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Correction:
Saint Thomas Aquinas

Lou Giorgetti



Saint Thomas Aquinas: 7th Century Of Death
Scott 556 (1974)

First off--Happy Ground Hog Day. In doing some quick research, I have come to learn that "holiday" originates from European Candlemas traditions and German lore. I am hoping the most famous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, DOES NOT see his shadow, which would predict an early spring. I, for one, have had enough of this really cold and snowy winter.

Last week, I received an email from an alert reader as a follow-up to the Daily Email on Saint Thomas Aquinas that appeared on January 28:
”Hi Lou!
Just a note regarding today’s Daily Email.
St. Thomas Aquinas died on March 7, 1274. This is still his feast day in the old (pre-reform) Roman calendar. In revising the calendar of saints after the Second Vatican Council, January 28 was selected as his memorial, commemorating the transfer of his relics to the Dominican friary in Toulouse in 1369.”
The Email had the saint's date of death as January 28, a lazy mistake on my part. For many of the feasts of the saints, the date does coincide with their date of passing. But that certainly is not always the case. Our astute reader adds the following:
”For the most part, the feast day of a saint is their date of birth into eternal life (the day they died). Sometimes it gets moved to a nearby date because there are already other important saints celebrated on that date, or another event. For instance, in the United States, St. Elizabeth of Portugal is celebrated on July 5, not on her feast day in the universal calendar, July 4, for obvious reasons. In other cases--during the revision of the calendar in the 1960s--some rather drastic changes were made. St. Thomas Aquinas is one of those. One of the reasons was to remove major celebrations of saints from Lent, so that its penitential character might be marked more clearly.
This is also the reason that St. John Paul II, who died on April 2, 2005, is not celebrated on that day, because it often falls in Lent, quite often during Holy Week or in the early days of the Easter Season. His feast day is 22 October, the day his Papacy was inaugurated in 1978.”
I am always thankful to hear from our readers. If there are errors, I want to correct them and pass the right information on to you. And, if the Daily Email can be enhanced with additional information that educates us, that's all the better.

Many thanks to all our members and the readers of the Daily Emails. I like to say: “You Learn Something Every Day”. And thanks to you, I certainly do!