Author Archives: Christine Sunderland

We left the sun of the valley, drove west through the Caldecott Tunnel, and emerged into foggy Oakland.  The change in temperatures during the summer still surprises me – and I grew up in this area – for there is often a 20-30 degree drop from the Walnut Creek area to San Francisco.  Oakland is on the way, and sometimes the fog that enshrouds San Francisco is halted in its journey east by the East Bay Hills and hovers over nearby Oakland.

In the valley we are protected from those cooling temps, for good or ill, for sometimes they rise  to triple digits and we wish for the San Francisco summer fog.  But the cry, “It’s winter in August,” is a familiar one from Berkeley, Oakland and other towns around the Bay.  A warning to San Francisco tourists!  Leave the shorts at home and pack a sweater or jacket.

Saint Peter’s Oakland was quiet today, the service sedate, thoughtful, serious, as we approach the end of summer and the beginning of fall.  The mood prompted reflection, and I listened closely to the preacher’s words, wondering what God wanted to say through him to me.

He preached on the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, a story told by Jesus, illustrating, I believe, the dangers of pride.  The Pharisee prays with great dignity and arrogance, for he has kept the law, he is better than others.  The Publican prays simply, have mercy on me a sinner.  Our Lord makes it clear which one goes to Heaven and which one does not.

It is one of those black-and-white stories that we don’t always want to hear.  We want to enjoy the shortsighted vision of moving through fog, cushioned by cultural mantras decrying falsehood and truth, lauding relativity and gray areas.  We do not want to stand in the sun for it might burn us, even blind us.

But we should recall that fog is cold.  The sun is warm.  The fog is blinding and isolating.  The sun is clarity and community.  The fog is death.  The sun is life.

I searched out my heart, looking for sins.  And I prayed, have mercy on me a sinner.  I want to be in the sun and see myself as I truly am.  I want to go to Heaven and see the face of God.

And with a scrubbed heart, and hopefully a renewed spirit of humility, I approached the altar.  I received the Body and Blood of Christ, thankful and joyous.

http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/; 6113 Lawton; Sunday Mass, 10 a.m.

My husband and I visited our youngest son and his family in Boulder, Colorado, this weekend and attended his First Presbyterian Church.

My father passed on to the next world many years ago.  He was a Presbyterian pastor, and I have many happy childhood memories of growing up in the church in Lafayette, California.  Choir.  Youth group.  Camping trips.  I remember the sanctuary, built in the fifties, the long, plain, raftered room, the first sanctuary.  Founded by my father, the church originally met in the local Park Theater, my father preaching in front of the big screen, and the Sunday School met in the Town Hall, creating classes with room dividers.  It was an important day when this first sanctuary building was finished and dedicated, although a much grander one would be built later, one that could be seen for miles from the hillside.

We sat, as I recall, on folding chairs, and faced a raised stage where my father sat to the side in his long black academic robe, waiting to preach.  When the time came, he moved to a lectern and wove a Gospel message of love through three good stories.  “Three good stories,” he would say, “is the secret to a good sermon.  Three points.  Three stories.”  He kept jokes and stories on index cards in a small file box at home.  We sang Holy Holy Holy, Lord God Almighty…

He was well loved, my father.  And he loved well.  I suppose it was easy for me to believe in a loving God the Father, having had such a loving father-on-earth.

So in Boulder on Sunday we sat with our son and his lovely wife and his own son, a precocious six-year-old, in the second pew of Boulder Presbyterian.  The immense sanctuary fanned up and around like a theater, with large video screens high on either side of the raised stage.  The church was packed, people taking seats in shiny oak pews, their feet resting on soft carpeting, some folks settling into an upper balcony ringing the room.  A choir angled in rows to the right of the stage.  High ceilings, a large cross on the back wall rising over greenery, a holy table with an open Bible, a cross, a chalice, a stemmed plate.  A baptismal font to the right, a lectern to the left. The simplicity was familiar, and I smiled when I saw the preacher sitting, waiting, in his chair behind the pulpit.

