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The Risen Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalen, by Rembrandt  (1638)…

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Last week’s post was Holy Week – and hot buns.  This post features Resurrection Sunday, a.k.a.  Easter Sunday.  We’ll look at its implications for humanity “and beyond.” 

But first a word about Rembrandt‘s interpretation of Easter morning, shown above:

Mary Magdalen had just found Jesus’ grave empty, and asks a bystander what has happened. In her confusion she thinks the man is a gardener. Only when he replies with “Mary!” does she realize who she’s talking to.  To illustrate Mary’s confusion, Jesus is often depicted as a gardener in this scene.

And then there’s the matter of Easter Sunday as it’s celebrated today, complete with the “Easter Bunny, colorfully decorated Easter eggs, and Easter egg hunts.”  (See What is Easter Sunday?)

In the meantime:

As noted, last week I covered Holy Week – and hot buns.  This week began with Easter Sunday.  You can see the full set of Bible readings at “Easter Day Principal.”  They include Mark 16:1-8:

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint Jesus.  And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb…   As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.  But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.  Look, there is the place they laid him.  But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him…

And that of course is a subject people have been discussing – and arguing about – ever since.

But first a note about Easter as a full season, and not just a single Sunday of the year.

Eastertide refers to the 50 days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost.  It’s the “festal season in the liturgical year of Christianity that begins on Easter Sunday.” See Eastertide.  Each Sunday in the season after Easter (the Day) is treated as a Sunday of Easter.  For example:  April 12, 2015 is celebrated as the Second Sunday of Easter.  And as noted, the Easter Season ends on Pentecost Sunday.  (Pentecost means “the 50th day.”)

So how did the “Easter Bunny” get mixed up in all this?

The Easter Bunny (also called the Easter Rabbit or Easter Hare) is a symbol of Easter, depicted as a rabbit bringing Easter eggs.  Originating among German Lutherans, the “Easter Hare” originally played the role of a judge, evaluating whether children were good or disobedient…   In legend, the creature carries colored eggs in his basket, candy, and sometimes also toys to the homes of children, and as such shows similarities to Santa Claus or the Christkind, as they both bring gifts to children on the night before their respective holidays.

That’s from the Easter Bunny link, connected to the “bunny” postcard image below.  The accompanying text said that the Easter Bunny custom was first written about 1682.  (On that note see also social control, not unlike that practiced in the season before Christmas.)

And check out the origins of Easter link.  It’s included in the What is Easter link noted above.

The origins of Easter are rooted in European traditions.  The name Easter comes from a pagan figure called Eastre (or Eostre) who was celebrated as the goddess of spring by the Saxons of Northern Europe.  A festival called Eastre was held during the spring equinox by these people to honor her.  The goddess Eastre’s earthly symbol was the rabbit, which was also known as a symbol of fertility…  Today, Easter is almost a completely commercialized holiday, with all the focus on Easter eggs and the Easter bunny being remnants of the goddess worship.

For another interesting article, see Ēostre – Wikipedia.  It referred to the “Germanic divinity” who was the “namesake of the festival of Easter.”  It noted that the “Ēostre” celebration was mentioned by the Venerable Bede in his “8th-century work The Reckoning of Time.”

Bede (circa 673-735) wrote that in the time before he was born, “pagan Anglo-Saxons held feasts in Eostre’s honor” during the equivalent of today’s month of April.  But – he added – the tradition “had died out by his time, replaced by the Christian Paschal month, a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.”

So it was apparently some time before the 8th century that “Christianity adapted itself to pagan customs” like these, as long as they didn’t “compromise the essential doctrines of the Church.  (See Asimov, 932-33.)

And speaking of “The Resurrection by El Greco:” That artist’s interpretation of Easter morning – shown above left – was viewed as “odd at the time,” by his contemporaries.  But these days El Greco’s version “stands out as a work ahead of its time.”  The painting itself shows Jesus – the Risen Messiah – “in a blaze of glory … holding the white banner of victory over death.”

Which is – after all – what Easter Sunday is really all about.

Isaac Asimov went on to note that many people – even to this day – still don’t believe in all this.  That is, they believe that “the tale of the resurrection must be put down to legend.”  But Asimov also noted that if the story had ended with the burial of Jesus – standing alone – it was highly likely “that Jesus’ disciples would gradually have forgotten their old teacher.”  In turn, few new disciples would have been recruited to gather in His memory, as they did in the years following His death.  (As described at length in the Acts of the Apostles – Wikipedia.)

