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We’ve had a coolish summer here in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Even in the eastern valleys where dry August temperatures often hit 105 degrees, fog enshrouds the mornings and the afternoon sun struggles through the air’s chill.  The nights are cold.  The natural world is unpredictable and perhaps this is why we often chat about the weather.  It is always news.

As creatures of the natural world, however, we long for God, for we belong to God.  We long for something more, something we cannot see, but know is there, this God in whom, as Saint Paul said, we live and move and have our being.  We long for our Creator.

This week offered many times to meet God, for there were two weekday Masses, not just the one at mid-week.  Friday was the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, a day in which we celebrate the amazing Gospel account telling how Christ took Peter and John and James up a mountain to pray.  “And as he prayed,” writes Luke, “the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering.  And behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias: who appeared in glory…there came a cloud, and overshadowed them: and they feared as they entered into the cloud. And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son, hear him.” (Luke 9:28+).

I had the great blessing of attending the Transfiguration Mass.  The tabernacle was draped in white, the color for feasts of Our Lord and saints not martyred, and the high altar shone bright, beckoning.  I considered what happened on that mountain two thousand years ago, how the bodily features of Christ were transfigured in this moment of glory with God the Father.  How Elijah and Moses appeared with Him, telling Him of his coming death.  It was the union of earth and heaven and his face changed, his clothing was “glistering,” or glittering brightly.   He was transfigured.

This, I thought, is what will happen to each of us one day, and for some of us today, here and now, and in days to come in this earthly life.  But in order to meet God we must prepare ourselves.  We must confess and repent, and be washed clean.  We must meet Christ in the Mass.  Then God will come to us and bring us to Him, for that moment or, upon our death, for eternity.

As I partook of the Body and Blood of Christ I knew there were two parts to such union.  I must prepare and God must come to me.  When we meet, as in this Eucharistic moment in time, I am transfigured.  In that moment I am far more than an earthly creature.  In that moment I fly with the angels.

Moses understood the holy fear of God, the un-namable Yahweh, when he approached the burning bush.  Just so, the power and glory of Almighty God requires such preparation in worship.  We gather and sing His praises.  We decorate our sanctuaries to make them sacred spaces.  We raise the altar and we tent the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies.  We light candles and we bow and kneel.  In these ways we honor God. In these ways we prepare ourselves to meet Him.

But most of all, we clean out our hearts.  God takes all of our wrong-turnings since the last cleaning out and forgives them, absolves us of all guilt.  Now we are ready for the burning bush.  Now we are ready to be transfigured.

Today’s Sunday Scriptures spoke of being visited by God, and being able to see Him when He comes.  But, as our good preacher reminded us, if we do not look, we will not see.  We will not know transfiguration.

http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/

My cat killed a bird.

The image of the lovely gray quail hanging from Laddie’s jaws, as the cat bounded to the back door to lay the offering inside, shall haunt me for a time.  My sweet and loving cat did this?

That’s what cats do, I told myself.  Horrified, I reached his strong tabby body in time and forced a release, then cradled the bleeding creature, carrying it to some sod near our back fence, far away from my cruel cat.  The quail died quickly, and a profound grief hit me.  What a horrible world, I thought, where we eat each other.

Indeed, this was another reminder of the brutality of the natural world, a brutality often hidden by its beauty, by man’s need to create order and life out of chaos and death.  Man is a different creature in that regard, having this desire in his heart, the desire of the Creator.

I know we are a fallen world, but it still powerfully affects me when I see such an example, although, to be sure, many examples filled the media this last week and year, and many more will stun us next week and in the coming year.

The incident of the bird occurred a few hours after returning from worshiping God in His church and considering the wonderful parable of the Prodigal Son.  It is a season of parables, Trinity Season, a long green growing season in the Church Year when we hear the teachings of Christ and try and be what God wants us to become.  Each year, on the Ninth Sunday after Trinity, Anglicans around the world listen to this particular Epistle and Gospel.  The Epistle, Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth (I Corinthians 10.1+) warns us against breaking God’s law, that is, of ordering our lives and our world according to our fallen way and not His perfect way of love.

