St Nicholas a children's saint

Today for many children in Europe it is a day of bounty and joy! Sint Nicholas, patron saint of children distributes presents and goodwill galore. Being Dutch, this is my favourite day of all, I well remember the excitement of waiting for Sint Nicholas to arrive on a boat from Spain, together with his helpers called black peters (zwarte pieten!), who dressed as 17th century court pages add to the fun by carrying round a bag with presents, but also mock to punish children who misbehave. When you get older and no longer believe in  Saint Nicholas, riding on his white horse on the roofs of houses, the evening before Sint Nicholas feast, on 5 December is a time when adults will give each other'surprises' or small presents often with a joke attached and accompanied by poems describing, the personality and perhaps faults of the recipient.

Good clean fun and a good occasion to give each other a present. Especially as for me this helps christmas take on a more religious and family meaning, and is not so overrun with commercial present giving. For children it is hard to distinguish the real meaning of Christmas and thus Saint Nicholas provides parents with a good occasion to split the commercial aspects of Christmas from the spiritual one

Adoration;the need to give up control and let Jesus give you all his love and protection

We need to be humble when we want to respond to God's humbleness( dixit Benoit XVI in 2008!).

 

Today our parish is celebrating a day of eucharistic adoration, with times dedicated to the children and their parents, as they come out of school! For children who are used to seeing their parents rush around especially if both work, a time amidst their schoolfriends and parents in which prayer stands at the centre is so important. They and we adults need to realise that it is through prayer that Jesus reaches our souls and can make us part of his presence.To adore the eucharist is to adore the presence of Jesus and his love for all of us. Let us be joyful and thankful for this supreme gift.

 

El Camino (the road to Santiago de Compostella)

"Life must be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" said Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855 philosopher)". The famous pilgrim's route to Santiago de Compostella, is known amongst pilgrims as "el camino" or the road. The starting place if you follow the true pilgrimage ,should be from your own home, but otherwise there are starting places in France and on the Spanish border, in the Pyrenees. There are many who follow this pilgrimage out of religiouos convictions, others do it for the beauty of the road, others for the companionship. Some do it in stages, a part each year, others take time out of their lives and do it for 5 months, all come out of this experience with a renewed look on life and their role in it.
I read a wonderful, witty, thoughtful book by french author, Alix de Saint André, on her experiences on "the road". She travelled it 3 times; the first two times she took the shorter route starting at the Pyrenees. These two pilgrimages, left her feeling unsatisfied, wanting more. The result was that she took some months off from her busy life as a journalist to start from her home town in the region of Brittany in France.She relates her experiences, in a wry manner, she is a practising catholic but the road fills her with anguish at the physical exhaustion and the companions she meets. Sometimes, she feels close to God, sometimes she is assailed by doubts. Her companions include a man and a donkey, 7 older men described by her as her 7 "husbands", because of the protectiveness they develop towards her!

Some of her fellow pilgrims are patently nonchristians, some devout believers. Her conclusions? She is touched by the words of a prior celebrating mass in Leon:"Jesus said: I am the road, 'el camino' is a moment in time to look for a treasure; God, in silence and solitude. Not tourism." The author notes that she had never thought of it that way, that Jesus is the road.Walking on the road we are within God, by walking we open up our arteries. The big bypass, created by the road to Santiago is circulating the blood between the three; the beauty of paternal creation, the sacrifice of the son shared in daily suffrance, and the pure love of the holy spirit that joins us".

Having read her book, I too feel called to join the road.Perhaps not inmediately, but soon.

What is happiness?

Jacob de Backer the Garden of Eden 2nd half of the 16th C

Watched a television interview with french writer and journalist Gonzague de Saint Bris the other day, he was asked what happiness meant for him. His reply: "Il n'y a pas de bonheur mais des bonnes heures" which is a pun on the word happiness in french, which translated literally means the good hours! Indeed happiness is not a state, rather a series of happy moments in our lives. We need to remember that as we face greyer periods. Look around you and savour the good moments, they are nuggets of gold, that can bring back a smile to your face when you most need it! My happy moment this week was watching my daugher and her class dancing to the theme of Pocahontas in the school's fancy fair. I said a Hail Mary to thank God for the joy of my child.

Belonging!

 

Georges Seurat (french impressionist), A sunday afternoon at the island of the Grande Jatte 1886

Following from my post on indifference and the need to form loving       communities, last week, I was struck by this part of the new bishop of Portsmouth's ( UK) ordination speech:

" that human needs ever remain essentially the same:
the need to love and to be loved,
the need for a purpose and vocation in life,
the need to belong to family and community,
the need for mercy and forgiveness, for peace and justice, for freedom and happiness,
and most profoundly, the need for immortality and for the Divine.
All these fundamental desires, hard-wired into the human heart:
theology expresses in the word 'salvation,' and we profess that every child, woman and man on this planet can find that salvation. "

 A beautiful text from Saint Paul to the Corinthians, reinforce this message ( 12, 31 ...): I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I am without love, I am a sounding gong or  a clanging cymbal. I may have the gift of prophecy, and know every hidden truth; I may have faith strong enough to move mountains; but if I have no love, I am nothing...love is patient , love is kind and envies no one"

Just what I needed, it confirms my own chosen path to seek and give love in community, sharing my emotions and my path through this life!

 

The threat of indifference

by LS Lowry
This painting by LS Lowry (1887-1976) symbolises for me the cataclysm created by the industrial society; busy worker bees hastening through the streets to their work or home, living to work!  No time to give to chance encounters on the streets and be open to others. A chance glance at my book of quotations brought up this disturbing quote, by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881):"If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. they would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it".

 Nothing much has changed in the two centuries after this was written; Sometimes I still feel that at a dinner party it is not so chic to talk about one's faith to nonbelievers. this makes it all the more crucial to show how christianity can give back humanity to the human race. It is all about caring, Jesus cared for us by giving up his life in a most cruel way.It is time for us to accept this gift and re form loving caring neighbourly communities. In these times of crisis, it warms my heart when someone takes the time to talk and enquire how one is doing. To receive a helping hand when you feel unable to cope. the gestures will provide the stepping stones to continue.

In the words of George Bernard Shaw, English playwright  (1856-1950): "The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity"

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A church with a tree

The holidays are over and what did we do? Did we take time to reflect on what life is about, Did we take time off from our busy loves especially during the holidays to pray and come closer to God?
I was in Greece, as my husband is Greek and this summer found it very hard to take the time to pray.  It was only when I went to visit this small church in the western peloponnessos, high up in the mountains, that I really prayed.The church is dedicated to Agia Theodora a byzantine saint from the 10th century. The story of Saint Theodora, is that when the army asked the family for a boy to become a conscript in the army, Theodora came instead as her family had no boys and her father was too old and too poor. She was convicted and beheaded on wrong charges and as she died she said that god would bear witbess to her innocence and faith by growing treeswithin the church where she is buried. the miracle is that 17 trees grow in this tiny church with no visible roots and throughout the last 10 centuries the walls hve not fallen down.
Every year in September pilgrims make the journey through the mountains for a mass and celebration in her honour. You can leave pieces of paper with your prayer and the priest will say them for you.

To me this simple little church with its trees reaching out to the skies and its roots in our earth symbolises our faith and belonging to the christian community. It gave me back the power to pray.