In sum (Asimov noted), the history of the world would be “enormously different:”

However, even if we take the rationalist view that there was no resurrection in reality, it cannot be denied that there was one in the belief of the disciples and, eventually, of hundreds of millions of men – and that made all the difference. (E.A.)

(896-97)  The foregoing was from Asimov’s summary of Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 27:61-28:3).  (See also Resurrection of Jesus – Wikipedia.)

So Asimov’s point seems to be that even though the “rationalists” among us can’t be persuaded by and through any direct evidence of the Resurrection, they can’t deny the circumstantial evidence.  (That is, the evidence provided by the millions of lives transformed by their own belief.)

And speaking of such Doubting Thomases:  The original, the prototype of such sceptics – as shown in the painting at left (by Schongauer) – is the subject of the Gospel reading for this upcoming Sunday, April 12.  See Second Sunday of Easter and/or John 20:19-31, and also Thomas the Apostle – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Then too there’s the fact that this otherwise-obscure former carpenter from Nazareth literally “split time in half.”  (A feat that hasn’t been done before or since.)

In the days before Jesus, people told time by whatever king held power in their particular time and place.  See Matthew 2:1, “Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod.”  See too Jeremiah 1:2, on the Old Testament prophet “to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.” 

So if it hadn’t been for Jesus, this post would have been published on April 8, but not 2015.  The date would have been “in the days of Barack Obama, president of the United States, in the sixth year of his reign.”  The year I was born would be “in the days of Harry Truman, president of the United States, in the sixth year of his reign.”  And I would have graduated from high school “in the days of Richard Nixon, president of the United States, in the first year of his reign.” (All of which would have been extremely confusing.)

So that simplicity-of-numbering alone may have been worth the price of admission…

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“An Easter postcard depicting the Easter Bunny...”

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The upper image is courtesy of The Risen Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalen – Art and the Bible.

The “Greco” image is courtesy of The Resurrection by GRECO, El – Web Gallery of Art:

Christ is shown in a blaze of glory, striding through the air and holding the white banner of victory over death.  The soldiers who had been placed at the tomb to guard it scatter convulsively.  Two of them cover their eyes, shielding themselves from the radiance, and two others raise one hand in a gesture of acknowledgement of the supernatural importance of the event…   By excluding any visual reference to the tomb or to landscape, El Greco … articulated its universal significance through the dynamism of nine figures that make up the composition [in] one of the greatest interpretations of the subject in art.

See also Resurrection, 1584-94 by El Greco, and El Greco’s Resurrection: Ahead of its Time:  “El Greco considered spiritual expression to be more important than public opinion and it was in this way that he developed a unique style … as one of the great geniuses of Western art.”

The lower image is courtesy of Easter – Wikipedia.

Re: Isaac Asimov.  The quotes – including the summary of the Gospel of Matthew – are from Asimov’s Guide to the Bible (Two Volumes in One),  Avenel Books (1981), at pages 896-97 and 932-33. 

Asimov (1920-1992) was “an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books.  Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards.”  His list of books included those on “astronomy, mathematics, the Bible, William Shakespeare’s writing, and chemistry.”  He was a long-time member of Mensa, “albeit reluctantly;  he described some members of that organization as ‘brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs.’”  See Isaac Asimov – Wikipedia.

The “Annunciation…”   (The white lily symbolizes Mary’s purity.)

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Wednesday, March 25, is the Feast of the Annunciation.

The full title is the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which I discussed back On the readings for December 21.  (And also The original St. Nicholas.)  I did it that way – in that order – as a kind of metaphor.  It’s a good metaphor for how the early Church “figured it backwards.”

It all started with the birth of Jesus.  The early Church Fathers decided first that the celebration would be on December 25. (For reasons explained further below.)  Then they figured backwards, nine months.  Since they said Jesus was born on December 25, He had to have been “conceived” on the previous March 25.  That’s where the Annunciation comes in.

It celebrates “the announcement by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus, the Son of God, marking his Incarnation.”  (More on Incarnation below.)   Then it’s not much of a leap to conclude that Conception and Annunciation happened the same day.  “She would conceive” became in effect “she did conceive.”

You can see the full set of Bible readings for the day at The Annunciation.  The readings are:  Isaiah 7:10-14, Psalm 45 (or a portion thereof), Hebrews 10:4-10, and Luke 1:26-38.

