Originally from the city
of Huesca in Spain, where, thanks to his inspired intervention, the sacred
chalice used by Our Lord at the Last Supper reposes, Lawrence was an archdeacon
of the Roman Church charged with the responsibility of managing the material
goods of the pious patrimony of Saint Peter, and the devoted distribution of
alms to the poor of the City. During the persecution of the Emperor Valerian, as
the holy bishop of Milan, Ambrose, relates that when a pushy Prefect asked for
the “treasures of the Church” the intrepid Iberian brought forward the poor and
divinely declaimed: "Behold in these poor persons the treasures which I promised
to show you; to which I will add pearls and precious stones, those widows and
consecrated virgins, which are the church’s crown." The furious functionary was
not amused, to say the least, arrested the cloy cleric and had a great gridiron
prepared, with pounds of fiery coals beneath it. Lawrence’s body was then
petulantly placed on the ignited instrument. After some undetermined
but objectively painful time elapsed, the lovely legend concludes, he made his
famously cheery quip, “It is well done on the one side. Turn me
over!”
From a July 2013 NASA
press release: "We have found that
one meteor shower produces more fireballs than any other," explains Bill Cooke
of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "It's the Perseid meteor shower, which
peaks on August 12th and 13th." Using a network of meteor cameras distributed
across the southern USA, Cooke's team has been tracking fireball activity since
2008, and they have built up a database of hundreds of events to analyze. The
data point to the Perseids as the 'fireball champion' of annual meteor showers.
A fireball is a very bright meteor, at least as bright as the planets Jupiter or
Venus. They can be seen on any given night as random meteoroids strike Earth's
upper atmosphere. One fireball every few hours is not unusual. Fireballs become
more numerous, however, when Earth is passing through the debris stream of a
comet. That’s what will happen this August. The Perseid meteor shower comes from
Comet Swift-Tuttle. Every year in early- to mid-August, Earth passes through a
cloud of dust sputtered off the comet as it approaches the sun. Perseid
meteoroids hitting our atmosphere at 132,000 mph produce an annual light show
that is a favorite of many backyard sky watchers. Cooke thinks the Perseids are
rich in fireballs because of the size of the parent comet. "Comet Swift-Tuttle
has a huge nucleus--about 26 km in diameter," comments Cooke. "Most other comets
are much smaller, with nuclei only a few kilometers across. As a result, Comet
Swift-Tuttle produces a large number of meteoroids, many of which are large
enough to produce fireballs." Cooke recommends looking on the nights of August
12th and 13th between the hours of 10:30 PM to 4:30 AM local time. Before
midnight the meteor rate will start out low, then increase as the night wears
on, peaking before sunrise when the constellation Perseus is high in the sky.
For every fireball that streaks out of Perseus, there will be dozens more
ordinary meteors. "Get away from city lights," advises Cooke. "While fireballs
can be seen from urban areas, the much greater number of faint Perseids is
visible only from the countryside."
Since the Perseid meteor
shower, which has been observed for two millennia, occurs around the feast the
magnificent Martyr they have been nicknamed “The Tears of Saint
Lawrence”.
Therefore this sounds like
the optimal opportunity for a Catholic camping excursion. And don’t forget to
bring the barbecue!
Mr. Screwtape
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