Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

 

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Memorial 21 November

Today is the feast of the presentation of the BVM in the Temple at the age of three.   This story is from the Protoevangelium of James, an apocryphal book written in the second century.   In the Middle Ages its stories bordered on the sacred to people thirsty for knowledge of the Church.  Much like the Clone Wars Saga and Jedi “new order” books, geeks buy and devour thirsty for more Star Wars stories…… It is quite a good read if you can find a copy. The Protoevangeliun I mean, the Star Wars stuff stinks after the Luke Skywalker movies ended, let’s face it.   Attack of the Clones may be the worst movie ever made.   I actually liked “The Force Awakens.” When it Cme out…but the others?   WOOO boy!   But Mark Hamel is right, a Jedi wouldn’t act like that….but I digress

 Anyhoo…  The story goes St. Anne and St. Joachim were the parents of Mary in their old age.   They prayed to God asking for a child, and promised to consecrate that child to God if he answered their prayers.   God naturally did, and as a result when she was only three Ann and Joachim brought a young Mary to the Temple to serve……This day celebrates that event.  The Greeks call this the “Entry of the Holy Theotokos” but they do so while wearing those dopey hats.  

Mary remained in the temple until puberty, at that time she was promised to Joseph in marriage;   which is another good story in the Protoevangelium involving a lineup of worthy men and the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, landing on Josephs’ head.     

The Nuns that taught me in Our Lady of Solace (OLS) in the Bronx were from the religious order of the Presentation; so they’re names were things like “Sister Mary Muriel PVBM”. The Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary were founded in Ireland in 1775 by Nano Nagle to teach children.   All the presentation Nuns were Irish with the exception of Sister Helen Parisi (formerly known as Sister Mary Dominic Joseph) who died in 2008 at the age of 83, I wept when I found out.   Sister Helen loved me; Italian kid in an Irish school, what’s not to love?     I didn’t bring my lunch one day and she made me a bologna sangwich on wonder bread with pickles, potato chips, and mayo.   She included a Twinkie on the side…the first Twinkie I had ever eaten…it was wonderful and that sangwich is still one of my favorites.

Anyway, the Presentation of the BVM is a pious story; like Fatima and Lourdes and Saint Denis walking around holding his severed head, you are not required to believe it.   I like it, so why not?   It’s easier to buy than 25 fully trained Jedi with The Force as their ally, getting beaten by a bunch of robots in an arena after all.    

Mother Cabrini

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

Also known as
Francesca Saverio Cabrini
Mother Cabrini

Memorial

13 November. On November 13th Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence……..that request came from his wife. Deep down he knew she was right but he also knew that some day he would return to her. With nowhere else to go he appeared at the home of his [childhood] friend Oscar Madison. Sometime earlier Madison’s wife had thrown him out requesting that he never return. Can 2 divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy? Sorry force of habit……anyhoo: before 1970 it was celebrated 22 December

Profile
Our Saint today was one of thirteen children who was sent to Catholic School for her education eventually becoming a teacher in her home town in Italy.

As was the case with a lot of these youth with a calling, when she tried to enter the convent at age 18, poor health prevented her taking the veil. A priest asked her to teach at an orphanage school for girl‘s in Cadagono, Italy, which she did for six years.

Eventually her health improved enough that she was able to join the religious order running the school in 1877, and was such a natural leader doing so well herself at her work, when the orphanage closed in 1880, her bishop asked her to found the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to care for poor children in schools and hospitals. Pope Leo XIII then sent her to the United States to carry on this mission.

She and six Sisters arrived in New York in 1889. They worked among immigrants, especially Italians. Mother Cabrini founded 67 institutions, including schools, hospitals, and orphanages in the United States, Europe and South America. She was a very forceful, some say difficult person to deal with. She had arguments with her superiors and even the Pope quite often; these “discussions” were said to be legendary at times.

