Did you know that it was St. Francis of Assisi who created the first nativity scene?
In 1223, Saint Francis had the idea of creating a living portrait of the birth of Jesus, as a way to bring the Gospel stories to life. Legend has it that local shepherds, guarding their flocks outside the small Italian town of Greccio, provided the inspiration.
As we continue to move into cooler weather, I’ve been looking for some new soup recipes. This one comes from the folks at Moosewood Restaurant in New York. According to them, this hearty soup is usually made around the time that olives are harvested. I know I just wrote about Italy yesterday….
One day, I hope I can make it there during the olive harvest. I heard recently that someone invented a machine that shakes the olives from their branches. That’s not what I want to see. Instead, I want to go someplace where they still do everything by hand. A place where they use heavy stone wheels to crush the oil out, as they have done for centuries. Take that back. Millennia.
Wouldn’t it be great to dip some crusty bread into that fresh, spicy, cloudy oil? I bet there’s nothing like that taste anywhere, certainly not out of a bottle. Of course, you’d have to be there to try it.
A priest friend of mine and I had to scrap our initial itinerary for an Italy trip we were planning for next summer. With the dollar as weak as it is right now, the trip was just too expensive.
I’m being cautious about it because, when I brought my last group over, some people traveling with me were just overwhelmed by the costs. It made for a stressful trip and took away a lot of the enjoyment I usually get from visiting my second favorite country.
So yesterday, it was back to the drawing board. We’re going to shave off three or four days (sorry Milan, Padua and Venice), and go back to a pretty standard trip I have done many times.
Landing in Pisa, we travel a short distance and stay for a few days in Florence. Personally, Florence is one of my all time favorite cities. Just amazing.
Where’s your happy place? When I’m having a tough day, I close my eyes and think about Tuscany. Over the last twenty years, I’ve had the great blessing to visit this wonderful part of Italy many times. If I were rich, I’d have an apartment in Florence overlooking the Piazza della Signoria. Almost always noisy and crowded with tourists, I’d love to set my alarm to go off in the middle of the night.
St. Francis is one of the greatest saints in the history of Christianity. You can learn all about him by clicking his name above. As I mentioned in yesterday’s posting, I had the chance to be in Assisi for his feast day during the Jubilee Year of 2000. I’ve been to Assisi many times, but this trip was special. I was with my mother and sister, along with a good friend of mine who later became a priest.
Maybe I’ll do a posting about Assisi sometime soon, but for now I want to share some thoughts that come from Catherine Doherty’s book Grace in Every Season.
Ten years ago today, my family and I were celebrating the Jubilee Year in the Umbrian town of Assisi. October 4th is the feast day of St. Francis, and there is an ancient tradition of celebrating the vigil of his death with prayer. It’s known as the Transitus of St. Francis.
Those two days in Assisi were some of the most memorable of all my travels in Italy. Almost 800 years after his death, I hope this little video gives you some insight into this holy man of God.
In the Catholic tradition, today is Mary’s birthday. This beautiful Madonna by Fra Angelico captures the youthfulness of Mary when Gabriel appeared to her with some history-changing news. Despite her virginity, she would bear a son, who would be named Jesus. There had never been an announcement like it before, or since.
Several years ago, I heard a wonderful reflection on this passage (Luke 1:26-38). I usually don’t have a great memory for such things, but whenever there is a Marian feast day, I easily recall the words Fr. Gerard spoke that day.
This Annunciation is one of my favorite pieces of art. Painted between 1433-34 by Fra Angelico, it hangs in the Diocesan Museum in Cortona, Italy. I have had the gift of visiting Cortona several times, and I love to stand in front of this painting, viewing the scene taken from the Gospel of Luke (1:26-38). The strikingly beautiful Gabriel has a message for Mary. Before he makes the announcement, the most important ever made, he has a more simple message. “Do not be afraid.”
For all those who are looking for something to do with your bumper crop of tomatoes, I’ve posted some new appetizer and main course recipes. There’s also a wonderful new salad from sunny Sicily. I think you’ll enjoy them all as much as my friends and I did Saturday night.
For dessert, I simply took four ripe peaches, peeled and sliced, and mixed them together with a pint of local blackberries. Add a teaspoon of lemon juice to keep the peaches from turning brown and a teaspoon of agave nectar for extra sweetness before covering and putting chilling in the refrigerator. Spoon into four bowls and add your favorite biscotti cookie to each, and it’s summer perfection in a dish:)
One year, I was leading a tour of Italy and we happened to be in Assisi for the 4th of July. I had a bunch of teenagers with me, and they reminded me that they had never been away from the US on our Independence Day. I knew I wasn’t going to find any fireworks, and I also realized that it wasn’t necessarily the place to whip out our American flags.
So, we did the next best thing. We sat around in the piazza outside the doors of the Basilica of St. Francis, and prayed. One person had speakers attached to his ipod, so we listened to some praise and worship music, praying and singing, as the sun went down. It was a really beautiful and powerful prayer experience for me and my fellow travelers.
But what causes us to remember that evening is the fact that, as soon as the sun went down, somewhere on the opposite side of the valley below the Basilica, fireworks began shooting into the sky. The display didn’t last long, but, as I recall, it was a good-sized display. It had been like a miracle and we all stood there awestruck. Then we laughed like crazy.
God wanted to give us a little gift that night, and He surely did. I don’t think anyone on that trip mentioned being homesick again. Our God is a God of miracles, some big and some small. No matter how bad things might seem, we can never lose sight of His love and care for us.