We began with Holy Holy Holy, Lord God Almighty, and my tears were near.  I prayed my thanksgivings for this moment when my past had, in some remarkable and blessed way, become my son’s present, and I was able to share it with him and his son as well.  I watched as the children sat on the steps of the chancel stage, gathered around the preacher for a lesson, my grandson sitting in the group, proud.

The children returned to their places in the pews, and the pastor preached to the adults.  He didn’t wear a black robe, but a neat jacket and tie.  He didn’t preach from the pulpit, but commanded center stage.  He told a few stories and left us with several memorable points.  The 23rd Psalm was all about redeeming the dark places in our lives.  We are not spared suffering, he said, but our trials are redeemed by Christ, and he is with us as we work through them.  Classic, orthodox Christianity, I thought, proclaiming the presence of God here and now, God’s powerful presence working through and in each of us.

We sang another hymn, following the words on the overhead monitors high above, and filed out, up the soft carpets, following the hundreds of worshipers to the large foyer.

Boulder First Pres wasn’t St. Thomas’ or St. Peter’s where the great Eucharistic liturgy is offered each Sunday in all of its dramatic glory, where the bread and the wine become Christ’s Body and Blood, nourishing us.  But I was grateful for the congregation’s clear belief in an active, loving God, one who lived with us, in us.  And I was grateful to be a mother, a grandmother, sharing this moment in time.

Gratia Deos

Our gentle valley is hazy with smoke this afternoon and I fear there may be fires farther east, this warm California weekend in August. The hills are brown and dry with temperatures climbing into the nineties.  A quiet Sunday afternoon, slow, this day of rest.

At St. Peter’s Oakland we heard a sermon on the Prodigal Son.  This rich tale of a son leaving his father to find his fortune elsewhere and returning a penitent beggar, holds so many images and epiphanies.  In this parable told by Christ, each key figure – the wandering son, the wise and loving father, the jealous brother – reflects our relationship with one another and with God.

The priest who spoke today, however, mentioned a quote I often recall from Oscar Wilde: “The judgment of God is to give us what we want.”  Versions ring in my memory: “Beware of what you pray for, you might get it.”  How true.  What do we really want?  What do, or should, we pray for?

I considered Thursday’s great Feast of the Transfiguration celebrating the scene on the Mount of Olives when Christ’s face was “altered, and his raiment was white and glistering,” as he prayed and spoke with Moses and Elijah. Peter , James, and John waited nearby (they actually fell asleep, something I would most likely do), waiting their Lord’s will.

Transfiguration by God.  Isn’t that what we want?  To know him, to do his will.   In the end, if God’s will is done, we shall be happy, we shall be changed, we shall be transfigured.  Our lives will be one glorified prayer, on earth and in heaven, past, present and future.  Each of us will be that person we are meant to be, that person we deeply yearn to be.  Our heart’s desire.

But how do we know God’s will?

So my thoughts return to the Church, and in particular, the parish of St. Peter’s Oakland, where the Body of Christ meet to do just that – to partake in the Eucharist, to worship, and to learn a bit more about God’s love for each of us, his desire to mold us into that people we are meant to be.  For an hour, we are no longer prodigal with our time, our lives, our goods, and we draw close to God.  We are transfigured.

August pulls us through summer.  School will soon start.  The seasons change our landscape and this natural transfiguration, one more reflection of God’s glory, draws us through time, to him.

St. Peter’s Church: Sunday Mass: 10:00, 6143 Lawton Ave., Oakland;http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/

We visited St. Thomas’ Anglican Church in San Francisco this morning, and were happy to see Father Seraphim of Nazareth House Apostolate in Sierra Leone (http://www.nazarethhouseap.org/) .  He knelt in the first pew in his long black robe, his beads looped at his waist, a man of prayer.  A black cap covered his silvery hair as he gazed upon the tabernacle on the stone altar, the red candle flaming to the side.

He stepped to the pulpit to preach, his eyes holding enormous love strengthened by boldness.  I had the sense he was deadly serious, and I had better listen.  Whenever Father Seraphim speaks, I am reminded of John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness.  Would he cry, “Repent!”

Today this holy man calls us to take our beliefs seriously, not half-way, not be lukewarm.  To be authentic, to be real.  This is the only way to live a meaningful life, a life to which we are all called.  How can we do this?  How can we be authentic, real, true?

