A Feast to Our Lady of Merriment

"Merry does not mean drunk, or uproarious, or frivolous. It means that a man is light-hearted, that his mind is at ease, that he is in a good humour, that he is ready to share a bit of fun with his neighbours. There is humility in the word, and innocence, and comradeship.
"And such a frame of mind as that is not to be secured, by grown-up people, through a continuous whirl of excitements, or a long course of dissipations. It comes from within."
Father Ronald Knox in Captive Flames

I humbly but heartily propose a new title for Mary, an additional appellation, which is, Our Lady of Merriment. What is more, I propose a new feast day for Mary as Our Lady of Merriment, and that this day be September 22, one week after the day of Our Lady of Sorrows. Our Lady calls us to penance, but I believe she also calls us to merriment. If we partake of true merriment -- light-heartedness, innocent fun, jovial camaraderie -- enjoying the good gifts of God, then we will be less likely to turn to false merriment -- to frenetic pursuits and vapid distractions, to greed and drunkenness and promiscuity, to darkness and despair.

True merriment is the interplay of sacrifice and joy, pain and pleasure, surrender and fulfillment. It is fasting and feasting, not one or the other. It is both living in the moment and living for eternity. There is meaning to merriment, just as there is meaning to sorrow. True merriment is giving, sharing; false merriment is grasping, groping. Merriment nurtures lasting friendships, not flimsy alliances. Merriment is the highest form of happiness, for merriment is not haphazard or happenstance; it is not lost by mishaps; it never leaves one hapless. False merriment is one-night stands and hangovers and regrets; true merriment, in good times and bad, is secure, satisfying, enduring -- ultimately, everlasting!

The English convert Father Ronald Knox, in Captive Flames: on selected saints and Christian heroes (republished by Ignatius Press), writes of St. George, the patron saint of England, that the connection between the saint and the country seems rather faint, that is except for an old phrase, "Saint George for merry England!" and also the saint's popular placement over the doors of inns, the sign of "The George and Dragon." Knox wrote, "In that most essentially English of our institutions, the country inn, our national Saint does seem to have come to his own. He has passed, somehow, into that tradition of hearty good-fellowship, of beef-eating and beer-drinking jollity, of which Chaucer first hymned the praises and Dickens wrote the epitaph."

Knox, writing in the days between the world wars, 1919 to 1939, says not only that England is no longer merry, but that England will not be merry until it is Catholic, until it returns to the Catholic faith that England held close for centuries before the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic faith that made England what it truly is, what it should be, that made England merry. "The more England becomes Catholic, the more English she will become," says Knox.

"A country cannot be merry while it forgets God," he says. "And a country cannot be merry for long, or with safety, if it tries to be Christian without being Catholic.... For these non-Catholic Christianities -- why, I do not know, but as a matter of observation it is true -- always go hand-in-hand with some kind of Puritanism that interferes with man's innocent enjoyments. Sometimes they want to make us all into teetotallers, sometimes they are out against boxing, or racing, or the stage; sometimes they insist that we shall sit indoors all Sunday afternoon and go to sleep. Wherever Protestant opinion really rules a country, you always find legislation of one sort or another which is designed to stop people being merry." (In the 1600s, for example, the puritans of England and colonial New England actually outlawed Christmas; for more on this, see the update to my post of September 8, "An Ode to Our Lady of Merriment.)

Knox writes -- remember, it is sometime between 1919-1939 -- that a rich and powerful Protestant minority still had a tight puritan grip on America (for example, I think of Prohibition), but that Protestantism had already lost its grip on England. "And when Protestantism does lose its grip, a reaction sets in," says Knox, "a reaction against Puritanism, which instead of making people merry makes them dissolute." The description that Knox gives of the dissolute England of his day, though his references now seem quaint, is fascinating for its uncanny resemblance to the dissolute America of our day, an America which has passed from puritanism to paganism with only a passing glance at the merry medium of Catholicism:

"Merry England -- do we talk much about 'merry England' now?" asks Knox. "If you open your morning paper, and cast your eye down the news -- strikes, divorce actions, murders, unemployment statistics, grave warnings to the public, and similar matters that chiefly occupy its pages -- is merry the first word that rises to your lips?

"Oh, I know, we are gay, we are frivolous, we hurl ourselves into our pleasures. No expense can be too heavy for producing a film, for putting on a revue, for hiring a football professional. We dance all night, and play tennis all day -- those of us who have the leisure. But is there not something suspicious about this feverish gaiety of ours, about these demands for a brighter London, this dreary cry for the unsexing of women, these lurid posters that herald our public amusements?

