Catholic Saints & Feasts

Ash Wednesday
Forty-six days before Easter
Liturgical Color: Violet

Without God we are a tiny pile of crumbs

The marauding pirates of the high seas had their tough skin inked with tattoos. Roman soldiers smothered their bodies in oil before a battle. Primitive peoples ritually paint a warrior’s face before a fight, stretch earlobes with hoops, or pierce noses with large rings. When American Indians wanted to emulate the ferocity or speed of an animal, a sharp bone fragment was used to carve that creature’s outline into their skin, where it was stained with dye or soot. Traditionally, when a simple man wanted to announce what tribe he ran with, what nation he would die for, or what woman he would defend, he didn’t need to say a word. He just lifted up his shirt a bit, rolled up his sleeve, or pointed to a mark on his neck. Clothes, hairstyle, and cosmetics communicate status, origin, belonging, and commitment well. But they can all be removed or changed. Tattoos, scalpings, piercings, brands, paints, and scars use the body as their canvas to permanently convey what words cannot.

On Ash Wednesday, Catholics receive a temporary ash “tattoo” of a cross just above their eyes and nose. This primal gesture evokes the raw, uncomplicated, religious devotion at the core of our otherwise sophisticated theology. The Church consecrates the body externally with water and oil in Baptism, Confirmation, and Anointing of the Sick. The Church reads Saint Thomas Aquinas, sings refined Latin chant, and prays before luminous stained glass. And it also smudges black ashes on our faces. Real religions do things like this. A real religion has priests who smear your face with dirty ash as they whisper, “You’re gonna die.”

Man’s earthly end, the separation of soul and body, could have come about in many ways. But due to original sin, this end always comes through death. Death is a punishment for Adam and Eve’s sin of pride in eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. This sin is not original in the sense of being authentic or unrepeatable, but in that it occurred at our common origin. As a permanent repercussion of His punishment, God made work burdensome and instituted death as the mysterious doorway through which all must walk to exit earthly life. God told this to our common parents in Genesis 3:19: “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The last of these words are repeated to the faithful as the ashes are placed on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday.

But as these words of death and destruction, of returning to the ground, are spoken, the priest does not trace an ash circle or a black question mark on our foreheads. He traces a cross. In this sign we shall conquer. In no other sign will we conquer. So with death comes a promise. With the old Adam there comes a new Adam—Jesus Christ. This is how Jesus was first understood in the early Church. Mary was the New Eve. Christ was the New Adam. They untied the knot our remote ancestors had tied. They were faithful where Adam and Eve were unfaithful. They kept the promise Adam and Eve had broken.

The start of the forty days of Lent is a practice run. One day, we will all have to give an accounting of our lives. The balance sheet will have to be settled, the good and the bad weighed in their columns. Ash Wednesday is a reminder of something we know but don’t call to mind often enough. Without God all that remains of our greatness is a little pile of dust. We are, in a sense, marked with ourselves today. The tiny black crumbs of ash will fall away in a matter of hours, to be forgotten for another year. And life will go on. Such is our destiny. With God, everything. Without God, nothing.

God of all, we ask that we live a fruitful Lent starting on this Ash Wednesday. Help us to be faithful to our promises of penance, sacrifice, and repentance for past sins. May we see in the ashes of today our true nature without You. May we see in the cross our true destiny with You.

The Baptism of the Lord
First Century; Sunday after January 6 or the Monday after the Epiphany
Feast; Liturgical Color: White/Gold

He humbly bowed His head as an example, not because He was imperfect Who would not want a doctor who, before he cuts, lifts his shirt a little, shows his own scar, and says to the patient, “I had the same. It’s going to be alright!” What soldier would not be just a little braver, stand a little taller, seeing medals for valor on his commander’s uniform? We want our heroes, our leaders, and our guides to lead through personal example. To have been there. To have done that. And we want our Savior to do the same. To empathize. To participate. To identify. To accompany. Actions resonate more than words.

Our sinless God “became” sin, in the words of Saint Paul. Jesus identifies with sin but never sinned. Jesus carries sin but is not a sinner. Why? Because to become sin is to become man. In order for God to enter into human reality, He had to identify with all that sin entails. God wanted to stand with us shoulder to shoulder. He did not fake becoming man but really became man. And if God came to forgive sins and sinners, and to shed His blood for them on the cross, He had to bear the burden they bore yet retain His perfection.
This is why our sinless God was baptized on today’s feast. God lays to the side His perfection and dignity and bows His head in the dirty waters of the Jordan River. He lined up with sinners to receive in humility what He did not need, to attend a school whose subjects He had mastered. Our God knew the value of empathy. He knew the power of example. And He knew that His ministry to mankind had to start not on a golden throne but in the mud with other men just trying to start again and again and again.

The fullness of the Holy Trinity, first revealed subtly at the Annunciation, is present and spoken for at the Lord’s baptism. The Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, hovers. The voice of God the Father intones His favor over His Son. And the Son enters into the essential Christian pact with man—I will become like you so that you can become like me. Sins will be taken away through water and blood. I will suffer for your benefit. This is the promise. And the Church’s priests will carry on the baptizing, forgiving, and consecrating until the sun sets for the last time. God comes to us most intensely through the Sacraments. Jesus’ actions prove this.

