Thursday, February 25, 2026

Rachel’s Corner Try an “Seville Bitter Orange Marmalade”

· do a personal eucharistic stations of the cross.

· Spirit hour: Isabella Cocktail in honor of Blessed Isabel of France

· Bucket List Trip: Hang in Beijing-The Havermale’s & China

· How to celebrate Feb 26th

o Start your day by telling a fairy tale to a friend or family member. Let your imagination run wild and transport your listener to a magical world of enchantment. Embrace the whimsy of the storytelling process and have fun with it.

o For snack time, indulge in some delicious pistachios. Whether you crack them open one by one or enjoy them in a pistachio-based dish, savor the unique flavor and health benefits of these green gems.

o In the spirit of Levi Strauss Day, rock your favorite denim attire. Dress head to toe in denim or simply add a denim accessory to your outfit. Embrace the timeless style and versatility of this classic fabric.

o Show your support for anti-bullying efforts on National Pink Shirt Day by wearing a pink shirt. Take a stand against bullying and promote kindness and acceptance in your community.

o Take some time to write a heartfelt letter to an elder in your life on Letter to an Elder Day. Share memories, words of wisdom, or simply let them know how much they mean to you. Your words will surely brighten their day.

o Challenge yourself with some tongue twisters on International Tongue Twister Contest Day. Have a friendly competition with friends or family to see who can tackle the trickiest twisters without stumbling over their words.

o Celebrate Tex Avery Day by watching classic cartoons or indulging in some animated fun. Enjoy the lighthearted humor and creativity of Tex Avery’s beloved creations.

o Seize the day on National Carpe Diem Day by embracing new opportunities and making the most of each moment. Try something new, take a chance, and live life to the fullest.

o Get into the festive spirit on Carnival Day by hosting a mini carnival at home. Create games, serve up some carnival-inspired treats, and enjoy a day of fun and laughter with loved ones.

o On Inconvenience Yourself Day, perform random acts of kindness for others. Whether it’s helping a neighbor, volunteering your time, or simply spreading positivity, make a difference in someone else’s day.

o Set a positive example on National Set a Good Example Day by embodying kindness and compassion in your actions. Lead by example and inspire others to follow suit.

o For Pete’s Sake Day, take some time to relax and unwind. Treat yourself to a little self-care, whether it’s a bubble bath, a favorite movie, or a cozy nap. Put your well-being first.

o Lastly, observe Maha Shivaratri by spending some time in reflection or meditation. Connect with your inner self and find peace and serenity in the stillness of the moment.

Best Place to visit in February: Saguaro National Park, Arizona

I’m a big fan of this underrated but very photogenic beauty spot! Located ten miles from Tucson in southern Arizona, I found unique and unspoilt desert landscapes, diverse flora and fauna, ancient petroglyphs, incredible hiking trails and the famous saguaro cactus (which have been known to grow up to 78ft tall)!

The park spans over 91,000 acres and is split into two districts by the city of Tucson. For the best cactus viewing, I headed to the western portion, which, while smaller, had a higher concentration of saguaro cacti.

I much prefer visiting this time of year as the weather is more comfortable (and safer!) than the summer and I loved exploring the hiking trails in more peace – Hugh Norris Trail and the Mica View Loop were my favorites. When here, I also spotted the gorgeous spring wildflower blooms and the cholla and prickly pear cacti which was in blossom during this time of year.

Visitor’s Center Address: 2700 N Kinney Road, Tucson, AZ
Map Location
Average temperature –60.8 to 80.6

My highlights…

Taking Instagram-worthy shots of the incredible Saguaro Forest at Golden Hour after hiking to the spectacular Valley View Overlook – I loved how it was bathed in a warm, soft light and casting long shadows.
Taking a trip to Rincon Mountains, located in the Saguaro East – I loved the breathtaking views overlooking the unique cacti-filled landscapes and spotting a red-tailed hawk!

Thursday Feast

Thursday is the day of the week that our Lord gave himself up for consumption. Thursday commemorates the last supper. Some theologians believe after Sunday Thursday is the holiest day of the week. We should then try to make this day special by making a visit to the blessed sacrament chapel, Mass or even stopping by the grave of a loved one. Why not plan to count the blessing of the week and thank our Lord. Plan a special meal. Be at Peace.

· According to Mary Agreda[4] in her visions it was on a Thursday at six o'clock in the evening and at the approach of night that the Angel Gabriel approached and announced her as Mother of God and she gave her fiat.

Today’s Menu is from KANSAS

After Dinner Cigars

February 26 Thursday in the First Week in Lent

GRAND CANYON Established 1919

Deuteronomy, Chapter 3, Verse 22

Do not FEAR them, for it is the LORD, your God, who will fight for you.

What are the demons in your life?

Do not fear them, for it is the Lord who fights for you! The Lord will send His angels around those who fear Him. These heavenly spirits shield us from danger and assist us in both our spiritual and temporal needs. Angels instruct us and mentor us in the virtues. Ask your guardian angel to be your spiritual director and be open to change.

