The World According to Taquoriaan

Yesterday, before I went to sleep my eye fell on a post in my twitter feed. It said “According to USGS a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti“. I never witnessed a real earthquake, so I don’t know what being in an earthquake is. The biggest ones we get are around 3.5 and they are quite rare. They are a result of gas mining and nothing like the big ones people in the Americas have to endure.

I retweeted the tweet and asked my friends on Facebook for prayers. I said a prayer myself and went to bed. I don’t have a TV so I haven’t seen any footage of the Haiti quake. But I get really sad when I hear that the death toll is rising above 100,000 victims.  I can’t help looking up and ask the age-old question: Why?

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One of the things I want to get started with in 2010 is praying more consistently. A lot of times when I sit down and want to pray for other people, I notice I don’t know what to pray for. Therefore I want to keep lists and share them so other people can pray for those intentions too. Feel free to add your own intentions in the combox.

- For my family members, who are not religious and struggling on their own.
- For the Church in The Netherlands, that they may find trust in their shepherds and courage to rebuild a missionary Church.
- For the elderly who have a hard time coping with the untypical winter we’re facing now.
- For my priest and monk friends, for strength and courage to do the work God asks them to do.
- For SQPN, that they may find financial means to sustain themselves in the upcoming year. (You can donate here, by the way)
- For my friends who face a challenging time both financially and socially.

Today marks the Feast Day of St. Charles of Mount Argus, a well known priest in Ireland where there’s a big devotion to him. Originally he’s from Munstergeleen in Limburg, The Netherlands where he was born on December 11, 1821. He  was sent after his ordination in 1850 to England and to Ireland in 1857. He spent most of his life at the monastery in Mount Argus in Dublin, Ireland. I don’t know why I am so fond of this saint. Maybe it’s because he’s from The Netherlands, maybe because he’s a Passionist priest, belonging to the same religious order my patron saint was attracted to, St. Gemma Galgani.

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During Advent, everything is dialling back: there are no flowers in our churches, the gloria is omitted during Mass and the colour is purple. The church is preparing for Christ’s coming with Christmas. We sing “Veni, Veni, Immanuel” and the “Rorate Caeli” only during this season. But on Dec. 8 the colour gets bright, the church flares up: it is the Solemnity of The Immaculate Conception. There’s a reason that this Solemnity is on the calendar at the beginning of Advent. It helps us to understand the coming of Christ better. It really helps preparing for Christmas.
A lot of Catholics think, because we are preparing for Christ’s birth, this feast is referring to the Immaculate Conception of Jesus, when the virgin Mary became pregnant of the Holy Spirit. This is not the case. We celebrate the Immaculate Conception of Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary, also called in the Bible the second Eve. From Catholics to Protestants the general agreement is that Genesis 3:15 refers to the Blessed Virgin giving birth to the one who would crush the snake’s head.

The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle, and above all wild animals; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

(Genesis 3, 14-15)

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Time flies, it sounds corny but it’s true! Last year I experienced Advent for the first time as a “real” Catholic. And because I didn’t give the topic much thought I didn’t really do anything special during Advent. I wanted to read Spe Salvi, but somehow never got around doing it. The encyclical still sits on my book shelf. And to my great dismay I discover that the last year flew by and now it’s Advent again. And again I don’t have a plan. I wanted to buy an Advent candle, but I don’t know where to buy it and I forgot about it later. I also wanted to make an Advent wreath, but found it too expensive to make. I went to the store to see how much an Advent Star would cost, but again, it was outside my budget.

I wasn’t raised with Christianity, so the whole idea of Advent was alien for me until a few years ago. In the Presbyterian Church they didn’t really do anything special during Advent in the first few years, later on I noticed how they were copying some symbols from the mainstream Protestant Church, like introducing ‘Advent colored’ flower pieces. The reason why it was purple? Because it was the color of Advent, but the symbolic meaning of purple was lost in translation, so to say. I felt like they were copying outward symbols, but had no idea what the meaning behind it was. I only discovered the true meaning of Advent when I discovered how Catholics and Lutherans celebrated Advent. It was a time of penance, I discovered.

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This is a transcript of episode 23 of “A Journey into the Land of the Spirit” podcast. Like I promised in the podcast I transcribed the segment about statues and graven images for those who want to refer back to it.

