Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!
– William Butler Yeats

On a recent and very ordinary Tuesday evening I felt the magic that is fairyland breeze through my heart. I had not been among the fairies for a long, long while. This whimsical, little breeze came in the form of a young girl, not all of twelve, who slowly opened a tiny little purse and let fly one little felt fairy after another and laid them carefully in a row before me as she confessed with a shy smile, “I have grown quite attached to them. Funny how I will miss them when they go”. Her words revealed such an ingenuous charm that I was quite moved by the beauty of it. Captured in her eyes, for the briefest of moments, I witnessed that vulnerable flicker; the telltale sign of an artist. I carefully picked up each fairy and made sure to ask about the particulars. These were her creations. And it was clear that she wanted me to find them as unique and priceless as she did. With furtive eagerness, she waited for me to pronounce them good. I chose a little fairy family and a happy grandmama fairy with a gray yarn bun. Their maker was genuinely pleased with my choices and it was clear she was feeling the flush of accomplishment; the joy of her art being passed on to another. She crafted each fairy a beautiful little box before she placed them into my hands. Art had been entrusted to me. Bits of felt, string, stray silk flowers, and the heart of an innocent little girl. I felt peculiarly honored and humbled by this gift of self; this fragile yet beautiful unfolding of an artist.

In my less hopeful moments, I have wondered what is to be the fate of fairyland in our STEM laden world. Are children still wandering in the beautiful lands of their imagination now as much as we did back then? This little girl seemed to say yes, but I knew her for a year before I realized this was so. It struck me then that we don’t always look at children and see everything all at once; even more so is this the case for artistic children who unfold like proverbial rose buds, one slow, mysterious petal at a time. We need to make a greater effort to carefully open our adult hearts to that mystery underneath the seemingly ordinary. For, we talk about children, we defend their right to be born, there are endless books on how to deal with potty training or the teen years. But we don’t always take the time on a daily basis to simply look at them or hear what they are actually saying. If we did, we would be astounded by how much of Heaven is still left swirling within them. That is what motherhood is for; why fatherhood exists. That we be astounded by our children and learn to protect their Heaven.

True, it can be exasperating for a no-nonsense, list making, time-tabled mother to see her son staring out the window doing nothing but dreaming and forgetting quite where he put his shoes. It can be disconcerting for a dad who is one hundred percent goal oriented to wonder why his twelve year old daughter is up there making little houses filled with tiny people and dreaming her life away in that little world. It is easy to worry about these kind of children when we are in the thick of “real life”. But we must make a solemn pledge not to worry, and to find the patience to carve out and protect the quiet spaces that surround these little dreamers, because they are our future poets, painters, and writers. Art takes time. If we learn to watch carefully as parents, we may be privileged witnesses to the magical process of art unfolding before us – all those things that need to happen before the art is even created. When they are staring out the window they might be trying to eagerly experiment with the perfect words to express the delight they feel in seeing dappled light on the sidewalk, or trying to process in their child’s heart a new and overwhelming feeling; the luxurious sensation of awe. They are beginners at this dreaming, and beginners simply need time to slowly process who they are and what they are to do with the world that astounds them. It is a platitude, but a profoundly true one, that you can’t rush art. Letting them just BE in childhood is your gift to them. We see this in the childhoods of many artists that have dotted history. William Morris was left to tromp the fields of the verdant English countryside with his sister as a child day after summer day. He learned all the flowers intimately, knew the birds, clouds, and slowly over time began to internalize them and the feelings they produced in his soul. All of that seemingly ‘useless’ time spent in his childhood was to later reveal itself in the most exquisite wallpaper, furniture, and tapestries England had ever seen. Emily Dickinson carefully prepared and tended an herbarium as a young girl and read many books about nature in her long, quiet days at home. All this knowledge garnered over girlhood was to reveal itself in the brilliance of her poetry. If she had not wandered and ‘puttered’ in her garden; if she had not reveled late into the night reading the words of the best authors and experimenting with her own words, these poems would never have had their brilliance. Gerard Manley Hopkins could spend an hour or so just looking at raindrops on the blades of grass outside his door in wet knee’d wonder. If he had not, we might not now have the famous and exquisite words: “Glory be to God for dappled things…” Artists need time. This time most importantly begins in childhood. It is the unique gift we parents can give. Our budding artists will come to honor us as their champions in the end, and they will bring something so unique and beautiful to the world that awaits.

