Feast of the Holy Cross

Detail of my Summer 2015 Quarter Year Liturgical Calendar

September 14 - The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is one of the markers for the seasonal-liturgical calendar year. Holy Cross Day marked the beginning of monastic winter in some communities; the Rule of St. Benedict has a summer and winter schedule for the monks' working, eating, and prayer days, and as the days grew noticeably shorter, this was the point in which the schedule changed over--meals would be lighter since outdoor work would be decreasing. 

"From the Ides of September until the beginning of Lent
let them always take their dinner at the ninth hour.

...
But this evening hour shall be so determined
that they will not need the light of a lamp while eating,
Indeed at all seasons
let the hour, whether for supper or for dinner, be so arranged
that everything will be done by daylight."

--from Chapter 41 of the RSB

Holy Cross Day also is the marker for the Ember Days at the end of of summer, arriving near the autumnal equinox (September 23 this year) and before the next Quarter Day, Michaelmas (September 29). The Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, following the Sunday after Holy Cross Day (got that?), are the Ember Days, which are days of thanksgiving, prayer and fasting in appreciation of the harvest, the fruits of the earth and the fruits of the Spirit, all of which grow and nourish us, thanks to the grace of God. 

Ember Days at a glance
Reflect & orient oneself to the coming season 
Wednesday: give thanks for the harvest - devotion to Mary
Friday: we ask the Lord to bless our labors - light a candle and pray for the souls of loved ones 
Saturday: anticipating the celebration - pray for priests & vocations

These would be good days for garden clean up, planting new trees (before that first frost hits), preparing for colder and wetter days ahead. I have grapes and basil to harvest, as well as a lot of summer greens to clear up and out. The pumpkins and squash are doing great still, but you can feel the garden starting to die back with less sunlight and more cold days.  

Holy Cross is also my parish, so this is our patronal feast day. One Eastern Orthodox Christian practice I read about for Holy Cross is the veneration of the cross (on the vigil of the feast) by placing a small cross on a tray, surrounded by basil leaves and flowers. This would be part of the feast's liturgy, and would be venerated (kissed) and incensed in a procession. This idea could easily be adapted for home use as part of your family evening prayer time. 

In Color: Summer 2015

If coloring isn't your thing, here is a colored version of Summer 2015. 

See the previous post for b&w version.

Summer 2015

Found some time and inspiration to draw this today. 

Enjoy!

--LeeAnn

A Mother Nature Bedtime Story

Every night when I put my son to bed we say two prayers together: the St. Michael Prayer ("his" prayer) and another one ("my" prayer), which varies. The other night we were saying the Hail Mary and Ewan asked me:

"What's a womb?"
"The place where a baby grows in a mom's body."
"How can Jesus have a womb? He's a man."

Oh, I see the confusion. Like the difference between "Let's eat, Grandma!" and "Let's eat Grandma!" he hears the prayer as saying, "Blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus!" forgetting that the entire prayer is addressed to someone else (Mary), not Jesus at all.

"In the Hail Mary prayer we are talking to Mary, Jesus' mother, so when we say "blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus," we are saying "blessed is your son, Jesus."
"Oh. What does fruit of the womb mean?"
"Like a tree makes fruit. An apple tree makes an apple. Mary is like a tree and Jesus is the fruit."

Connections sparking in his 9-year-old brain...

"And God is like the rain that makes the tree grow!"
"Sure, or maybe the Holy Spirit is like the rain?" I suggest, though like all analogies, it is also imperfect and fails to fully explain divine truth.

"OK, then God the Father is the Sun."
"Yep, that makes sense."

And then he comes up with another connection.

"There's also Mother Nature," he says.
"Hmm, Mother Nature is more an idea, not a real person," I say.
"Mother Nature is real too. Mary is Mother Nature."
"Ummm...."

Just when I thought this was going well, it seems like he's got his religion and mythology mixed. I start blaming myself for every fantasy-based cartoon and movie he's ever watched.

"Mary is Mother Nature because she makes everything beautiful," he concludes.

OH!

"Wow, Ewan, that makes me really happy that you understand things that way. Not everyone does!"

Even if it is not perfectly correct theology, it is great that he is making analogies to understand the Faith for himself and sees Mary as a beautiful mother who helps make the world more beautiful too.

