Dara’s Day
· How to celebrate Sep 18th
o After getting your workout in, take a moment to appreciate the importance of water on World Water Monitoring Day. Stay hydrated throughout the day and consider ways you can contribute to water conservation efforts in your community.
o As the day continues, make time to read an ebook in the afternoon. It’s a relaxing way to unwind and celebrate Read An Ebook Day.
o If you’re feeling particularly creative, why not write a heartfelt greeting card to someone special on Hug A Greeting Card Writer Day? It’s a small gesture that can brighten someone’s day.
o For dinner, why not cook a meal with rice and enjoy a delicious Rice Krispies treat for dessert in honor of Rice Krispies Treats Day?
o Embrace the spirit of Chile’s Independence Day by trying out a new recipe inspired by Chilean cuisine.
o As the evening approaches, take a moment to reflect on the importance of respect on National Respect Day. Whether it’s respecting others, yourself, or the environment, small acts of kindness can make a big difference.
o Before you wind down for the night, consider the impact of diesel engines on the world as you plan for Global Company Culture Day. Think about ways you can promote a positive work environment or support businesses with strong company culture.
SEPTEMBER 18 Ember Wednesday
1 Samuel, Chapter 13, Verse 6-7
6
When the soldiers saw they were in danger because the army was hardpressed,
they hid themselves in caves, thickets, rocks, caverns, and cisterns. 7 Other Hebrews crossed the Jordan
into the land of Gad and Gilead. Saul, however, held out in Gilgal, all his
army trembling in FEAR behind him.
This was a
low point for Israel. Probably many of them thought, “What we really need is a
king. A king would solve our problems.” Now they have a king, and the problems
are still there. We often think things will “fix” problems when they won’t at
all. “And hereby God intended to teach them the vanity of all fleshly
confidence in men; and that they did not one jot less need the help and favor
of God now than they did before, when they had no king.” [1]
Men are
foolhardy things when faith and trust in God leaves; fear and pride enters. We
see this in the response of the Jew’s to Pilate.
When Pilate heard these words he
brought Jesus out and seated him on the judge’s bench
in the place called Stone Pavement, in Hebrew, Gabbatha. It
was preparation day for Passover, and it was about noon. And he
said to the Jews, “Behold, your king!” They cried out, “Take
him away, take him away! Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify
your king?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.”
(John 19:13-15)
Ember
Days[2]
The profound
importance of total conversion.
Before the revision of the
Catholic Church's liturgical calendar in 1969 (coinciding with the adoption of
the Mass of Paul VI), the Church celebrated Ember Days four times each year.
They were tied to the changing of the seasons, but also to the liturgical
cycles of the Church. The spring Ember Days were the Wednesday, Friday,
and Saturday after the First Sunday of Lent; the summer Ember Days
were the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after Pentecost; the
fall Ember Days were the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the third
Sunday in September (not, as is often said, after the Feast of the Exaltation
of the Holy Cross); and the winter Ember Days were the Wednesday, Friday, and
Saturday after the Feast of Saint Lucy (December 13).
·
The Roman Origin of Ember Days: It's common to
claim that the dates of important Christian feasts (such as Christmas) were set
to compete with or replace certain pagan festivals, even though the best
scholarship indicates otherwise. In
the case of Ember Days, however, it's true. As the Catholic Encyclopedia notes:
The Romans were originally given to agriculture, and their native gods belonged
to the same class. At the beginning of the time for seeding and harvesting
religious ceremonies were performed to implore the help of their deities: in
June for a bountiful harvest, in September for a rich vintage, and in December
for the seeding.
·
Keep the Best; Discard the Rest: The Ember Days
are a perfect example of how the Church (in the words of the Catholic
Encyclopedia) "has always tried to sanctify any practices which could be
utilized for a good purpose." The adoption of the Ember Days wasn't an
attempt to displace Roman paganism so much as it was a way to avoid disrupting
the lives of Roman converts to Christianity. The pagan practice, though
directed at false gods, was praiseworthy; all that was necessary was to
transfer the supplications to the true God of Christianity.
·
An Ancient Practice: The adoption of Ember Days
by Christians happened so early that Pope Leo the Great (440-61) considered the
Ember Days (with the exception of the one in the spring) to have been
instituted by the Apostles. By the time of Pope Gelasius II (492-96), the fourth
set of Ember Days had been instituted. Originally celebrated only by the Church
in Rome, they spread throughout the West (but not the East), starting in the
fifth century.
