This is a photo of the shrine to Saint Lucy the patron saint of eyes and eye problems. This shrine is in the front of a brownstone and is dedicated for the intention of one of the owners realtives.
I have one rule for when I visit a Catholic church. I always look for the statues. If they have St Lucy with her eyeballs on a plate then it is a "real" church. Otherwise it is too Protestant for me.
By the way this photo was taken by Glenn Kenny a sometimes contributor to Althouse who is a great film critic and whose blog "Some Came Running" is being added to my blog role.
I always see him sitting at the bar which is right next door to the shrine. A shrine of a different sort so to speak.
4 comments:
I'll have my own piece to say about Santa Lucia in the context of the Portola expedition, but it'll have to wait until tonight.
You live in a really cool neighborhood.
"I only have eyes for you."
When we were kids mom would make boiled wheat with honey for the feast of St. Lucy.
In the cathedrals and churches in Mexico when I was a child, I was fascinated by an area that was a wall of pinned up silver and gold body part replicas. Little medallions pinned on the wall behind the area where you light the votive candles. Some were bigger than others, I guess for the more wealthy petitioners.
There were eyeballs, feet, arms, torsos and all kinds of other body parts and symbols. If your father was paralyzed you placed legs. If the problem was blindness...eyeballs. I don't recall anything for gonnoreha.
The Mexican Catholics would buy the items, have them blessed and place them on the wall and hope that the prayers and blessings would cure the intended. I think this was a blending of pre-Colombian religion and European Catholicism. Very cool.
I was baptized in the Cathedral of Guadalupe and wear my baptismal medallion daily......just in case...you never know.
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