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August 28, 2011September 6, 2011

Feast of the Dormition of Theotokos

August 28

Dance with joy, O peoples!
Clap your hands with gladness!
Gather today with fervor and jubilation;
Sing with exultation.
The Mother of God is about to rise in glory,
Ascending from earth to heaven.

It’s called the Dormition, or the “falling asleep”. On its own, falling asleep might not sound like ample reason for a feast, no matter how much you like to sleep, but it’s a very big deal in the Orthodox Church. That’s because Dormition in this case refers to the departure from earth and subsequent ascension of Theotokos, ie. “god-bearer”, the Virgin Mary.

In Roman Catholicism, it’s known as the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Although the Assumption is celebrated on August 15, in the Eastern Orthodox Calendar that equates to today, August 28th.

The Dormition is a major feast in Eastern Christianity, so major it’s preceded by a strict two-week fasting period. During the fast Orthodox Christians refrain from eating red meat, fish, poultry, and dairy products. The Feast of the Transfiguration falls right in the middle of the fast (How’s that for confusion?) during which time fasters are allowed to go wild and eat fish.

In early Christendom, the stories of life of the Virgin Mary after the crucifixion received far less play than those preceding the Annunciation…

Already by the second century, Christians had begun to circulate stories of the Virgin’s life before the Annunciation, but evidence of a similar concern with the details of her life after her son’s ascension does not emerge for several more centuries.

— Stephen Shoemaker, Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary’s Dormition and Assumption

As the 4th century author Epiphanius writes:

“The holy virgin may have died and been buried…Or she may have been put to death—as the scripture says, ‘And a sword shall pierce through her soul’…Or she may have remained alive, for God is not incapable of doing whatever he wills. No one knows her end.”

But by the eighth century monk John of Damascus wrote:

If her childbearing was remarkable and of saving worth for the world, surely her falling asleep was glorious, too—truly sacred and wholly worthy of praise. (Daley, 1998)

Between those epochs we have the foundation of the written history of the Dormition. According to Orthodox tradition, Mary died a natural death, the same as any mortal. Her soul was received by Christ. All the Apostles except Thomas were present at her death. Three days later, Thomas (always the odd man out) finally arrived and pleaded with his fellow Apostles to see her once more.

“We are all servants of the one Lord, Jesus Christ. How, then, is it that ye were counted worthy to behold the repose of His Mother, and I was not?…I beseech you, my fellow disciples: open the tomb, that I also may look upon her remains, and embrace them, and bid her farewell!”

But when they opened her tomb, her body had disappeared. “All that remained were her burial clothes, which emitted a wonderful unearthly fragrance.”

Like Son, like Mother. Mary’s body was resurrected and ascended into heaven on the third day after her death.

“Neither the tomb nor death had power over the Theotokos, who is ever watchful in her prayers and in whose intercessions lies unfailing hope. For as the Mother of Life she has been translated unto life by Him Who dwelt in her ever-virgin womb.”

— Feast of the Dormition

August 27, 2011September 6, 2011

Saint Monica

August 27

There is no more pathetic story in the annals of the Saints than that of Monica…

The Catholic Encyclopedia

Take Wilshire Blvd west all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and just before you crash over the cliff above PCH, you will have run over a white statue that serenely overlooks the bay that bears her name.

santa-monica-statue2 — Saint Monica statue, Santa Monica, CA

Monica of Hippo was born in Tagaste (present-day Algeria) around 332 AD. She is the mother of St. Augustine, who despite his blessed prefix, lived a life of debauchery and licentiousness almost up until his poor mother’s death.

After her husband died, Monica traveled from Africa to Rome to pay her son a visit.

There is no more pathetic story in the annals of the Saints than that of Monica pursuing her wayward son to Rome, whither he had gone by stealth; when she arrived he had already gone to Milan, but she followed him. Here she found St. Ambrose and through him she ultimately had the joy of seeing Augustine yield, after seventeen years of resistance.

The Catholic Encyclopedia

At age 33, Augustine converted to Christianity, renounced his sinful ways, and went on to become one of the most influential Christian philosophers of all time. Having fulfilled her greatest hope, Monica began a journey back home to Africa with Augustine. She died on the way, in the town of Ostis. She was in her mid-50s.

On Saint Monica’s Day in 1769, Spanish explorers encountered a Native American village right around the area of today’s Wilshire Blvd, and gave the name to a nearby spring. Or, as a more romantic story goes, the spring’s water reminded them of the tears she shed for her son.

Saint Monica's Statue from above — Saint Monica statue from above

Today in California, Monica’s image watches over wayward children, including those souls who wander just left of the City of Angeles.

(Monica’s feast day was May 4 up until 1969, when the Vatican decided she was more of a summer gal and changed her feast to August 27. St. Augustine’s Day is August 28.)

