Calendar Class of October 15, 2025

A Carpe Diem Snapshot:

Carpe Roma Aeterna! The ladies of the Fall 2025 Art and Architecture class began at the top of the Caput Mundi yesterday, the Capitoline hill. The incredible sweep of history this view provides is worth the trip to Rome alone. Now we will spend the next few months deciphering its significance.

Liturgical: Memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church

Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God?

Or do you disdain the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

For he will repay according to everyone’s deeds: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth, but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.

Romans 2:1-11

Sanctoral: Teresa of Avila (March 28, 1515 – October 4, 1582)

Saint Teresa of Avila lived in an age of exploration as well as political, social, and religious upheaval. It was the 16th century, a time of turmoil and reform. She was born before the Protestant Reformation and died almost 20 years after the closing of the Council of Trent.

The gift of God to Teresa in and through which she became holy and left her mark on the Church and the world is threefold: She was a woman; she was a contemplative; she was an active reformer.

As a woman, Saint Teresa of Avila stood on her own two feet, even in the man’s world of her time. She was “her own woman,” entering the Carmelites despite strong opposition from her father. She is a person wrapped not so much in silence as in mystery. Beautiful, talented, outgoing, adaptable, affectionate, courageous, enthusiastic, she was totally human. Like Jesus, she was a mystery of paradoxes: wise, yet practical; intelligent, yet much in tune with her experience; a mystic, yet an energetic reformer; a holy woman, a womanly woman.

Teresa was a woman “for God,” a woman of prayer, discipline, and compassion. Her heart belonged to God. Her ongoing conversion was an arduous lifelong struggle, involving ongoing purification and suffering. She was misunderstood, misjudged, and opposed in her efforts at reform. Yet she struggled on, courageous and faithful; she struggled with her own mediocrity, her illness, her opposition. And in the midst of all this she clung to God in life and in prayer. Her writings on prayer and contemplation are drawn from her experience: powerful, practical, and graceful. She was a woman of prayer; a woman for God.

Teresa was a woman “for others.” Though a contemplative, she spent much of her time and energy seeking to reform herself and the Carmelites, to lead them back to the full observance of the primitive Rule. She founded over a half-dozen new monasteries. She traveled, wrote, fought—always to renew, to reform. In herself, in her prayer, in her life, in her efforts to reform, in all the people she touched, she was a woman for others, a woman who inspired and gave life.

Her writings, especially the Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle, have helped generations of believers.

In 1970, the Church gave her the title she had long held in the popular mind: Doctor of the Church. She and St. Catherine of Siena were the first women so honored.

Human: First day of conversion to Gregorian calendar from Julian for several countries (Poland, Spain, Italy, Portugal), due to Pope Gregory XIII’s decree. Great Britain and colonies did not convert until 1752 – 1582

Ancient Rome--In honor of the god of war Mars, Equus October ritual took place. This ritual ended the season of agricultural work and military campaigns. It took place during one of the three chariot races in honor of Mars (so-called Equirria). Two-horsel teams (bigae) competed against each other on the Field of Mars (Campus Martius). The horse, belonging to the winning chariot, and the one on the right was transfixed by a spear, then sacrificed. The horse’s head (caput) and tail (cauda) were cut off and used separately in particular stages of the ceremony. Scientists believe that many aspects of the rite were adopted from the Etruscans.

70 BC – Virgil was born in Andes, a village near Mantua, in Cisalpine Gaul, – the author of the Aeneid – the great Roman mythological and political epic poem. The biography of Virgil is relatively well known, mainly thanks to Donatus’ biography of Virgil from the 4th century AD.

Natural: How to Find North, South, East & West Without a Compass

Italian: Fiuto (sense of smell / instinct)

It can also be used figuratively to denote a person’s intuition, instinct, flair or knack for something, such as gli affari (business).

Quote: “Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.”

―St. Augustine of Hippo