Monday Night at the Movies
Christopher’s Corner
· Beans Month bursts into July with a celebration of one of the world’s favorite and most versatile ingredients—beans!
· Eat waffles and Pray for the assistance of the Angels
· Foodie- Roast beef sirloin & béarnaise dauphinoise
· Bucket List trip[4]: USA 70-degree year trip:
o Shoshone Falls — “Niagara of the West”
· Spirit Hour: Good Fortune Cocktail
· Monday: Litany of Humility
·
Let Freedom Ring Day 6 Freedom from Envy
Understanding and Managing Envy in Modern Life[1]
Envy
is a universal emotion. Virtually every discovered civilization—past and
present—contains artifacts that record its presence through human history,
permeating virtually every aspect of our lives. From ancient scriptures to
modern social media feeds, the narrative of envy has evolved, yet its core
remains unchanged: it is the discomfort and longing provoked by others'
possessions or successes. This post delves into the multifaceted nature of
envy. Beginning with an exploration of envy in Greek and Biblical sources, we
turn to examine how it is an emotion of utmost social importance—relating to
how we find ourselves within our own tribes. We then turn to modern,
psychoanalytic understandings of envy before discussing ways to remedy its
often-corrosive effects on our mental health.
He restores my soul. He guides me along right paths for
the sake of his name. Psalm 23:3
JULY 14 Monday
St. Kateri Tekakwitha-Bastille Day
Matthew,
Chapter 10, verse 31
So do not be AFRAID; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is
within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne
Williamson.
Copilot
From
a Catholic perspective, the verse “So do not be afraid; you are worth more
than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:31) offers profound lessons on fear, divine
providence, and human dignity. Here's a breakdown of its spiritual
significance:
🕊️ 1. Fear Not—You Are Known and Loved
·
Jesus
uses the image of sparrows—creatures of seemingly little value—to emphasize
God's intimate care for all creation.
·
If
not even a sparrow falls without the Father's knowledge, how much more does He
care for each of us, made in His image and redeemed by Christ?
·
This
is not sentimental reassurance; it’s a theological truth: our worth is rooted
in God's love, not in worldly status or success.
🙏 2. Fear of God vs. Fear of the World
·
Catholic
teaching distinguishes between:
o
Servile
fear: fear of punishment or harm (which Jesus tells us to reject).
o
Filial
fear: reverent awe of God’s majesty and justice (which we are called to
embrace).
·
As
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa explains, we are not to fear those who can harm the
body but to revere the One who holds our soul in His hands.
·
This
verse invites us to shift our fear from temporal threats to eternal truths.
🛡️ 3. Trust in Divine Providence
·
St.
Francis de Sales beautifully echoes this teaching: “The same Eternal Father who
cares for you today will take good care of you tomorrow”.
·
Fear
often stems from anxiety about the future. But grace is given in the present
moment—like manna in the desert.
·
This
verse calls us to live in the present with trust, knowing that God’s providence
is constant and personal.
🕯️ 4. Mission in the Face of Fear
·
In
context, Jesus is sending the apostles out on mission, warning them of
persecution but urging them not to be afraid.
·
The
message is clear: courage in proclaiming the Gospel flows from knowing our
worth in God’s eyes.
·
We
are not alone; we are sent in community, as Church, and upheld by the Spirit.
✨
Spiritual Takeaway
This
verse is not a denial of fear, but a redirection of it. It teaches us:
·
To
anchor our identity in God’s love.
·
To
reverence God, not fear the world.
·
To
trust in divine providence, especially in uncertainty.
·
And
to proclaim the Gospel boldly, knowing we are never forgotten.
St.
Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680).
Kateri
was born in 1656 near the town of Auriesville, New York, the daughter of a
Mohawk warrior. She was baptized by Jesuit missionary Fr. Jacques de
Lambertville on Easter of 1676 at the age of twenty. She devoted her life to
prayer, penitential practices, and the care of the sick and aged in Caughnawaga
near Montreal (where her relics are now enshrined). She incurred the hostility
of her tribe because of her faith. She was devoted to the Eucharist, and to
Jesus Crucified, and was called the "Lily of the Mohawks." She died
in 1680 and was beatified June 22, 1980, and canonized on October 21, 2012—the
first native American to be declared "Blessed" and "Saint."
—Excerpted
from Magnificat, July 2003
Bastille Day[1]
Today, July 14, is
Bastille Day, the commemoration of the revolution that brought down France’s
Ancien Régime and led to the establishment of a new order that promised to
totally refashion society. Unlike the American Revolution, which was
fought to conserve rights and maintain political order, the French Revolution
destroyed the fabric of French society. No aspect of human life was untouched.
