Angeli et amici: Sanctus Corbinianus urso sarcinas imponit

Many a little child in the Nineteen-Eighties dreamt of sleeping on clouds, riding in cloud-mobiles, and sliding down rainbows while cuddling cute colorful plush teddy bears. The original ten Care Bears consisting of Bedtime Bear, Birthday Bear, Cheer Bear, Friend Bear, Funshine Bear, Good Luck Bear, Grumpy Bear, Love-A-Lot Bear, Tenderheart Bear and Wish Bear became an overnight (pun very much intended) success. Later on, as executives were dreaming dollar signs, additional bears joined them. Each Care Bear had a symbol on its tummy corresponding to its name and "care ability", e.g. a rainbow for Cheer Bear, a shooting star for Wish Bear, or a rain cloud for Grumpy Bear. From their respective tummy symbol, according to the marketing mythology, emanated their powers. When standing together they generated their most potent weapon, the annoyingly alliterative Care Bear Stare. A light radiated from their bellies to form a rainbow that brings cheer, love, care, and goodness into the heart of their target.  In their TV show and feature films the Care Bears, heroically save the day from the likes of Professor Coldheart, Frostbite and Auntie Freeze, who were always trying to foil the Care Bear mission to bring love, cheer, and caring to the world.

 

On the feast of the Birthday of Our Lady, Holy Mother Church gives Her children, not a syrupy saccharine Care Bear but the sacredly sweet bear of Saint Coribinian. There is a charming legend involving a bear that is told about the blessed Bishop Corbinian, who preached the Christian faith in the ancient Duchy of Bavaria in the 8th century and is honored as the spiritual father and patron of the Archdiocese of Freising-Munich. He originally lived in Châtres on the road to Orléans as a hermit for fourteen years, near a church dedicated to Saint Germain. His reputation attracted students to him, which divinely distracted him from his holy hermitage. His devotion to Prince of the Apostles, according to one story’s saintly spin, piously prompted a decision to make a journey to Rome, accompanied by some of his disciples. While in Rome, Pope Gregory II admonished him to use his talents to evangelize Bavaria. Corbinian, who may already have been a bishop or who was so consecrated by Gregory, was sent to minister to Grimoald, the Frankish Duke of Bavaria; Corbinian probably arrived in Bavaria in AD 724 and continued his apostolic labors at Freising until his death in AD 730.

 

The hagiographies relate that while he was traveling to Rome through a scary sylvan stretch, his poor pack-mule was maliciously mauled by a wild bear. The Saint then righteously rebuked the untamed beast, and celestially commanded the bear to carry his packs to the Eternal City. Once the pilgrimage destination was reached (and raising a few eyebrows along the way), however, he released the beholden bear from its servitude, and it submissively retreated back to its native forest. The metaphorical meaning of the lovely legend is thus lucidly clear to the Church’s Faithful children: Christianity tamed and domesticated the ferocity of paganism and thus laid the foundations for a great civilization in the Duchy of Bavaria. At the same time, Corbinian’s Bear, as “God’s beast of burden,” sacrally symbolizes the terrible weight of the onerous office of the episcopacy that is tryingly thrust upon a sacerdotal soul, perhaps most famously illustrated in contemporary heraldry by its appearance on the coat of arms of Josef Alois Ratzinger, the Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI.

 

And the implications of that thought should cause some to lose a few moments of sleep.

 

 

Mr. Screwtape

");    

Angeli et amici: In festo S. Raymundi Nonnatus

The following salutation, benediction and felicitation escapes one's lips when one is introduced to a blushing bride in her first pregnancy "Congratulations on your second child!"

At first, the lovely lady's countenance betrays a sentiment of bewilderment but in an instant an intuitive illumination opens wide her emotive eyes and, knowingly nodding, she resignedly replies: "Oh yeah, you're right!"

 In virtue of his birth by caesarean section, the magnificent Mercedarian monk, who marvelously emancipated members of the Church Militant from Moorish minions, is invoked as the celestial champion of childbirth. In fact, the extraordinary Roman Ritual contains an optimally opportune order of:

BLESSING OF CANDLES IN HONOR OF ST. RAYMOND NONNATUS

(meant especially to be lit for a safe delivery)

P: Our help is in the name of the Lord.

