Something to ponder in your heart…. God is Love… literally. So when He loves us, He gives Himself to us… think of it as deeper, more intense and more of a true union than the love of a husband and wife in marriage. His Love becomes Incarnate and He manifests Himself to us in both a real spiritual and physical way… this is the meaning and significance of the Sacraments, most especially the Most Holy Eucharist which is the very giving Himself to us in a physical, tangible way. He is infinite and we receive His infinite love by which He unites Himself to us and we literally become sharers of His very own Divine Nature.
Fr. Scott Brossart

Last Week In Life: May 31, 2021- June 6, 2021

Last Week’s SPECTACULAR STORY OF WEEK

Some kids do wondrous and crazy things.

I hope the person waiting for the novel Axiom’s End by Lindsay Ellis from the Natick public library will forgive me that I’m keeping it past the return date. It was due June 02, 2021 and today is June 05,2021. I couldn’t renew it because it was only a 14-day book loan and is on hold. I’m only on chapter 13 out of 40 and I have to the date of my Sci-Fi book club on the 9^th of June to finish it. I would have started it earlier but got caught in the usual looking up info on FB, wife-spending time and feeding food to the elderly to actually dive into it right away. Now it’s late and somebody is waiting for it.

My book will return late but still not as late 8^th grader Howard Simon’s return of Bob Dylan’s “Self Portrait” record Album.  Some kids make innocent mistakes. A few of the memorial songs on the album include All the Tired Horses, Wigwam and Living the Blues. The album was due sometime back in 1973 and was just recently returned 48 years later. Two years less then I’ve been alive. The album must have had a real impact on young Howard as he grew up to a musician himself and his songs sound like Bob’s except with a better singing voice. Some kids grow up to use their talents as a full functioning adult.

While Old Howard is singing songs on the Western Reserve, young 11-year-old Seenlada Supat is performing weekly piano recitals at the Thailand Khao Kheow Open Zoo dressed in an alligator costume for the lonely lemurs. With low zoo attendance due to Covid this gives the lonely animals some much needed attention and gives Seenlada a chance to practice her musical talents for a live audience while having fun at the same time. She will grow up to hopefully to entertain children as she seems to have the costume and skills for it. Some kids hone in on their talents and use it for the good of others. A musician named Paul Barton grow up to play classical music on his piano in the middle of an elephant sanctuary to a blind elephant named Lam Duan.

While some kids do wonderous things, some kids do crazy things.

Not everyone at a young age makes innocent mistakes like forgetting a library book or will go out of their way to use their talent performing a public service to lemurs. Some kids make decisions without thinking through all of the possible consequences of their actions, actions that could possibly end up in death. Some kids like this 9-year-old Utah girl and her younger 4-year-old sister. The girls got this fanciful idea of swimming with dolphins in California. And so, after waking up one night at 3:00 AM they swiped their parents’ keys and drove off in the family car on their summer adventure only to hit a semi-truck. They actually made it 10 miles before their non-fatal collision. They were wearing seatbelts. What some kids do to live their adolescent dreams.

“You have been told to follow your dreams, but what if it’s a stupid dream?  If we’d all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses.”
–Stephen Colbert

As dangerous and foolish as that was, it was not as bad as 17-year-old Hailey Morinico rushing to push a black mama bear off a wall before it was able to kill her dogs that were barking at mama and her cubs. She felt risking her life for her dogs was worth confronting a mother bear and her offspring. At least she was thinking of others and not herself. Some kids will risk their lives to save their dogs.

As dangerous and foolish and brave as that was it was not as bad as the shootout with 2 runaway kids and the cops. A 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl ran away from a group home and broke into a house. While they were ransacking the place, they found guns inside including an AK47 and a shotgun. They later used those guns to engage in a gun battle with police officers. By the grace of God, no deaths occurred in this very unfortunate lack of thinking on the part of the teens. And I thought my daughter made bad choices about her life. Some kids lack a moral foundation and need loving guidance to stir them back to a good place. These kids still have a chance to redeem their lives, because their still alive. With life comes opportunities.

