Saturday, March 7, 2020

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME TOMORROW

Daylight Saving Time Begins Tomorrow^[1]

Daylight Savings time had begun in an effort to help save energy and provide workers with more hours of serviceable daylight during the long summer days.  Daylight Savings Time was first introduced in the U.S. in 1918.  However, it was not until 1966, when the Uniform Act was passed, that all states had to either observe DST or pass a state law to abstain.

Daylight Saving Time Begins Facts

·         Benjamin Franklin first proposed the idea of DST in 1784.  He wrote An Economical Project for the Journal of Paris, wherein he discussed the cost of oil for lamps as well as working while it was dark and sleeping while it was day.

·         Daylight Savings Time changes at 2:00 a.m.  This time is selected in an effort to provide the least amount of inconvenience to businesses and citizens.

·         Hawaii and Arizona do not use DST.  Up until 2006, Indiana only used DST in part of the state.

Daylight Saving Time Begins Top Events and Things to Do

·         Move your clocks forward 1 hour before bed on Saturday night before the Daylight-Saving Time day in March.

·         Go to bed an hour earlier Saturday night before the Daylight-Saving Time day.

·         Get outside and enjoy the extra hour of daylight.

·         Replace the batteries in the smoke alarm and carbon dioxide monitors.

·         Clean out the medicine cabinet.  Dispose of all medicines properly.

Today imagine that God came to you and said you can move back time for two hours for any moment in your life. What would you change? Think of that before going to confession.

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[1]http://www.wincalendar.com/Daylight-Saving-Time-Begins

First Saturday

SAINTS FILICITY AND PERPETUA

Sirach, Chapter 40, Verse 7

As he reaches safety, he wakes up, astonished that there was nothing to fear.

Our loving God wants us free; He speaks to us at times through our dreams and reassures us of His assistance. Rest is an important part of God’s care for us and the world.

In the Jewish calendar God specified that we are to rest one out of seven days, but it goes further with a rest after seven weeks ending in a year of Jubilee after the 49^th year called a Shemitah.

The Shemitah Year is the seventh year of the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah for the Land of Israel and still observed in contemporary Judaism. When Moses received the Levitical law, God gave the commandment to rest on the seventh day… the Sabbath. Moses also applied the cycles of "seven" to weeks and years. A cycle of seven weeks points to the 50th day, called Pentecost. And a cycle of seven sets of seven years points to the 50th year, the year of Jubilee. The year of Jubilee is based on letting the land rest every seventh year as follows; "For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. But in the seventh year the land is to have a Sabbath of rest, a Sabbath to the Lord." (Leviticus 25:3-4)

Before the Exodus, the Israelites had been slaves in the land of Egypt, without freedom and without possessions. When they reached the land of Canaan, Joshua divided the land among their tribes and their families… so that each had his own inheritance. Every adult male among them became a landowner. This land was a permanent possession that could never depart from his family. If a man became poor, he could sell part or all of his land… but only temporarily. It would always revert to him or his descendants at the “Year of Jubilee.” If he became even poorer and was unable to pay his debts, he could sell himself into slavery, and work to pay off his debts. Again, that slavery could only ever be temporary. When the great “Day of Atonement” in the “Year of Jubilee” came he became a free man once again and repossessed his inheritance. The most unusual observance that God commanded the Israelites through Moses was… the keeping of the Year of Jubilee. For most people this celebration occurred only once in their lifetime and for many not even that, as it occurred …only once every 50 years. At this year of jubilee all Israelites who had sold themselves into slavery were set free… and all land that had been sold reverted to its original owner. This meant that the Israelites could not ever be in permanent slavery; nor could any Israelite permanently lose his inheritance![1]

God’s purpose for the jubilee is to set men free from slavery. Are there people and things you are enslaved too? Now is the time to break free from them. If others happen to be enslaved to you; now is the time to release them and god’s mercy will shine on you! If you are enslaved to alcohol, drugs, pornography, food or any other thing or person. Free yourself to be able to give yourself to God.

First Saturday Devotion^[2]

Five consecutive Saturdays in reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
The practice of the First Saturday devotion was requested by Our Lady of Fatima, who appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, multiple times starting in 1917. She said to Lucia, the oldest of the three children: “I shall come to ask . . . that on the First Saturday of every month, Communions of reparation be made in atonement for the sins of the world.” Years later she repeated her request to Sr. Lucia, the only one still living of the three young Fatima seers, while she was a postulant sister living in a convent in Spain: “Look, my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men pierce me at very moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try to console me, and say that I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the rosary, and keep me company for 15 minutes while meditating on the 15 mysteries of the rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.” 
Conditions to Fulfill the First Saturday Devotion

There are five requirements to obtain this promise from the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On five consecutive first Saturdays of the month, one should:

1. Have the intention of consoling the Immaculate Heart in a spirit of reparation.

2. Go to confession (within eight days before or after the first Saturday).

3. Receive Holy Communion.

4. Say five decades of the Holy Rosary.

5. Meditate for 15 minutes on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary with the goal of keeping Our Lady company (for example, while in church or before an image or statue of Our Lady).

