ST.
PIUS V
Psalm 2, verse 11
Serve the Lord with FEAR;
exult with trembling, accept correction lest he become angry, and you
perish along the way when his anger suddenly blazes up. Blessed are all who
take refuge in him!
To
fully understand this verse, we must know who the writer is referring to. In verse 10 the writer states “Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned,
O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear.
Hello…..Nancy-Joe-Francis and Supreme
court personalities!!!!
Our
God is a just God and to those who have been given much; much is required.
Kings (and the 1 percenters) to be wise must humble themselves. It is easier
for a camel to go through the eye of the needle then for a rich man to get into
heaven. The
"Eye of the Needle" has been claimed to be a gate in Jerusalem, which
opened after the main gate was closed at night. A camel could only pass through
this smaller gate if it was stooped and had its baggage removed.[1]
I also with
this verse picture Mary Magdalene. Mary who by many accounts was a very rich
woman financed our Lord’s ministry. We see in this verse the shadowing of her
kissing of His feet and at the same time the hardening of Judas’ heart: who on
seeing her act of love and wanting riches refused to humble himself and died in
his pride.
Does Christ desire us to serve with Fear and trembling?
I
noticed the other day that my two dogs when I come in are so excited about
seeing me that they tremble with excitement. I think our God wants our hearts
and our desires. I think we should have the humble fear that a loved child has
for his or her parents, full of love and respect and that we should be excited
too. So, let us approach each day with the kind of excitement that makes us
tremble ready to do the will of God?
St. Pius V and Lepanto, 1571: The
Battle that Saved Europe[2]
The clash of civilizations is as old as history, and equally as old is the blindness of those who wish such clashes away; but they are the hinges, the turning points of history. In the latter half of the 16th century, Muslim war drums sounded, and the mufti of the Ottoman sultan proclaimed jihad, but only the pope fully appreciated the threat. As Brandon Rogers notes in the Ignatius Press edition of G. K. Chesterton's poem "Lepanto": Pope Pius V "understood the tremendous importance of resisting the aggressive expansion of the Turks better than any of his contemporaries appear to have. He understood that the real battle being fought was spiritual; a clash of creeds was at hand, and the stakes were the very existence of the Christian West." But then, as now, the unity of Christendom was shattered; and in the aftermath of the Protestant revolt, Islam saw its opportunity.
The Ottoman Empire, the seat of Islamic power, looked to
control the Mediterranean. Corsairs raided from North Africa; the Sultan's
massive fleet anchored the eastern Mediterranean; and Islamic armies ranged
along the coasts of Africa, the Middle and Near East, and pressed against the
Adriatic; Muslim armies threatened the Habsburg Empire through the Balkans. The
Ottoman Turks yearned to bring all Europe within the dar al-Islam, the
"House of Submission" — submissive to the sharia law. Europe, as the
land of the infidels, was the dar al-Harb, the "House of War." But
the House of War was a house divided against itself. The Habsburg Empire was
Europe's bulwark against Islamic jihad, but its timbers were being eaten away
by the Protestants who diverted Catholic armies and even cheered on the
Mussulmen, whom they saw as fellow enemies of the pope in Rome. In 1568, the
emperor Maximilian, of the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire, had agreed to a
peace treaty with the Turk; and the Danube was reasonably, temporarily, quiet.
In Spain, the other great pillar of the Habsburg Empire was Philip II. And for
him, things were not quiet at all. We think of Philip II as dark and brooding,
and so he was — to the degree that it is surprising to remember that he was
blue-eyed and fair-haired. But the lasting image, especially to those of
English (even Catholic English) blood, is Chesterton's sketch; as King Philip is
in his "closet with the Fleece about his neck":
The
walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin, and little dwarfs
creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in . . . And his face is as a fungus of
a leprous white and grey Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from
the day . . .
As a ruler, Philip was harsh, saturnine, and austere. He
embodied a scrupulousness that went beyond a personal failing to become a
public vice, where there was no room for charity and far too much room for plotting’s
and calculations, which, though they always had the protection of the Faith as
their goal, were too admixed with lesser, baser metals than the gold of the
monstrance. Philip's knights had ranged into the New World and were carving out
a vast empire, its extent virtually beyond imagining, whence came gold and
other treasures. That, Philip knew, was the future. But to his immediate north
was the menace.