· The Origin of the Word: The origin of the word "ember" in "Ember Days" is not obvious, not even to those who know Latin. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Ember" is a corruption (or we might say, a contraction) of the Latin phrase Quatuor Tempora, which simply means "four times," since the Ember Days are celebrated four times per year.
·
Optional Today: With the revision of the
liturgical calendar in 1969, the Vatican left the celebration of Ember Days up
to the discretion of each national conference of bishops. They're still
commonly celebrated in Europe, particularly in rural areas. In the United States,
the bishops' conference has decided not to celebrate them, but individual
Catholics can, and many traditional Catholics still do, because it's a nice way
to focus our minds on the changing of the liturgical seasons and the seasons of
the year. The Ember Days that fall during Lent and Advent are especially useful
to remind children of the reasons for those seasons.
·
Marked by Fasting and Abstinence: The Ember Days
are celebrated with fasting (no food between meals) and half-abstinence,
meaning that meat is allowed at one meal per day. (If you observe the
traditional Friday abstinence from meat, then you would observe complete
abstinence on an Ember Friday.) As always, such fasting and abstinence has a
greater purpose. As the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, through these activities,
and through prayer, we use the Ember Days to "thank God for the gifts of
nature, teach men to make use of them in moderation, and assist the
needy."
The term “Ember Days” is derived from the Latin term Quatuor Tempora, which literally means “four times.” There are four sets of Ember Days each calendar year: three days each – Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Ember Days fall at the start of a new season, and they are ordered as days of fast and abstinence. The significance of the days of the week are that Wednesday was the day Christ was betrayed, Friday was the day He was crucified, and Saturday was the day He was entombed. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the purpose of Ember Days, “besides the general one intended by all prayer and fasting, was to thank God for the gifts of nature, to teach men to make use of them in moderation, and to assist the needy.” [3]
Fall Ember Days[4]
Football games and pumpkin spice beverages and foods return; Autumn is upon us. Sadly, that is what the fall season means to so many people. We have lost contact the actual natural signs of the seasons of the year and turn to manmade expressions as signals for the change of seasons. But a pumpkin spice latte and football game aren’t true signals of the season change, because the specially flavored latte tends to return earlier each year, and added pre-season games blur the true end of summer and beginning of Fall. Once again, I turn to the Church’s Ember Days as an aid to looking at nature and the change of seasons and recognizing them all as a gift from God. Ember Days are a quarterly observance the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of one week of each season that “the Church is accustomed to entreat the Lord for the various needs of humanity, especially for the fruits of the earth and for human labor, and to give thanks to him publicly.” (Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, 45).
In addition, the Church provides us two seasons of preparation, Advent and Lent. Both seasons are a time for change of heart and renewal. But naturally the change of seasons seems to tug and encourage us for renewal and change (spring and fall cleaning, anyone?). Although not required, the traditional fasting and abstaining of these days are an external expression of turning our hearts and focusing back to God. Practicing Ember Days is not intended to be a backward-looking movement or living in the past. Ember Days are still a part of the Church’s tradition. There is an unbroken continuum within the Church’s Liturgy. Ember Days may look a bit different than pre-Vatican II (but even before 1962 Maria von Trapp was bemoaning how they were different and disappearing in her contemporary 1955 America), but the Ember Days are still a part of the Church’s living tradition. Ember Days are part of the agrarian heritage of our Faith. The Church recognizes our dependency on God for His gifts of nature. The Liturgy has reflected this connection with nature and God. Before man become so civilized, weather, crops, farm animals and the change of seasons were a part of daily life for everyone. Not everyone lived in rural locations, but there was a recognition of that connection of the land to our life. The agrarian connection also recognized that while man could work the land, he can never control the elements.
Returning to our agricultural roots brings true humility in remembering man’s role on earth as being completely beholden to God. The gift of nature is from God, and man is not and can never be in control of it. While Liturgy always has the balance of the four forms of prayer: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving and supplication, our personal prayers tend to lean heavily on the petition form. The Ember Days were a time dedicated to continuing that petition to help us with our needs, especially with harvests, but also stressing on giving gratitude to God for His generous gifts.