But first a word on how December 25 got chosen as the date to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

It started back in the olden days.  Nowadays we know all about the winter solstice, which “marks the shortest day and the longest night of the year.”  (In 2014 it was December 22.)  We also know that from that date onward, the days do start getting longer and the nights start getting shorter.

But back in those primitive olden days, “there was never any certainty that the sinking Sun would ever return.”  (As Isaac Asimov noted.)  So about mid-December those old-time people kept worrying that the days would keep getting shorter and  shorter, until there was nothing but eternal night.

But then around December 25 they noted that the cycle had stopped and the days were getting slightly longer.  They always felt great joy and gladness, and  the time when the sun started returning “was the occasion for a great feast in honor of what one might call the ‘birth of the sun.'”  That time of raucous celebration became known as Saturnalia in Roman times.

At the Saturnalia, joy was unrestrained, as befitted a holiday that celebrated a reprieve from death and a return to life…  It was a season of peace and good will to all men… Naturally, the joy easily turned to the extremes of licentiousness and debauchery, and there were, no doubt, many pious people who deplored the uglier aspects of the festival.

Among those “pious people” were the early Church Fathers.  They felt the festival was “a great stumbling block to conversions to Christianity.”  So the early Church “adapted itself to pagan customs” like Saturnalia.  In essence they transmogrified Saturnalia; they said Christians needed only  “to joyfully greet the birth of the Son rather than the Sun.”  (Asimov, emphasis added.)

Note also that the Annunciation pretty much coincides with the “northern vernal equinox:”

An equinox occurs twice a year, around 20 March and 22 September.  The word itself has several related definitions.  The oldest meaning is the day when daytime and night are of approximately equal duration.  The word equinox comes from this definition, derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night).

So the Annunciation is celebrated about the time of the vernal equinox.  (Vernal is from the Latin word for “spring.”  The photo at right is Vernal Sunshine on Azaleas.)  In turn the birth of Jesus is celebrated about the time of the winter solstice.  (The summer solstice is the longest day of the year.)

Which brings up the matter of the Incarnation.  As Wikipedia put it:

The Incarnation … is the belief that [Jesus], “became flesh” by being conceived in the womb of Mary…   [The idea is that the Son of God] took on a human body and nature and became both man and God.  In the Bible its clearest teaching is in John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us…”  The Incarnation is commemorated and celebrated each year at Christmas, and also reference can be made to the Feast of the Annunciation; “different aspects of the mystery of the Incarnation” are celebrated at Christmas and the Annunciation.

See also Liturgical year – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  Then there’s a book, The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life.  (Which looks to be a pretty interesting read…)

It first noted that technically the liturgical year begins with Advent and goes through next November.  More to the point, the liturgical year “sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus.”  (It’s not just an “arbitrary arrangement of ancient holy days.”)  Instead:

It is an excursion into life from the Christian perspective [and] proposes to help us to year after year immerse ourselves into the sense and substance of the Christian life…   It is an adventure in human growth; it is an exercise in spiritual ripening.

I couldn’t have put it better myself.  On the other hand, you could say that while “technically the liturgical year begins” with Advent, it’s the Annunciation that gets the ball rolling…

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The upper image is courtesy of Annunciation – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, .  The full caption:  “Annunciation by Paolo de Matteis, 1712.  The white lily in the angel’s hand is symbolic of Mary’s purity  in Marian art.”  De Matteis was an Italian painter (1662-1728), who was  born in Salerno and died in Milan.  While in Rome (1723-25) he “received a commission from Pope Innocent XIII.”

The “winter solstice” – rotating image – is courtesy of the Wikipedia article.  The caption reads:  “Winter solstice in Northern Hemisphere over Asia.” 

See also Solstice and Summer solstice – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 

The lower image is courtesy of the Wikipedia article on the Incarnation, contained within the article on  the Annunciation.  The caption reads:  “The Incarnation illustrated with scenes from the Old Testaments and the Gospels, with the Trinity in the central column, by Fridolin Leiber, 19th century.”

Re: Isaac Asimov.  The quotes about the “dating” of Christmas and the “olden days” are from Asimov’s Guide to the Bible (Two Volumes in One),  Avenel Books (1981), at pages 930-34. 

