Annual Immaculate Conception and Monkees Post

I toss the same general post up every year. I don’t care. No need to search my brain for heartfelt spiritual metaphors from Daily Life™. When we have the Monkees!

Riu riu chiu, la guarda ribera;
Dios guardo el lobo de nuestra cordera,
Dios guardo el lobo de neustra cordera.

El lobo rabioso la quiso morder,
Mas Dios poderoso la supo defender;
Quisola hazer que no pudiese pecar,
Ni aun original esta Virgen no tuviera.

Riu, riu chiu…

Este qu’es nacido es el gran monarca,
Christo patriarca de carne vestido;
Hemos redemido con se hazer chiquito,
Aunqu’era infinito, finito se hiziera.

Translation:

River, roaring river, guard our homes in safety,
God has kept the black wolf from our lamb, our Lady.
God has kept the black wolf from our lamb, our Lady.

Raging mad to bite her, there the wolf did steal,
But our God Almighty defended her with zeal.
Pure He wished to keep Her so She could never sin,
That first sin of man never touched the Virgin sainted.

River, roaring river…

He who’s now begotten is our mighty Monarch,
Christ, our Holy Father, in human flesh embodied.
He has brough atonement by being born so humble,
Though He is immortal, as mortal was created.

River, roaring river…

Here’s a helpful video that someone put up with subtitles. 

And the Kingston Trio:

More from Fr. Steve Grunow on the song and the feast.

Here’s my book on Mary, available in a Kindle version for .99:

 And for even more substance from a homily hB16 gave in 2005 on the feast – it was also the 40th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council.  It’s lengthy but SO worth it, an excellent reflection of what he has written elsewhere on it (for example, in this book):

But now we must ask ourselves:  What does “Mary, the Immaculate” mean? Does this title have something to tell us? Today, the liturgy illuminates the content of these words for us in two great images.

First of all comes the marvellous narrative of the annunciation of the Messiah’s coming to Mary, the Virgin of Nazareth. The Angel’s greeting is interwoven with threads from the Old Testament, especially from the Prophet Zephaniah. He shows that Mary, the humble provincial woman who comes from a priestly race and bears within her the great priestly patrimony of Israel, is “the holy remnant” of Israel to which the prophets referred in all the periods of trial and darkness.

In her is present the true Zion, the pure, living dwelling-place of God. In her the Lord dwells, in her he finds the place of his repose. She is the living house of God, who does not dwell in buildings of stone but in the heart of living man. She is the shoot which sprouts from the stump of David in the dark winter night of history. In her, the words of the Psalm are fulfilled:  “The earth has yielded its fruits” (Ps 67: 7).

She is the offshoot from which grew the tree of redemption and of the redeemed. God has not failed, as it might have seemed formerly at the beginning of history with Adam and Eve or during the period of the Babylonian Exile, and as it seemed anew in Mary’s time when Israel had become a people with no importance in an occupied region and with very few recognizable signs of its holiness.

God did not fail. In the humility of the house in Nazareth lived holy Israel, the pure remnant. God saved and saves his people. From the felled tree trunk Israel’s history shone out anew, becoming a living force that guides and pervades the world.

Mary is holy Israel:  she says “yes” to the Lord, she puts herself totally at his disposal and thus becomes the living temple of God.

The second image is much more difficult and obscure. This metaphor from the Book of Genesis speaks to us from a great historical distance and can only be explained with difficulty; only in the course of history has it been possible to develop a deeper understanding of what it refers to.

It was foretold that the struggle between humanity and the serpent, that is, between man and the forces of evil and death, would continue throughout history.

It was also foretold, however, that the “offspring” of a woman would one day triumph and would crush the head of the serpent to death; it was foretold that the offspring of the woman – and in this offspring the woman and the mother herself – would be victorious and that thus, through man, God would triumph.

If we set ourselves with the believing and praying Church to listen to this text, then we can begin to understand what original sin, inherited sin, is and also what the protection against this inherited sin is, what redemption is.

What picture does this passage show us? The human being does not trust God. Tempted by the serpent, he harbours the suspicion that in the end, God takes something away from his life, that God is a rival who curtails our freedom and that we will be fully human only when we have cast him aside; in brief, that only in this way can we fully achieve our freedom.

