Jinnderella has opened up comments on her blog, and it's become quite the happening place! I expecially liked this comment by Dymphna. Exerpt:
During my formative years I lived in an orphanage run by nuns. My whole day was punctuated with religious language (even at the age of six, I thought it strange to recite daily the prayer to St. Joseph for a happy death), but in addition there were religious icons everywhere. In other words, it wasn't just thought and language: there were compelling visual images as far as the eye could see. There were statues, crucifixes, holy cards with saints' images to contemplate; each element in the visual image had a deeper meaning, just as it did for those in the 13th century.
We prayed when we got up, we went to Mass before breakfast, we said grace before and after meals, we said the Angelus at noon. We prayed in class, after class and before going out to play. After supper we gathered in the chapel to say the rosary. And after our Recreation Hour we knelt down one last time before going off to bed. Our rewards often consisted of holy cards: images of saints whose lives we knew as well as we knew our own. The day was punctuated with vocalized prayer in the midst of an otherwise silent time. Even in silence we were supposed to pray. We learned to pray in the midst of any exigency. Lose your pencil? Pray to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things.
The months were punctuated with feast days: I know the saint for my birthday. The year was described within the confines of the liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Eastertide, and Pentecost. Each season had its color and that color represented something. Lent, for example, was penitentially purple. Every moment was accounted for.
And God's language was, of course, Latin. "Ora pro nobis" responsively repeated in an endless litany left one's mind free to wander. Sometimes the words come back, unbidden but here anyway..."like a song on the radio."
What that experience taught me was that life had a deeper, higher and wider meaning than anything I could assign to it. From the outside it sounds harsh (btw, there are no horror stories to relate. The nuns were mostly kind, if a bit rigid) but as a lived experience it brought order out of chaos and I was grateful even while I longed for my mother. As Erikson said, children can survive anything as long as it has meaning.
Even more God-suffused than the average observant Jewish life (and that's saying a lot)! Though there are Jews who attain this level - just make the appropriate substitutions (and don't pray to anyone but God). I especially liked the last sentence, "children can survive anything as long as it has meaning" - it's true of adults too.
Note that, as I understand the theology, prayers directed to Saints are in a sense directed thru them. The power to fulfill the prayer rests with G-d; Saint Anthony, for example, runs the lost and found department on His behalf.
As to why Saint Joseph will deliver your request for a prompt and profitable sale to G-d's residential real estate department if you bury his image in your yard is, however, beyond me.
Posted by: triticale at January 14, 2005 07:27 AM Permalink