Just as an aside, Asimov (1920-1992) was “an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books.  Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards.”  His list of books included those on “astronomy, mathematics, the Bible, William Shakespeare’s writing, and chemistry.”  He was a long-time member of Mensa, “albeit reluctantly;  he described some members of that organization as ‘brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs.’”  See Isaac Asimov – Wikipedia.

The “Vernal Sunshine” is courtesy of bearspawprint.wordpress.com/2014/03/26/blooming/vernal.

“Saint Joseph with the Infant Jesus…”

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We have two Feast Days coming up.  One is major and one is minor.  But the “minor” festival is the far better-known of the two.  (And celebrated more, usually with lots o’ beer…)

That is, March 19, 2015, is the Feast Day for St. Joseph.  That’s the Major Feast Day coming up, but it’s way overshadowed by St. Patrick’s Day, today, March 17.   I figure there’s some kind of object lesson in all of this, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet.

According to Apostles, Major Saints and Feast Days, St. Joseph is third on the list of important figures who have Feast days.  (He comes in third only to Christ the King and Mary.)  St. Patrick on the other hand didn’t even make that list.  But again, his Feast Day far overshadows that of “St. Joe.”  (Who might be called at least the lesser of the two father figures of Jesus:)

Christian tradition places Joseph as Jesus‘ foster father [but] represents Mary as a widow during the adult ministry of her son.  Joseph is not mentioned [at] the Wedding at Cana at the beginning of Jesus’ mission, nor at the Passion at the end.  If he had been present at the Crucifixion, he would under Jewish custom have been expected to take charge of Jesus’ body, but this role is instead performed by Joseph of Arimathea.  Nor would Jesus have entrusted his mother to the care of John the Apostle if her husband was alive.   (E.A.)

Saint Joseph – Wikipedia, which added that Joseph is venerated as a saint by many, including the Catholic, Anglican, and Methodist faiths.  In some traditions he is the patron saint of workers.  And, with “the growth of Mariology, the theological field of Josephology has also grown and since the 1950s centres for studying it have been formed.”

See also St. Joseph – Saints & Angels – Catholic Online, which added that he is also patron saint of the dying.”  That’s because, “assuming he died before Jesus’ public life, he died with Jesus and Mary close to him, the way we all would like to leave this earth.”  And finally, this:

The Bible pays Joseph the highest compliment: he was a “just” man…   By saying Joseph was “just,” the Bible means that he was one who was completely open to all that God wanted to do for him. He became holy by opening himself totally to God.

That’s from St. Joseph, Husband of Mary | Saint of the Day.  (And points the way for all of us.)

The full readings for the Feast Day can be found at St. Joseph.  They are:  2 Samuel 7:4,8-16, Psalm 89 (or portions thereof), Romans 4:13-18, and Luke 2:41-52.

Now about St. Patrick.  We don’t know when he was born, but he is said to have died on March 17, now celebrated as his Feast Day.  In Irish his name would be Padraig.  That’s often shortened to “Paddy,” and is seen as a derogatory term for Irish men.  See Saint Patrick – Wikipedia, and also The Free Dictionary.   That in turn  gave rise to the “Paddy wagon:”

The name came from the New York Draft riots of 1863.  The Irish at the time were the poorest people in the city.  When the draft was implemented it had a provision for wealthier people to buy a waiver.  The Irish rioted, and the term Paddy wagon was coined.

Urban Dictionary: paddy wagon, about the “police vehicle used to transport prisoners.”

But we digress!!!

According to legend, St. Patrick was born in Britain but at 16 was captured by Irish pirates.  He was taken as a slave back to Ireland, and lived there for six years before escaping.   He got back to his family, then studied became a cleric, and in the fullness of time returned to Ireland.

Legend further says Patrick used the native shamrock to illustrate the Holy Trinity to the Irish.  And finally, legend says Patrick “banished all snakes from Ireland,” though there’s debate whether snakes were there in the first place.  An alternate theory: the “snakes” referred to the “serpent symbolism of the Druids.” (Wikipedia.)

See also St. Patrick | Saint of the Day | AmericanCatholic.org:

He suffered much opposition from pagan druids and was criticized in both England and Ireland for the way he conducted his mission.  In a relatively short time, the island had experienced deeply the Christian spirit, and was prepared to send out missionaries whose efforts were greatly responsible for Christianizing Europe. (E.A.)

