BACK YARD

BACK YARD
Watercolor Painting of my back yard in Northern California

Tuesday, December 31, 2019

SAINT MELANIA AND ME




THE CELL AND TOMB OF SAINT MELANIA
IN JERUSALEM
(383-439)


The remembrance of Saint Melania is December 31 in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, while in the Western Roman Catholic Church, it is apparently celebrated on the 17th. She is listed among today's saints on the Catholic website to which I typically refer. (I use Catholic.org to get the names, and then branch out to multiple other websites and books for research about the saint.)

The women who eschew the typical life of family and enjoyments, and live as hermits instead, remain a beacon of encouragement for me, since I am also an independent religious woman, living a vowed life on my own, with no support from any establishment. 




Occasionally, I forget that the history of the Christian faith is full of stories of independent monastics who set out on their own to live for God alone. Reading about Saint Melania and others like her buoys my spirits and encourages me to continue.

The topic of renunciation of the allurements of the world in favor of communing with the Lord and serving Him in a solitary state is not something that is typically discussed across the modern dinner table or on social media - though a whisper of it does catch the ear of my heart now and then. During the first few hundred years of Christianity, however, it was quite common for women and men to abandon the secular life for the trials of "the desert."





Living an ascetic life of physical pain and privation for the sake of God alone is an impulse found across the spectrum of religions. Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions all have long histories of men and women who have adopted this life, to one degree or another.

When I became fully disabled about 16 years ago, I was overjoyed to realize that, although it was disconcerting that I was no longer able to support myself through outside employment, I was suddenly free to commit myself to a life lived for the sake of God alone, just as many of the saints did in the early years of the Christian church. I had wanted to do this since leaving the Hindu convent years before, but it had never been possible. Sometimes, bad news is good news in disguise.





Physical pains and limitations prevent me from throwing myself, at full throttle, into anything similar to what one would recognize as an "ascetic" life in the classical sense. I do not need to cause myself pain, discomfort and inconvenience through artificial means, such as fasting, sleeping on the floor of a cave or anything like that because my body itself is constantly, chronically hurting me and preventing many activities I might otherwise like to perform.

But I can and have devoted my daily activities and the occupation of my mind to a continuous recognition that The Lord is present in all things. I practice the presence of God and am in tune with Him constantly.

For inspiration, I look to other women who have left the world of society for a solitary sojourn with God, and there are many from whom to choose.  The desire to sequester oneself in a small place with Our Dear Lord is not unique to me - not at all! It is a natural outpouring of the soul's love for the Divine - a desire to join with Him who is our All.

With the female saints, there is an oft-repeated theme in which a woman of means eschews family life in favor of a solitary or semi-solitary life of removal from society for the sake of God. Typically, these women have been forced to marry at some point in their teen years, and either their husbands die or they and their husband BOTH put on the hermit's robes.





Depending upon the amount of the woman's fortune, she will usually establish at least one monastery for women that will house others that follow her example. Often, they will also endow a monastery for men, sometimes for the purpose of giving their husband something to do, it seems to me!

The saintly life of Melania the Younger followed this general theme. As was common in those days, her parents gave her in marriage at the very early age of 14, and it appears that she tried to avoid it, but could not. Her grandmother was Melannia the Elder, a well known figure in monastic history, being one of the "Desert Mothers" who was also pushed into marriage at age 14. Their lives run along parallel lines.



Daily Reading for December 31, 2015, St. Melania


Melania the Elder (325-410), who lived during the reign of my 47th great grandfather, Theodosius the Great (who was born in Spain, like her) was one of the wealthiest people in the entire Roman empire, but was a follower of Origen who considered the ascetic life of mortification of the body necessary to salvation, and this would obviously have been made known to Melania the Younger and likely fueled her determination for that course in life. Melania the Elder established two religious communities on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and supported the monks of Nitria before and after their expulsion and exile to Dicaesaraea in Palestine.

The young saint begged her husband to free her from wifely duties but he was, at first, unwilling, telling her that they should have two children before giving up the world and donning hermit robes. Unfortunately, both her children died while still very young, and she and her husband gave themselves to God's work much earlier than the husband had anticipated. In the early death of her children, she was also similar to her grandmother, Melania, who not only lost 2 of her 3 sons before she turned 23 years old, but also her husband, after which, she entrusted her son to the care of others, immediately embarking on the ascetic path of voluntary suffering.






Having been raised in a thoroughly worldly, anti-religious household, with a half-mad narcissist mother and an absent, self-obsessed father who worked in the entertainment industry, I came to this party rather late in life, relatively speaking. I thank God I was led to Him at all, considering my mother's hostility toward faith of any kind, but she had an especial hatred toward Catholics. I had no saintly Grandmother to follow, and no example of any kind, really, when it came to religion and the life of the spirit. My beloved grandmother Emzaella, a lovely woman I adored, used to say that no one needed religion. All one needed was "the golden rule," in her book. As far as I can tell, she lived that philosophy pretty well, but her extremely truncated religious sentiment was of little help to me.