Copilot’s Take

Deuteronomy 3:22 reminds us that Lent is not a season of self‑rescue but of surrender to the God who fights for His people. The demons we face—fear, resentment, old wounds, hidden habits, the quiet despair that says nothing will ever change—are real enough, but they are not ultimate. Scripture never asks us to pretend they are harmless; it simply refuses to grant them the final word. The Lord surrounds His people with His own strength, and He appoints His angels as guardians, teachers, and companions along the way. In the Goffine tradition, the Christian year is a school of trust, and Lent in particular is the season when God trains His children to stop negotiating with their fears and instead hand them over to Him.

Ask your guardian angel to be your spiritual director today. Not as a pious flourish, but as a concrete act of humility: “Show me what I fear. Show me what I cling to. Show me where I resist grace.” Angels do not remove the battle; they remind us that we do not fight alone. Lent becomes lighter—not because the demons disappear, but because we finally let God take His rightful place at the front of the line.

Thursday in the First Week of Lent[1]

EPISTLE. Ezech, xviii. 1-9.

IN those days: The word of the Lord came to me, saying: What is the meaning, that you use among you this parable as a proverb in the land of Israel, saying: The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, this parable shall be more to you a proverb in Israel. Behold all souls are Mine: as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is Mine: the soul that sinneth, the same shall die. And if a man be just, and do judgment and justice, and hath not eaten upon the mountains, nor lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel: and hath not defiled his neighbor’s wife, nor come near to a menstruous woman: and hath not wronged any man: but hath restored the pledge to the debtor, hath taken nothing away by violence: hath given his bread to the hungry, and hath covered the naked with a garment: hath not lent upon usury, nor taken any increase: hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity, and hath executed true judgment between man and man: hath walked in My commandments, and kept My judgments, to do according to truth : he is just, he shall surely live, saith the Lord Almighty.

GOSPEL. Matt. xv. 21-28.

At that time: Jesus went from thence and retired into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And behold a woman of Canaan who came out of those coasts, crying out, said to Him: Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou Son of David: my daughter is grievously troubled by a devil. Who answered her not a word. And His disciples came and besought Him, saying: Send her away, for she crieth after us. And He answering, said: I was not sent but to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel. But she came and adored Him, saying: Lord, help me. Who answering, said: It is not good to take the bread of the children, and to cast it to the dogs. But she said: Yea, Lord, for the whelps also eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters. Then Jesus answering, said to her: O woman, great is thy faith: be it done to thee as thou wilt: and her daughter was cured from that hour.

Prayer. Look, O Lord, upon the devotion of Thy people, that we, who are afflicted in body by abstinence, may be refreshed in mind by the fruit of good works.

Lenten Calendar[2]

Read: In the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, also called confession, we meet the Lord, who wants to grant forgiveness and the grace to live a renewed life in him. In this sacrament, he prepares us to receive him free from serious sin, with a lively faith, earnest hope, and sacrificial love in the Eucharist. The Church sees confession as so important that she requires that every Catholic go at least once a year.

Pray: If you have anger in your heart towards someone, say a prayer for him or her today as a step towards healing.

Act: Make going to confession a priority during Lent this year.

What the Grand Canyon tells us about God[3]

(est. today in 1919) A view from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. Contemplation always involves knowledge of one’s true scale, of a reality that dwarfs the ego.

Many years ago, I was telling my spiritual director that I found it easiest to pray in a beautiful garden, and I was warming to my sense of myself as a contemplative. The wise Dominican asked with disarming candor:

“But are you in the garden, or is the garden in you?”

It took a long time even to realize what the question meant. I remember another similarly disarming question at the very beginning of my adult search for God. I was an undergraduate and took myself to a Benedictine monastery for a few days’ retreat in Lent. I was captivated by the silence, prayer and retreat from the world, swept up in the chant and the romance of monastic life. What I did not realize was that I was attracted to it as something that would make it less painful to be what I thought I was – something I needed for my religious amour-propre. Thus, many searches for God begin, but one can only search for God because he has already found you. What must happen is that someone else must put a belt around you and lead you where you would rather not go. It is not the intensity of the search, but of the willingness to be led that is ultimately the measure of vocation. Vocation is not finding the garden in you; it is finding yourself in the garden.

Perhaps the wise abbot sensed this. Anyway, I remember being rather discombobulated by his direct manner. As I emoted about the spiritual life, he looked at me carefully and asked:

“Is God real to you?”

It was like a torpedo below the waterline of all my high-sounding talk about my attraction to the monastic life versus secular priesthood, the script I was busy constructing of an encounter with the living God in which I remained firmly the star. The best answer I could manage was: “I think so.” In the moment of asking I doubted it, or rather I realized suddenly that so much of what I thought was God wasn’t actually God. It was the paraphernalia of God, of religion. (In fact, the moment wasn’t too confounding, for soon there came another answer from deep inside: “He’s real to me in the Blessed Sacrament.” There – perhaps because, as Aquinas put it, “Sight, touch and taste in thee are each deceived” – I couldn’t confuse feeling for the reality.

