{"id":4610,"date":"2021-02-03T19:48:16","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T19:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/?p=4610"},"modified":"2025-04-26T23:06:35","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T23:06:35","slug":"on-this-date-in-some-year-not-much-happened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/on-this-date-in-some-year-not-much-happened\/","title":{"rendered":"On This Date in Some Year, Not Much Happened"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/taking-god-seriously\/#paine\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/brendans-island.com\/blogsource\/20170721ff\/20170819-800px-La_fournee_des_Girondins_10-11-1793-658.jpg?w=640&#038;ssl=1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s not true, actually. A quick check told me that stuff happened on February 3rd:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1488: Bartolomeu Dias landed in Mossel Bay<\/li>\n<li>1690: Colony of Massachusetts issued paper money, first in the Americas<\/li>\n<li>1793: Enlightened French leaders removed insufficiently liberated citizens<\/li>\n<li>1916: Seven people were killed when Canada&#8217;s parliamentary Centre Block burned\n<ul>\n<li>Rumors said it was Germany&#8217;s fault<\/li>\n<li>Others said that someone left a lit cigar in the wrong place<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>1918: San Francisco&#8217;s Twin Peaks Tunnel opened<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Problem is \u2014 &#8216;February 3rd&#8217; items I found would either take too long to research, be too potentially provocative, or both.<\/p>\n<p>Research legwork, the virtual sort, isn&#8217;t a problem. Neither are provocative topics.<\/p>\n<p>But, since I prefer making sense to other options, legwork and making (reasonable) waves take more time and effort than I&#8217;ve got. Time, particularly.<\/p>\n<p>Wait a minute. Can I &#8220;have&#8221; effort? Never mind.<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s Wednesday, which is when I get an hour at the local Adoration chapel. And that hour neatly splits my afternoon into two sub-optimal intervals for writing.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;ve picked a topic that deserves days of time and effort. And I plan to spend the next hour slapping out something I can review, revise and post today.<\/p>\n<h4><a name=\"saint\"><\/a>Saint Faustina Kowalska&#8217;s Divine Mercy Devotion<\/h4>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Divine_Mercy_image\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/brendans-island.com\/blogsource\/20201109ff\/20210128-Kazimirowski_Eugeniusz_Divine_Mercy_1934-329.jpg?w=640&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Eugeniusz Kazimirowski's 'Divine Mercy.' (1934)\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>Normally, I&#8217;d start by talking about Saints. They&#8217;re folks who earned reputations for heroic virtue. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 828)<\/p>\n<p>Sainthood&#8217;s fast track is deciding that being killed for taking Jesus seriously makes more sense than going along with someone&#8217;s preferred reality.<\/p>\n<p>Over the last couple millennia, a fair number of folks took that option.<\/p>\n<p>But many Saints weren&#8217;t executed.<\/p>\n<p>Some lived long and generally healthy lives.<\/p>\n<p>Some, like St. Faustina Kowalska, got sick and died young. But that&#8217;s not why they&#8217;re Saints, and that&#8217;s another topic.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve talked about this before.<\/p>\n<p>Folks who enjoy taking time with a name and title say &#8220;Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska of the Blessed Sacrament&#8221; when they&#8217;re talking about St. Faustina.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s proper and correct. But I&#8217;ll be calling her &#8220;St. Faustina&#8221; in this entry. Mostly.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, St. Faustina was a Polish nun in the early 20th century. Back then she was Faustina Kowalska. She wasn&#8217;t vetted for Sainthood until later.<\/p>\n<p>She said that she was having conversations with our Lord. Nothing unusual there. <strong>Lots<\/strong> of folks say they&#8217;re on a first-name basis with Jesus, Napoleon or some other bigwig.<\/p>\n<h4><a name=\"due\"><\/a>Due Diligence and a Polish Nun<\/h4>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/divine-mercy-and-lnk\/#illuminating\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/brendans-island.com\/blogsource\/20170908ff\/20171011-AdorationChapel-b-329.JPG?w=640&#038;ssl=1\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>What&#8217;s different about Faustina Kowalska was that an assortment of clergy in her part of the world went through our routine for dealing with such claims.