The Beautiful Face of Mary

The traditions that depict the ancient saints according to various events of their life and attributes of their person are beautiful - and it is just as beautiful that there is variety in the different cultures and traditions within the depiction of the same saint.  Even Christ has a very broad variety of depictions in sacred images.

The Virgin Mary is no exception to this.  I have seen icons of our mother's beautiful face in so many styles and traditions - Byzantine, Japanese, Ethiopian, Renaissance and even Inuit, to name just a few.

Yet, in the case of the Virgin Mary, the most saintly of all saints, we have a special gift that we do not have for any other ancient saint; we have an exact image of her face.

From almost 500 years ago, we have this event:

'the peasant Juan Diego saw at the Hill of Tepeyac, near Mexico City, a vision of a girl of fifteen or sixteen years of age, surrounded by light. It was the early morning of December 9, 1531 (celebrated as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Spanish Empire). Speaking to him in Nahuatl, his language, the girl asked that a church be built at that site in her honor; from her words, Juan Diego recognized the girl as the Virgin Mary. Diego told his story to the Spanish Archbishop of Mexico City, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, who instructed him to return to Tepeyac Hill, and ask the "lady" for a miraculous sign to prove her identity. The first sign was the Virgin's healing Juan's uncle. The Virgin told Juan Diego to gather flowers from the top of Tepeyac Hill.

Although December was very late in the growing season for flowers to bloom, Juan Diego found Castilian roses, not native to Mexico, on the normally barren hilltop. The Virgin arranged these in his peasant tilma cloak. When Juan Diego opened his cloak before Bishop Zumárraga on December 12, the flowers fell to the floor, and in their place on the fabric was the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, miraculously imprinted there.' (from Wikipedia.)

One of the most miraculous parts of this image is that it remains in its original form, on the original cloth.  This is not an artist's rendition, an age-old tradition of depiction, nor someone's attempt to replicate what they saw in a vision; it is an image of the Virgin Mary directly imprinted on a cloth.

Basically, this means we know what her face looked like, at least in her early/mid teens when she bore Christ.  And as we know from Revelations chapter 12, in this apparition she is pregnant with Christ. (The image on the cloth is that described in that chapter.)

Recently I have been looking at this image and reproductions of it closely.  I am amazed by how beautiful her face is.  Yes, the image is aged, but it is not so hard to look past that.

Now, this does not diminish or remove the beauty or importance of the rich traditions of images of the Virgin Mary.  Yet, it is simply amazing that we can say that we have this direct image of her.

How Many Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist Does a Catholic Parish Need?

Notice: only 2 Extraordinary Ministers for a huge parish

How many Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist does a Catholic parish need?

The short answer is, in most small to medium parishes, none.

I've been to medium sized parishes in the Mexican countryside where those partaking would rather line up out of the door and have mass go overtime overlapping with the beginning of the next mass (creating the kind of disorganized chaos that is a part of normal life in Mexico anyway) than receive the Eucharist from anyone but the priest.

These same parishes also offer communion under both species by means of intinction (dipping the Body of Christ into the Precious Blood), making it impossible to rush through in any way because of the special care required (and probably offering yet another reason not to have anyone but the priest delivering.)

Even the elderly man using the walker prefers to approach the altar

My wife and I are reminded of this every time we go back to Mexico.  While in Playa del Carmen, there are Extraordinary Ministers, and they do not practice intinction, our home parish here (Our Lady of Guadalupe) demonstrates the point as well.

We estimate that an any given Sunday Mass there are probably between 1000 and 1500 people present (and there are 5 Sunday Masses.)  And how many Extraordinary ministers are there?

2.

The priest is in the middle in front of the altar, and the other 2 (usually the leading nun, and a deacon) are at the front of the side aisles.  No one goes to the back of the church.  Everyone approaches the altar.

I have been to parishes in Canada that have less than 1/10 of that mass attendance.  Yet they have 2 or 3 extraordinary ministers.  One goes to the back of the (very small) church.  I'm not sure why that is considered to be necessary.

The Precious Blood and Body of Christ

(In Mexico there is also no row by row.  It's less organized but it removes the pressure that everyone should go up.  When you do row by row, there's always the chance of that awkward moment when someone ready to go up for communion waits for that person next to them kneeling and praying to go up, and the person coming out of the row behind them also waits for them.  It draws unnecessary attention to the person who doesn't go up for communion, and - in some cases - may pressure them to simply go up.  But that's a side point.)

Mexican Catholicism isn't by any means perfect.  It has its flaws - some of them glaring.  But there are certainly good points we could pick up from them.

A Boat Tour in the Mexican Caribbean

My family and I just spent a wonderful month in Mexico, and I have so many things to write about that I'm not sure where to start.  But for now, I'll just start with something easy - a relaxing and fun boat trip we went on on Saturday.

The trip started just out of Cancun, and took us around Isla Mujeres, a beautiful little island where Mexico's old Caribbean lifestyle can still be seen.

Here are some pictures.

This is the dock where the trip started.  We had breakfast in the larger hut at the back:

The twins, on board:

Getting ready to snorkel:

 The two older sons, watching me snorkel:

This is the view they had.  My oldest son claims he knows which one was me:

After snorkeling, with my lovely wife:

A typical hotel on Isla Mujeres:

A traditional wooden house on the island, in this case converted into a shop; this kind of simple wooden house was typical on the Mexican Caribbean before tourism took off.  Now everything is concrete.  I can imagine that these would stand up to a hurricane too well, but these little homes seem to have been around for a while:

Most homes have images of this sort:

The island's church; nothing "fancy" but the people's devotion and respect is truly beautiful:

 This is the beach where we spent the afternoon:

Some of the docks in the fishermen's district of the island; many of these local fisherman had their dock, home and a little restaurant all next to each other:

Although it's not very clear in this picture, this haphazard home is built of bamboo on a floating island. The island was made of old plastic bottles, covered with plastic and then soil on top:

Dinner at the beach club:

The view of the beach from the beach club:

My oldest son enjoying a dip in the pool:

Back on the boat, one of the crew members (the bartender) caught this barracuda:

This is one of the last pictures from the trip:

After my wife took this picture, the barracuda jumped and got the hook caught in the wrist of the man who caught it.  It was a very large and thick hook (2 1/2 inches or so).  Seeing the accident put her into shock; combined with low blood pressure and the motion of the boat, this was enough to put her out of commission for the next 24 hours!  She spent the night in the hospital.  Thankfully, she is much better now!

The fisherman downplayed the pain, and claimed that this kind of thing was normal for people who live at sea. I saw him as we got off the boat and he was smiling and waving.  I assume that he had removed the hook in a procedure similar to section 2 of this diagram:

In any case, that didn't help my wife very much.  But otherwise the trip was very enjoyable!

It's also worth noting that we were the only couple who brought our kids with us.  The other couples left their kids at home to enjoy a vacation alone.  While I understand that couples do need a break from the kids now and then, our trip was that much better simply because we brought them!  They loved it and so did we.