R: Who made heaven and earth.

P: The Lord be with you.

R: And with your spirit.

 Let us pray. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, light of everlasting life, who have given us candles to dispel the darkness; we humbly beg you to bless + these candles by the merits of Blessed Raymond, your confessor. By the power of the holy cross bestow a heavenly + blessing on them. Let them be so empowered by the sign of the holy  cross, that the spirits of darkness will flee in fear and trembling from all places where their light shines, and nevermore disturb or molest those who serve you, the almighty God, who live and reign forever and ever. Amen.

 Let us pray. Almighty everlasting God, who enable us, your servants, in our profession of the true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the three Persons in the eternal Godhead, and to adore their oneness of nature, their co-equal majesty; grant, we pray, that by steadfastness in that faith we may ever be guarded against all adversity; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

 Let us pray. We entreat you, Lord God, grant us the enjoyment of lasting health of body and mind; and by the glorious intercession of blessed Mary, ever Virgin, free us from present sorrow and give us everlasting joy; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Let us pray. God, who endowed Blessed Raymond, your confessor, with the wondrous power to deliver your faithful from captivity under impious men; grant by his intercession that we may be absolved from the bonds of our sins, and then tranquilly perform only those things that are pleasing to you; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

 May the blessing of almighty God, Father, Son, + and Holy Spirit, come upon these candles and remain forever. Amen.

 He sprinkles them with holy water.

 

Then, of course, there is the retiring rubric that instructs the mighty midwife, for the preservation of life and limb, to remove from the critical chamber of confinement the hapless husband! 

 

Mr. Screwtape

Angeli et amici: Da mihi animas, coetere tolle

Once upon a notoriously noxious time, the tough thoroughfares of Manhattan's Alphabet City had, how shall we say, endearing epithets: Avenue A was for Assault, Avenue B was for Battery, Avenue C was for Crippling, and Avenue D was for Death. In that lovely little land was an adorably scrawny little boy; so scrawny in fact, that if the Beaufort scale hit six he could go flying. This little boy wanted very much to go to Catholic school. Unfortunately, the Reverend Sister Principal sadly said, there was no more room for an additional pupil. The Reverend Pastor got wind of this and, for some unfathomable reason that will forever remain a mystery of Divine Providence, in imitation of his Order's founder, that wonderworker of Turin, Saint John Bosco, said simply, "Then we will make the room for him."

The beautiful oasis that once was the Church of Mary Help of Christians is now just a pile of dust. A century's worth of blood, sweat and tears are now just wisps in the air. The treasured temple modeled on the magnificent mother basilica of the same title in the one time capital city of the Duchy of Savoy exists now only in memories and photographs. Faint now are the lyrical echoes of industriously intrepid immigrants lovingly lisping sweet supplications to "Mary Help", "Maria Auxiliadora", "Maria Ausiliatrice".

The one, true, holy catholic and apostolic Faith is not, and can not ever be, limited to any one particularly poignant locus. Rather it is the call of all the Faithful in virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation to cast that spiritual fire across the entire face of the world as Our Lord so passionately exclaimed in the Gospels. The Salesian Fathers who devotedly staffed MHC, as it was affectionately known, constantly taught in their words and above all in their actions the marvelous maxim of Don Bosco: "Give me souls!, take away the rest".

But it still hurts so much that the sweet supernatural garden wherein one was given a deliciously divine nurturing has been diabolically decimated, never more to enrich this pathetic vale of tears.

However, with the help of the Most Holy Mother of God, so long as one is on this side of Eternity, an amusingly alliterative acolyte will continue to the best of his limited abilities to repay that heavenly trust placed in a scrawny little boy.  

 

Mr. Screwtape

Angeli et amici: Benedic, Domine, nos et haec tua dona

An accomplished academic atheist was taking a leisurely hike through the woods. “What majestic trees! What powerful rivers! What beautiful animals!” he said to himself. As he was walking alongside the river looking for a place to picnic, he heard a distinctive rustling in the bushes behind him. When he turned, he saw a seven-foot grizzly bear charging toward him! He started to run as fast as he could, but realized the bear was closing in on him. Then, he tripped and fell to the ground. When he rolled over the bear was right on top of him, raising his paw to strike him. At that instant the Atheist cried out, “Oh my God!”

