A Carpe Diem Snapshot:
This morning the ladies of the Fall 2024 Art and Architecture class presented their final project, their coat of arms or personal crest. As I commented to one student afterwards, "I wish I had known all these interesting parts of your life and personality at the beginning of the semester!" But that thought was quickly followed up by another, that none of them are exactly the same individuals now that they were before this semester in Rome, the city which is every Catholic's Alma Mater.
Liturgical: Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent
All flesh is grass, and all their glory like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower wilts, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it.
Bishop Barron's Gospel reflections today.
Sanctoral: In 2019 Pope Francis added this Optional Memorial of Our Lady of Loreto to the Universal Roman Calendar. The title Our Lady of Loreto refers to the Holy House of Loreto, the house in which Mary was born, and in which the Word was made flesh at the Annunciation. Tradition says that a band of angels scooped up the little house from the Holy Land, and transported it first to Tersato, Dalmatia in 1291, then Recanati, Italy in 1294, and finally to Loreto, Italy where it has been for centuries. It was this translation of the Holy House and the longstanding of the structure Our Lady of Loreto is the patron of builders, construction workers, and aviation. It is the first shrine of international renown dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and has been known as a Marian center for centuries. Popes have always held the Shrine of Loreto in special esteem, and it is under their direct authority and protection. A replica of an ancient statue of Our Lady which is found there, one of the "Black Madonnas." The original statue made of cedar from Lebanon was destroyed in a fire in 1921.
Human: It's the birthday of poet Emily Dickinson, born in Amherst, Massachusetts (1830).
More at The Writer's Almanac edition today.
Natural: Death of Alfred Nobel (chemist, engineer, and the inventor of dynamite. In his last will, he used his enormous fortune to institute the Nobel Prizes.) – 1896
Italian: Stufo (fed up)
Quote: There is a solitude of space / A solitude of sea / A solitude of death, but these / Society shall be / Compared with that profounder site / That polar privacy / A soul admitted to itself — / Finite infinity."
Emily Dickinson
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