St.s Perpetua and Felicity are commemorated in Eucharistic Prayer I (the Roman Canon) itself. But who were they, and what is their dramatic story?
Thursday is the feast of St.s Perpetua and Felicity.
Many have heard their names. They’re early saints mentioned in Eucharistic Prayer #1 (the Roman Canon).
But often we don’t know much more than that, which is a pity.
They have a dramatic story, which St. Perpetua recorded herself in the days before her martyrdom. It also records the visions she received during this time.
Here are 10 things you need to know.
1. Who was St. Perpetua?
She was a young Christian woman and martyr, who died just after the year 200 in North Africa. When she was still a catechumen, she and several acquaintances were taken into custody.
And among them also was Vivia Perpetua, respectably born, liberally educated, a married matron, having a father and mother and two brothers, one of whom, like herself, was a catechumen, and a son an infant at the breast. She herself was about twenty-two years of age.
No mention is made of her husband, who may have already been dead.
After being baptized, Perpetua received several visions and was eventually martyred. We also learn about her companions and other members of her family, including her father and her younger brother, who had died previously of cancer.
2. What is the “Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity”?
It is a document describing what happened to Perpetua and her companions. It is also called “The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicity.”
The document is composed of a preface followed by six chapters.
What is particularly special is that about half of the document was written by the martyr herself:
Chapters 1-3 were penned by St. Perpetua while she was awaiting execution.
Chapter 4 was written by one of her companions and fellow-martyrs, Saturus.
Chapter 5-6 (and the preface) were written by the anonymous editor, who was apparently an eyewitness of the martyrdoms.
3. What does Perpetua’s writing reveal about her father?
Jesus appeared to three of his disciples in the mysterious event known as the Transfiguration. What was happening here? What did it mean? Here are 10 things you need to know!
The Gospel reading for the Second Sunday of Lent commemorates the mysterious event known as the Transfiguration.
This event is hard to understand. Why did it happen? What did it mean?
Here are 10 things you need to know.
1. What does the word “transfiguration” mean?
The word “transfiguration” comes from the Latin roots trans– (“across”) and figura (“form, shape”). It thus signifies a change of form or appearance.
This is what happened to Jesus in the event known as the Transfiguration: His appearance changed and became glorious.
Before looking at the Transfiguration itself, it’s important that we look at what happened immediately before it in Luke’s Gospel.
2. What happened right before the Transfiguration?
In Luke 9:27, at the end of a speech to the twelve apostles, Jesus adds, enigmatically:
“There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
This has often been taken as a prophecy that the end of the world would occur before the first generation of Christians died out.
The phrase “kingdom of God” can also refer to other things, though, including the Church–the outward expression of God’s invisible kingdom.
The kingdom is embodied in Christ himself and thus might be “seen” if Christ were to manifest it in an unusual way, even in his own earthly life.
February 22 is the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter. Here are 9 things you need to know about it.
Yes, there is a physical object known as “the Chair of St. Peter.”
It is housed at the Vatican, at the back of St. Peter’s basilica.
February 22 is the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter.
And there is more to the story.
Here are 9 things you need to know . . .
1. What is the Chair of Peter?
It depends on what you mean.
On the one hand, there is a physical object–an ancient, ornamented chair–located in the apse of St. Peter’s Basilica.
On the other hand, there is the spiritual authority that this chair represents.
Here we will look at both the physical object and the spiritual reality it represents.
2. What is the physical Chair of St. Peter?
This object–known as the Cathedra Petri (Latin, “Chair of Peter”)–is located in the apse of St. Peter’s Basilica. It is in the back of the chamber, behind the famous altar, on the far, back wall, below the the well-known, stained glass image depicting the Holy Spirit as a dove (see above).
This display contains an ancient chair that has been repaired and ornamented over time.
The Catholic Encyclopedia states of the original chair:
The seat is about one foot ten inches above the ground, and two feet eleven and seven-eighths inches wide; the sides are two feet one and one-half inches deep; the height of the back up to the tympanum is three feet five and one-third inches; the entire height of the chair is four feet seven and one-eighth inches.
According to the examination then made by Padre Garucci and Giovanni Battista de Rossi, the oldest portion is a perfectly plain oaken arm-chair with four legs connected by cross-bars.
