2 Chronicles, Chapter 17, Verse 10
Now the FEAR of the LORD was upon all the
kingdoms of the countries surrounding Judah, so that they did not war against
Jehoshaphat.
Jehoshaphat
was zealous for God and as a result peace comes to the land. Seek first the
Kingdom of God.
St. John Bonfires[1]
St.
John’s bonfire is traditionally lit on the night
before the Feast. The mood surrounding this solemn vigil is merry, since the
day was regarded as a sort of summer Christmas. The Roman ritual even includes
a special benedictio rogi, or blessing of the bonfire, for the birthday
of the Baptist:
Lord God, Father almighty,
unfailing Light who is the Source of all light: sanctify this new fire, and
grant that after the darkness of this life we may be able to come with pure
minds to Thee who art Light unfailing. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Domine
Deus, Pater omnipotens, lumen indeficiens, qui es conditor omnium luminum:
novum hunc ignem sanctifica, et praesta: ut ad te, qui es lumen indeficiens,
puris mentibus post hujus saeculi caliginem pervenire valeamus. Per Christum
Dominum nostrum. Amen.
The
bonfire, incidentally, is an excellent symbol for John, the untamed prophet who
lived outside the city both literally and figuratively. It also makes an
interesting contrast with the Paschal candle. On Easter vigil, a similarly
"wild" fire representing Christ is made outside and is used to light
the Paschal candle, which is then carried into the church. Significantly, in
the Exultet the deacon praises this candle as the product of a beehive,
symbol of a virtuous and harmonious city. The idea seems to be that Christ is
also an outsider, though he succeeds through his death and resurrection in
bringing the light of truth into the very citadel of darkness. On the other
hand, John, who never lived to see Christ's triumph, can only bear witness to
the light from the outside.
Things to Do[2]
·
St.
John's Birth marks the summer solstice. On the eve of this feast many countries
have celebrated with bonfires. This is especially true in Ireland, Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania. See the list of suggested activities to read more about
this tradition.
·
Read
about St. John's Eve particularly in Ireland (note the link is a secular
website).
·
From
the Germanic countries, here is some information on the Summer Solstice.
International
Widows’
Day[3]
International Widows' Day
serves to recognize widows and their unique situations worldwide. Widows are
women whose husbands have died. After their husbands have passed, many widows
are forced to fight for their human rights and overcome many obstacles to
ensure their social and economic development. It is estimated that there are
over 245 million widows worldwide, nearly half of which live in extreme poverty
and are subject to cruel violence.
Top Events and Things to Do
- Watch
a movie about the life of a widow. Some suggestions are: Water
(2005), Black Widow (1987), and Passionada
(2002).
- Read
a book about the lives and struggles of widows. Some suggestions are: The
Amish Widow’s Secret, A Widow’s Story, and The Writings
and Later Wisdom Books.
- Use
the hashtags #InternationalWidowsDay, #IWD and #WidowsDay on social
media to help spread awareness of the holiday.
- Visit
an old age or retirement home. Retirement homes are often home to many
widows who receive no visits and little interaction with people outside of
the homes. They will appreciate your visit.
Widowhood
in Judaism-Mary Our Queen was a Widow
Widowhood in Judaism is
treated as a distinct state of being, for a woman. If the widow's husband had
died after the start of the actual marriage (Hebrew: nissuin), rather than
merely dying after the betrothal (Hebrew: erusin), she became a legally independent
individual; the Talmud states that a woman became independent from her father
upon her marriage (nissuin), and she would become independent from her husband
when he dies. It was said that a formerly married widow was tantamount to an
orphan.
Though Judaism takes a
somewhat benign attitude towards widows, historically it has also imposed a
small number of odious requirements on them. For example, if a widow's husband
had appointed her to be the guardian of his children, and some were still infants,
her husband's heirs had a Talmudic right to demand an oath from the widow,
concerning her management of the children; however, her husband could, before
dying, remove this task, by means of written revocation of it.
Protections
The Book of Isaiah argues
that one should judge the fatherless, plead for the widow; in Judaism, it
consequently became customary to give cases raised by any widow the second
highest priority (the fatherless having the highest), when scheduling cases for
a rabbinic court. The later Deuteronomic Code takes up this principle,
commanding that the fatherless (and resident aliens) should not be deprived of
justice, and forbidding people from taking a widow's cloak as a pledge; in
Judaism this command was regarded as referring to all movable property
belonging to a widow, rather than merely her outer clothing.
In the second prologue of
the Book of Deuteronomy, which scholars regard as a later prefix to the
Deuteronomic Code, it is said that such protection is also provided by God
himself, judging the (cases of the) fatherless and the widow. Similarly, a
psalm argues that God was a father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows.
The Talmud permits a widow to remain resident in her husband's house.