Europe Divided
Philip was no friend of the Mohammedan, and the Mussulmen
remained a persistent threat to Spain's possession of Naples and Sicily.
Spanish vessels clashed throughout the Mediterranean with Barbary corsairs. At
that very moment, Spanish infantry were suppressing the Morisco revolt of
apparently unconverted Moors. But Philip trusted that Spain was well equipped
to defeat the Mussulmen. That was old hat. But Protestantism was something
relatively new. It was treason and heresy. And, though Philip would not have
been so eloquent, it was worse:
The
North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes, And dead is all the
innocence of anger and surprise, And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow
dusty room, And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom, And
Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee . . .
Where the Austrian Habsburgs hoped against hope for conciliation
with their own violent, Teutonic Protestants, Philip II trusted to his renowned
Spanish infantry. They had the answer that Protestantism deserved. The pope had
no sympathy for Protestants either, but for him, as for previous popes, Islam
remained the real threat. The pope felt he had many urgent tasks to attend to,
but the vital one was confronting the Islamic challenge. Pope Pius V, like
Philip, was no exemplar of rubicund, jovial Christianity such as the Italians
preferred. He thought the Church had seen too much of that, with the
concomitant slackness in Renaissance morals and an excessive generosity to
Protestant error. He had never known the high life. He was a former shepherd,
an ascetic, a Dominican, and an inquisitor. Though much of a mind with Philip,
he had a finer balanced spiritual core that kept him from Philip's failings.
As a pope, he was a reformer, and brought a monastic purity
to the organization and administration of the Church, to a review of the
religious orders, to educating the faithful, to evangelizing, and to caring for
the poor (which he did personally). If Christendom was split asunder — with
even Philip disputing papal control of the Church in Spain — the pope
nevertheless had the spiritual and temporal authority, the presence of a future
saint, to assemble a Holy League, a fighting force that included Catholic
knights not only from the papal states and the Knights of Malta, but from
Italy, Germany, and Spain; and even from England, Scotland, and Scandinavia,
Catholics and freebooters, gentleman adventurers and convicts condemned to row
the galleys. France, la belle France, would be present in the Knights,
but not as a party itself. The great period of the fleur de lis had
passed away with the end of the Crusader kingdoms. Now the king of France could
support no venture in league with the Habsburgs, whose dominions surrounded
him. Worse, he was quite willing to cut deals with the Mohammedans in order to
turn Muslim corsairs against Genoese and Spaniards and away from Frenchmen
(unless they were Knights of Malta, where Frenchmen of the old school continued
to thrive). So, the French king, from the line of Valois, Charles IX, pleaded
exhaustion from having to fight the Huguenots. Even less willing to cooperate
with the pope was Protestant England, whose Virgin Queen was establishing a
cult around herself and a church subordinate to her will.
The
sad result of French realpolitik and English apostasy was that the sons of
Richard Coeur-de-Lion sat this one out: And the Pope has cast his arms abroad
for agony and loss, And called the kings
of Christendom for swords about the Cross. The cold queen of England is looking
in the glass; The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass . . .
A Rude Awakening for Venice
Others, who might also occasionally yawn at Mass,
nevertheless were enthusiasts for a crusade against the Turk — this was most
especially true of the merchant Republic of Venice. It is one of the many
commonly accepted myths of history that Protestants invented capitalism, but
Venice is proof that Catholic states were exercising their capitalist muscles
centuries before Luther burped into his tankard or Calvin had his first glint
of his predestined salvation and others' predestined damnation.
The Venetians were prime exponents of the capitalist art.
They were, in fact, something like the entrepreneurs of modern Hong Kong, to
the extent that their city was built in a lagoon, the buildings actually
resting on logs; and the Venetians enjoyed great economic success despite having
no natural resources to speak of, save the sea. No one knows exactly when
Venice was founded, but it was during the Roman Empire, perhaps in the fifth
century. By the early Middle Ages, it was an established city-state and had
carved out a commercial and territorial empire — the territory necessary to
protect and extend Venetian commerce. As with all men of commerce, the
Venetians' preferred mode of interaction was trade: They wanted to make money,
not war.
But they realized that, as the similarly minded Thomas
Jefferson realized half a millennium later, "Our commerce on the ocean . .
