Faith Filled Friday: The Dancing of the Giglio

This requires a lot of context.  I’m going to try to give it briefly.  Start with the Italian city of Nola, a city that goes back to (328 BC) before the Romans conquered the Italian peninsula.  It’s a city in the Campagna region of Italy, the region from which I’m from.  Nola today I think would be considered a suburb of Naples. 

Fast forward to 410 AD, where the town of Nola selected a priest by the name of Paulinus to be their bishop.  Paulinus died in 431 AD.  Somewhere in between these years the Goths, a Barbarian tribe, invaded the Italian peninsula.  Men were taken as hostage and slaves.  Legend has it that a particular widow had her only son taken, and Bishop Paulinus offered himself as an exchange for that widow’s son.  It was accepted and for a number of years Paulinus was a slave working farms.  The legend has transformed the barbarian Goths into the “Turks,” probably during the Middle Ages when the Turks raided the Italian coast. 

As a slave Paulinus performed miracles for his masters, and the legend has it the Sultan took notice.  He asked about Paulinus’s background and learned he was a man of stature.  He offered Paulinus his freedom, and Paulinus got the release of all the captured men of Nola.  When he sailed back to Nola, the populace greeted him with swarms of lilies.  Lilies are called giglio in Italian, and so the Feast of the Giglio was started.

At some point the Feast of the Giglio incorporated a carrying a structure that symbolized the Giglio.  I don’t know the process in which this structure grew to be massive, but that is what happened.  It developed into a tradition.  Immigrants from Nola brought this tradition to the United States, and specifically to a region in Brooklyn, New York called Williamsburg.  The feast in Williamsburg has been going on since 1903!

One last thing to understand.  The feast day for St. Paulinus is June 22^nd.  The feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is July 16^th.  Because feast celebrations run a couple of weeks long, the two feasts were merged.  The “Dancing of the Giglio” is performed as part of the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, and the devotions that come out of this feast have a Carmelite association.

You can read about the history of the celebration in Williamsburg, here. 

Now this video is going to give you what the feast, the Italian-American tradition, and the Dancing of the Giglio entails.

So here are some raw facts of the Giglio tower.  It’s seventy feet high—that’s six or seven stories.  It weighs eight thousand pounds!  It takes 122 men to lift it, traverse it, and dance it. 

The pastor at our parish on Staten Island, Fr. Eugene of St. Rita Catholic Church, grew up in Williamsburg, and many times has referenced it in his homilies, especially in our celebrations of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel.  It never dawned on me the full extent of this tradition.  This mid-July, he arranged for a bus to take a number of us interested to the feast.  We went for the vigil of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, the evening of July 15^th.  I believe this was the first night of the celebration.

First a few pictures.  Here is the Giglio before its initial coming out and dance.  You can see it is taller than the apartment buildings on the street.

Every year there are new decorations and holy images to the Giglio.  Here is some detail to this year’s construction.

Here is the initial coming out.  Enjoy the music!  It’s a mix of Italian and American.

 

Now over the course of the evening, they would slowly take the Giglio up the street in manageable spurts—remember the 122 lifters underneath are each carrying anywhere from 65 to 100 lbs—past Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church, up another street, and then return for the night.  Here is another clip.

 

You can hear the captain calling out commands in his Neapolitan dialect. 

Here is a picture of the lifters trying to get into position.

And here is a clip of the lifters and a “dance” from their point of view.

 

Finally inside the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church.

A statue of St. Paulinus.

And on the side of the church, OLMC shrine.

Now you know how Italians get into their feasts.  Plus I didn’t even mention the food.  The zeppole were great!

 

St. Paulinus, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, pray for us.

Faith Filled Friday: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mariachi Band Mass

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, memorializing the day and event of when Our Lady appeared in Mexico to Juan Diego in 1531.  You probably know the history, but if you don’t make sure you read the Wikipedia entry and search out Catholic sites that will relate the story and devotion.  Our Lady under this title is super important in this segment of the world, carrying the additional monikers of Empress of the Americas, Patroness of Latin America, Queen of Mexico.  If you live in North or South America, this is our native Marian devotion.

Needless to say Our Lady of Guadalupe is huge in Mexico.  And so is Mariachi Music, a native musical genre from western Mexico.  When the Mexicans celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, it is very common to integrate Mariachi Music into the Mass.  For the first time ever, today at my parish of St. Rita in Staten Island we celebrated today’s feast day with a Mariachi band for musical accompaniment. 

It was different.  It was endearing.  It was wonderful! 

