Corpus Christi incidents

Went to the traditional Latin Mass at St. Mary's by the Sea in Huntington Beach today. Huntington Beach is a pretty seaside town in Orange County, much loved by surfers, where everyone's casual even by Californian standards. St. Mary's is a little church just a few blocks inland from the ocean. After Mass we had ourselves a traditional Corpus Christi procession around the block.

The procession looked like this: flower girls in their white First Communion dresses scattering rose petals on the sidewalk, followed by altar boys in cassock and surplice, holding candles, swinging censers, and ringing sanctus bells, followed by four men bearing a canopy under which a priest, with a humeral veil wrapped around his hands, was holding a monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament, followed by two other priests and all the people in their Sunday best, most of the women in veils, all singing Pange Lingua Gloriosa.

The neighborhood we went through looked like this: there were cute little beach cottages, lots of cars parked on the streets, some people walking down to the beach with their flipflops and beach towels, a jogger in a sports bra going by on the other side of the street, what appeared to be a tattoo parlor or maybe a surf shop (I couldn't tell with all the stickers on the window) and a cafe with people sitting at the tables outside.

So you can imagine how the folks stared at us. Some of them had perhaps a touch of defensiveness, as if they feared we might break ranks and start handing out pamphlets or something. "That's just how we roll," I would have said to them, if it were the sort of thing I could say without sounding ridiculous. Anyway, 'twas a fine procession.

Then as I was driving back home on Pacific Coast Highway with the ocean on my left, I saw, right on cue, a pelican flying overhead!

There was a legend in medieval times that a pelican in times of famine would pierce her own breast and feed her blood to her chicks to save them from death. (Probably this idea was suggested by the way a pelican presses its bill on its chest to empty its pouch.) This of course reminded people of Jesus Christ, who was pierced for our transgressions and gives his children his own blood to drink. So pelicans were a popular motif for decorating churches, especially altars. And they especially show up on Corpus Christi, which is the celebration of the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ. My 1962 missal has a picture of a pelican at the beginning of the propers for today. Its caption is "Pie Pellicane, Jesu Domine," which means something like "Jesus Christ, loving pelican." See how confusing that line would be if I hadn't just explained it? :)

C.S. Lewis' early impressions of J.R.R. Tolkien

"A smooth, pale fluent little chap-- no harm in him: only needs a smack or so."

I can't come up with a rejoinder worthy of that. :) So let's just have some more quotes!

Elisabeth Elliot:
"George Macdonald said, 'If you knew what God knows about death you would clap your listless hands', but instead I find old people in North America just buying this whole youth obsession. I think growing older is a wonderful privilege. I want to learn to glorify God in every stage of my life."

Jim Elliot, who was martyred in his 20's:
"God always gives His best to those who leave the choice with Him."
He also wrote this:
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, observing a passing mob in 1848:
"I must follow them for I am their leader."

Henry Ward Beecher:
"Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength."

Rene Descartes:
"Good sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for everyone thinks himself so well supplied with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in every other way do not usually desire more of it than they already have."

John Kenneth Galbraith:
"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel:
"What experience and history teach is this - that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it. We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Edmund Burke :
"Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less there is within, the more there must be without."

J.V. Cunningham:
"This is my curse: Pompous, I pray
That you believe the things you say
And that you live them, day by day."

A Mexican funeral on St. Rita's day

I can't remember much about St. Rita, except that she suffered from a bad marriage and bad sons and managed to redeem both and then became a nun after her husband was killed. Also, something about white bees.

But when I realized it's St. Rita's day today, I had a thrill of nostalgia, because of my very vivid memory of where I was on this day last year. I was part of a large group from St. Peter Chanel on a pilgrimage in Mexico. I can't convey to you how thrilling that trip was for me as a very new Catholic-- seeing the very old Catholic shrines that were built at such cost by generations past, seeing the open expressions of piety of so many Mexicans in the present, standing in the places where amazing miracles had occurred, and feeling intimately connected to a heritage I'd had no part in before... so forget it, I'll just tell you the story.

