Postmodernism: an art movement that doesn’t really exist?
In the past, when someone decided that they wanted to be an artist, it was usually because they liked to draw and paint or sculpt, and thought they were good at it. Learning to be a good artist always meant primarily learning how to be better at drawing, painting or sculpting.
This is not the case nowadays. It is still true that many artists begin their journey as children when they first pick up a crayon and draw. However, many of those who complete fine art degrees at university do not spend a high proportion of their time studying what used to be considered the basic skills of the artist. Rather, if they complete a fine arts degree, they have very likely lost the desire to draw, under the influence of their art-school education. Typically, contemporary art students are told that they must conform to a worldview that rejects the values that underlie traditional art, and abandon traditional methods altogether. Those who resist will not do well unless they can persuade their teachers that their use of drawing skill is in pursuit of ‘irony’. If they use their art to mock those traditions, then they will be permitted to flourish.
Above: My Bed, by Tracy Emin, contemporary British, post-modernism. Shortlisted for the Turner Art Prize, she argued that her work was like Turner’s because Turner was a ‘really raunchy man’. It sold most recently for over $2.5M.
William Turner, British, 1838: The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up. Putting aside the alleged raunchiness of the artist for a moment, does this look like Tracy Emin’s art to you?
This is a generalization of the situation today, but to a greater or lesser extent it is true for most art schools that participate in the modern university system. The highest praise that the teacher and critics can give an artist is that he ‘challenges established norms’ (here meaning Christian and Judeo-Christian values). So, for example, any artist who expresses, through his work, an unorthodox approach (from a Christian point of view) to sexual morality will be praised for doing so, especially if his art has the power to shock conservatively minded people.
A typical example of work consistent with these ideas is by the British artist, Chris Ofili who was born in 1968. In 1999 a painting of his was part of an exhibition shown in New York City. It was a Madonna described by Wikipedia as follows:
On a yellow-orange background, the large painting (8 feet high and 6 feet wide) depicts a black woman wearing a blue robe, a traditional attribute of the Virgin Mary. The work employs mixed media, including oil paint, glitter, and polyester resin, and also elephant dung, map pins and collaged pornographic images. The central Black Madonna is surrounded by many collaged images that resemble butterflies at first sight, but on closer inspection are photographs of female genitalia; an ironic reference to the putti that appear in traditional religious art. A lump of dried, varnished elephant dung forms one bared breast, and the painting is displayed leaning against the gallery wall, supported by two other lumps of elephant dung, decorated with coloured pins: the pins on the left are arranged to spell out “Virgin” and the one on the right “Mary.”
A distorted image of the Virgin Mary adorned with pornography and elephant dung was clearly intended to deride Christian values. I have read accounts of comments by the artist that, along with everything else, he thought the depiction of Virgin Mary as a black woman did this too. If so this was a mistake on his part, given the tradition of the portrayal of black and brown skinned Madonnas in both Orthodox and Catholic Churches.
Our Lady of Czestochowa
Initially Ofili’s painting did not attract much attention. This changed, however, when the then mayor of New York, Rudy Guiliani, publicly objected to it. His discomfort and the wider interest it generated, combined with the fact that Christians and conservatives who were now aware of it also hated it, delighted the art world. The fact that Ofili had succeeded in baiting such people gave his work new value in their eyes. As a result of the publicity it attracted, the painting was quickly snapped up by a collector, and sold in 2015 by Christie’s for $4.6M before being given to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The artist himself was elevated into the mainstream of the art establishment as a result. He would go on to win the Turner Art Prize - one of the most prestigious awards the British art establishment can bestow, to become a member of the Royal Academy, and to sit on the board of the Tate Modern gallery in London.
What is the basis of the philosophy of this particular brand of anti-traditionalism that Ofili typifies? It is often characterized as postmodernism. The Tate Modern website tells us that artistic postmodernism started to catch on around 1970 and defines it as ‘a reaction against the ideas and values of modernism, as well as a description of the period that followed modernism's dominance in cultural theory and practice in the early and middle decades of the twentieth century. The term is associated with skepticism, irony and philosophical critiques of the concepts of universal truths and objective reality’.
This, it seems to me, is disingenuous, because it does not tell the full story. While artists today do challenge the principle of objective truth and any institution based upon that principle such as mainstream religion, they are certainly not even-handed about it. It is Christianity and especially the Church over and above all other religions (with the possible exception of orthodox Judaism) that is targeted. Similarly, while all natural science is founded on the principle of objective truth, there seems to be a selective approach to their challenges to the scientific establishment too. Rarely do we see ‘postmodern’ artists attacking such politically fashionable scientific hypotheses as anthropogenic climate change or Darwin’s theory of evolution.
The driving principle behind the contemporary art movement is not, in fact, post-modernism as it is described by Tate Modern, but rather the latest iteration of Marxism called Critical Theory.
Marxism originated as a materialist, pseudo-scientific method of inquiry made in the 19th century by Karl Marx, therefore it is part of the ‘modernity’ that the contemporary art movement claims to be a reaction to. It was first known as ‘scientific socialism’ because it claimed a methodology that applied the principles of analysis of natural science to history in order to predict the future of society. By tracing the chain of events in history and applying the laws of cause-and-effect, Marxists predict a Utopian future in which all human needs are met. The necessary causal influence for change that pushes mankind on to its final destiny is in their view, violence. The violence that will bring about the desired change is, they claim, the product of an ongoing struggle between oppressor classes and the oppressed that will lead first to the total destruction of present society, and then the rise of a utopia out of the ashes.
In this scenario the oppressors fight to maintain the status quo which benefits them, and the oppressed fight to destroy it. Building on ideas developed by the German philosopher Hegel, this ‘dialectic’ of opposites, oppressors and the oppressed, is not seen as a harmonious process of resolution by discussion, but rather one that can only be resolved by the victory of the oppressed over their oppressors. Violent conflict is seen therefore as a necessary component to its resolution.
This is not a political movement that seeks to change modern society into one that is more just. Rather, it is an ideology, a cultish, pseudo-religion that seeks the total destruction of the present society so that a fresh start can be made. There is however, no template for what this new society will look like, for it is assumed that it will emerge naturally from human interactions free from the traditions of the past.
Part 2 to come: Marxism and Critical Theory in the culture.
The Mother of God, by Theophanes the Greek, painted in Russia in the 14th century
In a month’s time I will be in South Carolina giving three lectures (on three different topics), April 20th in Charleston, April 21st in Columbia, and April 22nd in Greer. I look forward to meeting any NLM readers who happen to live in that part of the country!