Read How to Make Your First Saturday Rosary Meditation According to Sr. Lucia

Why Five Saturdays?

Our Lord appeared to Sr. Lucia on May 29, 1930 and gave her the reason behind the five Saturdays devotion. It is because there are five types of offenses and blasphemies committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary:

1. Blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception

2. Blasphemies against Our Lady’s perpetual virginity

3.  Blasphemies against her divine maternity, in refusing at the same time to recognize her as the Mother of men

4.  Blasphemies of those who publicly seek to sow in the hearts of children, indifference or scorn or even hatred of their Immaculate Mother

5.  Offenses of those who outrage Our Lady directly in her holy images
Never think that Jesus is indifferent to whether or not His mother is honored!

Reflect today on what it took to make Christ the gentle shepherd of our souls!

Martyrdom of Felicity and Perpetua[3]

Perpetua was twenty-two, well born, married and the mother of a tiny son still at her breast. Felicitas, an expectant mother, was a slave. They were among five catechumens whose arrest and imprisonment were meant as a warning to the other Christians in Carthage in the year 203. Tormented by her father who was a pagan and wanted her to apostatize, terrified by the darkness and stifling heat of the dungeon where they were imprisoned, Perpetua's greatest suffering nevertheless was for her baby who was with her. Baptism, however, drove away her fears and with the coming of the Holy Spirit she was at peace and the prison became to her as a palace; in visions she learned the manner of their martyrdom and caught glimpses of what awaits souls in the life after death. Among these was a vision of Purgatory where she saw her little brother Dinocratus suffering. Dinocratus had died when he was only seven, painfully ulcerated about the face. Perpetua saw him "coming out of a dark place where there were many others," dirtily clad, pale, with the wound still on his face, and he was very hot and thirsty. Near him was a fountain but its brim was higher than he could reach and, though he stood on tiptoe, he could not drink. By this vision she knew he needed her prayers, and she prayed for him night and day. On the day the Christians were put in stocks, she had another vision and saw Dinocratus freed. This time he was clean and finely clothed, on his face was a clean scar and beside him a low fountain reaching only to his waist. On the edge of the fountain was a golden cup ever full of water, and Dinocratus drank. "And when he had drunk, he came away — pleased to play, as children will." In the meantime, Felicitas was worried for fear her baby would not be born in time for her to die for Christ with her companions. There was a law which forebade throwing even a Christian woman to the wild beasts if she was with child. Three days before they were to go to the arena, they prayed God would permit the birth of her child, and as soon as their prayers were done, her labor began. She gave birth to a little girl who was afterward adopted by her sister. At last the scene of their martyrdom and in it Perpetua and Felicity were told to put on the garments of pagan priestesses, the two refused and so were stripped naked, covered with nets, and sent to face assault by a maddened cow said to have been used in insult to their womanhood and their maternity. Strangely enough the audience — screaming for blood though it was — yet was touched by the sight of these two so young and so valiant, and the people shuddered. Perpetua and Felicitas were called back and clothed in loose robes. Now Perpetua was thrown, her garment rent, and her thigh gored. Regaining her feet, she gathered her tunic over her thigh so in suffering she would not appear immodest and looking about found her fallen hair ornament and repinned her hair lest one soon to be a martyr seem to grieve in her glory. Looking for Felicitas, she gave assistance to her and standing together they awaited another attack. But the mob cried, "Enough," and the two were led off to the headsman's block. Catching sight of her brother, Perpetua cried out: "Stand fast in the faith and love one another; and do not let our sufferings be a stumbling block to you." Felicitas was struck down first then Perpetua — but only after the nervous swordsman had struck her once and failed to sever her head. The second time she guided his sword with her own hands. So brave, and so full of love; perhaps if she were dying now, she would exhort us to be brave and full of love in slightly different words. Perhaps she would cry out, "Stand fast in the faith and love one another; and do not let our color be a stumbling block to you." Perpetua was white, and Felicitas was black.

Daily Devotions

·         Saturday Litany of the Hours Invoking the Aid of Mother Mary

·         Reflect on Day 20 of 30 days with St. Joseph

·         Manhood of the Master-week 4 day 6

·         Offering to the sacred heart of Jesus

·         Make reparations to the Holy Face

·         Nineveh 90-54 day rosary day 54

·         Manhood of the Master-Day 27

·         Drops of Christ’s Blood

·         Universal Man Plan

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[1] http://www.pray4zion.org/thecomingshemitahjubileeyear57745.html

[2]https://www.catholiccompany.com/getfed/what-is-the-first-friday-and-first-saturday-devotion/

[3]http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/activities/view.cfm?id=248

God loves a grateful heart; in the comments section state what you are grateful for.