Some kids can fully cooperate with evil. 21 years ago three girls led Sr. Maria Laura Mainetti on June 6, 2000 to a park in Chiavenna, Italy where they stabbed her to death in a Satanic ritual.  They had intended to stab her 18 times to form the number 666 but got in one extra stab ruining their devilish number. As the misguided girls commited the grizzly act of murder Sister Maria like St. Stephen and Our Lord himself said “Lord, Forgive Them.” On June 6, 2021 Sr. Maria was beatified by Pope Francis as a martyr for the faith. What the kids intended for evil ended up failing as God can always turn into good what Satan intends for evil.

Some kids like 8 year old Leo remain innocent and are concerned with things like NPR Having a  Lack Of Dinosaur Stories.

Some kids escape a deadly family situation and find a skill and talent such as becoming a chess champion.

Some kids almost lose their lives like the boy who hid in a trash can and almost got thrown out with the garbage.

Some kids like a 10-year-old Tennessee boy, actually lose their life after doing a heroic deed.  He died trying to save sister from a frozen pond.

Some kids like 15 year old Carlo Acutis die from cancer and years later become a saint, proving that even in death young people can make a difference.

Some kids want to remember what they did when they were young.

Mark will not let me alone. He wants me to write about him so he can know what he did when he was small. He wants to be sure I put in that Laurie stepped on his toe. He wants also to have me put in about his “ Sean & Marky” comic books that he makes. He gets the ideas and dictates his ideas to me each night so I can draw them .He calls them Our “Drawing Lessons”. But I have to do all the drawing. Louise Wilson’s Diary-June 30th, 1977

 FEAST DAYS ,HOLIDAYS AND LAST WEEK IN HISTORY

 Mon  May 31,  2021

The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

World No Tobacco Day (International)

• 1790 – The United States enacts its first copyright statute, the Copyright Act of 1790.
• 1857– Pope Pius XI (d. 1939)
• 1859 – The clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, which houses Big Ben, starts keeping time.
• 1889– Johnstown Flood: Over 2,200 people die after a dam fails and sends a 60-foot (18-meter) wall of water over the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
• 1819– Walt Whitman, American poet, essayist, and journalist (d. 1892)
• 1911– The RMS Titanic is launched in Belfast, Northern Ireland
• 1960 – Chris Elliott, American actor, comedian, and screenwriter is born.
• 1961 – Lea Thompson, Star of Back to the Future is born.
• 1971– In accordance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed by the S. Congress in 1968, observation of Memorial Day occurs on the last Monday in May for the first time, rather than on the traditional Memorial Day of May 30.
• 2005– Vanity Fair reveals that Mark Felt was “Deep Throat“.
• 2013– The asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon make their closest approach to Earth for the next two centuries.

June is the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Saints in the News, June 2021 – Catholic World Report

 Tuesday June 1, 2021

Saint Justin, Martyr

World Milk Day (International)

• 1495– A monk, John Cor, records the first known batch of Scotch whisky. 
• 1533– Anne Boleyn is crowned Queen of England. 
• 1796– Tennessee is admitted as the 16th state of the United States.
• 1801– Brigham Young, American religious leader, 2nd President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is born. (d. 1877)
• 1934– Pat Boone, American singer-songwriter and actor 1978 – The first international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty are filed.
• 1990– Cold War: George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev sign a treaty to end chemical weapon
• 1996 – Tom Holland, Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic universe is born.
• 2004– Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols is sentenced to 161 consecutive life terms without the possibility of a parole, breaking a Guinness World Record.

Wednesday June 2,  2021

[Saints Marcellinus and Peter, Martyrs]

International Whores’ Day
(Yes this is a real thing.)

One night a flasher sneaked through the grounds of Tyndale House where I work. He waited until a pretty young lady was sitting on her own at a desk facing the window and then exposed himself. He ended up humiliated. After the initial shock of seeing a face at the window, she looked at him and burst out laughing. He ran away hurriedly and she began to feel a bit sorry for him. He didn’t know that she regularly did mission work among prostitutes and often had to confront their bosses; she was used to dealing with dangerous and seedy situations.