"Does not our laughter ring rather hollow, as if we were making merry not because we feel light-hearted, but because we want to forget the anxieties that are weighing us down? Our industries, our trade, our empire, our birth-rate, our morals -- do they encourage merriment? Our poetry, our clever novels, our art -- do they reflect a mood of happiness? Our expert critics, do they bid us believe that all is well with England? Is our gaiety real, or is it a smile painted on the face of a corpse?"

It is my belief that for true merriment we need Mary -- Queen of Heaven and Earth, Mother of God, and, I propose, Our Lady of Merriment. It is Mary who exclaimed with much merriment, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is might has done great things for me, and holy is his name."

Canon law and chapel veils

Chapel veils were the subject of frequent discussion this summer. Is their use still mandated by canon law and/or by tradition? If so, what is the symbolism of a woman wearing a chapel veil? Personally, I don't wear a chapel veil, but my mother does. She argues that something with so much tradition behind it should not be lightly discarded. I agree with her, but I don't want to keep a practice just because it's always been done that way, without understanding the reasoning behind it.

Canon lawyer Ed Peters investigates the issue of chapel veils and concludes that the requirement for women to wear chapel veils went out of force in 1983. (By the way, according to Peters, the canonical requirement did not appear until the 1917 Code). So, women are not required by canon law to wear chapel veils. I know that some people will argue that it's still a good thing for a woman to wear a veil, and I'd like to hear them - if they're more than, "a woman looks nice and more demure with a veil".

New feature

I've added a new feature to the blog - a list of some of the orders that we got to know over our six weeks at NDGS in Front Royal. I know that some of the orders are missing - if you know of one, leave me a comment and I'll add it.

An Ode to Our Lady of Merriment

Happy Birthday, dear Mary!

(September 22: Well, this is, practically speaking, the final update, allowing for more polishing and any corrections. Hail, full of grace; pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen!)

(Updated September 14, though still in need of finishing and polishing. Thank you for your kind comment, dismas teine!)

(Inspired by the much-appreciated and much-admired post of dismas teine of August 21, an excerpt of her paper this summer on the queenship of Mary for the graduate school of theology at Christendom College. This post is in honor of Mary's nativity, her birthday, September 8; it may be late, it may have some errors, it is indeed unrefined and unfinished, but I am hopeful that Mary will understand, and that she will be pleased with my humble gift, however flawed, for she is not only my queen but my mother.)

"Blessed is she who believed..."

Hail to you Mary, Happy Birthday! You are three times a lady: daughter of the Father, mother of the Son, spouse of the Holy Spirit. You are the daughter of Love, the mother of Love, the spouse of Love. You are the daughter of Truth, the mother of Truth, the spouse of Truth. You are the perfect vessel of love and truth, and thus of worship and wisdom, faith and reason, passion and logic, devotion and detachment, mysticism and pragmatism, activity and prayer. In you is a blessed blend, a holy synthesis, for you are a perfect consistency of heart and head, of love and truth, and thus a model for all Christians.

Hail to you, Mary, for whenever and wherever you are honored as Our Queen, embraced as Our Mother, an esteemed as Our Lady, there is an increase in homage to Christ the King, an increase in adoration to Christ the God, and an increase in devotion to Christ the Friend. As the venerable convert, Cardinal Newman said, and I paraphrase, those who disregard you, dear Mary, tend to lose their belief in the divinity of Christ; while those who are devoted to you tend to hold fast to their faith in Jesus as true God and true man. Newman said this in the 1800s -- the century of the Jefferson Bible, of Unitarianism, of the Book of Mormon, of the Jehovah's Witnessess, of diluted Protestantism using the Bible to explain away the essence of Christianity -- all of these denying the full divinity of Jesus, one in Being with the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God. "In the Catholic Church Mary has shown herself, not the rival, but the minister of her Son;" wrote Newman, "she has protected Him, as in His infancy, so in the whole history of the Religion."