The human being lives in the suspicion that God’s love creates a dependence and that he must rid himself of this dependency if he is to be fully himself. Man does not want to receive his existence and the fullness of his life from God.

He himself wants to obtain from the tree of knowledge the power to shape the world, to make himself a god, raising himself to God’s level, and to overcome death and darkness with his own efforts. He does not want to rely on love that to him seems untrustworthy; he relies solely on his own knowledge since it confers power upon him. Rather than on love, he sets his sights on power, with which he desires to take his own life autonomously in hand. And in doing so, he trusts in deceit rather than in truth and thereby sinks with his life into emptiness, into death.

Love is not dependence but a gift that makes us live. The freedom of a human being is the freedom of a limited being, and therefore is itself limited. We can possess it only as a shared freedom, in the communion of freedom:  only if we live in the right way, with one another and for one another, can freedom develop.

We live in the right way if we live in accordance with the truth of our being, and that is, in accordance with God’s will. For God’s will is not a law for the human being imposed from the outside and that constrains him, but the intrinsic measure of his nature, a measure that is engraved within him and makes him the image of God, hence, a free creature.

If we live in opposition to love and against the truth – in opposition to God – then we destroy one another and destroy the world. Then we do not find life but act in the interests of death. All this is recounted with immortal images in the history of the original fall of man and the expulsion of man from the earthly Paradise.

Dear brothers and sisters, if we sincerely reflect about ourselves and our history, we have to say that with this narrative is described not only the history of the beginning but the history of all times, and that we all carry within us a drop of the poison of that way of thinking, illustrated by the images in the Book of Genesis.

We call this drop of poison “original sin”. Precisely on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we have a lurking suspicion that a person who does not sin must really be basically boring and that something is missing from his life:  the dramatic dimension of being autonomous; that the freedom to say no, to descend into the shadows of sin and to want to do things on one’s own is part of being truly human; that only then can we make the most of all the vastness and depth of our being men and women, of being truly ourselves; that we should put this freedom to the test, even in opposition to God, in order to become, in reality, fully ourselves.

In a word, we think that evil is basically good, we think that we need it, at least a little, in order to experience the fullness of being. We think that Mephistopheles – the tempter – is right when he says he is the power “that always wants evil and always does good” (J.W. von Goethe, Faust I, 3). We think that a little bargaining with evil, keeping for oneself a little freedom against God, is basically a good thing, perhaps even necessary.

If we look, however, at the world that surrounds us we can see that this is not so; in other words, that evil is always poisonous, does not uplift human beings but degrades and humiliates them. It does not make them any the greater, purer or wealthier, but harms and belittles them.

This is something we should indeed learn on the day of the Immaculate Conception:  the person who abandons himself totally in God’s hands does not become God’s puppet, a boring “yes man”; he does not lose his freedom. Only the person who entrusts himself totally to God finds true freedom, the great, creative immensity of the freedom of good.

The person who turns to God does not become smaller but greater, for through God and with God he becomes great, he becomes divine, he becomes truly himself. The person who puts himself in God’s hands does not distance himself from others, withdrawing into his private salvation; on the contrary, it is only then that his heart truly awakens and he becomes a sensitive, hence, benevolent and open person.

The closer a person is to God, the closer he is to people. We see this in Mary. The fact that she is totally with God is the reason why she is so close to human beings.

For this reason she can be the Mother of every consolation and every help, a Mother whom anyone can dare to address in any kind of need in weakness and in sin, for she has understanding for everything and is for everyone the open power of creative goodness.

In her, God has impressed his own image, the image of the One who follows the lost sheep even up into the mountains and among the briars and thornbushes of the sins of this world, letting himself be spiked by the crown of thorns of these sins in order to take the sheep on his shoulders and bring it home.

As a merciful Mother, Mary is the anticipated figure and everlasting portrait of the Son. Thus, we see that the image of the Sorrowful Virgin, of the Mother who shares her suffering and her love, is also a true image of the Immaculate Conception. Her heart was enlarged by being and feeling together with God. In her, God’s goodness came very close to us.

MORE

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Second Sunday of Advent

Some related images from my books.

 

More on the root of Jesse here. 

More on the books here. 