See also, How the Irish Saved Civilization.  That book argued that the Irish played a “critical role in preserving Western Civilization from utter destruction by the Huns and the Germanic tribes” after the Roman Empire collapsed.  (Those Germanic tribes included Angles and Saxons and Jutes.  Oh my!)   The book told the story of the “pivotal role” played by members of the Irish clergy in preserving Western civilization, with a “particular focus” on St. Patrick.

Or as Kenneth Clark put it, “In so far as we are the heirs of Greece and Rome” – after the collapse of the Roman Empire about 500 A.D. – “we got through by the skin of our teeth.”  We were saved in large part by a “group of monks huddled off the coast of Ireland.”

(There they were safe from the rampaging Vandals, Huns and other barbarians from the east.)

Now about that celebration.  See How America Invented St. Patrick’s Day | TIME, which began:   “Immigration and nativism transformed a quiet religious celebration into a day of raucous parades and shamrock shakes.”  That transformation began in America.

In Ireland – up until about 1904 – March 17 was a “quiet day with no parades or public events.”

The first recorded public American celebration came in Boston in 1737.  Around 1766, Irish soldiers in the British Army stationed in New York started holding a parade to honor “the Irish saint” that day.  Then came the end of the Civil War and more and more Irish immigrants:

Facing nativist detractors who characterized them as drunken, violent, criminalized, and diseased, Irish-Americans were looking for ways to display their civic pride and the strength of their identity…    Irish-Americans celebrated their Catholicism and patron saint … but they also stressed their patriotic belief in their new home.  In essence, St. Patrick’s Day was a public declaration of a hybrid identity [including] a strict adherence to the values and liberties that the U.S. offered them.

(See also Anti-Irish sentiment – Wikipedia.) By the 1890s, St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated not only in cities with large Irish populations; Boston, Chicago, and New York. It was also celebrated in cities like New Orleans, San Francisco, and Savannah. The tradition “grew across the U.S. and became a day that was also celebrated by people with no Irish heritage.  By the 20th century, it was so ubiquitous that St. Patrick’s Day became a marketing bonanza.”  (There’s probably a lesson there too…)

The TIME article ended with this:

The holiday also spread by becoming a means for all Americans to become Irish for the day. The shared sense of being Irish, of wearing green and in some way marking March 17, has resulted in St. Patrick’s Day being observed in a similar fashion to July Fourth or Halloween.  It’s the closest thing in America to National Immigrant Day, a tribute not only to the Irish, but to the idea that Americans are all part “other.” (E.A.)

See also St. Patrick’s Day – Facts, Pictures, Meaning & Videos, and St Patrick’s Day 2015: From London to Uganda – the 10 best Irish pubs outside Ireland.  (An FYI:  the list of best Irish pubs includes The Irish Haven in Brooklyn and Finn McCool’s Irish Pub in New Orleans.)

So Here’s to You, St. Joseph, patron saint of all workers and of the dying.

And Here’s to You, St. Patrick, who – among other things – helped to save Western Civilization from those barbarians, including the Angles and Saxons and Jutes.  (Oh my!)

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The upper image is courtesy of Saint Joseph – Wikipedia, which also noted that the “Pauline epistles make no reference to Jesus’ father; nor does the Gospel of Mark.”  The caption for the painting:  “Saint Joseph with the Infant Jesus, Guido Reni (c. 1635).”

The lower image is St. Joseph and the Christ Child, courtesy of El Greco – WikiArt.org.  See also, On art history: El Greco’s Sensibility: A Painting of Saint Joseph:

Saint Joseph and Christ Child [the one by El Greco] is one of the first Western paintings in which Saint Joseph is the principal protagonist.  We see his enormous figure in the first plan, shown as a walker, and as a figure of trust and protection to the Child Jesus, who embraces the waist of His Father.  [He is] presented as a young man with a crook in his right hand, shows his paternal love toward Jesus, and is crowned by the three [angels] in the [upper] part of the painting.  These angels in full movement bear lilies, which symbolize the purity, and laurel and roses, symbols of triumph and love respectively.  Here we see that the agitated postures of the angels contrast the calmness of the group of St. Joseph and the Infant Christ.  Behind them, a view of Toledo is included.

Re:  the “skin of our teeth,” and/or the Irish saving Western civilization.  See  Civilisation (TV series) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and CIVILIZATION by KENNETH CLARK – Culturism.

One final note, the phrase Here’s to You is generally translated, Bottoms Up, “an expression said as a toast when people are drinking together.”  