The Committee of Public Safety – influenced by Rousseau – claimed that to
convert the oppressed French nation to democracy, “you must entirely refashion a people whom you wish to make free,
destroy its’ prejudices, alter its habits, limit its necessities, root up its
vices, purify its desires.” To achieve this end, the new rational state, whose
primary ideological plank was that the sovereignty of “the people” is
unlimited, attempted to eliminate French traditions, norms, and religious
beliefs.
The revolutionary
governing bodies were particularly determined to destroy every vestige of the
Roman Catholic Church because France was hailed by Rome as the Church’s “eldest
daughter” and the monarch had dedicated “our person, our state, our crown and our
subjects” to the Blessed Virgin. The Constituent Assembly began the campaign
against the Church by stating in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, “nobody
or individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from
the nation.” In other words, the Church could no longer have any say in public
matters. The secular state would now have the final word over every aspect of
human and social life.
Next, the government
abrogated the 1516 Concordat that defined France’s relationship with the Vicar
of Christ. Financial and diplomatic relations with the papacy ceased. In the
name of freedom, all monastic vows were suspended and in February 1790, legislation
was approved to suppress the monasteries and confiscate their properties. The
Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed on July 12, 1790, decreed that the
priesthood was a civil body and all bishops and priests were to be selected by
the people and paid by the state.
The pope was to have no say in the
matter. In addition, clerics had to swear an oath of loyalty to the French
Constitution. Dissidents had to resign their ministries, and many were
prosecuted as criminals. Lay Catholics loyal to the pope were treated as rebels
and traitors. With only four out of 135 bishops taking the oath in 1791, the
more radical Legislative Assembly ordered additional sanctions against the
Church. All religious congregations were suppressed and wearing clerical garb
was forbidden.
·
Priests
loyal to the papacy were automatically guilty of “fanaticism” and sentenced to
ten years imprisonment. Processions were forbidden; crucifixes and religious
artifacts were stripped out of churches. Government priests were granted
freedom to marry, divorce was permissible, and marriage became a civil
procedure.
·
Also,
education, managed for centuries by the Church, was nationalized. To further
de-Christianize France, a new civil religion was introduced – patriotism. The
Gregorian calendar was eliminated and replaced with names related to nature. To
abolish Sunday worship, months were rearranged to contain three “weeks” of ten
days apiece, thus designating every tenth day for rest.
·
Catholic
holy days were replaced with national holidays and civic days of worship. The
“Cult of Great Men” (i.e., Rousseau) replaced the veneration of saints. The use
of the word “saint” was forbidden. “There should be no more public and national
worship but that of Liberty and Holy Equality,” declared the revolutionary
government. Every city and village were ordered to erect an “altar to the
fatherland” and to conduct July “Federation Month” patriotic rites.
·
The
Feast of Nature was observed in August and the Cult of Reason was celebrated at
Paris’ Civic Temple, formerly the Cathedral of Notre Dame. A female dancer was
crowned as the Goddess of Reason and performed for the assembly. In 1794, the
deistic cult of the Supreme Being replaced the atheistic adoration of reason.
At the first public worship, the self-declared high priest, Robespierre,
pronounced in his homily, “the idea of the Supreme Being and the soul’s
immortality is a continuous summons to justice and consequently social and
republican.”
·
Despite
all the efforts of the missionaries of terror, the Church was not stamped out
of existence. The heroism of the thousands of martyred bishops, priests, and
religious inspired millions of the faithful and caused a spiritual renascence
in France during the nineteenth century. The notorious political rogue and
excommunicated bishop of Autun, the Prince de Talleyrand, reviewing that
terrible period of persecution, conceded, “Regardless of my own part in this
affair, I readily admit that the Civil Constitution of the Clergy . . . was
perhaps the greatest political mistake of the Assembly, quite apart from the
dreadful crimes which flowed there from.” General of the Republic, Henri
Clarke, agreed. In a report to the government in 1796, he wrote, “Our
revolution, so far as religion is concerned, has proved a complete failure.
·
France
has become once more Roman Catholic, and we may be on the point of needing the
pope himself in order to enlist clerical support for the Revolution.” The
French ideologues learned, as did their barbaric heirs in the twentieth
century, that every effort to destroy the Church and eliminate the faithful
fails. As Christ Himself promised: “the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it.”
“Therefore,
do not be afraid of them. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor
secret that will not be known. What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the
light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not be afraid
of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the
one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.
