First Friday
FISH & CHIPS and NATIONAL DOUGHNUT DAY
1
Chronicles, Chapter 28,
Verse 20
David
said to his son Solomon: “Be strong and steadfast, and go to work; do not fear or be dismayed, for the LORD God,
my God, is with you. He will not fail you or abandon you before you have
completed all the work for the service of the house of the LORD.
We all long to hear this from our fathers but the
ultimate truth is He tells us this every day in the quiet of our hearts. We
merely reflect His grace when we pray.
·
When
we give Him all our suffering, He makes us strong and steadfast;
·
when
we give Him our mind, He breaks our fears and gives us a purposeful mind;
·
when
we give Him our heart, He does not abandon us
·
and
when we give Him our soul, He gives us the vision to see the work He has laid
before us.
To Make
Us Strong and Steadfast-God gave us His very self:[1]
Hold your heads up high Roman Catholics,
today you will receive the Holy Eucharist. Your venial sins will be melted away
and you will be brought into the closest communion with God that you can
experience while on Earth, and why?
Because God wants you to. I thank God that
I am not Protestant, not because they are not holy, but because I am not holy
enough. I do not have the attention, the desire, the spiritual openness, the
fervor, the humility, and the patience to achieve the state of grace. No, I am
Catholic: I am given the state of grace, and the Giver of Grace Himself.
“If Christ did not want to dismiss the
Jews without food in the desert for fear that they would collapse on the way,
it was to teach us that it is dangerous to try to get to heaven without the
Bread of Heaven.” – St. Jerome
The eucharist is the most radical truth we
can tell. It’s something that should be whispered in awe and reverence, and
proclaimed in joy as well: I eat God. I do. For us American Catholics, that
should have special significance. We live in a country where, for hundreds and
hundreds of years, human beings were sacrificed to false gods. In Aztec
culture, a man would be tied onto an altar, his heart cut out and held up to
the sky by a priest, his blood poured, and his body cut into pieces and thrown
down from the altar. This was done to appease the gods, to make it rain, to
bring good crops — none of which happened. Essentially, god ate man. Now I am
aware that it is not common practice to take theologically seriously the
sacrifice of the Aztecs, but what were they doing wrong?
Besides that, their acts were evil, the
problem was this: the gap between God and man is infinite, and so no number of
human sacrifices would bring them into communion with Him. Imagine how their
minds were rocked when the Conquistadors came with their Catholic priests. Now
man eats God. Now the Aztecs are told that it is the God who was killed, and
whose body is upon the altar. It is the very heart of the Most High that is
lifted up by the priest. It is His blood that is let out, His body that is
broken and taken from the altar to the people yearning for the rain of grace
and the crop of salvation. And God the Father is appeased by the sacrifice of
His Son, and we are forgiven and brought under his mighty wings once more,
because the infinite gap is filled by the infinite God. This mighty turn, this
divine reversal of the fortune of the human race is something we are called to
participate in.
It
is there in His Eucharist that He says to me: “I thirst, thirst for your love,
your sacrifices, your sufferings. I thirst for your happiness, for it was to
save you that I came into the world, that I suffered and died on the Cross, and
in order to console and strengthen you I left you the Eucharist. So, you have
there all My life, all My tenderness.” – Mother Mary of Jesus, foundress of the Sisters of
Marie
Reparatrice
Ghandi is famous for saying that if he
believed what Catholics believe about the Eucharist, he would crawl on His
hands and knees to receive it. His point is powerful, and we should learn from
it. Knowing what we know should inspire a reverence in us great enough to shock
and scandalize the world. At the same time, I wish I had been there to say to
Ghandi, “If we Catholics ourselves fully grasped what we believe about the
Eucharist, we would not dare approach it. If we Catholics truly understood the
Eucharist, if it was revealed to us in all its glory, there would be a long
line of unconscious people leading up to the altar.” God in His mercy comes to
us in bread and wine that we might be able to receive Him without dying.