Drawing Quarters

I've been working on the next installment of my liturgical calendar drawings, Winter 2015. I originally thought this would be the last of them, since it would make a complete year. I figured why go to the hassle of drawing the same framework every three months, just make something more perpetual and be done with it. But then I realized that I enjoy the process, it is actually a kind of meditation on the year, and I can imagine choosing different bits of each quarter year to illustrate every time. So, this will not be the last! The proportions may move a bit and which saints' days I include may also change from year to year.

The first was Spring 2014, which covers Annunciation (March 25) to Midsummer (June 24).

Spring 2014

The drawing is an Easter Vigil procession. Every time I look at it, I see the one goof, the date of Corpus Christ should have been June 22. This drawing was published in Soul Gardening Journal.

There's a lily for Annunciation/Lady Day and water droplets to represent baptism for St. John's Day/Midsummer (for St. John the Baptist). Flowers for May Day, a little rock covered tomb for Holy Saturday. Some other little symbols for some of the Sundays.

The second drawing was Summer 2014, which I drew and colored and posted to SGJ's facebook page.

Summer 2014

I am pretty happy with how this one turned out. I added more detail about the quarter days, since these are pretty unrecognized in the USA. Summer runs from St. John's Day to Michaelmas, with Lammas in the middle as the cross-quarter day. The drawing is of two women on a walking pilgrimage. This continues the theme across the bottom of the picture, first the Easter Vigil procession, then the continuation of pilgrimage through life.

For the saints days I included, I made the men's days red and Mary's days blue (also St. Ann's and St. Hildegard's, who are included because they are family patrons). I drew a little loaf of bread for Lammas and a St. John's Wort flower for Midsummer, along with an Aster/Michaelmas Daisy for Michaelmas. I added different kinds of green leaves for the Sundays of Ordinary Time.

Third is another black and white drawing, published in Soul Gardening Journal's most recent issue. Unfortunately, my scanner made kind of a mess of it and it was reproduced really small in the journal, so a lot of the detail did not come through.  

Autumn 2014

This drawing was really tricky to plan out. There are so many saints' days and important feasts in Autumn, plus I realized that Michaelmas and All Saints' Day are really not that far apart from each other, so the arrows of the calendar wheel had to be adjusted slightly. Every three months has 13 Sundays in it, but each quarter has slightly more or less, making some creative rearrangement necessary.

I really liked the decision to make the saints days stars in the night sky, and All Saints is a cloud, because of the "cloud of witnesses." I wish I had made the Nativity arrow bigger and easier to read. I liked the overall effect of the stick figure Christmas scene at Bethlehem. I included a few phrases from hymns and scripture as I thought of them while drawing.

For the fourth and current drawing (unfinished), I knew I wanted the background to be a wintry sky of some sort. It covers the period of Christmas to Annunciation (Dec 25-March 25) and Candlemas is the cross-quarter day (Feb 2). I included a bit more explanation of the quarter days template, since it is not the usual way Americans think of the calendar. If people have heard of it, it is either from old English novels or from neopagan holiday articles. The Quarter Days and Cross-Quarter Days are part of a seasonal calendar system that fits nicely with the Christian liturgical calendar. 

Winter 2015

I'm not quite sure if I will do more to this or not. Sometimes the calendar drawings are so busy, I wish I'd left them more plain, but I do like having the Sundays colored to match the vestment colors, so there are always going to be a few more colors included in the drawing than I would generally prefer. I tried to keep it simple by only including a few extras outside the Sundays: Our Lady of Lourdes, St. Valentine, St. Patrick and St. Joseph. Ash Wednesday and the Lenten Ember Days are there too. As well as the arrival of spring. There are six Sundays before Candlemas and eight Sundays from then to Annunciation, so again, a little tweaking necessary to make the dates all fit properly.

I love the wintry sky blended colors. I'm happy with my cartoon of Mary Hodegetria (She shows the way) and even the little angel with the strangely curled trumpet. I added even more verses that popped into my head as I worked on this, with the theme of stars, sun, moon. January 1 is a holy day that sort of sneaks up on you, and so it does in the drawing too, as a little gold cloud to begin the new year. At the bottom right, Annunciation/Lady Day reads "nine months to next Xmas!" Pretty much it is always either almost Christmas, during Christmas or going to be Christmas again soon it feels like! ha ha

When this is finished, I may share it on the Soul Gardening Journal facebook page again for their readers to enjoy, as I don't think they'll be publishing another issue until Spring.

You can roughly see what all four drawings would look like if pieced together (if Blogger is cooperating). For the next drawing, Spring 2015, I need to take the time to make a scan of the finished black and white before I color it in (if I do). Or I could do the entire year in one go. Hmm....