Giving them this gift of time ensures us a very unique gift in return. Artists, even budding artists, are a mystery that refuses to be boxed. They disrupt our efficient ways of doing things. Busy parents need everyone to tow the line, to get the dishes done, the beds made, the errands run, the schooling finished by dinner. These are practical realities. If, however, they have been entrusted with a little dreamer, he or she will definitely put a kink in the works of that efficiency. They will always be one step behind. They will be playing inexplicably with their fairy dolls when it is obvious that the car is running and waiting. They will open the dictionary to find out how to spell a word for their book report and can be found an hour later with their nose still buried in the O’s chirping out loud to no one in particular, “this word comes from the ancient French. Imagine that.” Sometimes they will start saying all the words aloud just to hear the glorious sound of them on the air. Then they will say them in different accents. The book report is completely forgotten. Some children will play the same piece of music over and over and sit in the dark listening in wonder as we try not to wonder if they are not altogether fey. They are simply listening to all the separate melodies they hear buried there. They will want you to sit and listen too. Another will climb high into a flowering tree and try to stand at the very end of the branch to be closer to the sky, while you run out to the yard with dishtowel in hand screaming for them to be careful up there. They are not listening. They are in fairyland. One will inexplicably be wearing her pointe shoes to load the dishwasher and we will need to dodge the suddenly inspired pirouettes coming and going past the stove as she hums the Nutcracker ad nauseum. It is not for the faint of heart to be the parent of a dreamer.

We will be tempted in our more frazzled moments to wonder why these children just don’t ‘fit’ into the efficient machine of life; why they are so eccentric and unaware that they are wasting precious time. We feel a sudden impulse to fill their days with practical things like sports, so they can be like everyone else. We find ourselves worrying because we know they must learn to navigate a world that waits for no one. We are gripped at times with the real fear that they will be lost. But God does not see as the world sees. He sends us the lovely irksomeness of Heaven intruding into our human control through these little dreamer children who remind us of what matters; that the world needs to be looked at, marveled at, luxuriated in. That God lifts the veil between earth and Heaven far more than we expect. If we slow down to watch and listen, to carefully look at all the fairies dancing on their desk when we go in to make their bed, listen patiently to words pronounced with wonder from a dictionary, marvel at the lithesome grace of a pointe-shoe’d dish washer, we may suddenly realize how truly beautiful the world is that we have spent so much time trying to hurriedly ‘get through’ and navigate instead of just sitting to marvel at. This is why we have dreamer children so filled with the poetry of His grace. They are the voice of God intruding into our busy days and asking us to see. We are the lucky ones to have been chosen by God to embrace them in their full, eccentric loveliness. It is His solemn request that we take care of them and protect their art. We will come to be acutely aware that it is God’s world that matters, not the world created by the fast paced, efficient humans, and that He who clothed the lilies of the field will not fail to take care of these artists in the future; these whimsical, eccentric, exasperating lovelies whom He knit with such special care in their mothers’ wombs. He only asks us to give them our time and our careful attention. To let them dwell for long swaths of their childhood in the innocent fairylands of their imagination.

As I open these little boxes and lift each little felt fairy out one by one, I rejoice that I have been entrusted with the art of a lovely young girl, whose parents have protected her imagination, an imagination that “rides upon the wind and dances upon the mountains like a flame”. That is no small thing, and I realize anew that all is grace. Even little felt fairies carry the news of His marvelous workings in the world. Praise Him!

Denise Trull lives in St. Louis, MO with her husband Tony.

The scene that still fills me with a palpable sense of outrage at injustice is from Ramona the Brave. Ramona and her classmates have been assigned a project making paper bag owls. Ramona has come up with a creative way to draw owls, one that will distinguish her artwork from the others on Parents’ Night. When she discovers that the teacher’s pet has stolen her idea and copied her creativity, she destroys both owls, an act for which she is forced to apologize in front of the entire class the next day.

When I read of the passing of Beverly Cleary at the age of 104 this past March, this was the scene that I immediately recalled: a forced, public apology for an act of justified anger. Indeed, after reading tribute after tribute to Cleary, I now understand why. This is a classic example of Beverly Cleary’s writing. In her own childhood, she often experienced literature for children as being extremely didactic. Beverly Cleary once said that she thought people loved Ramona because “she does not learn to be a better girl” — in other words, because it was the opposite of the didactic literature of her youth and instead often showed empathy for the emotions of children.

As I read through various obituaries and tributes to Cleary, it became obvious that commentators who loved her writing felt that it was necessary to point out that Cleary’s books were quite groundbreaking and even subversive when they arrived on the scene precisely because they broke from the moralistic tone of books written for children.

While I appreciate this point, as a Catholic interested in the ability of literature to form the moral imagination of children, I felt it necessary to state that I have other reasons for appreciating Beverly Cleary’s writing. First of all, Cleary’s books never go to extremes. Against the overly didactic world of pre-Cleary children’s literature, there often creeps another extreme in today’s culture. Kay Hymowitz, in her provocative book, Ready or Not: What Happens When We Treat Children As Small Adults calls it “naturalism,” and identifies it with ideas that came about at the beginning of the 20th century related to romanticism. Naturalists saw children as “naturally capable, fully conscious and intentional.” Adults just needed to get out of the way as children were basically their moral superiors.

