CHRISTMAS STAMP- A TRADITION IN USA

 

Soon people all over the world will be sending out Christmas cards, in spite of so many now sending via the internet. I thought this Advent it would be interesting to find religious stamps from other countries

Every year since 1966,  the United States has issued a religious Christmas stamp, usually of the Madonna and Child. Most are found in a US museum, and many are by Old World masters.

2020 was  Our Lady of Guapulo (18th century), unknown artist from Cuzco, Peru, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC. Enrobed in a pyramidal gown speckled with jewels and holding a scepter woven with roses and leaves, a crowned Virgin Mary looks down at a similarly adorned Christ Child in her left arm. A red rosary ropes across the center of her dress and down to her right. Cost of stamp was 60 cents.

But the first religious theme caused the Post Office Department some difficulty. An assistant to the PMG demonstrated this concern when he wrote to a lawyer, on March 22, 1966, “This would be the most religious design we have ever used on a postage stamp and we would like an opinion from your office as to whether a stamp based on this painting would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.” It was the lovely Madonna and Child by the Flemish artist, Hans Memling.  Note it cost a mere 5 cents.  Long gone are those days.

Perhaps my favorite Christmas stamp was 2009 Tiepolo Madonna of the Goldfinch (c. 1767), which is in our National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

THE EXCUSE SYSTEM?

 

                                                           Anni Morris

When I saw the above painting, I thought that as funny as it seems, it may be easier to ride on a whale than our too often non- existent ferry. Today, the First Sunday of Advent we do not have morning Mass due to ferry breakdown- or was it crew? This is the 2nd Sunday this month with no Mass.

Ever since I came to our islands, over 35 years ago, I have heard complaints about the state ferry system.  But in the old days, at least it ran!  Now days, one never knows if one is getting off the island, or able to return home when away.  

Last week in our local weekly island paper, there was a great guest column in which the writers stated that our WA State Ferry System should be call the WA State Excuse System.  With the"retirement" of many ferry hands during the Covid days, we have been lacking full crews.  If one member is missing, the boat stays in the dock.

I have stopped voting for local state officials, as they have never in my many years here, paid attention to the plight of islanders.  In the past year it has reached crises level, especially the inter-island system, which is supposed to run so that school children and workers can get home. Some people opt to go to the mainland the day ahead of important appointments, in order to be on time.  One island couple we know have a van they just stay in the night before.

A few weeks ago a ferry was cancelled due to the vessel running into a crab pot?  This is the worst I have heard yet. We seem to miss a Mass or two every few weeks due to lack of inter-island ferry. (Our priests travel by ferry from the main island)  A few Sundays ago, we did not have Mass  due to some vessel "practice". On a Sunday?

Seems in spite of our modern era, we have slipped back a century, though I don't think they had so many lame excuses in days gone by.

CIVIL RIGHTS NUN

As we celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow, we are grateful for all who have gone before us, giving example of a life lived following the Lord and in service of others.  We close this month dedicated to saints with the third American woman being considered for canonization.

MOTHER MARGARET MARY JANE HEALY MURPHY, was born in 1833 and is considered to be an early civil rights activist. She founded the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate, the first order of sisters in the state of Texas, as well as the first free private school for African Americans in San Antonio, Texas.

Throughout her life, she helped the poor and reached out to help African Americans and Mexican Americans.

She was  born in Ireland  in 1833.  Her mother died when she was 6 and when she was 12 her father, a physician, emigrated to the United States.  For a time, she lived in Mexico, where she met her future husband, John Bernard Murphy.

The couple married in 1849 and later moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, where her husband worked as a lawyer and served as mayor. The well-to-do couple owned slaves there. While they had no biological children, the couple adopted three young girls who needed a home — two of whom later entered religious life.

In 1884, John died, leaving Margaret Mary a widow. Her life dramatically changed again, three years later, when she moved to San Antonio and heard a letter from the U.S. bishops read from the pulpit. In that letter, the bishops called on Catholics in the South to minister to the post-Civil War African American population.

Margaret Mary decided to answer that call. That same year, she funded construction for the first Catholic free school and church for African Americans in San Antonio.The school was named for a Jesuit saint, St. Peter Claver, who had spent his life helping slaves in Cartagena, present-day Colombia.

.Facing constant criticism and racial prejudice, she struggled to maintain a teaching staff, and the local bishop suggested that she start a religious congregation to help. In 1892, she and three other women became novices with the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur. A year later, the four made their first vows and the Sisters of the Holy Ghost and Mary Immaculate began.

