Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Feast of the Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Spanish: Nuestra Señora de la Expectación) was a Catholic Feast that was originally celebrated in Spain, but started to be celebrated in other Catholic countries.[1] It is not on the universal calendar, but is still commemorated on December 18 in some places such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and Poland as well as in a few religious orders. The Dominicans honor Mary under the title of "Our Lady of the Expectation".[2]

Our Lady of the Expectation, multi-coloured wood statue, 16th century. Museum of Santa Cruz, Toledo, Spain.

History

The feast owes its origin to the bishops of the tenth Council of Toledo, in 656.[3] The accompanying of the expectant mother of Jesus became a prominent theme that spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula and Italy during the Middle Ages.[4] A High Mass was sung at a very early hour each morning during the octave, and it became customary that all who were with child would attend, that they might honor Our Lady's Maternity, and seek a blessing upon themselves.[5] "The feast heightens the anticipation of Christmas and makes the last few days of Advent unique opportunities to meditate on what Mary must have been pondering in her heart."[6] It is sometimes joined with a novena beginning on December 16 and ending on Christmas Eve.

gollark: Sometimes my lack of ability to imagine things and/or broken long term memory can be really convenient!
gollark: ... yes, that.
gollark: You could have some thing where you prefix an instruction with `vec[some parameters]` and it converts it to multiple instructions working on each register or something.
gollark: Couldn't it mostly just be a macro, if you have those?
gollark: Clearly you should just implement vectorization so you can just run some magic "vectorize" thing on ANY instruction and the assembler works it out.

See also

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Feast of the Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.

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