Saint Paul promises that “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”  So we remain fallen, and we face our sins – pride, envy, sloth, gluttony, covetousness…  We know the list.  And, as our good preacher explained this morning, God doesn’t remove the temptation, but helps us to endure it, to bear it without succumbing.  When this happens, we are infused with His grace and the fallen has been redeemed.

After Saint Paul’s admonitions, we listened to the Gospel, the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11+), the well known story of the young man who leaves home, spends his inheritance, and returns begging for any small place in his father’s household.  Not only does the father forgive, he celebrates the son’s homecoming.  He throws a party.  The story holds many levels of truths, and I have been blessed through the years to hear dozens of sermons preached on various aspects and insights.  But this morning I was particularly struck by its relation to the Epistle, and to the ensuing Mass.  We are the prodigals, I thought, here and now, confessing our sins and being forgiven in this liturgy by God Himself.  Here and now, we are being celebrated by God Himself as we celebrate Him.  Each week, each Mass, we appear at Our Father’s house.  We sit at His feet. We are home.  If we repent, we know he will forgive.  So we list our falling-aways of the week and promise to try and change.  We repent.  And each week, Our Father sends His Son into our hearts and minds and bodies to teach us to love one another better.  Just so, each week He celebrates His creation along with His creation.

I am like my cat, hungry for what passes by, instinctually tempted by every fad and easy turn.  We are part of this world, but we have been given the chance to be redeemed.  We are invited to the celebration, the greatest celebration on earth, in His house, and I am so very thankful.

http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/

I love going to Mass, for it is a time to reflect on the last week and consider the week to come.   It is a time to repent and be forgiven.  It is a time to receive God’s life giving power.

This last week was a week of saints, ending with Saint James the Apostle today.

And as a week of saints, it was a week of lovely moments piercing the ordinary day.  I was looking forward to Thursday’s Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, for I had recently visited the Provencal region where she is said to have spent her last days.  I reflected on the four days we were given in the Var – Bouches-du-Rhone region of France, collecting experiences, sights and sounds, tastes and scents, in this lovely wine country east of Marseilles, north of Toulon, for my novel-in-progress, The Magdalene Mystery.

I recalled the crystal crisp blue-sky morning after a week of rain and the drive through the vineyards to the base of the broad limestone massif, the hike up the wide pilgrimage path to Mary’s grotto and chapel.  The trail was luminescent with sun refracting off broad leaves and I can hear even now the birds singing as we passed through their land, the slight breeze rustling the ancient forest foliage.  The 11:00 Mass began on time in the damp, dripping cave, and the young white-robed Dominican preached an enthusiastic sermon in French.  It was an experience of transcendence in the cool dark as candles flamed and a few faithful sang the responses.

This last Thursday, the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, I imagined the cave with its crowd of pilgrims that had processed up the mountain to honor the saint on her day.  I hope it was joyous at the Grotto of La Sainte-Baume and later as the pilgrims gathered in the valley in St. Maximin’s Cathedral, dressed in traditional Provencal costumes.  Mary’s relics rest in the dark crypt below, sanctifying the church, part of the amazing mystery of this saint, for who she was and who she was not has become part of my present search.

I was sorry to miss the pageantry and devotion of those faithful in southern France, but was cheered with an email from my friend, Sister Emanuela of the Sisters of Divine Revelation in Rome, an order that runs the small gift shop in St. John Lateran and have an active teaching ministry.  I had asked Sr Emanuela if she would take a few photos of the cloister at the basilica there, where, I had read, there had once been a shrine to Mary Magdalene.  And there, on Thursday, Mary’s day, the photos appeared on my screen:  photos of the cloister and the altar pieces remaining from the thirteenth century shrine.  Many thanks, Sister Emanuela!  So I proceeded to write my scene set in the Lateran cloisters, my little part in the honoring of Mary Magdalene.