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St. John Damascene

Another great saint.

 B16 spoke about him at a General Audience in 2009.

It’s very appropriate that John’s feast falls during Advent, during our preparation for the Feast of the Incarnation.

(I have re-paragraphed it for ease of reading. Also bolded some key points.)

John, born into a wealthy Christian family, at an early age assumed the role, perhaps already held by his father, of Treasurer of the Caliphate. Very soon, however, dissatisfied with life at court, he decided on a monastic life, and entered the monastery of Mar Saba, near Jerusalem. This was around the year 700.

He never again left the monastery, but dedicated all his energy to ascesis and literary work, not disdaining a certain amount of pastoral activity, as is shown by his numerous homilies. His liturgical commemoration is on the 4 December. Pope Leo XIII proclaimed him Doctor of the Universal Church in 1890.

In the East, his best remembered works are the three Discourses against those who calumniate the Holy Images, which were condemned after his death by the iconoclastic Council of Hieria (754). These discourses, however, were also the fundamental grounds for his rehabilitation and canonization on the part of the Orthodox Fathers summoned to the Council of Nicaea (787), the Seventh Ecumenical Council. In these texts it is possible to trace the first important theological attempts to legitimise the veneration of sacred images, relating them to the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

John Damascene was also among the first to distinguish, in the cult, both public and private, of the Christians, between worship (latreia), and veneration (proskynesis): the first can only be offered to God, spiritual above all else, the second, on the other hand, can make use of an image to address the one whom the image represents. Obviously the Saint can in no way be identified with the material of which the icon is composed. This distinction was immediately seen to be very important in finding an answer in Christian terms to those who considered universal and eternal the strict Old Testament prohibition against the use of cult images. This was also a matter of great debate in the Islamic world, which accepts the Jewish tradition of the total exclusion of cult images. Christians, on the other hand, in this context, have discussed the problem and found a justification for the veneration of images. John Damascene writes, “In other ages God had not been represented in images, being incorporate and faceless. But since God has now been seen in the flesh, and lived among men, I represent that part of God which is visible. I do not venerate matter, but the Creator of matter, who became matter for my sake and deigned to live in matter and bring about my salvation through matter. I will not cease therefore to venerate that matter through which my salvation was achieved. But I do not venerate it in absolute terms as God! How could that which, from non-existence, has been given existence, be God?… But I also venerate and respect all the rest of matter which has brought me salvation, since it is full of energy and Holy graces. Is not the wood of the Cross, three times blessed, matter?… And the ink, and the most Holy Book of the Gospels, are they not matter? The redeeming altar which dispenses the Bread of life, is it not matter?… And, before all else, are not the flesh and blood of Our Lord matter? Either we must suppress the sacred nature of all these things, or we must concede to the tradition of the Church the veneration of the images of God and that of the friends of God who are sanctified by the name they bear, and for this reason are possessed by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Do not, therefore, offend matter: it is not contemptible, because nothing that God has made is contemptible” (cf. Contra imaginum calumniatores, I, 16, ed. Kotter, pp. 89-90).

We see that as a result of the Incarnation, matter is seen to have become divine, is seen as the habitation of God. It is a new vision of the world and of material reality. God became flesh and flesh became truly the habitation of God, whose glory shines in the human Face of Christ. Thus the arguments of the Doctor of the East are still extremely relevant today, considering the very great dignity that matter has acquired through the Incarnation, capable of becoming, through faith, a sign and a sacrament, efficacious in the meeting of man with God. John Damascene remains, therefore, a privileged witness of the cult of icons, which would come to be one of the most distinctive aspects of Eastern spirituality up to the present day. It is, however, a form of cult which belongs simply to the Christian faith, to the faith in that God who became flesh and was made visible. The teaching of Saint John Damascene thus finds its place in the tradition of the universal Church, whose sacramental doctrine foresees that material elements taken from nature can become vehicles of grace by virtue of the invocation (epiclesis) of the Holy Spirit, accompanied by the confession of the true faith.