It was Tuesday, May 22, 2007, and we were visiting a small and surprisingly mosque-like church not far from Mexico City. The neighborhood was very poor and crime-ridden even by Mexican standards, but the church was a little oasis of calm, neat and well-kept, with paintings inside of the Virgin Mary's appearance to Juan Bernardino in 1531. It was the site of the fifth apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

There was a Mass scheduled to start soon, and a number of locals had gathered, but we pilgrims far outnumbered them and filled the pews. Our own chaplain, Fr. Fernando, a native Columbian who'd come with us from St. Peter Chanel, disappeared to speak to the Mexican priest about concelebrating the Mass. (That was one of the astonishing things to me about touring in Mexico-- bring your own priest and as long as he has a letter from his bishop declaring his good standing they'll let him say Mass practically anywhere, even in ancient and incredibly valuable churches that'd be roped off and hermetically sealed if they were located in America. I'm told you can do the same in Rome, maybe not in the Sistine Chapel, but in lots of other chapels. Truly a catholic Church.)

I was in the front row because that's where the holy people sit. Mass began, we all stood up, and in came Fr. Fernando and the Mexican priest, who processed up the aisle while we sang a hymn. They reached the altar and bowed to kiss it, and about then I became aware of a large crowd of people coming in late. They walked right up to the front and that was when I saw that they were... eight pallbearers carrying a coffin!

What the HECK? thought I. Are we crashing someone's FUNERAL? I looked at Fr. Fernando; he was waiting with folded hands as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The pallbearers set the coffin down in the aisle right next to me; that's what I get for sitting in front! I felt awful about being dressed in blue jeans until I noticed that they were too.

It was an ordinary Mass, with the readings for that day, and then the Mexican priest stepped forward to deliver what sounded like a funeral homily in Spanish. When he sat down, Fr. Fernando rose and addressed a few words himself to the mourners. Then he told us in English that the other priest had spoken of Juan Bernardino and of being close to Mary in sickness and in death. Fr. Fernando went on calmly to deliver a short homily of his own about St. Rita, since it was her day, and that was where I learned the few facts I remember about her. I was glad the mourners probably knew no more English than I knew Spanish; seemed a bit odd to be hearing a normal homily with the body right there!

We went on to the liturgy of the Eucharist, kneeling on the hard tile floor. Afterwards the Mexican priest came down to sprinkle the coffin with holy water, and the mourners walked slowly around it, gazing through its glass window, at least one woman sobbing loudly. The pallbearers carried the coffin away. Once the locals were safely gone I was able to look at a little sign they'd set up and discovered that the deceased was a man in his seventies who had died only yesterday.

I joined the other pilgrims under a tree outside and when Fr. Fernando arrived we snowed him under with questions. With laughter in his voice he related the tale. He and the Mexican priest had been in the sacristy, vesting for Mass, when they were interrupted by a man who hurriedly asked, "Can you do a funeral Mass, Padre? We're bringing the body up right now." It was less than ten minutes before Mass was to start, but the Mexican priest adjusted his homily and the whole thing came off with remarkably little fuss (or expense, I'll bet.) "That is very Mexican!" laughed Fr. Fernando, "Everything is casual and last minute!"

So, happy St. Rita's day, wherever you are!

Pictures: The outside of the church, the inside of the church before the Mass started, and a copy of the painting over the church's altar.

What will I do to avoid working on what I should be working on for just a little while longer?

I'll pull out ten eyebrow hairs and four eyelashes, compare their color, take a blurry photograph, and post them on my blog.

Wow, I'd better post again pretty soon to make sure this one doesn't stay at the top...

I guess I'm a lesser woman

I just ran across this quote from Elisabeth Elliot's Quest for Love:

I know a woman who, when asked for a date, told the man quite candidly that since she had reached thirty she was no longer in the dating scene but was ready for marriage. The man proposed shortly thereafter. A lesser man would have been scared off, which is probably just as well.

I remember when I first read that story. I was a sophomore in college, and I thought it was pretty spunky of the woman to jump the gun. Wise, too, since she'd reached such an ancient age. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I'm going to be thirty in a few weeks and I don't feel that way any more. :)