St. Medard

St. Medard was born around 456 into a noble Frankish family in northern France. His mother was from a Roman family that had settled in Gaul. At age 33 Medard became a priest. He was known for his knowledge and his piety. In 530, he was made bishop of Vermand. In 532, he was also made the bishop over Tornacum. He moved the see of Vermand to Noyon and then combined the two dioceses.

He was a well-loved bishop, known throughout what is now eastern France, western Germany, and Belgium. He was known for his good disposition, often depicted with his mouth wide open, laughing (this depiction would lead to him being evoked for toothaches).

It was a period of turmoil following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476. King Clovis I had formed France, yet the Burgundians and Merovingians battled for power. Medard served as a councilor to the Merovingian king Clotaire.

Lots of local legends arose around him. It was said that as a child an eagle spread its wings and sheltered him from the rain and that whatever the weather is on his feast day will continue for the next 40 days. It is also said that St. Gildard was his twin brother and that they were born, ordained, and died on the same day.

St. Medard died on June 8, 545. His feast day is June 8. He is a patron against toothaches and bad weather.

For the low, low price of 60 pieces of silver

I hate to jump on the latest outrage wagon, but…

The saying goes, “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” but must it be so literal?

The Christian nationalist “God Bless the USA Bible” went for sale on Holy Week (“Happy Holy Week” the video ad began). A fundraising grift for legal costs, the “Bible” indeed is wrapped in flag imagery, a political weapon shrouded in hallowed symbols. The item contains the KJV alongside the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Pledge of Allegiance, and lyrics to the song “God Bless the USA.”

Has anyone checked Monticello? Because Jefferson, who wrote his own edited-down version of the Bible, must be rolling in his grave.

The blatant disrespect, for both scripture and founding documents, is jarring, even in this day and age. Both are being commodified and weaponized. Maybe that’s nothing that new for America but it’s still insidious. It’s gross. This is not about the Word of God or the words of Thomas Jefferson. The hucksters don’t care about the actual message of these documents. The only message they care about is creating a warped version of both Christianity and patriotism, where you can only be a good Christian if you’re a conservative nationalist and you can only be a good citizen if follow a specific, narrow strain of Christianity.

Monday Motivation: The Grace of Easter

“The grace of Easter is a great silence, an immense tranquility and a clean taste in your soul. It is the taste of heaven, but not the heaven of some wild exaltation. The Easter vision is not riot and drunkenness of spirit, but a discovery of order above all order—a discovery of God and of all thing in Him. This is a wine without intoxication, a joy that has no poison in it. It is a life without death.” Thomas Merton, April 9, 1950

Do You Feel Like Singing?

Maundy Thursday is usually when things turn dark and somber. We try to create a space of quiet and heaviness as we enter into Christ’s betrayal, arrest, and agonizing death. We traditionally leave Maundy Thursday in silence. But the apostles left in song. 

On Thursday morning, (most of) the apostles still had no idea of what was to come. They had watched Jesus enter Jerusalem in welcomed glory just days earlier and speak in the Temple. They were celebrating the Passover, a holiday of survival. They probably entered that upper room in good spirits. 

Then things got strange. Jesus insisted on washing their feet. But he was always trying to teach lessons they didn’t fully understand. Then he announced that one of them was going to betray him—what a shocking discovery! But then the Passover meal continues. 

Their world has just been turned upside down, in ways they don’t understand. There is fear and confusion. Their heads are probably swirling. But there is the Passover feast, an annual tradition of rituals. The holiday has prescribed steps, prescribed words. Internally everything is a mess; externally they can hold on to the familiar motions. Are these rote holiday traditions grounding, comforting? Are they taking on new meaning in light of sitting there with what Jesus has said? 

Monday Motivation: Father Thomas Keating

"The spiritual journey is a struggle to be ever more available to God and to let go of the obstacles to that transforming process. The gospel is not merely an invitation to be a better person. It is an invitation to become to become divine." –Father Thomas Keating

Servant of God Élisabeth Leseur

Pauline Élisabeth Arrighi was born into a wealthy family in Paris on Oct. 16, 1866. She was sick as a child and suffered from health issues throughout her life. Élisabeth grew up conventionally religious. Her highly educated socialite circles were generally antireligious, including her husband Félix Leseur. Félix was a doctor and a leader in the anticlerical movement. He had told Élisabeth that he lost his faith during his medical studies

Élisabeth and Félix wed in 1889. The couple was close, even though they disagreed on the matter of religion. Initially Félix had agreed to respect Élisabeth’s practice of the faith, but as time went on, he grew more critical, even openly ridiculing her beliefs. For a time, Élisabeth abandoned her relationship with God.