Santa Monica: A History

August 15, 2011August 17, 2011

The Assumption

August 15

Celebrated on August 15, the Assumption refers to the death of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her entry into heaven. But ‘Assumption’ might also refer to what we base our knowledge of the event on, which is–well, nothing.

That’s right, there’s actually no mention of Mary’s Assumption in any of the Gospels. But that’s hardly surprising. In the centuries after Jesus’ death, the sites of his last years in Jerusalem were purged of any reference to the religion that he preached, as the city was completely rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian in homage to pagan gods.

“After the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 336, the sacred sites began to be restored and the memories of the life of Our Lord began to be celebrated by the people of Jerusalem,” writes Father Clifford Stevens.

One such site was the “Place of Dormition”, said to be the place where Mary “fell asleep” for the last time. The locals celebrated not the Assumption, but the “Memory of Mary”

For a time, the “Memory of Mary” was marked only in Palestine, but then it was extended by the emperor to all the churches of the East. In the seventh century, it began to be celebrated in Rome under the title of the “Falling Asleep” (“Dormitio”) of the Mother of God. Soon the name was changed to the “Assumption of Mary,” since there was more to the feast than her dying. It also proclaimed that she had been taken up, body and soul, into heaven.

According to tradition, Mary was taken up to heaven body and soul, rather than her soul alone–placing her in a select group of people, including the prophets Enoch and Elijah. By the 13th century the story of the Assumption was accepted as fact my much of Christendom. But the Assumption wasn’t deemed official church dogma until Pope Pius XII proclaimed it so in 1950.

August 6, 2011August 6, 2011

Transfiguration of Jesus

August 6

transfiguration:
a: a change in form or appearance; metamorphosis
b: an exalting, glorifying, or spiritual change

The transfiguration, celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church each year on August 6, refers to what is perhaps history’s greatest Kodak moment: Jesus talking with the prophets Moses and Elijah (Elias) on the peak of Mount Tabor in 27AD.

Only the Apostles Peter, John and James witnessed the event, and unfortunately none of them posted pics it to their myspace account. (If you have a photograph of the Transfiguration, please email it to us!) Nor do we have any record of what was discussed, for the disciples were too distant to hear the conversation, and Jesus forbade them from even mentioned the event until after the Son of Man had risen.

What we do know comes from nearly identical versions in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke.

Jesus led the three Apostles to the mountaintop where “His face shone like the sun and his clothes became as white as the light,” says Mark.

“Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus,” continues Matthew.

Peter offered to set up three shelters, one for each prophet, but as he spoke a cloud enveloped them. “A voice came from the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him,” concludes Luke. When the Disciples looked again, the two prophets had disappeared.

Theologians have debated the literalness of the Transfiguration. Most take the Transfiguration as a factual description of an actual event, especially in the Orthodox Church. Others view it as an allegory.

One interpretation of the Transfiguration is that Moses represents the Law and Elijah represents the Prophets.

In Jesus’ time, Moses was seen as having delivered the Law from God to the people and codifying it during their 40 year trek across the desert. In fact, after Genesis and half of Exodus, that’s what most of the first five books of the Bible are: lengthy lists and descriptions of the laws that governed ancient Hebrew society, from the now obscure laws concerning the treatment of slaves, the ritual sacrifice of goats, and proper stoning technique, to principles still considered the basis of Western law, such as “Thou shall not kill.”

Elijah meanwhile, may have represented the Prophets. Elijah is a prophet in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths (“Ilyas” in Islam), but occupies very little space in any of those religions’ spiritual texts. One of his claims to fame was that he was said to have never died. Instead he was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. It was believed his future appearance on Earth would be an imminent predictor of the coming of the Messiah. In the New Testament, folks take St. John the Baptist for Elijah.

For all its celebration among the churches themselves, the event receives very little attention from the general Christian public. And these days a child is less likely to learn about transfiguration from Matthew, Luke, or Mark than from Harry:

“Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts. Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back.”

— Minerva McGonagall, HP 1:8

[2008: This year the Transfiguration falls only a few days away from Islam’s Al-Miraj, the Ascension of the Prophet. During what is often called the “Night Journey,” Muhammad travels first to Jerusalem in a single night, then up to the heavens where he meets the prophets of Islam’s past, including Jesus, Moses, and Abraham. Like the Transfiguration in Christianity, Islamic religious leaders debate whether Al-Miraj is an actual event or symbolic allegory. And like Jesus, Muhammad is transformed prior to the encounter, not by light but by the Qur’an’s most famous open-heart surgery.]

Greek Orthodox Transfiguration

July 31, 2011August 2, 2011

St. Ignatius of Loyola

July 31

ALMOST 500 years ago in the Basque country in the north of Spain, a young man sat in bed recovering from a long and brutal operation. Inigo, an officer in the Spanish army, had been struck during a French siege by a small cannonball which had shattered one leg and severely wounded the other.

