The Pelican of Mercy

I've been attending RCIA classes at St. Sebastian Parish in Byron Center, MI for the last few weeks. (RCIA, just to explain, stands for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults). It's required (for the most part) training for anyone who is hoping to enter the Catholic Church.

At any rate, this past Tuesday, we toured the Historic St. Sebastian Church and I was introduced to the very Catholic world of statues and stained glass and altars and relics.

Amongst all the statues of Mary and Joseph and Jesus, was an image that seemed completely out of place: a pelican pictured in stained glass.

Now, a pelican in a church is weird enough, but it gets weirder. See, the pelican isn't just sitting there doing normal pelican-y things (whatever they might be). Instead, she is pictured striking her breast with her beak and drawing big drops of blood which then are gulped down by three or four young pelicans huddled beneath her wings. Perfectly normal, right? Sure! Of course! I mean really, what says "worship" and "Church" and "God" and "Love" more than a pelican being cannibalized by her young?

Naturally, my first reaction was surprise and, honestly, a little frustration. How in the world am I going to explain the bloody-pelican-window-thing to my less-than-enthusiastic-about-Catholicism wife?

I was wondering about the chances of her really staring at the window long enough to figure out it was a bloody pelican pictured there when I realized the leader of the RCIA class was talking. I tuned back in just in time to learn something.

Turns out, the pelican has been a cherished symbol in the Christian Church for hundreds of years. It was understood, all those years ago, that the pelican would, in times of hunger or extreme need, feed her young with her own body and blood, keeping them alive even at the sacrifice of her own life.

This tradition is evidenced in Christian Art as well as Christian literature. Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his Eucharistic Hymn Adore te Devote wrote:

Bring the tender tale true of the Pelican;
Bathe me, Jesu Lord, in what thy bosom ran---
Blood whereof a single drop has power to win
All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

Because of this association with the sacrifice of Christ, the pelican is also displayed in many early depictions of the Crucifixion. Here she is seen at the top of the cross, feeding her young with her own blood:

Once the symbolism was explained--and once I'd listened with an open mind--the pelican (like so many other things Catholic) became understandable. And more than that: meaningful, profound.

Instead of shuddering at the weirdness of Catholic symbolism and iconography, I found myself drawn into it and appreciating it and letting it speak to me. The vividness of the image--the way it jumps out and shocks you with red blood and hungry young--makes you think. It's not clean. It's not safe. It's not sterile. But, then again, neither was the cross. The cross and the sacrifice of Christ caused Him real pain. The blood that poured from his hands, feet, side, back and head was real blood. The heart that was pierced was a real heart that had been beating just minutes before. The death he died was a real death.

Contained in that vivid, violent symbol of the Pelican of Mercy is the meat of the Christian story: Our Creator, in times of spiritual famine, gives himself to us and feeds us with His body and His blood. We were in danger of starving--still are as long as we are alive--and our Lord, not content to sit by and urge us on to goodness and life with mere words, jumped into the fray, struck his own breast and let the life-giving blood flow to us. It wasn't clean. It wasn't sterile. It wasn't easy. Redemption never is.

An hour or so later, I left that church that night with a new appreciation for the symbols and icons the Catholic Church has preserved and passed on through all the generations of Christians who've gone before me.

And if my wife notices the bird in the window and the blood, I'm not going to worry about what to say. It's the redemption story. In stained glass.

From the Rising of the Sun: Malachi's Prophecy of the Mass

Here's a remarkable verse from Malachi:

Because even among you the doors shall be shut, and one will not kindle the fire of mine altar for nothing, I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord Almighty, and I will not accept a sacrifice at your hands.
For from the rising of the sun even to the going down thereof my name has been glorified among the Gentiles; and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord Almighty.

--Mal 1:10-11

From the earliest times Christians saw this verse in Malachi as a prophecy regarding the Mass. St. Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue With Trypho (AD 155) quotes the passage and then explains: "It is of the sacrifices offered to Him in every place by us, the gentiles, that is, of the Bread of the Eucharist and likewise of the cup of the Eucharist, that He speaks at that time."

And really, can it be anything else? What other Sacrifice is offered, not by the Jews, but by the Gentiles (us) with incense? What other pure offering is offered from the rising of the sun to its setting in every place? The only offering that fulfills this prophecy is the Mass: the pure offering of Jesus in the Eucharist, offered around the world, every hour of every day.

Now, that's interesting, but what's even more interesting is the actual word used for "offering" is the Hebrew word minchâh. According to Strong's Hebrew Dictionary, the word means "a sacrificial offering (usually bloodless and voluntary): - gift, oblation, (meat) offering, present, sacrifice."

This is interesting because non-Catholics who look at this passage tend to interpret "offering" or "sacrifice" as a "sacrifice of Praise." Or possibly prayers and praises--in short, worship. However, that explanation simply doesn't account for the word, minchâh, used in the text.

In searching the Old Testament for other uses of minchâh, we find that most of those instances are translated as a "meat offering" (and none refer to a mere symbolic "sacrifice of praise").

What's more interesting is that a "meat offering" isn't what we might typically think. In fact, instead of including flesh of any kind, a meat offering was an unbloody offering of fine flour, unleavened and baked in an oven. Leviticus 2:4 explains this clearly and is really quite startling: "But when thou offerest a sacrifice baked in the oven of flour, to wit, loaves without leaven, tempered with oil, and unleavened wafers, anointed with oil". (see also Lev. 2:11).

But that's not all. According to Smith's Bible Dictionary a meat offering was just as we described above, but was also "generally accompanied by a drink offering of wine."

So, let's go back to the passage from Malachi (and the prophecy given to him by God) and ask ourselves: What pure, unbloody sacrifice of flour, unleavened and baked, in the form of wafers is offered to God by the Gentiles from the rising of the sun to its setting, in every place in this world and is accompanied by a drink offering of wine?

It can't be a "sacrifice of praise" or some other anachronistic concoction because the prophecy specifically refers to a "meat offering". The only sacrifice that completely fulfills this Holy Spirit-inspired prophecy is the sacrifice of the Mass.