Citing the words of St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Ambrose, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum reminds all members of the Church of our responsibility to cling to the Word of God:
25. Therefore, all the clergy must hold fast to the Sacred Scriptures through diligent sacred reading and careful study, especially the priests of Christ and others, such as deacons and catechists who are legitimately active in the ministry of the word. This is to be done so that none of them will become “an empty preacher of the word of God outwardly, who is not a listener to it inwardly” [St. Augustine], since they must share the abundant wealth of the divine word with the faithful committed to them, especially in the sacred liturgy. The sacred synod also earnestly and particularly urges all the Christian faithful, especially religious, to learn by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures the “excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ” (Phil 3:8). “For ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ” [St. Jerome]. Therefore, they should gladly put themselves in touch with the sacred text itself, whether it be through the liturgy, rich in the divine word, or through devotional reading, or through instructions suitable for the purpose and other aids which, in our time, with approval and active support of the shepherds of the Church, are commendably spread everywhere. And let them remember that prayer should accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that God and man may talk together; for “we speak to Him when we pray; we hear Him when we read the divine saying” [St. Ambrose].
This exhortation is something we all need to ponder—including those of us who love and cherish the usus antiquior. We, too, need to pay close attention to the readings read or chanted at Mass; it’s not as if taking Scripture seriously is some kind of Protestant or modernist innovation! In fact, Scripture’s “home” is most of all the liturgy, the Divine Office and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It will not do to react against charismatic excesses or the flaws of the Ordinary Form Lectionary by swinging to an extreme that fails to give to the Word of God the profound reverence it deserves—the homage of our minds and hearts, the deliberate attentiveness and personal application that causes the seed to take root.
I have noticed a strange phenomenon, namely, that traditionalists tend to swing to the opposite extreme on a lot of things, as if overreacting to the abuses around them. "The congregation singing at Mass? Oh, that's a Novus Ordo thing"—forgetting that St. Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII, to name just the most outstanding, repeatedly urged the faithful to chant the Ordinary of the Mass, as indeed is completely fitting and easily done through regular exposure to the chant. "Read Scripture devotionally? Oh, that's a Protestant thing"—forgetting that the Bible is a Catholic book and that the saints of the Church were doing lectio divina for fifteen centuries before the Protestants ever showed up. "Follow along with the readings and prayers at Mass in a Missal? I can't be bothered, I'd rather just pray individually, and be in a pleasant holy haze for an hour." I'm not denying that the old Mass wonderfully promotes interior prayer, and certainly I would never say we should always be reading or singing, but it's no less true that we ought to put on the mind of Christ by joining in the public worship offered by the Mystical Body—and this involves at least some effort at getting acquainted with the content of that worship!
To get back to our main point: Scripture is most of all at home in the Mass, where it is like a jewel placed in a setting of precious metal, and it is our privilege as Catholics to attend to the voice of Almighty God when His very words are being offered up before Him as a sweet-smelling incense. Like everything else in the liturgy, the proclamation of the biblical readings is both for God's glory and for man's sanctification.
A contemporary author has spoken eloquently of these connections:
“Liturgical proclamation is obviously the place and privileged means of contact with the sacred text. There the living and active Word is returned to me in all its fullness. . . ‘It is he himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in church’ (Sacrosanctum Concilium 7).”[1]
This is because the Church’s worship is the activity of the Risen Christ, Head of the Church, together with all the members of His Mystical Body. The liturgy is His personal action for, and with, His people: He saves and sanctifies them, He gives them the grace to respond to Him in adoration, praise, blessing, contrition, supplication, thanksgiving. However, “the Church does not actualize its mystery or carry out its activity only in liturgical acts. It follows from this that, in the liturgy, the Word is living and active maximally though not exclusively”[2].
Of course the book itself is not the Word of God, only the means by which it is transmitted to me. But the reader of the book is a member of the Church. That reading takes place in the context of the ecclesial mystery, where the same Spirit who inspired the prophets and sacred writers is present and active. Therefore the text can be read in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written.
Because we are members of Christ’s Body, we can continue to hear God’s Word outside of the liturgy—and in fact that continuation is what makes the public proclamation bear fruit within us as well as prepares us for the next reception of the Word. “All personal reading of the sacred text finds its center in liturgical hearing—as preparation for it, or as its continuation.”
Let me give some examples about how we might prepare ourselves for, or derive further fruit from, the liturgical hearing of the Bible.
On Sundays or Holy Days, we might look at the day’s readings ahead of time, either the evening before or in the morning, and/or look at them again later that day, to impress the word more firmly on our souls. I have been amazed, personally, at how much more I get out of the reading or chanting of the Scriptures at Mass when I have already gone through the text, even if only cursorily, beforehand. It’s as if the ground had been plowed, and now there are furrows where the seeds can fall and find moisture.
During Lent, where both the Roman Rite and the modern rite of Paul VI offer us daily readings at Mass, we might take as our lectio divina the very Epistle and Gospel of the day.
I have seen it recommended to do lectio divina with the entirety of the Mass, from the Introit through the readings to the Communion, and this has indeed been very fruitful for me on the occasions when I’ve done it.
If one is fortunate enough to be able to attend a public Divine Office at a monastery or parish, one may do the same thing: look over the psalms and other parts of the liturgy ahead of time and/or afterwards.
In such ways, we are nourishing our souls from the feast of the liturgy, preparing better for its celebration, returning to it in memory and love. Archbishop Magrassi comments:
A kind of spiritual exchange will take place. The soul, in its moments of prayer, will easily remain influenced by what moved it during the liturgy; it will relive it, probe it more deeply, personalize it in one-to-one dialogue with the divine speaker. On the other hand, what the soul experiences in these moments of prayer will, as it were, flow back to it as it listens during the liturgy. It will be totally present to the reading; it will listen more receptively and be more fully open. The two moments become complementary aspects of a single act.[3]
Lectio divina is an essential instrument in the life of the traditional Catholic. It has been a fundamental element (or better yet, foundation) of monastic life since the very beginning. It has been the recurrent life-giving devotion of countless saints. It has shaped the great theologians and mystics. It is recommended to us again and again by the popes and enriched with indulgences. It is a spiritual bread that feeds our hunger and yet causes us to hunger more and more for the Bread of Life, our Lord Jesus Christ, in His Eucharistic Presence and in His heavenly glory. “It is your face, O Lord, that I seek; hide not your face from me.”
NOTES
[1] Archbishop Mariano Magrassi, O.S.B., Praying the Bible: An Introduction to Lectio Divina, 3.
[2] Ibid., 4. The next two quotations are from the same page.
[3] Ibid., 9-10.