Father Seraphim gave us three ways.

First, we obey what God tells us to do.  We do his will.  Sounds simple, but what is his will?  We are told to love God and our fellow man, as it says in Scripture, and we can count on Scripture because it is true.

Second, we resist the culture around us when it goes against God’s laws.  Sometimes you have to say no, in order to have a meaningful yes.  We want the Truth that sets us free and makes us real. We want to avoid that which hinders this process.

What is the Truth?  Christ.  God becoming Man, dwelling among us, and bringing us to him, to be with him.   Before Christ came, man suffered for the lack of the Truth.  After Christ came, man suffers for the Truth.  We cannot choose our obedience, but must say yes immediately, not counting the cost.  We shall have nothing to fear, for we shall not be counting the cost.  God will pick up the pieces.  But we must obey him.

At times we find ourselves at a dead end, feeling trapped.  This may be God forcing us to face our disobedience.  How have we disobeyed?  We turn to God’s commandments, that we are to love him and love one another.  To the Ten Commandments; to the cardinal virtues, the deadly sins.

So the third way we can be authentic and real is that we don’t give up.  We pick ourselves up and try again.  For the truth of God, of Christ, fills us, making us real.

I considered these simple words coming from this simple man of love.  In the end, all of theology is really quite simple – a search for Truth, an understanding of our world, the human condition.  But what Father Seraphim is saying, I believe, is that the truth of who I am, who I am created to be (indeed how I spend the rest of this day, this week, this month, my life span) is all found in Christ himself, and once we embark on a relationship with him we shall find a life of meaning, a life of joy.  We shall be authentic.  We shall be real.

How profoundly true.

Saint Thomas’ Anglican Church, 2725 Sacramento St., San Francisco,http://www.anglicanpck.org/ .

Our blog was lost for a few weeks.  Many apologies.  I’ve had to repost all the entries, and unfortunately don’t have copies of the “comments”.  Many thanks to my readers – those who posted, those who visit, those who continue to check out the site.  We should be a little more stable now.

Home now and will post on Sundays, then late September we head for Venice, Florence, and Paris…

We did indeed return with our candles and paper lanterns last night for the Marian procession.  It was an evening I shall never forget.  We joined a group forming behind banners bearing the name, Abbeyleix, an Irish group it seemed.  We thought they would be singing in English and we could sort of follow along. The thousands that joined us on that windy evening were quiet folks, the chairs carrying the crippled pushed by attendants, families of all sorts, young and old.  We began at the Basilica and moved up the Esplanade, singing our chorus triumphantly, Ave Maria.  The Lourdes tune is lovely, Ave, Ave, Ave Ma-ri-a, with a final accent on the last a.  With each Ave, the candle is thrust higher in the air.

Dark clouds were forming in the distance over St. Michael’s Gate, and the wind picked up, snuffing our candles.  A neighbor relit mine, again and again and I wondered how she kept hers going.  Finally, I held my candle up with the song, lit or not, my heart alight, my mind full of the moment.  We followed the crowd, singing and stepping slowly, moving forward in time, and somehow moving in faith too, with all these brothers and sisters, a great family.  We returned to the Basilica with all of its light and color, where final prayers were said.  By 10 p.m. the crowds dispersed quietly to their beds for a good night’s rest.

This morning we woke to heavy mist, nearly a rain, and umbrellas in hand walked through the old town of Lourdes, pausing at the sights of Bernadette’s life – the house where she was born, the cachot, former jail, where the family lived in poverty at the time of the apparitions.  The cachot was just like the pictures, and you can walk right in, see the fire place, the two windows, the white walls, the smallness of the space for a family of six.  I recalled she had asthma, and her mother worried, but I also recall theirs was a loving family, and the first years of Bernadette’s life, until this year of misfortunes when her father lost his job and they moved to the cachot, were happy ones.  Her father had been a miller and they lived in the mill, alongside the rushing River Gave.

We walked farther up into town to the parish church with its triple nave and stained glass depicting Bernadette’s life.  A woman was singing before the Reserved Sacrament in the north aisle, another group was reciting the rosary.

The Tourist Office across the street was helpful with maps and information.  Folks spoke English.