John Damascene extends these fundamental ideas to the veneration of the relics of Saints, on the basis of the conviction that the Christian Saints, having become partakers of the Resurrection of Christ, cannot be considered simply “dead”. Numbering, for example, those whose relics or images are worthy of veneration, John states in his third discourse in defence of images: “First of all (let us venerate) those among whom God reposed, he alone Holy, who reposes among the Saints (cf. Is 57: 15), such as the Mother of God and all the Saints. These are those who, as far as possible, have made themselves similar to God by their own will; and by God’s presence in them, and his help, they are really called gods (cf. Ps 82[81]: 6), not by their nature, but by contingency, just as the red-hot iron is called fire, not by its nature, but by contingency and its participation in the fire. He says in fact : you shall be holy, because I am Holy (cf. Lv 19: 2)” (III, 33, col. 1352 a).

After a series of references of this kind, John Damascene was able serenely to deduce: “God, who is good, and greater than any goodness, was not content with the contemplation of himself, but desired that there should be beings benefited by him, who might share in his goodness: therefore he created from nothing all things, visible and invisible, including man, a reality visible and invisible. And he created him envisaging him and creating him as a being capable of thought (ennoema ergon), enriched with the word (logo[i] sympleroumenon), and orientated towards the spirit (pneumati teleioumenon)” (II, 2, pg 94, col. 865a). And to clarify this thought further, he adds: “We must allow ourselves to be filled with wonder (thaumazein) at all the works of Providence (tes pronoias erga), to accept and praise them all, overcoming any temptation to identify in them aspects which to many may seem unjust or iniquitous, (adika), and admitting instead that the project of God (pronoia) goes beyond man’s capacity to know or to understand (agnoston kai akatalepton), while on the contrary only he may know our thoughts, our actions, and even our future” (ii, 29, pg 94, col. 964c).

Plato had in fact already said that all philosophy begins with wonder. Our faith, too, begins with wonder at the very fact of the Creation, and at the beauty of God who makes himself visible.

The optimism of the contemplation of nature (physike theoria), of seeing in the visible creation the good, the beautiful, the true, this Christian optimism, is not ingenuous: it takes account of the wound inflicted on human nature by the freedom of choice desired by God and misused by man, with all the consequences of widespread discord which have derived from it. From this derives the need, clearly perceived by John Damascene, that nature, in which the goodness and beauty of God are reflected, wounded by our fault, “should be strengthened and renewed” by the descent of the Son of God in the flesh, after God had tried in many ways and on many occasions, to show that he had created man so that he might exist not only in “being”, but also in “well-being” (cf. The Orthodox Faith, II, 1, pg 94, col. 981).

With passionate eagerness John explains: “It was necessary for nature to be strengthened and renewed, and for the path of virtue to be indicated and effectively taught (didachthenai aretes hodòn), the path that leads away from corruption and towards eternal life…. So there appeared on the horizon of history the great sea of love that God bears towards man (philanthropias pelagos)”…. It is a fine expression. We see on one side the beauty of Creation, and on the other the destruction wrought by the fault of man. But we see in the Son of God, who descends to renew nature, the sea of love that God has for man. John Damascene continues: “he himself, the Creator and the Lord, fought for his Creation, transmitting to it his teaching by example…. And so the Son of God, while still remaining in the form of God, lowered the skies and descended… to his servants… achieving the newest thing of all, the only thing really new under the sun, through which he manifested the infinite power of God” (III, 1, pg 94, col. 981c-984b).

We may imagine the comfort and joy which these words, so rich in fascinating images, poured into the hearts of the faithful. We listen to them today, sharing the same feelings with the Christians of those far-off days: God desires to repose in us, he wishes to renew nature through our conversion, he wants to allow us to share in his divinity. May the Lord help us to make these words the substance of our lives.

More from Ellyn von Huben at Word on Fire

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Bambinelli Sunday on the Way

Every year I take a few minutes and collect links to some of the parishes around the world who are celebrating Bambinelli Sunday. This is just a quick survey, and it’s so very gratifying to see this traditional continue to grow in popularity. All kudos to Ann Engelhart for seeing the possibilities!

More on the book.

The group in Rome that sponsors the St. Peter’s event…has gone Lego this year. Ah, well:

From B16 in 2008:

God, our Father
you so loved humankind
that you sent us your only Son Jesus,
born of the Virgin Mary,
to save us and lead us back to you.

