Summertime seems rather empty in the Church's calendar. The great
dramatic events of Easter and Pentecost are over, and we are simply
living out the Church's year, Sunday by Sunday. Rather bleakly, in
most prayer books and missalettes, this is described as being "ordinary
time". What a dreary description for the Christian glancing at
the page! Surely there is no "ordinary time"! These are
really the Sundays after Pentecost - reminding us that we are still
living in the Pentecost era, and that the fruits of that wonderful
encounter with the Holy Spirit are with us still.
There are also feast-days that are scattered through the summer,
and it is worth looking at these and seeing how we can use them in
ways that will enhance and encourage our faith and open up opportunities
for evangelism.
It's
useful to remember that while to us summer means holidays and relaxation,
a break from hard work and a chance to visit pleasant places, this
was not so in times past. For hundreds and hundreds of years, summer
meant hard work. It was a time of harvesting and reaping, of bent
backs and sunburned limbs, aching muscles and calloused hands. First
came the grain harvest - with the first wheat used to make hosts used
in a special Harvest Mass in August, asking for a blessing on all
the work ahead. Then came the harvesting of each crop in turn, ending
with the fruit crop in late September, apples pears and plums and
also the wild fruits such as blackberries. Finally, the Harvest Thanksgiving
at Michaelmas (Feast of St Michael, September 29th) saw a great feast,
usually involving roast goose. The geese were fattened up on the "gleanings"
from the harvest - the grain that fell to the ground as the crops
were gathered in.
Feast-days, such as saints' days, in these summer months were opportunities
for a brief break in the summer toil. Today, they tend to get forgotten
in the general sense of summer relaxation. Let's rediscover some of
them and find messages for today.
June 24th is Midsummer Day, the feast of the Birthday of John the
Baptist. It has sometimes been called the "summer Christmas"
as it is exactly parallel to Christ's birth in midwinter. Remember
that on the feast of the Annunciation (March 25th) we recalled how
Mary was told that she would give birth to a child, who would be the
Saviour. She was also told that her cousin Elizabeth was also with
child, and was six months pregnant. It takes nine months for a child
to grow in the womb, so three months on from March, we come to the
Birthday of John the Baptist.
It's good to celebrate midsummer with a picnic supper and to enjoy
the long evening - after St John's Birthday the days start growing
shorter again, just as after Christmas they start to grow longer (a
parallel with John the Baptist's words about Christ in the Scriptures
: "He must increase and I must decrease"). In Scandinavia,
where the midsummer sun never sets at all, there are all sorts of
midsummer traditions, and tasty foods such as pickled herrings and
salads which are fun to discover. Songs and poetry celebrating midsummer
could be part of the evening, as could eating carob cake or carob
ice-cream - carobs are traditionally associated with the "locusts"
that John the Baptist is said to have eaten in the desert, as the
carob bean is locust-shaped. (Use any recipe for chocolate cake, substituting
carob powder instead - incidentally it is a popular alternative to
chocolate among migraine sufferers).
In July, we have the feast of St Anne and St Joachim, parents of
the Blessed Virgin Mary. They are the patron saints of all grandparents,
because of course they were the grandparents of Christ. An old rhyme
says "St Anne, St Anne, she sits in the sun..." because
her feast-day is on July 25th, in the hot sunny weather.
September 8th is traditionally Our Lady's Birthday. In Medieval times,
this marked the end of the time when all were obliged to help on the
communal harvest. After Our Lady's Birthday, which was a holiday,
each man could work on his own little cottage plot and harvest his
own garden crops for his own family.
Harvesting may seem remote from us now - but we still depend on farmers
for our bread and they deserve our prayers at this busy season. It's
good to encourage children to know and understand about where we get
our food. A visit to a farm, a look at how harvesting works, and the
chance to do a bit of "harvesting" themselves, even if it's
just picking blackberries, can build good memories.
Blackberries ripen in August and it's a shame to waste them - you
will often find them in semi-urban settings such as a cemetery or
a common. If it's not private land, anyone can pick them. They make
excellent jam (use one pound of sugar to one pound of fruit) or you
can boil them up and then strain the mixture through muslin to make
jelly. Blackberry-and-apple pie is a traditional dish for Michaelmas.
Find out about St Michael, and learn the beautiful prayer in which
we invoke his aid against evil: "Holy Michael, Archangel, defend
us in the day of battle.."
Baking bread is easy and fun, especially with a simple kit available
from any supermarket. You can make plaited loaves scattered with poppy
seeds, fruited buns topped with grated orange or lemon peel, or other
varieties. A Harvest Supper could also include a roast chicken if
you can't manage a goose - and instead of a herb stuffing, use chopped
raw apples, traditional for Michaelmas.
This is a time to thank God for food, and to ask Him to show us how
to be generous to the hungry. Grace before meals should be part of
our lives all year, but it might be good to try new forms of this
traditional prayer at this season. Gracewing Books (Leominster, Herefordshire)
has a charming paperback with different Graces, including some specially
for harvest-time.
A basket of harvest goodies taken to an old people's home could
be a good project - get a group of youngsters together and learn a
couple of songs to sing too.
Summer needn't be a time when we put our religion on hold as we sunbathe.
God is with us all year round!
