Still June 24, 2021

June 24, 2021 still

 

As regards the other issue I was thinking of, All you of the catholic variety, you may remember as we were growing up in the western catholic culture, two of the famous names that were ingrained in us were: St John Fisher and St. Thomas more, two big martyrs under King Henly VIII. For you non-catholics, you may remember the movie, A Man for all Seasons …it was the life of St. Thomas More. These were some of our heroes in the catholic saints culture,

Both from the UK, but I say a western catholic culture.

On Tuesday this week, Fr. Bernard Ngidi, who is the main celebrant at our mass in the morning, chose ST. Paulinus of Nola, a very early Christian saint, so that the altar was covered with a white cloth. When I came into the chapel in the morning, having re-read the biography of my two heroes who were martyrs, murdered by Henry VIII because of faith matters. So, being martyrs, having shed their blood for their beliefs, the color of the altar covering should have been red. Ha. So, as I entered the chapel, I immediately noticed that the color was white and not red as I thought it should have been.  So I asked Fr. Bernard, why white, and he said because it is the feast of Paulinus of Nola, who was not a martyr. I was stunned…who is Paulinus of Nola, I thought, and then I realized that Fr. Ngidi comes from an African culture and didn’t know any more about St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, than I did about Paulinus of Nola. He grew up in an African culture where those names probably didn’t get much mention whereas in our western culture, these were big Christian heroes. So we have various cultures in our house.

In the German speaking European culture, they eat everything with both knife and fork, unlike us uncouth Americans. I smile when I see one of them have a piece of bread with peanut butter or jam eating what we would just take in our hand with a knife and fork. They will also eat an apple after first peeling it with a knife, when I just munch it down. Ha. And then there are many cultures in Africa so that saying one is of an African culture tells nothing any more that saying that a person is of a white culture. Every nationality of whites has its own culture as does every African nation its own culture. I knew this, of course, but this very simple but real experience  at Mass the other day caught me.