 

Time Stopped! The bear froze. The forest was silent. Then, a bright light shone upon the man, and a Voice said, “You deny My existence for all these years, teach others that I don’t exist, and even credit creation to some cosmic ‘accident’. Do you really expect Me to help you out of this particular predicament? Can I count on you as a believer?”

 

The atheist looked directly into the Light, “Well, it would be pretty hypocritical of me to suddenly ask you to treat me as a Christian now, but perhaps you could make the BEAR a Christian?”

 

After a moment the Voice replied, “Very well.”

 

The Light went out. The sounds of the forest resumed. Then the bear brought both paws together, bowed his head and said “Bless us, O Lord, for these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

 

Generally this ridiculous redactor uses this forum to highlight quaint customs of the liturgical calendar in order that the Faithful might be eminently edified to restore the practical practice of these pious projects. (With the exception, perhaps, of leaping over the St. John's bonfires unless one was a track and field Olympian.) This e-pistle, however, seeks to remind us of a more pedestrian, quotidian ritual: grace before meals. Not only in the amicable domestic hearth but perhaps of more immediate import, especially in consideration of the rapid vapid "pluralization" of what were once considered common mores, in settings public this simple, short supplication brings to concrete fruition the divine promise of the Gospels that "wherever two or three are gathered in My Name, in their midst, I AM".

 

Because you never know when your last meal will be.

 

Mr. Screwtape

Angeli et amici: In festo S. Laurentii Martyris

Originally from the city of Huesca in Spain, where, thanks to his inspired intervention, the sacred chalice used by Our Lord at the Last Supper reposes, Lawrence was an archdeacon of the Roman Church charged with the responsibility of managing the material goods of the pious patrimony of Saint Peter, and the devoted distribution of alms to the poor of the City. During the persecution of the Emperor Valerian, as the holy bishop of Milan, Ambrose, relates that when a pushy Prefect asked for the “treasures of the Church” the intrepid Iberian brought forward the poor and divinely declaimed: "Behold in these poor persons the treasures which I promised to show you; to which I will add pearls and precious stones, those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the church’s crown." The furious functionary was not amused, to say the least, arrested the cloy cleric and had a great gridiron prepared, with pounds of fiery coals beneath it. Lawrence’s body was then petulantly placed on the ignited instrument. After some undetermined but objectively painful time elapsed, the lovely legend concludes, he made his famously cheery quip, “It is well done on the one side. Turn me over!”

 

From a July 2013 NASA press release: "We have found that one meteor shower produces more fireballs than any other," explains Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "It's the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on August 12th and 13th." Using a network of meteor cameras distributed across the southern USA, Cooke's team has been tracking fireball activity since 2008, and they have built up a database of hundreds of events to analyze. The data point to the Perseids as the 'fireball champion' of annual meteor showers. A fireball is a very bright meteor, at least as bright as the planets Jupiter or Venus. They can be seen on any given night as random meteoroids strike Earth's upper atmosphere. One fireball every few hours is not unusual. Fireballs become more numerous, however, when Earth is passing through the debris stream of a comet. That’s what will happen this August. The Perseid meteor shower comes from Comet Swift-Tuttle. Every year in early- to mid-August, Earth passes through a cloud of dust sputtered off the comet as it approaches the sun. Perseid meteoroids hitting our atmosphere at 132,000 mph produce an annual light show that is a favorite of many backyard sky watchers. Cooke thinks the Perseids are rich in fireballs because of the size of the parent comet. "Comet Swift-Tuttle has a huge nucleus--about 26 km in diameter," comments Cooke. "Most other comets are much smaller, with nuclei only a few kilometers across. As a result, Comet Swift-Tuttle produces a large number of meteoroids, many of which are large enough to produce fireballs." Cooke recommends looking on the nights of August 12th and 13th between the hours of 10:30 PM to 4:30 AM local time. Before midnight the meteor rate will start out low, then increase as the night wears on, peaking before sunrise when the constellation Perseus is high in the sky. For every fireball that streaks out of Perseus, there will be dozens more ordinary meteors. "Get away from city lights," advises Cooke. "While fireballs can be seen from urban areas, the much greater number of faint Perseids is visible only from the countryside."