We pray that with your Blessing
these images of Jesus,
who is about to come among us,
may be a sign of your presence and
love in our homes.

Good Father,
give your Blessing to us too,
to our parents, to our families and
to our friends.

Open our hearts,
so that we may be able to
receive Jesus in joy,
always do what he asks
and see him in all those
who are in need of our love.

We ask you this in the name of Jesus,
your beloved Son
who comes to give the world peace.

He lives and reigns forever and ever.
Amen.

 

 

St. Robert Bellarmine, Bayside, NY

St. Benedict, Covington, LA

Divine Mercy, Hamden, CT

St. Aidan Cathedral, Ireland

Holy Family, Belfast

Incarnation, Bethlehem, PA

Elizabeth Ann Seton, Shrub Oak, NY

St. Leo’s, Elmwood Park, NJ

St. Mary Newhouse

Holy Redeemer Ellwood City, PA

Sacred Heart, Eldon, MO

St. Teresa of Calcutta, Mahanoy City, PA

Suggested by the Archdiocese of New Orleans (headline has an error – refers Lent, not Advent)

Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, Ankeny, IA

St. Francis of Assisi, St. Louis

St. Pius X, Loudonville, NY

St. Sebastian, Greenbrae, CA

Assumption, St. Louis

St. Thomas Aquinas, Zanesville, OH

St. John Bosco, Hatboro, PA

St. Bridget, Framingham, MA

Transfiguration, Marietta, GA

All Saints, Milville, NJ

St. Jude, Atlanta

Mentioned in “Equipping Catholic Families.”

St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Catharines, ON, CA

Holy Ghost, Bethlehem, PA

Church of the Holy Family, Dunblane

St. Edith, Livonia, MI

Basilica of St. Mary, Alexandria, VA

St. Michael and All Angels, Diocese of Portsmouth, England

St. Michael’s Blackrock, Cork

St. Ignatius Loyola, NY, NY

St. Mark, Shoreham, NY

St. Thomas More, Somerset, MA

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7 Quick Takes

—1 —

Time certainly does fly, doesn’t it?

Not too long ago, our Honduras trip was in the future, and we were ready and excited to go …and then we were in the midst of it….and now…we’ve been back over a week.

 

How did that happen??

If you’re interested in all the posts I’ve written on the trip, go here. 

Advent is just about here – still time to order resources, especially if you go the digital route. Here’s a post on that. 

If you’re interested in ordering signed (or unsigned!) books as gifts from me…go here. 

— 2 —

Thanksgiving was quiet here. College Kid is back and in and out. Daughter and son-in-law will be dropping by on Friday. College Kid returns for the final sprint on Sunday, then M and I head out to see new Grandson/Nephew for a couple of days (a longer return trip will be happening after Christmas, when College Kid can come, too).

Dinner was fine, but neither it nor the prep were Instagram-worthy. No turkey this year – I wanted to give College Kid food that he’s not getting and that he’s missing at school, so we did flank steak (this recipe – my standby).

 

— 3 —

Lots of Christmas shopping lists out there highlighting small businesses – here’s a good one focused on Catholic shops

— 4 —

”

Latin is not useless – and there are reasons to study that go beyond vocab boosting:

The frail argument offered by the usefuls has, for decades, helped to prop up shaky pedagogical and rhetorical methods, only adding fuel to the fire of the uselesses. The structure won’t hold anymore. No, the study of Latin—demanding, challenging, exhausting, and, like a good hike through the mountains, restorative in and of itself—must not be treated like a cognitive boot camp. Next we’ll be going to the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum to sharpen our vision and to La Scala to improve our hearing. Divers and ballerinas have beautiful physiques, no doubt, but they’ve built those muscles so they can dive and dance, not to look at themselves in the mirror. When we study Latin, we must study it for one fundamental reason: because it is the language of a civilization; because the Western world was created on its back. Because inscribed in Latin are the secrets of our deepest cultural memory, secrets that demand to be read.