Support
The Deuteronomic Code
legislates the requirement for gleanings to be left for consumption by widows
(and by the fatherless, and by resident aliens); according to the Holiness
Code, which scholars attribute to a different author and time period, gleanings
were actually to be left to the poor, and to strangers. The Deuteronomic Code
also expects widows (and the fatherless, and resident aliens) to be treated as
guests at Shavuot and Sukkot, and permits them (and the fatherless, and
resident aliens), every third year, to eat from the proceeds of the Levite
Tithe.
More substantive and
continual means of support are provided for widows by the Talmud, which allows
a widow to claim support from her husband's estate, even after the estate had
been inherited by his heirs; as with married life, if the woman made such a
claim, she had to surrender all her earnings to the owners of the estate, in
order to offset their duty to support her.
As with an absent husband,
it was argued that a widow should be allowed to sell any parts of her former husband’s
property, if necessary to sustain herself. She was not required to make such
sales via rabbinic courts; however, the Talmud argues that if she did not
involve a rabbinic court, and sold land for this purpose, for less than it was
actually worth, the sale would be void.
Alimony
In Judaism, alimony for a
widow is a right written into most Jewish marriage contracts (Hebrew:ketubah);
the alimony itself is often referred to as the ketubah, in consequence of this.
There was no statue of limitations against a widow collecting her alimony, as
long as she possessed the ketubah for the marriage in question; if she no
longer possessed this ketubah, and had re-married since the death, the statute
of limitations for the claim was 25 years since the death. However, in the
Talmud's opinion, once a widow had claimed her alimony, or had agreed to
receive it, she should no longer be allowed to claim support from her husband's
estate, nor to live in his former home.
The Talmud sets the
minimum amount for this alimony as 200 zuzim for a bride who had been a virgin
when the marriage began, and a mere 100 zuzim for a non-virgin bride; 200 Zuzim
is generally considered [by whom?] to have been enough for a woman to
financially support herself for a full year. These minimum amounts were not the
upper limit, meaning that the groom could, if he wished, increase the amount of
alimony that the bride would receive. Any property which came into the marriage
as a dowry-like gift, was legally possessed by the husband during the marriage,
but it eventually returned to the widow's ownership, as part of her alimony (at
least according to the classical rabbis).
The right of a widow to
claim the alimony could be transferred by her to absolutely anyone, for any
reason, including selling the right. If she died before completely obtaining
the alimony, her heirs could inherit the right to claim the outstanding amount;
the Talmud argues that such inheritance would carry with it an obligation to
pay for the proper burial of the woman.
There are, though, several
things which Jewish tradition regards as sufficient to cause the alimony to be
forfeited, should the bride have committed them. These included immodest behavior,
adultery, having sexual intercourse with her husband while she was ritually
impure due to menstruating, given her husband food that was ritually forbidden,
and obdurate refusal, for more than a month, to have sex with her husband. It
could even be forfeited if the wife had failed to inform her husband, prior to
the marriage, of all of her physical defects which were not already known about
by him.
The
chained wife
As the classical rabbis do
not allow a man to be presumed dead merely on the basis of a prolonged absence,
the wife of a man who has travelled to foreign locations and become lost (such as
explorers in the Amazon, and soldiers in World War II), or of a man who has
deliberately abandoned his wife and become uncontactable, would continue to be
married to him, according to the views of Jewish tradition. A woman trapped
into a marriage in this way was referred to as an agunah, literally meaning a
chained/anchored wife; in modern times, the term agunah has also come to refer
to women trapped into a marriage for other reasons, such as being refused a
divorce by their husband.
In order to mitigate the
hardship arising from being an agunah, Judaism has traditionally been willing
to also accept a much more lax standard of evidence about a husband's fate,
compared to its requirements for other questions. To prevent the situation
arising in the first place, some Jewish husbands provisionally divorce their
wives before undertaking long journeys, or taking part in warfare; such divorce
only takes effect if the husband goes missing for more than a certain period of
time. Provisional divorce has been used by some Jewish American soldiers,
during World War II, but other Jewish groups, such as the Chief Rabbinate of
the modern State of Israel, have completely rejected the method.
Remarriage
According to Jewish
tradition, as soon as a widow remarried, she would no longer have the right to
reside in her former husband's home, nor to claim support from his estate.
Remarriage, though, was not entirely a free choice, and was subject to several
restrictions.
Waiting
period
The classical rabbis
forbade all widows from remarrying, until at least 90 days had passed since the
death of their previous spouse; the delay existed to reduce doubt about the
paternity of any subsequent children, by making it easier to discover whether
the widow was pregnant. A similar waiting requirement, known as iddah, exists
in Islamic society, for similar reasons. Purely for the sake of bureaucratic standardization,
the classical rabbis insisted upon a woman waiting the 90 days even when it was
obvious that she could not be pregnant.
