Author Archives: Christine Sunderland

We walked the Way of the Cross this morning, climbing the mountainside behind the Grotto and its basilica, following a wide path through a forest of shade trees dappling the pathway.  Larger-than-life sculptures depict each station, and we read the meditative prayers from our booklet.  I left understanding love a little better, that when we fall we pick ourselves up as Christ did, that we each have our own Way of the Cross, one which when fused with Christ’s, becomes a way of joy.  I left thankful.

This visit to Lourdes has indeed been a pilgrimage of thanksgiving for me, having come to the famous shrine many years ago for half a day and been entranced even then.  But on this visit, this pilgrimage to Bernadette’s home and vision of Mary, I am giving thanks especially for the publication of Offerings, with its chapters set here.  Indeed, a theme of the novel is the theme of Lourdes: the offerings God has made to us through His Son’s incarnation, death and resurrection, through His Mother Mary with her many apparitions of hope, particularly in France in the 19th century.  Through these offerings, mankind is given the chance, the choice, to be redeemed.

I would like to leave a copy of my novel here with someone who reads English, as an offering of thanksgiving.

The day was warm, the temperatures rising, the skies a dome of blue.  We descended through the forest of the Way of the Cross, down to the Grotto where candles burned in the giant candelabra.  We washed in the waters pouring from the spigots alongside the cliff face, and purchased candles to add to the many flames of the others.  The cave is kept the same as it was in Bernadette’s time.  Masses are often said there, below the image of Mary where she appeared on a small ledge above and to the right of the cave entrance.  The waters come from the spring Bernadette found when she obeyed the strange instructions of Mary – to scratch in the soil and eat the soil of sinners.  She scratched and tasted, and a spring bubbled up through the earth.  These are the same waters of that spring, found to be chemically pure, that have been routed through pipes into taps throughout the grounds, and into the baths where pilgrims are immersed by careful attendants.

Wash. Repent. Be healed.

We flew Nice-Paris-Lourdes, and finally arrived in time for a late dinner.

My first reactions are such a mix… loud music blaring on the taxi radio as we passed through peaceful forested foothills.  An old Victorian hotel set on a street of neon kitsch shops selling plastic figurines next to lovely icons.  The hotel dining room traditional, carved paneled wood, chandeliers, white linen table cloths. Bustling with pilgirms and tourists – many in the white garb of the “hospitaliers” those nurses who push the wheelchairs and help with the processions.  After dinner the procession itself, heard and seen from our balcony, winding along the Esplanade of green lawn, singing in many languages (one after the other) the Ave Maria.  Strolling over to the Basilica where the processions were now arriving, the sun just going down (it’s 9:30 p.m.), their paper lanterns starting to light up the dark.  The thousands of pilgrims, sick and well, helping one another, singing to Mary and Our Lord words of hope and joy.

We walked up a wide path leading to the Gothic church to a place where we could see the pageant of song and light and utter delight, the lights of the church appearing in the dusk, the pilgrims lights answering in some mysterious way, a kind of couterpoint.  Further on, the river rushed below the grotto, high with the rains of last year, the snowmelt of the nearby Pyrenees.

Then we walked back through town, along the neon path of shops, to our old hotel and took the lift, the long cables visible through the shaft to the floors above.

What will tomorrow bring in this miraculous place where the young Bernadette saw and spoke with the Virgin Mary?

Here on the lawn, high above Cannes, surrounded by lavender, a nearby waterfall rushes in the distance, a soothing sound.  I’ve been reading about Mary Magdalene’s time in the Marseilles area, a few hours west of here.  She sailed from Jerusalem with Maximin and many others, escaping persecution, and retired to a cave in the Sainte-Baume Massif between Toulon and Marseilles.

This story is one of French legend, promoted by medieval chroniclers, but I’ve always sensed the kernel to be true.  I was familiar with the dripping cave-chapel, the local Dominican monastery, the meditative walk up the mountainside.  I had never climbed beyond to the top, Mount Pilon, where they say Mary was carried by angels to hear them sing.  A chapel sits on the edge of a rocky promontory, a destination of many papal and royal pilgrimages over the last 1200 years, their names recorded by an 18th-century French historian.