One other minor contention against the usefuls and the uselesses: Latin is beautiful. This fact undergirds all that I will be saying in these pages. Beauty is the face of freedom. What all totalitarian regimes have most strikingly in common is their ugliness, which spreads to every aspect and form of life, even to nature. And by the adjective “beautiful” I mean to say that Latin is various, malleable, versatile, easy and difficult, simple and complicated, regular and irregular, clear and obscure, with multiple registers and jargons, with thousands of rhetorical styles, with a voluble history. Why give ourselves practical reasons for encountering beauty? Why impede ourselves with false arguments about comprehension? Why submit ourselves to the cult of instant access, of destination over journey, of answers at the click of a button, of the shrinking attention span? Why surrender to the will-less, the superficial, the defeatists, the utilitarians? Why not see that behind the question “What’s the point of Latin?”—perhaps posed unassumingly—rests a violence and an arrogance, an assault on the world’s richness and the greatness of the human intellect?

I would like to put the reader on guard against one more noxious cliché. Even among specialists one hears the term “dead language” thrown around. This characterization arises from a misconception of how languages live and die, and a hazy distinction between the written and the oral. Oral language is linked immediately with the idea of being alive. But this is a bias. Latin, even if it’s no longer spoken, is present in an astounding number of manuscripts—and writing, particularly literary writing, is a far more durable means of communication than any oral practice. If, therefore, Latin lives on in the most complex form of writing we’ve yet imagined, namely literature, is it not absurd to proclaim it dead?

Latin is alive, and it’s more alive than what we tell our friend at the café or our sweetheart on the phone, in exchanges that leave no trace. Think of it on an even larger scale. In this very moment the entire planet is jabbering, amassing an immeasurable heap of words. And yet those words are already gone. Another heap has already formed, also destined to vanish in an instant.

It’s not enough that the speaker is living to say that the language he or she speaks is alive. A living language is one that endures and produces other languages, which is precisely the case with Latin. I’m not referring to the Romance languages, which were born from spoken Latin, or to the massive contribution of Latin vocabulary to the English lexicon. What I mean to say is that Latin qua literature has inspired the creation of other literature, of other written works, and, as such, distinguishes itself from other ancient languages: those that, even with a written record, are truly dead on the page, since they served in no way as a model for other languages.

 

— 5 –

 

I thought this was good:

This also means, though, that if we are going to become missional parishes, and make forming disciples our main emphasis, the Sunday liturgy cannot be our sole focus. It can’t be our “main event.” It can be the place where disciples come to grow in holiness and be sent on mission, (Ite Missa est), but it can’t be the main way we attempt to accomplish our mission to evangelize. It is a way, in the Church’s theology, that we disciple and catechize those who have already made that intentional decision to follow Jesus, since the sacramental economy is not accidental to the Christian life, and, mainly through the homily, it can be a way that we do missional formation and evangelization, but it isn’t primarily how we as a Church have ever primarily, initially made disciples through the work of pre-evangelization and evangelization.

The Mass isn’t ever going to be very good at pre-evangelization, which is what most people in the earlier discipleship thresholds need. The Sunday service at your local evangelical church is always, always going to be able to put the “cookies on the bottom shelf” more effectively than the Mass is. While we both have Sunday worship experiences, the target audience of ours is very different and, I guess what I am wondering is…maybe that is okay?

To me, this is good news because, frankly, in refining the focus of the Mass, we still do not lose our missionary mandate as parishes, so we have to figure out how to do that elsewhere. Outside of some small tweaks with how we approach hospitality and welcoming, or the homily, etc., nothing about the way the liturgy is crafted is ordered with non-believers in mind. It is inherently for disciples, to move them deeper into the mysterium tremendum. It serves the mission in the sense that it sanctifies disciples to prepare them for mission but it’s purpose is not to speak to non-disciples in a way that impacts them and moves them through the thresholds. Even the best tweaks we can make to the Sunday experience will still not allow for the Mass to actually comprise the sum total of our evangelistic efforts, if we want to be missionally impactful in our communities.

If parishes DO want to be more missionally effective, they then have to get really serious about Thinking Outside of Sunday.

 

— 6 —

 

If you haven’t read Madeleine Kearns’ NRO cover piece on “The Tragedy of the Trans Child” – here it is. An excellent summary of much of the current situation. 

 

— 7 —

 

Good saints coming up next week – including St. Nicholas, so be sure you check out the Saint Nicholas Center in time!

I’ll be in Living Faith on Tuesday – so go here to check that out. 