. must be paid for by frequent
war." Still, given the choice, just as Churchill thought "to jaw-jaw
is always better than to war-war," the Venetians thought ka-ching—ka-ching
was better than war-war. As such, crusades called by the pope merely for the
sake of repelling the Mussulmen had no appeal to them. The Mohammedan was a
customer, after all — and the customer is always (at least up to the point of
heresy) publicly right, even if the merchant secretly despises him.
The Venetians, however, had been forced to come to some
sober conclusions about Islamic aggression in the eastern Mediterranean. In
1565, the Ottomans had laid siege to the island of Malta, which was defended by
the Knights Hospitallers (also known as the Knights of St. John; or, given
their new home, the Knights of Malta). For four months the gallant Knights
threw back the besieging Turks, inflicting massive losses on the enemy, who
finally called it quits after the Knights were reinforced by Spain. The
Ottomans hated the Knights, but reckoned that Venetian-held Cyprus was easier
pickings, and five years later it was Cyprus that was besieged.
Now Venice, which had ignored previous papal calls to
defend the Mediterranean against Mohammedan raiders, was itself in the firing
line. As was good business practice, the Venetians were not caught unprepared.
Their insurance policy was the Venetian Arsenal, which built and held the
merchant republic's mighty naval forces. The arsenal, however, had caught fire
in late 1569; and in February 1570 the Ottoman mufti Ebn Said, on behalf of
Sultan Selim II, declared a jihad against the Christians on Cyprus. Selim was
known as "the Sot" for his rather un-Islamic drinking habits. He also
had the distinction of having blond hair. Despite his heavy drinking, he, like
Philip II, was not a blond who had more fun. With his harem, free-flowing
alcohol, and access to all the pleasures that the devout expected only to find
in paradise, he tramped his palace in depression and rage against the infidel
and Western decadence. While no soldier or sailor himself, he lent his full
support to every corsair who would attack Western shipping, to every expansion
of the Ottoman navy, and to the siege of Cyprus.
The Muslim Onslaught
The Turks came on with 70,000 men, including their shock
troops, the praetorian guard of the sultan, the Janissaries — Christian youths
taken as taxation from their families, trained up in the art of war, converted
to Islam, and given the power of the sword and the possibility of advancement.
The Catholic defenders of Cyprus were frightfully outnumbered — by about 7 to 1
— but then again, the Knights of Malta had faced even stiffer odds. The two key
points in Cyprus were Nicosia and Famagusta. The city of Nicosia held out for
nearly seven weeks.
Finally, reduced to 500 soldiers, it surrendered, expecting
the civilians to be spared, even as the Christian troops were enslaved.
Instead, the Muslim attackers butchered every Christian they could find —
20,000 victims, murdered regardless of rank, sex, or age, save perhaps for
1,000 women and children who would be sold as slaves.
The Mussulmen knew something about commerce, too, and those
with an eye for harem-flesh tried to spare the most valuable Europeans. That
left the former Crusader fortress of Famagusta as the only defensible point on
the island. Inspired by the Turks' display of severed Venetian heads from
Nicosia, the Christian soldiers put up a stiff defense and were at one point
resupplied by gallant Venetian sailors. But the man most devoted to the relief
of Famagusta was Pope Pius V. It was his incessant diplomacy that finally
brought together the forces of the papal states, the Knights of Malta, Venice,
its smaller rival Genoa, the Savoyards, and, most important, Spain and its
possessions Naples and Sicily to form the Holy
League.
The pope did not punish Venice for its failure to support previous papal calls to combat. He was above such pettiness. He only wanted to restore Christendom. He knew, however, that there were national and personal rivalries and hatreds aplenty within his League, and it would take enormous tact to hold the League together and lead it to victory against the Turk and to the relief of Cyprus. For the brave defenders of Famagusta, it was too late. In August 1571, after ten months of resistance, the Venetian commander Marco Antonio Bragadino gave in to civilian pressure and opened negotiations with the Turks. Terms were agreed: The garrison would be exiled, the people spared. The troops were disarmed and boarded transports — and then they and their commanders were slaughtered. But for Marco Antonio, the Mohammedans reserved a special torture. He was not killed immediately. Instead, his nose and ears were severed, and, as T. C. F. Hopkins has it in Confrontation at Lepanto:
He was pilloried in Famagusta and
dragged around the Ottoman camp in nothing but a loincloth and a donkey's
saddle and made to kiss the ground in front of Lala Mustapha's tent. The
Ottoman soldiers were encouraged to throw garbage and excrement on him, and to
mock his misery, and to pull hairs from his beard . . . Lala Mustapha himself
came out to spit on the Venetian and to empty his chamber pot over the old
man's head . . . And even that was not the end of it. Marco Antonio — still,
for the moment, alive — was flayed, skinned like a trophy, and then his corpse
was stuffed and sent to the sultan, who had the prize stored in a warehouse of
other human trophies — a slave prison.
