Today is the Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the last Feast of the year that depends on the date of Easter. Today is the date of the Summer Solstice, marking either the Beginning or the Middle of Summer (you decide). Today is World Refugee Day, West Virginia Day (1863), and the birthday of our former neighbor Pam, mother of several of the Assembled who are friends with our own kids (1959).
On this Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, always held the day after the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (and thus always on a Saturday), we honor the Blessed Virgin Mary in reference to her interior life, her joys and sorrows, her virtues and hidden perfections, and, above all, for her virginal love for her God, her maternal love for her Son, Jesus, and her compassionate love for all people. The consideration of Mary’s interior life and the beauties of her soul is part of the traditional devotion, as is the consideration of the Heart of Mary as a part of her physical virginal body. The two elements are essential to the devotion, just as, according to Roman Catholic theology, soul and body are necessary to the constitution of man. Devotional practices towards the Immaculate Heart of Mary became common in the late eleventh or early twelfth century. In the 18th and 19th centuries the devotions grew, both jointly and individually; in 1855 the Mass of the Most Pure Heart formally became a part of Catholic practice. Pope Pius XII instituted the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1944 to be celebrated on August 22nd, thus replacing the traditional octave day of the Assumption. In 1969 Pope Paul VI moved the celebration of the Immaculate Heart of Mary to the day (Saturday) immediately after the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This means in practice that it is now held on the day before the third Sunday after Pentecost, and is the last feast day of the church year that depends, ultimately, on the date of Easter (the movable feast par excellence). The pious practice of honoring the Blessed Mother on Saturday is an ancient custom, derived from the tradition that Jesus appeared to her on Holy Saturday. The liturgical observation of venerating Mary on Saturday is attributed to the Benedictine Alcuin (735-804), “Minister of Education” at the court of Charlemagne. On July 1st, 1905, Pope Pius X approved and granted indulgences for the practice of the First Saturdays of twelve consecutive months in honor of the Immaculate Conception. In 1925 Lúcia Santos (Servant of God Lúcia de Jesus Rosa dos Santos (died 2005), one of the visionaries of Our Lady of Fátima in 1917, in October 1925 entered the Institute of the Sisters of St. Dorothy in Tui, Spain, just across the northern Portuguese border,as a postulant. Two months later she beheld an apparition of the Virgin Mary; by Her side, elevated on a luminous cloud, was the Child Jesus. Mary requested the institution of the Devotion of the Five First Saturdays in reparation to her Immaculate Heart, saying, “Look, my daughter, at my Heart encircled by these thorns with which men pierce it at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You, at least, strive to console me, and so I announce: I promise to assist at the hour of death with the grace necessary for salvation all those who, with the intention of making reparation to me, will, on the first Saturday of five consecutive months, go to confession, receive Holy Communion, say five decades of the beads, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary.” The Summer Solstice occurs exactly when the Earth’s axial tilt is most inclined towards the sun at its maximum of 23° 26 ′ (at my locale, at 4:43 pm CDT). Except in the polar regions (where daylight is continuous for many months during the spring and summer), the day on which the summer solstice occurs is the day of the year with the longest period of daylight (fourteen hours, seven minutes at my locale). Thus the seasonal significance of the Summer solstice is in the reversal of the gradual shortening of nights and lengthening of days. In some cultures the Summer Solstice is held to start the season of Summer, while in others cultures it marks the middle of Summer. (Which is why we have Mid-Summer’s Day three or four days after the Start of Summer.) Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied among cultures, but most recognize the event in some way with holidays, festivals, and rituals around that time with themes of religion or fertility. Turning to World Refugee Day, on December 4th, 2000, the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 55/76 decided that, from 2001, June 20th would be celebrated as World Refugee Day. In this resolution, the General Assembly noted that 2001 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. African Refugee Day had been formally celebrated in several countries prior to 2000. The United Nations noted that the Organization of African Unity (OAU) had agreed to have International Refugee Day coincide with Africa Refugee Day on June 20th. Each year on June 20 the United Nations, United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and countless civic groups around the world host World Refugee Day events in order to draw the public’s attention to the millions of refugees and Internally displaced persons worldwide who have been forced to flee their homes due to war, conflict and persecution. The annual commemoration is marked by a variety of events in more than one hundred countries, involving government officials, humanitarian aid workers, celebrities, civilians and the forcibly displaced themselves. Today is West Virginia Day, celebrating when West Virginia became the thirty-fifth State of the United States. The area now encompassed by West Virginia was the western section of the State of Virginia. During the Civil War, the Virginia General Assembly in Richmond chose to join the Confederate States of America, much to the chagrin of most of the inhabitants in the trans-Allegheny region of the state who had long expressed their resentment toward the political elites in Richmond. Loyal unionists gradually pushed for the creation of a new state. After two years of legal maneuvering, West Virginia was formally admitted to the United States of America on June 20th, 1863. June 20th had been informally celebrated across West Virginia over the next six decades until the West Virginia Legislature gave the holiday formal recognition in 1927. The day has traditionally been celebrated with festivities at the state capitol complex in Charleston and at other locations across the state. The state has some of the best scenery in the world, and the worst economy; the major exports are coal, marijuana, and moonshine (not in that order). (I grew up in West Virginia, along the Ohio (A-hi-a) River in Ravenswood, below Parkersburg, and was in school there from first grade (no kindergarten) through ninth grade, moving to SouthEast Louisiana in 1973. When challenged about my non-Southwestcentral Louisiana accent, I always say, “I was born near Pittsburgh, Pa., grew up in West By Gosh Virginia, and have been in Louisiana since 1973, which means I will eat boiled crawfish, but I won’t suck the heads.”) And today is the birthday of our former neighbor Pam, mother of several of the Assembled who are friends with our own kids (1959).
