Arms Update #634284632217

 

This is it- make no mistake anymore.

Blazoned thus by u/MajoEsparza of the Reddit:

Argent, a bush enflamed proper, and upon a chief wavy Purpure a sword and a saw in saltire also proper, all within a bordure compony Sable and Argent.

Alternatively:

Per fess enhanced wavy Purpure and Argent, in chief a sword and saw in saltire, and in base a bush enflamed proper, all within a bordure compony Sable and Argent.

You could also specify how many pieces the bordure should have as "...of 24 pieces Sable and Argent" or "Argent and Sable", depending on whichever you want. You could also change the "bush enflamed" with "the burning bush".

This website also has become familiar with my vagaries in heraldic achievement. I'd like to think of each as intentional and meaningful. These last few have retained the same "charges" (items); the main changes have been in tincture (colors) and layout. Shield style also, which is less vital. 

The charges and field division pertain to my name, either directly or by allusion. 

Christopher: the wavy line resembling the river he crossed with Our Lord; 

Michael: the sword, also used by the Lithuanian vytis (knight, on their arms); 

Joseph, the saw;

Zelonis, the bush burning but not consumed. 

The burning bush has no intrinsic connection, save the false cognate of zelus (L, "zeal"); I do not know what my name means in Lithuanian. I put Hebrews 12:29 on my ordination card: "for our God is a consuming fire." I note that the Fathers of the Church often compared the Virgin Mother Mary to that bush aflame (pregnant) yet unconsumed (virginal).

I chose a two-handed saw to represent Joseph (my Confirmation name), suspecting that he and his Son sawed some wood together a few times. Consider, too, the synergy of God and man in the Incarnation and in the Christian life.

I was stationed in parishes dedicated to St. Joseph the Worker (curate, from March to December 2007) and St. Michael the Archangel (pastor, October 2016 to June 2019). My current parish, Saints Peter and Paul of Lehighton, PA, is near the Lehigh River. I often run and bike on windy river-adjacent trails.

I thought it neat that I received the finished product from fleurdelis.com today, when the 12th chapter of Hebrews was in the Office of Readings. This also happened, I think, with a previous revision. Is it odd, or is it God?

I felt moved to send my ordination card to the artists, noticing today that the original (which listed my First Mass at my home parish, where it didn't happen) cites Hebrews 13:29; reader, there is no 13:29. It was changed to 12:29 in the second card, which also omitted the actual location of the Mass (the former St. Mary Church in my hometown of Saint Clair, PA, now the site of St. Clare of Assisi Parish, where I resided while serving as a hospital chaplain from June 2014 to October 2016).

Silver reflects my second-place finish in my high school class: it serves as a sufficient background for the bush, termed "proper" because it is meant to represent the original (as far as we know; but isn't the plant red?). So what if I was second? God is and must be first.

Purple reflects my indecisiveness, as red is on the Lithuanian and Polish flags, and blue is Marian. I decided to combine them. 

The alternating black-white border alludes to 🎹 ; the reigning Bishop of Harrisburg, Timothy C. Senior, a skilled pianist, did it before me (vide infra).

That's my achievement, and I'm sticking to it. Face it: one of them will end up being my last!

On Planning and Providence

A few weeks ago, I noticed two tasks fell due on the same day: my tax preparer's request for my documents, and the A.D. Times' request for an article. To provide maximum bandwidth for both tasks, I decided to address one sooner than the other. 

My taxes won out because of this verse: “Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, whose mercy is very great, rather than into the hands of men” (1 Chronicles 21:13). Those who failed to receive this article would be more forgiving than Uncle Sam’s great-grandchildren. But then the verse inspired the article.

 

The above citation was King David’s response to the prophet Gad, who presented David three options of divine punishment for the census he had ordered. The king chose “the Lord’s own sword,” a three-day sweeping plague, over three years of famine or three months of his enemies’ pursuit.

 

What was the big deal over a census? Same as ever: leaders want to figure out the money and militia they can extract from their citizens. In the appropriately named Book of Numbers, the Lord Himself ordered Moses to count the Israelites for those very purposes.

