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Yes indeed, it is again the Feast of St. Nicholas, one of my favorite lesser festivals, which I generally celebrate by getting up ridiculously early, having long wittering Prussian conversations with myself about gift distribution , and shoot (or crawl as the case sometimes is) about the Metro area with cookies and toys to drop on (not so) random doorsteps (and windshields).  I also break Advent and listen to Christmas music.  And eat chocolate…. And meat.  So there.

Other people seem to enjoy it as well. (For more on Nicholas check out the previous posting.)

photo (2)

“Are the coins real or chocolate?” asked the youth. “Chocolate,” said his mother. “Oh, ” he said thoughtfully, “Well, that’s cool too.”

Shoes are fascinating!

 

 

 

 

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So here it is, almost Reformation Day, and in fact, it is Reformation Day.  This day celebrates the day that Martin Luther dressed up as an Augustinian monk on Halloween and went down to the local bulletin-board—on the door of the church, as it happened—and tacked up a bunch of questions for the guys to consider the next time they got together for beers.  Well, more or less.

In fact, that is not so very different from what happened, though there are a great many party-poopers—who professionally work as historians—that question whether Martin nailed anything to a bulletin board, or anywhere else.  But, to be sure, a number of questions were proposed for academic disputation, and things steamrollered on from that point.

From this you could take any number of lessons, I suppose.  You could observe, piously, that there is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.  You might say, thoughtfully, that an honest question has tremendous potential to disturb everybody’s peace and quiet.  Or, angrily, that he should have kept his damn mouth shut.

That last was never going to happen, ever.  But for the rest of his life, Luther remained amazed that so much should have happened from such a small beginning, and from such a man as he.  By the side of his deathbed, decades later, was a paper on which he had scratched, “Wir sind bettler, das ist wahr.”  “We are beggars, this is true.”  One of the great proofs of the power of God for Luther was that He had taken the voice of a beggar, and made it loud enough to shake Popes and Emperors.

In the process, he took young man Luther—gaunt, ascetic, burning, driven—and transformed him into fat Doctor Luther—eyes placid, fat now padding those ascetic bones, belly full of beer and home-cooking.  You can see no greater reversal of medieval values than the transformation of the monk Luther, anxious for God’s grace, into Doctor Luther, Katie’s husband, content now to live a simple life within the hands of a gracious God.

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Danse Macabre by Bernt Notke (15th Century)

Really there’s no point writing about Halloween.  The origin of the holiday is covered elsewhere in more detail than you can ever possibly desire.  (Just google it.)The debates within Christianity about whether Halloween should Christians should celebrate Halloween is covered elsewhere in more detail than one can possibly desire. (Ditto with the Google). And pretty much everyone knows how to celebrate Halloween if they are celebrating it ; and how not to if not.

The only thing worth noting about Halloween is its name. Halloween is the  contraction for “All Hallow’s Eve,” which is to say the night before All Hallows/Hallow Mas (Holy Mass) All Saint’s Day.  As the evening before a major festival in the Church, most people prepared their souls by coming to church and making confession, which is why  a young, frustrated professor  chose that date to tack up a notice on the bulletin board of a church near his University.  He figured, if he posted it then and there, a lot of people would read it.

He got that right.

Martin Luther Posting the Ninety-Five Theses

 

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“But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:19

St. Luke

One of the best listening experiences I ever had came from a physician.

Medical guides tell you that when you visit a doctor to compose a list of questions and unroll your concerns up front.  “Take charge!” they trumpet. “You need to communicate to your doctor directly your needs and concerns! Be forceful!” Doubtless this is good advice, but it is a little hard to be forceful when within seven hours you have been jettisoned from the world of the thoughtlessly healthy into the one of testing, surgery, treatment, and a parade of physicians of all sorts, sizes, and temperaments and you are running low on oxygen.

The chief physician assigned to my case was a wonderful man, who would tell me what was going to happen next and then ask if I had any concerns and issues. He was sincere in wanting to answer questions, but I always felt that I did not want to disturb the high priest with my unfocused questions: he might be waiting for a communiqué from God.