Today in Saint Peter’s Church, Oakland, I thought of these things and then turned my attention to Saint James the Apostle.  Since James was martyred (early, 42-43 AD, the first Apostle to be martyred) the vestments and tabernacle drapes were blood red and the church flamed crimson in glorious homage to this devoted fisherman. The Gospel told of Christ’s question to James and John, “Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of?”  Indeed, I thought, the Apostles did drink of His cup, and just so, our preacher exhorted, we are called to do the same, for while we may not be called to give up our lives (although many do this today in our world), we are called to sacrificial self-giving in the observance of His law, way, and cross.

The first century folded into the twenty-first and we sang I sing a song of the Saints of God…, the charming children’s hymn, and as I drank from Christ’s Eucharistic cup, I prayed I too could offer myself as the saints had done and still do, as Mary Magdalene did in Southern Provence, as James, son of Zebedee, brother of John, had done, until the day that Herod Antipas killed him with the sword.

I left Saint Peter’s with joy, knowing if I listened I would hear God’s voice, that He held me close to Him.  He would guide me through the week to come, another big saints week: Anne, Martha, Ignatius of Loyola.

http://http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/ ; http://www.divinarivelazione.org/

Father Pomroy preached on sloth today, one of the seven deadly sins.

Sloth, he explained, is not the same as laziness.  Sloth is being lukewarm about God.  A slothful person is ambivalent and unenthusiastic, and he will will, one day, be rejected by God (the actual phrase from Revelation is more graphic: He will “spew” the lukewarm from His mouth).  Sloth enervates, drugs, and in the end, destroys the soul.

It is easy, I thought, to slide through life with little thought about God.  It often takes a grave illness or crisis in one’s life to wake up.  In the meantime, duty has called many to Sunday worship, to regular examination of conscience, to love of one’s family and neighbor, indeed to repentance.  But duty has largely been abandoned in today’s culture.

So we become slothful, and encouraged to be so.  We look out for ourselves and attend church when we have nothing better to do, when we feel like it.  One day, we shall be spewed out from God’s presence.

In the Anglican Church, as in many others, we have disciplines and “days of obligation” (attendance at Mass.)  These form a framework for our lives; they encourage us in our spiritual growth, even when we do not “feel” like it.  And, I have found, that when I follow these disciplines, I do grow and I do become enthusiastic and, both slowly and suddenly, I am filled with boundless joy.

I begin with my feet plodding the earth, dragging myself to Sunday Mass.  I leave, having tasted Heaven, angel wings lifting me along the path.  Such a transformation.

And so it was today, this Seventh Sunday after Trinity, an ordinary summer Sunday in July when folks were camping and hiking and swimming and enjoying the outdoors.  I entered the large dim nave, and knelt to say my prayers, praying for my family and friends, a list that seemed very long this morning.  So many were hurting, so many lost, so many despairing.  Then I turned to the Psalms for the day in the Book of Common Prayer, and “prayed” the Psalms.  These ancient prayers are filled with every emotion and I find myself grateful to have these poetic words to hold onto.  Then, as I looked up at the green tented tabernacle on the altar, I heard the organ play the opening chords for the processional hymn.

The hymn is one of my favorites:

Ye holy angels bright,
Who wait at God’s right hand,
Or through the realms of light
Fly at your Lord’s command,
Assist our song,
For else the theme
Too high doth seem
For mortal tongue.
(Richard Baxter, 1672, and John Haptden Gurney, 1838)

The tune is called Darwall (John Darwall, 1779) and is as bright and uplifting and delightful as the words.  Already I was soaring and the service was only beginning.  I waited expectant, knowing now that each minute would be filled with God.

We heard the Scripture lessons and Father rose to preach.  As I listened to him I smiled at the different ways in which he expressed the same truth: dancing Christians versus creeping Christians, seeking and finding and being “caught” by God, bound by love to God.  I was astounded at the simple truth of it, for I had moved from sloth to adoration within one hour.  The contrast was immense and I feared for those who were still in the land of sleep.  Would they wake up?  Would they know what I had known?

The sacred liturgy continued, and as we received Christ into our souls and bodies, our individual joys became one, and the Body of Christ breathed as a single living organism.