For more Quick Takes, visit This Ain’t the Lyceum!

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Blessed Miguel Pro

Blessed Miguel Pro is in the  Loyola Kids Book of Saints under, “Saints are people who create.”

(Click on images for readable versions)

From our 2018 visit to Mexico City and Puebla – the church where Miguel Pro’s relics can be found – except it was Holy Thursday morning that we stopped by, so while the church was open, the museum was not:

 

 

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Where we stayed

Well, we’re back!

As per usual, I’m going to collect my thoughts in this space and do a bit more systematic collection of what and where and a bit of why. Go to the end of the post and to this tag for the posts and this page for posts on many (not all) of our bigger trips over the past few years.

Just a reminder, first, of the why:

My youngest son has had a deep interest in Mayan archaeology for years, inspiring three and a half trips so far.

The first, to the Yucatan in 2014, the second to Guatemala in 2017, the third, this one to Honduras, and the half? Our Holy Week trip to Mexico City and Puebla in 2018. I say “half” because only half – maybe even less – of that trip was attributable to his interest (which would take us here – not Mayan, of course, but general ancient Mesoamerican will do) – the rest of it was about my wanting to spend Holy Week (their spring break that year – they were both in school) somewhere where they did Semana Santa right. And so Honduras.

He’d been talking up Copan for a while, as a major site still on his list (and one that I would be wiling to take him to, unlike, say El Mirador – for that four day trek into the jungle or whatever it is, you’re on your own, sir). The other purpose of this trip was to experience some intensive Spanish instruction.

My first thought was Antigua, Guatemala, with Copan tacked on at the end. Antigua has been on my radar for a while – I wanted to go there during Holy Week in 2017, but for some reason I changed my mind and off we went to Mexico City and Puebla (which was great).

The more I thought about Antiuga as a focus for this trip, though, the less sense that made. Spanish lessons would take up at least a half of each day, and Antigua, while it is an interesting place, didn’t, I think had enough half-day activities that would really interest him to fill the rest of those “school” days – the major activities that would interest him (volcanoes, the lake) would take at least a day.

After doing some research, I saw several people in online discussions mention Copan Ruinas itself as a good place to learn Spanish. The more I looked into it, the more attractive it was – it seemed as if there was a lot to do during those half days, and he was interested in the archaeological features anyway (which ended up taking up one full day and two half days). And then my son pointed out the Celaque National Park in Gracias would be an interesting place to see. So there you go – the major focus of week one, with the added few days at the end.

Where to stay?

I often do apartments and rental homes when traveling, but honestly, now with only the two of us most of the time, the need for space isn’t so pressing. In addition, in this situation, since I wouldn’t be renting a car and wasn’t really sure how I’d be getting around or even the details of what we’d be doing outside of the Copan ruins and Spanish school – I thought a small hotel or B & B would be a better idea than an independent apartment. I could, I thought, use the help in planning and coordinating that a B & B owner could provide.

November 9-17

In Copan, I settled on the Casa de Cafe – a fantastic choice, if I do say so myself. I’m very glad that we spent a week in this almost idyllic spot. I would say it’s on the “Outskirts” of Copan, but when a town is about ten by twenty blocks…are you really on the “outskirts” if you are four blocks from the center? Nah.

Owners Howard (American) and his Honduran wife Angela, also own some rental properties and a boutique hotel in Copan. They’ve created beautiful, peaceful spaces in this busy little town.

This was our room, inside and out.

Breakfast was served every morning – your choice of drink, of course, fruit, freshly squeezed juice, and then either the offering of the day (omelet, traditional Honduran breakfast, pancakes and so on) or simply scrambled eggs and toast – or nothing! Along with housemade hot sauces and marmelade (pineapple). The cafe also functions as a stand-alone restaurant. There were other guests – but only a couple of days in which the place felt full. Most of the guests, it seemed, were French – someone I met staying in another hotel confirmed that yes, her hotel was bursting with French tour groups as well. These tours usually begin flying into Belize City or Guatemala City, take in Tikal, various natural sites in eastern Guatemala, perhaps include Antigua, then swing down to Copan Ruinas and then back up to Quirigua …or perhaps it’s the reverse order. Let’s just say that the French are keen on seeing these Mayan sites – are you?

