DAILY COMMENTARIES FROM THE TRADITIO FATHERS
MAY 2026

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MAY 1, 2025 - STS. PHILIP AND JAMES, APOSTLES
DOUBLE FEAST OF THE SECOND CLASS

The May 1 Feast of "St. Joseph the Worker" is NOT traditional. It was concocted by the Freemason presbyter Hannibal Bugnini, the head of "liturgy" for the nascent Newchurch of the New Order and placed in the calendar in 1955, in conjunction with Communist May Day. The concocted new feast shockingly displaced on May 1 the traditional Feast of Sts. Philip & James, the Apostles of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and suppressed the traditional Solemnity of St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, which had long been celebrated on the Wednesday after the Second Sunday after Easter.

The new May 1 Feast of St. Joseph the Workman ("Worker" in genderless "modernized" English) was widely reviled in the Church at the time by the highest authorities, and was derisively called the Feast of "Joe the Worker" or the "Pseudo-feast of San Giuseppe Comunista" by the Romans and others, as it fell on Communist May Day. The traditional Sacred Congregation of Rites rejected Bugnini's new feast, and there was open opposition in the Church to it. Opposition to the new feast was so strong that the Sacred Congregation of Rites refused for four years to formulate the Gregorian-chant Mass and Divine Office for the new feast.
Sts. Philip & James

Sts. Philip & James, Apostles
Duccio di Buoninsegna (ca. 1255 - ca. 1318)

"In crastinum voluit exire in Galilaeam
et invenit Philippum.
Et dicit ei Iesus: Sequere me."
["On the following day, (Jesus) would go forth into Galilee:
and he findeth Philip.
And Jesus said to him: Follow me."]
John 1:43
From the Gospel of the Feastday

From the early Church the Holy Apostles Philip and James the Less (brother of St. Jude Thaddeus) have shared the same feast day, May 1, because the relics of the martyrs were solemnly translated from New Rome, i.e., Constantinople, by Pope Pelagius I to the Church of the Holy Apostles at Rome, where they still rest. St. Philip brought the Catholic Faith to Scythia. St. James the Less was author of the Epistle in the New Testament.

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