I left Saint Peter’s today changed as always, having partaken of Heaven itself, and I prayed that I would never ever ever be lukewarm about God, that I would always dance to the lilting melodies of His angels.  The experience was too beautiful and exquisite to miss one single second, but I knew that duty and discipline would tide me over when I fell once again into sloth.

http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/, Sunday Eucharist, Sermon and Church School at 10:00.

Home again and thankful for my birthday this last week, thankful for another year on this good earth, and thankful for another opportunity to worship God in the beauty of holiness at Saint Peter’s Anglican Church.

Over the last month, as I traveled to the sites of Mary Magdalene in Provence and journeyed to that first century I sensed time encapsulating.  For her Lord is mine, the same then as today.  Her presence was everywhere I visited – the dripping cave in the massif of limestone, the Gothic basilica that honored her relics in the luminous crypt, even the ancient Abbey of Saint Victor in Marseilles.  I began to notice other country churches that had been founded by monks from fifth-century Saint Victor’s, so that soon I could see Cassianite churches dotting old Provence, their place-names remaining to remind.  And then, the Benedictines of the Abbey of Saint Mary Magdalene in Barroux at the foot of Mount Ventoux, brought me full circle to the present as I gazed upon these young ascetic faces, their black robes dusting the stone floors of the Romanesque nave, singing Latin praises.  God is good, I thought.  He remains active in our world, weaving an exquisitely beautiful tapestry of the faithful, each person unique, each love different, each talent adding to the drama of redemption.

From that first century, when Mary Magdalene and the many others preached to the decadent Roman world, to the present day, as faithful witnesses proclaim God’s immense love to our straying culture, the years seem but a blink of an eye, yet each second contains life and death, holds eternity within it.

A mystery.  And this morning as I gazed upon the thirteenth-century crucifix rising over the green tented tabernacle at Saint Peter’s, I watched and waited for the mysterious miracle, the coming of Christ into our midst in the bread and the wine.

It was a morning of miracles it seemed, for we were blessed with a baptism.  The crucifer and torchbearers processed with our priest down the central aisle to the font near the entrance, and we turned, bowing, as the crucifix passed.  Soon we were looking back to the choir loft over the doors and above that the massive red stained glass window portraying the fire of the Holy Spirit.  The glass is brilliant in its crimsons and oranges and pinks, a happy rain of color upon us below, and today the prisms shimmered with light as we gathered around the stone baptismal font.

I listened to the familiar words of the ancient rite, somehow new each time, and glanced at the fiery windows, thinking of the descent of the Holy Ghost:  “None can enter into the kingdom of God, except he be regenerate and born anew of Water and of the Holy Ghost… received into Christ’s holy Church and be made a living member of the same… an heir of everlasting salvation… to give him the kingdom of heaven, and everlasting life.”  Our priest poured the sanctified water over the young man’s head and with this action, baptized him “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”  With this pouring, sin dies in Christ’s own death, and the newly baptized rises from the waters a new creature, part of Christ.

I love the words used to present the newly baptized to us, his new family-in-God:  “We receive this person into the congregation of Christ’s flock; and do sign him with the sign of the Cross in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world, and the devil; and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s end.”

Mary Magdalene was not ashamed.  She carried the Sign of the Cross on her heart as she fought under Christ’s banner, against sin, the world, and the devil, a faithful servant.  Today is no different, I reflected.  Courage is needed to make one’s way in the dripping dark with the light of a candle.  Courage is needed to be not ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified to an unbelieving world.  But He gives us that courage, he rains it upon us.

We received God this morning in the bread and in the wine, as body and blood entered our bodies and souls.  We were washed clean.  We received the crucified one so that we could rise with Him.

Even now, the stained glass rains upon my senses, the brilliant reds, the shimmering prisms.  The Holy Ghost showering upon us, world without end.

http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/.
All quotes from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer

“O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord,in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life,whose service is perfect freedom…” The Order for Daily Morning Prayer, Collect for Peace, 1928 Anglican Book of Common Prayer

I often think of this remarkable phrase, whose service is perfect freedom. 

