Ugly Truth: Here's why I am still single: I would rather be right and alone, than be perpetually annoyed and married. And perhaps it is as simple as that. I do not mean to be a jerk. But I have no patience for unnecessary errors and it seems to me a common unlikable trait that many people do not want to be enlightened and put aright: they would rather be stubborn and wrong. As my good friend Barb once said to me, "You do not tolerate fools gladly." SIGH. I must agree, this is my flaw.
So of things that I think I am expert in and they are not many, I admit, ... I believe I should have the last word. And I narrow the playing field down to what I know for sure: I know my dogs for sure. I know my religion and saints for sure. I know the Bible for sure. Those are things I have studied in, worked in, educated myself in so that I have a degree of expertise... and I will play that card if I have to.
This is a holy card of St. Joseph holding baby Jesus.
For purpose of comedy I offer you the latest travesty from the field of "Hagiography," or "study of the Saints." The religion I belong to (Catholic) celebrates people who were great people in our faith because of their virtuous lives. We believe that when we die, we, the truest part of ourselves, do not POOF evaporate, but we return to the Creator from which we came. AKA "God." There is a charming campfire song from the early American Protestants that sings:
"Will the circle be unbroken by-and-by Lord, by-and-by? There's a better land awaiting in the sky, Lord, in the sky..."
The circle referenced in the song above is formed of people on earth who live, as well as those who have gone before us in faith. We believe that the spirit of Love connects us. We can talk to people who have passed, and we believe somehow they can hear us. (We do not worship them, for they are not God.) We believe that they care for us in our daily concerns even though they do not physically walk among us. Even people of no faith at all may have moments where they feel that someone, somewhere, is rooting for them, or helping them out in situations otherwise unresolvable by human efforts alone. In short, assistance of a holy one, namely, a Saint, or even Divine intervention itself is required.
With Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, we believe that eternal life is a reward gained for us by the virtue of Christ and His gift to us, not what we do ourselves. However - and this has a 500 year-old misunderstanding behind it - some Protestants think that Catholics think we can "earn heaven by our good deeds." We Catholics do not teach that. BUT - and this is a big BUT - While on the one hand you can say, "Your good works cannot get you to heaven," It is also true that "Faith without works is dead." (If the Church had sent me to dialogue with Martin Luther instead of the other guys, we'd be in a different place today. Just sayin'.) Importantly, and little-known-fact: Pope Benedict (formerly known as Cardinal Jozef Ratzinger) was involved in a theological truce in our lifetime between the Catholics and the Protestant Lutherans over this very issue. We have come to an important understanding that you cannot say "I am saved" and not actively serve your neighbor in some way. We do believe that HOW you live your life of faith on earth matters. To wit, we should become holy, become saints. The God of the Old Testament said, "Be ye holy, as I Am holy, so sanctify yourselves..." And that is the work of a lifetime, is it not?
So I have laid the foundation for you of Saints 101. Why these people are important to us, is because they are shining examples of the power of a faith that is alive. The Catholic Church has a liturgical calendar that celebrates at least one saint just about every day of the year. We typically celebrate them on their Feast day, which is the day they passed on to heaven. It is impressive how many great human beings have actually walked among us. Some of their names are more recognizable than others:
*St. Francis of Assisi - statues picture him feeding birds or with a wolf at his side.
*St. Patrick of Ireland - a bishop who preached to the Irish nation before it was Christian.
*St. Nicholas - a bishop who was known for his kindness to children and the poor.
Each of these were real, historical people who have both true stories and legends - perhaps at times a bit embellished, and other times just as frequently display daring magnanimity - that accent their biographies. But I can tell you that from our days as small children, Catholic kids are given little booklets of pictures and stories about these men and women. When iconographers - those who engage in the artistry of saints - put certain things in the picture, you get clues as to who they were. For instance, martyrs or saints who were known for their purity or virginity typically carry a lily. Sometimes those who books wrote will have a book in their hands. You get the idea.
True example. One parish I went to had a statue of St. Agatha holding a palm branch that someone recently tucked into her closed fist. I asked why, since that is not the traditional rendering of her. The leadership at the time felt that her holding a pair of plyers might be frightening to children. And my typical response was: there is no excuse for not teaching people that the plyers were originally crafted into the hand of the statue because St. Agatha taught that by little acts of love and self-denial we are able to symbolically remove the nails from the hands and feet of Jesus on the cross. The lesson being: our loving actions can ease His suffering.
And yet other renditions of St. Agatha have her holding a plate. Because of what appears to be on the plate, people presumed were two loaves of bread, they declared her the patron saint of cooks and bakers. However, they are not two loaves of bread. When she was being martyred for her faith, her cruel torturers performed a barbaric mastectomy on her ... She is pictured holding her body parts on a plate because that is her offering of herself for her faith. Gruesome but true. Even if you don't share her faith, you have to respect a person that will stand for their convictions to that degree ... understandably she is the patron saint of people who have breast cancer.
Okay so now that I took you through all that ... here's the funny story I promised. St. Joseph the foster-father of Jesus is celebrated in March around the time we celebrate St. Patrick's Day. In the days of ethnic neighborhoods 50 years ago, it used to be that the Irish Catholics would party-it-up for St. Patrick's Day; while the Polish and Italian Catholics would celebrate St. Joseph's Day. The Irish would do a parade and corned beef and cabbage; the Italians would do a spaghetti supper and all was merry and right with the Catholic world.
So this year, in late February, two different Catholic missionary outreaches sent me a booklet of prayers in honor of St. Joseph. Except they both bungled the picture of who they put on the booklet cover. To the first one, I wrote this:
I received your 7 days of prayer to St. Joseph booklet. I couldn’t stop laughing. You put Bishop Patrick of Ireland’s picture on the front cover…. Green vestments and shamrock over his right shoulder.
another religious Order put St. Anthony of Padua holding baby Jesus on the front cover of THEIR novena to St. Joseph! St. Joseph didn’t have a tonsure, or a brown Franciscan habit.
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I got a very kind reply of how the picture came from a Church in Scarborough, England, where perhaps there were zealous Irish parishioners who added shamrocks and green vestments to St. Joseph's picture... and that the lily and the absence of a bishop's mitre (hat) are proof it is St. Joseph. (I aint buyin' it. But I thanked him for his response.)
Look, if we want to clearly teach people (and children) who is who, then we need to be OKAY with the image remaining the same over the years. It is important. It tells a story. We need some things to not change in order to ground us in the faith. We can't have an icon or photo that leaves people wondering, "who actually is this in the picture?"
Obviously, there can be updates or changes in the style of the art that reflects the genre (ie. Byzantine art tends to have more gaunt figures than Roman art) BUT there are things that remain the same. When you see an image of St. Dominic, he is going to have a dog carrying a torch sitting next to him because his name and the name of the religious order he founded, the Dominicans, translates from the Latin to: "Dogs of God," as a reference to their persistence in preaching the Gospel of Christ.
I leave you with this, though, in honor of St. Patrick, I show you this image and His beloved prayer. I prefer it much more to the short quips people attribute to him that may or may not be actually his words... ie.) "May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead." Indeed. +
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