Top row: Virgin Mary and St. Joseph
Bottom row: Sts. Charles Borromeo, Anne, Christopher,
and Archangel Michael
In a private message, a Catholic Light reader mentioned his difficulty with prayer to saints, and I wanted to explain why I think it’s important.
I would like to give amateur Catholic Web sites — such as this one — a Christmas present. Or rather, an Ordinary Time present, because that’s when this project would be completed, without a doubt. I’d like to do a little “Saint of the Day” feature that could be inserted by anyone who wanted to include it on their Web page.
The HTML for the feature would be taken via client-side JavaScript, so the Web site’s owner would simply have to insert some Javascript on the site’s home page. Everything else would be taken care of by my server. I would think this might be a great little inclusion for many Catholic sites.
My question is 1) has anyone seen something like this out there? I’m not looking to re-invent the wheel; and 2) do you think other sites would like this? I don’t want to do this and find that I’m only doing it for my own amusement.
Oh, yeah — Merry Christmas!
(In response to Ken Shepherd’s comments below about the “Messiah” being fine for Christmas.)
Ken, we’re running into one of the big differences between the liturgical and non-liturgical Christian traditions (and no matter how much Evangelicals like to deny it, Evangelicalism is as much a tradition as Roman Catholicism.)
You say, “…Christianity is not about cycles, it’s about the linear unfolding through time of God’s eternal plan towards the end of this age and the inauguration of a new heaven and a new earth.” In the Catholic view, the Christian life has a very strong cyclical component. We celebrate the birth of hope in winter, as the days begin to lengthen; we do penance before Spring so we can celebrate the resurrection of Christ.
To the Catholic, there is nothing wrong with following the cues of nature as we live out our baptismal vocation. Nature was created good by God, and we must adapt our lives to it even in the modern world. Those two facts urge us not to keep a constant focus on one aspect of the Christian mission — spreading the word of God — to the exclusion of others. Sometimes we should preach Jesus Christ, and sometimes we should merely adore and worship Him. The remembrance of his birth is an occasion for the latter.
Evangelicalism, as the name implies, has an omnipresent emphasis on conversion and downgrades adoration to a lower priority. What about the prophetess Anna, who “never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying” (Lk 2:37)? Does the Evangelist imply that she should have been out proclaiming the Word, a la John the Baptist? No. She was living out her vocation: to pray for her fellow men and to adore God in the one place in the world where he dwelled in a special way. Clearly her example is one way to live out the Christian life.
To everything there is a season. There is a time for the Cross; but for now, it’s still off in the distance. This is the season to kneel at the Christ child and be astonished once again that God wanted to become one of us.
Mark Steyn, whose wisdom and intellect are not yet legendary but should be, has some things to say about Europe’s practically non-existent birthrate:
I recently had a conversation with an EU official who, apropos a controversial proposal to tout the Continent’s religious heritage in the new constitution, kept using the phrase “Europe’s post-Christian future”. The evidence suggests that, once you reach the post-Christian stage, you don’t have much of a future. Luke, a man of faith and a man of science, could have told them that.
His exposition of Luke 1 at the beginning of the article is accurate and perceptive. Steyn consistently reminds the public about some uncomfortable truths, among them that kids are essential to a functioning society and not ornamental. Europe (and Japan) is embarking on a dangerous experiment: having massively expensive social programs and expecting immigrants and the young to shoulder the cost. That the fiscal numbers don’t add up does not seem to bother them too much.
My personal opinion is that the European Union is nothing more than a continent-wide suicide pact, designed to ensure that Europeans can live comfortably at the state’s expense as they contracept and abort themselves into oblivion. Look at Europe’s birthrates and tell me that’s incorrect.
Two brief comments this evening:
1. As part of my personal crusade to “Keep the Incarnation in Christmas,” I want to reiterate, contra every choral society in the English-speaking world, that Handel’s “Messiah” is an Easter oratorio. Furthermore, the “Halelujah” chorus from that oratorio is a celebration of THE RESURRECTION, not the Nativity. The words are from Revelation, not Luke. It’s exciting music. I love it. But it ain’t for Christmas.
2. Some mischevious persons change the words of “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” because their tender ears can’t stand to hear masculine pronouns used in an inclusive manner. “Pleased as man with man to dwell” is what Charles Wesley wrote, and that’s what we should sing. If you are “uncomfortable” with standard English, and you like gender-bending music, my advice is to write your own damn song.
Aside from eliminating the play on words with the double meaning of “man” (since when did liberals favor artistic censorship?), it’s an attempt to fly from the meaning of the Incarnation. “Pleased with us in flesh to dwell” is less theologically robust and it puts the emphasis on us, the worshippers.
Anyone else have Christmas hymn atrocities against which they would like to rail?