While it is customary in American culture to celebrate before the holi-day and rarely, if ever, afterwards, I enjoy octaves, the traditional eight days of celebration after the feast.  With this excuse I continue to celebrate Saint Peter (June 29) and Independence Day (July 4), neighbors in our American calendar.

I think of Peter the Apostle as a robust saint, full of passion and life, who pulled himself up when he fell, soon to kneel at his Lord’s feet.  He, like Mary Magdalene, is one of us.  He is fully human in this sense, full of self, pulled by sin.  Scriptures speak of his threefold denial of Christ when fear vanquished love.  “Do you love me?” Christ asked him three times, and three times Peter insisted he loved him.  “Feed my sheep,” Christ commanded.  And Peter did, even to the point of failure again as he tried to escape the persecutions in Rome, fleeing the city on the Appian Way.  Christ meets him there, and once again brings him back to himself.  “Quo vadis?”  (”Where do you go?”)  Peter turns around and faces his death, and his new life.

Peter was free to choose, and just so, we enjoy that freedom as creatures and as citizens in the West.  He was free to listen and to decide.  And it is this freedom we celebrate on July 4th, our American Independence Day.  In the Western democracies freedom of belief is still protected for the most part, but we must not take such a revolutionary idea for granted.  Much of the world does not honor religious freedom, but seeks to impose a set of beliefs on all.

So we desire and celebrate freedom, but not the freedom to take freedom away, not the freedom to take life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  When I enter a church, my first prayer is thanksgiving for the people, the clergy, and the freedom to worship, the last a continual reminder of this great gift.

This is perfect freedom.  It is a freedom found in the Judaic-Christian God, the God who demands perfection but offers loving mercy.  He is a Father God who guides, protects, and loves us, leading us into our full humanity.  He is a God whose service is, indeed, perfect freedom.

We drove down from Crillon-le-Brave into the countryside through the farmlands past Carpentras and the melon festival signs, heading for a picturesque village at the source of the River Sorgue, Fontaine de Vaucluse.  Here the waters rush from the mountains, once transformed into power by waterwheels, and today channeled into the valleys below.

We parked outside the village, and followed the road over the bridge, crossing the roiling waters to the main square where tall trees shaded a monument commemorating the time Petrarch (1304-1374) resided here.  The Italian poet, known for his many letters and sonnets, is particularly known here for his unrequited love of Laura, a married gentlewoman he met in an Avignon church.  It was a romantic but platonic love from afar, and he recorded his romance in his sonnets, with echoes of the Courts of Love of an earlier time.

We lunched on an uneven terrace overlooking the rushing Sorgue and peered up the canyons to glimpse waterfalls at the true sources higher up, then strolled up the main street to the 11th century stone church.  The sanctuary was musty and dim, but the Blessed Sacrament was reserved on the altar  and an bay alcove honored Our Lady with not only a bank of flaming votives at the foot of her sculpted image, but a carved image of Saint Anne as well.  In reading about L’Eglise de Saint Veran, I learned it was founded in the 6th century by monks from Saint Victor’s in Marseilles.  I smiled for it was another Cassianite witness (see St. Victor’s post), and gave me more pieces to the wonderful puzzle of history.

We returned slowly to our car, under the heavy heat of the day, and drove into the valley of vines with their lush greenery striping the gentle green hills, watching the narrow road carefully for speeders and steep roadside ditches.

We would not be visiting Avignon this time, but I recalled that watershed fourteenth century when the Pope resided there, and the resulting turmoil caused in Western Christendom.  When the papacy did return to Rome, the city was falling to ruin, and it would take many years to restore.  Then again, it seemed to me that the presence of the papacy in France must have supported the new basilica at St. Maximin to the south of Avignon which honored the rediscovered relics of Mary Magdalen (see earlier post).  Many royal pilgrimages were made to her grave and Avignon played a substantial part in the development of the shrine, I am sure.

We returned to our hilltop village at the base of Mount Ventoux, and as I gazed at the mountain, I thought again about Petrarch, who climbed it because he wanted to (he is considered to be the first tourist) and about his romance with Laura.  It had been a colorful and fascinating day, full of image and sound, and best of all, of story.

