el día de los muertos... what does it mean?

celebrating el Día de los Muertos in Tulsa

What do you know about el Día de los Muertos, the celebration of Day of the Dead? 

Here's an overview of what it is and what it means to Catholics, and to Latinos in particular. The text is from an photo essay I wrote for the November 2013 issue of St. Anthony Messenger Magazine:

From my grandmother Josefita I learned that the Communion of Saints is real, not some exotic superstition, too mystifying to believe.

Every November 1^st and 2^nd, for the feasts of All Saints and All Souls—el Día de los Difuntos, Josefita’s Caribbean home altar grew both in size and candle-power, intermingling the holy and the personal: saints holy cards, prayers, flowers and photos of deceased family members.

Her personal memorial echoed the larger one celebrated at our parish, where we gathered together to honor and remember the dead and thank God for their lives, followed by a family visit to the cemetery.

Coming together to remember and celebrate is a very Catholic idea, as is thinking of death as a joyous occasion—the essence of Day of the Dead observances.

But to non-Hispanic Catholics, the ornate human skeletons typically used as decorations may seem macabre, even morbid, and more reminiscent of Halloween decor or a Tim Burton film than of a spiritual celebration.

Except el Día de los Muertos is not a Latino Halloween. These skeletons, or calacas, are traditionally depicted joyous rather than grisly or ghoulish. And they are characteristically shown in festive clothing, dancing or celebrating, to indicate a happy after life.

Similar celebrations and rituals celebrating the lives of ancestors appear in ancient cultures in Asia and Africa, stretching as far back as the Egyptians, and foreshadowing Catholic understanding of the communion of saints.

Whether the Mayan in Central America, the Incas in South America, or the Aztec in Mexico and Guatemala—the Day of the Dead is predominantly celebrated in countries with heavy indigenous roots, who customarily welcomed back the deceased for an annual encounter with their loved ones.

There is no way to describe a typical Día de los Muertos since each country—and even each region or town—has its own specific traditions.

In the Philippines, the feast of Todos los Santos (All Saints, November 1) is a holiday resembling a festive family reunion at the cemetery. The public holiday of Finados (Day of the Dead) in Brazil is celebrated on November 2^nd with visits to churches and family graves.

Building and flying giant kites at the gravesites is the highlight in Guatemala. For food, families make fiambre, an elaborate salad dish made only for this day every year. The all-encompassing dish, with over 50 ingredients, varies from family to family, with recipes passed down from generation to generation. Tradition calls for families to share their unique fiambre with other families on the Day of the Dead.

In Mexico, where the feast has perhaps the highest prominence, el Día de los Muertos is a national holiday. The home altars are decorated with candles, crosses, images of the Virgin Mary, and covered with ofrendas, favorite items of the deceased. El Pan de muertos—bread of the dead—is shaped like bones or calaveras, skulls.

Pre-Christian traditions taught that the scent of the person’s favorite foods, along with the fragrance of flowers and incense, invite the deceased to return. While the souls inhale the scents, the tamales, mole and atole are for the living to enjoy with others.

In some parts of Mexico, after cleaning and decorating the graves, families spend the night of November 1^st at the cemetery participating in a festive celebration of food, live music, Mass, and remembering—telling stories of their ancestors to the children.

In the United States, observance of el Día de los Muertos has spread thanks to Mexican-American communities, where traditional celebrations at parishes and school blend culture and Church tradition, often incorporating into the celebration specific aspects of their immigrant experience.

Variations aside, what all Day of the Dead observances have in common is a joyous encounter with the Communion of Saints, reminding the living that death is the next step on our journey into the fullness of life.

from my home altar

Year of Faith: faith celebrated

Our Lady of Lourdes grotto, University of Notre Dame

Although I hesitate to use the word organize, this past week I sorted through and cleared the cobwebs off my desk, which has not see much actual work for many weeks now. 

The few work projects that I’ve managed to complete, however, have been different and quite interesting.

I wrote the August column in the current issue of St.Anthony Messenger, for example, part of their special monthly feature for this Year of Faith.

In this world of 140 characters, the challenge as a writer was to say something personal and meaningful—in no more than 400 words! Our assignment called for each writer to take on a theme inspired by the Holy Father’s letter Porta Fidei, “Doors of Faith.”

My particular topic from the document is this: how the celebration of faith fuels our faith. The idea is inspired by a passage found in paragraph 9 of Porta Fidei that states:  

“To rediscover the content of the faith that is professed, celebrated, lived and prayed,[15]and to reflect on the act of faith, is a task that every believer must make his own, especially in the course of this Year.” 

Here’s the complete paragraph: 

“We want this Year to arouse in every believer the aspiration to profess the faith in fullness and with renewed conviction, with confidence and hope. It will also be a good opportunity to intensify the celebration of the faith in the liturgy, especially in the Eucharist, which is “the summit towards which the activity of the Church is directed; ... and also the source from which all its power flows.”[14] At the same time, we make it our prayer that believers’ witness of life may grow in credibility. To rediscover the content of the faith that is professed, celebrated, lived and prayed,[15]and to reflect on the act of faith, is a task that every believer must make his own, especially in the course of this Year.”