One day, though, hours before I was to be released from the hospital at the end of a bit of a rough run, as the chief physician, having consulted Urim and Thummim and pronounced all good, swept out of the room followed by the retinue, one of the doctors stayed behind. He asked again, “Do you have any questions?”  I, being in good patient mode and wanting to get the heck out of the hospital, assured him I was completely up to date and had no concerns. He smiled, came over to the side of the bed, pulled out a chair, sat down and said “You can ask anything, you know.“ and then sat there in smiling silence, waiting.

In my mind St. Luke is a blond, blue-eyed Hungarian.

Of course, St. Luke wasn’t a Hungarian, but he was a good listener. His bedside manner must have been fantastic.  A Greek (possibly Greco-Syrian) born in Antioch in present day Syria, Luke was an early convert to Christianity. Some traditions hold that Luke was among the seventy sent out by Christ.  Others say it can’t be so because Luke states upfront in his Gospel that he did not see any of the events told.  He is merely relating them.

I rather hope the latter position is the accurate one, because while Luke’s Gospel would be pretty marvelous if he had been one of the 70, it is even more extraordinary as a complete work of hearsay.  Having not seen the acts he describes in the Gospel, he has to rely upon the stories of others, which meant he had to listen.

One person to whom Luke seems to have listened very closely was Mary, the mother of Jesus.That text you may hear once a year,

St. Luke drawing the Virgin by Rogier van der Weyden

“In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world was to be taxed…” comes from Luke.  It’s Luke who gets into the nitty-gritty of the nativity and tells all the lovely stories beginning with the Gabriel’s apparition to Zacharias through to twelve year old Jesus teaching in the temple. Most of what we know about the early life of Jesus comes from Luke, whom tradition supposes got it from Mary…because who else was there for those events?

It probably wasn’t easy to get the story from Mary. Sure, mothers like to talk about their children, and I’m sure Mary liked talking about her boy, but Luke writes a telling phrase about Mary: she “kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.” That phrase indicates a long practice of introverted contemplation, and information locked into the heart of an introvert is hard information to obtain.  The only person who can get to it is an extremely good listener.

It is also clear from the writings that Luke listened well to another, very different personality.  Luke is often credited as the author of Acts as well (scholarship agrees that the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were likely written by the same author) and the main character of Acts, Paul, gives Luke several shout-outs in his writing.  Paul had a lot to say.  Luke apparently listened. Sometimes its even harder to listen to the never-ending talker than it is to one who speaks rarely.  That Luke could listen so well to both is to his credit.

I eat Greek! Souzoukaklia and some fixins.

How to celebrate this extraordinary listener? Go listen to somebody.  You don’t even have to cook, just go listen.  But if you want to cook, invite someone over for Souzoukaklia in honor of St. Luke and listen as you eat.

Vital Stats

Name: Luke

Origin: Greek/Syrian

Symbol: a winged ox (Luke’s gospel emphasizes the sacrificial nature of Christ)

Patron: artists (Luke is credited in the East as the first icon writer for writing an icon of the Virgin as the above painting shows he gets credit in the West as well), physicians, surgeons, students, butchers (whether this is because of the winged ox or the origin of surgeons I cannot say)

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On October 7, most of the Lutheran bodies in America (of which there are a marvelous variety) commemorated the life of Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg (1711-1787), who has claim to the the Great Organizer of American Lutherans.

He was not, it must be quickly added, the founder of the Lutheran church in America.  By the time Muhlenberg arrived in 1742, the Lutheran church was off and running, founded by lay people and lay preachers, first from Sweden (there’s a story there for another day) and then Germans settling in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and the Carolinas.  From about 1732, American Lutherans began sending letters to various and sundry organizations asking if they would be so kind as to send over a minister.  Finally, after about ten years, Muhlenberg arrived.  He was a good choice.