Don Juan Takes to the Sea
But for this outrage, the pope had an answer, and he had
found the man to deliver it. Among all the courageous, experienced, jostling
commanders in his unruly Holy League, he chose a handsome 24-year-old. The
young man, raised on tales of chivalry, was a student of war and an experienced
commander, with a track record of victory against the Moriscos. He was also the
bastard son of the late, great Charles V, which gave him good bloodlines as
bastards go. He was Don Juan of Austria. Don Juan was also the half-brother of
Philip II, who treated him with the cold, brooding calculation one might
expect, and an apparent jealousy that one might not. Philip was pleased that
Don Juan's elevation affirmed Spain's leading role in the Holy League. But he
did everything he could to tie Don Juan's authority to his other Spanish
commanders and thus to himself. When the decks were readied for action,
however, such constraints had of necessity fallen away, and Don Juan the swashbuckler
took full command.
Where,
risen from a doubtful seat and half-attainted stall, The last knight of Europe
takes weapons from the wall, The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird
has sung, That once went singing southward when all the world was young, In
that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, Comes up along a winding road the
noise of the Crusade.
His first victory was keeping the Venetians, the Genoese,
and the Spaniards from killing each other. His second was more important:
Against urgings of caution from some of his commanders — most especially the
Genoese Admiral Giovanni Andrea Doria — Don Juan of Austria pressed his fleet
forward to the attack. Andrea Doria had reason to fear. If defeating the
Turkish fleet required the united naval force of Christendom, what chance had
this cobbled-together coalition of fractious rivals commanded by a 24-year-old
who, though he had fought corsairs, had sought instruction in commanding so
huge a fleet from Don Garcia de Toledo? Don Garcia had once been renowned as a
tough old naval warrior, but having run afoul of Philip II, he had been forced
into retirement, his reputation blackened. Don Juan, however, trusted him, and
believed his advice would be unsullied by Spanish politicking. And Don Juan, fortunately,
was right, for in the words of Jack Beeching in The Galleys at Lepanto, he
"had the fate of the civilized world placed in his hands."
The Battle Begins
The Turks had an estimated 328 ships, of which 208 were
galleys, the rest being smaller supporting craft. Aboard them were nearly
77,000 men, including 10,000 Janissaries, but also 50,000 oarsmen, many of them
Christian slaves. At Don Juan's command were 206 galleys, along with 40,000
oarsmen and sailors, and more than 28,000 soldiers, knights, and gentleman
adventurers. He also had the blessings of the pope and the papal banner; the
ministrations of Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Capuchins who
accompanied the fleet, the prayers of the faithful; and the rosaries that were
pressed into the hands of every Christian oarsman. The Catholic armada had been
spotted by Muslim spy ships (painted entirely black so that they cruised
through the night unnoticed). They reported that the Christians would be no
match for the Ottoman fleet.
On October 7, 1571, Don Juan's lookouts raised the alarm as
the Christian ships entered the Gulf of Patras. The Ottomans, from their naval
base at Lepanto in the adjacent Gulf of Corinth, had formed a battle line, its
front arrayed in three "battles," as were the Christians (though the
battle had started before Andrea Doria, commanding the Catholic right flank,
could bring his ships fully in line). Ahead of Don Juan's three battles was a
wedge of galleasses — slower, less maneuverable gunships that made up for their
lack of mobility with their unrivaled firepower. The battle was met, the
galleasses drawing first blood, splintering Turkish decks and Turkish men.
But the Ottomans sailed around them, the goal, to grapple
with the Catholic ships and turn the battle into a floating melee of Muslim
scimitars, bows, and muskets against Catholic swords, pikes, and arquebuses.
Cannons erupted, arrows rained on the Christians, and arquebuses spat back
balls of lead. When the ships closed, grappling hooks threw them together; the
Christians hurled nets to repel boarders and followed up with gunfire. Still,
the fighting closed to hand-to-hand aboard decks. Catholics turned swivel guns
on the enemy ships, and the Turkish bowmen fired dark volleys of arrows that
claimed the life of Agostini Barbarigo, commander of the Catholic left wing,
whose eye was pierced when he raised his visor to issue orders.
