Christmas Every Day

St Patrick and the Trinity

I am reluctant to leave St Patrick behind when there is this brilliant bit of animation to be shown. The good saint was famous for explaining the mystery of the Trinity with a shamrock — three leaves on one plant. That may not be theologically rigorous enough, according to this Lutheran cartoon satire.

St Patrick’s Day

March 17 is sacred to the memory of Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, Nigeria, and Boston. Born in the late 300s to a noble Romano-Briton family, he was kidnapped as a teen and enslaved in Ireland as a swineherd. He escaped, returned to the civilization of Britain, and became a priest with the intention of spreading Christianity to the Irish. In this, he was very successful, becoming the stuff of legends. As we swill our green-dyed beer today and (at least in western Canada, wait for the ice to melt), let us enjoy this particular set of myths retold in the 19th century.

The principal enemies that St. Patrick found to the introduction of Christianity into Ireland, were the Druidical priests of the more ancient faith, who, as might naturally be supposed, were exceedingly adverse to any innovation. These Druids, being great magicians, would have been formidable antagonists to any one of less miraculous and saintly powers than Patrick. Their obstinate antagonism was so great, that, in spite of his benevolent disposition, he was compelled to curse their fertile lands, so that they became dreary bogs: to curse their rivers, so that they produced no fish: to curse their very kettles, so that with no amount of fire and patience could they ever be made to boil; and, as a last resort, to curse the Druids themselves, so that the earth opened and swallowed them up.

A popular legend relates that the saint and his followers found themselves, one cold morning, on a mountain, without a fire to cook their break-fast, or warm their frozen limbs. Unheeding their complaints, Patrick desired them to collect a pile of ice and snow-balls: which having been done, he breathed upon it, and it instantaneously became a pleasant fire—a fire that long after served to point a poet’s conceit in these lines:

Saint Patrick, as in legends told,
The morning being very cold,
In order to assuage the weather,
Collected bits of ice together;
Then gently breathed upon the pyre,
When every fragment blazed on fire.
Oh! if the saint had been so kind,
As to have left the gift behind
To such a lovelorn wretch as me,
Who daily struggles to be free:
I’d be content—content with part,
I’d only ask to thaw the heart,
The frozen heart, of Polly Roe,

With eyes of blue and breast of snow.

2013

Election of Pope Francis

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires to a family of Italian immigrants. He became a Jesuit in 1960 and was ordained to the priesthood seven years later. He served the order as a teacher and theologian but his opposition to “liberation theology” and his emphasis on pastoral work rather than critiquing contemporary society led to a falling out with his Jesuit superiors in Argentina.

Despite a Jesuit rule forbidding members from attaining high office in the church Bergoglio was named a bishop in 1992 and became Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1997. He became known for his decision to have his priests penetrate the poorer areas of his diocese and for curbing extravagant spending. He was also noted for his call for national repentance for the violence and terrorism of Argentine political life in past eras.

At age 75 he resigned as Archbishop but was named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II, whereupon he moved to Rome where his simple living attracted attention. At the papal conclave to elect a successor to John Paul he is said to have finished second to Cardinal Ratzinger in the voting. On Ratzinger’s resignation in 2013 Bergoglio was chosen pope and took the name Francis, after St Francis of Assisi. He thus became the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas or the Southern Hemisphere, the first non-European since 714.

Since his election, he has proved an enigmatic leader of the Roman Catholic world, giving off mixed signals about gay marriage, women as deacons, communion for divorced couples, and indigenous spirituality without actually directly challenging received teachings. Francis is perceived to be over-friendly to leftist regimes and has angered theological conservatives with his restrictions on the Tridentine mass. He is the first pope to have an Instagram account.

Death of Pope Gregory I

Only three popes have merited the title of “the Great” (though fans of John Paul II are trying hard to make it a quartet.) The second of these to be born (c. 540) was Gregorius Anicius, who renounced great wealth to become a monk. In 590 he was elected pope and became a powerful force for good in the ruins of the western Roman empire. You will not find a more loving tribute to him than this 19th-century account.