St. Michael, “reaching out to souls in purgatory…”

March 11, 2015  –  Back on August 10th I did a post on St. Michael and All Angels.   It was about an Episcopal church  –  “Saint Michael and All Angels”  –  that Mi Dulce and I passed on the way out of Stone Mountain.  (That’s a park east of Atlanta.)

Which led to a question, “Who the heck is this St. Michael guy?”

There’s more on St. Michael below.  But first let me say that last Sunday, March 8, “we” attended the 11:00 a.m. service at St. Michael Catholic Church on Tybee Island.  (An island on the coast of Georgia east of Savannah.  The Episcopal Church around the corner had a service at 10:00 a.m., but that was actually 9:00 thanks to the time change, so it was way too early…)

The sanctuary itself was nice and cozy, and the Bible readings were the same as those described in The “Big Ten” and Jesus with a whip.  That is, “Exodus 20:1-17, Psalm 19, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, and John 2:13-22.  For the full readings see the Third Sunday in Lent.”  (The Catholic Church and Episcopal Church share the same Revised Common Lectionary.)

St. Michael’s has been on Tybee since July 5, 1891, as noted in the Morning News:

See St. Michael, under “About Us” and the parish history.  The history noted that the church on the beach cost the then-whopping sum of $2,000 to build.

Now, about Tybee Island.  It’s a small island and a small city east of Savannah, and the easternmost point in the state of Georgia.  Long known as a “quiet getaway for the residents of Savannah,” it has recently become equally popular for other tourists as well:

It is one of the few locations where the U.S. Air Force dropped an atomic bomb – by accident (during a botched 1958 military training exercise).  Though the “Tybee Bomb” did not detonate … there has been ongoing concern, since the Mark 15 nuclear bomb lost during the mishap was never found…  [On a lighter note,] Tybee Island has had an annual Beach Bum parade … down the main road in Tybee, Butler Avenue, and when parade floats come by onlookers have been known to shoot each other with water-guns.

See Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.   There’s also The Breakfast Club, a “legendary” way to start a bright Sunday morning, before going to mass at St. Michael’s.  (Just be sure to get there before the line starts forming outside the front door.)

But we digress…

For more about the original St. Michael, see the Book of Revelation at 12:7-10:

[T]here was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels.  And prevailed not…   [T]he great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.   And I heard a loud voice saying … the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

Note that both the Hebrew and Greek words “Satan” (“Satanas” in Greek) translate as “an adversary,” while the root word for devil is “diabolos,” which is Greek for “slanderer.”

Or see Michael (archangel) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, which included this:

Michael ([which translates] “who is like God?” … ) is an archangel in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic teachings.  Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans refer to him as “Saint Michael the Archangel” and also as “Saint Michael. . .”   In the New Testament Michael leads God’s armies against Satan‘s forces in the Book of Revelation, where during the war in heaven he defeats Satan.

Also, St. Michael has a Feast Day – called Michaelmas Day – on September 29.

I’ve included two images of St. Michael.  The one below shows him “trampling Satan.”  The upper image shows him in another of his jobs, “reaching out to souls in purgatory.”  That means he might end up being the archangel who saves my own spiritual butt.

On the other hand, there is that part of the Book of Common Prayer which calls the idea a “Romish doctrine.”  But for myself I say, “Hey, I’ll take all the help I can get!”

The upper image is courtesy of the Wikipedia article on St. Michael.  The full caption: “Archangel Michael reaching to save souls in purgatory, by Jacopo Vignali, 17th century.”

Dulce is Spanish for “Sweet,” or in the alternative Mi Dulce or “My Sweet.”   (See also the posts On “St. James the Greater”, and On the “Infinite Frog.”)

As to the definitions of Satan and/or the “Slanderer,” see the New International Dictionary of the Bible, Regency Reference Library, 1987, Page 899.

Re:  “shared lectionary.”  Wikipedia noted, “This lectionary was derived from various Protestant lectionaries in current use, which in turn were based on the 1969 Ordo Lectionum Missae, a three-year lectionary produced by the Roman Catholic Church following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.”

The lower image is also courtesy of the Wikipedia article, with the full caption: “Guido Reni‘s painting in Santa Maria della Concezione, Rome, 1636 is also reproduced in mosaic at the St. Michael Altar in St. Peter’s Basilica, in the Vatican.”

For more information, see the notes for On “St. Michael and All Angels.”