We arrived at Crillon-le-Brave, about two hours north of Sainte-Baume, near Carpentras and Avignon as the temperatures rose here in southern France, hitting ninety degrees on Saturday.  Crillon-le-Brave is a small hilltop village at the base of Petrarch’s Mount Ventoux, and the lovely hotel here, began and owned by two gracious Canadians, has been a favorite over the years.  The hotel spreads over a rocky crag, looking out to the valley and the mountain beyond, and we descend spiraling stairs to breakfast on a terrace, as birds fly overhead in glorious abandon.  I set a chapter or two here in my second novel, Offerings, and with its publication, I am happy to return to this ethereal aery of stone.

Today, Sunday, we were able to go to church.  We drove through the Provencal forest of pine and alders on winding narrow lanes, the hills rolling softly beneath the mountain called Ventoux, windy, to visit a Benedictine monastery for Sunday Messe, the Abbey of Saint Mary Magdalen.

The lavender was in bloom, and we followed a gravel footpath alongside the swathe of purple reaching nearly to the porch of the ocher stone abbey. Cypresses rose alongside a graceful bell tower and as I pressed the minute button on my camera the bells began their song, chiming through the countryside, Come to Mass.

We entered through the arched portico, where a lovely statue of Marie Madeleine greeted us, and where Girl Scouts were preparing a bake sale on tables.  Inside, the sanctuary was dim, a few faithful having arrived for the 10:00 Office, ensuring they found a seat for the 10:30 Mass.  The small nave filled up quickly, folks climbing winding stairs to a loft above.  We found seats in the second pew, Epistle side, and watched as a black-robed Benedictine entered, turned on the lights, and lit the candles.

I recalled that in 1970 a few monks gathered in the Chapel of Mary Magdalen in the nearby village of Bedoin. Following the rule of Saint Benedict of the sixth century, they prayed the daily offices and worked the land. As they grew in numbers, they built a new monastery with their own hands in neighboring Le Barroux.  They remain a faithful witness, I thought, as I gazed at the oak choir, sixty stalls running perpendicular to the altar and apse in the traditional monastic form.  Theycontinue to sing the seven daily offices from Matins to Compline and celebrate Mass each day as well, weekdays in the grotto chapel, Sundays in this graceful sanctuary of light.

As I wrote in my chapter set here in my second novel Offerings,

Columns of cream and brown stone under vaulted arches lined the side aisles, and a high ceiling ran from the western loft to the eastern apse. A Madonna stood on a pedestal to the left of the altar, holding the Christ Child on her hip in the country manner, a figure of greens and golds. The sculpted image reminded Madeleine of the Madonna in Saint Thomas’ back home, but the lofty symmetry of the sanctuary echoed Saint Antimo’s in Tuscany. All was balance and harmony, calling the soul to peace.

The abbey retains that sense of ethereal wonder, peaceful harmony, perfect discipline, but there have been changes since I wrote those words.  Sadly, their beloved abbot has passed on, but another has taken his place, and there appeared to be many young men who had taken their vows here, a sign of increasing health for the order.  They offer programs for children over the summer and parish care for the local families.

I gazed at the crucifix over the altar.  Suspended by long black cords from the tower above, the corpus is Christ the King, fully clothed in blue and red, crowned in gold.  The image of the sacrifice as a royal one, with the arms outraised in welcome as well as suffering, has always touched me with its profound truth.  For this is a victorious Christ, one who, in this image, reminds us that he has conquered death, even the death of the Cross for the world.  We also recall in this colorful figure the public nature of his death, that his was an action of the heavens upon the earth, as the heavenly became the earthly in order to raise earth to heaven.

