Tag: catholicism

Postcard from Villa de Etla, Oaxaca: Pain paved the road to sainthood

postcardsfromsanantonioLeave a comment

Although the Church of San Pedro y San Pablo is far from small and fronts a spacious walled-in plaza in Villa de Etla, finding it though the maze of Wednesday market vendors with tarps obscuring upward views can be difficult.

The church and former monastery were founded by Dominican priests and built in the early 1600s. Their name honors two of the Catholic Church’s earliest and most famous martyrs, Saints Peter and Paul. The pair suffered rather painful ends under Emperor Nero: San Pedro was crucified, upside down at his request because he felt unworthy of dying in the same fashion as Jesus, while San Pablo was beheaded. Villa de Etla stages a major festival in their honor at the end of June.

But the San Pedro statue that catches one’s eye is of a Dominican priest who perished more than 1,200 years later. Brother Pedro’s preaching attracted papal attention, and he was promoted upward by Pope Innocent IV, who named him the Inquisitor for Lombardy in 1252. Charged with punishing heretics using some of the same brutal tactics as Emperor Nero had employed in Rome, San Pedro of Verona was pleasing the pope but made a number of powerful enemies. Assassins attacked him before he served even a full year in his position as Inquisitor. His enemies sliced his head open with an axe, and, when he continued to loudly profess his faith through prayers, they finished him off by stabbing him in the heart. San Pedro was rewarded with sainthood before the next year passed.

The statue of San Antonio of Padua bears such a sad expression; he appears to be mourning the loss of the original, more-to-scale sculptured companion of El Nino Jesus. Saint Anthony actually places second, falling only behind San Pedro of Verona, as the candidate canonized most quickly after death by the Catholic Church.

While in town on market day, many of the faithful visit the church to pray, light candles of hope and leave photos of loved ones in need of miracles.

Postcard from Puebla, Mexico: Talavera tiles accent glittering gold

postcardsfromsanantonio2 Comments

Gilded to the hilt, the Capilla del Rosario provides a Cinderella-like setting for destination weddings in downtown Puebla. The chapel is dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary, who appeared to Saint Dominic (1170-1221) and presented him with a rosary to aid his efforts to combat heresy and recruit converts to Catholicism.

The chapel is “new,” added in the second half of the 17th century to the much older Templo de Santo Domingo, dating from the late 16th century. Templo de Santo Domingo boldly combines ornate gilded Baroque embellishment with seemingly incongruous folk-art-like, colorful talavera tile.

Most of these images are from the interior of the temple Santo Domingo, but the same is true in many of the city’s churches. Somehow the contrasting styles work together, the tiles conveying a comforting hominess preventing the opulence from overwhelming the faithful flocking to kneel in the pews.

But back to the rosary. Among the many things nuns never taught me was what to do with the beads of a rosary. About the only thing I understood about the rosary given to me by my godmother on the occasion of my first communion at age 6 was that I was not to wear it as a necklace when playing dress-up.

Even in the late 1950s, rosaries seemed to be used only by white-haired widows, mysteriously muttering over each bead for long periods of time. Now I know why; it’s complicated. According to one website:

A rosary is a string of beads with a crucifix. A short string of five beads is attached to the crucifix which leads to a large circular strip of beads made of five sets of one large bead and ten smaller beads, called decades. You begin on the crucifix with a Sign of the Cross and an Apostles’ Creed. Say an Our Father on the large bead and one Hail Mary for each of the next three smaller beads. On the next large bead, say a Glory Be to the Father, announce and meditate on the first mystery and say an Our Father. Say a Hail Mary for each of the following smaller beads, and end the decade with the Glory Be. Begin the cycle again with an Our Father, meditate the second mystery according to the same schema and so on for the third, fourth and fifth mysteries. You end with the Prayer After the Rosary and a Sign of the Cross.

Phew! But those are only part of the instructions, omitted from gift boxes containing rosaries. The five mysteries to be contemplated on each decade change according to the days of the week, meaning there are a lot more than five with which one must be familiar. The Joyful Mysteries are recited on Mondays and Saturdays and are counter-balanced by the Sorrowful Mysteries on Tuesdays and Fridays. The redeeming Glorious Mysteries are the focus on Wednesdays and Sundays, and then, there are my favorites, the Luminous Mysteries celebrated on Thursdays. Thursday rosaries probably are most popular with those footing the bills for the destination weddings as well; for the second Luminous Mystery relates to the miraculous conversion of water into wine for the guests attending the wedding feast at Cana.

For exterior views of some of Puebla’s churches, visit an earlier post, Almost a church on every corner in the “City of Angels,” and to see saintly shrines housed within, visit Saints to answer any prayer.

Postcard from Puebla, Mexico: Mexico’s first charro bestows blessings on travelers

postcardsfromsanantonioLeave a comment

At first glance, he doesn’t look very good. But you have to know the backstory. He didn’t die yesterday.

Blessed Sebastian of Aparicio was 98 when he died and was buried, briefly, for six months. And that was more than four centuries ago.

Blessed Sebastian of Aparicio is among the group of saints, or in his case almost-saints, whose bodies have withstood the normal ravages of time. God chose to leave their bodies incorrupt, or intact, and they remain on display for the faithful.

While San Sebastian de Aparicio seems handsome for a 500-year-old man, in his youth his beauty caused great problems for him. He was so “comely,” according to the website Roman Catholic Saints, “wicked women frequently set snares for his purity.” The pious 31-year-old finally fled the lascivious ladies of Spain and settled in Puebla.

Blessed Sebastian de Aparicio began making ploughs and wagons for the primitive farmers he found there, and he plowed fields at no charge. So produce could be moved around the country, he set about building roads. This included a 466-mile stretch connecting Zacatecas, where there happened to be a lot of silver, to Mexico City. His farming, ranching and transportation endeavors made him wealthy.

Taking pity upon a young girl whose parents could afford to pay no dowry, Sebastian finally married at age 60. After her death at a young age, he entered a second “virginal marriage,” according to American Catholic. (Try to avoid falling prey to skepticism at this point.)

Finding himself a widower again, he distributed his worldly goods to the poor, funded a convent and entered the Franciscan order at age 72.

He died in 1600, and miracles attributed to him began to multiply and accumulate. He was beatified in 1787, but he’s still on the waitlist for sainthood after all this time.

If you are traveling through Puebla, you should make a pilgrimage to his shrine in the Church of San Francisco, particularly if you are from Texas. Although Blessed San Sebastian de Aparacio might not be canonized, he’s regarded as particularly helpful in granting miracles to travelers and was Mexico’s, which included Texas, first cowboy.