The September Ember Days were one of the first Ember Days established, and they are the most prominent of the quarterly days. The Ember Days in September are outside the main liturgical seasons (Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter) and are closest to the Fall Equinox. The Church recognized the pattern of change of seasons and bringing in the harvest man needs to give thanks and renew our hearts. The public practice of Ember Days within the diocese or parish is dependent on the local Ordinary, so there are many locations that do not observe Ember Days at all. But that doesn’t mean that Ember Days can’t be observed in small ways in our domestic churches. There are prayers, food, decorations and activities that can easily be incorporated by your family. Even if no extra external activities or food are added, the Ember Days can be a simple three-day exercise of remembering to look with wonder at our gifts of nature from God, see the connections in our life, and to use this time to turn our hearts in praise and thanksgiving.
Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, 14 September, are known as "Michaelmas Embertide," and they come near the beginning of Autumn (September, October, November). The Lessons focus on the Old Covenant's Day of Atonement and the fast of the seventh month, but start off with this prophecy from Amos 9:13-15:
Behold the days come, when the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed, and the mountains shall dop sweetness, and every hill shall be tilled. And I will bring back the captivity of My people Israel, and they shall build the abandoned cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine of them; and shall make gardens and eat the fruits of them; and I will plant them upon their land: and I will no more pluck them out of their land which I have given them; saith the Lord thy God.
Like all
Embertides but Whit Embertide, the Lessons end with the story of the three boys
in the fiery furnace, as told by Daniel.
The Gospel readings recount how Jesus exorcised demons from a possessed boy and
tells the disciples about fasting to cast out unclean spirits (Matthew
9:16-28), forgave Mary
Magdalen (Luke 7:36-50), and healed the woman on the sabbath after telling
the parable of the fig
tree (Luke 13:6-17).
National Cheeseburger
Day[6]
Fast Day eat a fish Taco instead and eat two cheeseburgers
tomorrow.
National Cheeseburger Day is a day of appreciation for cheeseburgers.
Typically, when cooking a cheeseburger, cheese is added to a hamburger
patty a few seconds before the patty is removed from the heat. This
allows the cheese to melt onto the burger. According to an obituary
published by Time in 1964, Lionel Sternberger created the cheeseburger in
1920s, when he placed cheese on top of a hamburger as an experiment.
Sternberger was 16 and worked as a cook in his father's sandwich shop in
Pasadena, California. Aside from cheese, other cheeseburger toppings
include ketchup and mustard. This tasty national holiday is celebrated each
year on September 18th.
National Cheeseburger Day Facts & Quotes
·
According to the US Department of Agriculture, the
average cheeseburger contains 303 calories and 30 grams of carbohydrates, as
well as 41 mg of cholesterol.
·
In 2008, Burger King released a men's cologne called
Flame. This cologne was marketed as the scent of seduction with a hint of
flame-broiled meat. Sounds like a whiff of purgatory, to me!
·
Each year, McDonald's serves more than 5 billion
burgers, which translates into a herd of 25 million cows.
·
According to archeologists, ancient Egyptian tombs
contain murals about cheese making, which date back to 2000BC.
·
Life is too short to miss out on the beautiful
things in life like a double cheeseburger. - Channing Tatum
National
Cheeseburger Day Top Events and Things to Do
·
Enjoy a cheeseburger for lunch or dinner. Try
it with an exotic cheese. Our
favorites: Havarti, blue cheese, smoked gouda and goat cheese.
·
To try a twist on the traditional cheeseburger with
a veggie, tofu, lamb, bison or chicken patty instead.
·
To celebrate National Cheeseburger Day, host a
cheeseburger tasting with your family and friends. You can create slider
cheeseburgers with an assortment of toppings, including:
- Spicy curry mayo with a mango salsa
- Fried egg and bacon
- Mac & Cheese
- Grilled eggplant and hummus
- Wasabi mayo and avocado
- Guacamole, lettuce and tomato
·
Enjoy a free cheeseburger or a cheeseburger upgrade
on this national holiday. Some restaurants are offering free cheeseburgers for
downloading aps, others free upgrades and others free cheeseburgers for sharing
promotional hashtags.
·
Watch empowering documentaries about the impact of
unhealthy eating on health and well-being:
1) Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead (2010)
2) Supersize Me (2004)
3) Food, Inc (2008)
Catechism of the Catholic Church
PART ONE: THE PROFESSION
OF FAITH
SECTION
TWO-I. THE CREEDS
CHAPTER THREE-I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY SPIRIT
Day 97
683 "No one can say 'Jesus
is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit." "God has sent the Spirit of
his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!"' This knowledge of
faith is possible only in the Holy Spirit: to be in touch with Christ, we must
first have been touched by the Holy Spirit. He comes to meet us and kindles
faith in us. By virtue of our Baptism, the first sacrament of the faith, the
Holy Spirit in the Church communicates to us, intimately and personally, the
life that originates in the Father and is offered to us in the Son.