Flannery O’Connor was arguing against naturalism when she once described the job of the high school English teacher, stating, “He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.” While Cleary does not write didactic literature, she does not go to the opposite extreme of romanticizing children or imagining them to be somehow the moral superiors of adults. Indeed, Ramona never does “learn to be a better child,” but she does become adept in dealing with the unexpected, eventually earning her the nickname “Ramona the Brave.”

In one of my childhood favorites, Muggie Maggie, a thoughtful teacher comes up with a gentle plot to entice third grader Maggie to learn to write in cursive. In classic Cleary fashion, the resistance of a third grader to learning cursive handwriting is dealt with realism and a good dose of humor. Maggie does learn to write cursive beautifully and more than that, she learns to want to learn, thanks to the quiet intervention of a wise teacher. In Cleary’s world, adults ought to be kind, they ought to be respectful of children and their emotions – but they remain adults, entrusted with the formation of children.

“Stories,” says Professor Vigen Guroian, “…are the most effective means of engendering a moral imagination that respects rules and obeys laws.” Cleary never mentions Original Sin, but it is clear that her characters inhabit a fallen world. Nobody is perfect – not even adults, Ramona’s dad poignantly tells her – life is not always fair and sometimes it can be dark. But by showing us reality as children see it, Beverly Cleary showed us that there is also grace. In her stories, grace and redemption usually take the form of humor, ingenuity and, most especially, the possibility of responding to these circumstances with bravery. For these reasons, those interested in the Catholic imagination should appreciate the contributions of Beverly Cleary to children’s literature.

Barbara Gonzalez is an Associate Editor for Dappled Things, a grant writer, and a mother, writing from Haymarket, Virginia.

One of the hazards of being both a great writer, and a professor at a university, is that your email is publicly available, allowing fanboys like myself to contact you at will. This is exactly what I did a couple of years ago, having just read one of Jim Shepard’s novels (Project X, I think). I sent him a short note thanking him for writing the book, and asking whether he was currently working on any new projects. He responded that he was working on a novel about a pandemic. Interesting, I thought, a book about zombies; the topic seemed slightly out of character for Mr. Shepard, whose fiction – both short stories and novels – are often intensely researched, highly realistic, historical narratives. Then I googled “pandemic.” Oh, I realized, the book is not about zombies. And then March 2020 happened, and I learned firsthand that pandemics are definitely not about zombies.

Novelist Jim Shepard

After a long wait, I have now read the novel, Phase Six. As I indicated earlier, I am a Jim Shepard fanboy. I’ve loved his novels such as The Book of Aron, about a Jewish boy caught in the midst of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, and Paper Doll, about the crew of an American WWII B-17 Flying Fortress tasked with a catastrophic mission, as well as short stories like “The Zero Meter Diving Team,” about three brothers involved in the Chernobyl catastrophe. Come to think of it, Mr. Shepard writes a lot about catastrophes, and Phase Six is no exception.

One of the wonderful things about Phase Six is both its closeness to the past year, but also its distance. This is not a novel about COVID-19. But in reading about the lives impacted by a pandemic in Phase Six, from 11-year-old Aleq, who unwittingly unleashes the outbreak in a tiny settlement in Greenland by trespassing at a mining site that has exposed thawing permafrost, to Jeannine, an epidemiologist first dispatched by the CDC to investigate the outbreak and then dispatched to a remote, high-security facility in Montana to gather information from Aleq, one hopes that one’s own empathetic imagination might increase. That as a reader experiences individual suffering and guilt and fear and uncertainty, but also tenderness and mercy and heroism and bigness-of-spirit, one’s own capacity to love during the current pandemic might grow. What perhaps struck me most about Phase Six is that even in the midst of a worldwide catastrophe, where every government, and institution, and agency must get involved, the real drama of life is still the drama of individual human souls. The drama of individual choices; the drama of family loss and family love; the drama of finding connection and purpose and friendship in a sometimes-brutal world. And ultimately, the drama of discerning and attempting to do God’s will.

Mr. Shepard graciously agreed to a conversation about his new book, empathetic imagination, friendship, and a host of other topics. I hope you enjoy it.

I want to begin asking you about your latest novel, Phase Six. You are infamous for the intense amount of research you conduct for your fiction, both for your novels and your short stories. For example, the acknowledgements page of Phase Six takes up four pages. Do you remember what sparked your interest in writing about a worldwide pandemic, pre-COVID-19? Do you feel in some way vindicated and prophetic, or a little unnerved by your own clairvoyance?