Once again, our thanks to our Roman pilgrim friends Jacob and Agnese for sharing their photos of the Lenten station Masses in Rome with us. This post includes a lot of relics, and, more by coincidence that any deliberate design on my part, shows three different churches which are now below street level, as the many layers of the Eternal City have risen up around them. We also have a good example of a modern revival of the ancient custom of the Collect churches, once an integral part of the Stational liturgy, as explained in this article from 2010.
Friday of the Second Week of Lent – St Vitalis
San Vitale was first dedicated in the year 416; modern constructions around it, including the street on which it sits, the via Nazionale, are on a much higher level, and one must now descend a rather large staircase to reach the church. This first photo was taken from the top of the stairs. In Italy, it was also a very common custom once upon a time to hand decorative covers on the columns of a church for a major feast day and other important occasions, as we see here.
This church has also faithfully maintained the custom of spreading greenery all over the floor on the station day...
Praise the Lord, for He is good; sing praise to His Name, for He is sweet; all that He wills He does in heaven and on earth. (The Offertory of Laetare Sunday)
Offertorium, Ps. 134 Laudáte Dóminum, quia benignus est: psállite nómini ejus, quoniam suavis est: omnia, quaecumque vóluit, fecit in caelo et in terra.
In the Roman Rite, the Gospel of the woman caught in adultery, John 8, 1-11, is joined at today’s Mass with the story of Susanna, who is rescued from an accusation of adultery by the prophet Daniel. Whether by coincidence or design, these two stories are united not just by a textual theme, but also by a text-critical one; both stories were known in antiquity to be later additions to their respective books, but nevertheless accepted as authentic and canonical by the Church.
Christ and the Adulteress, 1620s, by the French painter Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632), an unabashed plagiarist of Caravaggio. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.
Susanna is one of two Greek additions to the book of the prophet Daniel, the other being the episode known as Bel and the Dragon. In the Septuagint, it is placed at the beginning of the book, since it describes Daniel as a youth, and Bel and the Dragon at the end. St Jerome placed them both at the end of his Latin translation of Daniel, and they therefore appear in the Vulgate as chapters 13 and 14 respectively. Since the time of the Protestant reformation, they have been included in many non-Catholic English Bibles with the group of books improperly known as the Apocrypha.
But as with the other so-called Apocrypha, the early Church had no serious doubts about the canonicity of either episode. The earliest Patristic commentary on Daniel, written by Hippolytus of Rome in the first half of the 3rd century, accepts Susanna as a part of the book without distinction, and the hugely influential Biblical scholar Origen, his contemporary, explicitly defended its canonicity. It was frequently depicted in art in the Roman catacombs, and both episodes form part of the Roman Mass lectionary.
Susanna as a lamb between two wolves, from the Arcosolium of Celerina in the Catacomb of Praetextatus, mid-4th century.
The pericope of the adulteress, on the other hand, was a bit slower to find acceptance. It is missing completely from a considerable number of Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, including several of the earliest and most important ones, such as the Codexes Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and Alexandrinus. Other early manuscripts have it marked in such a way that indicates doubt as to its authenticity, and a few place it at the end of Luke 21, which is why it is sometimes known as “the wandering pericope.” It is not mentioned in some important early commentaries on the Gospel of John, such as those by Ss John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria. To this day, the Byzantine Rite’s Gospel for the Divine Liturgy of Pentecost goes from the last verse of John 7 directly to verse 8, 12, and the passage is not included in the semi-continuous reading of St John that runs from Easter to Pentecost. (It is included in the lectionary for the feasts of female penitents.)
In the West, the question of its authority was settled by its acceptance on the part of three of the first four Doctors of the Church. St Jerome included it in the correction of the Latin text of the Gospels which he made at the behest of Pope St Damasus I. St Ambrose refers to it as part of the liturgy in his Second Apology for David, and it is still used to this day in the Ambrosian Rite in the same place in which he attests it. St Augustine includes it in his commentary on the Gospel of John, which is by far the most important and widely read such commentary in the West. In his book “On Adulterous Marriages”, he also gives the following explanation of the passage’s absence from some manuscripts, words which have become, alas, all too relevant to our own age.
“But now, after Christ said to the adulteress, ‘Neither shall I condemn thee; go, sin no more henceforth,’ who could not understand that the husband must forgive since he sees that the Lord of them both has forgiven (her)? Nor should she any longer call herself an adulteress, whose crime was wiped away by God’s mercy when she repented.
But clearly the sense of the faithless abhors this, such that some of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, I believe, fearing that free license to sin was being given to their wives, took out of their copies (of the Gospel) that which the Lord did regarding the forgiveness of the adulteress, as if He granted permission to sin when He said, ‘Now sin no longer …’ (De conjugiis adulterinis II, 7.)
The Four Doctors of the Church, by Pier Francesco Sacchi, ca. 1516.
For Hippolytus, Susanna is a figure of the Church beset by her persecutors, but vindicated and saved by the just judgment of God in the person of the prophet Daniel, whose name means “God is my judge.” For St Ambrose, the adulteress is also a figure of the Church, in the broader sense of God’s people, in both the Old and New Testaments, that seeks the Word of God in many places until she finds it in Christ, and is absolved and purified by Him. “And therefore she was waiting about, and everywhere sought the Word of God, because she was wounded, because she was naked, because she was an adulteress in all things, although without blemish in Christ, as she sought a redeemer in her wretched body. Christ joined her to Himself, in order to make her immaculate; He united Himself to her, in order to take away her adultery.” Where Susanna is the symbol of the Church in her fidelity to Christ, and the adulteress is the Church redeemed by Christ when she has been unfaithful to him.
Roughly nine centuries later, William Durandus neatly sums up this union of the two readings as follows: “On Saturday (of the third week of Lent) it is shown that the Lord saves by justice and mercy, whence the Epistle speaks of Susanna, who was saved by justice. The Gospel is that of the woman caught in adultery, whom the Lord delivered through mercy. Therefore, because (she) is saved through mercy, the Church, seeing the weakness of her children, asks to be delivered through mercy in the Introit, saying, ‘Give ear, O Lord, to my words, understand my cry. Hearken to the voice of my prayer, (my king and my God.)’ ” (Rat. Div. Off. 7, 52, 1)
Three further things we may note about this Introit. Psalm 5, from which it is taken, is titled in Greek and Latin “for her that obtaineth the inheritance”, which the Church Fathers naturally took as a reference to the Church. A 4th-century commentary on the Psalms called “Breviarium in Psalmos”, which was long mistakenly attributed to St Jerome, says, “This Psalm is written about the Church, which at the end of the world will obtain the inheritance in all the nations that believe in Christ.” (PL XXVI, 828D-829A)
Secondly, the same commentary explains the words “my king and my God” as follows. “He truly dared to say ‘my king and my God’, even he over whom sin does not reign in his mortal body. ‘My king and my God’, because Thou reignest in me, and sin reigneth not, wherefore Thou art my God. Thou art my God, because my belly is not my God (Phil. 3, 19), because money is not my God, because lust is not my God.” This represents the condition of the Church as symbolized by the adulteress, whose adultery is taken away, and thus lust is no longer her god.