After 15 days, doctors…

decided that the leg ought to be broken again and the bones reset because they had been badly set the first time or had been broken on the road…This butchery was done again; during it…he never spoke a word nor showed any sign or pain other than to clench his fists… — Culture and Belief in Society, David Englander & Rosemary O’Day

But as he healed, one of the bones remained on top of the other, shortening his leg. A self-admittedly vain Inigo didn’t want to live life deformed. He opted to to undergo a third operation to fix it, even though it would be the longest and most painful, as the bone had already healed.

Having cut into the flesh and sawed off the projecting bone, the surgeons set themselves to the task of reducing the shortness of the leg…and continually stretching it by means of mechanical devices, which for several days on end cause him great torture. — Saint Ignatius Loyola: the Pilgrim Years, James Brodrick

In recovery Inigo asked for some books to occupy him. All they had to read were two books, De Vita Christi (Life of Christ) by Ludolph of Saxony and a book on the lives of the Saints, both in Castilian.

(On a personal note, I was once stuck in a laundromat for three hours where the only book I could find was “The Valley of the Dolls.” We are glad that was not the case with Inigo, because) After reading these tomes and healing from his operation, he tossed aside three decades of vanity and materialism, to found the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits.

It didn’t happen overnight. It began with a competitive pursuit of “besting” the saints, to be more ascetic than this one or to fast more stringently than another. But each exercise and pilgrimage slowly transformed his faith. He spent several months living in a cave. He begged his way across Europe to Jerusalem. He preached on the streets of Barcelona. He was interrogated during the Inquisition, and briefly incarcerated in Salamanca.

“About what do you preach?” Loyola was once asked.

He replied, “We do not preach, we speak to a few in a friendly manner about the things of God, just as one does after dinner with those who invite us.”

He left his troubles (and his name) in Spain to study at the University of Paris. There ‘Ignatius’ of Loyola met six other like-minded men who formed Societas Iesu–the Society of Jesus. In August 1534 the men made a vow–to live in poverty and chastity, to devote themselves to missionary work and other good deeds, and to serve the Pope.

By the time of Ignatius’s (Inigo’s) death, on this day in 1556, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) had spread to three continents, where they operated dozens of schools. They made enemies among colonial powers while defending the the rights and lives of indigenous inhabitants of North and South America.

With over 18,000 members in 112 nations, the Jesuits are the largest male religious order of the Roman Catholic Church. Millions more have been educated at Jesuit schools and universities.

Prayer of Saint Ignatius Loyola
Teach us, Good Lord,
To Serve Thee as Thou deservest;
To give and not to count the cost;
To fight and not to heed the wounds;
To labor and not to ask for any reward,
save that of knowing that we do Thy will.
Through Jesus Christ Our Lord, Amen.

http://www.pray-as-you-go.or

July 25, 2011July 26, 2011

The Way of Saint James – Spain

July 25

July 25th is the feast day of St. James.

James and his brother John, sons of Zebedee, were two of Jesus’s twelve Apostles. After Jesus’s crucifixion, James took the Gospel westward to unchartered territories—Iberia—and never looked back. Oh wait, he did look back, unfortunately. After receiving a vision of the Virgin Mary, James returned to Judea where he was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I in 44 AD.

But that’s not the end of James’s story. No, James’s hagiographers tells how James’s followers risked their lives to bring James’s body back to Iberia. They witnessed several miracles on the way, eventually laying his relics to rest at the edge of the western world: Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain.

Santiago de Compostela is the destination for thousands of pilgrims who make the journey to St. James’s resting place each year. The route is known as Camino de Santiago, or the Way of Saint James.

The most commonly traveled route is the Camino Frances. It starts somewhere north of the border in the French Pyrenees near St Jean Pied de Port. The trail winds 780 kilometers westward across Northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela, though many pilgrims continue a little further west to Cape Finisterre on the Atlantic. Finisterre comes from the Latin for “land’s end”.

The cape was once believed to be the end of the world.

On foot the pilgrimage takes about a month of walking. Peripatetic veterans recommend walking from 6am to 1pm. There are plenty of towns to stop in along the way, and such a schedule figures in nicely with the Spanish siesta, falling around 2pm each day.

The numbers of pilgrims have skyrocketed since the 1980s, when only a few thousand travelers would make the journey each year. These days that number is in the hundreds of thousands. Religious devotion varies among trekkers.

“Modern Pilgrimages seems to be a lot less about religion and more about peace, finding something in their life, a time to think, and for some a challenge…

“I did not set out on a Spiritual or religious journey – but it ended being that way…”

— http://www.caminodesantiago.me.uk/camino-frances/

All about El Camino de Santiago

July 17, 2011July 11, 2011

Romanov Holiday?