The scholar Michael Donley examines the legend, and has come up with some interesting evidence.  The valley below the cave, and for that matter, in the greater region stretching from the town of Saint-Maximin and its basilica to Marseilles itself, is dotted with hermitages and abbeys dating to the fourth century.  These monastic communities were founded by monks from the Saint Victor monastery in Marseilles, a sort of “monks school” begun (we know from historical sources) by Saint John Cassian.  Records refer to the “Cassian way.”  The fact that there is such a congregant of these hermitages and abbeys near the site where Mary’s grave and oratory would have been is not conclusive but certainly indicative that the area was considered to be particuarly sacred.

John Cassian, too, is an interesting figure, for he was involved in the heady debate of the time about free will (Pelagius) versus grace (Augustine), landing firmly in the middle, which seems to me appropriate.  Donley argues Cassian was from this area, became a follower of John Chrysostom in the East and when this saint was banished from Constantinople, Cassian was ordered out as well.  He returned to his Provencal homeland where he founded two schools for monastics in Marseilles, and possibly spent his last days as a hermit in these hills.  His name marks the Cannes airport – St. Cassien – and a town nearby as well.

Fascinating clues to the mystery of the amazing Mary Magdalene, who, Donley also argues, was not only Lazarus’s sister, but the woman who washes the feet of Jesus with her hair, the woman whose demons are cast out, and the woman called a “sinner.”  In spite of recent statements by Church scholars to the contrary, and admitting there is no concrete Gospel evidence for the fusion one way or another, he makes it appear most likely they are all the same Mary.

I feel closer to Mary Magdalene, here in the country of her last years, when she preached in Marseilles about her Lord’s resurrection and her own salvation, then retired to the quiet of the mountain cave.  I’m carrying in my luggage my little novel, Offerings, that talks about her, and hope she approves my account.

In the meantime I shall read some more, inhale the lavender, and listen to the distant waterfall.

High above the Mediterranean Sea, west of Nice, hilltop villages look over the coastline.  These medieval walled villages were built for defense, but today have become havens for tourists seeking quaint alleyways, cobbled lanes, and walker-friendly towns.  Saint Paul de Vence, our neighboring village, is such a town, today an artist’s haven.  Indeed, you must park outside the walls and walk into the village, for the roads are too narrow for traffic.

These hills, at the base of the Alps Maritime, sit between the mountains and the sea.  The skies are large, with dramatic changes of weather as clouds are blown down from the peaks, and mist settles over the waters far below.  Yesterday was clear with a dome of blue above us, a light breeze.  Perfect.  Today gray skies carry brisk winds that swirl around our auberge.  A bit of sun tries to burn through.  A good day to read and reflect.

This is Mary Magdalene country, for legend claims she sailed to Marseilles with her companions, escaping persecution in Jerusalem.  She preached for thirty years in the area, then retired to a cave in the Sainte-Baume Massif, a low mountain range to the east.  We have visited her cave in the past, walking through an ancient protected forest, up the mountainside to the chapel grotto in the cliff face.  I told Mary’s story in Offerings and I wish to return to the legend in my work-in-progress, hoping to set a scene in the cave itself.  As part of my research, I’m reading a wonderful book, St. Mary Magdalen in Provence, the Coffin and the Cave by Michael Donley (Gracewing, 2008).  So I sit in the garden watching the weather change and reading about Mary Magdalen who spent her last years not so far away from here, also on a mountainside in Provence.

Time sometimes disappears, folds together, becomes one.  Soon we will be in Lourdes, where another Mary, the Mother of God, spoke to a young girl, also in a grotto.

Such miracles, tres miraculeuse.

We took the 10:43 ferry from Cernobbio to Bellagio, stepping carefully on the swaying metal gangplankbridging the Victorian station and the white steamer.  We headed upstairs to the top deck and sat in the stern.