For one thing, he seems to have been tireless.  When he wasn’t preaching, he was doctoring with medicines sent over from Germany, or he was writing in the diary which by his death has assumed massive proportions.  This he did from his home in Trappe, Pennsylvania–just north of Valley Forge–or in his many journeys throughout the thirteen colonies.  Other than the missionary George Whitefield, Muhlenberg has a claim to be the man who traveled more often and through more colonies than any other man prior to the Revolution.  Wherever he went, he preached, ordained, doctored, wrote in his diary, and urged the German immigrants to be more organized, efficient, clean, benevolent, and altogether thoroughly Teutonic.

If that wasn’t enough, he married the lovely and strong-minded Anna Maria Weiser, the daughter of one Conrad Weiser (one of the most remarkable men in the history of Colonial America), and together they birthed and nurtured a remarkable family of whom I could write a lot, but then I would use up all the material that I plan on using next year.  He also organized the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, the oldest Lutheran organization in America, and the direct ancestor of the modern Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  All this, and he also compiled the larger part of a hymnal.

In short, Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg was one of those guys whose life and activity makes you feel tired and inferior, and he seems to have been invented by mothers to make their children have an example to live up to, except that he was real.  It is doubtful that he had much time to eat, but if he did, he probably supped a hot bowl of Chicken Pot Pie, Pennsylvania Dutch style.  You may make it yourself–I personally can’t stand the stuff–but when you do, please avoid the cornstarch and yellow food coloring so beloved of the gourmands of the Delaware Valley who pack away this stuff by the gallon, and put some sage, chervil and other herbs into the sauce, to make it taste like something.

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I’m writing a blog called Cooking for Jesus so think it’s obvious: I like food.  I like food way too much.  I like food so much that the only thing that turns me off food is food writing.  Not all food writing mind you. Food writing that gets in there and gives you all the gory and glorious details but keeps the focus firmly on the fact that, in the end, this is just food is some of the best writing out there.  I wish I could write like that.

But most food writing these days isn’t that good as I was reminded when I ran across this this weekend and read the piece on coffee, which makes me want to hop over to the nearest stylus and shout:

“Yo, Simeon! Move over.”

Of course, I feel that way because the piece strikes to close to home. It’s a perfect picture of gluttony and worships the sin so completely that even I, a poor, miserable glutton, am repulsed.  It forces me to look into the mirror and say, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.” And that’s just not fun.  Good and necessary, but not fun.

Somewhere amid all the fun he was having, Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone must have looked into the mirror and said the same thing.  After all he was more than a bit of  jack the lad, a bright young spring dashing about in fancy duds to feast, frolic, or fighting  until a stint in the jails of Pisa as a prisoner of war, followed by a serious illness, showed him another way, which he embraced with both an understandable  and lovely circumspection.

But when he decided to embrace it, he stuck like a burr, braving his father’s and the world’s displeasure. Francis was not the dippy hippie so beloved by modern culture.  Yes, he loved nature and animals and other people, but he loved them because God created them and loved them first. Had loving something or someone been incompatible with the love of God, it would have been incompatible with Francis as well.

Francis receiving the stigmata

Which is why I prefer Giotto’s portrayal of Francis receiving of the stigmata over Caravaggio’s.  Caravaggio’s is lovely  and that’s the problem.  Francis looks likes he’s throughly enjoying the deep spiritual massage whereas Giotto’s Francis has the look of one who is getting what he really doesn’t want, because that’s the difficulty of loving God: you frequently get what you don’t want. As a soon to be celebrated saint observed, “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder why you have so few.”

But Francis loved God because God had first loved him. And despite what he may have wanted or felt, Francis let that love flow through him and that is what it takes to be a saint.

