At 07:09 this morning your local yellow star managed once again to haul itself above the eastern horizon of the Eternal City, illuminating domes, bell towers, roof terraces and an impressive number of people irritated in traffic in the great ring road car cloaca.
At 18:47 it will withdraw behind the Gianicolo, but not before gilding the buildings and warming the heart.
The Ave Maria Bell is in its 1900 cycle on the curial calendar, though at The Parish™ it rings at 1917, 30 minutes after sunset. Another Roman day will have slipped into evening and Roman nightlife.
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And…
This is a sad one 🥺 https://t.co/MfV6etwCty
— MedievalistMatt (@medievalistmatt) October 5, 2026
And…
Something new is beginning & I am so excited! 🤗
Catholic Unscripted and REGINA Magazine are coming together as REGINA UNSCRIPTED, bringing serious Catholic conversation, independent commentary and the extraordinary reach of REGINA into one new platform. But we don’t simply want an audience, we want to build a community.
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The conversation is changing. Be part of it.
— Mark Lambert (@sitsio) October 5, 2026
White to move and mate in 4.
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
It was nice to use my vestment for Mass this morning.
Since it is October, there will be many flowers at Mary’s altar at The Parish™. They are prepared by the great Pippo at the Campo de’ Fiori.
The photo does not do justice to the new lighting system.
Sunlight does do justice to the window full of stuff.
At my usual veggie stand.
I stopped at Pippo for my usual alstroemeria.
Before that I went to get some Pane di Lariano at Roscioli.
Mozzarella from Ruggieri, tomato and basil from stand, bread from Roscioli … lunch.
White mates Black in 4:
1. Qa8+ Kd7
2. Rf7+ Qe7
3. c5c6+ b7xc6
4. b5xc6 mate
1. Qa8+ Kd7
2. Rf7+ Qe7
3. c6+ bxc7
4. bxc7#
Speaking of celestial occurrences… Spaceweather reports:
“The Oct. 6th lunar occultation of Jupiter is one of the best astronomy events of 2026. Observers across a wide swath of the USA will have a ringside seat as Jupiter vanishes behind the edge of the Moon, then reappears again later. Jupiter is very bright, so this is a naked-eye event.
If you have a telescope, take a closer look: Galilean satellites Europa, Callisto and Io slip behind the Moon minutes before Jupiter does. Ganymede disappears last. Even small telescopes will show this procession.
Different cities have different occultation times. For instance, in New York, Jupiter disappears at 4:23 a.m. EDT and reappears at 5:27 a.m. In Chicago, it is 3:22 to 4:17 a.m. CDT. West Coast cities will see only a close encounter–no occultation–but the near miss will be beautiful. Along the Pacific coast, the best time to look is between 3:00 and 5:00 am PDT.
If you’re in the occultation zone, watch the whole thing. The end is especially good. Jupiter is a disk, not a point, so takes nearly a minute to reappear over the Moon’s mountainous dark limb. The Galilean satellites will pop into view one after another, abruptly like stars.”
Alas, the spectacle is not visible in Europe this time around.
For map see https://spaceweather.com/?tab=news
When you canonize a new saint and nobody notices
Our brand-new and very shiny Adoration Chapel features a prominent window image of St. Faustina to complement one of Pope St. John Paul II. Since I have been studying astronomy, and simply looking upwards with alacrity lately, I’ve noticed how marvelous this window, and the rest of our church, is.
Our founding pastor was regarded as a looney for building a church so far out in the sticks, and they called our church a UFO, because he chose 36 sides over your standard 4-sided building. Come to find out that our church was fully equipped for the Fátima generation, and the aerospace industry, because despite a notable paucity of sacred images plastered all over the walls, the images that do exist are in exquisite harmony with the astronomical world outside our walls.
So I was sitting in the Adoration Chapel just cataloging which stars/constellations corresponded to the images in there. But St. Faustina’s window is particularly remarkable, because it seems only to mediate the sunlight in a most amazing way. There are azures and browns and golds, a lovely earth-sky-waters palette, and our brilliant Arizona Sun is always guaranteed to blaze through that window and thereby paint the floor, the seats, and especially the crucifix and monstrance with that palette.
Because, isn’t that what St. Faustina did in her life and with her vocation? She was a little pencil, or paintbrush, in the hand of Christ, writing down His words and directing the artists to paint His image. That reminds me — I told my mom that the Divine Mercy image is “Quasimodo Jesus”. Jesus is depicted wearing only an alb and His glory. Jesus is demonstrating His solidarity with the neophytes who traditionally wore white on the Second Sunday of Easter. Jesus becomes spiritually “as a little child” in faith, to show us the way. Imitation of Christ is imitation of His innocence and His merciful love.
“We are an Easter people, and ‘Alleluia’ is our song!”