Eventually Peter Paul merged with Cadbury, which later merged with Hershey. Not only is there a recipe for the Mounds and Almond Joy confections on the internet, but you can also bake a cake out of them, with recipes to be found here and here.
Personally, I can't think of a better way to celebrate this feast than to bake a cake out of something that says "Peter Paul," don't you think?
Today, Catholics of the Western tradition celebrate the Feast of the Sacred Heart.
Outside of devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary, there is none more popular or more identified with the traditional piety of Catholic life than this feast, occurring on Friday of the week following the Feast of Corpus Christi. It was on that earlier feast when a Novena to the Sacred Heart would begin, culminating in the Mass and Office of today.
“Christ’s open side and the mystery of blood and water were meditated upon, and the Church was beheld issuing from the side of Jesus, as Eve came forth from the side of Adam. It is in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that we find the first unmistakable indications of devotion to the Sacred Heart. Through the wound in the side, the wounded Heart was gradually reached, and the wound in the Heart symbolized the wound of love.” (1917 Catholic Encyclopedia)
There were various monastic communities who took up the devotion since the eleventh century, but the real tip of the biretta has always gone to St Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-90), a Visitation nun who had a vision. While praying before the Blessed Sacrament, she saw Our Lord with his heart beating openly, and the sight of it all sent her into a spell of ecstasy. “He disclosed to me the marvels of his Love and the inexplicable secrets of his Sacred Heart.” And so it was, with local approval, that the Feast itself was first officially celebrated in Rennes, France. This was followed by papal approval, with official texts for the Mass and Office, in Poland and Portugal. Its popularity spread across Europe. Then in 1856, Pope Pius IX established the Feast of the Sacred Heart as obligatory for the whole Church, to be celebrated on the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi. The octave was suppressed during the 1955 calendar reforms of Pope Pius XII, along with most existing octaves*, and yet the novena that precedes this feast is rising in popularity among traditional Catholics in the West.
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But perhaps the finest explanation of this vision can be found in an episode of The X-Files, a detective series that ran on The Fox Network for nine years, and to this day has a formidable cult following. It is from the series' sixth season and is entitled "Milagro" (6X18), originally airing on April 18, 1999. In the story, there are people murdered with their hearts mysteriously removed by hand. FBI Special Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) visits a Catholic church, and coming across the image of the Sacred Heart, she runs into this unsavory fellow who explains the story behind the image to her. A piece of the dialogue, from the mysterious writer named Philip Padgett (John Hawkes), describes a vision:
I often come here to look at this painting. It’s called “My Divine Heart” after the miracle of Saint Margaret Mary. Do you know the story ... The revelation of the Sacred Heart? Christ came to Margaret Mary, his heart so inflamed with love that it was no longer able to contain its burning flames of charity. Margaret Mary ... so filled with divine love herself, asked the Lord to take her heart ... and so he did, placing it alongside his until it burned with the flames of his passion. Then he restored it to Margaret Mary, sealing her wound with the touch of his blessed hand.
His account portrays an almost sensuous quality to the Saint's reaction to this vision, in a way that one might rarely hear or read anywhere else. It is a sign that perhaps the influence of Christendom has not entirely faded from the popular culture, not to mention the realm of folk religion, with images created in tattoo parlors.
A common practice in many Catholic homes until the mid-20th century (including mine), was the "Enthronement of the Sacred Heart," in which the family placed the appropriate image of Christ on the wall, and together recited the necessary prayers, pledging the consecration of the family and the home to Him, in return for special graces. Fisheaters has a good explanation of the whole kit and caboodle, just in case it makes a comeback.
It could happen.
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*The suppression of most octaves in the liturgical calendar by Pius XII has recently become a matter of much debate, attributing it to an overzealous agenda within the Liturgical Movement. However, it may have also been the result of conflicts between at least some of those octaves, and commemorations of equal or greater rank occurring at the same time -- but, that's another story.
In the tradition of our Mother the Church, the days of the week are venerated, each for a different purpose. An example would be the reservation of Saturday to honor the Blessed Mother. No less worthy of note is the association of Thursday with the Holy Eucharist. For it was on a Thursday night that Our Lord instituted this Great Sacrament, changing the bread and wine into His Sacred Body and Precious Blood, the bloodless foretaste of His bloody Sacrifice on Calvary the following day.
The gift of this Bread of Angels would be cause for great celebration, but for the larger context of the Paschal Triduum, where the suffering and death of Our Lord precedes the Resurrection as the Prophets foretold. And yet the Church would so wish to shed a spotlight on this solitary Gift, that She has enabled events in Her history to set aside this solemn remembrance, on a Thursday immediately after Paschaltide.
Such a remembrance began with a vision.