Third, the verse of the Introit continues in the fourth verse of the Psalm, “For to thee will I pray, o Lord; in the morning thou shalt hear my voice.” The story of the adulteress begins when “early in the morning (Jesus) came again into the temple.” This is also a symbol of the adulteress’ conversion, as the Breviarium says: “As long as I am in the darkness of error, He does not hear me, but when the sun of justice (i.e. Christ) shall come into my heart, then He heareth me.”
The Gradual of this Mass is taken from Psalm 22: “If I shall walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils; since Thou art with me, o Lord.” This refers to the fact that both Susanna and the adulteress faced the possibility of being killed, but were saved by the Lord. In many medieval Uses of the Roman Rite, this same gradual was used at the Requiem Mass.
The Offertory is from Psalm 118, verse 133: “Direct my steps according to thy word, that no injustice may have dominion over me, o Lord.” Of this, the Breviarium says simply “and not according to bodily desires, because I am given over to Thy service.” St Hilary of Poitiers comments in a similar vein, “…not according to the ways of the world, not according to the glory of men, not according to the pleasures of the body.” (Tractatus super Psalmos; PL IX, 617D-618A) Thus the Church, freed from the dominion of sin like the adulteress, is able to proceed to the offering of the Holy Sacrifice. And since this Psalm was sung daily for centuries at the hours from Prime to None, those who heard and sang this Offertory would certainly have thought of the first part of the following verse, “Redeem me from the calumnies of men” as a reference to the calumnies made against Susanna, and the second part, “that I may keep thy commandments,” as a reference to the Lord’s command to the adulteress, “Go and sin no more.”
On the ferias of Lent, the Communion antiphons are taken each one from a different Psalm in sequential order, starting on Ash Wednesday with Psalm 1. The days which were formerly aliturgical do not form part of this series, namely, the six Thursdays, and also the first and last Saturday; the ferias of Holy Week are also not included. (See the table below; click for larger view.)
The series is also interrupted on six days when particularly important passages of the Gospels are read, and the Communion is taken from them instead. Here is a magnificent polyphonic setting of the one for today, by the Portuguese composer Frei Manuel Cardoso (1566-1650), a Carmelite friar who worked principally at his order’s house in Lisbon.
In the lectionaries of the various Latin rites, one of the most prominent Gospels of the Lenten season is that of the Samaritan woman who spoke to Christ at the well of Jacob (St John 4, 5-42). Although the Roman, Ambrosian and Byzantine Rites each read this Gospel on a different day, it appears in all three as a lesson of particular importance for the preparation of those who will be baptized at Easter or Pentecost.
In the Roman Rite, it is read on the Friday of the third week, joined with one of the most important epistles of Lent, Numbers 20, 1-13, in which Moses makes water run from the rock in the desert. This story was understood by the early Christians as a prefiguration of the sacrament of baptism, starting with St Paul himself, who tells us that “our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. And all in Moses were baptized, in the cloud, and in the sea: and did all eat the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink; and they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.” (1 Cor. 10, 1-4) Moses striking the rock to make the water run from it is one of the most frequently depicted Biblical scenes in early Christian art; just in the paintings of the Roman catacombs, it appears over 70 times, along with numerous other representations on ancient sarcophagi.
Moses making the water run from the rock in a fourth-century fresco in the Catacomb of St Callixtus.
On the previous Sunday, the Lenten station is kept at the church of St Lawrence Outside-the-Walls, where anciently the catechumens underwent a formal examination of their Christian faith, the ritual known as the scrutiny. The Gelasian Sacramentary contains a beautiful prayer for them to be said on that day, “that they may worthily and wisely come to the confession of Thy praise; so that through Thy glory they may be reformed to the former dignity which they had lost in the original transgression.” At the same Mass, the Memento of the living has an interpolation to pray for their future godparents, and during the Hanc igitur, the names of the catechumens were read out loud. On the following Friday, the station is kept at another church of Rome’s most venerated martyr, St Lawrence ‘in Lucina’, nicknamed, like so many sacred places in the city, for the woman upon whose property it was originally built. Here, they would hear Christ speaking to the Samaritan woman of the “living water … springing up unto life everlasting”, and understand His words as a clear reference to baptism.
A piece of the gridiron of St Lawrence’s martyrdom, preserved in a reliquary in a side-altar of San Lorenzo in Lucina. Photo courtesy of Orbis Catholicus.
In his treatise on the Gospel of St John (Tract 15, 10), St Augustine explains the woman as a type of the Church, “not yet justified, but waiting to be justified”, like the catechumens themselves. He also reminds us that the Samaritans were not part of the Jewish people; indeed, the Bible itself says that they were a mixed nation of Jews and pagans, observing the customs of both. (4 Kings 17, 24-41) So too, the early Church was a mixture of Jews and pagans, now united in Christ in whom “there is neither Jew nor Greek … for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3, 28) Augustine continues by saying, “Therefore, in her, let us hear ourselves (spoken of), and in her, let us recognize ourselves, and in her, let us give thanks to God for ourselves.” (i.e. for what He has done for us.)
The dedicatory inscription on the counter-façade of Santa Sabina in Rome, the only part of the church’s original mosaic decoration which survives, ca. 425 A.D. The two figures on the sides are “the church from the circumcision” on the left, and “the church from the gentiles” on the right. Photo courtesy of Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.
In the Ambrosian Rite, the first Sunday of Lent is called “in capite jejunii – at the beginning of the fast”, a title also used for Ash Wednesday in medieval liturgical books of the Roman Rite. The remaining Sundays are named for their Gospels, all taken from St John, the second Sunday being that of the Samaritan woman, the third ‘of Abraham’ (chap. 8, 31-59), the fourth ‘of the man born blind,’ (9, 1-38), the fifth of Lazarus (11, 1-45) and the sixth ‘of the Palms’ (11, 55 – 12, 11). On the second Sunday, the following antiphon is sung after the Gospel, while the deacon spreads the corporal on the altar in preparation for the Offertory. (As in the Roman Rite, most of the Mass propers use the Old Latin version of the Scriptures.)
For I will take you from among the gentiles, and I will pour upon you clean water; you shall be cleansed from all your iniquities. I will give you a new heart, and renew a righteous spirit within you. (Ezechiel 36, 24, 25 and 26.)