We watched as forty monks processed in to the sanctuary from the southern aisle and took their places in the choir.  They stepped quickly, with assurance, in pairs, their eyes full of a thoughtful certainty and grace.  They were tall and gaunt and ascetic.  Following the river of black robes, so marked against the pale tawny stone, came three others, side by side, robed in Trinity green.  The center monk, a priest, would celebrate the Mass.  Those on either side raised with care the edges of his chasuble, so that the effect was one of honoring the Eucharistic sacrifice, honoring the man who would perform the sacred rite, bringing Christ into our midst in a very unique and Scriptural way.

The High Mass progressed as the monks chanted in Latin, the lessons and sermon spoken in French, and as we entered the Canon of the Mass, I was grateful that the celebrant faced the altar in the traditional fashion, offering us to God.  Later, when the bread became the Host holding the presence of Christ, he would turn to us, offering God to us.

Six thick candles flamed on the stone altar lighting the colorful Christ and the apsidal stained glass windows.  With time and with watching, one sees more, and eventually the figures frescoed on the apsidal sphere took shape, Rublev’s Trinity (the Angels of the Lord visiting Abraham and Sarah, the Lamb of God in the center, prefiguring the sacrifice of Christ) above the twelve apostles in white.

In a way we were spectators of the great liturgical dance, and perhaps this is appropriate in this abbey church.  The men here work and pray continuously, and we joined them in a very small part of this offering.  We were grateful for their witness, their ora and labora, the Benedictine way, to God.

After, we left quietly through the portico, past the Magdalen, out to the field of lavender and the stalwart bell tower.  We found the crowded gift shop run by the monks and bought some bread, honey, tapenade, and two replicas of the stunning red-and-blue Christ the King, the Abbatiale crucifix.

And I left a copy of Offerings for the Abbot, as a small thank you for their glorious witness to truth at this Abbey of Saint Mary Magdalen.  Having come from La Sainte-Baume and venerated the Magdalen’s relics at St. Maximin, having traced the origins of the Cassianite hermitages in the plain beneath the cave and Marseilles, this visit of the more modern expression of Mary Magdalen’s devotion and evangelization was pure grace this Fourth Sunday after Trinity.

It was also, as I recalled, the octave of the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

Deo Gratia

We  drove in to the village of St. Maximin this morning to see the basilica and the relics of Mary Magdalene, past colorful market stalls selling Provencal skirts and linens, winding our way behind the church to a large parking lot.

The story of the discovery of Mary Magdalen’s relics begins in 1254 when King Louis (Saint Louis), visited the Saint-Maximin oratory as he returned from the seventh crusade, also making a pilgrimage up to the grotto of Sainte-Baume.  He asked his nephew, Charles of Anjou, Count of Provence, to investigate the strong tradition that Mary was buried under the oraory.  The original alabaster sarcophagus remained, but it was empty, for the relics had been hidden from invaders and never found.

Charles initiated excavations and in 1279, digging between existing tombs of the first-century graveyard that had been covered over the years, creating an oratory, making the graveyard the crypt and the oratory above used by the few monks in the adjoining Cassianite priory.  After many attempts, they found a marble sarcophagus near the (empty) alabaster one said to be Mary Magdalen’s.  When it was opened a lovely scent filled the air.  Charles immediately closed it and sealed it, to open later in the presence of reliable witnesses, both secular and ecclesiastical.  When the tomb was opened several weeks later, they witnessed a full-body skeleton, with only the lower jawbone missing, but hair remaining.  A bit of flesh on the forehead remained as well, and many conjecture that this is the place Christ touched her in the garden after his resurrection, asking her not to touch him (”Noli me tangere”), and the flesh has stayed attached until the mid-eighteenth century.  In 1780 it was placed in a glass reliquary and displayed in the crypt.

Also discovered was a tablet coated in wax, which stated in Latin, Hic requiescat corpus Mariae Magdalenae (Here lies the body of Mary Magdalen.)  The body was placed in a silver reliquary and the head in a gold bust for pilgrims to see.  Charles wanted to establish Dominicans to care for the shrine, and in 1295 he received permission from Boniface VIII.  When Boniface saw the lower jawbone missing he recalled the Magdalen relic in his own Basilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome.  The lower jawbone fit perfectly, and the Pope declared the relics to be those of Mary Magdalen.  Charles began to erect an basilica over the oratory in 1295.