The level of service here (as well as at the place we stayed at in Gracias) was superb. Frequent offers of coffee or tea, prompt and thorough room cleaning, and great assistance in planning activities and transportation. If you’re even faintly considering a trip to Copan Ruinas – the Casa de Cafe is really a great place to stay (they do have family rooms as well.) Then it was off to Gracias.

 

November 17-21

The place we stayed in Gracias had a similar vibe to the Casa de Cafe – clean, simple rooms in a lush garden setting. Owned by a Dutch woman assisted by an excellent mostly local staff, the Hotel Guancascos sits on the hill upon which the Fuerte de San Cristobal stands sort -of-tall. Gracias itself is bigger than Copan and as a busier, lest tourist-centered vibe, as well as being a little more prosperous, it seems. The Guancascos seems to be a slightly bigger place that the Casa de Cafe, but that might be because it’s laid out differently. The restaurant, though, is definitely bigger and more clearly established as a stand-alone – and in a lovely setting, on a large porch/patio overlooking the city. A great place to eat breakfast (provided with the room) as well as just park yourself in the afternoon when you have to really want to do your Spanish or in the evening when you need some Me Time.

The rooms were, as they’d been in Copan, immaculate, and kept so every day. Guancascos is working very hard and consciously at being eco-friendly, so water is solar heated, and there are other environmentally friendly features. Both hotels feature purified water whenever you need it – at the Cafe de Copan, when you walk by the kitchen and there’s someone in there, I’d just ask them to fill the carafe – and at Guancascos , purified water jugs are provided through the hotel. My impression is that drinking bottled water is pretty standard for everyone, not just foreigners, in Honduras.

As was the case the Casa de Cafe, Fromie, the owner and her managing partner were unfailingly helpful in helping me get things set up – in correspondence they gave me feedback on actually getting to Gracias from Copan (more on that tomorrow), on getting from Gracias to the airport on the 21st, and then in setting up ways for us to get to activities – Fromie’s son drove us to the zipline and thermal baths, they set up a guide for us for the Death March up the mountain in Celaque National Park, and they arranged that driver for the airport journey.

Not a lot of folks were staying there when we were, although they were expecting a big tour group of hikers this weekend. I spoke to a couple of American medical missionaries staying there one night, and it seems that this is a important clientele – as it is, I assume in much of Honduras. So there you have it!

Sometimes apartments make sense – when you need the space, when hotels are stupidly expensive for what you get, when people are going to need to eat food that needs to be prepared by you at times frowned upon by the local restaurant culture, and when you just want to live in a neighborhood, with the locals (although AirBnB has kind of, in intending to meet that desire, ruined the possibility in many instances), and are just fine with minimal interaction with other human beings like desk clerks and housekeepers – but then there are other times when you do want that interaction – and even need it. I personally have soured on AirBnB in the last year, not only because of their Woke Politics, but also because of the many questions and concerns raised about their business practices, lack of renter support and impact on neighborhoods. We have no huge travel plans for the near future aside from a couple of trips to Charleston over the various upcoming holidays and one to NYC in February, but if I do go the apartment route again, I’ll be trying to do so outside AirBnB – I did it before their rise, and I’ll do it again! But really, as I mentioned before, with just the two of us doing the bulk of the traveling now, a place like this is just fine

 

 

All the Honduras posts so far:

Sunday 11/10: Mass and a wedding. Touring the Copan ruins with archaeologist David Sedat

Monday 11/11: Spanish school and Macaw Mountain

Tuesday 11/12: Return visit to the ruins

Wednesday 11/13: Las Sepulturas and El Rastrojon ruins near Copan

Thursday 11/14: Hacienda San Lucas and Los Sapos

Friday 11/15-Saturday 11/16: Last day of Spanish school, a day-long coffee-farm tour on horseback; Luna Jaguar hot springs.

Sunday 11/17: Traveling from Copan to Gracias, Honduras. Mass. Settling in. 

Monday 11/18: Ziplining the canopy and more hot springs

Tuesday 11/19: Hiking the El Gallo trail in Celaque National Park

Wednesday 11/20: Fuerte el Cristobal; relaxing, preparing to return

 

 

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