Calendar Class of July 5, 2025

A Carpe Diem Snapshot:

Cordelia, an enthusiastic actress, and Valentina, a creative costume designer, played the roles of Snow White and the evil stepmother Queen, respectively, in an impromptu performance yesterday afternoon during the hours between parade and fireworks. I assumed the role of narrator, as usual, and the menfolk split up all the other roles, from the seven dwarves to the repentant huntsmen to the salvific prince. Trina Schart Hyman, my favorite illustrator, and translator Paul Heins, kept all the gruesome details of the original Brothers Grimm version. It reminded me of a lecture about the symbolism inherent in Snow White that I once heard by our good family friend Vigen Guroian. Here is an interview he gave on Fairy Tales and Children's Literature.

Liturgical: Saturday of the 13th Week of Ordinary Time

No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”

Matthew 9:14-17

Bishop Barron's Gospel reflections today: The new wine is the Good News, the Incarnation, the reconciliation of the divine and the human. But this powerful elixir cannot be contained in the receptacles of the old consciousness. As long as the ego reigns in the soul, the new wine will prove too strange, too foreign, too threatening—and it will be accordingly rejected. 

Before the heady wine of the Gospel can be assimilated, there must be a scouring out of the spirit, a transformation of awareness and attitude, a metanoia. We should examine the stories of Jesus’ confrontations with the demons from this perspective. The demon within us realizes that he is the old wineskin that will be shredded by the inpouring of the new wine, and he consequently reacts in horror. It is a helpful spiritual exercise to isolate those passages from the New Testament, those sayings and actions of Jesus, that make us most uncomfortable, since they will most effectively indicate how our souls have to be transfigured. They, much more than the passages we instinctively love, will show the path that metanoia must follow.

Sanctoral: St. Zoe of Rome was a noblewoman married to a top Roman jurist named Nicostratus. Her husband was also the jailer of St Sebastian. She was mute for six years, but had her voice restored when St. Sebastian made the Sign of the Cross on her forehead. Now able to speak, she praised the Lord Jesus Christ and told of seeing an angel holding an open book in which everything said by St. Sebastian was written.

Zoe and Nicostratus asked Sebastian for baptism. Sebastian urged them to serve the lord not the Eparch. Her husband brought their family, the family of his clerk, and the condemned prisoners over whom he had responsibility to their home. There they all heard of Zoe’s healing. In the evening the priest Polycarp baptized all sixty-four who were present. Devout and faithful, Zoe was taken prisoner on religious grounds while visiting the tomb of St. Peter. She was put on public trial where she refused to renounce her faith. She was martyred over fire, dying of smoke inhalation. Her body was tossed into the Tiber River.

Killed in 286, Zoe appeared in a vision to St. Sebastian while he was in prison anticipating execution. He noted this so the example of her faith and bravery could inspire others.

Buon Onomastico to Zoe Rus in Romania! We can't wait to meet you!!!

Today is the Optional Memorial of St. Anthony Mary Zaccaria (1502-1539), who was the founder of the Clerks Regular of St. Paul, later called the Barnabites from the name of their principal church in Rome. He also founded a congregation of nuns, the Angelic Sisters of Saint Paul. St. Anthony was a great admirer of St. Paul and was himself imbued with the teaching of the great Apostle, whom he gave to his followers as a model and a patron. He was a zealous and untiring preacher and completely wore himself out at this work; he died at the age of thirty-six on July 5, 1539.

Human: Happy Birthday to our lakeside neighbor John Shepherd!

Physicist Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica was published – 1687

Followers of Indian spiritual leader Ashutosh Maharaj win a court case three years after his death to keep his body in a freezer in case he returns to life--2017

Natural: Basic summer fruit salad recipe with honey drizzle

Italian: All the meanings of PASTA in Italian!

Book of the Day: Snow White translated by Paul Heins and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman

Quote: “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being...

This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont, to be called Lord God παντοκρατωρ or Universal Ruler.”

― Isaac Newton, The Principia : Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy