restored both for Anglicans and for Catholics. On March 29, 2020, England was rededicated as the "Dowry of Mary" with Our Lady of Walsingham being the central Marian devotion around the rededication.