And here’s the short reflection that I wrote, titled “Faith Celebrated”:

As a young Cuban refugee growing up in the neighboring island of Puerto Rico, I was keenly aware of all that made me different. In spite of speaking the same language, my schoolmates teased me for my differences in speech. Like refugee families from other cultures, ours was a multi-generational home shared with three grandparents. Our family spent a considerable amount of our time and energy taking classes and attending events meant to remind us of our native culture, lest we ever forget what made us Cuban—and why we were refugees.   

 It was an unsettling time for all the adults in my life. This meant that I attended five different grade schools and lived in five different homes—one not corresponding with the other.  

 I was a perceptive child, more aware than most of the inner struggles of those suffering around me. In a very real way, I felt my parents’ anguish over the family and friends left in Cuba. I ingested my grandmother’s nighttime tears and loneliness. I experienced my grandparents’ uprootedness and displacement.  

 In the midst of all this inner suffering and external displacement—and perhaps directly because of it—my sense of place, belonging, and peace became deeply rooted in the Catholic Church.  

 Unlike most people’s experience, however, this sense of being claimed and chosen was not attached to one parish—but in a very real way, to the Church universal. Walking into a church. Celebrating the liturgy in unison. Receiving the Eucharist with mis hermanos, my brothers and sisters in the faith. This was, and is, home to me. 

 Paraphrasing Pope Benedict XVI’s declaration, I want this Year of Faith to arouse the desire to profess the faith in fullness and with renewed conviction, with confidence and hope.
  

In truth, there’s no substitute for the basics. Honest, daily prayer. Reclaiming the graces of the Sacraments. Approaching faith and tradition with a willing heart. Reclaiming the liturgy, and especially the Eucharist, as our home—the source from which “all its power flows.” 

 Only if we put the events of our lives—past, present, future—in contact with the Word of God and the Sacraments will those events become signs of God’s presence in and for our lives. 

 Only if we recommit to daily private and public prayer can we “rediscover the content of the faith that is professed, celebrated, lived and prayed.” 

Do we dare live our lives with such certainty?

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Be sure to check out the printed August issue of St. AnthonyMessenger Magazine, where this reflection was first published [www.StAnthonyMessenger.org].

Madeleine L'Engle and I

Thanks to my son, Christopher, I have a last-minute addition to my Christmas wish list: Listening for Madeleine: A Portrait of Madeleine L'Engle in Many Voices, a collection of 50 or so interviews with the people who knew her most intimately.

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) is perhaps best recognized as the author of A Wrinkle in Time, the incredible fantasy fiction that won her the 1963 John Newbery Medal for excellence in children's literature almost 50 years ago. But she was also a memoirist, a writer of adult fiction and nonfiction, much of it spiritual in nature.

As a reviewer pointed out, Listening for Madeleine  is the closest you'll ever get to hanging out with Madeleine L'Engle.

But, in truth, I did have a relationship (of sorts) with this talented author.

In my late 20s and early 30s,Madeleine and her work were formative for me as a developing writer and first-time author.  I was a young mother with four children in grade school who dreamt about writing during any and all "free time" (sarcasm here). 

That's when I discovered a fellow sojourner in Madeleine's Crosswicks journals.

In her beautiful book Circle of Quiet, I got to "know" an award winning author who was also an honest, funny woman who struggled with her desire to intersperse her writing and teaching career with raising three children, not to mention maintaining an apartment in New York and a historical farmhouse called "Crosswicks." Is it wrong that I smiled when I read that she suffered a decade of rejections before her books was published?

I first met Madeleine L’Engle at a writers’ retreat that she led annually at Laity Lodge in Leakey, Texas. Wearing colorful clothing and wild, big earrings, she had a formidable, even intimidating, presence addressing our small group of artists. 

But she was also present to each person talking one-on-one, encouraging, and always smiling. Going on that retreat was transformational. It was also my Christmas present for two years combined, not so much because of the cost, but because it required me to be gone for five whole days, an eternity for the at-home parent holding the fort with our awesome foursome!

I also had the pleasure of interviewing Madeleine in New York City, just prior to the birth of Madeleine's first great- grandchild, Konstantinos John Voiklis. On November 29 of this year, that room where we met--the Diocesan House of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on the Upper West Side--was dedicated as a Literary Landmark, in honor of the nearly four decades that Madeleine wrote and worked in its library. 

At that interview, I was struck by her intensity and devotion to her craft. Madeleine was a surprisingly quiet person whose voice filled with passion when she reflected on subjects that she cared about deeply—writing, faith, relationships. 

I remember how she talked in short sentences and often paused before she spoke. 

“I know my best work is unself-conscious. When I’m really writing," Madeleine explained in a bedtime-story voice, "I’m listening, and I’m not in control. That’s when I finish and look back and say, ‘I wrote that?’”

Three links:

•  to read one of my published profiles of Madeleine L'Engle, go to St. Anthony Messenger magazine archives here.

• to read a beautiful and personal description of the Crosswicks home written by Madeleine's granddaughter, Léna Roy, go here.

• And to watch a video of L'Engle speaking about writing and being a Christian, go to this interview re-published earlier this year in Religion & Ethics newsweekly.