We headed back for lunch, the sun breaking through the wetness and scorching the air, and later ventured out again, the rain clearing, the skies brightening.  This time I carried my last two copies of Offerings, thinking to leave them with the Information Center, addressed to the English Chaplain of Lourdes, a Father Martin Moran.

But first we had one more offering of thanksgiving: placing flowers at the feet of Our Lady of Lourdes, who faces the basilica, anchoring one end of the Esplanade, the giant crucifix standing tall at the other end, Saint Michael’s gate, facing the crowds coming in.  We bought two pink roses outside the gate and placed them in the wrought iron fence surrounding Our Lady.  I said a Hail Mary and a prayer of thanksgiving.  We continued to the banks of burning candles, and placed our candles, purchased nearby, in the iron stands and prayed for our Church, our clergy, and our people in these difficult times.  Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

We then went to the Information Office in search of Father Martin.  A lovely lady behind the desk, Christina, came to my aid and phoned Father, and he soon arrived, greeting us with a smile and a handshake.  Father Martin Moran is a tall man, gracious and friendly.  He was most encouraging, taking my novel with thanks and chatting with us about Lourdes and the many ways folks are healed here.  “Everyone leaves changed,” he said, smiling.  And I could see that.

Father Martin suggested I take my second copy back into town to the English bookshop, run by the Griffins.  Which we did.

We walked back up the hill, crossing the river into town, up the rue de la Grotte, turning on the rue du Bourg.  There were several book shops on this quiet street, and we spotted the one with the folding sign outside that read “English Book Shop.”

The Griffins were most welcoming and accepted my little book.  I hope to send them a few  more copies, and wish them blessings with their store in these difficult economic times.  The shop is lovely, with icons and an excellent selection of books in English.  Wish I had spent more time there, although I tend to load my suitcase too readily when it comes to books and icons.  http://www.lourdes-books.com/

I thought my day was nearly perfect, and our last event in Lourdes was yet to come.

Pilgrims meet at the Grotto each day at 5 p.m. for the Eucharistic Procession.

Around 4:30 we walked toward the Grotto to say goodbye to Our Lady, the image poised on the ledge looking down upon the flaming candelabra, the pilgrims moving quietly (silence requested here) in a somber line along the cliff face, into the dark cavern where one can see Bernadette’s bubbling spring through a window in the floor.  Nearby the candles in the sheds were flaming too, and we passed the baths next, closing for the day now, and crossed the rushing river to the other side.  It was here groups were gathering, opposite the Grotto and the gothic basilica, its spires shooting into the afternoon sky.

The blue chairs carrying the sick and handicapped had their awnings pulled out to protect the patients from the sudden hot sun.  Many were grouped under the shade trees.  A gathering of clergy was forming near one of the modern halls on this side of the river.  Perhaps as many as a hundred priests in white robes with stoles waited quietly or listened to assembly instructions.  I guessed most were visitors, and each day a few leaders resident here in Lourdes would instruct their charges in the rituals of this procession.  I wondered how they would proceed, how the procession would proceed.

A canopy was carried by four priests, and soon, the assempled clergy moved to a white tented pavilion nearby where a large monstrance holding the Eucharistic Host was on the altar.  Many in the watching crowd genuflected, some kneeling on the hard pavement.  I did both for a time, then rose, for I do believe that God is in the Host, a reality sometimes difficult to fathom.  Once again I was glad for the help of ritual to deal with such a mystery, and I relied on custom to guide me.

They soon were singing a familiar Easter hymn, one from our Anglican hymnal, and I sighed my thanksgivings for the familiar tune, and joined in theAllelulia!  The procession, the Host carried solemnly, left the altar pavilion toward the waiting crowds with their banners and chairs.  The long swathe of white robed clergy followed the canopied Host, leading the congregation along the rushing river, across the stone bridge to the Esplanade.

It was a smaller group than the Marian procession, perhaps five hundred or so, and we filed toward Saint Michael’s Gate, then crossed the Esplanade to the other side.  This was a different route, I thought, then saw that we were descending into a massive underground chapel.  I had seen pictures of the Chapel of Pius X, but had not visited.