JS: Four years ago I was jolted by a story out of Siberia of a 12 year-old boy killed by anthrax, with 20 others infected.  The Russians were panicked — anthrax hadn’t been seen there in over 75 years — and investigators were floored to discover that long-dormant spores of the bacteria frozen in a reindeer carcass had rejuvenated themselves to infect the boy.  I knew that the permafrost bordering the Arctic Ocean had long been stable but with the Arctic now warming so much faster than the rest of the globe, all of that biological material full of pathogens was re-emerging.  And both Russia and Greenland had announced extensive plans to mine all across their northern extremities, meaning millions of tons of permafrost excavated and mountains of pathogens thawing alongside new mining communities. And those miners from all over the world periodically flying home.  So this seemed to me, in terms of disaster, a matter of when and not if, and I thought: well, since I’m going to be obsessively unable to stop learning about all of this anyway, maybe I should write about it.   As for my clairvoyance, as I’ve noted elsewhere, the experience of watching a matrix of catastrophe unfold right after you’ve worked as comprehensively as you could to try to imagine it has a surreal edge to it, like an echo of deja vu, leavened with a superstitious sense on the one hand that maybe your imagination should have left well enough alone, and a chastened sense on the other that Cassandras are a dime a dozen, and by definition ignored.  But even so, the entire project of literature may be about trying to prevent ourselves from repeating our mistakes.

Let’s jump to the final paragraph of Phase Six. This passage had me spellbound. It is a summary of a minister’s sermon about a big storm that had caused some destruction in town. The sermon pre-dates the pandemic, but is clearly apropos. Here is the excerpt:

He said he wondered why they didn’t believe they’d been commanded by the shaking of the supposedly solid rock to heed the angry voice of God. He asked if they thought their God would tear up their houses from their foundations and bury them in the ruins for no reason. He asked if it had occurred to them that they might receive their summons to step into eternity without any warning. He said that some storms were so terrible that it was as if God had decided to punish the sins of many years in a single day. He warned that a storm like that was a challenge to their intelligence that they must accept. And he said that in a place called Lisbon, after one such storm, the king had cried out that he didn’t know what he should do next, and that one of his ministers had finally answered that before they could make whatever other changes they needed to make, they first had to bury the dead, and feed the living.

This passage beautifully evokes the mystery of the power and sovereignty of God, but also the challenge of theodicy. Would you agree that these final lines are a lens through which to read the whole novel? Are you also trying to say something about our present American moment, one that seems increasingly obsessed with D.C. and politics and people “out there,” but perhaps forgets about the neighbor next door, and about what the Church would call the corporal works of mercy?

JS: Yes. The passage is inspired by some of the famous and not-so-famous responses to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, and of course those issues are exactly what the thinkers of the time had to confront. My novel certainly isn’t blind to the devastation our politics can wreak on our planet and our individual lives, but it’s also very much about that capacity each of us has to be each other’s rescue.

I read in a Ron Hansen interview where he said that you considered yourself a Catholic novelist, but that your Catholicism does not come out as obviously as does Hansen’s in his own fiction. Do you agree with those statements? Do you consider yourself a “Catholic novelist,” or novelist who happens to be Catholic, or who was raised Catholic, or who is tormented by Catholicism, etc. Have you seen Catholicism and faith shaping you as a writer?

JS: I do agree with Ron’s characterization of me in that case: given both my background and my worldview, I would consider myself a Catholic novelist. Which is not to claim either that I’m devout or that I’m unappalled by much of the Church’s history.

In his recent book The Decline of the Novel, Joseph Bottum argues that the novel is primarily a Protestant art form that focuses on “the salvation and sanctification of the individual soul.” Certainly your own fiction is concerned with strong individual characters and the possibility for grace and salvation (a child victim of the Holocaust; a tormented German silent-movie director; a single-mother who tries to cover up a hit-and-run accident). But it seems to me that at the heart of your fiction is also relationships. Family dynamics. Father-son relationships. Doomed friendships. The possibility of self-giving love. At the heart of the New Testament is not simply individual salvation, but the concept of the Kingdom of God (especially in Paul’s writing); the notion that somehow my salvation is bound up with the salvation of the community. Your fiction seems to me to be about more than just individual grace and salvation. How would you respond to Bottum? What does the Kingdom of God and community mean to your own fiction?

JS: I suppose I would amend Bottum’s formulation to add that the salvation of the individual soul for me always involves the individual’s relation to others. Without that concrete relation, notions like goodness and grace, it seems to me, remain unhelpfully abstract.

