Michaelmas for Better Eye Sight

This was my first time serving a (somewhat) traditional dinner to celebrate the Feast of the Archangels - or Michaelmas, if you're a reader from medieval England.  In the past we've done the obvious dessert options like Devil's Food Cake or Angel Food Cake, but I was inspired by so many other lovely Catholic bloggers to offer my family a somewhat more traditional (read "labor-intensive") feast to honor Saints Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, as well as to celebrate the end of the harvest, give me an excuse to make blackberry cobbler, and unite in spirit with my beloved Jane Austen characters by casually referring to Michaelmas in my daily conversation like it's no big deal and everyone knows what I'm talking about. 

So... "Michaelmas."

Because the Feast of the Archangels falls at the end of September, it was traditionally associated with the end of the harvest season.  Consequently, the feast always involved a lot of beta-carotene, as you will see.  (Seriously, no one in my family should need new glasses for the next two year after this meal...)  

Here's how we celebrated Michaelmas:  We rushed through the grocery store first thing in the morning so that we could take the 8-month old to his 6-month old well pediatrician visit, only to find out that he wasn't well at all and has been suffering (for quite some time apparently) with an ear infection.  My poor James!  (Perhaps that explains his outbursts of screaming, which I had just chalked up to being 8 months old...)

After that fiasco, here's how we celebrated Michaelmas: I spent the entire day in the kitchen.  Literally.  (except of course for when I was at the grocery and the doctor)  This was more labor intensive than Thanksgiving even, because I was working solo.  I gave the boys the afternoon off from lessons under the auspices of "celebrating the feast" but it was really because things were getting cuh-ray-zee in the kitchen.  I used every pot and pan and bowl I own and washed them all at least twice.  I ran the dishwasher mid-day (which I can usually avoid) and by the end of the afternoon, I had decided that I probably wasn't going to be preparing a Michaelmas feast any other years.  

But... the dinner was a huge success, with three fourths of my speaking children proclaiming it the best meal they've had in their whole lives.  We had a few guests with us as well who also assured me it was a delicious meal.  (It was pretty good!)   During dinner Ruth recounted the story of the archangels casting Satan and the fallen angels out of Heaven, Dominic told of the significance of the blackberries, and James screamed.  Given the evident catechetical success, the health-nut-levels of beta-carotene we consumed, and the thumbs up I got from everyone, I think we just might plan on future Michaelmas celebrations after all :)  

So really, here's what we did:  

We cut marigolds to adorn our autumnal table.

We prayed the prayer to St. Michael after the meal.  

We dined on this fine menu...

A traditional roasted goose  er... I mean... $4.99 rotisserie chicken  (don't tell my home-steading, chicken-raising friends ;) )  

 Butternut Squash with Baby Spinach

Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Apples  (I mostly followed the recipe, but I didn't have rosemary, so I used thyme instead, and I added about 2 T. brown sugar.)  This was so delicious!  

Brown Sugar Glazed Carrots

 Harvest Dinner Rolls (I used this bread machine recipe and just added sunflower seeds to the tops and called them "Harvest" to make it sound fancy :)  )

 Blackberry Sparkling Water (For the kids.  But I could have finished off a bottle or two myself.)

 Michaelmas Blackberry Cobbler 

So what's with the goose and blackberries anyway??  I looked into it:

As for the goose, the food experts at the BBC say: 

It falls near the autumn equinox and also marks a medieval festival when harvest was finished and farmers paid rent to the landowners, often offering geese as part of the exchange.

Goose fairs became popular across the country, with farmers driving their geese for miles to get to market.

The Michaelmas goose itself became associated with paying off debts, and according to folklore eating one on the day would bring financial luck for the coming year.

And as for the blackberries, the Church is full of rich legends and this is one... 

It is said that when Michael and the other archangels cast the fallen angels from Heaven, Lucifer, on his way into Hell fell through the thorns of a blackberry bush and cursed its fruit.  The medieval English said then, that blackberries were no good to eat after the day we remember that fall and the triumph of the archangels (Sept 29) and that all blackberries should be finished up on that day!  (Ok! Yum!)

As usual, I hardly every take photos of people actually enjoying the meal - I'm too busy and people don't look great when you snap their picture mid-bite anyway.  Let me assure you though, everyone was licking their lips (and maybe a plate or two) and smiling!

not picture-pretty, but so delicious I'm putting it in here anyway :)  

Saint Michael the Archangel, 
defend us in battle. 
Be our protection against the wickedness 

and snares of the Devil. 
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, 
and do thou, 
O Prince of the heavenly hosts, 
by the power of God, 
cast into hell Satan, 
and all the evil spirits, 
who prowl throughout the world 
seeking the ruin of souls. 

Amen.

