Friday, September 25, 2015

25 September -- St Albert the Lawgiver

In the old Discalced Carmelite calendar this is the feast of St Albert the Lawgiver.  (The Ancient Observance kept it on the 16th of September.) The good old Catholic Encyclopædia discusses him here.  It includes this curiousity:

 The Bollandists call attention to this curious anomaly, that not at Vercelli, where he was Patriarch, not among the Canons Regular, to whom he properly belonged, but in the Order of the Carmelites, of which he was not a member, does he receive the honour of a saint. "That holy Order could not and ought not to lose the memory of him by whom it was ranked among the Orders approved by the Roman Church; in saying which", adds the writer, "I in no way wish to impugn the Carmelite claim of descent from Elias." At Vercelli Albert does not even figure as Blessed, and the Canons Regular honour him as a saint, but pay him no public cult.

The Ancient Observance Carmelites have a short life here, with a commentary and some collects.

From the old O.C.D. propers:

Tuæ benedictionis plenitudo super nos, quæsumus, Domine, copiosa descendat :  et jugiter sancti Alberti Confessoris tui atque Pontificis placare suffragiis. Per Dominum.  Amen.

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