Friendship also seems so vital to your fiction. For instance, the friendship between Aleq and Malik, and also between Danice and Jeannine in Phase Six. But also in your other novels, like Nosferatu and The Book of Aron, and the tragic friendship between school shooters in Project X. You write about friendship in complex ways – the ways that a friend might lead us toward destruction (Project X). Or how a friend might betray or abandon us (Nosferatu). Could you talk about the power of friendship? What is it about friendship that keeps you coming back to the theme?

JS: For me the project of literature is also in crucial ways about the size of that gap that we perceive between who we wish to be and who we all too frequently are. And friendship feels to me an opportunity to enact versions of both that shortfall and those rare achievements in closing the gap.

Speaking of friendship, as a reader of both Ron Hansen and you, I’ve long been encouraged by your friendship. You often credit one another in your books, have collaborated on projects, and mention one another in interviews. What do you think is the role of literary friendship in a writer’s life?

JS: The sorts of sustenance that you might expect. Writing is an odd and solitary way of connecting with the world, and so finding something like an ideal reader is a marvelous and important thing. We also now have our whole histories, of a sort, in our heads, and so have a perspective that other readers and friends might not have. Ron and I are also frequently amused and pleased by how different we are: a notion that is perhaps additionally encouraging as well.

One of the things that I love about your fiction – both in the novels and short stories – is that they often deal with adolescent boys. I must admit, I am a sucker for coming-of-age boy stories. But you subvert that genre, working with deeply flawed, wounded souls. These boys are often fatherless or do not have a good relationship with their fathers. Unlike in the classic coming-of-age story, where the boy goes through some hardship and comes out a better, stronger, “man” in the end, the fate of your young males is often in doubt. One thinks of Aron, who is likely bound for the gas chamber. Or Edwin Hanratty, the would-be-school shooter who perhaps is saved by the fact he didn’t actually pull the trigger, but hates himself for failing to do it. Or Aleq, who appears destined to live as a bubble boy, with the knowledge that literally everyone he knew and loved has died. Why do you keep coming back to adolescent males as a subject? What do you think about the possibility of redemption (both on a human, but also divine plane) for these boys you write about?

JS: I’ve always been interested in the child’s radical vulnerability, for one thing.  That difficulty that children have in articulating the sophistication of their perceptions, for another: a difficulty with which most writers can sympathize. And I’m drawn to the intensity of a child’s (or especially an adolescent’s) world view: how apocalyptically they can see things. I’ve also always been moved by the demands the more heartless aspects of our societies routinely dump upon children.

I want to ask you about portraying goodness and sanctity. You as much as any contemporary fiction writer plumb the depths of evil, sin, and suffering. When I read Project X, it reminded me of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, really engaging with a depraved mind and broken soul. Of course, Dostoevsky also wrote about sanctity and goodness; both with Prince Myshkin (less successfully), but also with Alyosha (very successfully). In The Book of Aron, I also think you pull off one of the most beautiful and believable depictions of holiness in the character of Janusz Korczak, the renowned Polish doctor who runs a Jewish orphanage. One senses the cost of his love, and also his own battle with despair and exhaustion. Could you discuss how you approach writing about goodness and virtue and sanctity? Do you think as a writer you have some obligation to show both sin and suffering, but also goodness and at least the possibility for redemption?

JS: Good question. It’s not too hard to figure out why goodness is so hard to write about, since it tends to obliterate complexity as well as the kind of conflict on which literary fiction runs. In the case of Korczak, my way in was imagining a perceiving lens in the form of my narrator who A) wasn’t particularly focused on Korczak, and then B) approached him with skepticism. In some ways that allowed me to more easily access the agonized and hopelessly compromised aspects of Korczak’s position, even given what we’d have to call his incontestable saintliness.

I’ve often been struck by the phrase “empathetic imagination,” a concept that seems near and dear to your fiction. Could you discuss what an empathetic imagination means to you? I’m particularly interested in what the phrase ought to mean to a Catholic fiction writer who comes to their fiction from a particular Tradition and set of beliefs? How can one develop a stronger empathetic imagination?

JS: If, as I noted above, the project of literature in crucial ways is about the size of that gap that we perceive between who we wish to be and who we all too frequently are, one of the central ways we shrink that gap is by working more fully to imagine the other, to get outside the prison of our own agendas. I think it was Allen Gurganus who remarked that the favor of trying to imagine one another’s interiors might be the most profound thing we can do for one another, and one of the least profound things, as well. I do think that the entire project of the arts is about the development of the empathetic imagination: the development of that saving ability to really imagine ourselves in someone else’s position.

I consider you one of the living deans of American letters. If you could give some advice to young fiction writers in the current and coming generation(s), what would it be?

