Time to celebrate

 This post was written by Rosie Pozos.

Recipe for How to Celebrate Your Saint’s Feast Day*

Ingredients:

1 bottle Sparkling Apple Cider or favorite wine
2 Pretty candles
1 Nice Table Cloth
4 Goblets
4 Settings of nice silverware and china
Ingredients for your family’s favorite dinner.
Approximately six servings of Pan Dulce (sweet Mexican pastry) – or other favorite dessert.
Family or other special people with whom to celebrate
Coffee or tea (optional)

Set table with table cloth, china, silverware, goblets and candles. Fix dinner. Light candles. Pour cider or wine. Have family and/or special people all sit down.

Enjoy dinner family style: that’s where everyone reaches for whatever dish is closest to them, serves themselves and passes the dish to the next person.

Bring out Pan (or other dessert) after everyone is finished. Pass plate of Pan around the table. Ask if anyone wants tea or coffee. If yes, fix it.

Take time to enjoy each other’s company with dinner and dessert.

Enjoy the rest of the evening.

Approximately 4 servings. (Can be adjusted for more celebrants!)

Recipe can be used for celebration of any saint’s feast day.

* If for some reason you are at a loss for which saint to celebrate, visit http://www.theologika.net/search for biographies of saints and for the “Saint of the Day.”

There is a growing cottage industry of books attempting to prove or disprove the existence of God. Today, on this spot on the Church calendar devoted to St. Bonaventure (July 15), reflection on his blending of the rational and the spiritual is even more important than when he formulated it seven centuries ago.

Unfortunately, we live in a time of two simplistic approaches. One claims that religion is literally a superstitious hangover from the time of Bonaventure – the late Middle Ages – and has no basis in rational scientific thought. The inhumanity to which we have been reduced by the rational technological world destroys our spirit just as surely as the dogma of the religious. The scientific rationalists show that there is no empirical proof for the existence of God and the literalist acceptance of the Bible only heaps on further irrationality. The spiritualists of the New Age, on the other hand, are concerned about energy flows, the design of built spaces and the sacred diffuse life force emanating from the planet, with its animate and inanimate manifestations.

As much as we might like to think that these debates are new, they are as old as recorded civilization. Christianity is unusual in the sense that it holds and affirms the supra-rationality of faith in the unknowable and then elaborates the faith experience and its doctrinal content in a rational manner. To say it in more simple terms, the Christian experiences and creates reality within the faith experience itself. Given the inherent order of creation itself, this experience reveals and elaborates that core capability of the human, which is critical reason. Creation is sacred and diaphanous and faith enlightens our minds and leads them to the perfect knowledge revealed in Christ.

These view are presented mystically, poetically, and rationally in St. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium Mentis Ad Deum (The Mind’s Road to God). This small book is in many ways a meditation on the the vision of Christ by St. Francis on Mount Alverno, in which the saint becomes so identified with the Risen Christ that he receives the stigmata and the five wounds appear on his body.

How can thinking people believe is the post modern question. How can people with systematic rationalized collections of belief be spiritual is the New Age question. In the post modern age, empirical science is truth. In the New Age there is my truth, my karma, and your truth, your karma. No faith is required. No revelation is possible. There is no enlightenment and encounter with the Divine - a Divine that we cannot control with mathematical models or the arrangement of crystals.

Bonaventure provides a guide to living for the post-modern / New Age Christian – delightfully encountering the “vestigia Trinitatis,” the footprints of the Trinity in creation, learning and understanding in enlightenment, and caught up in the wonder of the divine.

Fog near Monterey Bay

The Fourth of July dawned foggy and cold this morning in Santa Cruz. Not too surprising. It is, after all, “fog season.” Usually the fog lifts by early afternoon, but it’s after 3 now and except for it being a touch ligher, there’s no blue sky near the ocean.

It’s been an unusual Sunday for us. The celebration of the Mass we usually attend can’t take place when the 4th falls on a Sunday because the Aptos 4th of July Parade starts in the street beside the church (Resurrection Parish). Our pastor offered a “Park, Pray & Parade” special to all who wanted to attend the 8:15 Mass, but that’s a bit early for my family. So we chose to visit another parish community this week.

We arrived just on time for Mass at Holy Cross Church in Santa Cruz, after having been diverted by a detour due to closure of the road that passes the church. We came in the back way and parked behind the old school building. Arriving at the front of the church, the reason for the road closure was apparent. A brass band was playing, people were milling around, dressed in their “Sunday best,” (not a common sight in Santa Cruz on a holiday weekend) and lots of young girls were dressed in long white gowns, with capes and trains and wearing glittering crowns. We’ve lived here a long time, but this was the first time we’d arrived for this celebration.

