Calendar Class of August 26, 2025

A Carpe Diem Snapshot:

When I glimpsed this scene before the Sunday Feast the other evening, I quickly grabbed my camera to capture the moment for posterity, not only because I love to see Grandma Kirk reading aloud to the little girls, but also to provide photographic evidence to Sheila Carroll that she has accomplished the once seemingly impossible by turning my NYC born mother into a nature lover! In this photo my Mom is enthusiastically sharing Sheila's most recent Nature Notes essay about the "Spider as Artist". What Sheila aims to achieve with these notes is to awaken a sense of awe and wonder for the intricacy, beauty, and interconnectedness of every single thing within Creation. To hear my Mom speaking with admiration about the innate capabilities of the humble spider, and then letting her wonder overflow to her granddaughters, is ample proof that Sheila has accomplished her task.

Liturgical: Tuesday of the 21st Week of Ordinary Time

For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

Sanctoral: St. Orontius of Lecce (1st c.) was the son of the Roman imperial treasurer in Lecce, Italy. Upon his father's death he inherited the position. Orontius was converted to the Christian faith along with his nephew, Fortunatus, by Justus, a disciple of St. Paul the Apostle. Orontius was later denounced to the authorities as a Christian and was ordered to sacrifice to the pagan gods. He refused and was arrested, removed from his office, tortured, and exiled to Corinth together with Fortunatus. In Corinth the pair met St. Paul the Apostle, who consecrated Orontius as the first bishop of Lecce. When Orontius and Fortunatus returned to Lecce they were persecuted and imprisoned again, but were released and ordered to stop preaching. They continued to preach in the surrounding cities, and were arrested a third time and executed.

Human: Women's Equality Day

This day marks the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1920), granting women the right to vote. Ratification came in Tennessee, where Tennessee state legislator Harry T. Burn, age 24, cast the deciding vote after reading a letter from his mom, Febb Burn. “I know that a mother’s advice is always safest for a boy to follow,” he said, “and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”

The country’s 26 million voting-age women were enfranchised by this change in the Constitution. Longtime suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt summed up her experiences in the battle this way: “Never in the history of politics has there been such a nefarious lobby as labored to block the ratification.” Upon ratification, Catt founded the League of Women Voters, an organization now dedicated to providing impartial, in-depth information about candidates, platforms, and ballot issues.

The Nineteenth Amendment was adopted, granting women the right to vote. It was nicknamed the Anthony amendment in recognition of the lobbying efforts of suffragette Susan B. Anthony. – 1920

Birthday of Mother Teresa (missionary and saint) – 1910

Natural: Planning for Autumn Nature Study made simple-- recommended resources here. From Sheila Carroll's latest newsletter:

Albert Einstein once said, “All great science begins with a close observation of nature.” And Miss Mason adds her own encouragement: when a child grows up, those early hours outdoors will return to him as “a balm and a blessing.”

Nature Study doesn't require grand field trips or encyclopedic knowledge. It might be nothing more than a weekly half-hour set aside for observation and a simple journal entry. Clouds shifting shape, a sparrow at the feeder, weeds in the crack of a sidewalk—each is an invitation to notice, to name, to wonder.

And here's the heart of it: you don't need to have all the answers. The most powerful words you can sometimes say are, “I don't know—let's find out together.”

Italian: Magone (the blues / down in the dumps)

Book of the Day: Children's Read-Aloud Picture Book about Mother Teresa

Quote: “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.” --Rachel Carson