Calendar Class of July 16, 2025

A Carpe Diem Snapshot:

There are many fine and necessary forms of education available today, but to my mind this is the very best-- to share a good book cuddled up with a parent in the quiet of the early morning or at the end of the evening. My best childhood memories with my own father were by the fire at the end of my parents' bed in the dead of winter. He pealed oranges while telling me fantastical stories from his imagination or reading classic fairytales as I listened all snug and wide-eyed, until those eyelids were shut, long before he had run out of steam for storytelling.

Liturgical: Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

"I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,

for although you have hidden these things

from the wise and the learned

you have revealed them to the childlike.

Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will."

Matthew 11:25-27

Bishop Barron's Gospel reflections today.

Sanctoral: Today is the Optional Memorial of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Sacred Scripture celebrated the beauty of Carmel where the prophet Elijah defended the purity of Israel's faith in the living God. In the twelfth century, hermits withdrew to that mountain and later founded the Carmelite order devoted to the contemplative life under the patronage of Mary, the holy Mother of God.

Devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel is worldwide, and most Catholics are familiar with the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, also known as the Brown Scapular. The feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was instituted for the Carmelites in 1332, and extended to the whole Church by Benedict XIII in 1726.

An audio about Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

Human: National Hot Dog Day 2025: Why Do We Call Them Hot Dogs?

Death of Anne of Cleves (fourth wife of King Henry VIII) – 1557, Mary Todd Lincoln (U.S. First Lady) – 1882, Charles W. Sweeney (pilot of the U.S. bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, in the last days of World War II) – 2004

Natural: Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida, to become the first manned space mission to land on the moon – 1969

135 pilot whales beached at Point au Gaul, Newfoundland and Labrador – 1979

Swimmer’s Itch: How to Prevent and Treat This Summertime Rash

Italian: Nientepopodimeno (no less)

Quote: Selected quotes from Baruch Spinoza

"Nothing in Nature is random. A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge."

"All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love."

"Minds, however, are conquered not by arms, but by love and nobility."

"It is the part of a wise man, I say, to refresh and restore himself in moderation with pleasant food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration, music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use without injury to another."

"The good which every man, who follows after virtue, desires for himself he will also desire for other men..."

"The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free."