Bastille Day-the other story[2]
Bastille Day marks the
anniversary of the attacks on the French prison of Bastille, a symbol of King
Louis XVI's power. On July 14, 1789, a group of Parisian revolutionaries
attacked the Bastille looking for gun powder to go with the rifles they had
recently stolen from the Invalides. The revolutionaries stormed the prison,
defeating the soldiers and bringing victory to the common people of France.
This event marked the beginning of the French Revolution, the defeat of a
monarchy and the birth of a republic as King Louis XVI was beheaded by use of a
guillotine on July 21, 1793, in front of a crowd of Parisians. The anniversary
of this attack is now the French National holiday and is observed on July 14th
each year.
Bastille Day Facts & Quotes
·
The
French Revolution was brought about partially due to the unequal class system
found in France during the late 1700s. The Catholic clergy held the
highest position, next came Louis XVI and his court, and lastly were the
general population. Without the benefit of being born into a higher
class, the general population had almost no hope of ever improving their
station in life.
·
Louis
XVI's spending at Versailles and his financial support of the American
Revolutionary War against the British, placed France in severe economic crisis.
The general population was starving while King Louis XVI was building a
great navy and continuing his lavish lifestyle in Versailles.
·
The
French flag consists of blue; white and red. White was the color of the
Monarchy and red and blue represented Paris. During the Revolution, the white
was surrounded by blue and then red.
·
A
revolution can be neither made nor stopped. The only thing that can be done is
for one of several of its children to give it a direction by dint of victories.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
Bastille Day Top Events and Things
to Do
·
Watch
the Fireworks at the Eiffel Tower. They usually start around 11pm and can be
viewed from the Champs de Mars and Trocadero.
·
Attend
a French military parade.
·
Visit
a French national museum as most is free to visit on Bastille Day or visit a
local firehouse in France - they are open to the public on this holiday.
·
Watch
a movie or a documentary about the French Revolution. Our picks: The French
Revolution (2005), Jefferson in Paris (1995), Marie Antoinette
(2006), Danton (1983) and That Night in Varennes (1982)
·
Go
out to a French Restaurant. Many have specials for this day.
Grand
Marnier Day[3]
Grand Marnier Day
celebrates this innovative adult beverage and all of the wonderful ways it can
be used. Grand Marnier was the labor of love of Louis-Alexandre Marnier
Lapostolle, founder of the Grand Marnier brand. His ambition to blend together
Haitian tropical oranges with traditional Cognac out of France was seen as
entirely unexpected during its time, but that didn’t deter him at all. Since then his
family name has risen to mean quality and innovation in the liquor industry and
maintains a position of distinction among connoisseurs. Nothing but the highest
quality Cognac is used in the creation of Grand Marnier, specifically the Ugni
Blanc grapes from within the Cognac region of France. The grapes are double
distilled in copper stills to bring out the richest aromas and delicious flavor
profile. The same Cognac has been sourced since the creation of Grand Marnier
in 1880. Since their first release, they’ve
continued to release other groundbreaking liquors including their Cordon Jaune,
produced with a neutral grain spirit instead of Cognac, and their Cuvee du
Centenaire, a limited release made with 25-year-old Cognacs.
How to Celebrate Grand Marnier Day
·
The
best way to celebrate Grand Marnier Day is to try out a few of the mixed drinks
that can be made with it and indulge in its rich succulent flavors.
·
Why
not start off with a Marnier & Bubbles! All you need to do is mix Grand
Marnier with Champagne or another French sparkling white wine. The proportions
are 1 ounce of Grand Marnier and 4 ounces of sparkling white wine. Then, for a
splash of color, add a cherry.
· Or you can mix up a Grand Marnier-Ita. Simply mix 2 parts Tequila with 1-part juice of lime and mix it up. Pour it into a cocktail glass through a strainer with ice, and then add some lime wheels to finish it off.
Bible in a Year-Day 25
Where is God in Job's suffering? Today, Fr. Mike dives deeper into Job's
questions as he wrestles with his suffering. We learn that God always uses our
suffering for a purpose although we may not understand it in the moment.
Today's readings are Genesis 47-48, Job 39-40, and Psalm 16.
Daily Devotions
· Unite in the work of the Porters of St. Joseph by joining them in fasting: Catholic Politian’s and Leaders
·
Novena
to Our Lady of Mount Carmel-Day 8
·
Litany of the Most Precious
Blood of Jesus
·
Offering to
the sacred heart of Jesus
·
Rosary
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