JS: One of the living deans! Now I feel both honored and old. On the one hand, I would encourage them, for all of their seriousness and ambition, to stay in contact with the spirit of play: with that passion that we all access in childhood that enables us to try what we might not try, to find joy in the process of what we’re doing, and to not find failure at something we’ve attempted to be devastating or defining. And on the other hand, I would wish them well as they head into a world in which reading itself – especially in any sustained and absorbed way – is becoming less and less common, and less and less valued.

Bonus question: Walker Percy once gave an interview to himself of questions interviewers never asked him. Is there a question you have never been asked, that you now wish to answer?

JS: Oh, maybe: what constellation of minor dysfunctions would have to come together to possess someone to become a lifelong Minnesota Vikings fan?

Jeffrey Wald writes from the Twin Cities.

Queen of Heaven Rejoice, Alleluia!

The Coronation of the Virgin, Enguerrand Quarton

From Easter Sunday until the Saturday after Pentecost, the Church sings the Marian antiphon[1] “Regina Caeli” (“O Queen of Heaven). We joyfully tell Our Lady to rejoice (and we remind ourselves also) because Christ, her Son, He who she alone merited to bear, is risen — as He said.

Regina, caeli, laetare, alleluia:
Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia,
Resurrexit sicut dixit, alleluia.
Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.
V. Gaude et laetare, Virgo Maria, alleluia,
R. Quia surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia.

Oremus
Deus, qui per resurrectionem Filii tui, Domini nostri Iesu Christi, mundum laetificare dignatus es: praesta, quaesumus; ut, per eius Genetricem Virginem Mariam, perpetuae capiamus gaudia vitae. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

O Queen of heaven rejoice! alleluia:
For He whom thou didst merit to bear, alleluia,
Hath arisen as he said, alleluia.
Pray for us to God, alleluia.
V. Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia.
R. Because the Lord is truly risen, alleluia.

Let us pray
O God, who gave joy to the world through the resurrection of Thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; grant, we beseech Thee, that through His Mother, the Virgin Mary, we may obtain the joys of everlasting life. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Replacing the Angelus between Easter and Pentecost

Between Easter and Pentecost, the Church sings or recites the “Regina Caeli” instead of the Angelus, which is recited three times a day, at morning, noon, and evening.

Mark Twain Relates A Slightly Garbled Version of the Regina Caeli’s Creation Legend

Mark Twain in The Innocents Abroad (which was published in 1869) wrote a bit of satire that includes the legend of the origin of the “Regina Caeli”–in which he used the alternate spelling “Regina Coeli.” Twain quoted an account from an unnamed book published in New York in 1808, written by “Rev. William H. Neligan, LL.D., M. A., Trinity College, Dublin; Member of the Archaeological Society of Great Britain,” poking fun at what he believed to be the incredulity of the author, who in spite of his string of degrees, wrote seriously about miraculous occurrences.

Twain wrote, perhaps wistfully: “Still, I would gladly change my unbelief for Neligan’s faith … .

“The old gentleman’s undoubting, unquestioning simplicity has a rare freshness about it in these matter-of-fact railroading and telegraphing days. Hear him, concerning the church of Ara Coeli:

‘In the roof of the church, directly above the high altar, is engraved, ‘Regina Coeli laetare Alleluia.’ In the sixth century Rome was visited by a fearful pestilence. Gregory the Great urged the people to do penance, and a general procession was formed. It was to proceed from Ara Coeli to St. Peter’s. As it passed before the mole of Adrian, now the Castle of St. Angelo, the sound of heavenly voices was heard singing (it was Easter morn,) ‘Regina Coeli, laetare! alleluia! quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia! resurrexit sicut dixit; alleluia!’ The Pontiff, carrying in his hands the portrait of the Virgin, (which is over the high altar and is said to have been painted by St. Luke,) answered, with the astonished people, ‘Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia!’ At the same time an angel was seen to put up a sword in a scabbard, and the pestilence ceased on the same day. There are four circumstances which ‘CONFIRM’–[The italics are mine–M. T.]–this miracle: the annual procession which takes place in the western church on the feast of St Mark; the statue of St. Michael, placed on the mole of Adrian, which has since that time been called the Castle of St. Angelo; the antiphon Regina Coeli which the Catholic church sings during paschal time; and the inscription in the church.”

The Current Statue of St. Michael Sheathing His Sword atop the Castel D’Angelo in Rome

My own research indicates that the icon believed to have been painted by St. Luke that was carried by Pope St. Gregory the Great in procession is actually the image known as Salus Populi Romani, Health (or Salvation) of the People of Rome, which Pope Francis venerated the day after his election.

The author that Twain quoted seems to have been wrong about the church where the image resided, because the image was not and is not in the Ara Coeli Church but in Santa Maria Maggiore (St. Mary Major).