I wish I had videoed all the musical parts of the Mass.  I only captured two at the end of Mass.  Both were after the pastoral blessing when the band moved up to the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and serenaded the Blessed Mother.  Here are the videos.

 

And here’s how they ended with a more upbeat tune.

 

Oh that was wonderful, and you can see our two pastors, Frs. Eugene and Anthony clapping along behind the altar.  Fr. Eugene is planning to do this annually.  Unfortunately I did not get the name of the band.

One last thing.  Our Lady of Guadalupe has a special place in my heart.  That was the name of my parish in Brooklyn growing up. 

 

Faith Filled Friday: Our Feast of Mt. Carmel, 2025

The actual feast day for Our Lady of Mt. Carmel was Wednesday, July 16^th, but we celebrated it with a Mass, an Italian marching band, a procession, and then a parish BBQ on Sunday the 13^th. 

 

The feast day is a special to the Carmelite Order, commemorating the giving of the brown scapular in 1287 by Our Lady to St. Simon Stock, an English member of the Carmelite Order.  

Our pastor, Fr. Eugene, is also a Third Order Carmelite, and we had many from his chapter at the Mass.  We also had people attend from the Padre Pio Society and of course the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel organization which is located in Brooklyn, NY.  We also had an Italian band.

Fr. Eugene, who is Italian-American, included in his homily a funny little story.  I’ll put this in quotes, but it’s not a direct quote.  He said, “so deep is the Italian devotion to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, that his mother once asked where in Italy is Mt. Carmel located?”  The love of this feast is so pervasive among Italians that his mother assumed the mountain was in Italy.  But it’s not.  It’s in Isarel.

Now back in 2017, I posted that year’s procession with plenty of pictures.  If you want to see stills, go here.  

For this year, I’m going to post three videos from the procession.  First coming out of Church.

 

 

The grand exit of our beloved Lady and being put on the rolling cart.

Viva Maria!

 

And finally the procession.

 

Seminarians and altar servers in the front, banners and flags next, the rolling cart, the band, and finally the parishioners.  That’s Fr. Eugene in his vestments directing the rolling cart.  We processed about two blocks, up an avenue, and then back around.  As you can see, our parish is not just full of Italian-Americans but quite diverse. 

Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, pray for us!

Faith Filled Friday: Feast of St. Rita

Yesterday, Thursday, May 22^nd, was the Feast Day of St. Rita of Cascia.  She is the patron saint of our parish, which is named after her.  If you are not aware of this wonderful saint, you should be.  I’ll try to list a number of pertinent facts.  The Wikipedia entry, linked above, has a lot of good information.  The Catholic Company’s Saint of the Day entry is also very good.  

She was born in 1381, the year after my beloved St. Catherine of Siena died, near the town of Cascia, which is in the Umbria region.  Umbria is in central Italy, north of Lazio, which is the region which Rome is in, and Tuscany, which is the region where Florence and Siena reside.

From very young she wanted to become a nun, but her parents needed her to marry, and so arranged a marriage when she was twelve years old.  Her husband turned out to be violent and abusive, but she quietly prayed for him, and by her prayers and constant sweetness converted him over to faith.  They had two sons together.

After eighteen years of marriage, her husband was murdered.  Her two sons vowed to take revenge, and she prayed that God should take their lives rather than to fall into such sin.  Within months, both sons came down with illnesses and died.

Free of family obligations, she joined some nuns and formed a convent.  Eventually their group joined the Augustinian Order and lived under the Rule of St. Augustine.  She was an Augustinian nun for over forty years.

She became known as a prayerful and self-sacrificing nun, and one who meditated on the sufferings of Christ on the cross.  In time she received a partial stigmata, an indentation of a thorn in the middle of her brow.

Miracles began to sprout on her prayers, and she is now known as the saint of the impossible causes.

On her death bed, she was asked what if anything she wanted.  She asked for roses and figs from her old family property.  Unfortunately it was winter, and not the season for either roses or figs.  She told one of her sisters to go look, and sure enough roses and figs were miraculously growing and were brought back to her.

Roses are special to St. Rita, and so parishes that celebrate her feast day Mass will give out blessed red roses to the congregation.  Every year at our St. Rita Church, Fr. Eugene our pastor gives out red roses blessed during the course of the Mass.

Fr. Eugene is fantastic at decorating the church.  Let me share some photos.  First the altar with the red roses all around. 

The ones in the bucket in front of the altar are the ones that will be blessed and distributed.  The statue on the left is St. Rita, in the black and white habit of the Augustinians.

