Today is the third of three Minor Rogation Days in the Catholic Church. Today is the Optional Memorial of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, Religious (died 1927). And today is World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day and VE Day.
This Wednesday is the third of three Minor Rogation Days (the three days before the traditional date of the Feast of the Ascension), and is a day when we ask for the blessings of God upon our crops and our undertakings. The Minor Rogations were introduced by Saint Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne (died c. 475), and were afterwards ordered by the Fifth Council of Orléans (511), and then approved by Leo III (795-816). They were removed from the General Calendar in 1969, but I note them in this weblog. Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, Religious (died 1927) was born as Teresa Demjanovich in 1901 in Bayonne, New Jersey, the youngest of the seven children of immigrants to the United States from what is now eastern Slovakia. She received Baptism, Chrismation, and First Holy Communion in Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church (also known in the United States as the Byzantine Catholic Church). Growing up beside the oil refineries that mark the landscape of this portion of New Jersey, she graduated from high school in 1917. At this time, she wished to become a Carmelite, but stayed in the family home to care for her sick mother. After her mother’s death in the influenza epidemic of November 1918, she was encouraged by her family to attend the College of Saint Elizabeth at Convent Station, New Jersey. She began her college career in September 1919, majoring in literature, and graduated with highest honors in June 1923. Uncertain which religious community she should enter, she accepted a teaching position at the Academy of Saint Aloysius in Jersey City (now known as the Caritas Academy). During her time at the college, many individuals remarked on her humility and genuine piety. She could be found kneeling in the college chapel at all hours and was very devoted to praying the rosary. Demjanovich was part of the Saint Vincent de Paul Parish choir, the Sodality of Our Lady, and a parish community associated with the National Catholic Welfare Conference. During the summer and fall of 1924, Teresa prayed to discern the direction of her life. She visited the Discalced Carmelite nuns in The Bronx, New York. Because of several health issues, including headaches, they suggested that she wait a few years before applying. However, after consulting with her family, they suggested that she use her education to serve God in a teaching order. For the Feast of the Immaculate Conception that year, she made a novena and, at its conclusion on December 8th, she decided she was called to enter the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth. She then planned to enter the convent on February 2nd, 1925, but her father caught a cold and died on January 30th. Consequently, her entrance was delayed until February 11th, 1925, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Her brother. who was a priest, and two of her sisters accompanied her to the convent. She was admitted to the novitiate of the religious congregation and received the religious habit on May 17th, 1925. She never received an official transfer of rite, and therefore remained a Byzantine Rite Catholic while serving as a Religious Sister in a Roman Rite congregation. As a postulant and novice, Demjanovich taught at the Academy of Saint Elizabeth in Convent Station during 1925-1926. In June 1926, her spiritual director, Father Benedict Bradley, O.S.B., asked her to write the conferences for the novitiate. and she wrote twenty-six conferences. In November 1926, Demjanovich became ill. After a tonsillectomy, she returned to the convent, but could barely walk to her room. After a few days, she asked if she could return to the infirmary, but her superior, thinking it odd that someone so young could be so sick, told her, “Pull yourself together.” When Father Bradley saw how sick she was, he notified her brother, who called one of their sisters who was a nurse. She went to the convent and immediately took Sister Miriam to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with “physical and nervous exhaustion, with myocarditis and acute appendicitis.” Doctors did not think she was strong enough for an operation and her condition worsened. Demjanovich’s profession of permanent religious vows was made in articulo mortis (danger of death) on April 2nd, 1927. She was operated for appendicitis on May 6th, and died two days later. Because of Demjanovich’s saintly life, her striving for perfection in her religious life, spiritual writings, and the favors received by others after her death through her intercession with God, the Sisters of Charity petitioned Rome for permission to open a cause for her beatification. Greater Perfection: Conferences of Sister Miriam Teresa, edited by her brother Father Demjanovich, was published in 1929. In the latter part of 1945, a communication was received from the Holy See authorizing Thomas H. McLaughlin, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Paterson, in which the motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity is located, to institute an ordinary informative process concerning Demjanovich’s life and virtues. The official investigation began early in 1946, and that same year The Sister Miriam Teresa League of Prayer was founded to spread the knowledge