The Christian Life: April 2003 Archives

Good Friday
I think today is one of the most solemn and sacred days of the year and should be spent with family in Church, contemplating the death of Our Lord and eating customary Good Friday food at dinner (after fasting of course).
Well, the people who like run the country and stuff do not see Good Friday the same way I do, so my husband has to work. Bummer. I will attempt to go to Stations of the Cross at noon at my local Novus Ordo Church, and hope that the children behave and that I do not burst a blood vessel from some type of heterodox theatrics. Say a prayer it goes well.

In the meantime I will share with you what my Italian family customarily eats on Good Friday. It is something we call "Grass Pies." You take greens, any greens you like, but broccoli rabe is a must, spinach, dandelion and in my parents generation, we added collard greens and even if you have it a green called colalu. In a pot sautee some garlic, a couple of anchovies in olive oil, some sliced black olives and some chopped up hot peppers or crushed red pepper if you like. Add washed (and still wet) greens to the pot and simmer on low heat covered. When the greens are all dark and mushy (in Italian we say "shfat", Ido not know how you spell it though) you put them in in pizza dough. I guess in little rolled out cirles about 8 inches in diameter, put some greens in the middle, fold over and squish the sides together with the tines of a fork to make a little pouch. Now the customary thing to do is take these and deep fry them. I do not-too fattening, so we bake them.

In the meantime here are some Good Friday prayers a friend emailed to me (thanks Karen):

Prayer For Good Friday

"O, my Lord Jesus, I hereby beg of Thee, by the merits of Thy Precious Blood,
by Thy Divine Heart, and by the intercession of Thy Most Holy Death to assist
me in this pressing necessity."

(To be said 33 times for each intention. It must be said during the hours of
12 noon and 3 PM.)

~~~~~~~~~

Prayer for Good Friday

"I adore Thee, O Holy Cross, which has been adorned with the tender,
delicate, and venerable hands and feet of my Saviour, Jesus Christ, and
immured with the Precious Blood. I adore Thee, my God, nailed to the Cross
for me.
I adore Thee again, O Holy Cross, for the love of my Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. Amen"

(Revealed to St. Bridget that if said devoutly 3 times on Good Friday that 33
souls would be released from Purgatory. 3 souls on ordinary days.)

Real life is just like the spiritual life

Lee Ann was kind enough to leave a recipe for eggplant parmagiana in our comments box (by the way, I am starting the eggplant seeds indoors.) She also was kind enough to leave the URL for her blog, The Literarium. From her mega-post on Mega-Merton:

I don’t think you can have any kind of interior or spiritual life until you stop seeing things as you would like them to be, or fear they are, and start seeing them as they really are. As long as you focus on an illusion of a thing, on your idea of how it is or ought to be, you cannot respond to that thing. You can only respond to your self-created illusion. Only when you dispense with illusion and see things as they are can you respond to them and value them.

It's almost depressing to think about how many problems -- from the tiniest personal issues to international issues -- arise from refusing to face things as they are instead of how one wishes they were.

Another good one:

This is why I have never liked the stripped-down, rather morbid Spartan Aesthetic of Protestantism and modern AmCatholicism. Nothing is less conducive to a connection with the majesty of God than a plain white box. Modern churches can be more like sensory deprivation chambers than churches. Plain walls with nothing to look at, a plain altar with nothing to look at, and an overall sense of being in a nicely appointed office building are the first things I call to mind when I think about modern churches. There is nothing religious about them. There is nothing that says you are in a special, sacred place for a special sacred purpose. Boring, uninspiring buildings push you farther and farther away from God. You can’t pay attention to Him when you’ve mentally fallen asleep. Maybe this is somewhat behind the craze for garish Hindu/ Mexican religious objects. After being deprived of spiritually inspiring, artistic rituals and worship aids, people are grasping for anything that will make faith lively. By excising the religious artistic tradition of the American Church, you are left with soul-numbing modernism or artificial, imported kitsch. Too many people lapse from faith because our houses of worship are so alienating and uninspiring. Beautiful churches can plant a seed of faith that True Religion can make grow. But something has to plant that seed.

There is a church not far from me that literally is a big white box. Whenever I go there I wish I had my sunglasses with me because of the darn glare. I feel like I'm in one of those 60's science fiction dystopia movies, where after great exertion the hero has finally found the villian's secret headquarters, and it turns out to be a single brilliantly lit but eerily silent room, housing the evil pulsing brain that controls the planet.

By the way, Lee Ann also writes for The Spinsters.