In the Roman Rite, the same prophecy of Ezechiel (though not exactly the same words) provides both the introit and the first epistle of the Mass of the Wednesday of the fourth week of Lent, on which day the catechumens were exorcized and blessed at the tomb of St Paul, the great Apostle of the gentiles.
The Ambrosian Missal contains proper prefaces for nearly every Mass of the temporal cycle, generally rather longer than the those of the Roman Rite. The Lenten prefaces of the Sundays are each based on the Gospel of the day, and that of the Samaritan woman reads as follows:
Truly it is worthy and just…through Christ our Lord. Who, to instill (in us) the mystery of His humility, being tired, sat at the well, and * asked of the Samaritan woman that a drink of water be given Him, even He that had created the gift of faith in her; and so He deigned to thirst for her faith, so that, as He asked water of her, He might enkindle in her the fire of divine love. * We therefore beseech Thy boundless compassion, that defying the dark depths of vice, and leaving behind the vessel of harmful desires, we may ever thirst for Thee, that art the fountain of life, and source of all goodness, and may please Thee by the observance of our fast. Through the same etc.
The words here noted between the stars form the basis of a Preface used in the post-Conciliar Rite in the first year of the three-year lectionary cycle, when the story of the Samaritan woman is read on the third Sunday of Lent. Since this crucial passage is not included among the readings of the second and third years, a rubric provides that it may be read on Sunday in place of the Gospels assigned to those years, or it may displace one of the ferial Gospels; a similar provision is made for the blind man and Lazarus.
The Orthodox church of Jacob’s Well, also known as St Photini’s, in the city of Nablus on the West Bank. The current church is the fifth structure to stand over the site, which has been venerated by Christians as the Well of Jacob since the fourth century.
In the Byzantine tradition, the story of the Samaritan woman is read in Eastertide rather than Lent, as is that of the man born blind; however, the association of it with the sacrament of baptism is just as clear as in the Latin rites. On the fifth Sunday of Easter, the following three exapostilaria are sung at the end of Matins; the first is that of the Easter season, the second relates to the Gospel of the day’s Divine Liturgy, and the third to the feast of Mid-Pentecost.
Exapostilarion of Easter Having fallen asleep in the flesh as a mortal, O King and Lord, You rose again on the third day, raising up Adam from corruption, and abolishing death. O Pascha of incorruption, O salvation of the world! of the Samaritan Woman You reached Samaria, and talking with a woman, sought water to drink, my all-powerful Savior, who poured out water for the Hebrews from a sharp rock, and led her to belief in you: and now she enjoys life eternally in heaven. of Mid-Pentecost At the mid-point of the feast, Lover of mankind, you came to the temple and said: You who are full of thirst, come to me and draw living water welling up, through which you will all revel in delight and grace and immortal life.
Note how the exapostilarion of the Samaritan woman makes the same association between the Lord’s revelations to her and the episode of the water running from the rock that is made in the Roman Rite by the readings of the Mass. This reference to the waters of baptism continues in the third text, which quotes Christ’s second reference to the “living waters” in the Gospel of John, when He speaks in the temple during the feast of Tabernacles. (chapter 7, 37-39.)
The text of this second Gospel of the “living waters” is deferred by the Byzantine Rite to Pentecost itself, a custom which it shares with the Ambrosian and Roman Rites in different ways. The church of Milan preserves to this very day an ancient custom of celebrating two Masses on both Easter and Pentecost, the traditional days for the administration of baptism; one is the Mass “of the solemnity” itself, and another “for the (newly) baptized.” On Easter Sunday, the Gospel at the Mass for the baptized is John 7, 37-39, with the second part of the last verse omitted.
On great day of the festivity, the Lord Jesus stood and cried, saying: If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Now this he said of the Spirit which they should receive, who believed in him.
At the Mass for the baptized on Pentecost, this Gospel is repeated, adding the final words of verse 39 which are not said on Easter, “for as yet the Spirit was not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” In the Roman Rite, the same text provides the Communion antiphon for the Mass of the vigil of Pentecost, although the Gospel itself is read on the Monday of Passion Week.
The Byzantine Rite has traditionally honored the Samaritan woman as a Saint, and she was often called both an Apostle and Evangelist. Her legend states that she, her five sisters and two sons were among those baptized by St Peter and the other Apostles on the first Pentecost, and afterwards traveled to preach in many places; after evangelizing Carthage, they came to Rome, where they were martyred under Nero. Her given name is Photeine (or “Photini” in the modern pronunciation), the Greek word for “bright”; the cognate “photistes – illuminator” is used in the Byzantine tradition as a title for the saint who first evangelizes a people, the best-known example of this being perhaps St Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia. With the latinized form of her name, Photina, she was added to the Tridentine edition of the Roman Martyrology by Cardinal Baronius, along with her family members, on March 20th, the day of her feast in the Byzantine Rite. Her troparion makes the same association between the waters of baptism and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost indicated by the placement of her Gospel on the Sunday after Mid-Pentecost.
Wholly illuminated by the divine Spirit, and sated of your thirst by the springs, you drank deeply of the water of salvation from Christ the Savior, all praiseworthy one, and shared it abundantly with them that thirst; o Great Martyr and Equal to the Apostles, Photini, entreat Christ our God to save our souls.
The 3rd Choral Festival of the Catholic Sacred Music Project will be held in Paris, France, from July 2-8, in collaboration with Lux Amoris, an organization for the promotion of sacred music based in Paris, and will provide formation for Church musicians in choral singing, choral conducting, and organ improvisation. The event will culminate with a performance of the Messe Solennelle Op. 16 by Louis Vierne at a Pontifical Mass at the church of Saint Roch in Paris. Singers, conductors, and organists from all over the world who are devoted to the Church’s sacred music are welcome to come and cultivate their musical skills, and renew their passion for serving the Church through music. The international faculty includes renowned conductors, organists, and teachers from Notre Dame de Paris, Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, Abbaye de Notre-Dame de Troirs, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C., and Hillsdale College. Applications are accepted until March 29.
Saint Patrick (385-461) is probably one of the Church’s best-known saints, at least in countries influenced by Irish emigration. But despite his popularity, the details of this his life are not well known. In this article, we survey the life and legacy of Saint Patrick and some of their surprising elements.
Ireland’s English Patron
Saint
Patrick, who was born in either Scotland or northern England, describes himself as both a Roman and a Briton (who were Celts). His father was a Roman decurion (a senator and tax collector) and a deacon, and his grandfather was a priest. As a youth, however, Patrick was a lukewarm believer, and at the age of fifteen he committed an unknown sin or cluster of sins in the span of an hour. [1] The misdeed(s) do not appear to have been a great crime, but, as we will see, they would come back to haunt him.
