SUNDAY, Aug. 1, 3:30pm

This Is the Day

CATHOLICTV Today’s guest, Thomas Zordani, author of Faith Finances (2009), tells how he turned to his Catholic faith and sacred Scripture in 1995 to transform his life and his family finances. He calls the Bible a handbook God has given us, and he explains his eight principles for stewardship.

SUNDAY, Aug. 1, 8pm

Extreme Makeover:

Home Edition

ABC In Champaign County, Ill., the “Makeover” team, TV chefs and volunteers build a new house for the Montgomery family. Nathan Montgomery founded and directs Salt & Light, a ministry that feeds as many as 250 families a week. A re-airing. Advisory: TV-PG.

THURSDAY, Aug. 5, 9pm

The Universe: Mars:

The New Evidence

HISTORY Recent probes of Mars suggest that water once flowed there, lakes existed, the polar ice caps are mostly water, and methane plumes occur. Viewers will recognize speculation about “life on Mars” as just that: sheer speculation.

FRIDAY, Aug. 6, 3am, 6:30pm

St. John Cantius,

Restoring the Sacred

EWTN This video from StoryTel Productions profiles St. John Cantius Parish in Chicago and shows how Father C. Frank Phillips of the Congregation of the Resurrection revived it by restoring the church and its art treasures, bringing back Mass in Latin, starting courses in religion, Catholic heritage and culture, Latin and Greek, and making a home for a new order, the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius.

SUNDAY, Aug. 8, 5pm, 8pm

Lost Gold of the Dark Ages

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL The Staffordshire Hoard, found on an English farm in 2009, consists of more than 1,500 Anglo-Saxon gold and some silver military items that were buried around the seventh century, possibly for retrieval later. A gold strip bears a Latin inscription from Numbers 10:35. Advisory: TV-PG.

MONDAY, Aug. 9, 9pm

History Detectives

PBS The show’s experts scrutinize a shotgun possibly used for the St. Valentine’s Day gangland massacre in Chicago in 1929. They also investigate a miniature painting of George Washington and inquire about a World War II prisoner-portrait artist in the German camp Stalag 17B.

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 11, 10pm

Poor Clare Nuns:

A Life for God

EWTN “Fixing their gaze upon Christ Jesus … they wholly cleave to the Lord.” The Poor Clares of the Monastery of Our Lady of Mercy in Belleville, Ill., produced this video in 2003 to show people “what the Poor Clares do all day” and to explain their hidden Christocentric, Eucharistic, Marian life of prayer. Re-airs at 5am Aug. 14.

Dan Engler writes from
Santa Barbara, California.