of her life and mission, and to work for the cause of her beatification. On Thursday, May 10th, 2012, Demjanovich, along with another American, the first Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Marquette, Frederic Baraga, were proclaimed Venerable by Pope Benedict XVI, meaning that they were formally recognized as having lived lives of virtue and may be prayed to for intercession. On December 17th, 2013, Pope Francis approved the attribution of a miraculous healing to the intercession of Demjanovich, opening the way to her beatification. It involved the restoration of perfect vision to a boy who had gone legally blind because of macular degeneration. Demjanovich was beatified at a ceremony on October 4th, 2014, held at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark. This was the first time a beatification had ever been held in the United States. According to Sister Marian Jose, S.C., Vice Postulator of the Cause of Sister Miriam Teresa, Demjanovich’s “message” is that “everyone is called to holiness.” On January 1st, 2016, after the merger of the parishes of St. Mary Star of the Sea and St. Andrew the Apostle in Bayonne, New Jersey, the newly created Parish was given the name of Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich Parish. If you know of any miracles that can be attributed to her, please contact the Vatican. World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day is an annual celebration of the principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The idea for an “annual action [that] could take hold in the whole world … [that] would be a major contribution to peace” was introduced just after World War I and evolved out of the “Red Cross Truce, an initiative that was studied by an international commission established at the 14th International Conference of the Red Cross. Its results, presented to the 15th International Conference in Tokyo in 1934, was approved and having considered the principles of the truce, and its applicability across different regions of the world, the General Assembly of the International Federation of the Red Cross Societies (IFRC) asked the League of the Red Cross Societies (LORCS) to study the feasibility of adopting an annual International Red Cross Day. Two years later, the proposal was adopted and the first Red Cross Day was celebrated on May 8th, 1948; this date is the anniversary of the birth of Henry Dunant (born 1828), the founder of International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the recipient of the first Nobel Peace Prize. The official title of the day has changed over time, and it became “World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day” in 1984. Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany’s unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, May 8th, 1945, marking the official end of World War II in Europe in the Eastern Front, with the last shots fired on the 11th. Russia and some former Soviet countries celebrate on May 9th. Several countries observe public holidays on the day each year, also called Victory Over Fascism Day, Liberation Day or Victory Day. In the United Kingdom it is often abbreviated to VE Day, or V-E Day in the United States, a term which existed as early as September 1944, in anticipation of victory. The end of all combat actions was specified as 23:01 Central European Time, which was already May 9th in eastern Europe.
Last night I continued reading The Cat Who Went Bananas by Lilian Jackson Braun.
Richard fed the cats and went to drink coffee. When he got back, he saw a wild turkey and a quail (escapees, presumably, from one of our neighbors), and took photos. He then came to tell me; I was still three-quarters asleep, after not-good dreams, and my first thought was to doubt him; I woke up at 9:15 am, and realized I must have been dreaming, as Richard has been waiting impatiently to see any kinds of birds at our bird feeders. When I went out to the front room, Richard showed me the photos and video he had taken of the birds. I posted to Facebook that today was World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day, and posted to Facebook that today was VE Day. I paid bills, started my laundry, and started the Weekly Computer Maintenance and Virus Scan. I then did my Book Devotional Reading. The garage door opener guys arrived at 11:00 am, and replaced the whole assembly (as Richard said, everything but the garage door itself). I ate my breakfast toast and read the Acadiana Advocate inside, then I did my Internet Devotional Reading and said the Sixth Day of my Ascension Novena. Richard and I then set up the new garage door opener remotes, which involved me up on the ladder pushing the button on the back of the garage door motor housing. By the time I was done, I had a new app on my phone to open and close the garage door from my car, a remote in the garage, and a remote inside the back door. At the second round of the SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament in Auburn, Alabama, our #10 LSU Lady Tigers won their SEC College Softball game with the #20 Alabama Crimson Tide by the score of 3 to 2 in fourteen innings. I worked on this Weblog, finished the Weekly Computer Maintenance and Virus Scan, and finished my laundry. After Jeopardy!, I started reading The Fall of Saints by Wanjikũ wa Ngũgĩ. We ate chicken stir fry with egg rolls for dinner, and watched Jeopardy! Masters. Richard went to drink a beer at D.C.’s. And I will now finish this Daily Update, do some reading, and go to bed.