I imagine that Jesus was equally unshockable. Unlike the rest of his respectable generation, Jesus went out of his way to meet prostitutes; they were part of the humanity he came to save.- Bible Scandals – 3. Prostitutes – bethinking.org

• 455– Sack of Rome: Vandals enter Rome, and plunder the city for two weeks.
• 1098– First Crusade: The first Siege of Antioch ends as Crusader forces take the city; the second siege began five days later.
• 1835–  T. Barnum and his circus start their first tour of the United States.
• 1904 – Johnny Weissmuller, Hungarian-American swimmer and actor and star of some Tarzan movies. (d. 1984) is born.
• 1979– Pope John Paul II starts his first official visit to his native Poland, becoming the first Pope to visit a Communist
• 1997– In Denver, Timothy McVeigh is convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, in which 168 people died. He was executed four years later.

Thursday June 3,  2021

Saint Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs

World Bicycle Day

• 1808– Jefferson Davis, American colonel and politician, President of the Confederate States of America (d. 1889) is born.
• 1889– The first long-distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed, running 14 miles (23 km) between a generator at Willamette Falls and downtown Portland, Oregon.
• 1963 – Pope John XXIII(b. 1881) dies.
• 2011 – Jack Kevorkian, American pathologist, author, and activist (b. 1928)  dies.
• 2016 – Muhammad Ali, American boxer (b. 1942) dies,

 Friday  June 4, 2021

Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 Memorial Day(International)

• 1561– The steeple of St Paul’s, the medieval cathedral of London, is destroyed in a fire caused by lightning and is never rebuilt.
• 1876– An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, via the First Transcontinental Railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.
• 1896– Henry Ford completes the Ford Quadricycle, his first gasoline-powered automobile, and gives it a successful test run.
• 1912– Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to set a minimum wage.
• 1917– The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for biography (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.
• 1919– Women’s rights: The S. Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees suffrage to women, and sends it to the U.S. states for ratification.
• 1939– The Holocaust: The MS  Louis, a ship carrying 963 Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, in the United States, after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.
• 1975 – Angelina Jolie, American actress, filmmaker, humanitarian, and activist is born.
• 1989 – Ali Khamenei is elected as the new Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran by the Assembly of Experts after the death and funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
• 1989 – The Tiananmen Square protests are suppressed in Beijing by the People’s Liberation Army, with between 241 and 10,000 dead (an unofficial estimate)
• 1998– Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.
• 2010– Falcon 9 Flight 1 is the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40.

  Saturday June 5,   2021

Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr

World Day Against Speciesism(International)

• 1829– HMS Pickle captures the armed slave ship Voladora off the coast of Cuba.
• 1837– Houston is incorporated by the Republic of Texas.
• 1849– Denmark becomes a constitutional monarchy by the signing of a new constitution.
• 1851– Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, starts a ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist^[6]
• 1883– The first regularly scheduled Orient Express departs Paris.
• 1893– The trial of Lizzie Borden for the murder of her father and step-mother begins in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
• 1910–  O.Henry, American short story writer (b. 1862) dies.
• 1956– Elvis Presley introduces his new single, “Hound Dog“, on The Milton Berle Show, scandalizing the audience with his suggestive hip movements.
• 1968 – Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan.
• 1989 – The Tank Man halts the progress of a column of advancing tanks for over half an hour after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

Elvis singing Hound Dog

Sunday June 6,  2021

THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST (Corpus Christi)

Saint Norbert,

D-Day Invasion Anniversary. 

Queensland Day. 