We walked into the earth, and I gasped.  The space was huge, like a football stadium, with an altar in the center raised on a dais.  Like theater in the round, the congregation was assembling everywhere, and I could see many had arrived before us.  The space seats 10,000 and it was nearly full.  I soon sensed my mouth had dropped open and my eyes were bulging.  We found seats.

The clergy had taken their places to the side of the raised dais and a few gathered around the Host in the monstrance now on the central altar.  Large video screens in the congregation gave us closeups of what was going on.  There were readings and songs and finally Adoration, as we sang the wonderful Saint Anselm’s hymn, Now we before him bending… , a second familiar tune, one which I used in Offerings in the scene of Adoration at Sacre Coeur in Paris.

God is good, I thought, weaving together my loose ends, and Mother Mary has watched and loved and cared for me like a good mother.  I was grateful.

Last  night we joined the 9 p.m. procession, as the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary were sung in six languages, the “lanugages of Lourdes.”

The crowd moved slowly, some ten abreast, with handicapped in wheelchairs, children stepping solemnly, elderly with knowing faces, most carrying candles protected by small paper lanterns purchased in town.  Each mystery – each scene from the sorrowful period of Christ’s life, his Way of the Cross – was read in six languages, broadcasted through loudspeakers along the oval esplanade route that would lead back to the Basilica.  We said an Our Father and sang the Ave Maria chorus, candles lifted into the air.

It was still light when we began, but by the end of the route, about an hour later, the flames began to light up the dark.  As we walked I looked at the faces of my neighbors.  They held purpose and devotion to be sure, but there was also a sense of amazement that they were there with so many like-minded Christians.  Many of us live in this world as strangers, sojourners, and to have this sense of “solidarity,” of union with our fellow believers, outside in the balmy air, processing and taking part in praise, strengthens us.  To be together like this, to sing toether, to walk together, to pray together en masse, uplifts us, gives us courage and joy.

The first night we watched the procession from the sidelines, dazzled.  Last night  we took part in the procession as individuals, and thus joined the group at the end of the line, an Italian group, I believe.  We hadn’t located our lanterns yet, so we raised our hands to God.

Tonight we shall return after our supper, this time candles and lanterns in hand and join the throng of praise, song, and lanterns lifted high.
Will we recite the Glorious Mysteries?  I do not know.

Ave Maria, Gratia Deos.

We woke this morning to a warm humid day with high gray skies, and, after breakfast, set out for the Grotto of Massabielle, where the Virgin Mary appeared eighteen times to Bernadette.  As we worked our way along the crowded Rue de Bernadette to Saint Joseph’s Gate, past curio shops (which today seem quaint) and accompanied by white clad nurses pushing wheel chairs and pulling small carts carrying the malades, I thought about Bernadette’s amazing story.  Here is an adaptation from my account inOfferings.

On February 18, 1858, fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous saw a “beautiful Lady” in the Massabielle Grotto on the River Gave southeast of Bordeaux.

The nearly destitute Soubirous family had moved from a mill to a former jail, the cachot.  A chronic asthmatic and of simple intelligence, Bernadette was unschooled until age thirteen.  On that extraordinary day in February, as she gathered firewood with her sister and a friend, a “gust of wind” drew her gaze to the grotto where she saw “a Lady in white.”  Bernadette prayed the rosary with the Lady.  The Lady asked her to return for fifteen days, and Bernadette obeyed, finding a way to get to the grotto when she felt she must.

On February 24, Bernadette witnessed the eighth apparition.  The Lady asked her to kiss the ground, scratch the soil, and wash in its waters.  A curious crowd had gathered by this time, and they watched the young girl eat dirt and smear her face.  The following day a spring bubbled from the earth.

Healings began.  On March 1, Catherine Latapie, thirty-eight, thrust her deformed hand into the pool from the spring, and the hand returned to normal.  Bouriette Louis, fifty-four, was cured of blindness in his right eye, and Henri Busquet, fifteen, was healed of tuberculosis tumors of the neck.

