Ferragosto - bit like a bank holiday

We have been in Florence for nearly a year and still parts of Italian culture and practise remain very strange to me.

For example, today. Typically for a bank holiday weekend, yesterday was rain and thunderstorms but today the sky is once again blue. "Ferragosto" is the name for the festival of assumption (or ascension) of Mary. It's a festival that has previously passed me by, as it isn't exactly a Protestant occasion (but for more on that, see below).

"Ferragosto" may come from the latin for a holiday to celebrate Emperor Augustine, but the Catholic/Orthodox/Anglican festival has different roots.

In San Marco Convento (home of the beautiful murals by Fra. Angelico including the famous Annunciation) is also a small art museum. There for the first time I saw a sequence of paintings of gospel scenes which culminated in the Crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven. Strange, I thought, as I've not read that in any canonical gospel! When, during a general conversation at language school, I related my confusion that this Crowning is not a gospel story the teacher (a non-practising Catholic) was quite adamant that it had to be!

And so today, I've paid a little more attention than normal to the meaning behind the day of holiday. The theory seems to be that Mary is the fulfilment of the promise of the general resurrection. Christ is the first-fruits of the resurrection from the dead, and the assumption of Mary is our proof. There is no canonical biblical evidence for this, although a quick google reveals a few biblical one-liners that are interpreted through the lens of Mariology. Quite honestly, this seems to me to be the worst kind of hermeneutical twisting.

The Catholic Church has remained imprecise about the details of the assumption. It is possible to believe that Mary died, was resurrected and then ascended, or that she ascended directly to heaven without dying. It seems to depend on quite what you believe about the sinlessness of Mary - if she is sinless, she cannot die so ascends directly. If you take this view, you may believe that "original sin" did not apply to Mary, and thus when Jesus is described as the "new Adam", Mary becomes the "new Eve". The Anglican Church again holds a variety of viewpoints: you may recognise the death of Mary, or you may hold either of the Catholic Church perspectives.

Besides wondering what on earth it means to compare mother and son with Adam and Eve, none of this made any difference in the Methodist church this morning. We are still enjoying the presence of the brothers and sisters from the Chiesa Valdese (and with only 1 Methodist in the congregation of 16 this morning, they are essential!). We were also confronted once again by the needs of the Romanian community here on the streets of Florence and the surrounding area. It is impossible to know how to respond when people ask for money to pay accommodation, or for a bus fare home, or, in one case, to pay a loan secured on the family home in Romania. The loan, for a reasonable substantial sum, was taken out to repatriate his father's body. To me, to take out the loan seems to have been a foolish decision, but what we do with bodies matters profoundly, what we believe about bodies is fundamental to our existence. Whether or not Mary ascended does affect what we believe about our life after death and about how we deal with "earthly remains". The impact of one funeral could see his family made homeless. At least believing in the assumption of Mary means that there has been no search for her body. It is very sad that cultural expectations about death are about to fall harshly on the living.

Springtime

The river Arno running through the centre of Florence deserves its very own "Springwatch". The river changes endlessly and is now gently subsiding from the winter full flow. The large bricked walls give an easy indication that the level is lower, the grass is reappearing on either side. The canoe club by the Ponte Vecchio(perhaps the most expensive in Europe!) has gorgeous roses in full bloom and today I saw a duckling family (6 or perhaps 7) with a protective mother hissing away the crow.

The river hosts a surprising variety of wild life: mallards, grey herons and little egrets, hooded crow, pigeons (of course) 2 varieties of gull, kingfisher (the whizz of colour is incredible), sparrows, blackbirds, starlings, swallows, wagtails and a small yellow bird that I can't identify and several species of geese

The range of birds is lovely, but it is the mammal and reptile population that I particularly like: otters, geckos and terrapins. As for fish, we've seen plenty of fishermen and some sudden flaps in the water, but no evidence of actual fish.

