A Carpe Diem Snapshot:
The annual olive harvest today at Villa Serenella, the Maronite monastery where we once lived with our students, afforded us the opportunity to spend a few Sunday hours in this green oasis. The girls were in their natural habitat. While the traditional olive oil making process is a bit messy from here on out, we were able to participate in the most bucolic part of it today-- shaking the branches then sorting the olives between those ready to eat now and those to be sent to the press. It takes many hands to create Italy's famous liquid gold.
Here's an article on the Autumn olive harvest tradition in Italy, with a ranking of the different brands. I think the one you harvest with your own hands tastes the best!
Liturgical: Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
And they came to Jericho; and as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great multitude, Bartimae'us, a blind beggar, the son of Timae'us, was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!" (Mk 10:46-52).
Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon: Answering God's Call
Fr Plant's Homily: Rabbuni, let me see again
Fr Mike Schmitz's Homily: "Presence and Sacrifice"
Pope Francis' Angelus Address
Sanctoral: Blessed Bartholomew of Vicenza, Italy +1271
During his years as bishop in Cyprus, Bartholomew befriended King Louis IX of France, who is said to have given the holy bishop a relic of Christ’s Crown of Thorns.
Human: Today is the birthday of the 26th president of the United States: Theodore Roosevelt Jr., born in New York City on this date in 1858. He was born into privilege, but he was a sickly child and suffered from asthma, so he spent much of his time indoors. When his doctors discovered he had a weak heart, they advised him to live a quiet life and take some kind of a desk job that wouldn't prove too strenuous or stressful. But he dreamed of becoming a naturalist and an adventurer, and by the time he was a teenager, he had developed a program of rigorous exercise, including boxing and lifting weights.
He worked hard at Harvard and went on to study law at Columbia, but he grew impatient and left his studies in favor of politics, where he enjoyed many early successes. But on Valentine's Day, 1884, both his mother and his wife, Alice, died. Devastated, Roosevelt left behind the world of politics — and his baby daughter — to become a cattle rancher in the Badlands of the Dakota Territory. It would be two years before he returned to the New York political scene.
His political bent was progressive: he fought monopolies, reformed the workplace, regulated industry, and championed immigrants and the middle class. He supported desegregation and women's suffrage. He was serving as vice president under William McKinley when McKinley was assassinated in 1901. At age 42, Roosevelt was the youngest man ever to become president of the United States. And the sickly child had grown up into a man who championed "a life of strenuous endeavor," demanding that everyone around him adopt his now robust and active outdoor lifestyle. He served two terms — from 1901 to 1909 — and then after a few years away, returned to politics, feeling "fit as a bull moose," as he said.
More at The Writer's Almanac.
Roman history on this day:
97 AD – Roman emperor Nerva adopted Trajan, thus beginning the period of adopting emperors.
312 AD- according to the legends, Constantine the Great was supposed to have a vision before the battle of the Milvian Bridge. Constantine I was supposed to see the sign in the evening when the sun was beginning to lean towards the west.
Natural: 16-foot Burmese python caught in the Florida Everglades– 2011. If you are brave enough to hunt these invasive serpents, you can actually get paid for that:
Python removal agents will be paid:
An hourly rate ($13.00 per hour or $18.00 per hour depending on the area) for up to ten (10) hours each day while actively searching for pythons on designated lands.
An additional incentive payment of $50.00 for each python measuring up to four (4) feet plus an extra $25.00 for each foot measured above four (4) feet.
An additional $200.00 for each verified active nest.
Italian: Hai voluto la bicicletta? E ora pedala! (You’ve made your bed, now lie in it!)
Quote: From "Ode to Olive Oil" by Pablo Neruda
It’s not only wine that sings
Olive oil sings too
It lives in us with its ripe light
And among the good things of the earth
I set apart
Olive oil,
Your ever-flowing peace, your green essence
Your heaped-up treasure which descends
In streams from the olive tree.
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