Like many of the people she worked with, Mother became a United States citizen. Although they try to soften her image in the holy cards she comes across to me as a stern woman, sometimes sporting a nice moustache, not unlike my wizened grandmother “Mary Goodwill”. She makes the holy card images of Louise de Merrilac look good…..She was the first American citizen to be canonized a saint. She died in the USA, Chicago, of malaria in 1917. Her miracles included restoring sight to a child iatrogenically blinded by silver nitrate, and healing of a terminally ill nun.

Her shrine is uptown in Manhattan, 701 Fort Washington Avenue, The A train stops almost across the street from it. Her, sadly not incorrupt body, is on display, daily in a glass altar in the church there. The head of her remains looks like a wax fake…it is, the real head was sent to Rome as a relic there. After a nice walk through Fort Tryon Park and a visit to the Cloisters you may want to stop in and see her body on display, rotting away. The gift shop for the shrine is full of nice Catholic voodoo stuff like sanitaria statues, and holy oils and holywaters, and the like so fondly favored by the neighborhood locals The sign said “Holy Water for Sale / Agua Bendita para venta”; as you know selling a blessed item is the sin of simony. Being the wiseacre that I am, I pointed out to the lady in there that she can’t sell holy water, she must be selling the container not the water, right? She didn’t care one way or the other…. She said “$7.50… do you want it or not?” (Actually it was “Siete cinquenta.. quieres eso, si o no?”)


Patronage
against malaria
against blindness
hospital administrators
immigrants
orphans
invoked by commuters to have a bus or train come quickly while waiting. Try this if you are waiting for the A train to her shrine:

“Mother Cabrini
send a machini.”

Pope Leo I

Pope Saint Leo I

Also known as:
Pope Leo the Great

Memorial 10 November ( it used to be 11 April until 1969)

Our Saint was born in Tuscany about the year 400; Leo was elected the 45th Pope in the year 440. Although there were 44 guys before him Leo was the first Pope we have some substantial writings from.

Around this time the Bishops of the other big dioceses, Constantinople in particular, were flexing their muscles and were saying that the Bishop of Rome was not so special anymore, and all bishops were all equal in the hierarchy. Seeing as how the Emperor of Rome was now, no longer, living in Rome but in Constantinople, the Patriarch of that city claimed Papal primacy. This eventually led to that whole Greek Orthodox thing....

Another particular troublemaker was the Patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril, who called himself “Pope Cyril”. Leo pointed out that Rome’s Church was founded by Peter, and Alexandria’s Church was founded by Peter’s disciple Mark. Even the Founder of Cyril’s Church would agree he was subservient to Peter. He was the head man not because of the Emperor or where the Empire’s capital was, but because he was the successor to St. Peter. This idea of the primacy of the Bishop of Rome can be traced all the way back to the time of St. Linus, the second Pope and reinforced by the writings of Clement the 4th Pope. It was never a question before so no one needed to publish an edict declaring this fact; everyone accepted it.

Leo persuaded Emperor Valentinian to recognize the primacy of the bishop of Rome in an edict in 445. This basically told Constantinople and Alexandria: “Omnes homines estis stulti.” (Don’t ask)

The doctrine of the Incarnation was formed by him in a letter to the Patriarch of Constantinople. This became an article of Catholic faith in the East and West.

The secular world knows Leo for his leadership during the upheaval of the fifth century barbarian invasion. As he was seen as the only person of authority in the city he went out to parlay with Attila the Hun. His encounter with Attila at the very gates of Rome persuading him to turn back remains a historical memorial to Leo’s great eloquence. Later when the Vandals occupied the city of Rome, he persuaded the invaders to desist from pillaging the city and harming its inhabitants. He died in 461, leaving many letters and writings of great historical value.

He is one of the 37 Doctors of the Church. He was the first and still one of only two Popes with the popular appellation “The Great” after his name. He died on 10 November 461

Dedication of Saint John Lateran Basilica

Dedication of Saint John Lateran Basilica
Feast
9 November

Today, is the Feast of the Dedication of the Papal Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior and St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist, which we call St John Lateran.