The mention of the procession and also of the church having been St. Mary Major is corroborated in part by this quote from Butler’s Lives of the Saints, “The great litany is sung on this day to beg that God would be pleased to avert from us the scourges which our sins deserve. The origin of this custom is usually ascribed to St. Gregory the Great, who, by public supplication, or litany, with a procession of the whole city of Rome, divided into seven bands, or companies, obtained of God the extinction of a dreadful pestilence. … The station was at St. Mary Major’s, and this procession and litany were made in the year 590.” Butler’s Lives of the Saints as quoted here.

The account that Twain quoted says that St. Gregory the Great’s miraculous procession took place on Easter, other accounts place the procession during Eastertime, and others specify April 25, which is the feast of St. Mark. Even Twain quotes one supposed proof for the miracle as the then-current procession on St. Mark’s feast day, without explaining the connection. One possible explanation that makes all of these versions of the date possibly correct is that April 25 may occur on Easter or afterwards. However, the feast of St. Mark didn’t get assigned to April 25 for many centuries after the miraculous procession is said to have occurred in the year 591.

Dom Guéranger, OSB, wrote in The Liturgical Year that a procession on which the Great Litanies were prayed existed as far back as the fourth century, that April 25 is a Rogation Day, and that the procession predated the assignment of that day to the feast of St. Mark.

“This day is honored in the Liturgy by what is called Saint Mark’s Procession. The term, however, is not a correct one, inasmuch as a procession was a privilege peculiar to April 25 previously to the institution of our Evangelist’s feast, which even so late as the sixth century had no fixed day in the Roman Church. The real name of this procession is The Greater Litanies. The word Litany means Supplication, and is applied to the religious rite of singing certain chants whilst proceeding from place to place in order to propitiate heaven.”

Salus Populi Romani, traditionally said to be painted by St. Luke, this image is also said to have been carried by Pope St. Gregory the Great in the procession when the Regina Coeli was first sung, St. Michael sheathed his sword, and the plague came to an end.

The Golden Legend[2], which was compiled around 1260, relates the story this way. The people of Rome were walking in procession and chanting the litanies to ask heaven to remove a plague that was killing ninety men an hour, while Pope St. Gregory walked with them holding a perfect likeliness of Our Lady that had been painted by St. Luke. “And lo, the poisonous uncleanness of the air yielded to the image as if fleeing from it . . ..” Angels were heard around the image singing the first three lines of the Regina Caeli, “Regina caeli, laetare, alleluia: Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia, Resurrexit sicut dixit, alleluia.” Pope Gregory added a fourth line that is slightly different from the version we sing today: ‘Ora pro nobis. Deum rogamus. alleluia’. When the pope then saw St. Michael standing on the top of the castle/mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian sheathing his sword, he knew that the plague had ceased.

St. Luke Painting the Blessed Virgin Mary. Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Guercino), (1652-53)

The tomb of Hadrian became the Castle of the Holy Angel (Castel Sant’Angelo), which later became a residence of the popes and then a prison (the Golden Legend calls it the Castle of Crescentius for a famous Roman aristocrat named Crescentius who was imprisoned there in 974). Castel Sant’Angelo now is a museum.

At the head of the procession, St. Gregory the Great sees St, Michael atop the castle putting his sword into its scabbard.

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Listen to the “Regina Caeli”

Simple Tone

Solemn Tone

Every morning at Mass, like clockwork, a tall dad with quiet eyes and a lovely beard calmly and devoutly walks down the side aisle to the pew two ahead of me. He pauses and bends down to a tiny little boy of about two, who is right on his heels, and whispers to him that “remember, we genuflect”, and the little boy does so. Sometimes sideways, sometimes backwards, but always down on the right knee. His mom is already in the pew. She arrives about five minutes earlier than the dad and boy. I can’t help but think that her husband has given her the gift of a little quiet prayer before Mass. I am filled with the absolute assurance that this is a holy family. And as is the way with real holiness, they are completely unaware that they are doing anything out of the ordinary, or that they are a model for anyone to follow. They are simply taking their role as Catholic parents quite seriously at this very hidden, simple, daily Mass in the heart of a city. The little boy is the proof.

He isn’t a perfectly behaved little child. He does all the things that little children do at Mass. He sits on the kneeler and ruffles through the hymnals. He walks up and down the pew length and back again. He has dropped an occasional kneeler which makes all the devout old ladies jump in place. And yes, he has suffered the proverbial head crash on the pew a few times; that seeming right-of-passage for every Catholic toddler in the Universe. Once, he cleverly loosened the bolt of the kneeler and unscrewed it. I confess I was mesmerized by the process. He brought the bolt to his dad at the other end of the pew; the dad whose face betrayed a brief and passing look of shock before he quietly got up and screwed it back in and told the little boy to come down by him for a while. The mom hid a smile and let him sit in her lap.