The wood is much worm-eaten, and pieces have been cut from various spots at different times, evidently for relics.
To the right and left of the seat four strong iron rings, intended for carrying-poles, are set into the legs.
Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days and then was tempted by the devil. What is going on in this mysterious incident?
This Sunday the gospel reading speaks of a mysterious event, just after Jesus’ baptism, in which he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness.
How could Jesus–the All-Holy Son of God–be tempted?
Why did this event happen, and what was going on?
Here are 9 things you need to know about Jesus’ “temptations” . . . and ours.
1. Why did Jesus go into the desert after his Baptism?
Empowered and led by the Holy Spirit, Jesus spent forty days fasting in the desert in preparation for his ministry, which his baptism inaugurated. Click here for more information on his baptism.
Forty days recalls various periods of preparation in the Old Testament, including the forty days Moses spent fasting and with God on Mt. Zion at the giving of the Law (Ex. 34:28), the forty days the Israelites spent spying out the Promised Land (Num. 13:25), and the forty years that the Israelites spent wandering in the wilderness before entering the Promised Land (Num. 14:34).
Should we have holy water in the fonts during Lent or should they turn into little ash trays? What does the Church say?
Like other liturgical seasons, Lent has its own special rules, and there are certain things that should not be done in Lent.
Here are 6 of them . . .
1. Instrumental music with no singing
In some parishes, instrumental music is used at certain points during Mass. A passage will be played on an organ or on another instrument or instruments, even though nobody is singing.
But not in Lent (with a few exceptions).
The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM) states:
313. In Lent the playing of the organ and musical instruments is allowed only in order to support the singing. Exceptions, however, are Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday of Lent), Solemnities, and Feasts.
2. Singing or saying the Gloria
Just after Sunday Mass begins, it is common to sing or say the Gloria (“Glory to God in the highest”).
But not on the Sundays of Lent.
The General Instruction states:
53. The Gloria in excelsis (Glory to God in the highest) . . . is sung or said on Sundays outside Advent and Lent, and also on Solemnities and Feasts, and at particular celebrations of a more solemn character.
3. Singing or saying the Alleleuia before the Gospel
It covered the basics of the rules of fast and abstinence in Lent, but it didn’t cover every possible application of them.
Then, by email, I received this query, which deals with an application I hadn’t considered before:
Is fasting and abstinence practised by Roman Catholics who are incarcerated?
Thanks. Your prompt reply is earnestly requested.
Interesting question!
In principle, both fast and abstinence are to be practiced by Catholic prisoners. There is no general exception for them (not that I have been able to find).
However, prison poses special challenges.
Could there be exceptions in individual cases?
How to Answer the Question
There are two ways to attack a question like this, where there is no explicit answer in the Code of Canon Law.
The first is to dive into the secondary literature (commentaries on the Code of Canon Law, handbooks of moral and pastoral theology, etc.).
Much of that will date from before the current, 1983 Code, and even before the Church’s current system of penitential practices was set up in 1966. However, it might still shed light on the question today.
I checked the main U.S. commentary and didn’t find anything on the question.
I’m sure there is some discussion of it out there, but it might take more time than we have before Lent begins for me to find it, so in the interests of providing a timely answer, let me pursue the other way of attacking the question, which is to try to extract the principles embedded in the law and apply them to this situation.
What’s the Goal?
The first question to answer is what is the goal that the Church’s requirements of fast and abstinence are trying to accomplish?
It isn’t to get people to eat less or fewer types of food, whether from reasons of diet, economy, health, or what have you.
Eating less food (in the case of fasting) or fewer types of food (in the case of abstinence) is just a means to an end.
What end?
Penance.
That’s why this topic is dealt with in the section on penitential days in the Code.
By undertaking a form of limited hardship, we can express sorrow for our past sins and train ourselves in self-discipline to say no to sin in the future.
That’s fundamentally what we’re trying to accomplish here, and it leads to a second question . . .
How Much Hardship?
The Church, at least in the Latin Rite today, does not expect us to undertake extreme hardship in pursuit of these goals on Ash Wednesday and the Friday of Lent and Good Friday.
With the discipline of fasting, all that is required by law is cutting down a bit on what we’d otherwise eat. We’re allowed one full meal and two cases where we can have “some food.”
