As an
attempt to transform a festivity that tends to leave God out of its
celebration, churches began to create fall festivals encouraging the community
to dress in costume as their favorite saints.
For the past two years at my local parish my nephew and I have participated
in the Parish Fall Fest. This year I
decided that I wanted to utilize the month to do a little more studying and to
really get to know one saint so that by the time the Hallows Eve festivities
come I will have a deep understanding of a soul that gave herself entirely to
God. I decided that as actors study for
their parts I too would study my saint.
As I research the plethora of Catholic Saints I came across Saint Elizabeth
of Hungary. I knew ahead of time that I
wanted a Renaissance saint because I love that period in history. Thus, the search began and I came across a
beautiful icon of Saint Elizabeth and new immediately that she was the
one. I order a book online that had
pretty high ratings and came from Ignatius Press. The book came in yesterday, Saint
Elizabeth's Three Crowns, and I am about half way through it. Once I finish it I will do a follow-up post
on it.
While I was
really drawn to the beauty of Saint Elizabeth’s icon and was happy to take on
the role of a princess I came to find out that later in her life she became a
third order Franciscan! I tell you my
dear Saint Francis follows me closely (smile).
One day in court a missionary friar stopped by the kingdom and was
summoned to tell stories (for he was a great story teller) and after entertaining
the nobles with secular stories and gaining their attention he began to tell
them about Saint Francis. Elizabeth was
so moved by Saint Francis’ testimony that she began to imitate his
spirituality. Though she had to endure ridicule and contempt from those who dwelled in the castle she gave abundantly to
the poor and spent hours in her chapel praying…
I have not
finished the book- thus I don’t want to get ahead of myself- but so far this
exercise of taking a saint during the entire month has been really
fortifying. While in the past I thought
saints distracted one from God - as I continue to learn more about the lives of
ordinary people that surrender completely to God- I realize that the few saints
that I have studied have always left me with a strong desire to give more of
myself to God. All the saints have shown
me a clear path towards God and have intensified my desire for personal sanctification. I can’t wait to finish my book and to tweak my
costume to better reflect her (smile).
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