O Lord, You are not remote. You know sin but are not a sinner. Help us to renew our baptism through a frequent reception of confession and the Holy Eucharist. By receiving one, we strengthen the others. By receiving You, we receive God Himself.

January 6: The Epiphany of the Lord
January 6 or the first Sunday after January 1 where this feast is not a Holy Day of Obligation
Solemnity; Liturgical Color: White/Gold

Catholicism did multiculturalism before anyone else

The Feast of the Epiphany has traditionally been considered more theologically important than almost any other Feast Day, including Christmas. The early Christians had only Scripture, not the wealth of tradition we have today, to guide them in marking the great events of the life of Christ. So Holy Week and Easter, the Baptism of the Lord, Pentecost, and the Epiphany jumped off the pages of Scripture as great events which merited celebration. These few dates became fixed points on the calendar and were later surrounded over the centuries with numerous other feasts and saints’ days.

Two lessons from the visit of the Magi are worth considering. The first is that the wise men’s gifts were given after Christmas. Many Catholic cultures preserve the ancient tradition of giving gifts on the Epiphany, not on Christmas itself. This tradition separates the birth of Christ from gift giving. When these two things—the birth of Christ and the giving of gifts—are collapsed into the same day, it causes some confusion of priorities, and the birth of Christ never wins. Waiting to exchange gifts until January 6 lets the Child God have the stage to Himself for a day. It makes people, especially children, wait—a rarity in the modern Western world. Postponing gift-giving until January 6 makes for a long, leisurely Christmas season and has the benefit of tradition and good theology as well.

Another great lesson from the Magi is more theological—that a true religion must be true for everyone, not just for some people. Truth is not geographical. It climbs over borders. Truth by its nature conquers untruth. The Magi are the first non-Jews, or Gentiles, to worship Christ. They tell us that the mission field of Christ is the whole world, not just the Holy Land. The Church is forever bound, then, to teach, preach, and sanctify the world over.

The Magi crack everything open. The true God and His Church must light a fire in Chinese souls, Arab souls, African souls, and South American souls. This may take until the end of time, but Christianity has time on its side. The Magi give personal testimony to the universality of the Church, one of its four marks. The Epiphany is the start of the multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, and faith-united society that the Catholic Church envisions as the only source of true human unity. Catholicism started multiculturalism and diversity without sacrificing unity and truth.

Balthasar, Caspar, and Melchior, your minds were prepared to receive a greater truth. You give an example of holy curiosity, of pilgrimage by light to light. When you discovered your treasure, you laid down your gifts in homage. May our search also find. May our pilgrimage also end in truth.

Fourth Thursday in November: Thanksgiving Day (U.S.A.)
Optional Memorial; Liturgical Color: White

Life is a gift replete with countless gifts

It’s 1542, and the Spanish Franciscan Juan de Padilla, a rugged ex-soldier, is trekking through the high, waving prairie grasses of the buffalo plains of North America at the head of a small band of explorers. Suddenly, an Indian war party of the Kansas people appears on the low horizon. The Spaniards scatter into the tall grasses for cover. But Father Padilla stays, slowly kneels in the moist soil, bows his head in prayer, and doesn’t move an inch. The war party approaches, and as the Spaniards watch from afar, they stretch their bows and fill Father Padilla’s torso with a volley of arrows. He is the first North American martyr. There are no dissenting Protestants anywhere in sight.
It’s 1570, and five Spanish Jesuits establish a mission, with chapel and school, to evangelize Indians in the future state of Virginia. In February of 1571, all the Jesuits are hacked to death with the very axes they had given to the Indians for chopping wood. A relief boat arriving a few months later finds Indians on the shore dressed in blood-stained cassocks. The English Potestant settlement of Jamestown is still thirty-six years in the future!

It’s April 30, 1598, in modern-day New Mexico. A Spanish explorer and a team of Franciscan priests erect a large cross and solemnly consecrate the vast land before them to Christ the King. The local Indians accept baptism and a large banquet is held, and is still held annually, to commemorate the event. The pilgrims who would one day land in Massachusetts are, in 1598, still in Europe. Throughout the American borderlands, in the Southwest, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, and Texas, hundreds of Spanish missionaries in the 1500s were traversing the deserts, swamps, forests, and plains of the future United States of America saying Mass, teaching the faith, and baptizing, long before a single boat loaded with pilgrims ever slowly floated into an East Coast harbor.

The people of the future United States of America gave thanks in many and varied ways long before President Abraham Lincoln, in 1863, established the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.” North America’s native tribes gave thanks in primitive ways common to all pre-modern societies. They honored the gods who formed the mountains like clay, who blew the winds across the prairies, and who caused the rain to fall. These Indians had their sacred dances, sacred dress, and sacred places where their holy men invoked the spirit gods equated with creation. These robust, but primitive, religious impulses lacked an equivalent moral dimension requiring respect for women, prisoners of war, children, or the unknown other. Christian missionaries brought a fuller, more complex religion which built a solid structure on the native culture’s wide base of nature-based cosmologies.