“If angels could be jealous of men, they
would be so for one reason: Holy Communion.”
– St. Maximilian Kolbe
The
prayer of the Church venerates and honors the Heart of Jesus .
. . which, out of love for men, he allowed to be pierced by our sins." To
those who show him love and who make reparation for sins, however, our Lord
made a great pledge: "I promise you in the unfathomable mercy of
my heart that my omnipotent love will procure the grace of final penitence for
all those who receive communion on nine successive first Fridays of the month;
they will not die in my disfavor, or without having received the sacraments,
since my divine heart will be their sure refuge in the last moments of their
life."
To gain this grace, we must:
·
Receive
Holy Communion on nine consecutive first Fridays.
·
Have
the intention of honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus and of reaching final
perseverance.
·
Offer
each Holy Communion as an act of atonement for offenses against the Blessed
Sacrament.
Considerations
The fullness of God is revealed and given to us in Christ, in the love of Christ, in Christ's heart. For it is the heart of him in whom "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." Were one to lose sight of this great plan of God-the overflow of love in the world through the Incarnation, the Redemption and Pentecost-he could not understand the refinement with which our Lord deals with us. So, when we talk about the heart of Jesus, we stress the certainty of God's love and the truth of his commitment to us. When we recommend devotion to the Sacred Heart, we are recommending that we should give our whole selves to Jesus, to the whole Jesus-our souls, our feelings and thoughts, our words and actions, our joys. That is what true devotion to the heart of Jesus means. It is knowing God and ourselves. It is looking at Jesus and turning to him, letting him encourage and teach and guide us. The only difficulty that could beset this devotion would be our own failure to understand the reality of an incarnate God. But note that God does not say: "In exchange for your own heart, I will give you a will of pure spirit." No, he gives us a heart, a human heart, like Christ's. I don't have one heart for loving God and another for loving people. I love Christ and the Father and the Holy Spirit and our Lady with the same heart with which I love my parents and my friends. I shall never tire of repeating this. We must be very human, for otherwise we cannot be divine. . .. If we don't learn from Jesus, we will never love. If, like some people, we were to think that to keep a clean heart, a heart worthy of God, means "not mixing it up, not contaminating it" with human affection, we would become insensitive to other people's pain and sorrow. We would be capable of only an "official charity," something dry and soulless. But ours would not be the true charity of Jesus Christ, which involves affection and human warmth. In saying this, I am not supporting the mistaken theories-pitiful excuses-that misdirect hearts away from God and lead them into occasions of sin and perdition. . .. But I have still a further consideration to put before you. We have to fight vigorously to do good, precisely because it is difficult for us to resolve seriously to be just, and there is a long way to go before human relations are inspired by love and not hatred or indifference. We should also be aware that, even if we achieve a reasonable distribution of wealth and a harmonious organization of society, there will still be the suffering of illness, of misunderstanding, of loneliness, of the death of loved ones, of the experience of our own limitations. Faced with the weight of all this, a Christian can find only one genuine answer, a definitive answer: Christ on the cross, a God who suffers and dies, a God who gives us his heart opened by a lance for the love of us all. Our Lord abominates injustice and condemns those who commit it. But he respects the freedom of each individual. He permits injustice to happen because, as a result of original sin, it is part and parcel of the human condition. Yet his heart is full of love for men. Our suffering, our sadness, our anguish, our hunger and thirst for justice . . . he took all these tortures on himself by means of the cross. . .. Suffering is part of God's plans. This is the truth; however difficult it may be for us to understand it. It was difficult for Jesus Christ the man to undergo his passion: "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done." In this tension of pleading and acceptance of the Father's will, Jesus goes calmly to his death, pardoning those who crucify him. This supernatural acceptance of suffering was, precisely, the greatest of all conquests. By dying on the cross, Jesus overcame death. God brings life from death. The attitude of a child of God is not one of resignation to a possibly tragic fate; it is the sense of achievement of someone who has a foretaste of victory. In the name of this victorious love of Christ, we Christians should go out into the world to be sowers of peace and joy through everything we say and do. We have to fight-a fight of peace-against evil, against injustice, against sin. Thus, do we serve notice that the present condition of mankind is not definitive. Only the love of God, shown in the heart of Christ, will attain our glorious spiritual triumph. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is of great antiquity in the Church. It was St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, however, who made this devotion widespread. In 1675, within the octave of the feast of Corpus Christi, our Lord appeared to her and said: "Behold this heart which, not withstanding the burning love for men with which it is consumed and exhausted, meets with no other return from most Christians than sacrilege, contempt, indifference and ingratitude, even in the sacrament of my love [the Eucharist]. But what pierces my heart most deeply is that I am subjected to these insults by persons especially consecrated to my service." The great promise of the Sacred Heart is most consoling: the grace of final perseverance and the joy of having Jesus' heart as our sure refuge and Infinite Ocean of mercy in our last hour. Almighty and everlasting God look upon the heart of your well-beloved Son and upon the praise and satisfaction which he offers to you in the name of all sinners; and grant them pardon when they seek your mercy. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you for ever and ever.