The boat cleaved the deep blue waters, the sun warm upon us, the wind cool and brisk, and followed the shoreline to the many ocher-roofed villages, stopping at wrought-iron landing stations, letting folks off and others on.  The villages nestled along the water’s edge, each with its church and Lombard steeple, its yellow-painted hotels with orange geraniums trailing from windowsills, its cobbled lanes.  Beyond the shore, the villages spread up the green flanks of the lower Alps, to more churches and convents hugging the cliffs, villas with terraces and awnings, some shuttered.

Lake Como hangs from the Alps like an upside down “Y”, the western arm anchored by the main town of Como, the eastern arm ending with Lecco.  Bellagio perches on the peninsula reaching north through the center of the lake.  Byron called Lake Como the “Garden of the World.”  Many artists and statesmen have visited: Shelley, Longfellow, Verdi, Bellini, Listz, Puccini.  Winston Churchill painted; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor spent time here.

It is a blue and green landscape with scuttling clouds emerging from behind tall peaks, sudden winds ushering rain into the tranquil air with fat drops and swirling weather changes.  The beauty, the drama, takes my breath away, these sudden changes of weather.  Then, the storm gone, the sun bakes the wet grass and oleander trees.  Summer has returned.

We glide up the narrow lake bordered by the forests rising steeply on either side, passing white villas surrounded by gardens, cypress spires in rows, broad shady plane trees.  Church bells chime, echoing from village to village.

Arriving at Bellagio we take the ferry across one more stretch of water to Varenna, a quieter town, fewer tourists.  The waterfront path passes numerous restaurants, tables set in gardens overlooking the lake with awnings and umbrellas.  We finally reach the Hotel du Lac where we sit on a terrace under shade trees.  A mist has settled over the sun, and the view has been obscured, and we gaze into the whiteness as we nibble on salad and pasta.

Varenna is famous for its “Villa Monastero” and I had hopes of an interesting chapel somewhere.  It turned out the monastero was a convent of Cistercian nuns that was closed by the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century because the nuns were too lax.  The white Villa Monastero remains along the water’s edge and, having passed from owner to owner, is a Scientific Center today.

As we finished our lunch, a storm came in, and rain splattered through our leafy arbor, driving us inside to the lobby.  Thirty minutes later it let up and we ventured into the puddled town square, up steep cobbled stairs to the main road.  There we found the Church of San Giorgio.  A red candle flamed, and we prayed thanksgivings in the first pew before the Blessed Sacrament.  The Romanesque/Gothic church was lovely and well cared for, with many pieces from the closed convent, and a lovely fifteenth-century polyptych of Saint George over the high altar.

We descended along cobbled lanes to the docks and our 3:30 ferry home, full of color and sweetness, content with the day given to us.

We have made the remarkable transition from home to away, a journey of mind as well as body, and as I unpacked I sensed I was unpacking myself too – the bits and pieces of my life that traveled with me.  In some ways, here on Lake Como, I am the same person, and in some ways, I am different, as though the foreign senses – the smells, the sounds, the lake itself – reflect a different me.

The hotel sits on the edge of the village of Cernobbio, the name dating to the times of a monastery here, a “coenobium.”  Cernobbio itself fronts the lake and spreads up the flanks of Mount Bisbino.  Historical records date to 4,000 BC, and since that remarkable time Etrurians, Romans, Longobards and Byzantines have settled here, the town of Como has dominated, Spain has taken possession, and war was fought with the village of Torno across the lake. In the eighteenth century paper mills revived the economy of the area, and villas began to appear with names like Villa Geno, La Rotonda, La Gallietta, Villa Olmo.  The convent along the river Garovo became a villa that would be home to Cardinal Gallio and eventually our hotel.