At the age of sixteen, Patrick’s life was changed forever when he and other members of his father’s household were abducted by Irish pirates and sold into slavery. (Sidenote: the Irish word for “pirate” is Foley, so you can thank my family for the gift of Saint Patrick to Ireland.)
Patrick spent six years in slavery, probably near the modern village of Killala in the northwest. He was charged with keeping watch over his master’s livestock and had to endure snow, frost, rain, hunger, and nakedness.
The experience was transformative. During that time, he grew in his love of God. He prayed day and night as he tended his master’s flocks, and the hardships he suffered did him no harm, for as he later came to realize, “the Spirit was burning hot” within him. [2] Eventually, he heard the voice of the Lord telling him that it was time to leave. Patrick obeyed and traveled two hundred miles to the east coast, where he found a ship bound for Britain. The problem was that he had no money for the voyage (a problem common among Irishmen), but as he was walking away the sailors invited him to join them.
After the ship landed (probably in Scotland), the crew and their holy passenger roamed the countryside desperately looking for food. Saint Patrick had been telling the sailors, who were pagan, about the infinite goodness and power of God, and so the starving company asked him why he was not praying for help. he told them that if they prayed with their whole hearts, God would answer their prayers. They did, and sure enough they fell upon a herd of wild boar. Guess who you’ll be praying to the next time you are hunting feral hogs.
Saint Martin of Tours, by The Master of Sierentz, 1440-50
Travels and Commission
Patrick was well traveled and well connected. Before returning to Ireland as a missionary, the Saint traveled from one end of the Continent to the other. His biography reads like a Who’s Who of contemporary Christian Europe. He studied under Saint Martin of Tours, was tonsured in the famous island monastery of Lérins in the south of France, ordained a priest by Saint Germanus of Auxerre, consecrated a bishop by Saint Maximus of Turin, and was given his commission to convert the Irish by Pope Saint Celestine I. Celestine gave him the job, by the way, because the first missionary to Ireland had fled in terror.
Patrick was probably not surprised to receive this commission. In his autobiography The Confession, he describes a vision that he had after coming back home to Britain. A man named Victoricus appeared to him carrying many letters from Ireland. Patrick opened one of them, which began with “The voice of the Irish.” As he read these words, he heard a multitude of natives from the place where he had been a slave say with one voice: “We beg you, holy boy, to come and walk again among us.” [3] his heart was deeply moved, and he could read no further.
Patrick’s Name
We do not know Patrick’s real name. When the Pope authorized him to evangelize Ireland, he prophetically named him Patricius or “father of citizens.” Before that, we are not entirely certain what he was called. A later biographer offers three options: Magonus, that is, famous; Succetus, that is, god of war; and Cothirthiacus, “because he served four houses of druids.”
Life
Patrick had a hard life. He was enslaved twice: the second time, possibly as a missionary, lasted two months. When Roman legions withdrew from Britain to protect other parts of the Empire, the region was destabilized. As he knew all too well, abductions and violence were rampant. Saint Patrick once excommunicated a leader and his soldiers who had the audacity to murder or enslave fellow Christians: some of the victims were so new to the Faith that they were still wearing their baptismal robes and the holy oil was still visible on their foreheads. Several times, local chieftains and the Druids had Patrick and his companions beaten, robbed, and enchained.
He was also scrupulous about his ministry and refused to accept gifts. The advantage of such a policy is that it steered clear of simony, but since it was often perceived culturally as an affront, it complicated his evangelizing efforts. Patrick deeply missed his home and family in Britain, and he wrote about how much he would have loved to visit his saintly friends in Gaul, but he felt obligated to remain in Ireland and do the Lord’s work.
His mission was, of course, a great success. According to his own testimony, he baptized thousands and lived to see some of Ireland’s future leaders become monks and nuns. A land that knew nothing of God and that had “served idols and unclean things,” as he put it, had now become “a people of the Lord.” [4] And yet, despite this success, Patrick writes his Confessio near the end of his life in an occasionally defensive tone. Apparently, he was beset by detractors who claimed that he had fabricated the story of his enslavement and who accused him of financial improprieties. He was also betrayed by a close friend to whom he had confided the sins he had committed at the age of fifteen. The friend mentioned this embarrassment to Patrick’s elders (seniores) in Britain, and they held this failing against him and his episcopate, bringing great sorrow to the Saint.
Activities
Stories about Saint Patrick’s labors in Ireland abound, although it is not always easy to separate fact from fiction. It is believed that he founded his main church in Armagh, which went on to become the head church in Ireland. He is also credited with founding churches and monasteries throughout the island. Numerous miracles are attributed to him, including restoring sight to the blind and raising nine people from the dead. He died on March 17, 461 in what is now known as Downpatrick, a town in County Down, Northern Ireland. His remains are preserved in Down Cathedral.
Shamrocks and Snakes
As a general rule, the more popular a legend is about Saint Patrick, the more it is dubious. Pace the Baltimore Catechism, Patrick most likely did not teach the Irish about the Trinity by using a shamrock (if he had, he would have been guilty of the heresy of partialism). According to one source, the earliest mention of the legend comes from (gasp!) English botanists in 1571; other accounts point to a travel diary by an English tourist visiting Ireland in 1684. And to complicate matters even more, the shamrock is not a botanically recognized species: the word seamróg (shamrock) is simply Gaelic for young clover. [5] Despite the shaky historical evidence, however, the shamrock is a fitting symbol of the Saint insofar as it is an inseparable symbol of the Irish people, whom he lovingly held in the palm of his hand.
Lutheran Satires, “Saint Patrick’s Bad Analogies”
Second, Patrick did not drive the snakes out of Ireland, at least not the reptilian variety. The last Ice Age had kept the sensitive, cold-blooded creatures from most parts of Europe, and when the earth began to warm up, they took advantage of ice bridges to reach places such as England. There was no ice bridge between Britain and Ireland, however, and so the snakes could not settle in the Emerald Isle. Ireland thus joined the ranks of Iceland, Greenland, New Zealand, and Antarctica in being perpetually snake-free. [6]
That said, it can be argued that Patrick did drive snakes out of Ireland There is a legend that he observed the Lenten fast of 441 A.D. on the mountain that now bears his name, Croagh Patrick or Reek Mountain in County Mayo, Ireland, and that afterwards he expelled the snakes by throwing his bell down the mountain. The bell was originally white, but it is now called the “Black Bell of Saint Patrick” because it pelted legions of demons who were disguised as black birds and venomous snakes. The snakes in question, then, were not reptiles but devils. To this day in Ireland, “Reek Sunday,” the last Sunday of July, commemorates the expulsion. Between 25,000 and 40,000 pilgrims climb Croagh Patrick each year.