We went into the church and discovered that the Portuguese community was having their annual celebration of the Feast of St. Elizabeth of Portugal. St. Elizabeth (1271 – 1336) was Queen of Portugal and noted for her devotion to the Holy Spirit and her care for the poor. Married at the age of 12, she was none-the-less a strong spirited woman who was not afraid to think for herself and even defy her husband. It is said that when he forbade her to take food to the poor, she continued to do so anyway. One day he caught her and asked what she had hidden under her cloak. She replied, “Roses.” He scoffed at that response because it was January and roses are not blooming in January in Portugal. He tore her cloak open and found, to his amazement, that she was indeed carrying roses.

St. Elizabeth of Portugal

Elizabeth (Isabel) was also known to be a peacemaker. When her husband and son, leading armies against each other, met on the battlefield, she marched out between them and made them come to terms of peace. Later, in her old age, she did the same when her son prepared to fight the king of Castile.

In Santa Cruz and around the world, where Portuguese communities live, the feast of St. Elizabeth is celebrated with special prayers to the Holy Spirit and blessings for the girls. This celebration occurs every year. I’d seen the procession after Mass – everyone walks from the church, up over the freeway and down to the Portuguese Hall in the park nearby for an afternoon of feasting and fun. It was a blessing to share Eucharist with them this year.

After the final hymn, in Portuguese, the choir led those who had not yet processed out of the building in the song, America the Beautiful. It seemed fitting. Here we all were. People literally from all over the world. Old folks and children. Parishioners and visitors to the community. People from all different walks of life. Social liberals and social conservatives. Gathered together to hear the word of God, celebrate Eucharist together and pray with thanksgiving for the gift of a wise and generous queen centuries ago, the gift of a nation with “freedom and justice for all” that we have received from our forebears in this country and to ask for the gift of wisdom for ourselves and our leaders now, in this time, with the challenges we face today.

The  original words of the hymn, and it is indeed a hymn, are worth pondering as we celebrate the freedoms we enjoy in this country today.

America the Beautiful

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self control,
Thy liberty in law.

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam,
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

Amen! May it be so.

Happy 4th of July!

St. George - 15th Century icon from Novgorod

April 23 is the feast of St. George. George was a Roman soldier in the third century, during the time of the Emperor Diocletian. He was from a Christian family and his father was an army officer. As a young man, he also entered the service of the Empire and rose to the rank of Tribune, enjoying a position of trust with the Emperor. When Diocletian turned against Christians and ordered the arrest of Christian soldiers, George went to him and protested the action. The Emperor was not swayed by George’s appeal and instead ordered him to renounce his Christian beliefs. George refused, was tortured and eventually was beheaded.

Most of the stories of St. George are non-verifiable legends. At least some of them seem to be confusions with the stories of others named George or others who had similar positions or histories.

The stories with which he is most often identified have him in the role of Dragon-slayer. They are found in many countries and cultures, even crossing religious lines between Christian and Muslim worlds. In most stories St. George slays the dragon. In some, he subdues the dragon.

I like the idea of subduing the dragon. I first came across it when my sons were young and attending Waldorf school. For the Feast of Michaelmas, in September, the second graders performed a play in which St. Michael faces a dragon that has been terrorizing a village. The play has a character more like St. George who is supported by St. Michael. In this particular version of the story, the dragon is tamed and provides energy to run the mill so the villagers can grind the wheat they have grown to make flour for their bread.

Dragons come in many sizes and shapes in stories from cultures all over the world. In China, dragons are respected and seen in a much more positive light than in Western European stories. In fact, when my first son was born, my Mother’s cousin who was a priest in Hong Kong sent a gift of a red dragon to us in celebration. The Dragon Wars stories of novelist Laurence Yep are some of my favorites. Written for middle school and older children, they present Chinese folklore in a very engaging way. Dragons are to be respected, held in awe and definitely not destroyed. Their presence and the gifts of passion and energy they bring are necessary for all of creation.

I like to think of dragons in these more Chinese terms. Having been born in a “Year of the Dragon” myself, and being somewhat choleric in nature, I have had to come to terms with the passionate, powerful energy within myself that can burst out in good ways and in not-so-good ways. That “dragonish” energy can bring forth wonderful things. It can also blast potentially wonderful things to smithereens if released inappropriately. I’m sure sometimes God winces in dismay as a carefully set up pattern of events that would lead to something really good gets derailed by such blasts. (Not to say that God can’t still bring something good out of it, but it’s so much more bother!)

So when I think of the feast of St. George and the stories of dragons slain or subdued or celebrated, I pray that the dragonish power within me - the Greek “dunamis” or power, potential, capacity – will be focused by the Holy Spirit for service of the Kingdom. I hope that will be your prayer as well.