A widow was also forbade
from remarriage if she became visibly pregnant during the 90 day waiting
period, or if had a child which was both younger than 24 months old, and had
still been breastfeeding when the widow's husband had died. Once the child had
reached 24 months in age, or died, the widow was allowed to remarry (if there
was no other impediment).
Forbidden
remarriage
The Talmud suggests that
it would be unwise for men to marry a widow. Furthermore, it completely forbids
a widow from remarriage if two of her previous husbands have died from natural
causes, while she was married to them; it was believed that such a woman was
too dangerous to marry, either due to bad luck, or due to her having a
dangerous vagina harboring some malignant disease.
If a widow had been
suspected of adultery, she was forbade, by the Talmud, from ever marrying her
suspected accomplice, unless she first married someone else; this intervening
marriage was thought to refute, to some degree, the accusation of the adultery.
Similarly if it is necessary for legal action to confirm a woman's widowhood
(due to her husband being absent or missing), the classical rabbis instruct
that she may not marry any of the witnesses who have testified that her husband
is dead.
Priests, and those who
claim descent from them
The Holiness Code demands
that the Israelite high priest must only marry a virgin, spelling out that this
forbids marriage to a widow. According to the regulations in the Book of
Ezekiel, even ordinary priests should be forbidden to marry widows, unless the
previous husband of the widow had also been a priest. The classical rabbis
followed the regulation of the Holiness Code in this respect, except that they
permitted a high priest to remain married to a widow, if he had married her
while he was merely an ordinary priest.
Although the first century
destruction of the temple in Jerusalem resulted in the priesthood being
redundant, the Torah frequently portrays the Israelite priesthood as an
hereditary position, and so the rabbis of the Middle Ages regarded these
regulations as applying, still, to all men who claim to be descended from such
priests; such claims can often be detected in modern surnames resembling the
Hebrew word kohen, the term used in most parts of the masoretic text to mean
priest (the cognates in related languages, however, mean soothsayer. In the
Middle Ages, several rabbis forced such men to divorce any wife prohibited by
these rules, often by threatening excommunication if this was not done.
Compulsory
remarriage
Among the Israelites, a
wife was legally regarded simply as property (valuable property that needed to
be looked after, and was thus inherited by close relatives, like other property;
this principle was widespread among ancient cultures, and it was usual for the
deceased husband's brother to be the first choice to inherit the wife. This
levirate marriage (levir is the Latin term for a husband's brother) was made
almost compulsory by the Septuagint's version of the Deuteronomic Code, if the
husband and his brother lived together, and the husband was childless; the
masoretic text, of this passage, makes it compulsory even when the husband was
just lacking a son (and he had lived with his brother). In contrast, the
Holiness Code of Leviticus appears twice to forbid the institution, listing it
among forms of incest.
If the brother in question
refuses to take part in the levirate marriage, the wife was permitted by the
Deuteronomic Code to loosen his shoe, and spit on him; this act, known in
Judaism as Halitzah, also existed in other cultures which practiced levirate
marriage. This purpose of this act, however, is not explained by the Torah,
though the Book of Ruth implies that it derives from an historic practice
customary at every transaction involving landed property; the person disposing
of the property gave away his shoe as a symbol of the transaction. In later
Judaism, Halitzah was interpreted as releasing the widow and her brother-in-law
from an obligation to marry each other.
By the time the Talmud was
written, levirate marriage was regarded by rabbinic Jews as an objectionable
practice, and Ashkenazi Jews now almost always perform the Halitzah ritual
instead; nevertheless, levirate marriage, in accordance with the Deuteronomic
Code, continues to be the usual practice of Sephardi Jews. The Samaritans and
Karaites usually only performed levirate marriage if the original marriage had
not been consummated.
Every Wednesday is
Dedicated to St. Joseph
The Italian culture has
always had a close association with St. Joseph perhaps you could make
Wednesdays centered around Jesus’s Papa. Plan an Italian dinner of pizza or
spaghetti after attending Mass as most parishes have a Wednesday evening Mass.
You could even do carry out to help restaurants. If you are adventurous, you
could do the Universal Man Plan: St. Joseph style. Make the evening a family
night perhaps it could be a game night. Whatever you do make the day special.
·
Devotion to the 7 Joys and Sorrows of St.
Joseph
·
Do the St.
Joseph Universal Man Plan.
Daily
Devotions
·
Simplicity
of life can drive out demons. Honesty is a weapon to defeat Satan, the Liar.
When we lie, we put a foot in his camp, and he will try to seduce us all the
more.
·
Litany of the Most
Precious Blood of Jesus
·
Total Consecration
to St. Joseph Day 8
· Offering to the sacred heart of Jesus
·
Rosary
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