Reek Sunday, date unknown
Moreover, according to another story, the same mountain was home to Corra, a frightening serpent-demon and the mother of Satan himself. Corra first sent her servants, the Sluagh, frightening minions in charge of the Wild Hunt who attacked Patrick in the form of black birds. After he banished them to the sea, Corra transformed herself into a fiery dragon and attacked him. The Saint won by clocking her with his bell, which drove her down the mountain slope. The demon is now trapped in a lake nearby (Lough Na Corra) and is allowed to ride the waves on dark and stormy nights. Just as Mary, the new Eve, crushes the head of the serpent through her Immaculate Conception, St. Patrick crushed the head of the serpent in Ireland through his evangelization.
The Last Judgment
Even after defeating the demonic, however, Patrick would not leave the mountain until he wrestled, Jacob-style, with God on behalf of his people. God kept sending an angel to give him more concessions, but the Saint persisting in praying and fasting until all his requests were met. They included: that many souls would be freed from Purgatory by his intercession; that the Saxons who were currently conquering the Britons never conquer the Irish; that the Irish remain Christian until the end of time; that just as the original Apostles will be judges of the twelve tribes of Israel (Mt. 19, 28), he (Patrick) will be judge of the entire Irish race at the end of time; and that the sea rise up and cover the Ireland seven years before the Last Judgment to spare the Irish the horrors of Doomsday. [7] If climate change ever drowns the island, start the countdown.
Patronages
Patrick has some unexpected patronages. He is obviously a patron saint of Ireland, and he has is also a patron of migrants because of his association with the Irish. He is a patron saint of engineers because he oversaw the construction of churches and, it is said, taught the Irish to build arches of lime mortar instead of dry masonry.
But the Apostle of Ireland is also the patron saint of Nigeria. In 1961, one year after Nigeria wrested its independence from Great Britain, the bishops of Nigeria (most if not all of them Irish) made Patrick the patron of the new nation. (That same day, the Republic of Ireland opened its embassy in the country, the first in Africa.) The bishops’ designation was not simply a case of personal preference. Irish missionaries had brought the Catholic faith to Nigeria in the nineteenth century while organizations like Saint Patrick’s Society for Foreign Missions provided education; at the same time, many Nigerians studied at universities in Ireland such as Trinity College Dublin, and some of them went on to occupy key posts in the Nigerian government. The Irish and Nigerians were natural allies, for both chafed at British colonial rule. And fittingly, after the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, Nigeria consumes more Guinness beer than any other nation, beating out the fourth-ranked U.S.A.
Saint Patrick Cathedral, Awka, Nigeria
I am also of the opinion that Patrick should be named the patron saint of surfers and water skiers. On one occasion, the Saint was transporting a large altar stone from the Continent to Ireland when the captain denied passage to a leper. Patrick threw his altar-stone into the sea, which miraculously floated, and had the leper sit on it. Leper and stone then cruised behind the ship for the entire journey.
Saint Patrick’s Day
Not every apostle to a nation is placed on the General Calendar, but the universal Church has celebrated March 17 as Saint Patrick’s feast day since the early 1600s, thanks to Father Luke Wadding, a native of Waterford and a Franciscan scholar. Wadding was the founder of the Irish Franciscan College of Saint Isidore in Rome and was on the committee to reform the Breviary. The pious priest celebrated the feast of Saint Patrick every year with great solemnity, and so it was only natural for him to persuade others to do so as well.
The celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day varies in different parts of the world. In the United States, the feast has been mixed in with Irish patriotism from an early age. Boston’s Irish Charitable Society sponsored the first organized celebration in 1737, and New York City began Saint Patrick’s Day parades in 1762. [8]
And yes, drunkenness has long been a feature of the Irish-American celebration. A New York Times report on the Saint Patrick’s Day festivities of 1860 is worth quoting at length:
It must be confessed that there were a great many persons very much intoxicated… The policemen had their hands full….An unbroken procession defiled through [the doorways of the detention center]… of officers in waiting on men and women in all stages of intoxication, from that balmy condition in which a man swears eternal friendship to all the world and is anxious to embrace everyone he meets, to that in which he is unable to walk without tying knots in his legs, though supported by an official friend on either side. Drunken women with infants in their arms, men argumentatively disposed to establish logically the fact of their own sobriety, and victims of pugilistic skill with too much color about the eyes, were yarded like cattle in the fenced inclosure [sic] for prisoners in the Court.[9]
In Ireland, by contrast, Saint Patrick’s Day has been a far more pious occasion. The day has been a holy day of obligation for centuries. There were no parades for the feast until the early 1900s, and all pubs were closed until recently. It is only within the past three decades that Saint Patrick’s Day has become as significant an affair in Ireland as it has been in the Irish diaspora for centuries.
In Nigeria, the Irish Embassy and the local Guinness breweries host different celebrations, while some Catholic parishes commemorate the day with rallies. Guinness is consumed as in other parts of the world, but it is followed by Isi ewu soup, a dish from the Igbo tribe made with goat’s head. Isi ewu, however, is a delicacy. For those who cannot afford it or a pint of Guinness, jollof rice, moi moi bean pudding, and meat straight from the wild (so-called “bush meat”) are consumed alongside locally produced palm wine. [10]
Today, Saint Patrick’s Day is celebrated in more countries than any other national festival. Unexpected places include Russia, Malta, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia—and outer space. In 2011, U.S. astronaut Catherine Coleman, who is Irish on both sides, celebrated St. Patrick’s Day on the International Space Station by playing a century-old flute belonging to one of the Chieftains.
Other Customs
Pota Phadraig or “Patrick’s Pot” involves drinking a full measure of whiskey. The custom is also called “drowning the shamrock” because a clover leaf is sometimes floated on the drink; the shamrock is either consumed or tossed over the shoulder for good luck. According to legend, during his missionary travels Saint Patrick was given a glass of whiskey that was far from full by a stingy innkeeper (we’ll conveniently ignore the fact that whiskey was centuries away from being invented). Patrick told the man that a devil was living in his cellar which was causing him to be dishonest and that the only way the man could banish the devil was by filling each glass to its brim. When Patrick returned to the inn later, he saw that each cup was full and proclaimed the devil duly exorcised.
Drowning the Shamrock, 1852-1863
Ireland has been associated with the color green since at least the eleventh century, and the wearing of the green came into vogue as an assertion of Irish nationalism under British rule. Today it is customary to wear green clothes or a shamrock on Saint Patrick’s Day; naysayers are pinched for refusing to play along. That practice is yet another American novelty, which probably began in the early 1700s. The rationale is that since green makes one invisible to mischievous Leprechauns, pinching is a pointed reminder to clueless green-abstainers.