And Charles erected an immense basilica.  St. Maximin is the largest Gothic structure in southeast France with three naves and fan vaults, measuring 73 by 37 meters (about 220 x 115 feet) and 29 meters (88 feet) at the highest point.  It rises from the broad plain of the Var, amidst vineyards, olive orchards, and lavender fields, and can be seen for miles.

We entered and paused to take in the fan vaulting and long naves, the quiet stone, then, off the north transept, we descended to the crypt, the fifth-century oratory.  The skull was behind a glass and a grill, ensconced in gold.  The small phial with the bit of flesh was there as well, with the label, Noli me tangere.  I prayed, Santa Maria Madeleine, prions pour nous.  I turned to the other coffins in the small crypt, the sarcophagus of Sidonius (the man born blind, in the Gospel story), Bishop Maximin, and Holy Innocents.

Above, Charles’ basilica held many accumulated treasures through the centuries, paintings and bas-reliefs of the stories of Mary Magdalen.  In these images, and with the small phial in the crypt, I am reminded that she is indeed a resurrection saint, and the sad, penitential side to her story has been, I believe, over-emphasized by medieval chroniclers.  Of course she repents, for one does this to be saved, one does this to see the Lord on Easter morning, one does this to go out and preach the good news of Christ’s, and our own, resurrection.

Archeologists have recently examined Mary’s relics, and have stated the bones are of a slim woman of about fifty years of age.  Unfortunately bones cannot be carbon-dated.

I left the basilica in St. Maximin thankful that such things can be seen, that the stories are verified, that men and women today still seek the truth about these early years of the Church.

We took the road through the old village of St. Zacharie to Marseilles, past the hermitage St. Jean de Puy, in search of L’Abbaye de Saint-Victor, a fifth-century Cassianite foundation, to further explore the legend of Mary Magdalen in Provence, going farther back in time.

The eleventh-century abbey, a fortress with thick walls and towers, was built to withstand invasions, and the church rises on a hill overlooking the Old Port of Marseilles, a protective and defensive position.

We entered the sanctuary, and gazed at the high pointed vaults of stone and I could see in my mind the monks processing, chanting, as they moved toward the choir.  The Blessed Sacrament was to the left of the High Altar, and we paused to pray for our world, for France, for the Church. In the north and south transepts relics were displayed behind glass, including the head of Saint John Cassian, the founder of these monastic foundations, whose monks settled in the valley below Sainte-Baume and around the small oratory built over the grave of Mary Magdalen.  The place then was known as Villa Lata, said to have been the site of her last communion, and also the later grave of Maximin, the first bishop of Aix-en-Provence, still later to become the Cathedral of Sainte-Mary Madeleine in the market town of St. Maximin.

We paid four Euro to the Sacristan who manned the small gift stall at the foot of the nave, and descended stairs into the crypt, the fifth-century church of John Cassian.  As I stepped on the old stone under these ancient vaults, I was stunned by the excavations and the many graves that had been uncovered, as well as the altars of these early years.   Here today the clergy, now part of a parish and diocese, continue to offer the Mass, and here I added my own prayers for the freedom to believe.  For the Cassianites had known the times when it was illegal in the Roman Empire to worship in public, and they appreciated the times when it became legal.  Indeed, in 390 when pagan shrines were outlawed in the Empire, a great building of Christian churches began.  Saint John Cassian was a part of that.

In the nearly three centuries after Mary Magdalen’s death and burial at Villa Lata, Christianity was illegal, but generations marked the place with a small oratory and remembered who was there, telling and retelling the story of this saint.  When Christianity became legal, the Cassianite monks settled nearby, building hermitages, knowing the ground was holy.  A monastery rose in nearby Montrieux.  From the fifth-century days of the Cassianites to thirteenth-century Charles of Anjou, time and invasions destroyed the oratory, but somehow a few monks survived and rebuilt, never forgetting.

Today the story of the valley, of La Sainte-Baume, of the life of Mary Magdalen after she landed on the shores of France, is being told once again.