This, not Saint Peter’s Basilica, is the Cathedral Church of the Bishop of Rome, also known as the Pope. The original was a gift to the Church from Emperor Constantine himself on land on which the Laterini family palace stood, which is where we get the name, Lateran.

Rome’s Cathedral was solemnly consecrated on 9 November 324. The Lateran Basilica is “omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput… the Mother and Head of all the Churches of the City and the World”. It is one of the four major basilicas in the whole world, all other basilicas you may have heard of are minor league (triple A at best) Basilicas….The Major Basilicas are all in Rome, the other three being St Peter’s, St Paul outside the Walls, and St. Mary Major.

St John Lateran boasts the relics of the heads of Saints Peter and Paul, and the high altar is made of wood, encased now in marble, but it is said St. Peter himself used it to preside at Mass.

In 2017, while in Rome with my lovely wife and daughter, I received the sacrament of reconciliation at St. John Lateran from a jovial Dominican priest in a box. There are marble statues of the 12 apostles along the sides of the Nave…..beautiful…..

North American Martyrs

 Today we have the feast of The North American Martyrs: Isaac Jogues, Renee Goupal, Gabriel Lallement, John de Brebeuf, Anthony Daniel, Noel Chabanel, Charles Garnier, John Le Lande. 

 The Memorial is celebrated on 19 October as a group, they each have a feast day all their own.  Canada celebrates their feast on 29 September.  The Anglicans also venerate them today as if I care about that..

 These are the Jesuit missionaries who were sent to Canada to minister to the “Noble” American Indians of Canada and Upstate New York.   As many of you know, there is a modern round church dedicated to this group of martyrs in Queens NY.   

 Contrary to current popular belief, these folk were martyred, not because they were imposing their beliefs on the indigenous “honorable” people, but rather they were preaching peace…a concept lost on the warlike and politically incorrect Mohawks, who loved to kill, enslave  and generally mess with the peaceful Iroquois and Lenape.    In fact, in the language of the Lenape the Mohawks are called “Opanu Nan”; which is often translated as “angry people.”    Add to that, local changes in rainfall, crop failures, disease, ill luck, and other unpredictable phenomenon and invariably the Jesuit “Black Robes” were blamed by the superstitious Mohawks who noticed the climate changes while taking a break from sharpening their tomahawks.   

 Anyhoo, each of these martyrs have their own horrible stories, specifically Saint Isaac Jogues.  Father Jogues was a Jesuit Priest and a teacher sent to Canada in 1636 to work among the Hurons and Petuns in the area of the Great Lakes.  He taught the Faith to any who would listen.

 Our saint was captured and tortured for 13 months by the Mohawks.   They physically mutilated him most notably by cutting off his thumbs, index and middle fingers, the finger he used to impart blessings, and the source of all the perceived difficulties. .   He was released through the help of some Dutch settlers and sent back home.   The Pope granted Isaac a dispensation to continue to say mass and give blessings with the stumps of his fingers…. He returned to Canada and Upstate NY to continue his work among the Mohawks. He eventually met his fate in Upstate New York on 18 October in 1646 at the business end of a Tomahawk to the head while trying to negotiate peace between the Mohawks and the Iroquois.  His head was displayed on a pole and his body thrown in to the Mohawk River.   His individual  feast day is on the 18 October. 

Luke the Evangelist

Saint Luke the Evangelist

Feast 18 October

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Our saint for today was born to pagan Greek parents in Antioch, but became one of the earliest converts to “The Way”. He was a Physician, and probably traveled as a ship’s doctor.

Legend has that he was also a painter who may have done portraits of Jesus and Mary, but none have ever been correctly or definitively attributed to him; this story led to his patronage of artists.

He met Saint Paul the Apostle at Troas, and evangelized Greece and Rome with him, being there for the shipwreck and other perils of the voyage to Rome, and stayed in Rome for Paul’s two years in prison.