 

Since the Perseid meteor shower, which has been observed for two millennia, occurs around the feast the magnificent Martyr they have been nicknamed “The Tears of Saint Lawrence”.

 

Therefore this sounds like the optimal opportunity for a Catholic camping excursion. And don’t forget to bring the barbecue!

 

Mr. Screwtape

Angeli et amici: In festo S. Ignatii Confessoris

Once upon a time, that impeccably influential institution, the Brompton Oratory, held a liturgical congress which would be crowned by the special celebration of a Solemn High Mass.

Into the sublime sacristy enter the sacred ministers: an Italian Jesuit, an American Jesuit, and a Jesuit scholastic. 

Busy polishing a thurible, the surly sexton stops, looks up and mutters, "Eh, what's this, a joke?"

 

In the appendix to the perennially potent, reliably resourceful Roman Ritual many a religious congregation, institute and order have graciously shared with the secular clergy some of their most beautifully bountiful blessings. While not generally lauded for their acumen in liturgical praxis, the sons of Ignatius have bestowed to the august treasury a modest contribution.

 

BLESSING OF WATER IN HONOR OF ST. IGNATIUS, CONFESSOR

P: Our help is in the name of the Lord.

R: Who made heaven and earth.

P: Blessed be the name of the Lord.

R: Both now and forevermore.

P: Lord, heed my prayer.

R: And let my cry be heard by you.

P: The Lord be with you.

R: And with your spirit.

Let us pray. Holy Lord, almighty Father, everlasting God, who, in pouring out the grace of your blessing on the bodies of the sick, encompass your creatures with your generous love; hearken as we call on your holy name, and by the prayers of Blessed Ignatius, your confessor, free your servants from illness and restore them to health, and then hasten their convalescence by your sure hand, strengthen them by your might, shield them by your power, and give them back in full vigor to your holy Church; through Christ our Lord. Amen. (He then immerses a medal or a reliquary of St. Ignatius in the water, and holds it so until the following prayer is concluded) Lord, bless this water, that it be a saving remedy for men; and grant that, by the prayers of Blessed Ignatius, whose medal [or relics] is [are] now immersed in it, all who will drink this water may have health in body and protection in soul; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

As befits the respectable reputation of the Society of Jesus, the preceding prayer is a pragmatic paragon of pithy practical prose. But if extraordinary pulchritudinous poesy is paramount it is best to remember the old sacristan's proverb: "A good Jesuit liturgy is one where no one gets hurt....especially the celebrant!"  

 Mr. Screwtape

Angeli et amici: In Vigilia S. Iacobus Apostolis

The ancient Greeks had Odysseus; Medievals had Arthur; Americans have Superman.

 

In celebration of the seventy fifth anniversary of the Last Son of Krypton this year a major cinematic commercial, I meant, presentation was released entitled "Man of Steel". The title is amazingly appropriate as steel is an alloy and a major thematic undercurrent regards the differing ways Jor-El and Jonathan Kent forge the powerful protagonist into Superman. In a marvelous marketing maneuver the film was released during Father's Day weekend thereby doubling and tripling the paternal overtures like a reverberating echo. 

 

Echos. For me, that is what remains of my father. On an usually chilly night of July 24th, lo many years ago, the sweetly serene designs of Divine Providence decreed that his soul return to the embrace of equanimous Eternity. Even though one was striding in the early years of his majority, a starker demarcation delineating the end of one's boyhood perhaps could not be had. My Father was a reserved man but that exterior gainsaid an heroic tenderness and devotion. Not to mention that he could display a delightful yet understated sense of humor when the occasion called for it. Perhaps the seeds of my own amusing avocation were sown were sown by him.

A comforting chuckle on the one day of the year that this otherwise chipper clown allows upon his countenance a quiet cascade of bittersweet tears.

 

Mr. Screwtape