UN Russian Language Day

• 1844– The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) is founded in London. 
• 1859– Queensland is established as a separate colony from New South Wales. The date is still celebrated as Queensland Day. 
• 1933– The first drive-in theater opens in Camden, New Jersey.^[23]
• 1968– Robert F. Kennedy, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 64th United States Attorney General dies. (b. 1925)
• 1985– The grave of “Wolfgang Gerhard” is opened in Embu, Brazil; the exhumed remains are later proven to be those of Josef Mengele, Auschwitz‘s “Angel of Death”; Mengele is thought to have drowned while swimming in February 1979.^[32]
• 2002– Eastern Mediterranean event. A near-Earth asteroid estimated at ten meters in diameter explodes over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya. The explosion is estimated to have a force of 26 kilotons, slightly more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb.^[34]
• 2005– Anne Bancroft, American film actress; winner of the 1963 Academy Award for Best Actress for The Miracle Worker  dies. (b. 1931
• 2013 – Esther Williams, American swimmer and actress dies. (b. 1921)

In 1944  the Commencement of Operation Overlord, took place. This was  the Allied invasion of Normandy during WWII. With the execution of Operation Neptune—commonly referred to as D-Day—the largest seaborne invasion in history took place. Nearly 160,000 Allied troops cross the English Channel with about 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers participating. By the end of the day, the Allies have landed on four invasion beaches and were pushing inland to take back Europe from the Nazis.

Bishop Barron’s Homily of the Week

 Last Week’s News of the World

A number of social justice and cultural issues were in the news last week.

You can read about them here in this article.

 Last Week in Moral and Social Issues May 31 – June 6 JUNE 05, 2021

 The Topics include

COVID & Abortion

Death Penalty

Discovery of 215 Dead Children

Disobeying Your Bishop With Donations

Pride Month

Tulsa Race Riots

Youth and Gun Problems

Oppressive Government Doesn’t Want to Remember

Sex Abuse Scandals

Released and Set Free

Now here is more of

Last Week’s News of the World

US troops accidentally storm olive oil factory in Bulgaria (msn.com)

The US military has issued an apology after soldiers accidentally stormed a factory in Bulgaria that produces processing machinery for olive oil during a training exercise last month.

DOWN ON THE GROUND! Drop the Olive Oil into my bag. I heard its good.

London’s New See-Through Skyscraper Pool Has Twitter Users Saying ‘Hell No!’ | HuffPost

Bozeman based performer combines clowns with landmine safety to educate children | Education | bozemandailychronicle.com

Naomi Shafer, a Bozeman resident and executive director of Clowns Without Borders, is part of an international team of performers and educators creating landmine safety videos in four countries.

UFO report: No evidence of alien spacecraft, but can’t rule it out (nbcnews.com)

A highly anticipated government report sheds little light on the mystery, finding no evidence of extraterrestrial activity but not ruling it out either, according to two U.S. officials.

Monks of France’s first papal vineyard sell wine to help local community (catholicnewsagency.com)

The Benedictine monks and nuns who tend to the first papal vineyard in France have launched an appeal to sell their wine to help the families of local wine growers.

Located on a hill in the Rhône Valley, the Abbeys of Le Barroux work together with the local wine-marking community to cultivate the land first established as a vineyard by Pope Clement V in 1309.

Kitui: Eagle picks snake, fight ensues, eagle drops snake, snake lands on car, bites man – Citizentv.co.ke

According to Musyoka, before he could do anything, the snake found its way inside the car and bit his left arm.

He immediately stopped the car and jumped out with the snake still hanging onto his arm and called for help.

Nearby residents of Kwa Mbungu market rushed to his rescue and killed the snake then gave him first aid.

However, in a shocking turn of events, the residents said the eagle emerged out of nowhere again and picked the dead snake right back up and flew away with it.

 POPE FRANCIS’S FAMOUS LAST WEEK’S WORDS 

Pope Francis: Basketball is a sport that ‘lifts you up to the heavens’ (catholicnewsagency.com)

“I would like to say one thing with basketball in mind. Yours is a sport that lifts you up to the heavens because, as a famous former player once said, it is a sport that looks upwards, towards the basket, and so it is a real challenge for all those who are used to living with their eyes always on the ground. I would also like this to be a noble task for you: to promote healthy play among children and young people, to help young people to look up, to never give up, to discover that though life is a journey made up of defeats and victories, the important thing is not to lose the desire to ‘play the game. And to help them understand that when in life you don’t ‘shoot a hoop,’ you haven’t lost forever. You can always get back on the court, you can still team up with others, and you can take another shot.”