Ottoman ships tried to turn the left flank of the Christian
line, and while they appeared to succeed, the Catholic ships responded — amid a
blinding hail of cannon blasts, arrows, grenades, and gunfire — in pinning the
Muslim ships against Scropha Point. There, against the shoals, the Muslim
vessels were trapped — and, at first, the Mohammedans fought with the ferocity
of trapped animals. But more Catholic ships joined the battle, and what had
been the right of the Ottoman line began to splinter, the Christian slaves on the
Ottoman ships revolted, and Ottoman captains and crews, sensing disaster,
beached their ships, hoping to escape to shore.
By early afternoon, the Catholic left had emerged
victorious. At the head of the Catholic center was Don Juan aboard the flagship
Real. For him, and for the Muslim commander Ali Pasha, the battle was a
joust. They fired shots to announce their presence one to the other, and then
drove to the clash, using their galleys as steeds. The ships crashed together,
Don Juan in the lead, and everywhere the line erupted with explosions of
cannons, bombs, gunfire, and the clash of swords and battle axes, while
silent-flying deadly arrows thudded into timber and men. It appeared that in
this violent shipyard scrum, Don Juan's ship and men were getting the worst of
it — despite the handsome hero's pet monkey hurling Ottoman grenades back at
the enemy — until Marco Antonio Colonna, commander of the papal galleys, rammed
his own flagship into Ali Pasha's.
The surging Catholic forces, in what had become an infantry
battle fought across ships' decks, swept the Muslims aside. Ali Pasha himself
was killed and beheaded, and when Don Juan waved away the present of the
severed head, it was tossed overboard. The Holy League's banner was raised
aloft the captured Ottoman flagship, and Ali Pasha's banner — the sultan's own
undefeated standard made of green silk and with the prophet's name threaded
through it 28,900 times in gold — was Don Juan's. On the right flank, Andrea
Doria was engaged in a battle of maneuver that was anti-climactic to the
battles on the Catholic left and center, save for the fact that in being drawn
away from guarding the center battle's right flank, he allowed the Turks to
pour through the gap. Some Catholic ships — without orders — pulled out of
Andrea Doria's battle to plug the gap. But they were too few, and were forced
to such desperate heroics as firing their own powder magazines.
The Muslim lunge was then directed at the flagship of the
Knights of Malta, who, like so many of their brave fellows before, fought to
the death against overwhelming odds. (There were, perhaps, six survivors. The
sources vary; six is a high guess. The one certain survivor was the Knights'
commander, Pietro Giustiniani, though five times wounded by arrows and twice by
scimitars.) Andrea Doria, having hardly distinguished himself thus far, wheeled
around and chased away the remaining Ottoman raiders who were commanded by
Uluch Ali Pasha, an Italian turned Barbary corsair. Uluch Ali had his prize —
the Knights of Malta's banner — and he knew how to skedaddle when necessary. A
realist, he knew the bigger battle was lost.
Victory at Lepanto
Not only was the battle lost for the Turk, but so were 170
of his galleys and 33,000 men killed, wounded, or captured, as well as 12,000
liberated Christian slaves. Lost was a generation of experienced Ottoman bowmen
and seamen; and though a mighty fleet could, and indeed was, rebuilt, and
though the sultan was committed to renewing the jihad by sea — or if not by
sea, then by land — the threat of the Ottoman Turks dominating the
Mediterranean was finished.
Domino Gloria! Don John of
Austria Has set his people free!
Catholic losses were 7,500 dead — though many of these were
knights and noblemen — and another 22,000 wounded (including Miguel de
Cervantes). Pope Pius V, who had commanded the faithful to pray the rosary for
victory, was convinced that it was prayer that had turned the tide. The Battle
of Lepanto became the feast day of Our Lady of Victory, later of Our Lady of the
Rosary. Don Juan, a hero to the last, gave his portion of the captured booty to
the Catholic wounded who had not been able to pillage for themselves, and
redoubled his generosity by adding to their treasure the 30,000 ducats awarded
him by the city of Messina. He also made gifts of two captured banners: The
imperial Ottoman banner went to the pope; the fabulous green silk banner went
to Philip II, along with his after-action report. He gave credit to everyone
else and little to himself, though he had been wounded in the hand-to-hand
fighting. Don Juan was everything a parfait gentil knight should be —
and, alas, as is often the case of the good and noble, died young, felled by
fever; a romantic hero, a devoted and faithful Catholic and soldier (but one appalled
at his half-brother's brutality in the Netherlands), in love with the charming
Marguerite de Valois, whose blood was royal but whose character was far less
admirable than his own. Still, Don Juan showed that chivalry could indeed live
and breathe, even in the thinner air of a Europe no longer unified by the
Catholic ideals that gave birth to chivalry.
