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.