 By the time of her death, the order had grown to 15 sisters and two postulants. She died in 1907 at age 74.

Mother Murphy's work led to the establishment of thirty nine missions throughout  Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. In the late 1960s, her religious order was renamed the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate and the school later changed its name to the Healy Murphy Center, which helps students who have dropped out of school and continues to have an excellent reputation for academics.

RE-DOING A PET PEEVE!

 

Anni Morris

Whatever happened to "women's lib"?  In the beginning when it all started, I would  stare at the speaker and say, "I don't see any guys".  But soon found that all it does is confuse the person, especially if they were born in this century! 

Somewhere in another era, our society began to substitute ''people at work'' for ''men at work'' and ''humankind'' for ''mankind''. Just when we were starting to be aware of the degree to which language affects our perceptions of women, this ''guy'' thing happened.

The term ''guy'' to mean ''person'' is so insidious that I'll bet most women don't notice they are being called ''guys,'' or, if they do, find it somehow flattering to be considered one of the "guys". Some say that this slang is just a sign of the times (mindless), a catchphrase that will fizzle out.

I have seen no polls which let me know that other women resent this term,  but nuns??? Here is one who is not content to let it fly.....  to this nun it is just thoughtless!

Maybe we could take a hint from the people in the south and say:  Y'all!   Ladies, we need to unite!

Artist Anni Morris was born near London but now lives in the far south of New Zealand in Dunedin.  Anni’s mother, a commercial artist, was her first teacher. Studying Design at Otago University and gaining a degree in Education, Anni majored in Art at the Dunedin College of Education. She is a Primary trained teacher. Over the last few years she has started exhibiting. Her art has been collected in New Zealand and abroad.

She has a vivid imagination with a great sense of fun and playfulness. I love her nuns at play.

AMERICAN MYSTIC- CALIFORNIA SAINT?

 

As we near the end of the liturgical year, in this month of saints, we consider 3 women who may one day have  a place in the rank of American Catholic saints.

During the fall general assembly in Baltimore, U.S. Catholic bishops voted to advance the causes for sainthood for three American women. Two are lay women- a mother considered to be a mystic and a young campus missionary.  The third was a religious sister who ministered to the poor and to African Americans.

 Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki of Milwaukee, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Canonical Affairs and Church Governance said: “Today we are blessed to hear about three women, each of whom followed unique paths. But each used their individual gifts to serve others — sometimes during great suffering and adversity — but who allowed themselves to be transformed by the love of God and which moved them to share the Lord’s joy and peace through the ordinary circumstances of their lives.”

In Dec. 2012 we did a short Blog on CORA LOUISE EVANS who was raised in Utah as a Mormon. Her first of many mystical experiences, was an apparition of the Blessed Mother, who came  in 1907,when she was only 3 years old.

 “I was without a God and religion but had gained a very wonderful husband,” she said after her marriage ceremony. “As I looked at him and learned to love him more and more, I resolved to help find a God for him. After 10 years of searching, we found the One True God in the Roman Catholic Church.”

She and her husband Maclellan (Mack), had three children: two daughters, LaVonne and Dorothy, and one son, Bobby, who died when he was a baby.

Her parish priest, Father Edward Vaughn, wrote that Cora’s efforts inspired hundreds of Mormons to convert to the Catholic faith.

Yet, in 1941, the family decided to move to California because her husband faced religious and cultural prejudices while trying to hold a job.

Five years later, in 1946, Cora said that Jesus asked her to promulgate the mystical humanity of Christ, or, as the website for her cause describes, “a way of prayer that encourages people to live with a heightened awareness of the indwelling presence of Jesus in their daily lives.”

 Cora suffered from the stigmata, Christ’s wounds on the cross present in her own flesh. Cora tried to hide  her gifts from her family, but her daughter still witnessed the stigmata and was greatly impacted by it.

Cora died in 1957 and before her death asked God to grant her the same ability as St. Therese of Lisieux — to spend her heaven doing good on earth. Since her death, her’ writings have been widely read and are a source of spiritual hope for many people.

The second lay woman being considered for sainthood is MICHELLE CHRISTINE DUPPONG, whom we did a Blog on July 9 of this year.

She dedicated her life to God,  serving as a Catholic campus missionary for six years before becoming the director of adult faith formation for the Diocese of Bismarck, North Dakota. She spent her, too short, life  “seeking holiness in the ordinary.”