To the left of the altar, we had a statue of St. Rita, kneeling and looking up toward heaven, surrounded by an arch of roses and a spread of roses before her. 

This statue is normally in an alcove in the back of our church but was moved up for the feast day Mass.  You can see the thorn indentation in her forehead.

Finally, as I’ve mentioned before, Fr. Eugene is also a great collector of relics.  He has three relics of St. Rita, which he situated in from of the lectern.  Two pictures, one for an overview and one zoomed in.

In the zoomed out photo, you can see the statue of St. Rita in the background.

I will close this from a couple of the prayers from this Novena to St. Rita.  

 

Glorious St Rita, you wanted to enter the convent but your parents arranged a marriage for you. We pray for those whose hopes have been frustrated.

 

Saint Rita, so humble, so pure, so mortified, so patient and of compassionate love for thy Crucified Jesus that thou couldst obtain from him whatsoever thou askest, on account of which all confidently have recourse to thee, expecting, if not always relief, at least comfort; be propitious to our petition, showing thy power with God on behalf of thy suppliant; be lavish to us, as thou hast been in so many wonderful cases, for the greater glory of God, for the spreading of thine own devotion, and for the consolation of those who trust in thee.

 

Truth be told, because St. Rita had a difficult husband, I appeal to her to pray for my wife when she has to put up with me! 

St. Rita pray for us.

Faith Filled Friday: Moving the Tabernacle to the Center

It’s been a few months now, but our pastor at St. Rita’s Church has, at the request of Cardinal Dolan to all parishes, moved the Tabernacle to the center of the Sanctuary.  Cardinal Dolan made this request to all parishes in his diocese that if possible that the Tabernacles should be moved to the center where they had traditionally resided before the Second Vatican Council. For some reason, perhaps they just thought it was more hip with the times, after Vatican II many parishes across the country, perhaps the world, moved their Tabernacles off to the side.  It was a mistake.  Christ should be at the center of the Mass, at the center of our vision, and at the center of our hearts.  We at St. Rita had no problem accommodating the request.

First, here’s a picture from Christmas 2017 as it had been for years.  The red arrow points to the Tabernacle.

Here’s how the full altar looks now with the Tabernacle in the center.

Here is a zoomed in view of the Tabernacle with the lovely new headpiece that our pastor, Fr. Eugene, added.

Here’s a look behind the altar at the beautiful stand set up to hold the Tabernacle.  This was taken before the new headpiece was added.

Changes to the church are not always welcomed.  This was more than welcomed, it was joyful!

Faith Filled Friday: All Saints Day at St. Rita Parish

We had a wonderful All Saints Day evening Mass at my parish, St. Rita of Cascia Church on Staten Island, NY.  Our pastor, Fr. Eugene is a great collector of relics, and he had received permission to display a goodly amount throughout the church.  Cardinal Timothy Dolan, our Archbishop, came by to celebrate the All Saints Day Mass and bless the relic cabinets.  It was a wonderful Mass.  Everything, the service, the incense, the music, the choir, the entrance and closing processions, the homily.  Cardinal Dolan has a great sense of humor.  It was one of the most perfect Masses I have ever attended.

First the entrance procession.

 

Now there are nine relic cabinets throughout the church, each having a dozen or more relics inside.  Here what the cabinets look like.

 

Besides the reliquary of a particular saint, a small statue of that saint might also be beside it.  I’m going to give you a few pictures of saints that are dear to me, mostly saints from the Dominican Order.  The date in the plaque is their feast day.

Let’s start with St. Dominic de Guzman, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Martin de Porres..

 

Saints Patrick and Frances of Assisi

Saint Augustine of Hippo and his mother St. Monica, displayed together.

And for my son, St. Matthew the Evangelist.

One cabinet has only three reliquaries in it, but they are of the upmost importance.  They are from the life of Jesus Christ.

If you can’t read the plaques, they identify “From the Wood of the Cross of Our Lord,” “Relics from the Crib, Rock of the Agony, Column of Flagellation, Lance, and Tomb of Our Lord,” and “From the Holy Seamless Tunic of Our Lord.”

Here are some pictures from the Mass.

Finally, one with the Cardinal blessing one of the cabinets.

All you holy men and women pray for us!

Sunday Meditation: The Nature of Life After Death

This is a remarkable exegesis by Jesus Himself.  Two keys to remember here.  First that the Sadducees did not believe in life after death, and that they only accepted the Pentateuch, the first five books, as Biblical authority.