He wrote the Gospel According to Luke, much of which was based on the teachings and writings of Paul, interviews with early Christians, the Gospel of Mark and his own experiences. Some scholars, including Scot Hahn, think he actually interviewed the Blessed Mother to get some of her input into the Gospel. The connection probably went from him traveling with the other evangelist, Mark. Mark also traveled with Paul for a while but they parted sort of unpleasantly and later, reconciled. Mark was also a disciple of Peter. Peter had ongoing communication with his fellow apostle John, who lived with the Blessed Mother until her Assumption. This may be why the most detailed account of the childhood of Jesus is recounted in Luke’s Gospel.

Luke wrote a second volume to his Gospel; a history of the early Church, the Acts of the Apostles. Some passages in Acts are written in the first person, i.e. Luke describing what happened to him. As we know the latter half of Acts focuses almost exclusively on Paul’s work, maybe giving us a skewed view of the early church.

Luke was a gentile, the only gentile author of any of the Gospels. His Gospel is also the only one that was originally written as opposed to being passed on orally. It is written in an educated form of Greek. It the book of Revelation the evangelist is represented an Ox.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac says that after St. Luke’s feast day there is generally a spurt of mild weather called St. Luke’s Little Summer. In olden days, St. Luke’s Day did not receive as much attention in the secular world as St. John’s Day (June 24) and Michaelmas (September 29), so to keep from being forgotten, St. Luke presented us with some golden days to cherish before the coming of winter — or so the story goes. This is different than Indian Summer which occurs around the feast of St. Martin of Tours (11 Nov), correct people if they mistake these two spurts of mild weather…it is one of the seven spiritual works of mercy; educate the ignorant.

Luke died around the year 74, somewhere in Greece some stories say he was martyred, others that he died of natural causes, his relics are in Padua, Italy.

Name Meaning
• bringer of light (= luke)

Patronage
• artists
• bachelors
• bookbinders
• brewers
• butchers
• doctors
• glass makers
• glassworkers
• gold workers
• goldsmiths
• lacemakers
• lace workers
• notaries
• painters
• physicians
• sculptors
• stained glass workers
• surgeons
• unmarried men

Representation
• brush (refers to the tradition that he was a painter)
• man accompanied by a winged ox
• man painting an icon of Blessed Virgin Mary
• ox

Ignatius of Antioch

Saint Ignatius of Antioch
Memorial 17 October

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Our saint for this week was an early convert from paganism to Christianity. He was the second bishop of Antioch it Is said that Saint Peter the Apostle himself appointed Our Saint as the bishop of that particular diocese. Ignatius was also a disciple and student of the Apostle John. Antioch is the first place we were called “Christians”. A long standing legend says he was the infant that Jesus took into his arms in Mark 9 and placed in the midst of the Apostles telling them that whoever accepts a child such as this receives him and the one who sent him. Mark was also a disciple of Peter. This is probably not a reliable legend since he was probably born around the year 50 AD

Anyhoo, during the persecution of Trajan, Ignatius was considered a big troublemaker in a big city in the empire. So the emperor ordered Our Saint to be taken to Rome to be killed by wild animals. Naturally there was no Amtrak back in the Roman Empire so the journey to Rome to meet his end took four months. On the way, Ignatius wrote a series of encouraging letters to the various local churches under his care. In these letters, written about the year 107, he describes the structure of the Church including Bishops, Priests and Deacons…and the nature of the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, the belief in the Eucharist being the true body and blood of Jesus Christ, not just a symbol, goes way back to the earliest times of the Christian Church, I’ve included some of his writings below. I find them interesting, but you know me.

As nice added bonus, he the first writer to coin the term the “Catholic Church”; which is also One, Holy and Apostolic.

He was martyred by being thrown to wild animals in the year 1o7 or thereabouts. His relics are in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

He is patron of people suffering throat diseases, as is St Blaise.

Readings

"Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. . . . They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes...keep aloof from such persons" (St. Ignatius: Letter to the Smyrnaeans; Ch. 6:2-7:1).



"See that ye all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as ye would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast (Mass); but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid." (St. Ignatius: Letter to the Smyrnaeans; Ch 8)