I realized that I had been given something to work with.) All of this came to mind when I visited the Grand Canyon at the end of my trip to America.

What’s the connection?

One may grasp what one might call the paraphernalia of the Grand Canyon. It was formed by billions of years of imperceptibly slow change, of almost every possible kind of geological activity: sediment layering, tectonic plates shifting, glaciers melting and rivers carving a gorge a mile and a half deep into solid rock. These are processes that can be mapped and understood, but the result overwhelms the sum and the mind of man. It’s astonishing, ancient beauty can only be contemplated – that is, it must act on you, overwhelm your mind with its four-billion-year-old scale, stillness and silence which is in constant change.

Spontaneously, the words of the psalmist rose from my heart at the breathtaking sight: “Before the mountains or the hills were brought forth, you are God, without beginning or end.” Contemplation always involves knowledge of one’s true scale, of a reality that dwarfs the ego. As if this were not enough, as the sun set, the sky above came alive with stars. I have never seen so many or so clearly. They were like the lights of some vast celestial city calling, a million points of light and security like some distant homeland, like the medieval fantasy that the stars were rents in the sky through which one could see the light of heaven. To count them I must be eternal, like God. The psalmist said:

“When I see the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and stars which you have made, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?”

And the answer comes back that in Jesus Christ the Father has united himself to the heart of every person in such a way that the vastness of the universe becomes an image not of alienation, but of the vastness of a love that was there before the hills were set in order. This love causes even rocks to exude a soft beauty which seems like the desire of the Eternal Hills for the Heart of their maker.

Bible in a year Day 239: Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah

Fr. Mike shares one of his favorite Bible verses, and guides us through the story of Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah as they are thrown into the fiery furnace. He also emphasizes heavily on the significance of their Hebrew names, and how powerful name changes are in Scripture. Today's readings are Jeremiah 22, Daniel 3, and Proverbs 15:29-33.

Daily Devotions

· Unite in the work of the Porters of St. Joseph by joining them in fasting: Today's Fast: Growth of Catholic Families and Households

· Litany of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus

· Offering to the sacred heart of Jesus

· Drops of Christ’s Blood

· Universal Man Plan

[1] Goffine’s Devout Instructions, 1896

[2]http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year/lent/march-14.cfm

[3]http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/february-27th-2015/what-the-grand-canyon-tells-us-about-god/

[4] Venerable Mary of Agreda. The Mystical City of God: Complete Edition Containing all Four Volumes with Illustrations (p. 770). Veritatis Splendor Publications. Kindle Edition

Impact (1949)

Starring: Brian Donlevy, Ella Raines, Charles Coburn
Studio: United Artists
Director: Arthur Lubin
Genre: Film Noir / Crime Drama
Runtime: ~111 minutes
Release Year: 1949

Plot Summary

Walter Williams (Brian Donlevy), a successful San Francisco businessman, is sent on what he believes is a simple errand by his wife Irene (Helen Walker). In reality, Irene and her lover have plotted to murder him. The plan goes awry, and Walter—presumed dead—escapes to a small Idaho town where he is taken in by Marsha Peters (Ella Raines), a compassionate garage owner.

As Walter heals physically and morally, he discovers a new way of living—one grounded in humility, honest work, and genuine human connection. Meanwhile, Irene faces the consequences of her treachery as the police unravel the truth. When Walter eventually returns to San Francisco, he must confront both the legal system and his own conscience.

Cast Highlights

Brian Donlevy as Walter Williams
A restrained, wounded performance that lets the moral arc breathe.
Ella Raines as Marsha Peters
Warm, grounded, and quietly heroic—her character embodies mercy without sentimentality.
Charles Coburn as Lt. Quincy
A detective who represents justice with a human face.
Helen Walker as Irene Williams
A chilling portrayal of calculated betrayal.

Catholic & Moral Themes

1. Resurrection After False Death

Walter’s survival and hidden life in Idaho echo the biblical pattern of “dying” to an old identity and rising into a new one. His time with Marsha is a kind of desert retreat—stripped of status, he discovers who he is without wealth or reputation.

2. The Sin of Betrayal

Irene’s plot is a textbook example of mortal sin: betrayal of covenant, attempted murder, and manipulation. The film doesn’t glamorize her; it shows the spiritual corrosion that accompanies deceit.

3. Mercy as a Transforming Force

Marsha’s hospitality is the moral center of the film. She takes in a stranger with no questions, offering:

Shelter
Honest work
Dignity

Her mercy is not naïve; it is discerning and strong. She becomes the instrument of Walter’s interior healing.

4. Justice With a Human Face

Lt. Quincy (Coburn) is a wonderful example of justice tempered by wisdom. He is not a blunt-force detective but a man who listens, discerns, and seeks truth rather than vengeance.