In 1897, Félix gave her a copy of The History of the Origins of Christianity by Ernest Renán, a book critical of the Church. Finding the arguments in the book weak, Élisabeth began to explore Christianity deeper. This study led her to a deeper devotion; she underwent a conversion. She read the scriptures, Church Fathers, and mystic writers. She worked with charities that helped the poor and continued to pray for her atheist husband.

Monday Motivation: Thomas Merton

"God gives Himself to those who give themselves to Him. The way does not matter much, as long as it is the way He has chosen for us. I find that I can get just as close to God in studying the dry problems of moral theology as by reading the more burning pages of the mystics….Duty does not have to be dull. Love can make it beautiful and fill it with life."  –Thomas Merton 

All Wound Up

I like time. If I wake up in the middle of the night, the first thing I do is check the time to orient myself. I am consistently early to events. I place a (probably unhealthy) meaning upon numbers and dates and cycles. Time is such a beautiful way of organization.

So I find leap day a little annoying. First of all, 29 is a prime number. I can’t do anything with that. February should be regularly getting 30 days anyway; take one back from July and August. Second, it’s embarrassing that we can’t have a more accurate calendar have to insert “make up days” every few years. It feels very sloppy.

It’s actually anything but that, however. When Pope Gregory XIII began his calendar reform in the sixteenth century, it was because the calendar we were using (the Julian calendar) had drifted far off from the solar observations. The Roman calendar followed a mix of lunar and solar observations. Intercalary days or months would occasionally be called to adjust as needed. In 45 BC, Julius Caesar established the Julian calendar which consistently treated a year as 365 days. However, a solar rotation is 365 days, 6 hours. Over the centuries, that difference adds up, so he also included a rule for leap years: one leap day every four years.

Monday Motivation: Thomas Merton

“My great obligation is to God, and to seek His will carefully with a pure and empty heart. Not to try to impose my own order on my life but let God impose His. To serve His will and His order by realizing them in my own life. This mean certainly a deep consent to all that is actually and manifestly His will for me.” – Thomas Merton

Seeing what is Hidden

Three times in today’s Gospel reading Jesus says, “And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”

It’s a warning to not be showy about faith, to not be a hypocrite. So often, if Christianity is the dominant culture, Christian faith can either be rote or performative. The outward motions and signs are there. But God sees the heart, the intentions, Jesus warns. He can tell the hypocrites from the pious. You may be checking off everything on the checklist of “good Christian,” but how and why are you doing it?

Don’t broadcast your charity or seek attention in your prayers or bemoan your fasting. The spiritual life is about the interior. It doesn’t matter if others see or know or understand. Sometimes the interior spiritual work takes you out of the noticeable, social routines. Will people think I’m praying less if they don’t see me praying as much? Wait, why does that matter?

St. Gobnait

St. Gobnait was born in the sixth century in Ireland. During a family feud, she fled home and took refuge on an island in Galway Bay. According to tradition, an angel appeared to her there and told her that this was “not the place of her resurrection.” Gobnait was instructed to go find a place where nine white deer were grazing.

She found such a place on a hill in County Cork. She and St. Abban (who may have been her sister) founded a convent there. The religious order there cared for the sick.

As abbess of the convent. Gobnait began beekeeping and was said to love her work with the bees. She used the honey as a medicinal aid, and was credited with saving local villagers from the plague. One tradition claims that after a man stole cattle, she directed a swarm of bees after him until he returned the stolen cattle.

St. Gobnait's feast day is Feb. 11. She is the patron of bees and beekeepers.

St. Anna Schäffer

 

St. Anna Schäffer was born in Mindelstetten, Bavaria on Feb. 18, 1882. Her father was a carpenter. When he died at a young age, the family of six children was left in poverty. Anna dropped out of school at 14 and worked as a maid to help support the family.