As a good Italian lad, I’m sure Francis had his fun with gluttony in his early days. He sounds like the sort of chap who these days would own two burr grinders and make sure his coffee was fresh.  In his latter days, he was famously disinterested in food, but apparently one thing that still tickled his palate were a type of almond cookie, which his dear friend Claire, being a good Italian girl, happily made for him.  Different cookbooks give different recipes for that concoction.  I have gone with the more medieval sounding Mostaccioli from Evelyn Birge Vitz’s A Continual Feast

Mostaccioli 

1 pound blanched almonds (I used unskinned whole almonds instead because I had them and I do not mind the color brown. And as I was not actually baking for Francis, I couldn’t face the work of blanching them.)
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon cinnamon, or 1 teaspoon vanilla
2 egg whites, lightly beaten

Mr. Mostaccioli

Approximately 1 cup of flour

Chop the almonds very fine or coarsely grind in a blender

In a bowl combine the nuts, honey, cinnamon, and egg whites. Mix thoroughly. Gradually stir in enough flour to form a thick paste.

On a lightly floured surface, knead the paste until smooth and stiff. Roll out to about 1/4 inch. Cut into diamond shapes, about 2 1/2 inches long. Place the diamonds on a lightly buttered and floured baking sheet.  (I put them on parchment paper.) Let dry for 1 to 2 hours.

Bake in a preheated 250°F oven for 20-30 minutes or until set. Do not let brown.

Yield: @ 3 dozen


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Turning My Face

GOOD-FRIDAY, 1613, RIDING WESTWARD.
by John Donne

LET man’s soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
Th’ intelligence that moves, devotion is ;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey ;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl’d by it.
Hence is’t, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul’s form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die ;
What a death were it then to see God die ?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes ?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,
Humbled below us ? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our soul’s, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragg’d and torn ?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God’s partner here, and furnish’d thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom’d us ?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They’re present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them ; and Thou look’st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hang’st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity ;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face.

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END now the white loaf and the pie,
And let all sports with Christmas die.

This is it, mes enfants, the absolutely LAST day of Christmas.  No excuses, returns, or exchanges.

Candlemas is the Feast of the the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the Purification of the Virgin Mary.  Under Jewish law, a woman was unclean after giving birth. For 40 days after the birth of a son and 60 after the birth of a daughter she was not allowed to worship in the Temple or indeed mix with the public. When the period ended, she was to present herself in the Temple and be ritually purified.  She would also offer a sacrifice to God. A lamb, if she could afford it, or as in Mary’s case, two turtledoves (but not a partridge in a pear tree, but now you know why there are 2 turtledoves in the song.)

But it’s what happened at the Temple that makes this outing interesting. I’ll let Luke tell:

“22When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23(as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”[b]), 24and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.”[c]

25Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 27Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
29“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you now dismiss[d] your servant in peace.
30For my eyes have seen your salvation,
31which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
32a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”

33The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. 34Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

36There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37and then was a widow until she was eighty-four.[e] She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. 38Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

39When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. 40And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.”

So there you have it. Candlemas may be the most meaningful feast day of which you have never heard.

Traditionally in secular liturgical culture, the day was celebrated by getting in your last licks of Christmas.  As Herrick observed the white bread and the Christmas pie say bye-bye, and…

Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
Till sunset let it burn ;
Which quench’d, then lay it up again
Till Christmas next return.
Part must be kept wherewith to tend
The Christmas log next year,
And where ’tis safely kept, the fiend
Can do no mischief there.


Most of you likely don’t have yule logs, but there are other ways to say farewell. I find it is a good last day to listen to Christmas music and will giving one last glorious go to Praetorious’ “Mass for Christmas Morning” until, God willing, next Christmas morning.

Also you can do like the French and eat your crepes. The French traditionally ea crepes on Candlemas as they remind the French of the sun.  And why not? I say cordially. Crepes are easy, delicious, and popular with the youth. Eat up!

And be not sad…we’re officially in Carnival where the fun never ends!!!!

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Barm Brack for Brigid

Barm Brack

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Candlemas Eve

Is your Christmas tree  hanging on to its last needle in the  corner?  Is the thing upon your door the object formerly known as a wreath?  Get them down before the  goblins come…

Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith ye dress’d the Christmas hall;
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch there left behind;
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected there, maids, trust to me,
So many goblins you shall see.

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