Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger  (1841-1875)

Quote:Raymund, surnamed Nonnatus, on account of his having been brought into the world in an unusual manner after the death of his mother, was of a pious and noble family of Portelli in Catalonia. From his very infancy he showed signs of his future holiness; for, despising childish amusements and the attractions of the world, he applied himself to the practice of piety so that all wondered at his virtues, which far surpassed his age. As he grew older he began his studies; but after a short time he returned at his father’s command to live in the country. He frequently visited the chapel of St. Nicholas, built near Portelli, in order to venerate in it a holy image of the Mother of God, which is still more honored by the faithful. There he would pour out his prayers, begging God’s holy Mother to adopt him for her son and to deign to teach him the way of salvation and the science of the saints.

The most benign Virgin heard his prayer, and gave him to understand that it would greatly please her if he entered the Religious Order lately founded by her inspiration, under the name of the Order of “Ransom, or of Mercy for the redemption of captives.” Upon this Raymund at once set out for Barcelona, there to embrace that institute so full of brotherly charity. Thus enrolled in the army of holy religion, he persevered in perpetual virginity, which he had already consecrated to the Blessed Virgin. He excelled also in every other virtue most especially in charity towards those Christians who were living in misery, as slaves of the pagans. He was sent to Africa to redeem them, and freed many from slavery. But when he had exhausted his money, rather than abandon others who were in danger of losing their faith, he gave himself up to the barbarians as a pledge for their ransom. Burning with a most ardent desire for the salvation of souls, he converted several Mahometans to Christ by his preaching. On this account he was thrown into a close prison and after many tortures his lips were pierced through and fastened together with an iron padlock, which cruel martyrdom he endured for a long time.

This and his other noble deeds spread the fame of his sanctity far and near, so that Gregory IX determined to enroll him in the august college of the cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. When raised to that dignity the man of God shrank from all pomp and clung always to religious humility. On his way to Rome, as soon as he reached Cardona, he was attacked by his last illness, and earnestly begged to be strengthened by the Sacraments of the Church. As his illness grew worse and the priest delayed to come, Angels appeared, clothed in the religious habit of his Order, and refreshed him with the saving Viaticum. Having received It he gave thanks to God, and passed to our Lord on the last Sunday of August in the year 1240. Contentions arose concerning the place where he should be buried; his coffin was therefore placed upon a blind mule and by the will of God it was taken to the chapel of St. Nicholas, that it might be buried in that place where he had first begun a more perfect life. A convent of his Order was built in the spot, and there famous for many signs and miracles he is honored by the concourse of all the faithful of Catalonia, who come there to fulfill their vows.

Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger  (1841-1875)

Quote:The first flower of sanctity that blossomed in South America, the virgin Rose was born of Christian parents at Lima. From her very cradle she gave clear signs of her future holiness. Her baby face appeared one day changed in a wonderful way into the image of a rose, and from this circumstance she was called Rose. Later on the Virgin Mother of God gave her also her own name, bidding her to be called thenceforward Rose of St. Mary. At five years of age she made a vow of perpetual virginity, and when she grew older, fearing her parents would compel her to marry she secretly cut off her hair which was very beautiful. Her fasts exceeded the strength of human nature. She would pass whole Lents without eating bread, living on five grains of a citron a day.

She took the habit of the third Order of St. Dominic and after that redoubled her austerities. Her long and rough hair-shirt was armed with steel points, and day and night she wore under her veil a crown studded inside with sharp nails. Following the arduous example of St. Catharine of Sienna, she wound an iron chain three times round her waist, and made herself a bed of the knotty trunks of trees, filling up the vacant space between them with potsherds. She built herself a narrow little cell in a distant corner of the garden, and there devoted herself to the contemplation of heavenly things, subduing her feeble body by iron disciplines, fasting and watching. Thus she grew strong in spirit, and continually overcame the devils, spurning and dispelling their deceits.