Comparing that to the normal practice of eating three full meals and allowing oneself a few snacks, that’s not a huge difference.
When it comes to abstaining from meat, that would not have been a big deal–historically–because until recently, many people did not eat meat every day (some still don’t).
The requirement of abstinence just meant not indulging in what was–then–a cultural sign of celebration (eating meat).
So in both cases, the Church is only expecting us to shoulder a quite modest form of hardship.
But this burden can fall disproportionately on some . . .
When a Little Is a Lot
Some people are in situations in which the disciplines of fast and abstinence would pose a disproportionate burden on them.
This is more common with the requirement of fast than of abstinence, since normally other foods can be eaten in place of meat. If meat were the only source of calories that was available, even abstinence could pose a disproportionate burden.
But more commonly the situation arises with fasting. This can happen, for example with various medical conditions, such as diabetes.
Diabetics needs to keep their blood sugar in a certain range, and this can require a more frequent intake of food than envisioned by the Church’s fasting discipline.
The situation can also arise from things other than medical conditions. The standard sources from before Vatican II note exceptions for workers who need to keep their energy level up during the day, lest a lack of food interfere with them fulfilling their job duties.
In such situations, people are excused from keeping the discipline of fasting (and/or, more rarely, abstinence).
Sound pastoral practice, though, would urge them to find another way of practicing penance on these days in order to honor the spirit of the day.
So What About Prisoners?
I am not fully conversant with how food is regulated in jails and prisons, and I imagine that it varies considerably from place to place. However, it seems certain that prisoners generally have less freedom in terms of when and what to eat than non-prisoners.
In some situations, they may also have less flexibility regarding their activity level.
If that lack of freedom would significantly increase the burden of keeping the disciplines of fast and abstinence then a prisoner would be excused from keeping them.
Interestingly, I can see in the case of a prisoner how situations regarding abstinence could be more challenging.
On a Friday in Lent they might be served a food that has meat in it as their principal source of calories for a meal. Removing the meat might either be impossible, very difficult, or might so decrease the calories available to them that it would turn an occasion of abstinence into an occasion of fasting.
This is not required. In such cases the prisoner would be excused from abstinence.
Whether the burden of the disciplines of fast and abstinence are disproportionately high on a prisoner will depend on his individual situation and will require a judgement call.
A prisoner is bound to fast and abstain if he can do so reasonably. If the burden would be disproportionately high for either, though, then he is excused from that requirement, just as a person with a food-related medical condition or other situation would be.
In such cases, the prisoner should still seek to keep the spirit of the day in some way.
They could also choose to fast and abstain anyway, even with the greater burden. The Church’s requirements regarding these practices are minimums, not maximums, and we are all encouraged to do more than the minimum. This is not a matter of requirement but of free choice, and choosing to do more than the minimum is praiseworthy.
What About Prison Officials?
The above information applies to prisoners, but what about prison officials who are (to a significant degree) in control of the food Catholic prisoners have available to them on the Church’s penitential days?
Since there is no general exception made for prisoners to the disciplines of fast and abstinence (only need-based exceptions, where they exist), prison officials should accomodate Catholic prisoners’ abilities to fast and abstain on the Church’s penitential days.
There are two grounds for this: First, there is the simple humanitarian ground of trying to allow another person to fulfill his religious duties. Second, there are the protections of religious liberty found in U.S. law (most notably in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, although there are many other protections of the free exercise of religion as well).
Thus they should seek to allow Catholic prisoners to have meatless meals on days of abstinence and, on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, they should not impose activity levels on prisoners that would be inconsistent with fasting.
They should also seek, to the extent possible, to have Catholic services available for prisoners on these days as well, particularly on Ash Wednesday, the Sundays of Lent, and the days of Holy Week, including Good Friday, leading up to Holy Saturday and Easter.
Remembering Those in Prison
I hope the above information is useful, and I invite readers to keep those behind bars in your prayers.
Our Lord took special note of the care we should have for prisoners, telling us,
“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).
27. Lent [is a liturgical season that] is ordered to preparing for the celebration of Easter, since the lenten liturgy prepares for celebration of the paschal mystery both catechumens, by the various stages of Christian initiation, and the faithful, who recall their own Baptism and do penance.