And so:
Cervantes
on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath…Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)And he sees
across a weary land a straggling road in Spain, Up which a lean and foolish
knight forever rides in vain, And he smiles, but not a Sultans smile, and settles
back the blade . . .(But Don John of
Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
Today, Christendom is even more divided, and certainly more
deracinated and less confident, than it was in Don Juan's time, but there are
still fighting men, the valiant core of that civilization, who even now patrol
the dusty villages of Afghanistan and the dirty streets of Mesopotamia. The enemy
smiles as "suicide bombers" smile, but our fighting men — some
holding rosaries (the very same as I have, made by a Marine Corps mom) — smile
with thoughts of sweethearts, wives, and children; of football and cold beers
by warm fires; and of Christmas. They are the inheritors of the men who saved
Europe at Lepanto; and they are the men who will, with God's grace, save the
West again. So, in honor of Don Juan, of Lepanto, of who we are as Catholics,
let us pray for them, for their safety and for their victory. St. George, St.
Michael, Our Lady, pray for them — and for us.
Arbor Day[3]
Arbor
Day is a celebration of trees and their importance to providing shelter,
stabilization for the ground, and beauty to the beholder. While Arbor Day is a
US holiday, several other countries have adopted similar observances including
Japan, Australia, Korea and Yugoslavia. In 1970, President Richard Nixon
declared Arbor Day a federal holiday and it is observed the last Friday in
April each year.
Arbor
Day Facts & Quotes
·
The
first Arbor Day was celebrated April 10, 1872 in the State of Nebraska. More
than 1 million trees were planted in Nebraska as they celebrated the first
Arbor Day.
·
A
single tree can absorb as much as 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year and can
sequester 1 ton of carbon dioxide by the time it reaches 40 years old.
·
Newspaper
editor, Julius Sterling Morton began Arbor Day to help bring attention to the
importance of trees.
·
Since
the Yellowstone Fires of 1988, the Arbor Day Foundation has partnered with the
US Forest Service. Through this partnership, over 25 million Arbor Day
Foundation trees have been planted.
·
The
best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.
–Proverb
Arbor
Day Top Events and Things to Do
·
Plant
a tree.
·
Visit
a nursery and consider buying some plants.
·
Organize
a neighborhood beautification project.
·
Hold
a paper drive. Use the recycling proceeds to purchase a special tree.
Walpugisnacht[4]
The last day of April was a druidic feast marking the beginning of summer and revels of witches. The evening of St. Walburga's feast day is known as Walpurgisnacht. Though the saint had no connection with this festival, her name became associated with witchcraft and country superstitions because of the date. Feast Day Cookbook gives some explanations in these crossovers and a recipe for Maibowle. St. Walburga's feast is no longer on the General Roman Calendar.
The last day of April was
first celebrated as a druidic feast of some importance in honor of spring's
return, and bonfires were lighted to frighten away the spirits of darkness
which might prevent the arrival of the joyous goddess of the springtide. For
Christians it became the feast of Saint Walburga, the daughter of a Saxon king
of the eighth century, who went to Germany at the call of her uncle, Saint
Boniface, to aid in the work of evangelizing the Germanic tribes and remained
to found and rule monasteries and convents. The Abbess of Heidenheim was given
great veneration in the Low Countries and Germany during her lifetime and was
honored after her death for her learning and the many miracles she wrought. But
the observance of her feast, or rather its eve, Walpurgisnacht, came to
be held with many of the pagan tradition’s peculiar to the day, so that it grew
to resemble the celebration of Halloween. At its best, it is the night when
protection is invoked against murrains of fields and crops and the spirits of
evil; at its worst, it is a night when witches ride and dark deeds are done.