Centuries ago, on the other hand, the key thing in Ireland was to wear a cross, and often it was the color red. Saint Patrick’s Day badges, which are now all but extinct, were made of paper and decorated with a cross and other patterns.
Foods
In the minds of most Americans, corned beef and cabbage is the quintessential Irish meal to be served on Saint Patrick’s Day. The association, however, is only true for Irish Americans. In nineteenth-century Ireland, beef was expensive and pork was cheap, but in the U.S., it was the opposite. Irish immigrants learned of corned beef (which reminded them of Irish bacon) from their Jewish neighbors in the slums. The cut of beef, which is similar to brisket, is “corned” or salt-cured (the large grains of salt then in use were called corns). The Irish added cabbage because it was affordable, easy (it could be thrown into the same pot as the beef), and delicious.[11] In our recent cookbook Dining with the Saints, my co-author Father Leo Patalinghug offers an outstanding variation of this classic dish. Back in the old country, the traditional feast-day dinner consists of some kind of meat, a potato dish called colcannon, and Irish soda bread.
Corned Beef and Cabbage
Conclusion
In some respects, Saint Patrick’s cult is as coherent as an Irishman’s drunken expatiations. The legends about him and the current observances surrounding his feast day are often in tension with or are an outright contradiction of the holiness of the Saint (and we didn’t take about green beer and green rivers!). But what we know about Patrick is enough to strengthen our resolve not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Saint Patrick almost single-handedly converted an entire people to Christianity, a people that had been practicing a particularly dark and sinister religion. Those people went on to become a seedbed of saints, scholars, and missionaries—and, until recently, they were a model of unbreakable fidelity to the Catholic Faith. It is not just Ireland but the world that owes a debt of gratitude to the surprising and homesick British ex-slave who heard the voice of the Irish across the sea and answered it.
Michael P. Foley is the author with Father Leo Patalinghug of Dining with the Saints: The Sinner’s Guide to a Righteous Feast (Regnery, 2023).
An abridged version of this article appears in The Latin Mass magazine (Spring 2023). Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.
Notes
[1] Patrick, Confessio 26.
[2] Confessio 16.
[3] Confessio 23.
[4] Confessio 41.
[5] MacConnell, Cormac. “Everything You Know about the Saint Patrick’s Day Shamrock is a Lie.” Irish Central. January 30, 2022. Retrieved January 30, 2023 from https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/st-patricks-day-shamrock.
[6] Owen, James. “Snakeless in Ireland: Blame Ice Age, Not Saint Patrick.” National Geographic. August 16, 2015. Retrieved January 30, 2023 from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/snakeless-in-ireland-blame-ice-age-not-st-patrick.
[7] See Moran, Patrick Francis Cardinal. "St. Patrick." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. Retrieved February 23, 2023, from http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm.
[8] Cavanaugh, Ray. “The Irish Franciscan Who Gave Saint Patrick His Feast Day.” National Catholic Reporter. March 17, 2016. Retrieved January 30, 2023 from https://www.ncronline.org/irish-franciscan-who-gave-st-patrick-his-feast-day.
[9] “Saint Patrick’s Day.” New York Times. March 19, 1860. p. 8.
[10] Egwu, Patrick. “Saint Patrick and Nigeria: The Irish Influence on an African country’s Catholic Mission.” Catholic World Report. May 17, 2020. Retrieved January 30, 2023 from https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/05/17/st-patrick-and-nigeria-the-irish-influence-on-an-african-countrys-catholic-mission/. Many
thanks to Fr. Augustine Ariwaodo for his additional input.
[11] Glendon, Meaghan. “Learn All About the Origins of Corned Beef and Cabbage.” Westchester Magazine. March 17, 2022. Retrieved January 30, 2023 from https://westchestermagazine.com/life-style/history/corned-beef-and-cabbage-origin/.
On March 15th, the Roman Martyrology commemorates St Longinus, who is traditionally said to be the soldier who pierced the Lord’s side with a lance on the Cross (John 19, 34), as well as the centurion who said “Truly, this man was the Son of God.” (Matthew 27, 54) His legend states that he suffered from a malady of the eyes, which was healed when the some of the blood that came forth from the Savior’s side touched him. The apocryphal “Letters between Pilate and Herod” also claim that he was one of the guards at Christ’s tomb, and not only witnessed the Resurrection, but spoke with the Lord Himself shortly afterwards. After preaching the Gospel and living a monastic life near Caesarea of Cappadocia (later the see of St Basil the Great), he was martyred by beheading.
An illustration from a Syriac Gospel book now kept at the Laurentian Library in Florence, known from the name of the scribe as the Rabula Gospels, dated 586 A.D. The name “Longinos” is written in Greek over the soldier on the left with the lance, but this may be an addition by a later hand.
There are a great many variants to the story, which cannot be regarded as a reliable hagiography. The city of Lanciano in the Italian region of the Abruzzi claims him as a native son, and that his martyrdom took place there instead. The city of Mantua in Lombardy, birthplace of the poet Virgil, claims that he preached in that region, and was martyred there, and furthermore, that he brought to that city relics of the Lord’s Precious Blood, and the sponge which was used to give Him vinegar during the Passion. These are now kept in the crypt of the basilica of St Andrew, which was begun by the famous Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti in 1472, but only completed in 1732. Here are some photos of the church from our Ambrosian writer Nicola de’ Grandi.
The chapel of St Longinus. The tomb on the left contains his relics, that on the right, some of the relics of St Gregory Nazianzen, given to Mantua by Matilda of Canossa. (Detailed photos below)
The story is told that the relics of Christ’s Blood brought to Mantua by St Longinus were hidden for safekeeping by Longinus himself, and discovered in 804 when St Andrew the Apostle appeared to someone to reveal their location. (Similar stories are told about many of the famous and more improbable relics of the Middle Ages.) The rediscovery of the relics is here depicted by Giulio Romano, a disciple of Raphael who did an enormous amount of work in Mantua under the Gonzaga dukes; the Crucifixion scene below is also his.
The Catholic Institute of Sacred Music at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California is proud to present the second lecture in its inaugural Public Lecture and Concert Series — an important perspective on a timely topic.
The Mass: The Essence and Foundation of Western Civilization
A Lecture by His Excellency Salvatore J. Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco
Sunday, March 19th 5:00 p.m. PDT (8:00 p.m. EDT) Sancta Maria Hall at St. Patrick’s Seminary 320 Middlefield Rd., Menlo Park
The in-person event will be followed by a reception. Ample guest parking is available on-site. Live-streaming and archived viewing of the event are also available. An RSVP is appreciated, but not required. This free event is open to the public.
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