Tomorrow is the Traditional Date for the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, but where I live, we will celebrate that feast on Sunday. Tomorrow I will start cleaning the house, as we expect Richard’s sisters in town sometime on the weekend, and we of course would invite them over. At the Quarter Finals of the SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament in Auburn, Alabama, our #10 LSU Lady Tigers will be playing an SEC College Softball game with the #2 Tennessee Volunteers.
Our Parting Quote on this Wednesday evening comes to us from Anne V. Coates, British film editor (died 2018). Born in 1925 in Reigate, Surrey, her first passion was horses, and as a girl she thought she might become a race-horse trainer. After obtaining her education, she worked as a nurse at Sir Archibald McIndoe’s pioneering plastic surgery hospital in East Grinstead, England. Coates became interested in cinema after seeing Wuthering Heights (1939) directed by William Wyler. She decided to pursue film directing and started working as an assistant at a production company specializing in religious films (also doing projectionist and sound recording work). There she fixed film prints of religious short films before sending them to various British church tours. This splicing work eventually led to the rare job as an assistant film editor at Pinewood Studios, where she worked on various films. Her first experience was assisting for film editor Reggie Mills on The End of the River (1947); her first credited work was on The Pickwick Papers (1952). She married in 1956, and had three children. After editing several more movies, Coates worked with film director David Lean on Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Her work on the movie earned her the 1963 Academy Award for Best Film Editing (actor Robert Stack accepted the Oscar on her behalf), and she was nominated for the 1963 American Cinema Editors Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film. In 1964 her editing of Becket earned her a nomination for the 1965 Academy Award for Best Film Editing. That same year she edited Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. 1974’s Murder on the Orient Express gave her a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Editing. She and her husband divorced in about 1978. She edited The Elephant Man in 1981, and was nominated for the 1981 Academy Award for Best Film and nominated for the 1981 BAFTA Award for Best Editing. In 1984 she edited Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Coates was the editorial consultant for the 1989 reconstruction and restoration of Lawrence of Arabia. In the Line of Fire (1993) earned her the nomination for the 1994 Academy Award for Best Film Editing, the nomination for the 1993 BAFTA Award for Best Editing, and the nomination for the 1994 American Cinema Editors Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film. Coates won the 1995 American Cinema Editors, Career Achievement Award, and in 1997 she won the Women in Film Crystal Award, International Award. In 1999 she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Film Editing and was nominated for the 1999 Online Film Critics Society Award, Best Film Editing for Out of Sight (1998), and was nominated for the 1998 American Cinema Editors Eddie for Best Edited Feature Film. Erin Brockovich (2000) won her the nomination for the 2001 BAFTA Award for Best Editing. In 2005 the Motion Picture Guild ranked the seventy-five best edited films; Lawrence of Arabia was ranked seventh, and Out of Sight was ranked fifty-third. She edited The Golden Compass (2007), and that same year received the BAFTA Fellowship. In 2015 she edited Fifty Shades of Grey (her last movie work), and in 2017 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy Awards. Coates was a member of both the Guild of British Film and Television Editors (GBFTE) and American Cinema Editors (ACE) (died 2018): “You [have to] have the courage of your convictions. When you’re editing you have to make thousands of decisions every day and if you dither over them all the time, you’ll never get anything done.”
From The Recamier 