Calendar Class of June 1, 2025
- Andrea Kirk Assaf
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
A Carpe Diem Snapshot:
Welcome, June, and welcome, summer! It already feels like it's August here in Rome today, which was a sticky occasion for the masses of pilgrim groups present for the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents, and the Elderly in St. Peter's Square. You can watch the whole warm but joyful Mass and Regina Caeli with Pope Leo in the link below.
We had a rare opportunity to leave the city today to spend an afternoon at a home in the countryside with a pool, which is rarer still. I caught this snapshot just before leaving, which seems to capture the spirit of summer in Italy- a post pranzo stroll and nap in the olive groves in a bathing suit! Ah, to be a child again in summer!
Once June cools down, hopefully, we can celebrate her many beautiful traditions and characteristics: in June's liturgical cycle, we have the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Feasts of Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, and the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary; in the sanctoral cycle, we have the feasts of many important saints, including the Nativity of John the Baptist, Anthony of Padua, Josemaria Escriva, Sts. Peter and Paul (patrons of Rome), and the First Martyrs of the Holy Roman Church; in the human cycle we study the missionary age stage (25-50 years old) aka the "summer season" of life and celebrate weddings (June is named for the goddess Juno, of marriage and childbirth), and Father's Day; in the natural cycle we celebrate the summer solstice on the 20th, when we can officially consider ourselves in the summer season, when we try to pack in a year's worth of outdoor fun. If you are lucky enough to have a birthday this month, your birth flower is the honeysuckle or the rose, and your birthstone is the pearl or moonstone.
The Holy Father's Intentions for the Month of June 2025:
That the world might grow in compassion: Let us pray that each one of us might find consolation in a personal relationship with Jesus, and from his Heart, learn to have compassion on the world.
Look up to heaven today. See Christ ascending to his Father and our Father. Say: Thank you, God, for creating me, and for giving me, through the Incarnation of your beloved Son, the possibility and the assurance that if I do my part here, when death comes it will not be an enemy but a friend, to speed me on my way to the true, supernatural life which you have, in your love, planned and prepared for me.
It was written, and foretold, that Christ should suffer and so enter into his glory. The servant is not above the Master. I too must suffer. I too must accept the hardships and the trials of this life, if I want, and I do, to enter into the life of glory. Christ, who was sinless, suffered hardship and pain. I have earned many, if not all of my hardships, by my own sins. I should be glad of the opportunity to make some atonement for my past offenses, by willingly accepting the crosses he sends me. These crosses are signs of God's interest in my true welfare. Through him he is giving me a chance to prepare myself for the day of reckoning, for the moment of my death which will decide my eternal future. For every prayer I say for success in life, I should say three for a successful death, a death free from sin and at peace with God.—Excepted from The Sunday Readings, Fr. Kevin O'Sullivan, O.F.M.
The Church marks this day as World Communications Day.
Pope Leo XIV’s Holy Mass & Regina Caeli - Jubilee of Families
Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon: Seated At The Right Hand of the Father
Fr. Plant's Sermon-Scripture Study: He Was Lifted Up While They Looked On
Sanctoral: Today is the Memorial of St. Justin, Apologist and Martyr (c. 100-165), who was one of the most important Christian writers of the second century. Justin himself tells how his study of all the schools of philosophy led him to Christianity, and how he dedicated his life to the defense of the Christian faith as "the one certain and profitable philosophy."
St. Justin is particularly celebrated for the two Apologies which he was courageous enough to address in succession to the persecuting emperors Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius. One of them contains a description of the rites of baptism and the ceremonies of Mass, thus constituting the most valuable evidence that we possess on the Roman liturgy of his day. He was beheaded in Rome in 165. Justin is also referred to as "the Philosopher."
Human: In Roman history on this day-- three temples were dedicated: the temple of Mars behind the Porta Capena (387 BC), the temple of Juno Moneta (384 BC) on the Capitoline Hill, and the temples of Tempests in the area of Regio I (259 BC).
Natural: Today marks the unofficial start of the season of summer! I say "unofficial" because the seasons officially change on the solstices and equinoxes according to astronomical calculations. But most of us consider seasons to be organized into three calendar months, which is the meteorological system of measurement.
Italian: Ammazzare il tempo (to kill time)
Quote: "In the family, faith is handed on together with life, generation after generation. It is shared like food at the family table and like the love in our hearts. In this way, families become privileged places in which to encounter Jesus, who loves us and desires our good, always.
Let me add one last thing. The prayer of the Son of God, which gives us hope on our journey, also reminds us that one day we will all be uno unum (cf. Saint Augustine, Sermo super Ps. 127): one in the one Saviour, embraced by the eternal love of God. Not only us, but also our fathers, mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, brothers, sisters and children who have already gone before us into the light of his eternal Pasch, and whose presence we feel here, together with us, in this moment of celebration."
--Pope Leo XIV, in his homily today at the Jubilee for Families, Children, Grandparents, and the Elderly.
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