 

Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection,

came forward and put this question to Jesus, saying,

"Teacher, Moses wrote for us,

If someone's brother dies leaving a wife but no child,

his brother must take the wife

and raise up descendants for his brother.

Now there were seven brothers;

the first married a woman but died childless.

Then the second and the third married her,

and likewise all the seven died childless.

Finally the woman also died.

Now at the resurrection whose wife will that woman be?

For all seven had been married to her."

Jesus said to them,

"The children of this age marry and remarry;

but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age

and to the resurrection of the dead

neither marry nor are given in marriage.

They can no longer die,

for they are like angels;

and they are the children of God

because they are the ones who will rise.

That the dead will rise

even Moses made known in the passage about the bush,

when he called out 'Lord, '

the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;

and he is not God of the dead, but of the living,

for to him all are alive."

~Lk 20:27-38

 

My pastor at St. Rita’s Church, Fr. Eugene, has a way to remember who the Sadducees were.  “Remember, the Sadducees are sad because for them there is no afterlife.”  But Jesus has a great way to rebuff the internal logic of their question.  He takes them right back to the Pentateuch to prove they did not even fully understand their own reduced vision of the scriptures.  He repeats that God is “not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive."  The dead are alive in God!

 

That is a nice little video.  Now notice what else Jesus says.  There is no marriage in heaven and no procreation, and therefore there will be no conjugal relations.  Do you find this a blessing or a bane? 

Faith Filled Friday: St. Dominic Receiving the Rosary

October 7^th was the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.  Last year I wrote up a detailed post on the history of the feast day, how it was originally called the Feast of Our Lady of Victory and linked to the Battle of Lepanto.  Read that post because it was very informative.  

I know it’s a few weeks late but I took the pictures and I want to post them.  The pastor at our parish, Fr. Eugene, loves sacramental and seems to have an affinity for statues and relics.  When the feast day of a particular saint comes around, Fr. Eugene will set up a statue of that saint off to the left side of the altar decorated with flowers.  Now this year for Our Lady of the Rosary he set up a small statue of the Blessed Mother handing St. Dominic a rosary. 

Before I get to the pictures, let me tell of the legend of how we got the rosary.  In 1208, it was held that St. Dominic prayed to the Virgin Mary for help in overcoming the Albigensian heresy in southern France and she in a vision gave him the rosary.  From John Roskoski at Catholic365:

 

It was during this time that the tradition of the Rosary comes to us. The form in which it has come down to us will best be stated in the words of P. Corneluis de Snecka, a disciple of the French Dominican Alan de la Roche:

 

We read that at the time when he was preaching to the Albigenses, St. Dominic at first obtained but scanty success: and that one day, complaining of this in pious prayer to our Blessed Lady, she deigned to reply to him, saying: ’Wonder not that you have obtained so little fruit by your labors, you have spent them on barren soil, not yet watered with the dew of Divine grace. When God willed to renew the face of the earth, He began by sending down on it the fertilizing rain of the Angelic Salutation. Therefore, preach my Psalter composed of 150 Angelic Salutations and 15 Our Fathers, and you will obtain an abundant harvest.’

 

The place of the revelation was the church of Prouille and the time was 1208. The claim of place and time are most strongly supported by the tradition of the Dominican Order. Pope Leo XIII affirmed over and over the Dominican origin of the Rosary and in a letter to the Bishop of Carcassone (1889), he accepts the tradition of Prouille as the place where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Dominic, revealing this devotion. The tradition that Mary first revealed the Rosary devotion to St. Dominic is supported by 13 popes. St. Dominic went into the villages of the heretics, gathered the people, and preached to them the mysteries of salvation – the Incarnation, the Redemption, Eternal Life. As the Holy Virgin had taught him to do, he distinguished the different kinds of mysteries and after each short instruction he had ten Hail Marys recited. St. Dominic found great success in this new devotion, bringing about the conversion of the Albigensians.

Well, it is a disputed story, but we Dominicans believe it. 

Here is a picture of the statue at my parish, St. Rita’s Church in Staten Island, NY, and then a zoomed in picture.

 

 

Afterwards I asked Fr. Eugene where that statue was normally placed.  I had never seen it before.  He said it was in his office.  I found that strange.  Fr. Eugene is a Lay Carmelite.  Why would he have a statue f St. Dominic in his office?  Then I remembered.  St. Rita many years back had a chapter of Dominican Sisters at the parish, teaching at the parish school. 

Well, it made my Dominican heart jump for joy when I saw it at Mass.