A Carpe Diem Snapshot:
This portrait of Cordelia taken last night as a blizzard was raging outside has to be one of my all-time favorites. There's too much personal history and meaning behind the objects and costume to be able to explain it all here, but I will just briefly say that this brief, spontaneous scene (created by the artist-in-residence Valentina, of course) that I captured on camera will be treasured forever.
Liturgical: Friday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way.”
Bishop Barron's Gospel reflections today.
Sanctoral: St. Thomas Aquinas, Italy +1274
St. Thomas ranks among the greatest writers and theologians of all time. His most important work, the Summa Theologiae, an explanation and summary of the entire body of Catholic teaching, has been standard for centuries, even to our own day. At the Council of Trent it was consulted after the Bible.
To a deeply speculative mind, he joined a remarkable life of prayer, a precious memento of which has been left to us in the Office of Corpus Christi. Reputed as great already in life, he nevertheless remained modest, a perfect model of childlike simplicity and goodness. He was mild in word and kind in deed. He believed everyone was as innocent as he himself was. When someone sinned through weakness, Thomas bemoaned the sin as if it were his own. The goodness of his heart shone in his face, no one could look upon him and remain disconsolate. How he suffered with the poor and the needy was most inspiring. Whatever clothing or other items he could give away, he gladly did. He kept nothing superfluous in his efforts to alleviate the needs of others.
After he died his lifelong companion and confessor testified, "I have always known him to be as innocent as a five-year-old child. Never did a carnal temptation soil his soul, never did he consent to a mortal sin." He cherished a most tender devotion to St. Agnes, constantly carrying relics of this virgin martyr on his person. He died in 1274, at the age of fifty, in the abbey of Fossa Nuova. He is the patron saint of schools and of sacred theology.
—Excerpted from The Church's Year of Grace, Pius Parsch
Human: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was published on this date in 1813. Austen had completed the first draft of the book — which was originally titled First Impressions — by August 1797, when she was 21. Her father queried a London bookseller about publishing the novel. The bookseller turned him down without ever looking at the manuscript, so Austen put the book aside. Fourteen years later, encouraged by the success of Sense and Sensibility, she picked First Impressions up again and began reworking it into the novel we know today. Thomas Egerton of Whitehall bought the rights for £110 and published it in three volumes. It was well received and made decent money for the publisher, but Austen never saw another penny. Although she had sold Sense and Sensibility on a commission basis and eventually made a fair amount of money, Austen sold Pride and Prejudice for one lump sum. She was widely read during her lifetime, but her name never appeared on any of her books; the title page of Pride and Prejudice read only "by the author of Sense and Sensibility."
Anne Isabella Milbanke (later the wife of Lord Byron) wrote to a friend: "I have finished the Novel called Pride and Prejudice, which I think a very superior work. It depends not on any of the common resources of novel writers, no drownings, no conflagrations, nor runaway horses, nor lap-dogs and parrots, nor chambermaids and milliners, nor rencontres [duels] and disguises. I really think it is the most probable I have ever read. It is not a crying book, but the interest is very strong, especially for Mr. Darcy. The characters which are not amiable are diverting, and all of them are consistently supported."
Charlotte Brontë, on the other hand, dismissed it as "a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but ... no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck."
In 1815, William Gifford wrote: "I have for the first time looked into [Pride and Prejudice]; and it is really a very pretty thing. No dark passages; no secret chambers; no wind-howlings in long galleries; no drops of blood upon a rusty dagger — things that should now be left to ladies' maids and sentimental washerwomen."
Emerson, for his part, wrote: "I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched & narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer in both the stories I have read, Persuasion and Pride & Prejudice, is marriageableness; all that interests any character introduced is still this one, has he or she money to marry with, & conditions conforming?"
And Mark Twain remarked: "I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."
The Writer's Almanac edition today.
Natural: Another great podcast from Dr. Chatterjee today- Stress and Brain Health
Italian: Castello (castle)
Quote: Some favorites from St. Thomas Aquinas
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