Baptism
gives us the grace of new birth in God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy
Spirit. For those who bear God's Spirit are led to the Word, that is, to the
Son, and the Son presents them to the Father, and the Father confers
incorruptibility on them. and it is impossible to see God's Son without the
Spirit, and no one can approach the Father without the Son, for the knowledge
of the Father is the Son, and the knowledge of God's Son is obtained through
the Holy Spirit.
684 Through his grace, the Holy
Spirit is the first to awaken faith in us and to communicate to us the new
life, which is to "know the Father and the one whom he has sent, Jesus
Christ."4 But the Spirit is the last of the persons
of the Holy Trinity to be revealed. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the Theologian,
explains this progression in terms of the pedagogy of divine
"condescension":
The Old
Testament proclaimed the Father clearly, but the Son more obscurely. the New
Testament revealed the Son and gave us a glimpse of the divinity of the Spirit.
Now the Spirit dwells among us and grants us a clearer vision of himself. It
was not prudent, when the divinity of the Father had not yet been confessed, to
proclaim the Son openly and, when the divinity of the Son was not yet admitted,
to add the Holy Spirit as an extra burden, to speak somewhat daringly.... By
advancing and progressing "from glory to glory," the light of the
Trinity will shine in ever more brilliant rays.
685 To believe in the Holy
Spirit is to profess that the Holy Spirit is one of the persons of the Holy
Trinity, consubstantial with the Father and the Son: "with the Father and
the Son he is worshipped and glorified." For this reason, the divine
mystery of the Holy Spirit was already treated in the context of Trinitarian
"theology." Here, however, we have to do with the Holy Spirit only in
the divine "economy."
686 The Holy Spirit is at work
with the Father and the Son from the beginning to the completion of the plan
for our salvation. But in these "end times," ushered in by the Son's
redeeming Incarnation, the Spirit is revealed and given, recognized and
welcomed as a person. Now can this divine plan, accomplished in Christ, the
firstborn and head of the new creation, be embodied in mankind by the
outpouring of the Spirit: as the Church, the communion of saints, the
forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
ARTICLE 8-"I BELIEVE
IN THE HOLY SPIRIT"
687 "No one comprehends
the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." Now God's Spirit, who
reveals God, makes known to us Christ, his Word, his living Utterance, but the
Spirit does not speak of himself. the Spirit who "has spoken through the
prophets" makes us hear the Father's Word, but we do not hear the Spirit
himself. We know him only in the movement by which he reveals the Word to us
and disposes us to welcome him in faith. the Spirit of truth who
"unveils" Christ to us "will not speak on his own." Such
properly divine self-effacement explains why "the world cannot receive
(him), because it neither sees him nor knows him," while those who believe
in Christ know the Spirit because he dwells with them.
688 The Church, a communion
living in the faith of the apostles which she transmits, is the place where we
know the Holy Spirit:
- in the Scriptures he inspired;
- in the Tradition, to which the Church Fathers are always timely witnesses;
- in the Church's Magisterium, which he assists;
- in the sacramental liturgy, through its words and symbols, in which the Holy
Spirit puts us into communion with Christ;
- in prayer, wherein he intercedes for us;
- in the charisms and ministries by which the Church is built up;
- in the signs of apostolic and missionary life;
- in the witness of saints through whom he manifests his holiness and continues
the work of salvation.
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
·
Total Consecration
to St. Joseph Day 16
·
Do the St.
Joseph Universal Man Plan.
Daily Devotions
·
Unite in the work of the Porters of St. Joseph by joining them
in fasting: Today's Fast: End
Sex Trafficking, Slavery
·
Religion
in the Home for Preschool: September
·
Litany of the Most Precious
Blood of Jesus
·
Offering to
the sacred heart of Jesus
·
Rosary
[3]http://www.aquinasandmore.com/catholic-articles/ember-days-in-the-catholic-liturgical-year/article/236
[4]https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/blog/index.cfm?id=218#
[5] https://www.fisheaters.com/customstimeafterpentecost8.html
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