St. Lucy’s Day

I’m getting a little tired of all these saints, especially the female ones who always seem to have taken a vow of virginity, like the girls with those current-day purity rings, which seem really creepy to me (putting your father in charge of your virginity?); who are so difficult to murder they often end up with their heads cut off; whose headless corpses are then dug up and cut up and transported all over the place; and whose body parts then not only don’t decompose but have some sort of angelic odor, whatever that is, about them.

I’ve written about so many saints because I like the way the dates of these grisly deaths are commemorated – the dates feel marked, set in place. St. Lucy’s Day, though, doesn’t mark the day she was surrounded with piles of wood and set on fire, but then didn’t die after all so they had to cut her head off with a sword. Instead they (and who they is, I have no idea) picked a day when the light starts to come back, because of the fire bit and also her name, from the Latin lucere. But when Pope Gregory got hold of the calendar and took out all those days, her date stopped meaning anything at all.

But you can pretend, Old-Style-Calendar-like, that today is the solstice, dress your youngest daughter up in white (and if she’s wearing a purity ring, so much the better), give her some candles, and if you’re lucky she’ll bring you some lussekatter (Lucy cat) pastries, though how the cats got in there I can’t tell you.

St. Barbara and the Chumash Indians

The Chumash Indians believed the stars in the Milky Way were human souls on their way to a heavenly paradise in the western sky. In this paradise the souls would be cleansed, and then return to the womb of a woman in their tribe. The brightest stars in the sky were the gods.

St. Barbara was the daughter of a rich man who shut her in a tower to protect her from the outside world. Somehow she became converted to Christianity, and escaped through a crack in the tower her prayers had created. Her father captured her and had her tortured, but she miraculously didn’t die so he cut her head off. He was then struck by lightning and died.

The daughter became one of those many martyred saints, and on the eve of her feast day the explorer Sebastian Vizcaino found himself saved from a violent storm, so he named the Santa Barbara Mission in honor of her.

The Santa Barbara Mission was established so that the indigenous Chumash Indians would believe in all those tortured and beheaded saints instead of in the stars.

Catherine Labourés miraculous medal

If you look at my word cloud, you might be forgiven for thinking I’m an expert on George W. Bush, and so if you arrived at my site as someone did the other day with the query “What time did George W. Bush go to bed,” you might actually find the answer, or at least my projection, from my life onto his.

You might also believe I’m an expert on Catholic feast days, in which case you would have been sorely disappointed, as one searcher surely was, to arrive at Celebrating Time yesterday asking about “feast day November 27” and finding, instead, a disquisition on the iphone.

She, poor soul (sorry to be sexist here, but I am assuming it’s a she), tried again today with “catholic feast days 28 november,” so now I feel obligated to oblige, and, happily, one stone can kill both of these birds.

There aren’t too many saints who get two feast days, which puts Catherine Labouré in the august company of Joseph and John the Baptist. It’s her day today, even though she wasn’t martyred or beheaded and didn’t die or be born on this day. In fact, she didn’t do much of anything on November 28 except maybe rest up from her vision of November 27, 1830, when the Virgin Mary appeared and gave her all the specifications for a miraculous medal. “Have a medal struck according to this model,” Mary said. “Those who wear it, when it is blessed, will receive great graces, especially if they wear it around their necks. There will be graces in abundance for all who wear it with confidence.”

November 27 thus became the only Catholic feast day for a medal.

Since Catherine was only a postulant nun, she had to be secretly investigated by the Archbishop of Paris, but finally he determined the vision was real, the medal was struck, and all kinds of miracles resulted, including the conversion of a Jewish banker; but the real proof is that Catherine’s body, after she died, was “uncorrupt,” as they say, and you can still see it in Paris at La Chapelle Notre Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse; whereas, most likely, that Archbishop’s body is long gone.

St. Catherine’s Day

Saints are undoubtedly very much like George W. Bush in that they probably don’t pay much attention to polls. If they did, however, St. Catherine of Alexandria would find herself way up in the pantheon. They call her one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, since she’s so helpful.

If you need help making a wheel, you might call on her, since she’s the patron saint of wheelwrights, but then again, if you like the wheel you’re making, you might want to think twice, since they started calling her St. Catherine of the Wheel when the wheel she was supposed to be tortured on disappeared when she touched it.

But what she’s most known for is helping girls find husbands, which is also somewhat strange because she reportedly told her parents she would only marry someone whose “beauty was more radiant than the shining of the sun, [whose] wisdom governed all creation, [whose] riches were spread throughout all the world” (which sounds like something someone wanting to be a saint, not a wife, would say).