Though she suffered greatly from severe illnesses, from the insults offered her by her family and from unkind tongues, yet she would say that she was not treated as badly as she deserved. During fifteen years, she suffered for several hours a day a terrible desolation and dryness of spirit; but she bore this suffering, worse than death itself, with undaunted courage. After that period, she was given an abundance of heavenly delights, she was honored with visions, and felt her heart melting with seraphic love. Her Angel-Guardian, St. Catharine of Sienna and our Lady used often to appear to her with wonderful familiarity. She was privileged to hear these words from our Lord: “Rose of my heart be thou my bride.” At length she was happily introduced into the paradise of this her Spouse, and being famous for miracles both before and after her death, Pope Clement X solemnly enrolled her among the holy virgins.

Quote:The COVID-19 vaccines’ ability to keep people out of the hospital appears to be dropping slightly, particularly for those 75 and older, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday during an advisory panel.

The CDC has previously estimated that 97% of people in the hospital being treated for COVID-19 are unvaccinated, but that data was collected before the spread of delta, a hyper-transmissible variant that many doctors have warned appears to be making people sicker.

The latest CDC analysis estimates that the ability of the COVID vaccines to keep a person out of the hospital is now between 75% to 95%.

For people older than 75 in particular, vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization experienced the steepest decline, from more than 90% to 80% between June and July.

Maybe this will be next...


From a 2002 NIH article posted from the Journal of the American College of Nutrition:
 

• Arkansas and Montana Governors Asa Hutchinson and Greg Gianforte signed legislation that bans discrimination on the basis of vaccination status
  

• Eight GOP states have also already banned so-called vaccine passports 
  
• Republicans are pushing forward with laws that give unvaccinated Americans the same protections awarded on the basis of gender, religion and race
  
• The latest bills come as the national vaccine effort has slowed substantially
  

While the following liberal Politico article bemoans the fact that enough farmers aren't submitting to the environmentalists' plan to have the government pay them to not plant their crops, it does outline what that plan's goals are...

A program that pays farmers not to farm isn't saving the planet
A decades-old program that pays farmers to leave land fallow is being heralded by the Biden administration as a climate solution, but environmentalists don’t see it that way.


A tractor plows under what would have been Spring Mix

Quote:The new analysis relies on the database of Maccabi Healthcare Services, which enrolls about 2.5 million Israelis. The study, led by Tal Patalon and Sivan Gazit at KSM, the system’s research and innovation arm, found in two analyses that people who were vaccinated in January and February were, in June, July, and the first half of August, six to 13 times more likely to get infected than unvaccinated people who were previously infected with the coronavirus. In one analysis, comparing more than 32,000 people in the health system, the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 was 27 times higher among the vaccinated, and the risk of hospitalization eight times higher.

Source: Bloomberg

August 28 – St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger  (1841-1875

Quote:Augustine was born at Tagaste in Africa of noble parents. As a child he was so apt in learning that in a short time he far surpassed in knowledge all those of his own age. When he was a young man he went to Carthage where he fell into the Manichæan heresy. Later on he journeyed to Rome, and was sent thence to Milan to teach rhetoric. Having frequently listened to the teaching of Ambrose the bishop, he was through his influence inflamed with a desire of the Catholic faith and was baptized by him at the age of thirty-three. On his return to Africa, as his holy life was in keeping with his religion, Valerius the bishop, who was then renowned for his sanctity, ordained him priest. It was at this time that he founded a religious community with whom he lived, sharing their food, and dress, and training them with the utmost care in the rules of the apostolic life and teaching. The Manichæan heresy was then growing very strong: he opposed it with great vigor and refuted one of its leaders named Fortunatus.

Valerius perceiving Augustine’s great piety made him his coadjutor in the bishopric. He was always most humble and most temperate. His clothing and his bed were of the simplest kind; he kept a frugal table which was always seasoned by reading or holy conversation. Such was his loving kindness to the poor, that when he had no other resource, he broke up the sacred vessels, for their relief. He avoided all intercourse and conversation with women, even with his sister and his niece for he used to say that though such near relations could not give rise to any suspicion, yet might the women who came to visit them. Never, except when seriously ill, did he omit preaching the word of God. He pursued heretics unremittingly both in public disputations and in his writings, never allowing them to take foothold anywhere; and by these means he almost entirely freed Africa from the Manichees, Donatists, and other heretics.