The most charming thing about this little boy, though, is that suddenly he will pay close attention to what is going on up there at the altar. He definitely has his favorite parts. He watches with rapt attention when Father carefully wipes the chalice after communion. I can hear him murmuring to his dad, “the cup”. Once he said with great conviction to no one in particular, “Peace I leave you.” And one morning my daughter was amazed to hear him say, like a veritable Latin scholar, “Dominus vobiscum” in a most solemn tone as he held an upside-down hymnal. Through observing all these charming little scenes it began to dawn on me that something quite profound was going on here. This little boy, not all of two years old, was absorbing the Traditions of the Church quite organically by watching a careful and dedicated priest celebrate Mass each morning; a Mass to which his mom and dad faithfully bring him. He cannot read, nor does he have FULL knowledge, but he does have knowledge. He knows the name Jesus because he stops whenever it is said. And he knows the first line of the Our Father and says it with that distinctive pride and joy of the two year old.

In his book The Meaning of Tradition, Yves Congar says something quite striking about the apostles receiving from Jesus by both His words and example the beginnings of the oral tradition in the Church. He says:

The churches were established by the spoken word and organized in like manner…the living example of the apostles must also be given a place of importance. The Jewish ideal of discipleship entails far more than the mere learning that characterizes a pupil; it included the imitation of the master’s life and habits. The disciple not only received oral lessons from his master, to be memorized – a most effective practice for inculcating “tradition”, and one that Jesus certainly applied to his disciples. He also learned from his master’s actions and personal way of life. So it was with the apostles; they had not only HEARD Jesus teach, they had FOLLOWED him everywhere; they had seen him praying, welcoming people and healing the sick; they had seen Him celebrate the Last Supper and break bread after giving thanks to God. Immediately after Pentecost and during the next thirty years, the Christians celebrated the Breaking of Bread, although no written text on the matter existed. It enough for the apostles to have SEEN Jesus celebrate it. The Church, which had seen the apostles do it after him, thus learned the Eucharist from its actual celebration; and so it was with many other things.

I find it so beautiful that Jesus chose apostles that were observant; whom He KNEW would watch Him and listen to Him and remember how He said and did things. It was paramount that they do so for His Church to “work”. And to think of St Peter or St John doing it exactly the way Jesus had done it – perhaps imitating the inflections of his voice and the gentleness of His hands when helping the sick or remembering just exactly HOW He had sounded at the last supper and trying to imitate his voice there as well. And down through the ages up until the present time, there would always be observant men who watched their mentors and imitated their actions in order to pass them on in turn; those to whom God has entrusted the oral treasures of His Kingdom and who generously bequeath them to others before they go.

I myself would have preferred everything written down to avoid misunderstanding and conflicts, because when it comes to the faith I am admittedly and strictly “by the book.” But I must admit after watching this little boy, I find there is a certain Divinely wonderful charm in the knowledge that in every age we are gifted with men and women who closely observe and remember and pass on all the traditions one to the other, especially about the Eucharist: how it is held, how it is Consecrated, how strikingly beautiful it becomes to our eyes when honored by a particularly devout priest. And all the things we learn from our parents: how to kneel, how to pray devoutly, how to genuflect, how to hold and pray a rosary, how to devoutly receive the Eucharist. No book can show these things. They are heard and observed and then imitated. It’s a kind of organic growth – like sap passing from branch to new branch, but in this case it is grace. It is a sign of our deep faith in each member of the Body, that he or she receives the grace by Heavenly inheritance to accept and pass on Tradition, even down to this smallest two year old boy. God depends on us for this. God has asked for it to be this way, that His Word be proclaimed by one human voice to the ear of another, one devout gesture imitated by the hand of another. For we are a LIVING Church and the law is written on our living hearts, minds, memories, and senses.

These were my thoughts one dusky morning as Father raised the Host at Holy Mass. He too was imitating and carefully observing all the rubrics passed on to him by someone who had cherished the traditions before him and then loved him enough to place them in his own safe keeping at the end of a long line reaching all the way down the ages of the Church to the Last Supper in the upper room. And a very small boy, not all of two, sitting two pews ahead of me with his father’s arm around him was, in turn, absorbing that Tradition right before my very eyes. This is why we bring our children to Mass. Why we pick up those song books over and over again, why we risk the kneeler’s complete demise, why we risk the chance of a meltdown or two; because suddenly we may hear a tiny voice say, “Dominus vobiscum!” and we are assured that He always will be.

Denise Trull lives in St. Louis, MO with her husband Tony.