On March 2, during the thirteenth apparition in the grotto, the Lady commanded, “Let the people come in procession and let a chapel be built here.” Bernadette reported this to her parish priest, but he did not believe her.  She urged him again that evening.  He replied she must ask the Lady her name.  On March 25, the Lady answered, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

When Bernadette reported this, the priest said, “But what are you saying?  Do you know what that means?”

“No, but I kept saying the name to myself all the way here,” Bernadette replied.

The dogma of the Immaculate Conception, decreed by Pope Pius IX four years earlier and a popular belief since the early Middle Ages, claimed that the Virgin Mary was conceived without sin, a condition necessary, it was thought, for her son to be born without sin.  Bernadette’s clear ignorance of this doctrine convinced the priest that the apparitions were real, and he told his bishop.

The healings continued.  On July 6, two-year-old Justin Bouhort was cured of terminal paralysis when his mother immersed him in the spring.

The local authorities began to interrogate Bernadette.  Throughout months of intense scrutiny and badgering (for the popularity of the spring had drawn thousands, threatening civil unrest in the village of Lourdes), she remained simple and straightforward.  Finally, she was believed.

The devout Empress Eugenie in nearby Biarritz heard about the miraculous waters and gave some to her child suffering from tuberculosis.  The boy recovered the following day.  On October 5, 1858, his father, Napoleon III, opened the grotto to the public.

The waters of the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes continue to heal, the sixty-fifth documented miracle announced September 21, 2005.  It is estimated that approximately four thousand were cured in the fifty years following the shrine’s opening (see http://www.lourdes-france.com/).  The waters draw pilgrims, sick in soul as well as body, and healings of the heart would be impossible to document and too numerous to count.

From Easter through October, Lourdes, population seventeen thousand, hosts five million pilgrims and tourists from all over the world, including seventy thousand sick and handicapped.

A long parkway with an oval shaped path connects Saint Michael’s Gate with the great basilica that rises over Bernadette’s Grotto.  We entered from the side through Saint Joseph’s Gate and found ourselves in front of the Rosary Basilica.

The massive parkway called the Esplanade serves as the route for the evening processions, as well as gathering points for the many pilgrimages from around the world.  But what struck me about this morning wasn’t the many languages and banners and brightly colored identifying shirts and scarves.  What struck me was the singing.

Everywhere we strolled, gaping at the church facades and interiors, everywhere we went, past the water taps and candles flaming in prayer alcoves, everywhere people were singing.  For the most part, they were singing favorite hymns, modern hymns, sounding like old folk songs, but tuneful songs of praise as they gather in the open air before the grerat churches on the cliff.

The basilica is really three layered churches – the Crypt, the Rosary Basilica, and above that, the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. We climbed the stairs, a sweeping arc to a terrace, to the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, and halfway up turned to look down upon the Esplanade.  Directly below us, in an outdoor alcove chapel, a Mass was being said for the malades.  Eight white-robed priests con-celebrated before a dozen rows of handicapped and ill, who, confined to wheelchairs, waited, praying the prayers, for their communion.  Others have been healed in Lourdes by this simple action of union and belief.

Did they think they would be healed?

I looked at their faces.  Some held hope, others devotion, but all seemed to be filled with a peaceful joy.  When they said the Our Father they held hands, sisters and brothers in their suffering, soon to receive the suffering one Himself.

I thought about miracles.  Why couldn’t all of these sick be healed?  Why was it only one person every now and then, and why that person in particular?  The answer came as soon as I asked the question – free will.  God cannot interfere in man’s freedom, so to preserve that freedom of choice, he can not intervene too often.  Those times when He does intervene, those times of overwhelming love and testimony, are to help us see Him, and see His love for us.  Since Adam’s fall, Adam’s terrible choice, sickness and suffering would be part of humanity.  We must choose to offer that suffering to God for His purposes.

We filled our bottles with water from the taps.  I wondered if the water would heal me of my strange chronic and undiagnosed condition, recurring dizzy spells.  I thought of all those confined to their chairs, their bent limbs, their drooping hands and fingers, the young and the old.  Not me, Lord, but let my small seizures be offered for them.  Heal them, Lord.

For they are the true saints, and Lourdes bears witness here to the sanctity of their lives, no matter their condition.  We can only pray that we have their courage and hope, and that we too, bear such a witness.