Persevering Through the Imperfect (Embrace the Ordinary :: Vol 11)

Sometimes, when a thing can't be exactly the way I want it or the way it should be, I skip it.  Even if it's a good thing.  And that's a bad thing.  Because things don't have to be perfect to be fruitful.  

I thought of this this past week when one of my sons wanted to pray the Rosary every day.   That's a very good thing, right?  Yep.  And even more so because in the past he's been voted "Least Likely to Pray Voluntarily."  So when any child, but that child in particular,  asks to pray and talk about all-things Faith, Russ and I do it.  

But a couple of those days it was really inconvenient and it was far less than perfect. One afternoon, aforementioned child asked me to pray with him and I agreed, but the timing was so off.  The Rosary that we said wasn't the prayerful experience I tend to think the Rosary ought to be.  I was nursing the baby, then changing diapers, then rubbing a bruised head, then taking dinner out of the oven while calling out the prayer responses from the kitchen.  

It was not a perfect Rosary.   It was an ill-timed attempt at prayer during the busiest part of the day, and I probably should have suggested we wait, but instead we plowed through it - diapers, crying, oven timers, and all.  

That's not what it's usually like around here when we have family prayer time.  Usually we do try to gather in relative peace and quiet to sit and pray with limited distractions.  But that afternoon that imperfectly prayed Rosary did serve to illustrate this to my children and me:

Our daily life is not peaceful and perfect, so our prayer is not likely going be that way either.  We don't need to wait for a perfect, peaceful moment (either mentally, or in the home) to pray.  It's more important that our faith and prayer are woven into all we do - including those disorderly, imperfect parts.  The distractions of that afternoon were not ideal, but when they happened they reinforced that fact that our faith and life are inseparable and one does not have to be practiced independent of the other.  

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"...there is something holy, something divine hidden in the most ordinary

situations, and it is up to each on of you to discover it."

Passionately Loving the World, St. Josemaria Escriva

Linking up with Gina at Someday (Hopefully) They'll Be Saints. 

Our Visit to the Divine Mercy Shrine, Stockbridge, MA

The last "extra" trip we made on our drive home to/from Cape Cod was to the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.  There is so much there that honors the Divine Mercy of Jesus, St. Faustina Kowalska (to whom the specific image was revealed), and St. John Paul II, the Pope that cannonized Faustina.  The Church is just beautiful!  I would have loved to go crazy in there with the camera, but they were having Adoration and Benediction while we were there.  While it was awesome to pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament there, it wasn't really an appropriate time to start snapping pictures of the artwork around the church!

I got some nice photos outside, though.  One of the highlights of the lovely grounds are the beautiful life-size Stations of the Cross.  The weather was gorgeous so we were able to walk and pray the Stations before getting back on the road!  (Believe me, we needed the exercise and the grace to survive the rest of that loooooong car ride home...)  

James looks a little skeptical about being carried from Station to Station ;)

one of the Women of Jerusalem

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We adore you O, Christ and we bless you;

Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world!

Our Visit to the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs

I was so happy that we were able to tag some extra side trips onto our recent vacation to Cape Cod.  We made stops on the way there and back, which helped to break up the car ride and afforded us some "bonus" vacation material during our week away.   One of these was a stop at the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, NY.   (also referred to as The Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs.) 

The 400-acre grounds in upstate New York are the site of the former Ossernenon village of the Mohawk Native Americans.  It was in this village that three Jesuit saints were tortured and martyred - St. Isaac Jogues (1646), St. Rene Goupil (1642), and St. John Lalande (1646).  A decade later, St. Kateri Tekakwitha was born in the same village.  Her mother is believed to have been lead to Catholicism by the these and the other Jesuit missionaries.  It is also believed that the village was the site of the first Rosary prayed in New York in 1642.  And we were there!  

It was so beautiful to be there with our whole family and my mom.  We had been reading and talking about St. Isaac Jogues and St. Kateri in the weeks before our trip in the hopes that we would be able to make the extra stop at the shrine.  It was so good to be there, to see the shrine, to pray, to venerate relics, and to be in the middle of what felt like nowhere but to know it was the same ground tread by holy saints and martyrs.  

The photos are nothing spectacular except that they are the account of our visit to holy ground.  And it was beautiful!

Several of Isaac Jogues fingers had been mutilated by natives during a previous missionary journey to North America.  Once back in France, he had been given permission from the Pope to continue to celebrate Mass despite the fact that his hands were not intact because he had already sacrificed so much to spread the Faith

We did not pray our Rosary at Theresa's Rosary rocks but chose a shady spot near by

Venerating the relics of St. Kateri

St. Isaac Jogues, pray for us!

St. Rene Goupil, pray for us!

St. John Lelands, pray for us!

St. Kateri Tekakwitha, pray for us!