St. Agnes of Assisi - St. Joseph's Monastery of Poor Clares in Aptos, CA

In his homily today at Mass, Fr. Ken Lavarone, OFM, included the story of a third grade girl’s response to the question, “What is a saint?” The little girl answered that saints are the people in the stained glass windows on the walls of the church. The light shines through all of them, spreading bright colors over all of us.  

Fr. Ken used this example to remind us that the light of God shines through the lives of the saints, all of them/all of us, both those living  in the here and now and those living with God in eternal life. That light brings color and joy, hope and beauty into our lives, through the good times and the hard times.

May the light and love of God shine into your life today and always and may you be, in turn, a window through which God’s light and love shine for others.

Teresa of Avila's Vision of the Dove - Peter Paul Rubens

On this feast of St. Teresa of Avila, when all is so uncertain in our world and so many worries seem to plague us all, I offer her reminder of what really matters. This quote is sometimes called her “Bookmark” because after her death in 1582 it was found written on a piece of paper in her prayer book.

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away,
God does not change.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone is enough.

In the original Spanish:

Nada te turbe,
Nada te espante;
Todo se pasa.
Dios no se muda.
La paciencia todo lo alcanza.
Quien a Dios tiene nada le falta:
sólo Dios basta.

Today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark (Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle B) is one of the more challenging ones. Jesus’ disciples have been struggling to figure out what it really means to be great in the Kingdom, to be a follower of Jesus, and what kind of exclusivity pertains to their role as His followers. John tells Jesus that someone who is not one of their group is driving out demons in Jesus’ name. Jesus’ followers are trying to get the man to stop doing it – he’s not authorized to use the power - almost as if it were under trademark protection or something. Jesus assures them that anyone not actively against them is for them, so it’s OK for the other person to cast out demons using Jesus’ name (a term also meaning power and authority). He continues, “Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.” (Mk 9:41)

The reading goes on to include Jesus’ teachings about removing things from our lives that get in the way of a free, loving  response to God’s presence and call  in our lives. It’s very dramatic in its images – plucking out an eye, or cutting off a hand or foot! But sometimes those physical actions might actually be easier than the spiritual work that is really required. Forgiving someone who has hurt us deeply, trusting again, giving freely of our time, talents and treasure when those gifts were not accepted graciously the last time we offered them, moving forward in faith when danger is all around and there seems no way that good can prevail… All in all, a couple of challenging passages.

Yet this year, the twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time coincides with the feast of St. Vincent de Paul.  And that has been on my mind all day today. Here was a man who took to heart the teaching that whatever is given to someone who belongs to Christ is given to Christ. Furthermore, he truly believed that whatever was given to the least of God’s children, was given to Christ. And he set about organizing groups of people, to care for those “children” of God, as well as working with political and religious leaders to change social and religious structures of oppression.

The work goes on today, some four hundred years after the time St. Vincent de Paul began his work. There are still oppressive social structures. People still struggle to survive. Many in the world go to bed hungry after spending all day hungry as well. Health care is not guaranteed to all. Education is not available to all children. Decent housing and clothing are not assured to all, even in the United States, the richest, most powerful nation in the world.

Still, we have Jesus’ promise and reassurance. “Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ … will surely not lose his reward.” May we also be ones who give that cup of water to drink to others who belong to Christ, in all the beautiful and all the distressing forms in which they come to us.

Russian Icon of the Birth of Mary

The birthday of the mother of Jesus, Mary, daughter of Joachim and Ann, is celebrated on September 8. It is an ancient feast, dating from the fifth century dedication of a church in Jerusalem. The church is known today as the basilica of St. Ann, mother of Mary. The feast is celebrated both in the Eastern and Western churches. 

In honor of her birthday, I offer what is perhaps her second most famous prayer, a prayer banned even in our times by despots and dictators who feared its power to inspire hope, courage and trust in God’s goodness and love of the poor and oppressed. May this be our prayer too.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;

                my spirit rejoices in God my savior.

For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness;

                behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.

The Mighty One has done great things for me,

                and holy is his name.

His mercy is from age to age

                to those who fear him.

He has shown might with his arm,

                dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart.

He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones

                but lifted up the lowly.

The hungry he has filled with good things;

                the rich he has sent away empty.

He has helped Israel his servant,

                remembering his mercy,

according to his promise to our fathers,

                to Abraham and to his descendants forever.

(Lk 1:46-55)

While camping recently with my wife and daughter in the redwoods near Santa Cruz, I spent some time with an enlightening and very readable book.