When dissenting Protestants disembarked in Massachusetts in 1620, they brought a deep belief in Jesus Christ and in His written word. After numerous settlers perished from disease, hardship, and starvation, they bonded with local Indians to offer thanks to God in 1621 for their tenuous survival. We need not live in desperate and difficult circumstances to fall to our knees in thanks to God for our life and all of its bounty. The intentional disciple must have a permanent attitude of gratitude if she finds it easy to believe when others struggle, if both of her parents were present as she grew up, if the children are healthy, if the job pays well, if the pain in the stomach was nothing at all, if the plane lands safely every time, if the bruised marriage heals, if there is always food at hand, gas in the car, a friend to call, or just one person who wonders where you’ve been the last few hours.

There’s a million reasons to be thankful and a million ways to express those million reasons. President Lincoln did not explain why he chose a Thursday as Thanksgiving Day, but perhaps the legacy of Catholicism influenced his decision. Jesus Christ instituted the Holy Eucharist, the ultimate act of Thanksgiving, on a Thursday evening—Holy Thursday. For the Catholic who goes to daily Mass, every day is Thanksgiving Day.

God, creation is not just a forum for action but a gift to mankind, a place for men and women, alone created in Your image and likeness, to work out their salvation, to exercise their gifts, and to render due homage and thanks to You for life itself, the gift of all gifts.

Last Sunday in Ordinary Time: Our Lord Jesus Christ,
King of the Universe
Solemnity; Liturgical Color: White or Gold

The vastness of creation serves as the Lord’s footstool

This last Sunday in Ordinary Time is dedicated to the very highest understanding of the nature, role, and purpose of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is multifaceted, the deep hues and contours of his personality revealing themselves to different races and ages in different ways. More personally, even inside of just one single life, a Christian can understand Jesus in more subtle and complex ways as that particular Christian matures. Carpenter, Miracle Worker, Son of Mary, Son of God, Prophet, Messiah, Son of David, Good Shepherd, Healer, Preacher, Logos, Lamb of God, etc. Yet all these titles and identities will give way as the world ends, time is fulfilled, and life with God becomes simply life itself. Jesus’ identity will culminate in His Kingship. It will not be a transitional but a terminal identity. The dead will come nose to nose with King Jesus, feeling His hot breath on their cheeks, as He judges them at their life’s end. And the saved will have King Jesus before them in heaven forever as He renders homage to God the Father in the power of God the Holy Spirit.

The feast of “Christ the King” was first established in 1925, and Pope Saint Paul VI expanded its name to “King of the Universe” in 1969. Jesus is not just a King of Hearts. He is more than mankind’s universal Coach, Teacher, or Counselor. By “King of the Universe” the Church is communicating Jesus’ metaphysical scale, that God encompasses all of reality, not just man’s reality. We say in the Nicene Creed that God created all things visible and invisible. So Jesus is King over all the planets, stars, black holes, quasars, and exploding suns in the blackest corners of remote space. He is King over the earth and all its waterfalls, rainforests, mountain peaks, desert plains, and dark sea floors. He lords over all creation because He is its source. Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that God is not the most perfect being inside of creation but being itself. God is reality, not just the most impressive being inhabiting the reality bubble.

This feast is an antidote to the private, or compartmentalized, Jesus who impacts only those spaces in the Christian’s life where He is allowed to enter. Jesus wants to reign in every sphere of our lives, at home, on the factory floor, in the yard, at the office, over drinks, on the sports’ field, in the car, at meals, on the phone, and on and on. His field of action has no borders. From one perspective, this is a challenging, and limiting, spirituality. Such an intrusive, all-encompassing God can make life feel like a cage, where self-expression is constrained by His rules. From another perspective, however, the total reign of God in our lives is freeing. It means that He is not found only in Church. Sunday Mass? Of course. But we need not have our fingers on the rosary to be close to God and Mary at all times. God is found inside of the daily duties that are the stuff of life. This is consoling. We are not distracted from the higher things as we manage a family, earn a living, exercise, raise the kids, or take care of the house. When the Lord is King of Everything, mundanities are not banalities. The world is richer and more alive when our life is an all-inclusive vocation.

The anointed King was a tangible image of the hidden God in Western culture until modern times. Every earthly king was validated by the mighty God King who stood invisibly behind him, the One who benevolently ruled the universe as His own sacred republic. This understanding of God as a Divine Ruler gave a real sense of order, unity, and common purpose to all of reality which is lacking in modern, secular, democratic societies. Today’s feast does not invoke, however, merely an image of Jesus representing someone else’s Kingship but Jesus actually reigning as King. All the baptized should be glad to be subject to such a benevolent monarch.

Christ the King, Your sovereignty over all creation is not heavy. You order all reality toward Yourself and govern Your creatures with justice and humility. Help us to be faithful and subservient to what You desire, so that we can live one day in Your heavenly kingdom.