The Teutonic word Lent, which we employ to denote the forty days’ fast preceding Easter, originally meant no more than the spring season. Still it has been used from the Anglo-Saxon period to translate the more significant Latin term quadragesima (French carême, Italian quaresima, Spanish, cuaresma), meaning the “forty days”, or more literally the “fortieth day”. This in turn imitated the Greek name for Lent, tessarakoste (fortieth), a word formed on the analogy of Pentecost (pentekoste), which last was in use for the Jewish festival before New Testament times.
40 days after his birth, Christ was presented at the temple. Why?
Later this week the Church celebrates the Presentation of the Lord.
It’s a feast that happens every year on February 2nd.
We read about the presentation of the Lord in Luke 2, but the text can be a little mysterious.
What is actually happening there?
Some claim that Luke himself didn’t know . . .
What Luke Says
Here is what Luke actually says about the event . . .
[22] And when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord [23] (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) [24] and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.”
He then records the encounters with Simeon and Anna the prophetess, but at the moment our focus is what Luke refers to as “their purification.”
Paul was converted when Christ appeared to him. What should you know about St. Paul and his conversion?
This Friday, the Church celebrates the conversion of St. Paul.
Here are eight things you need to know about him–and his conversion.
1. Where was St. Paul from?
In Acts 21:39, St. Paul states:
“I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city.”
Tarsus was the capital city of the Roman province of Cilicia. This is on the southeast coast of modern Turkey, so St. Paul was not from the holy land. He was actually a Jew born in what is now Turkey.
It was a port city and a noted commercial center. For these reasons, and because it was the capital, he can describe it as “no mean city” (that is, no common, ordinary city). It was famous.
One of the things it was famous for was being the place where Mark Anthony first met Cleopatra, after which they embarked on their doomed alliance.
Tarsus survives today as the city of Mersin, Turkey.
In Jerusalem. In Acts 22:3, Paul gives a bit more information about his background:
“I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city [Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel, educated according to the strict manner of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God as you all are this day.”
Gamaliel was a famous Jewish teacher. So famous, in fact, that we know about him today from Jewish sources.
Gamaliel is also mentioned in Acts, where he takes an open-minded view of Christianity, urging that it not be persecuted (Acts 5:34-42). Paul did not agree with him at this time, because this was before Paul’s great persecution of the Church, as well as before his conversion.
At the wedding at Cana, Jesus told Mary: "Woman, how does your concern affect me?" Was he showing disrespect to her?
At the wedding at Cana, Jesus turns to Mary and says, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come.”
Sounds disrespectful, doesn’t it?
Or at least you could take it that way.
But Jesus wasn’t being disrespectful at all.
Here’s the story . . .
Pronoun Trouble
First, the translation “How does your concern affect me?” (John 2:4 in the NAB:RE) is not a literal rendering of what Jesus says in Greek.
Word-for-word, what he says is “What to me and to you?”
In context, Mary has just come up to him and informed Jesus that the people running the wedding have no wine, so you might literally translate his response as “What [is that] to me and to you?” In other words: “What does that have to do with us?”
He’s not dissing her. He’s putting the two of them–both of them–in a special category together and questioning the relevance of the fact that people outside this category don’t have wine. He’s saying that it’s not the responsibility of the two of them to make sure they have wine.
But that’s lost if you take the Greek pronoun that means “to you” (soi) and obliterate it in translation.
“Woman”
Part of what makes it sound like Jesus might be dissing his mother is the fact that he refers to her as “woman.”
We don’t talk to women like that today–not if we respect them, and certainly not our own mothers.
But the connotations–of respect, disrespect, or other things–that a word has in a given language are quite subtle, and we can’t impose the connotations that a word has in our own language on another.
Consider: Suppose, in English, we replaced “woman” with a term that means basically the same thing but with better connotations.
For example, the word “lady” or “ma’am.”
Suddenly what Jesus says sounds a lot more respectful.
In British circles, “lady” has distinctly noble overtones (it’s the female counterpart to the noble honorific “lord”).
And even in demotic America, a son can say, “Yes, ma’am” to his mother and mean it entirely respectfully.
So what can we learn about the connotations of “woman” as a form of address in Jesus’ time?