We could take the ferry up the lake, and stop at other villages that dot the shoreline.  We could visit Como and its cathedral.  We could stay right here in Cernobbio and explore its three churches – San Vincenzio, Il Redentore, and Our Lady of Grace.  We decide to sit by the lake and watch the water lap the shore, sparrows chirping in the shade trees.  The sun is warm on the skin.  Perhaps we shall explore later.  Today we shall stare at the water catching the light as it ripples over the lake’s surface of dark crystal.  We shall read some from our books.  We shall doze.  Church bells from San Vincenzio echo through the humid air, reminding us that time is sliding, slipping, care-less.  So are we.

We sang “Holy holy holy, Lord God Almighty” today as the clergy processed up the aisle in Saint Thomas’.  One of my favorite hymns, triumphant, joyous, full of praise.  “Early in the morning my song shall rise to thee…”  It is a hymn I sang as a child in our Presbyterian church and the colorful notes still fill my heart with a poignant delight.

We had a visiting celebrant today, Father Mautner from Napa’s Saint Stephen’s.  He spoke the words of the Mass with great intention, paying full attention to each syllable, so full of meaning.  His care and clarity rang through our vaulted space, and I thought how this man, once Jewish and today Christian, knew better than any of us the full import of the Messiah coming to save us from our sins, our preoccupation with self.  He knew a salvation textured with Old Testament depth.  I recalled he is also a poet, one who values language.

But before the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, that moment when Christ becomes present in the bread and wine, our Deacon McNeely preached on the Trinity.  What is it?  This great mystery has been explained by many scholars and theologians, but today we considered the Trinity of the Cross – God the Father sending God the Son to actively love us.  It is this active love that is the Holy Spirit, and it is this active love that saves us.  We too must practice active love for others.   In the vertical of the Cross God reaches down to us; in the horizontal of the Cross we reach out to one another.  Profoundly true.

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost.  Our Trinity of salvation.  God’s active love transforming our own lives and our world.

I left our little chapel once again thankful, having been strengthened by the Eucharist, having been fed by the words of the sermon.

We will not return to Saint Thomas’ for a few weeks, for we will be heading back to Europe soon – northern Italy, southern France, and Lourdes.  What will God show me?  I pray for his active love to open my eyes to his many wonders.

We celebrated the coming of the Holy Ghost today in our little church of Saint Thomas’ in San Francisco.

What is the Holy Ghost? our archbishop asked in his sermon, as he stood before us in the central aisle.  Archbishop Provence appeared full of thought, his hands clasped quietly, his eyes pausing on various members of his flock.  For he knows each of us, or if he doesn’t, would like to.  I prayed that the Holy Ghost would use him to teach us, touch us, with God.

And the Holy Ghost did – He worked through our priest, came among us, gifting us with God Himself.

Pentecost, named for the Jewish holiday celebrated fifty days after Passover, over time took the name Whitsunday, named for the second day of baptism (the first being Easter) when the person dipped in the pool of cleansing waters wore a white robe.  Whitsunday also came to be associated with Confirmation in the English church, a ceremony in which the candidates wore white as well.  In the Christian calendar, Whitsunday comes the Sunday after Ascension, which is hooked onto Easter, a variable feast.  So each year Whitsunday lands on a different calendar day but is always the week after Ascension Sunday.

Pentecost-Whitsunday is the celebration of that remarkable event described so forcefully in Acts when the Spirit descends upon the disciples who wait (Christ had told them to do so), assembled in Jerusalem.  The Spirit comes upon them like “tongues of fire” and they are given the ability to speak in many languages.  They leave that Jerusalem room, telling all who will listen about the amazing acts of God, each one speaking in the language of the hearer.

We too assembled there in our chapel, waiting.

Our archbishop told how when God created the world, his Holy Ghost moved over the waters; when he created Man he whispered the words, then breathed life into him, rather like a kiss.  The Holy Ghost, the third person of the Trinity, shows God is an intimate God.  A loving God.   Yet a God of power and majesty.