Pope Francis: Never forget that Jesus is praying for you before the Father (catholicnewsagency.com)

“We must always keep this in mind: Jesus prays for me. He is praying now before the Father and makes Him see the wounds He carried with Him, to show the Father the price of our salvation, it is the love that He holds for us.”

Pope Francis releases video message on the beauty of marriage (catholicnewsagency.com)

“Getting married and sharing one’s life is something beautiful. It is a demanding journey, at times difficult, and at times complicated, but it is worth making the effort.”

Pope Francis turns to Mary, Undoer of Knots, at end of rosary marathon for end to pandemic (catholicnewsagency.com)

 During this month of May with many of the faithful we joined in prayer with various shrines scattered throughout the world and dedicated to you, O Mary our Holy Mother. We have asked you to intercede for us with your Son Jesus. Every day, holding in our hands the crown of the holy rosary, we have turned our eyes to you, Mother of Mercy, begging that the pandemic may end and humanity may resume its daily life with greater security.

“Tonight we gather before you, our Virgin Mother, venerated in this image as the one who unties knots. In fact, there are many knots that bind our lives and our activities. They are knots of selfishness and indifference, economic and social knots, knots of violence and war. By your obedience, you have untied the knot of disobedience of Eve’s disobedience; by your faith, you untied what Eve had tied with her unbelief. We pray to you, Holy Mother, untie the knots that oppress us materially and spiritually, so that we may joyfully bear witness to your Son and our Lord, Jesus Christ.”

 BLOG/ARTICLES POSTS OF THE WEEK

Jumping Spiders Hang By A Thread At Night – Why Is Unclear : NPR

Jumping spiders, which use their four pairs of big eyes to spot prey so that they can pounce, can spend a lot of the night just hanging around—literally.

The gorilla jumping spider, Evarcha arcuata, frequently hangs by a single thread at night, suspended in mid-air for hours. Researchers suspect these visually-oriented spiders may cope with darkness by switching to a strategy that lets them use vibrations as a warning signal of danger.

“Maybe they use this silk as a kind of an alarm system or as a way of getting out of reach for predators,” says Harvard University researcher Daniela Roessler, who notes that this new finding shows how science seems to know very little about the night-time resting habits of tiny critters, even common ones.

Echoes of the Gospel in ‘The Return of Superman’ – Voyage Comics & Publishing

Jesus is a model for the perfect human. God became man. He shows us the way to free us from sins. Literature is filled with heroic figures. But nearly all contain a fatal character flaw. Hubris. Greed. Anger. Lust. Or envy. While  no characters, especially comic book characters, can be matched perfectly with Jesus there is one superhero most commonly associated Christ— Superman.

The Man of Steel embodies everything you want in a hero: strength, a great origin story, and virtuous character. Some may argue Kal-El is too perfect. Unrelatable even. But I think most can agree that Superman is a symbol of hope for Metropolis and Earth.

Pondering Podcasts OF THE WEEK

‎A Jew and a Gentile Discuss: #41 | How to Share Jesus with a Jewish Friend – Awkward but Important on Apple Podcasts

 Yeah, it can be uncomfortable. Intimidating? Maybe. Awkward? Probably. But seriously, it’s super important. Like, eternity-important. So, Ezra and Carly are here to help you understand some things that will make talking about Jesus with a Jewish friend easier for you and more meaningful for your friend.

In this episode of A Jew and A Gentile Discuss, they talk about:

• The misconception that Jews don’t need Jesus
• Where to start when it comes to talking with a Jewish friend about Jesus
• Sharing the Gospel in the context of the Jewish Bible
• Words that will likely be misunderstood and terminology to use to help make the connection
• Sharing your faith testimony – is that good, relevant or what?
• Praying about the person and the conversation

 

#447 – The world’s most misunderstood literature

Book Em, Dano on your reading list