About July 26

Some tidbits about today

Irish playwright and novelist George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)was born on this day in Dublin. Some of his famous plays and pamphlets include Candida (1898), Pygmalion (1912, (about a cockney girl who learns to pass as a lady, which became the basis for the musical My Fair Lady) and Saint Joan (1923). He was self taught because he disliked formal education and wrote most of his own work in shorthand. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

A few of his famous quotes are:

If you are going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise they'll kill you.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
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It's the birthday of the writer Aldous Huxley, born in Surrey, England (1894), best known as the author of the novel Brave New World, about a future in which genetically engineered people take drugs to keep them happy, have sex all the time, and never fall in love. His masterpiece, Brave New World was written before Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin rose to power.

"Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted," warned Huxley who inspired Jim Morrison with the novel The Doors of Perception (1954) to name his rock group "The Doors" and even made it on the album cover of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1987).
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Today is the feast day of Sts. Joachim and Anne.
St. Anne and St. Joachim are the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Saint Anne, or Ann, is not mentioned in the Bible. The story of Jesus' mother and grandmother as written in the Gospel of James was very popular among early Christians. It had
a great influence on Christian worship, art and devotion. Around the year 550 a church in honor of Saint Ann was built in Jerusalem near the temple area on the site where Ann, Joachim and their daughter Mary were believed to have lived.

The Crusaders brought the name and legend of Saint Anne to Europe, and the famous Dominican Jacobus de Voragine (1298) printed the story in his Golden Legend. From that time on the popular veneration of the saint spread into all parts of the Christian world. It was encouraged by the religious orders of the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Carmelites. In southern France a Feast of Saint Anne was celebrated as early as the fourteenth century. Pope Urban VI in 1378 extended it to England at the king’s request. Not until 1584, however, did the feast become universal, when Pope Gregory XIII prescribed it for the whole Church.

In those days people were ostracized for not being able to conceive children. St. Anne and St. Joachim spent approximately 20 years praying to blessed with a child. Finally an Angel appeared to St. Joachim and said, "Don't be afraid. I have come to tell you the Lord has heard your prayers. He knows how good you are and he knows your many years of sorrow for having no child. God will give your wife a child just as he did Sarah, the wife of Abraham, and Anna, the mother of Samuel. Your wife Ann will bear you a daughter. You shall call her Mary and dedicate her to God, for she will be filled with the Holy Spirit from her mother's womb."

Many churches have been erected to her, most of them becoming famous centers of pilgrimages. One of the best-known shrines in this part of the world is St. Anne de Beaupre in Quebec, Canada.

From the eighteenth century on, Anne, which means ‘grace," was used more and more as a favorite name for girls. At the beginning of the nineteenth century it was the most popular girls’ name in central Europe, surpassing even that of Mary. This preference was based on a famous saying of past centuries, "All Annes are beautiful." Naturally, parents wanted to assure this benefit for their baby daughters by calling them Anne or by adding Anne to a first name. Thus we have the many traditional names containing Anne or Ann (Mary Ann, Marianne, Marian, Ann Marie, Joanne, Elizabeth Ann, Lillian, Martha Ann, Louise Ann, Patricia Ann)."

These are a few of the famous people we honor today. We will also be blessed with many others who will be born today.