There have been Popes of every shade of human character. Gregory the Great is one distinguished by modesty, disinterestedness, and sincere religious zeal, tempered by a toleration which could only spring from pure benevolence. The son of a Roman senator, with high mental gifts, and all the accomplishments of his age, he was drawn forward into prominent positions, but always against his will. He would have fain continued to be an obscure monk or a missionary, but his qualities were such that at length even the popedom was thrust upon him (on the death of Pelagius II in 590). On this occasion he wrote to the sister of the Emperor: ‘Appearing to be outwardly exalted, I am really fallen. My endeavours were to banish corporeal objects from my mind, that I might spiritually behold heavenly joys. I am come into the depths of the sea, and the tempest hath drowned me.’

The writings of Pope Gregory, which fill four folio volumes, are said to be very admirable. The English King Alfred showed his appreciation of one treatise by translating it. In exercising the functions of his high station, Gregory exhibited great mildness and forbearance. He eagerly sought to convert the heathen, and to bring heretics back to the faith: but he never would sanction the adoption of any harsh. measures for these purposes. One day-before he attained the papal chair-walking through the market in Rome, he was struck by the beauty of a group of young persons exposed to be sold as slaves. In answer to his inquiry of who they were, and whence they came, he was told they were Angli, from the heathen island of Britain. ‘Verily, Angeli,’ he said, punning on the name: ‘how lamentable that the prince of darkness should be the master of a country containing such a beautiful people! How sad that, with so fair an outside, there should be nothing of God’s grace within! His wish was immediately to set out as a missionary to England, and it was with difficulty he was prevented. The incident, however, led to a mission being ere long sent to our then benighted country, which thus owed its first reception of Christian light to Gregory.

Almsgiving, in such Protestant countries as England, is denounced as not so much a lessening of human suffering as a means of engendering and extending pauperism. Gregory had no such fears to stay his bountiful hand. With him to relieve the poor was the first of Christian graces. He devoted a large proportion of his revenue and a vast amount of personal care to this object. He in a manner took the entire charge of the poor upon his own hands. ‘He relieved their necessities with. so much sweetness and affability, as to spare them the confusion of receiving alms; the old men among them he, out of deference, called his fathers. He often entertained several of them at his own table. He kept by him an exact catalogue of the poor, called by the ancients Matriculae; and he liberally provided for the necessities of each. In the beginning of every month he distributed to all the poor corn, wine, pulse, cheese, fish, flesh, and oil; he appointed officers for every street, to send every day necessaries to all the needy sick: before he ate, he always sent off meats from his own table to some poor persons.’ There may be some bad moral results from this wholesale system of relief for poverty, but certainly the motives which prompted it must be acknowledged to have been highly amiable.

Gregory was a weakly man, often suffering from bad health, and he did not get beyond the age of sixty-four. We owe to him a phrase which has become a sort of formula for the popes-‘Servant of the servants of God.’ His name, which is the same as Vigilantius or Watchman, became, from veneration for him, a favourite one: we find it borne, amongst others, by a Scottish prince of the eighth century, the reputed progenitor of the clan M’Gregor. It is curious to think of this formidable band of Highland outlaws of the seventeenth century as thus connected by a chain of historical circumstances with the gentle and saintly Gregory, who first caused the lamp of Christianity to be planted in England.

1829

Bach’s St Matthew Passion is revived

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is now recognized as the towering genius of classical music but there was a time after his death when he had largely faded from public memory. His work was respected by later composers but JS Bach’s major works were seldom performed. Such was the case of his monumental musical treatment of the suffering and death of Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew. Written for two choirs and two orchestras it was meant to be performed on Good Friday.

Felix Mendelssohn had been given a copy of The St Matthew Passion which Bach had written in 1727 and which had not been performed outside of Leipzig since 1750. Mendelssohn’s staging of the oratorio in 1829 attracted great crowds in three sell-our performances and contributed much to the revival of interest in Bach’s music.

Here is a video of the final chorus, performed by a Swedish choir and orchestra.