After Melania and her husband vowed to live the rest of their lives in abstinence and chastity, she and her husband, and her mother went to Africa where she purchased the freedom of 8,000 slaves with some of the money she had gotten from the sale of her vast properties. She is honored as being a person of means who used those means to answer the generosity of her heart.



Image result for melania "I really don't care"


I cannot help but compare this saint to a prominent Melania that is in the news, peripherally, these days. Despite her namesake's extreme generosity of spirit and sanctity, Donald Trump's wife, Melania, so far, has demonstrated no interest in philanthropy. A former model, she is known for wearing a jacket on which the words, "I really don't care. Do u?" were splashed across it when she went to visit migrant children that had been captured at our borders, separated from their parents, and incarcerated in a detention center in McAllen, Texas.  The message emblazoned on her coat was the opposite of what it should have been, when visiting these terrified and suffering little children, some of whom are still in diapers.



Image result for "Melania the Elder"


Her anemic "be best" campaign has no legs and does little or nothing. She came out weakly against bullying but has said nothing about the bully to whom she is married - the guy who spews hatred constantly on Twitter and into every video camera that follows him. When he mocks a disabled reporter, calls public servants foul names, and targets the weakest among us, Melania is silent about that. "Be best" indeed! In fact, Melania has complained that she considers herself to be the most bullied person in the world - based upon how "The Media" treats her, I suppose. I have no doubt that our modern Melania was named after one of the two Melanias I am discussing in this blog. It is a common name in the Eastern Orthodox world. It is a shame she doesn't exemplify either one.


Related image


Before escaping to Africa, Saint Melania the Younger had left Rome in favor of a farm that she owned, where she lived a retired life. She would care for the sick, receive foreigners that came to visit her, and visit the imprisoned and exiled.

Melania's austere fasting practices intimidate me, I must admit. While I struggle to lose the weight the piled on me when I became disabled and my mobility was limited, I think about how Saint Melania's practice initially consisted of eating every other day, then developed into a routine in which she used to fast five days a week and would only eat on Saturdays and Sundays. Not only am I not capable of such an extreme schedule, I do not think I am in favor of it - certainly not for myself. I have other humiliations that stand in stead of her extremes of starvation.

I can think of one thing which we have in common. Apparently, Saint Melania had some artistic skill with calligraphy.

After spending 7 years in Africa, where she freed those 8,000 slaves, she traveled to Alexandria and then to Jerusalem, where she closed herself in a cell (which is pictured at the start of this blog.) She became famous for her holiness and many women came to her, to follow in her life and practices of mortification. At some point, she had 90 virgins and nuns accompanying her, and she provided for all their needs, temporal and spiritual.





In the end, it is recorded that she had a "pain in her side," and I wonder if it was a problem with her appendix? In any case, whatever it was, it was apparently deadly. The Bishop of Eleutheroupolis was called for, and from him she took the Eucharist, then she said goodbye to all her sisters, saying, "As the Lord wishes, so let it be," whereupon she died.

I am reminding myself not to become disheartened by my lack of abilities in so many areas, especially when compared to the saints. Much of what she was able to do was a result of the great wealth she inherited from her father, and this resource is something with which she was gifted. She is a perfect example of what one should do with whatever resources are at one's disposal in life, however. Every one of us can choose generosity and give whatever we are able. Great wealth or small, we may all do our part.

It also occurs to me that each of us, saint or not, is unique and has unique gifts and destinies. The best thing we can do is opt for a holy life, inasmuch as we are able, and to maintain a humble attitude about it. There will always be someone more righteous, more committed, more ascetic, etc. The fact that others are better than I is no reason to give up entirely! The point is to continue on, in the knowledge that we are not good enough, and being obedient to The Lord in spite of our shortcomings.




May Saint Melania inspire you today, on this day that is typically spent in revelry, over-indulgence and even drunkenness! I intend to spend the evening in quiet contemplation...between the outbursts of fireworks and rockets and all that noise, and will pray for a better adherence to my spiritual path, and for you, my brothers and sisters. I will also pray for our country and for the world. There are so very many problems that beset us now.

God bless us all

Silver Rose
Sannyasini Kaliprana


Resource links:

"Saint Melania" page on Catholic.org

"Melania the Younger" page on wikipedia

"Dec 17 – St Melania the Younger (383-439)" on CatholicIreland.net

"Venerable Melania the Younger of Rome" on Orthodox Church in America (OCA) website

"Melania the Younger" on Orthodox Wiki

"Saints and Feasts - Melania the Younger, Nun of Rome" on Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America website

"St. Francis de Sales Church - Patron Saints of Financial Generosity"

"Melania the Elder" on Wikipedia

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