Shrine of St. Thomas the Apostle, Chennai

Saint Thomas the Apostle first brought Christianity here to India in the first century. He was martyred here, on a hill south of city center, near the present airport.  

There are four extant apostolic tombs: Rome for Peter and Paul, Santiago de Compostelle for James the Greater, and Madras for Thomas.  Now I've been to them all. 

The Portuguese built a church here in the 16th Century.  This is it, rather like a large parish church, but called a basilica:

There is a grotto, styled after Lourdes, outside:

The church seen from said grotto:

Seen from across the very busy city street:

As I say, the church is downtown, near the center, on the beach.  The site of the martyrdom, with the extant relics (it seems that the rest of the body was spirited away to Europe) is on a hill in the southern suburbs called Saint Thomas's Mount:

The Tamil like neon, and their taste in iconography runs to the kitsch.. Which is okay, since it reminds me to try and swallow my snobbish pride and grin..

The custom here is to remove shoes, like Muslims do before entering a mosque.

One of the few relics of Thomas left in India.

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Photo Essay of Holy Family: The Local Parish Here in Mamallapuram

These past couple weeks I've been going to mass here in Mamallapuram.  This is what it is like:

The church is rather small, but the congregation of a few hundred overflows into the yard, which is what all the blue plastic chairs are for.

the altar boys.

Notice how the men and women sit separately; the women on Christ's right hand, appropriately enough.

I hope this video works, it's of one of the communion hymns. I adore how Tamil is sing song, and percussive, perfectly accompanied by the drum.  I shot this as inconspicuously as I could with my iphone, which did not focus.. those are my blue socked feet at the beginning, we take our shoes off before entering the church here, like Muslims at a mosque:

After mass, there is Marian prayer, like is common in Europe or many parishes stateside. Then, everyone rushes the front to venerate the statues of the Holy Family there:

They touched the table or base of the statues like the girl is doing here.  I didn't think to bring a candle with me, and they had none there to buy.

I'll get my own stash for future contingency.

So, that's how rural Catholics - who are mostly converts from lower Hindu castes here, and poor - roll in India.  Tomorrow I'll post the shots from the great Shrine of St. Thomas in Madras..



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Now, Some Good News..

For those of you who will understand. They put the repaired statue up again, in front of the newly consecrated (as of this fall) parish church the day before yesterday:

Pretty spiffy, eh? About time, finally..

 

 

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L'Église des Jacobins, Toulouse

Two weeks ago, on the afternoon of the day I left Lourdes, I stopped in Toulouse to pray at the tomb of saint Thomas Aquinas, whose relics grace the mother church of the Order of Preachers, built by St. Dominic in the earliest days of the Order, founded in the 13th century to preach against the Cathars here in Languedoc. Little else of world import has happened here, before or since, in this sleepy corner of France.

I found it interesting that the church takes its name from the priory later established by the Order on the Rue St. Jaques in Paris, named after St. James due to the fact the pilgrims to Compostelle congregated there, being the major thouroughfare of the medieval city. Later, in the years leading up to the French Revolution, a political club met at the priory there, and took their name from it, also being called "the Jacobins." This club became famous for radical republicanism, and came to dominate the revolutionary government during the regicidal Terror. Robispierre was a member.

I find it ironical somehow, that the Order responsible for the Inquisition (Torquemada was a member) later gave its nickname to another group infamous for totalitarian terror. Is there some metahistorical poetic synergy there? I think there is.

Here are some of the pictures I took, mediocre though some of them may be:

The Tomb of St. Thomas

And the candle.

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Some Few Odd Images from Lourdes

These past two weeks I've been in Lourdes. I've ensconced myself in a rather threadbare but very cheap hotel, with balcony, ensuite bathroom, and a very friendly Kabyle staff. Until last Sunday, the last day of the pilgrimage season (which extends from Easter through the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, which is to say last weekend this year) there was a nightly rosary procession at 9 pm and then vigil mass in the grotto of Mirabelle where the apparitions occurred every evening at 11 pm, that I joined in praying.

It's been an excellent retreat, all told.

But I haven't been much in the mood for blogging at all, despite your divers requests to post. Tonight, I have been planning the next week's itinerary, have bought some tickets, and laid plans that will take me eventually to Maryam Ana in Ephesus, if all goes well. I'll try to post much more frequently now, as I will be moving about more or less every other day this coming week or so.

One good - or utterly horrible, really, depending as you look at it - excuse I have for not blogging is that I managed to destroy my laptop by dumping a drink on it when I first got here, which means I am left resorting to my iPad to get online. Sorting and storing pictures is thus much harder, and since most of what I've taken here has been crap, most likely due to my having jacked up my camera and wide angle by dropping it (nay, smashing it wantonly) upon the hard marble floor ein Sacré Couer a couple weeks ago.. well..

I'm now happy merely to have anything electronic left to post anything at all. These crap images that follow were culled from thumbnails. I hope they amuse all the same:

interior upper basilica

view of grotto from above

the royal keep guarding the pass

The Grotto of Mirabelle

the basilica by night by the grotto

the evening procession from above

Slovenia! Or Slovakia! Or Croatia! Or whatever!

the candle alley

I'll only note in closing that I think - no exageration - that probably 80 - 90% of priests i've seen here have been wearing cassocks, something that prior to experience of the Legionarries would have made me ecstatic, but now merely makes me quizzical and mildly amused.

 

 

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Rue de la Grotte, Lourdes, France

 

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Photo Essay: Notre Dame de Chartres

After quitting Paris, I made my way to Chartres, to see the famous cathedral there.  I arrived at night, and took a few pictures of the exterior illuminated:

Next day, after sleeping in a big ivy patch under the low hanging branches of a great pine tree on the lawn of the Eure et Loir departmental prefecture (I had to hop their fence, and then got yelled at in the morning by some woman bureaucrat from the window of her office, when jumping back out onto the street) I went back and took some very mediocre images of the interior.

The inside is being restored, and maybe a tenth of the interior marble - besmirched with centuries of candle smoke and other dirt - has been bleached its original white, most of that in the sanctuary and front of the nave:

Note the contrast between the restored and dirty marble.

Plaque memorializing Peguy's pilgrimage here.

The cathedral is beautiful, a huge interior space with incredible stained glass.  Because of the dirty marble and cloudy day light, the church was darker than I expected it would be.  I still was awed, and sat there for three hours, said my chaplet and then just gaped, drinking it in.

I then did the tour of the place. There are these amazing wooden relief statues on the choir screen, figures in late medieval garb, carved in the 16th century, also being restored:

Restorer at work.

 And these are the famous flying buttresses:

I lit two candles at Chartres, the first to Ste. Therese here,

And another before ND de Cartres, her statue being on that pillar on the left there.

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