 

In place of the firstborn of all Israel, the Lord took as tribute the priestly tribe of Levi, who were exempted from military service and therefore also from that census. Through Moses, the Lord directed the firstborn to give the Levites a quantity of shekels as a sacrificial offering for their redemption, and, practically speaking, as part of the Levites’ sustenance.

 

The chain of charges continues: To obtain everything necessary for its budget (salaries, utilities, goods and services, etc.), our diocese assigns a fair standard percentage from the parishes, which in turn do what they can to provide for their own needs in addition to the above assessment.

 

The Diocese requires from parishes annual spiritual and fiscal reports to guide future plans. The recent “Disciple-Maker Index” intends to help parishes and individual disciples consider how we are doing by the important metric of what we are doing.

 

Did the Lord order these censuses? If not, will we lose a third of our faithful in punishment? As it is, surveys estimate only a third of self-identified Catholics attend Mass and/or believe in the Eucharistic Presence of Christ offered therein.

 

Here we are following a maxim of Saint Teresa of Avila: “The bread of self-knowledge should be eaten with every meal,” which has this modern parallel: “The room for improvement should be the largest room in the house.”

 

With due respect to David’s doings and resultant prophecies, I do not deem assessments to defy divine providence. It is awesome to think how much and how long God has trusted us to continue the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery in the world.

 

Our modern efforts to plan things aren’t so modern after all. We still would rather fall by the hand of the Lord, whose requirements are matched, if not surpassed, by His graces.

Arms Update #634284632216

Nearly ⅔ of the way through the Year of Our Lord 2023 and I'm posting here for the first time, mostly to change my header to reflect yet another coat of arms:

The blazon (heraldic description) reads: "Tenné, a bend sinister wavy argent surmounted by a burning bush purpure, in dexter chief a sword in bend argent, hilt vert and or, and in base a two-handed saw argent in bend, handles or; overall, a bordure company argent and sable."

Arma virumque cano

This post concerning my coat of arms is the background for the current update of the same, which is the work of the same artist. While my current arms are found in the header to this blog, I attach them here for easier and hopefully clearer reference.

Modifications from the previous version are as follows: the more customary style of galero; the return to the earliest motto (Heb 12:29; cf. Dt 4:24 et al) found on my ordination card and a huge stack of letterheads I may never use up; the removal of the lily from the St. Joseph-themed charge, for simplicity's sake; the relocation of the burning bush “in chief” (centered) and quite prominent on the shield; the slight widening of the "bordure compony" (composite border of sable and argent), and the tinctures (colors) in the main part of the shield.

The tinctures are the most dramatic change. I consider purpure a blend of the red and blue in my previous shield, a tribute to both that becomes its own expression. It is a royal hue—more the Roman purple of Lent than the indigo of Advent.

The tenné below is not a tincture, properly speaking, but, in heraldic terms, a “stain” infrequently used in heraldry, only among the English and a few others.

The color originally was more of an orange, but I changed it to a tan approaching leather; both are attested in heraldry, as infrequently as it is attested at all. It made me wonder whether the color of Tennessee football and other sports was related to the name of the stain, Tenné, but it doesn’t seem to have any connection. Not the first stretch I’ve made. 

For one thing, I just like the color orange.

Yes, it was Frank Sinatra’s favorite and "happiest" color: did I just adopt it myself in tribute to him?  Not entirely, but his preference of it is not unimportant to me. Orange factors highly in my life, as a color of several cars over the years, and various personal items besides. For me it’s not the new black (impossible for a priest!), but a suitable sidekick.

Heraldic  a stain was used as a denigration of the bearer’s status. I’ve denigrated myself enough over the years, but would I want that fact to reflect in something so personal, so emblematic, so final (😆)?

Trust me: I’ve been thinking about other revisions since this declaration of arms. But the one thing I don’t want to, ahem, part with, I have not mentioned yet: it is the wavy bend sinister, the undulating dividing line that rises from the viewer’s bottom left to the top right. It both parts the purple and tenné and personally symbolizes Saint Christopher, as the river across which he carried the Christ child.

Another reason for the tenné is its resemblance to Amber, the rock used in Lithuanian and Polish jewelry. A darker version of the stain provides more of a contrast to the gold of the burning bush. Not that the orange is necessarily inappropriate, as I’ve held onto the earlier rendition with that color and I might use it sometimes. The difference is slight.