Calendar Class of June 28, 2025

A Carpe Diem Snapshot:

An Acton dinner back in Rome last Fall led to this Carpe Diem Snapshot just taken a few minutes ago. Providentially seated next to Fr. Eamonn, we discovered many commonalities that led me to invite him to the Kirk Center's event happening now. Fortunately, Fr. Eamonn was already coming to town to speak about the political thought of Joseph Ratzinger at Acton University. While I wasn't able to attend his talk, we ran into each other at breakfast this morning and were able to chat about this and many other inspiring topics, such as the MAGA moment we are now in thanks to Pope Leo-- "Make Augustine Great Again!"

Liturgical: Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

In the midst of the World War II, Pope Pius XII put the whole world under the special protection of our Savior's Mother by consecrating it to her Immaculate Heart, and in 1944 he decreed that in the future the whole Church should celebrate the Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Memorial is celebrated on the Saturday following the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart.

This is not a new devotion. In the seventeenth century, St. John Eudes preached it together with that of the Sacred Heart; in the nineteenth century, Pius VII and Pius IX allowed several churches to celebrate a feast of the Pure Heart of Mary. Pius XII instituted today's feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the whole Church, so as to obtain by her intercession "peace among nations, freedom for the Church, the conversion of sinners, the love of purity and the practice of virtue"

Sanctoral: Saint Irenaeus (c. 130 – c. 202)

The Church is fortunate that Irenaeus was involved in many of its controversies in the second century. He was a student, well trained no doubt, with great patience in investigating, tremendously protective of apostolic teaching, but prompted more by a desire to win over his opponents than to prove them in error.

Human: Death of Pope Paul I – James Madison (4th U.S. president) – 1836, Maria Mitchell (astronomer) – 1889, Rod Serling (screenwriter) – 1975

Birth of Henry VIII ( King of England) – 1491, Peter Paul Rubens (painter) – 1577, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (philosopher) – 1712

The Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending WW I – 1919, Israel annexed East Jerusalem – 1967

Natural: How to Grow and Care for a Kentucky Bluegrass Lawn -- if you have to put a new lawn in, as I do, this is the softest, prettiest grass, and Kentucky bluegrass music is pretty wonderful, too.

Italian: The four different meanings for “have” in Italian

Quote: There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

- Thomas Jefferson, 3rd U.S. president (1743-1826)

Etc.: Just found out about this promising initiative-- The Human Flourishing Program

at Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science