“Michelle’s holiness of life and love for God certainly touched us here in the Diocese of Bismarck, at the University of Mary, and throughout FOCUS, but hers is a witness which should also be shared with the universal Church,” Bishop Kagan.

 He had hired Michelle as the diocesan director of faith formation, and she had worked with him in creating the “Thirst Conferences” that continue to this day, bringing in national Catholic speakers to inspire the faithful. Her main desire, Bishop Kagan said, was to share the joy of knowing Jesus. 

“Our Church, and especially our culture, needs models of everyday holiness — just as Michelle has shown us. Especially our young men and women, married or single, need Michelle’s example of faith, hope and charity. They need to know and see that real virtue is something for them, and it is never outdated.”

HOLINESS TODAY

 

We know November as the month dedicated especially to the saints. In October at the Press Conference to present the Study Conference “Holiness Today” (Augustinianum Patristic Institute, 3 to 6 October 2022) His Eminence Cardinal Marcello Semeraro spoke:

"Holiness is a theme dear to Pope Francis. During his pontificate, the number of canonized saints continues to grow, and he wrote about “the call to holiness in the contemporary world” in 2018 in the apostolic exhortation Gaudete et exsultate, so as to “repropose the call to holiness in a practical way for our own time, with all its risks, challenges and opportunities”.

Professor Cecilia Costa lecturer in sociology of cultural processes and sociology of education at the University of Rome spoke:

"Contemporary reality needs the hope, love, energy and courage of holiness because, as Pope Francis writes in Gaudete et exsultate, the saints bear witness to an experience that goes against the grain of the logic of the moment.

It suffices to think of Teresa d’Ávila whose text The Interior Castle is capable of responding both to the existential anguish of the men of her time, and to the vertigo of meaning of modern humanity. Or, to recall Pier Giorgio Frassati who, responding with conviction to the con-vocation of love of God, succeeded in his brief existence to combine the extraordinary with the ordinary. Or, again, Carlo Acutis, who explained to his peers, the millennials, how love for Jesus can coexist with passion for the internet."

The saints are not a vestige of the past, but a plan for the future, because they have always been the “heroes” of the altruistic and creative love that takes the Sermon on the Mount as its sublime model.

 The saints are part of history, but they also make history, and their “holy history” can enable a cultural, social, and individual “conversion” from selfishness to altruism, able to restore harmony, solidarity, brotherhood and goodness to the world.

Paintings:  John Nava Communion of Saints- Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels- Los Angeles

PRAY FOR OUR PRIESTS

 

                                                      Elizabeth Wang (d. 2016)

Living on a small island, with a ferry service that is most problematic in these post-covid times, we are grateful for the (almost) daily Mass. Our two priests priests, who alternate weeks, come at great cost, getting up before dawn to catch the first boat,  often  wondering when they will return home.

St. John Paul II gave a speech to priests in the United States in 1979, in which he made an appeal to the local Catholic population to pray for priests:

“At times we hear the words, “Pray for priests.” And today I address these words as an appeal, as a plea, to all the faithful of the Church in the United States. Pray for priests, so that each and every one of them will repeatedly say yes to the call he has received, remain constant in preaching the Gospel message, and be faithful forever as the companion of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

CHILDREN OF THE WORLD

 

                                                Phung Wang - Vietnam

Pope Francis’ prayer intention for the month of November is “to pray for the millions of CHILDREN who are suffering around the world, especially for those who are homeless, orphans, and victims of war”.

 Pope Francis calls on all Catholics to pray for children who are suffering due to rejection, indigence, poverty, and conflict around the world.

 “There are still millions of boys and girls who suffer and live in conditions very similar to slavery. These children are not “numbers” but “human beings with names and an identity that God has given them.

 Every marginalized child living without schooling, without a family, without health care, the Pope continued, is “a cry;” a cry “that rises up to God and shames the system that we adults have built.

 We can no longer allow them to feel alone and abandoned — they are entitled to an education and to feel the love of a family so they know that God does not forget them.”

 According to UNICEF, one billion children currently live in poverty, without basic access to education, health care, shelter, food, sanitation, or water. They estimate that 153 million children are orphans.

  “(We must) open our eyes, ears, and hearts to millions of forgotten children who suffer in silence on the streets and in hidden labor, victims of violence and war, migrants and refugees. In the face of indifference and impotence, we must pray.

It is our responsibility,  that no child feels left alone or abandoned — they are entitled to an education and to feel the love of a family so they know that God does not forget them.”