July 17

It’s not an official holiday yet, but with the Russian Orthodox Church’s beatification of the last Russian Tsar and his family in 2000, the Romanovs do have their own saint day—July 17—the anniversary of the day they were executed in 1918.

Nicholas II, the last Russian Tsar, is a touchy subject in the former Soviet Union. He and his family met a horrifying end at the hands of revolutionaries who banned all religion in Russia except worship of the state. But Russians also recall that Nicholas’s decisions wrought unrecoverable damage to one of the strongest empires on earth.

Nicholas’ reign was troubled from the get-go. Four days after his coronation in 1896, a panic during his banquet festivities in Moscow resulted in the trampling-to-death of nearly 1,400 celebrants. Though not the Tsar’s fault, Nicholas’ decision to attend a ball at the French Embassy that night anyway did not win kudos from the Russian people.

The following decade saw the tragic massacre known as Bloody Sunday, where striking workers and their families hoping to bring a petition to Nicholas II in St. Petersburg were instead gunned down by police. Public reaction to Bloody Sunday led the Tsar to allocate power to the political body known as the Duma.

But the end of his reign must be attributed to his refusal to pull out of World War I, even when his country was on the verge of total political and economic collapse. Mass mutinies led Nicholas to suspend the Duma, but members of the Duma and the Soviet, as well as leading generals, demanded Nicholas’s abdication. By 1917, the Tsar’s most loyal troops were lying under the sod of western battlefields; he abdicated in March.

Russia’s short-lived democratic government shielded the Romanovs in St. Petersburg, but during the October Revolution, that government was ousted by the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks wanted to leave no chance that Russia would return to the old aristocratic system. On July 17, 1918, the Bolsheviks gunned down Nicholas and the entire royal family in a cellar in St. Petersberg, including his wife Alexandra, their four daughters, and their 14 year-old son Alexei.

On July 17, 1998, eighty years to the day after their deaths, the royal family was interred in St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. They’re considered saints after the 2000 beatification, but not martyrs. To be a martyr of the Church, one’s death must be a direct result of one’s Christian faith. The Romanovs are honored instead as “Passion bearers”—those who met death in a Christ-like way.

Defenders of the Motherland Day

July 16, 2011July 11, 2011

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

July 16

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel gives Scapular to St. Simon Stock

Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the Asherah four hundred, that eat at Jezebel’s table.

1 Kings 18:19

What are Carmelites? Was Clint Eastwood their mayor? Are they responsible for my favorite Frappuccino toppings?

No, the Carmelites are named for Mount Carmel in Israel, a peak considered sacred to Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Bahais.

Mt. Carmel is mentioned prominently in the Old Testament, including the Book of Kings, wherein Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal and Asherah to light a fire atop the mountain.

Nearly two-thousand years later, according to hagiographers, a French Crusader by the name of Berthold founded a monastic order on Mount Carmel—on the site of Elijah’s Cave—after receiving a vision from Christ. St. Berthold remained in charge of the monastery until his death in 1195.

The most famed leader of the Order of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, or the Carmelites, may have been an English hermit named Simon Stock. During Stock’s tenure as prior, the Carmelite Order was in danger of being suppressed.

Oppressed by the Saracens, the monks slowly emigrated to Europe. During the night preceding the sixteenth of July, 1225, the Blessed Virgin is said to have commanded Pope Honorius III to approve the foundation.

— carlosechevarria.blogspot.com

The legend goes that on July 16th, 1251, St. Simon Stock had a vision of the Virgin Mary who presented him with a sacred scapular and a promise of protection for those who wore it.

“Take, beloved son, this scapular of thine order as a badge of my confraternity and for thee and all Carmelites a special sign of grace; whoever dies in this garment, will not suffer everlasting fire. It is the sign of salvation, a safeguard in dangers, a pledge of peace and of the covenant.”

— The Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Simon Stock, Cambridge, England

The Order was not suppressed, and in fact grew in prominence over the next several hundred years, even splitting off into different branches.

Today the special scapular is a defining vestige of the Carmelites, and they celebrate the anniversary of the apparition of the Virigin Mary—Our Lady of Mount Carmel—on July 16th every year.

In observation of the 750th anniversary, to be celebrated on July 16, Pope John Paul II has written a special letter to the Carmelites, saying: “I also carry the scapular on my heart… for the love that it nutures toward the common Heavenly mother, whose protection is continually springing forth.”

VIA Inside the Vatican Newsflash: John Paul II and the Brown Scapular , by John Drogin

Young Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyla) with Scapular around his neck

Mount Carmel – Bibleplaces.com

Mary and Carmelite Spirituality, another viewpoint