I want to delve deeper in a topic that’s discussed often. As a new Catholic I have to explain this to my friends, who are still Protestant all the time. The most common question I will be asked is “Why do Catholics worship statues?”. And the short answer always is: “Catholics don’t worship statues”.

Their response often is “But you’ve got tons of statues in your churches”, on which I respond, “Sure, be we don’t worship those”. Usually the next comment is “But God forbids making statues, why do you make statues where God forbids you to do so?”. My response to that surprises most Protestants. First I throw back another question: “Why do you keep pictures of your loved ones in your wallet even though you see them every day? You must know by now how they look like?” Then I usually say “But God doesn’t forbid making statues, there are quite a number of Bible passages in which God commands us to make objects for veneration, but that’s something different then worshipping them of course”. Usually that’s the point where my friends are really curious, let me explain where my answer comes from.

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Today is World Animal Day, and pet owners will give their pets an extra treat. I’m living in a highly secularised country and if I would ask random people on the street, they would think this feast day is a so-called ‘Hallmark Holiday’, invented by retailers to give their sales a boost. But if you look at the history of this day, you’ll notice this isn’t the case at all. The reason that Oct. 4 is called World Animal Day is that it was on this date that Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone died in 1226. To be more precise, he died on Oct. 3 in the evening, which would be the eve of Oct. 4.

Chances are that after reading the name, you still have no clue who this Giovanni Francesco di Bernadone was. That’s he’s more famous under his Latin name: Saint Franciscus of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, the environment, stowaways and merchants. Together with another great Italian saint, Saint Catharine of Sienna, St. Francis is also the patron saint of the country Italy. It’s no exaggeration he’s probably one of the most beloved saints venerated in the Catholic Church. One can ask why his example is still so appealing to us, many centuries later. I try to explain my take, but first let’s discuss a misunderstanding. Some people think that Francis and his followers of the religious order he founded, the Franciscans are proto-hippies who like hugging trees and are devout animal lovers.

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The following post is a transcript from episode 21 of “A Journey into the Land of the Spirit” in which I discuss the history of the Blessed Rosary and what it’s foundation in Scripture is.

Where does the Rosary come from? What is the connection between the virgin Mary and the Rosary? Isn’t it wrong to put the focus on Mary instead of on Our Lord? And finally a question asked by many protestants: is the Rosary a ‘Biblical’ / Scriptural thing?

So starting with the first questions. What is a rosary? The word rosary comes from ‘rosarium’ and the chaplet comes from the word ‘corona’. So basically it’s name means ‘a crown of roses’. That seems to be a weird name for a set of prayer beads. But it becomes even stranger. Did you know that the English word for bead (so b-e-a-d) is derived from the Old English word for pray which is b-e-d-e? Even in modern Dutch and German you can find that same word still in use as a translation for ‘prayer’, which comes from the French together with a lot of other words imported from French after 1066 when William the Conqueror invaded Britain.
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Photo by abcdz2000The following post is a transcript belonging to episode 20 of “A Journey into the Land of the Spirit”.

As a new Catholic with LOTS of Protestant friends, one topic immediately pops up when we talk about prayer. For some reason, my friends believe I stopped praying myself and am mindlessly reciting the Rosary (and thus praying to Mary instead of God) or I am praying to saints instead of God. Usually I have to explain that I pray to God only, but sometimes ask for saintly intercession, just like I ask them to pray for me. And the most common response to that is: “But the saints and angels cannot hear our prayers, only God can”. To them that’s the most logical thing on earth, because since God is omnipotent and omnipresent (he knows everything and is everywhere) he knows our prayers even before we know them. Since angels and saints are not all-knowing and do not share other divine characteristics, they don’t know what’s going on down here. Sounds like they have a point, but is that all there is to it?

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This is the third and last part of my article about The Exodus: Fact or Fiction? You can read the first and the second parts elsewhere on my blog. Click on the links to go there.

Splitting the Red Sea and going through it

The volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini in Greece could have had more effects than the Ten Plagues. According to the Bible, Egypt was in a total state of chaos after the Ten Plagues and the Semites were to blame for it. Pharaoh sent them away, into the desert, but regretted the decision soon after he made it. With a huge army he followed them in order to lead them back into the country. At the Reed Sea the people of Israel saw the Egyptian troops closing in and started to curse Moses. Everybody knows what happened next. But did that really happen or is it just a good story?

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