A. Vocabularies to Know
1) hierarchy: a system in which people or things are arranged according to their importance
2) predecess
or:
someone who had a job or a position before someone else, or something that comes before another thing in time or in a series.
3) successive: happening one after the other without any break
3-1) successful: achieving the results wanted or hoped for; having achieved a lot, become popular and/or made a lot of money
3-2) success: the achieving of the results wanted or hoped for:
3-3) succeed: If you succeed, you achieve something that you have been aiming for, and if a plan or piece of work succeeds, it has the results that you wanted
4) bronchitis: an illness in which the bronchial tubes become infected and swollen, resulting in coughing and difficulty in breathing
5) amendment: a change made to the words of a text
6) ratification: (especially of governments or organizations) to make an agreement official
7) appropriate: suitable or right for a particular situation or occasion
8) filibuster: to make a long speech in order to delay or prevent a new law being made
9) impeachment: to make a formal statement saying that a public official is guilty of a serious offence in connection with their job, especially in the US
10) gerrymandering: when someone in authority changes the borders of an area in order to increase the number of people within that area who will vote for a particular party or person
11)
lame duck: an unsuccessful person or thing
12)
red herring: a fact, idea or subject that takes people's attention away from the central point being considered
B. Whac-A-Mole
In Japan, もぐら退治 is
a popular arcade game invented in 1975 by Kazuo Yamada of TOGO, based on ten of the designer's pencil sketches from 1974, licensed to Bandai in 1977. It can also be commonly found at Japanese festivals.
A typical Whac-A-Mole machine consists of a large, waist-level cabinet with five holes in its top and a large, soft, black mallet. Each hole contains a single plastic mole and the machinery necessary to move it up and down. Once the game starts, the moles will begin to pop up from their holes at random. The object of the game is to force the individual moles back into their holes by hitting them directly on the head with the mallet, thereby adding to the player's score. The quicker this is done the higher the final score will be
C. Stigmatization of Saint Francis
Saint Francis imitated Christ so perfectly that towards the end of his life our Lord wished to point him out to the world as the faithful imitator of the Crucified, by imprinting His five wounds upon his body.
Two years before his death, when, according to his custom, Saint Francis had repaired to Mt La Verna to spend the 40 days preceding the feast of St. Michael the Archangel in prayer and fasting, and there this wonderful event took place. St Bonaventure gives the following account of it:
"Francis was raised to God in the ardor of his seraphic love, wholly transformed by sweet compassion into Him, who, of His exceeding charity, was pleased to be crucified for us.
On the morning of the feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross, as he was praying in a secret and solitary place on the mountain, Saint Francis beheld a seraph with six wings all afire, descending to him from the heights of heaven. As the seraph flew with great swiftness towards the man of God, there appeared amid the wings the form of one crucified, with his hands and feet stretched out and fixed to the cross. Two wings rose above the head, two were stretched forth in flight, and two veiled the whole body.
D. Francis of Assisi
Saint Francis of Assisi was
an Italian Roman Catholic friar and preacher. He founded the men's Order of Friars Minor, the women’s Order of Saint Clare, the Third Order of Saint Francis and the Custody of the Holy Land. Francis is one of the most venerated religious figures in history
Pope Gregory IX canonised Francis on 16 July 1228. Along with Saint Catherine of Siena, he was designated Patron saint of Italy. He later became associated with patronage of animals and natural environment, which became customary for Catholic and Anglican churches to hold ceremonies blessing animals on his feast day of October 4.
In 1219, he went to Egypt in an attempt to convert the Sultan to put an end to the conflict of the Crusades. By this point, the Franciscan Order had grown to such an extent that its primitive organizational structure was no longer sufficient. He returned to Italy to organize the Order. Once his community was authorized by the Pope, he withdrew increasingly from external affairs. Francis is also known for his love of the Eucharist.[6] In 1223, Francis arranged for the first Christmas nativity scene, life-sized, with real animals. In 1224, he received the stigmata, during the apparition of Seraphic angels in a religious ecstasy making him the first recorded person to bear the wounds of Christ's Passion. He died during the evening hours of October 3, 1226, while listening to a reading he had requested of Psalm 142 (141).
E. Saint Peter
Saint Peter, also known as Simon Peter, Simeon, or Simōn, according to the New Testament, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ, leaders of the early Christian Church. The Roman Catholic Church considers him to be the first Pope, ordained by Jesus in the "Rock of My Church" dialogue in Matthew 16:18. The ancient Christian churches all venerate Peter as a major saint and associate him with founding the Church of Antioch and later the Church in Rome, but differ about the authority of his various successors in present-day Christianity.
F. Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome and the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church. The primacy of the Roman bishop is largely derived from his role as the traditional successor to Saint Peter, to whom Jesus is supposed to have given the keys of Heaven and the powers of "binding and loosing", naming him as the "rock" upon which the church would be built. The current pope is Francis, who was elected on 13 March 2013, succeeding Benedict XVI.