1. Love
is revealed to us in the Incarnation, the redemptive journey which Jesus Christ
made on our earth, culminating in the supreme sacrifice of the cross. And on
the cross, it showed itself through a new sign: "One of the soldiers
pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and
water." This water and blood of Jesus speak to us of a self-sacrifice
brought to the last extreme: "It is finished"-everything is achieved,
for the sake of love. . .
2. Let
us realize all the richness hidden in the words "the Sacred Heart of
Jesus." When we speak of a person's heart, we refer not just to his
sentiments, but to the whole person in his loving dealings with others. In
order to help us understand divine things, Scripture uses the expression
"heart" in its full human meaning, as the summary and source,
expression and ultimate basis, of one's thoughts, words and actions. One is
worth what one's heart is worth.. . .
3.
Jesus on the cross, with his heart overflowing with love for us, is such an
eloquent commentary on the value of people and things that words only get in
the way. Men, their happiness and their lives, are so important that the very
Son of God gave himself to redeem and cleanse and raise them up. "Who will
not love this heart so wounded?" a contemplative asks in this connection.
"Who will not return love for love? Who will not embrace a heart so pure?
We, who are made of flesh, will repay love with love. We will embrace our
wounded One, whose hands and feet ungodly men have nailed; we will cling to his
side and to his heart. Let us pray that we be worthy of linking our heart with
his love and of wounding it with a lance, for it is still hard and impenitent.
. .."
Rich,
delicious, and flavorful, and utterly utterly satisfying, that’s the best way to describe this
treat. There’s
something about the tang of salt and the oil-stained newspaper that just speaks
of a meal so steeped in tradition it only seems appropriate that it comes
wrapped in the day’s
news. Fish and Chip day commemorate’s
this fundamental meal of the working class, and while its roots may lay on
Britannia’s foggy
shores, there are few places in the world that this comfort food hasn’t found its way to.
To
talk of the history of this holiday is, as in the case of so many others, to
speak of the origins of that which it celebrates. Fish and Chip seem an odd
thing to have become the foundation for an entire cultures working class, but
much comes into focus when you understand the economy and industry of the time
it took hold. In the late 1800’s,
trawl fishing became a major part of the industry in the North Sea, resulting
in a growing availability of fresh fish in areas further inland, especially
within the cities. Anyone who understands economics knows that ‘easily available’ means ‘cheaper to get your hands on’. Cheap, filling, and high caloric
food created an excellent foundation for a working class that held incredibly
physically demanding jobs. Thus, it was that “Chippers” started cropping up all over major
population centers, the vendors that served fish and chips to the people on the
street. From there, the meal spread all over the world and is now popular all
over Canada (being sold from ‘Chip
Wagons’) and
throughout the USA. In the America’s
it can be found in everything from corner burger shops as part of their fry
menu, to some of the most upscale restaurants which provide them with only the
best cod and sides. It really is a meal that crosses all the boundaries of
culture, class, and status.