Anna hoped to eventually join a religious order. In 1898, she had a vision that long suffering was ahead. Less than three years later, on Feb. 4, 1901, while working in a laundry, she slipped and severely burnt her legs against a boiling laundry kettle, leaving her immobile. She endured more than 30 surgeries, but the operations and skin grafts were unsuccessful. Her mother took care of her for the rest of her life. 

Anna believed her suffering was her path to heaven. She focused on prayer, writing, and knitting. She would knit clothes for her friends from her bed. A local abbott brought her the Eucharist daily, and she had a deep devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She continued to experience visions around 1910 and even received the stigmata.

Anna Schäffer died on Oct. 5, 1925 from colon cancer. Her feast day is Oct. 5.

The Clouds are Raining Justice

A Rorate Caeli Mass is a special Mass celebrated during Advent. The name comes from Isaiah 45:8: Rorate Caeli desuper et nubes pluant justum (“Drop down from above, heavens, and let the clouds rain justice”). The verse is used during vespers during Advent to express longing for the Messiah. It is also used as the introit for the Fourth Sunday of Advent and the feast of the Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Dec. 18).

The Rorate Mass is a votive Mass in honor of Mary. It is usually celebrated in the very early morning or late evening, accompanied only by candlelight. It was popular during the Middle Ages, also called the Angelic Mass or Golden Mass. In some countries, people would walk to the church carrying lamps or candles. Some say the melting wax of the many candles reflects the justice raining down. (Plus, who doesn’t love pretty candlelight in the winter dark?) 

Monday Motivation: Flight to Egypt

This week I've been obsessed with paintings of the Flight to Egypt composed while Victorians were super into ancient Egypt and thus place the Holy Family along the Nile and amongst the pyramids and sphinx. I love how Egyptian they are. At first, it seems like, well, the Victorians just wanted to see pyramids. But the more I look at them, the more they've made me think about how out of place the Holy Family was, how far away from home. The ridiculousness of the images makes you long to place the Holy Family back in a context where they belong, which, is where they wanted to be as well. That's the whole point about being forced to flee one's home; you didn't want to leave, and you long for the time when you can safely return. Until then, you seek shelter in strange, new worlds, even the strange, new world of ancient lands.

Happy Donkey Day!

Festum Asinorum, or the Feast of the Donkey, originated in France and was celebrated primarily between the 11th and 15th centuries. Celebrated on Jan. 14, it celebrates donkey-related stories of the Bible, primarily the humble donkey who carried Mary and Jesus on their flight to Egypt.  

Celebration of the feast would include a procession, led by a donkey, to and then into the church. It would stand by the ambo during a sermon; sometimes the priest would even deliver the sermon from the donkey’s back. Members of the procession would be dressed as prophets or other Bible figures such as Moses, Amos, John the Baptist, and most notably for the day, Balaam and his donkey. Some churches included a pageant about the prophets awaiting the coming of the Messiah or the story of Balaam before the beginning of the Mass.

At the end of the Mass, instead of the priest saying “Ite, missa est,” someone would coax the donkey to bray, to which the faithful would respond, “hee-haw.”

Some historians argue it was a day similar to Carnival—silly and profane bringing an animal into a sacred space. Others say it was more solemn—using the animal to focus on its symbolism of humility and burden. I’d say it was probably a bit of both.

St. Ivo of Kermartin

Ivo (or Yves) Helory was born Oct. 17, 1253 to the lord of Kermartin in Brittany. As a teen, he was sent to the University of Paris to study law. He was a serious student. He studied civil law, prayed, and visited the sick. He abstained from meat and wine. In 1277 he went on to study canon law in Orleans and become an ecclesiastical judge, serving in Brittany.

Ivo was known for his impartiality and rendering fair verdicts as a judge. He refused bribes, which were common at the time. He would even help parties settle disputes out of court to help them save money of court costs. He also defended widows, orphans, and the poor in other courts and paid their expenses.

While working as a judge, he continued to study, this time Scripture. He joined the Franciscans and was ordained a priest in 1284. He spent the rest of his life serving as a parish priest.

St. Ivo died of natural causes on May 19, 1303 in Louannec. He is the patron of Brittany, lawyers, and abandoned children. His feast day is May 19.