The original pagan feast,
celebrated as the Eve of Beltane in the British Isles, was accompanied by
lighting of new fires and feasting on certain foods retained by later customs
in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. We are told that Beltane Cakes, large and
scalloped, were set against hot stones to bake while a caudle (custard) was
eaten, and beer and whiskey consumed. Many customs were connected with these
cakes, among them that the person drawing a piece blackened by the fire became
the "carline" who must be sacrificed to the fire. Later in Wales when
cakes were cooked on ordinary stoves, light and dark oatmeal cakes were made,
and the one who drew the dark cake was required to jump three times through the
flames of the lighted bonfire.
We have been unable to
trace any authentic recipes for Beltane Cakes, and everyone knows how to make a
custard or caudle. However, on this eve one might well anticipate the day to
come by brewing the first Maibowle.
Activity
Source: Feast Day Cookbook by Katherine Burton and
Helmut Ripperger, David McKay Company, Inc., New York, 1951
Daily Devotions
·
Total Consecration
to St. Joseph Day 32
·
Manhood of
the Master-week 11 day 3
·
Offering to
the sacred heart of Jesus
·
Rosary
MAY
Flowers in
Mary's month tie us closely to the reawakening earth. The time of Resurrection
and expectant Pentecost is one of buds, blossoms, wildflowers, and greening of meadows
and lawns. Days lengthen and we welcome the warmth of the sun after the long
winter. Jesus is risen and is present in our midst, and so we rise and ascend
with him.
Overview of May[5]
The month of
May is dedicated to The
Blessed Virgin Mary. The first 23 days fall within the liturgical
season of Easter, which is represented by the liturgical color
white — the color of light, a symbol of joy, purity and innocence (absolute or
restored). The remainder of the month (beginning the Monday after Pentecost) is
in Ordinary Time which is represented by the liturgical
color green. This symbol of hope is the color of the sprouting seed and arouses
in the faithful the hope of reaping the eternal harvest of heaven, especially
the hope of a glorious resurrection.
·
The world is resplendent with Spring's increased
light and new growth. It is Mary’s month in the Easter season and all of nature
rejoices with the Queen of heaven at the Resurrection of the Son she was worthy
to bear. During the remainder of Easter time, let us endeavor through the prayers
of the Holy Liturgy and the Holy Rosary to deepen our gratitude for the mystery
of our Baptismal rebirth in Christ.
·
"The month of May, with its profusion of
blooms was adopted by the Church in the eighteenth century as a celebration of
the flowering of Mary's maidenly spirituality, with its origins in Isaiah's
prophecy of the Virgin birth of the Messiah under the figure of the Blossoming
Rod or Root of Jesse, the flower symbolism of Mary was extended by the Church
Fathers, and in the liturgy, by applying to her the flower figures of the
Sapiential Books-Canticles, Wisdom, Proverbs and Sirach.
·
"In the medieval period, the rose was
adopted as the flower symbol of the Virgin Birth, as expressed in Dante's
phrase, 'The Rose wherein the Divine Word was made flesh,' and depicted in the
central rose windows of the great gothic cathedrals-from which came the
Christmas carol, 'Lo, How a Rose 'ere Blooming.' Also, in the medieval period,
when monasteries were the centers of horticultural and agricultural knowledge,
and with the spread of the Fransiscan love of nature, the actual flowers
themselves, of the fields, waysides and gardens, came to be seen as symbols of
Mary…" – John S. Stokes
·
Pentecost, the birth of the Church, is also
among the celebrations of May. Though sprung from the side of Christ on the
Cross, the Church marks as her birthday the descent of the Holy Spirit on Mary
and the Apostles. At the 'birth' of the world, the Holy Spirit — the Breath of
God — was the "mighty wind [that] swept over the waters" (Gen 1:2);
at the birth of the Church He is present again "like the rush of a mighty
wind" to recreate the world in the image of Christ through His Church
(Acts 2:2).
We, the members of Christ’s Mystical
Body, are the present-day disciples sent by the Holy Spirit to bring Christ to
the world. May we go forth as did Mary, who set out in haste to assist St.
Elizabeth (feast of the Visitation, May 31). Come upon us, O Holy Spirit, so
that, with Mary, we may proclaim the greatness of the Lord who has done great
things for us — for his mercy endures forever!
It is a very old tradition to make pilgrimages during the
month of May to shrines dedicated to Mary. Although this author is writing
about the country of England, even in America there are shrines, basilicas,
cathedrals or churches that one can visit in a pilgrimage.
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