Christopher Hall in Learning Theology With the Church Fathers does a good job of summarizing St. Augustine’s notion of the fallen nature of humanity. St. Augustine is convinced that something went terribly wrong when Adam ate the forbidden fruit so that we are not capable of really loving and knowing the good until we are redeemed in Baptism. Of course this led not only to the notion of infant baptism but also to the notion that unbaptized infants would suffer the wrath of God in eternal punishment. It is logically consistent but it seems to be extreme and never became as much of a prominent idea in the Orthodox East as it did in the Catholic and Protestant West.

This doesn’t square with the Black civil rights assertion of human dignity: “God don’t make no trash!” In fact, it seems at odds with the fundamental goodness of creation which St. Augustine upheld in the face the Gnostic conception that creation was a mistake by a lesser god and matter is evil.

Today we might explain these things as laziness, psychological conflicts, compulsions, addictions, or unhealthy repression.

In St. Augustine’s defense, we should remember that he is also considered one of the founders of psychology. His concepts of memory, will, and understanding as the core of individual identity still hold up in the face of contemporary neuroscience. It seems that the key problem he wrestled with from his own experience and that of people he observed was our ability to know what is good and not to be drawn to it in a way that compels our will. In other words, we know the right thing to do and we do the opposite.

For Augustine, the arena of sexual behavior was particularly problematic. Unfortunately, for example, he didn’t have our understanding of human sexual anatomy and physiology and he felt that what we would call involuntary responses were a sign of lack of control and the conquest of the will. His promiscuous sexual behavior prior to his conversion appears to us post-moderns as bordering on addiction. Today, in contrast, we might view orgasm as something healthy and transformative. In fact, we have made it something holy at the core of the sacrament of matrimony. However, the momentary obliteration of memory, understanding, and will made it highly suspect for an upper class Roman like St. Augustine living during the decline and fall of the empire.

Relaxing in the redwoods enjoying creation seems an awful lot like a certain lost garden. Does God really need to be appeased or does he just continue to reach out to us in love – the beautiful love of creation? Are we only saved in Christ if we are baptized? Is salvation questionable outside the community of the baptized faithful? The traditional and orthodox answers are yes. Is everything else outside the assembly’s official teaching false? The official answer is yes.

What about the Spirit hovering over the abyss? About the eruption of God in space-time? Is our teaching about faith or about certainty? The church fathers sought revelation in the written books and the book of nature. Does not all creation shout the glory of God? Did not Jesus put all things right? Would a God of love do it for just a few?

Would a father or mother provide for only some of their children and leave the rest in eternal darkness? “Evil as you are would any of you give your son a scorpion when he asked for bread…” Would a father or mother require death by hideous torture of a beloved son?

In terms of making some sense of the death of Jesus in a culture in which thousands of animals were sacrificed each day as part of official worship, the notion of Christ as the final and only suitable victim is comprehensible. His final and complete sacrifice also explain the loss of the Temple and the genocide of a people lost in hopeless insurrection. How else could the death of God’s son make any sense? Yet once we begin this paternal projection and anthropomorphism of the One God, our words and images fall on hard ground.

Per usual, I have begun at the end, since Learning Theology With the Church Fathers actually begins with wonderful treatments of what we used to call De Deo Uno (the one God) and De Deo Trino (the triune God). Hall takes the wise course of not trying to explain the indescribable but begins by the efforts of the early Hellenistic church trying somehow to grasp the reality behind the hymns of praise to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the one God and to Jesus as the Eternal Word.

How can this be? Yes, that is the question, whether one is caught up in the majesty of the redwoods or the radiant light from light, begotten not made causing them to break forth into the Song beyond all hearing that is Music, Word, and Divine Rhythm.

St. Augustine’s famous Chapter 10 of The Confessions says it much better than I could.

Late have I loved you,
O Beauty ever ancient, ever new,
late have I loved you!

You were within me, but I was outside,
and it was there that I searched for you.
In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created.

You were with me, but I was not with you.
Created things kept me from you;
yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all.

You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.
You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.
You breathed your fragrance on me;
I drew in breath and now I pant for you.

I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more.
You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

Portrait of St. Dominic by Gionvanni Bellini - 16th century

Greetings and Happy Feast Day to our Dominican brothers and sisters.

St. Dominic was one of the first founders of a religious order to emphasize the importance of education and logic in thinking and teaching about God. He had noticed that Cathar/Albigensian preachers were not ignorant men but rather cultured, educated people living righteous lives. He reasoned that only equally educated and rational teachers/preachers would be able to turn the followers of the Cathar preachers away from heresy and back to traditional Christian beliefs. He and his companions set out to do just that, while always seeking truth wherever it might be found.

St. Dominic is the patron saint of astronomers, astronomy, the Dominican Republic, falsely accused people and the Santo Domingo Indian pueblo.

I’m curious and haven’t found the answer to this question. Why is he the patron saint of astronomers/astronomy? I’d love to hear from anyone who knows.