How to Celebrate Fish and Chip Day
Well,
it starts off simple enough, doesn’t
it? Pop on over to your favorite Chipper and get yourself a paper-full of this
delicious and filling meal. Try it, however, you like it, with a little tartar
sauce in the US, a bit of mayonnaise in Canada, or whatever strikes you as your
favorite thing to flavor your dish with. Malt vinegar is a very popular
addition, and with the delicious tang, it will make your Fish and Chip Day
flavorful and authentic!
National Doughnut Day is a day of appreciation of
Salvation Army volunteers who distributed doughnuts to servicemen during World
War I. Doughnuts are fried circular pieces of dough that are usually
topped with sugar syrups, chocolate, nuts and other flavorings. National
Doughnut Day began in 1938 as a fundraiser for Chicago's Salvation Army.
The fundraiser aimed to support the needy and honor the Salvation Army
volunteers who donated their time during World War I to hand out doughnuts to
the soldiers. When the US entered the war in 1917, Salvation Army huts
were formed where many female volunteers were deployed to mother the soldiers.
During this time, women began to make doughnuts for the servicemen who
began to refer to the women as, Doughnut Dollies. This national holiday is
celebrated each year on the first Friday in June.
National
Doughnut Day Facts & Quotes
·
According
to Statista's market research survey of approximately 29,000 Americans, 61% of
American households eat doughnuts.
·
In
the United States, there are more than 8,000 Dunkin Donuts restaurants, 1,000
Krispy Kreme Doughnuts restaurants, and more than 800 Tim Hortons locations.
·
In
2014, Krispy Kreme UK created the world's most expensive doughnut. The
doughnut was filled with Dom Pérignon jelly and iced in a passion fruit glaze.
The doughnut was placed on a handmade lotus flower carved from Belgian
white chocolate and dusted with edible 23-karat gold. A 24-karat gold
leaf and edible diamonds brought the cost of the doughnut to £1,000
·
Philip
Joseph Santoro of the USA holds the Guinness World Record for eating the
fastest a jam doughnut with no hands and without licking the lips. He set
the record with a time of 11.41 seconds on April 14, 2014.
·
I
have to stick to it because I found out last time that one doughnut doesn't do
a thing. You've got to eat 20 a day for five weeks before you get results. -
Renee Zellweger on her doughnut diet to gain weight for her film Bridget
Jones's Diary.
National
Doughnut Day Top Events and Things to Do
·
Visit
your local doughnut store for specials and promotions to celebrate National
Doughnut Day. Many doughnut stores offer free doughnuts or specials.
·
Try
to make your own doughnuts with your favorite toppings, or try new blends of
sweet and savory toppings. Some interesting twists include maple bacon
doughnut, smoked salmon doughnut and grilled cheese doughnuts!
·
Become
a volunteer with The Salvation Army. According to The Salvation Army, more than 30
million Americans received assistance from the Salvation Army's officers,
employees and 3.4 million volunteers in 2014.
·
Pick
up a large box of doughnuts on your way to work or school to share with
friends, family, colleagues or fellow students
·
Watch
episodes of the Donut Showdown (2013) to learn about out-of-the-box
donut recipes. The show is judged by chefs David Rocco, Maggie McKeown
and Zane Caplansky. Each episode consists of contestants competing
against each other to create unique donuts.
HOLY SPIRIT NOVENA-EIGHTH DAY
(Friday,
7th Week of Easter)
Bend
the stubborn heart and will, melt the frozen warm the chill. Guide the steps
that go astray!
The
Gift of Wisdom
Prayer
Our
Father and Hail Mary ONCE.
Glory be to the Father SEVEN TIMES.
Act of Consecration, Prayer for the Seven Gifts
Glory be to the Father SEVEN TIMES.
Act of Consecration, Prayer for the Seven Gifts
For
as the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is his kindness toward
those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he put our
transgressions from us.
Daily Devotions
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