Humans are not absent; beneath some of the bridges sleep Roma families, and as you walk by in the day you can spot bags of belongings stashed in openings and shelves, whislt their owners are presumbably working the streets.

Preghiera d’Intercessione per la festa dell’Ascensione

 

Gesù è liberato dai confini di spazio e tempo,

dal corpo umano e dai bisogni umani.

Cristo vive con noi adesso,

il Risorto, l' Asceso, il Signore di tutti.

 

Preghiamo per ogni persona che potrà conoscere la presenza del Dio liberatore nelle loro vite.

 

Dio di ogni spazio e tempo,

preghiamo per tutti quelli che lavorano per libertà:

per le persone che resistano a governi repressivi.

per quelli che promuovono la commercio giusto e libero tra paese poveri e ricchi,

per quelli che forniscono educazione e assistenza sanitaria per i bisognosi,

per quelli che predicano il vangelo del perdono e della nuova vita.

Le nostre preghiere sono ascoltate: grazie a Dio.

 

Dio presente e ad ogni ora.

preghiamo per tutti che vogliono liberarsi.

Dalla malattia,

da una vita difficile

dalla tristezza o ansia,

da paura o colpa.

Le nostre preghiere sono ascoltate: grazie a Dio.

 

Dio è dentro di noi e intorno a noi,

preghiamo per il dono del tuo Spirito Santo:

per rompere le barriere che ci dividono,

per liberarci dalle nostre paure,

per liberarci dell' essere noi stessi in Te,

per fortificarci con il tuo amore.

Le nostre preghiere sono ascoltate: grazie a Dio.

 

Sei con noi, Dio d'amore, in ogni situazione della vita,

ora e per sempre, nel nome di Gesù. Amen.

 

 

Tradotto dall'inglese: Alison Walker e Milo Papini.

Originale © Christine Odell "Companion to the Revised Common Lectionary vol. 1 Intercessions" (1998, Epworth Press)

 

Poster, perhaps

OK, so I can through the insert picture business, but nothing appears...

church publicity

There is very limited space for putting up a poster outside the church, so it needs to be eye-catching. I've tried doing this one, but perhaps there is just too much info? The church speaks italian, but there would be no problem accommodating english speakers, as long as they were content with translation, rather than actually hearing an english sermon or english prayers.
What do you think?

Hopefully I've managed to publish the poster, but I'm not sure...

Listen : Think : Act: Methodism and Migration - In Italy

Listen : Think : Act: Methodism and Migration - In Italy

I have not blogged here about the last few weeks, but instead took up John Cooper's invitation to expand my facebook updates into something a little more considered. Thanks John for the opportunity to blog "away from home". You can follow John's blog on the above link, and then I will post an update on my own blog. We are currently hosting our third group of Rom, 6 adults and two very small babies. The Methodist church here has therefore welcomed a total of 12 people.

Ash Wednesday and Festival of Religious Liberty

We spent a lovely Sunday night-Monday at www.casacares.it with great food, company and the traditional falò (bonfire) as a slightly in advance celebration of the granting of religious liberty to the Jews and the Waldensians (17 February 1848). It is a festival that seems to go unmarked by the majority of the country, but is significant as the religious freedom granted then opened the doors to the further freedom that is part of the country's consitution.

However, there continues to be widespread ignorance about the Protestant churches and faith. I think that Protestants are no longer seen as potential enemies of the state, but a sense of being separate clearly persists. On Saturday the Methodist Church hosts a conference on the theme of the expereince of religious minorities. I am wary in the UK when the Church starts to see itself as a religious minority, after all we exert an influence way beyond our membership, however here perhaps the term is correct.

It is also Ash Wednesday, althoug there is no service here. It has not been requested and I suspect that the practice of ashing would be seen as far too Catholic! One reaction to the experience of being a religious minority is to withdraw from practices that look too much like being quasi-catholic. Perhaps this combination of festival and fasting invites us to get back a sense of balance in our relationships with other churches, with the earth, with God.