From her childhood, a young Belgian orphan girl named Juliana (1193-1258) was especially devoted to the Blessed Sacrament. From her home in the convent of Mont Cornillon, near Liege (where she eventually took the veil), she longed for a feast to mark its place in salvation history. This desire was marked in a vision, where she saw Mother Church, under the appearance of a full moon with a dark spot upon Her. It was this blemish that was discerned to be the missing devotion for which she longed. Her appeal was first made to the Bishop of Liege, and onward to one prelate after the next, eventually reaching the Holy Father himself, then Pope Urban IV. The good bishop declared the Thursday immediately following the Easter season as dedicated to the feast in 1246.
As if a vision were not enough, this feast was further inspired by a miracle.
In 1263, a priest on pilgrimage was having his doubts about the Real Presence. But Peter of Prague found reason to set those doubts aside while celebrating Mass in the town of Bolsena, when the Host he consecrated started bleeding. Pope Urban was in Orvieto at the time, and the good Father brought the Host to him. It was reserved in the Cathedral of that city, where it remains today.
The following year, Pope Urban extended the observance of Corpus Christi to the entire Western church.
Urban then turned to a great theologian of his day, no less than Thomas Aquinas, commissioning him to compose the liturgical texts and hymns for the Feast. From the pen of the Angelic Doctor came four of the great hymns we know today, including Pange, lingua, which is also sung at the end of Mass on Holy Thursday. Perhaps his greatest work for this occasion was the sequence hymn Laude, Sion. It is here that the theological precision for which the good Doctor was known, and the sober character that is native to the Roman liturgy, was married to a description of almost Byzantine splendor, bringing forth a poem of love and devotion to the awesome Mystery:
Sub diversis speciebus,
signis tantum, et non rebus,
latent res eximiae.
Caro cibus, sanguis potus:
manet temen Christus totus,
sub utraque specie.
Here beneath these signs are hidden
Priceless things to sense forbidden;
Sign, not things are all we see:
Blood is poured and flesh is broken,
Yet in either wondrous token
Christ entire we know to be.
In the centuries leading to the present day, the most popular aspect of the Feast continues to be the Procession following the Mass, when the Holy Eucharist, reserved in the monstrance, is carried by the priest in formal procession. In many locales, the festivity carries into the main street of the town. Often it is preceded by flower-bearers spreading rose petals upon the ground, along a route that may be decorated with flowers and festive wreaths. This is followed by a complement of acolytes and other sacred ministers, culminating in the celebrant bearing the monstrance, under the protection of a canopy, and flanked on both sides by twin thurifers, who alternate their perfuming of the air surrounding the sacred Host.
The feast is met at its conclusion, by another beginning. On this day, a Novena to the Sacred Heart is traditionally begun, culminating in a feast of its own on Friday of the following week.
Tu, qui cuncta scis et vales,
qui nos pascis hic mortales:
tuus ibi commensales,
coheredes et sodales
fac sanctorum civium.
Thou who all things can and knoweth,
Who on earth such food bestoweth,
Grant us with thy saints, though lowest,
Where the heav'nly feast thou showeth,
Fellow saints and guests to be.
Amen. Alleluia.
PHOTOS: Celebrations of the Feast in Greenville, South Carolina, USA (First Annual Southeastern Eucharistic Congress), in Antigua, Guatemala (Infrogmation), in Poznań, Poland (Radomil), and in Vaduz, Liechtenstein (Joyce Chan).
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Today the Roman Rite, and much of western Christianity, celebrates Trinity Sunday. What began as a local feast in some parts of the Western church in the Middle Ages, was added to the universal Roman calendar by Pope John XXII (1316–1334), and designated as the first Sunday after Pentecost.
Three folds of the cloth,
yet only one napkin is there,
Three joints in the finger,
but still only one finger fair,
Three leaves of the shamrock,
yet no more than one shamrock to wear,
Frost, snowflakes and ice,
all in water their origin share,
Three Persons in God:
to one God alone we make our prayer.
(An ancient Irish prayer)
The Reverend Doctor Daniel Meeter is pastor of Old First Reformed Church in Brooklyn, New York. He writes:
We continue with what the reformed Roman calendar refers to in English as "ordinary time." This is ostensibly a faithful rendering, if not a literal one, of the Latin "tempus per annum;" literally, "time during the year." There was a time you might have heard the following Sunday referred to incorrectly as "the Umpteenth Sunday of the Year" or the "Umpteenth Sunday of the Church Year," which it is not, but rather, the Umpteenth Sunday of the regular part of the Church year. Thus, "ordinary" refers to that which is part of the regular order (the words "ordinary" and "order" having the same root) of the year.
Personally, this writer would just as soon they referred to Sundays After Epiphany and/or Pentecost, which some Anglican churches still do, even as they have adopted a more contemporary Book of Common Prayer, and a three-year-cycled lectionary.
Today, the Christian world celebrates the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.
Eventually Peter Paul merged with Cadbury, which later merged with Hershey. Not only is there a recipe for the Mounds and Almond Joy confections on the internet, but you can also bake a cake out of them, with recipes to be found here and here.