His numerous works are full of piety, deep wisdom and eloquence, and throw the greatest light on Christian doctrine, so that he is the great master and guide of all those who later on reduced theological teaching to method. While the Vandals were devastating Africa, and Hippo had been besieged by them for three months, Augustine was seized with a fever. When he perceived that his death was at hand, he had the Penitential Psalms of David placed before him and used to read them with an abundance of tears. He was accustomed to say that no one, even though not conscious to himself of any sin, ought to be presumptuous enough to die without repentance. He was in full possession of his faculties and intent on prayer to the end. After exhorting his brethren who were around him, to charity, piety and the practice of every virtue, he passed to heaven, having lived seventy-six years, and thirty-six as bishop. His body was first of all taken to Sardinia, afterwards Luitprand, king of the Lombards, translated it to Pavia, where it was honorably entombed.

August 27 – St. Joseph Calasanctius, Confessor
Taken from The Liturgical Year by Dom Prosper Guéranger  (1841-1875)

Quote:Joseph Calasanctius of the Mother of God was born of a noble family at Petralta in Aragon, and from his earliest years gave signs of his future love for children and their education. For, when still a little child, he would gather other children round him and would teach them the mysteries of faith and holy prayer. After having received a good education in the liberal arts and divinity, he went through his theological studies at Valencia. Here he courageously overcame the seductions of a noble and powerful lady, and by a remakable victory preserved unspotted his virginity which he had already vowed to God. He became a priest in fulfillment of a vow; and several bishops of New Castile, Aragon and Catalonia availed themselves of his assistance. He surpassed all their expectations, corrected evil living throughout the kingdom, restored ecclesiastical discipline, and was marvelously successful in putting an end to enmities and bloody factions. But urged by a heavenly vision, and after having been several times called by God, he went to Rome.

Here he led a life of great austerity; fasting and watching, spending whole days and nights in heavenly contemplation, and visiting the seven basilicas of the City almost every night. This last custom he observed for many years. He enrolled himself in pious associations, and with wonderful charity devoted himself to aiding and consoling the poor with alms and other works of mercy, especially those who were sick or imprisoned. When the plague was raging in Rome, he joined St. Camillus, and not content in his ardent zeal, with bestowing lavish care upon the sick poor, he even carried the dead to the grave on his own shoulders. But having been divinely admonished that he was called to educate children, especially those of the poor, in piety and learning, he founded the Order of the Poor Regular Clerks of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, who are specially destined to devote themselves to the instruction of youth. This Order was highly approved by Clement VIII, Paul V, and others of the Roman Pontiffs, and in a wonderfully short space of time it spread through many of the kingdoms of Europe. But in this undertaking Joseph had to undergo many sufferings and labors, and he endured them all with so much constancy, that every one proclaimed him a miracle of patience and another Job.

Though burdened with the government of the whole Order, he nevertheless devoted himself to saving souls, and moreover never gave over teaching children, especially those of the poorer class. He would sweet their schools and take them to their homes himself. For fifty-two years he persevered in this work, though it called upo nhim to practice the greatest patience and humility, and although he suffered from weak health. God rewarded him by honoring him with many miracles in the presence of his disciples; and the Blessed Virgin appeared to him with the Infant Jesus, who blessed his children while they were praying. He refused the highest dignities, but he was made illustrious by the gifts of prophecy, of reading the secrets of hearts, and of knowing what was going on in his absence. He was favored with frequent apparitions of the citizens of heaven, particularly of the Virgin Mother of God, whom he had loved and honored most especially from his infancy, and whose cultus he had most strongly recommended to his disciples. He foretold the day of his death and the restoration and propagation of his Order, which was then almost destroyed; and in his ninety-second year he fell asleep in our Lord at Rome, on the 8th of the Calends of September, in the year 1648. A century later, his heart and tongue were found whole and incorrupt. God honored him by many miracles after his death. Benedict XIV granted him the honors of the Blessed, and Clement XIII solemnly enrolled him among the saints.