Hail to you, Mary, Our Lady of the Annunciation, whom the angel greets not as "Mary" but as "full of grace" -- as if that were your name! The Lord is indeed with you, Mary; you have indeed found favor with God. And yet, though you were born without Original Sin, and thus are the Immaculate Conception, you have always had free will; like Adam and Eve, you could have distrusted and disobeyed God. You were given a generous share of the grace of Jesus outside of time, before Jesus was even present on earth; and yet without your assent to God, Jesus would never have been conceived in your womb! A "yes" to God meant for you, dear Mary, the insecurity of an unwed mother, the risk of a broken engagement, the threat of public shame -- perhaps even the peril of death from stoning as a perceived adulteress! Your sweet surrender, then -- your "Let it be" -- is a song of breathtaking beauty, at once solemn hymn and merry melody. Please, please, please, dear Mary, help us to trust in the goodness and mercy God; amidst the din of our day, whisper your words of wisdom, of hope and healing, to our frightened and broken hearts -- in a special way to the unwed teen with a child in her womb, terrified about her future; and the woman hurt by abortion, tormented about her dead child, despairing of her salvation. "For with God nothing will be impossible."

Hail to you, Mary, Our Lady of the Visitation, for you make haste to visit your people in their needs, to minister to them and to make merry -- as you did for your elderly kinswoman Elizabeth in her pregnancy. Not only does this woman rejoice at your greeting, but the babe in her womb, the unborn John the Baptist, leaps for joy. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, exclaims with a loud cry, a cry of laud, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!" Dear Mary -- "the mother of my Lord," as said Elizabeth -- please visit us in our insecurities, our fears, our anxieties, in our loneliness and in our longings; please tend to our needs, big and little, spiritual and physical; and please instill in us a growing trust in the goodness of Jesus, Our Lord and Our God. Blessed are you who believed, dear Mary; and blessed are you for manifesting your belief in loving service to us.

Hail to you, Mary, Our Lady of a Merry Christmas, for when you are neglected as the Mother of Jesus as true man, the puritans war against Christmas as a celebration of ritual and revelry, a pagan thing; and when you are neglected as the Mother of Jesus as true God, the pagans war against Christmas as the onset of an era of simplemindedness and prohibition, a puritan thing. From the 1600s to the 1800s, the puritans of England and New England, with sectarian zealotry, misused the Bible to turn Christmas into a day of work and fasting; from the mid-1900s on, the pagans of America, with secular zealotry, are misusing the Constitution to turn Christmas into a winter festival. Cromwell used British troops to enforce his humbug against Christmas; the colonial leaders of Massachusetts stole Christmas by imposing fines. In our day, the ACLU files a flurry of lawsuits. We Catholics pipe to the neo-puritans about the joy of Christmas, as the Light begins to overcome the darkness even as the days of winter begin to overcome the night, but the puritans do not dance, for we Catholics are drunkards and gluttons, indeed pagans; we Catholics wail to the neo-pagans about the sacrifices of Christmas -- the poverty of the cave, the sign of contradiction, the slaughter of the innocents, the flight to Egypt -- but the pagans do not mourn, for we Catholics are the oppressors of human happiness, indeed puritans. The puritans are afraid of life; the pagans afraid of death. Dear Mary, teach us that merriment is the interplay of joy and sacrifice, is both living in the moment and living for eternity. Mary, you treasured the ways of God in your heart; please help us not to be afraid of the "good news of a great joy" which is for all us: the gift of Christmas wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in a manger. Glory to God in the highest, and peace to all of us of good will!

Hail to you, dear Mary, Our Lady of Merriment, for you shared in the merriment of the wedding of Cana, and in this merriment you made a beautiful gesture to Jesus. You knew that your son was sadly reluctant to begin his "hour," his public ministry, the great march to Calvary, for that meant, not only would he no longer be at home to comfort you, his widowed mother, but also that his sufferings would be your sufferings, his sorrows your sorrows. Dear Mary, knowing that your own soul would be pierced by a sword, you also knew that your son had to be about doing the will of his Father, and so with exquisite delicacy you initiate the hour of Jesus, your dear little boy now grown in wisdom and stature: You make it easier for your son to move on! Dear Mary, please care for us, your dear little children striving to mature in our faith; please comfort us in our afflictions and encourage us to be brave, to fight the good fight. As you did at Cana, please intercede for us, that we may be truly merry, now and forever: "They have no wine," you say to Jesus (the good wine of festivity, of heartening, as well as the best of wines, the blood of the New Covenant); and to us you give the message of abundant life, "Do whatever he tells you." Where you are, dear Mary, Our Queen, Our Mother, Our Lady, Jesus manifests his glory, and his disciples believe in him.