Still Remembered Today

August 15, 2025 falls on a Friday this year.
Various people have lived and died on this day and many have participated in many fascinating  historical events.

It is a day ripe with the fruit of many interesting things that are still remembered today.

• 1914 – A servant of American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, sets fire to the living quarters of Wright’s Wisconsin home, Taliesin, and murders seven people there. May they rest in peace.
• 1914 – The Panama Canal opens to traffic with the transit of the cargo ship SS Ancon.
• 1935 – Will Rogers and Wiley Post are killed after their aircraft develops engine problems during takeoff in Barrow, Alaska. May they rest in peace.
• 1939 – The Wizard of Oz premieres at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California.
• 1947 – India gains independence from British rule after near 190 years of British company and crown rule and joins the Commonwealth of Nations.
• 1965 – The Beatles play to nearly 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City, an event later regarded as the birth of stadium rock.
• 1969 – The Woodstock Music & Art Fair opens in Bethel, New York, featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era.
• 1998 – Apple introduces the iMac computer
• 2013 – The Smithsonian announces the discovery of the olinguito, the first new carnivorous species found in the Americas in 35 years.

Of all the other things that are remembered on this day it also includes the birthday of children’s author,  E. Nesbit  (August 15, 1858 – May 4, 1924) who wrote such classics as the adventurous The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899)  the fantastical Five Children and It (1902) and the dramatic The Railway Children (1906).

They were not railway children to begin with. I don’t suppose they had ever thought about railways except as means of getting to Maskelyne and Cooke’s, the Pantomime, Zoölogical Gardens, and Madame Tussaud’s. They were just ordinary suburban children, and they lived with their Father and Mother in an ordinary red-brick-fronted villa, with coloured glass in the front door, a tiled passage that was called a hall, a bath-room with hot and cold water, electric bells, French windows, and a good deal of white paint, and “every modern convenience,” as the house-agents say.

You will think that they ought to have been very happy. And so they were, but they did not know how happy till the pretty life in the Red Villa was over and done with, and they had to live a very different life indeed.

The dreadful change came quite suddenly.

She has inspired several other children’s author which include P. L. Travers (of Mary Poppins), Edward Eager (Half Magic (1954), Diana Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle (1986) J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter) and the creator of the Narnia series C. S. Lewis. Lewis’s first book in that series ‘The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe came out in 1950. This was also the same year that The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church  was defined by Pope Venerable Pius XII.  August 15 just happens to be the feast day of this Catholic theological Marian belief.  75 years ago this dogma was given the official Catholic seal of authority. 

While some people might remember Ms. Nesbit and read her imaginative creative stories, Catholics around the globe are required by the successors of St. Peter appointed by Jesus to remember his mother Mary by attending the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in which the gift of salvation is represented for us in our midst and the last supper is done in remembrance of Jesus command so that we can eat the body and drink the blood of Mary’s son who is God. Reading about the magical adventures of children is one way to connect to person of Ms. Nesbit and that of the other crafters of fantasy worlds including the allegorical Christian world of Narnia. But your only connected to the memory of these people. But we are not just connected to Jesus’s memory, we are physically and spiritually connected to real presence of Christ. The Eucharistic sacramental body of Christ is the imaginative and creative way that we get to unite to the mysterious unseen real world of heaven and to the creator of our world which include the creations E. Nesbit and his blessed Mother who have  both lived here.

Mass is celebrated in various churches everywhere including these churches that have an anniversary on this date.

• 1248 – The foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral, built to house the relics of the Three Wise Men, is laid. (Construction is eventually completed in 1880.)
• 1483 – Pope Sixtus IV consecrates the Sistine Chapel.
• 1843 – The Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu, Hawaii is dedicated. Now the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Honolulu, it is the oldest Roman Catholic cathedral in continuous use in the United States.

Three years earlier before this dogma was defined in 1947 Madonna House Apostolate was formed by Servant of God Catherine Doherty  (August 15, 1896 – December 14, 1985) who was also born on August 15.

Just yesterday my wife Kristin and I went to see the Van Gogh immersion experience. It was a technological wonderland of Van Gogh’s paintings that were projected in a room all over the walls and floors. You got to experience his paintings in all their living colors which included a big model of some of his paintings and a really cool virtual reality experience that brought you into his paintings. This man is remembered years after he left this planet.

“What color is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life.” ― Vincent van Gogh

Jesus Mother Mary is remembered years after her departure from this earth in a spiritual immersion experience that is more intense then the Van Gogh experience. His paintings as excellent as they are connect us to the good temporal things of this earth here and now. A good painting or a good book reflects the creator of that work. The earthly creator reflects the heavenly creator in whose image they are created. The Mass connects us to the eternal things experienced here and now. And we remember one of Jesus’s best and most colorful creations on this day. And we remember that God resurrected his masterpiece early. That her reunification of her body and soul which resulted in her assumption is the same reunification were all going to experience at the end of time. All deceased people including E. Nesbit, C.S. Lewis, Catherine Doherty, Van Gogh, My wife and I and you who are reading this will all die and one day be reunited with our body. If we connect with Christ as Mary connected with Christ we can expect a glorified body. It can go the other way and if we don’t connect with Christ our bodies will still be resurrected but they will lose their color forever. So it is best to follow Mary’s example and follow her son and do whatever he tells you so you too can be resurrected and go to heaven like she did.

One of the best ways to connect to Jesus for a baptized Catholic in a state of grace is to remember to connect to his resurrected body in Mass and consume it into your body. The church that Christ left for us remembers that this is important or us to do this and instructs us to go to mass on this day so that we will connected to Christ not just in thought but in actuality so when we die we will be remembered like Mary was.