<\/p>\n<p>And they decided that she might be making factually-accurate reports. Which is one reason we&#8217;ve got her diary. And that&#8217;s yet another topic, for another time.<\/p>\n<p>Long story short, Faustina Kowalska kept making sense. A priest had her tell an artist how to present visual information she&#8217;d received, and that&#8217;s how we got the Divine Mercy picture I put up there.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s nothing &#8216;magical&#8217; about the Divine Mercy picture. It won&#8217;t cure warts, help you sell your house or give you whiter teeth.<\/p>\n<p>It is, however, a good visual aid for folks doing the Divine Mercy chaplet. Like me.<\/p>\n<p>Saying the Divine Mercy chaplet isn&#8217;t magic, either. No prayer is magic.<\/p>\n<h4><a name=\"prayer\"><\/a>Prayer: Always Possible, Not Always Easy and Always a Good Idea<\/h4>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/november-3-the-end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it-again\/#prayers\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/brendans-island.com\/blogsource\/20190916ff\/20191028-AdorationChapelStPaulA-329.jpg?w=640&#038;ssl=1\" align=\"right\" \/><\/a>If I don&#8217;t pray, I can&#8217;t act as if I take what God says seriously. (Catechism, 2098)<\/p>\n<p>I also can&#8217;t make stuff happen by going through the motions. (Catechism, 2111)<\/p>\n<p>Again, prayer isn&#8217;t magic. Trying to make someone on the &#8216;other side&#8217; do something is a very bad idea. (Catechism, 2115-2117)<\/p>\n<p>Prayer is \u2014 a library could be filled with books about that.<\/p>\n<p>Basically, prayer is getting together with God. It&#8217;s always possible. (Catechism, 2559, 2564, 2567, 2743)<\/p>\n<p>Again, prayer is always possible. I didn&#8217;t say it was easy. We&#8217;re not told that it is, and I&#8217;ve noticed that it&#8217;s often anything but easy. It&#8217;s a good idea, anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Now it&#8217;s nearly time for my &#8216;Adoration chapel hour.&#8217; I&#8217;ll very likely be doing the Divine Mercy chaplet twice during my hour in the Adoration chapel. Not because I&#8217;m particularly pious. And that&#8217;s yet again another topic.<\/p>\n<p>Like I said, I&#8217;ve talked about this sort of thing before:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/groundhog-day-and-me-in-three-words\/\">Groundhog Day, and Me in Three Words<\/a>&#8220;<br \/>(February 2, 2021)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/another-tuesday-faustus-focus-prayer-and-routine\/\">Another Tuesday: Faustus, Focus, Prayer and Routine<\/a>&#8220;<br \/>(January 26, 2021)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/a-gallimaufry-politics-and-prayer-a-dragon-and-turkeys\/\">A Gallimaufry: Politics and Prayer, A Dragon and Turkeys<\/a>&#8220;<br \/>(January 21, 2021)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/changing-my-daily-prayers\/\">Changing My Daily Prayers<\/a>&#8220;<br \/>(March 14, 2020)<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/divine-mercy\/\">Divine Mercy<\/a>&#8220;<br \/>(April 23, 2017)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s not true, actually. A quick check told me that stuff happened on February 3rd: 1488: Bartolomeu Dias landed in Mossel Bay 1690: Colony of Massachusetts issued paper money, first in the Americas 1793: Enlightened French leaders removed insufficiently liberated &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/on-this-date-in-some-year-not-much-happened\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"A little history trivia for February 3. Then a quick look at prayer, Sainthood, St. Faustina Kowalska, and the Divine Mercy devotion.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"On This Date in Some Year, Not Much Happened, so I Look at Divine Mercy","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,192],"tags":[122,27,91,62],"class_list":["post-4610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-being-catholic","category-journal","tag-divine-mercy","tag-history","tag-prayer","tag-saints"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Dwtw-1cm","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4610"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9127,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4610\/revisions\/9127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brendans-island.com\/catholic-citizen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}