We too have God’s power and majesty breathed into us, kissed into us.  We are given the ability to do marvelous acts.  We breathe in and breathe out (I thought of the Jesus prayer), praying our lives to him, our years, our hours, our minutes.
And soon we would hear the whispering of the Holy Ghost in the words of the Mass, prompting us, leading us, strengthening us, inspiring us.  Soon we would be kissed by God in the Body and Blood of the Mass.

I left our little chapel this morning, not speaking a new foreign language, but perhaps thinking one, as my heart, mind, and soul were filled with the whispers and kisses of God.

Saint Thomas’ Anglican Church, 2725 Sacramento St., San Francisco,http://www.anglicanpck.org/; Sunday Mass: 10:00 a.m.

We celebrated the Ascension of Christ to Heaven yesterday, Sunday, May 24, concluding Eastertide, the great yearly celebration of the Resurrection.  Christ walked the earth for those forty days between Easter and Ascension, giving his disciples proof, even the doubting ones.

And with Christ’s resurrection and ascension comes our resurrection and ascension. I thought about this, gazing at the thick Paschal Candle with the five wounds of Christ carved into the wax.  It stood in the chancel, to the left of the altar in our little church of Saint Thomas’.

Saint Thomas’ is of course dedicated to that doubting disciple, the one who had to touch his Lord’s wounds to believe in his resurrection.  Do we need to touch his wounds in order to believe?

For belief in Christ’s bodily resurrection from the grave after his death on Good Friday is crucial, central, to living on this earth.  I’m one of the lucky, fortunate, blessed ones, I suppose.  Belief was easy for me, Lewis’ argument moving from there is a God because there is a moral law, to Christ’s claims to be the Son of God, to the historicity of the Gospel accounts and the behavior of the first Christians.  One cannot deny history, and for me, the evidence was, and is, clear.

So I live each day knowing the hours count.  I live each day knowing my final destination.  I live with God’s presence and I partake of his body and blood, the once doubting Thomas touching wounds with fingers. I too, having been reborn, having been resurrected by belief, am slowly ascending to Heaven, day by day, as I journey through my time on this earth.

Easter to Ascension. A time of great glory.  And thanksgiving.

We visited Saint Francis of Assisi Anglican Mission in Danville today.

A small group of faithful Anglicans meet in a converted (no pun intended) Women’s Club on Sundays to pray and celebrate the Eucharist.  Using the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, with its liturgy that goes back to the sixteenth century, the simple setting is transformed with the texture and reverence of Elizabethan words and syntax.

As we entered we picked up our hymnals in a box by the door.  We sang as the deacon and two acolytes, one holding the crucifix high, one bearing a flaming candle, processed down the center aisle.  We prayed together, kneeling on portable cushions.  We sat on folding chairs to hear the epistle read.  The altar, I knew, would be removed later and stored, for the premises do not belong to the congregation.

But the tabernacle was on the altar, the red candle burning, announcing the Real Presence of Christ.  Tall tapers stood at either end of the white draped altar, a substantial crucifix above, reminding us of the real sacrifice of Christ two thousand years ago and once again today.  And with sacrifice, comes resurrection and new life.  This we knew and believed, and recited thunderously in the Nicene Creed, of one mind, one accord, as the Holy Spirit descended upon us, weaving among us, binding us.

Deacon Brown preached on prayer, for it was Rogation Sunday (from the Latin rogare, to ask), and with thoughtful phrasing explained how prayer was not only our spontaneous words to God, but indeed Psalms are prayer as well, and the liturgy itself is prayer.  Prayer is our life, a way of living with God.

We prayed the liturgy and received Christ with all of the solemnity of a grand cathedral as the language of ritual, the poetry of liturgy, ensured a sacred silence before God.  Worship.  Adoration.

The deacon prayed a benediction from the back of the room and the candles were snuffed out.  Soon the chairs would be folded and the books packed away.  We rose to greet one another over coffee, to mingle as the Body of Christ, to love.

In this simple setting the Great Liturgy had been offered and we had partaken of eternity.

Saint Francis of Assisi Anglican Mission, 242 Linda Mesa, Danville, California; Sundays: 10:00 Holy Communion