And so on this day in France, they pray to her for husbands, in such a pathetic little prayer I’ll just leave it un-translated.

Sainte Catherine, soyez bonne
Nous n’avons plus d’espoir
qu’en vous
Vous êtes notre patronne
Ayez pitié de nous
Nous vous implorons à genoux
Aidez-nous à nous marier
Pitié, donnez-nous un époux
Car nous brûlons d’aimer
Daignez écouter la prière
De nos cœurs fortement épris
Oh, vous qui êtes notre mère
Donnez-nous un mari

John the Baptist, Michael Jackson, and Ted Kennedy

On the day they celebrate (celebrate?) John the Baptist’s execution, where his cut-off head was delivered to Salome by the stepfather she seduced with a dance; and on the day Michael Jackson, who apparently had a hard time sleeping, was born; Ted Kennedy lies surrounded by his family and nearly all the power of America, including George W. Bush with an alarmingly red nose.

It would certainly be comforting to be able to believe that all these people: John the Baptist, Michael Jackson, Ted Kennedy, and even Salome, are all now mingling, albeit somewhat uncomfortably, up there in heaven.

The Assumption

Here’s a story I’d never heard before, despite all my years of Roman Catholic indoctrination. Shortly after Jesus died, St. Thomas was preaching in India when he found himself suddenly swept up in a swirling cloud. He ended up hovering just above Mary’s tomb (like Dr. Sam Parnia’s dead people in the OR), and saw her body rising up out of it. When he asked her where she was going, she, believe it or not, threw her girdle at him! (This is actually less salacious than it sounds, because a girdle in those days meant a belt-like cloth around the waist. And if you’re as doubting as Thomas was, you can actually see this green piece of cloth if you happen to be in Florence today, but you have to go to mass at the Duomo, where it’s only displayed five times a year.)

Anyway, her whole body rose up into heaven. Thomas landed near some other apostles and they all went into Mary’s tomb where, for some strange reason, they decided to smell the clothes she’d left behind (does this mean she was naked except for the girdle?), which had a wonderful sweet smell, the “odor of sanctity.”

And one more strange element for a very odd story: it’s also called the Feast of the Dormition, or the Feast of the Falling Asleep of the All Holy Mother of God.

Jesus died, but got resurrected, but for some reason they didn’t want to say Mary died. But if she didn’t die, but only fell asleep, what was she doing in a tomb?

Feast of St. Martha

Lazarus had been dead in his tomb for four days, but when Jesus called him he walked out, alive. Maybe he was just sleeping in there, like those seven Ephesians, but the gospel of John gives us the very interesting detail that Martha, his sister, was worried he would smell.

A couple days later, Martha served Lazarus and Jesus supper, and now she’s in the fortunate position of being the patron saint of servants and cooks.

But if Lazarus died, and was brought back to life, wouldn’t you expect him to be doing something less ordinary than eating supper (even if it was with Jesus)? And why is she, not he, the saint?

Feast of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus

They look so sweet there, crowded into that little cave, while the Roman emperor’s minions are sealing it up. They were supposed to go up the mountain and stop believing in Jesus; instead they fell asleep. When the cave was unsealed, 300 years later, they were alive. It was a miracle, they told a bishop, but they didn’t get to enjoy it (or the fact that the emperors now, thanks to Constantine, made everyone believe in Jesus) because, soon after they woke up, they died.

What’s even stranger about this story is that it also appears in the Koran, which is quite specific about it: there were seven men and a dog, and, while they were asleep, their calendar was changed from solar to lunar, so they were really asleep, it helpfully points out, for 309 (lunar) years.

Feast of the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome

If you ever find yourself bored at an anti-abortion rally you can look quite pious by burying yourself in a copy of Butler’s Lives of the Saints. Today, you’d be able to read about all the Christians Nero blamed for the great Rome fire, who were thrown to dogs, or crucified, or made into human torches to light his garden party.

Just try not to stand under one of those Choose Life signs.

The Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul

You can always tell when the Planned Parenthood clinic in Media is open by the groups of grim-faced people clustered outside holding grisly signs. It’s quite a scene, what with all the muttering, praying people; the clinic escorts; and a sad little statue of the Virgin Mary perched exemplarily on the sidewalk.

This clinic doesn’t even do abortions; so, righteous souls, what exactly is your beef?

And tell me this: why does your pro-life church mark saints’ days of death, instead of birth? Case in point: today, celebrating the crucifixion (head down) of St. Peter, and the beheading (with a sword) of St. Paul.