On waking up to get ready for work I posted to Facebook that today is the Summer Solstice, posted to Facebook that today was World Refugee Day, and posted to Facebook that today was West Virginia Day (1863). I did my Book Devotional Reading, cleaned out the cat litter boxes, and headed to work. Once in ADR I did my Internet Devotional Reading. When I clocked in I was on Three Card Blackjack all day.
When I got home from work I cleaned out the cat litter boxes, then I set up my medications for next week (nothing to renew). I then read the morning paper and ate my lunch salad. Richard reported that he was able to take a shower and wash his hair without getting his dressings and sling wet. And as I am tired, I will now finish this Daily Update and go to bed for the duration. The Summer Solstice will arrive at 4:43 pm here in SouthWestCentral Louisiana.
Tomorrow is the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time and the Memorial of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, Religious (died 1591). Tomorrow is also an Annular Solar Eclipse, but as it begins at 10:45 pm local time, it will not be visible in SouthWestCentral Louisiana. And tomorrow is Father’s Day, Tomorrow the New Moon will arrive at 1:42 am. Tomorrow is the last day of the current two-week pay period at the casino. When I get home I will make my lunch salads for Monday and Tuesday, eat a salad while reading the Sunday papers, and do my weblog and go to bed.
Our Parting Quote on this Saturday afternoon comes to us from Andrew Sarris, American film critic (died 2012). Born in 1928 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, his parents were Greek immigrants, and Sarris grew up in Ozone Park, Queens. He graduated from Columbia University in 1951 and then served for three years in the Army Signal Corps before moving to Paris for a year, where he befriended Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. Upon returning to New York’s Lower East Side, Sarris briefly pursued graduate studies at his alma mater and Teachers College, Columbia University before turning to film criticism as a vocation. After initially writing for Film Culture, he moved to The Village Voice where his first piece. a laudatory review of Psycho, was published in 1960. Around this time, he returned to Paris where he was present at the premiere of such French New Wave films such as Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (1960) and Godard’s A Woman Is a Woman (1961). The experience expanded his view of film criticism. Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the United States and coining the term in his 1962 essay, “Notes on the Auteur Theory,” which critics writing in Cahiers du Cinéma had inspired. Sarris wrote the highly influential book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968 (1968), an opinionated assessment of films of the sound era, organized by director. The book influenced many other critics and help raise awareness of the role of the film director and, in particular, of the auteur theory. In the book Sarris listed what he termed the “pantheon” of the fourteen greatest film directors who had worked in the United States: the Americans Robert Flaherty, John Ford, D. W. Griffith, Howard Hawks, Buster Keaton, and Orson Welles; the Germans Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, F. W. Murnau, Max Ophüls, and Josef von Sternberg; the British Charles Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock; and the French Jean Renoir. He also identified second and third tier directors, downplaying the work of Billy Wilder, David Lean, and Stanley Kubrick, among others. Sarris married fellow film critic Molly Haskell in 1969. For many years he wrote for both NY Film Bulletin and The Village Voice. During this part of his career, he was often seen as a rival to the New Yorker‘s Pauline Kael, who had originally attacked the auteur theory in her essay “Circles and Squares.” He was a Member of the ‘Official Competition’ jury at the 37th Venice International Film Festival in 1980. In his 1998 book You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet: The American Talking Film, History and Memory 1927–1949, Sarris upgraded the status of Billy Wilder to pantheon level and apologized for his earlier harsh assessment. He continued to write film criticism regularly until 2009 for The New York Observer, and was a professor of film at Columbia University (where he earned an M.A. in English in 1998), teaching courses in international film history, American cinema, and Alfred Hitchcock until his retirement in 2011. Sarris was a co-founder of the National Society of Film Critics. Film critics such as J. Hoberman, Kenneth Turan, Armond White, Michael Phillips, and A.O. Scott cited him as an influence. His career was discussed in the 2009 documentary For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, first with other critics discussing how he brought the auteur theory from France, and then by Sarris himself explaining how he applied that theory to his original review of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (died 2012): “I was a solipsist and a narcissist and much too arrogant. I have a lot more compassion now, but it took a long time.”
From The Recamier 