Calendar Class of August 27, 2025

A Carpe Diem Snapshot:

In the latest delightful installment of "All Roads Lead to Mecosta (and Rome), let's all welcome Fr. Joseph Hudson to the village! First stop, the Coffee and Cream Café before it closes for the season on September 1. Be sure to make your own coffee pilgrimage before then and say farewell to Marcos, Ava, and the whole crew.

Liturgical: Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

If I take the wings of the morning

and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night,”

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

Psalm 139:7-8, 9-10, 11-12ab

Sanctoral: St. Monica (322-387 A.D.) was raised in a Christian home in Tagaste, North Africa. Early in life she struggled with alcoholism, sneaking draughts of wine from the family cellar, before being caught and overcoming the habit. She was later given in marriage to an ill-tempered and adulterous pagan Roman official. She suffered greatly on account of her husband, and that of her unkind mother-in-law with whom she lived, and she fervently prayed for their conversion over the course of many years. Her patience and kindness became a source of encouragement to other unhappy housewives with whom she came in contact. Monica gave birth to three children, and she was grieved that her husband would not allow them to be baptized. Her eldest son, Augustine, was a wayward child and caused her the most pain, and she prayed fervently for decades for him to become a Christian. Through her persistence in prayer and good example, her husband was converted shortly before his death. When Augustine became entrenched in heretical sects and moved to Milan, St. Monica followed him. Monica befriended the Bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose, who consoled her by saying, "The child of those tears shall never perish." Augustine was eventually brought into the Church by St. Ambrose. Everything we know of St. Monica's heroic virtue is from the writings of her son, who became the great St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the most influential saints in Church history. St. Monica is patron of housewives, difficult marriages, alcoholism, mothers, widows, abuse victims, victims of adultery, and disappointing children.

Human: Volturnalia was celebrated, a festival to protect the still-ripening fruit from deterioration in the hot south-eastern winds (often occurring at this time of the year). During the festival, Volturnusa, the god of rivers the south-eastern wind was worshiped.

410 AD– Alaric’s army left Rome. After that, the Goths set off south, robbing Campania. During the march, in December 410 AD Alaric died, and Ataulf took his place. Throughout 411 AD Goths stayed in Italy, plundering it completely.

Natural: What is a brown dwarf?

A brown dwarf is like a star, only it is so small that it can’t quite work up the energy to shine as stars do. Brown dwarfs are at the lower end of the stellar family and are somewhere between the faint hydrogen-burning stars and the giant planets such as Jupiter. Stars vary considerably in size depending on where they were formed. Most are just a little smaller than our Sun, although some can be enormous. There is a limit, however, to how small a star can be in order to achieve the nuclear fusion that drives all stars. If a star is smaller than the minimum, it will glow dull red, a color that comes from its pressurized gases. This is how the brown dwarf was named. Because brown dwarfs are so small and dim, they have only recently been detected by astronomers with the help of infrared telescope technology.

Italian: Schietto (pure / frank / genuine)

Quote: "And Thou sent Thine hand from above, and drew my soul out of that profound darkness, my mother, Thy faithful one, weeping to Thee for me, more than mothers weep the bodily deaths of their children. For she, by that faith and spirit which she had from Thee, discerned the death wherein I lay, and Thou heard her, O Lord; Thou heard her, and despised not her tears, when streaming down, they watered the ground under her eyes in every place where she prayed; yea Thou heard her."

— St. Augustine in The Confessions