Dog Days, Part 1

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The star Sirius is part of the constellation called the “Large Dog” and is seen during the hot, sultry days of July and August.

The phrase “dog days” refers to the sultry days of summer, especially in mid-late July and August. The Romans referred to the dog days as diēs caniculārēs and associated the hot weather with the star Sirius. They considered Sirius to be the “Dog Star” because it is the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major (Large Dog); the association of the star Sirius with summer heat is found in an early Greek poem, Works and Days by Hesiod in 700 BC.

The Canis Major constellation was classically described as Orion’s dog. The Ancient Greeks thought that Sirius’s emanations could affect dogs adversely, making them behave abnormally during the long, hot “dog days.” The excessive panting of dogs in hot weather was thought to place them at risk of excessive dehydration and disease. In extreme cases, a foaming dog might have rabies, which could infect and kill humans whom they had bitten. For the ancient Egyptians, Sirius appeared just before the Nile’s flooding season, so they used the star as an indicator of the flood and associated the star with water and the wet condition of the land. Greeks and Romans, however, associated the appearing of the star with the summer wildfire season when dry fields of crops could easily be set afire by stray sparks. Their association with the star was not wet and watery but hot and dry.

Astrology associates the constellation Cancer with water and those born June 22-July 22 find it hard to achieve anything unless they feel safe and comfortable in their home lives. As such, they tend to be great at creating home environments for those that they love – both emotionally and physically. The constellation Leo (July 23-August 22) is associated with fire and those born during this period are considered theatrical and passionate people who love to bask in the spotlight and celebrate themselves. They are natural leaders.

Western Christian church calendars even noted the Dog Days. According to the 1552 edition of the The Book of Common Prayer, the “Dog Daies” begin July 6 and end August 17. The 1559 edition of the Book of Common Prayer indicates readings for July 7 and end August 18, the beginning and the end of the “Dog Daies.” This corresponds very closely to the lectionary of the 1611 edition of the King James Bible (also called the Authorized version of the Bible) which indicates the Dog Days beginning on July 6 and ending on September 5.

Deposition of the Sash of the Mother of God & The Visitation

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A 17th-century Russian icon of the Deposition of the Sash of the Mother of God.

July 2 has long been a feast day of the Mother of God in both the Eastern and Western Churches although the feasts each had a somewhat different emphasis.

According to legend, the Mother of God died and was buried by the apostles in a tomb in Jerusalem. Three days later, Thomas the Apostle, who had been delayed and unable to attend the funeral, arrived and asked to have one last look at the Virgin Mary. When he and the other apostles arrived at Mary’s Tomb, they found that her body was missing. According to some accounts, the Virgin Mary appeared at that time and gave her belt (also called sash or cincture) to the Apostle Thomas. Another version of the story recounts how the Mother of God gave her sash to one of the women tending her as she was dying and the sash was passed down in that woman’s family from generation to generation.

Traditionally, the sash was reportedly made by the Virgin Mary herself, out of camel hair. Whether it was given to St. Thomas or the woman tending the dying Virgin, the sash was kept at Jerusalem for many years. It was brought to Constantinople in the 5th century, together with the robe of the Virgin Mary. The robe and the sash were both deposited in the Church of St. Mary at Blachernae. The sash was embroidered with gold thread by the Empress Zoe, the wife of Emperor Leo VI, in gratitude for a miraculous cure. The anniversary of this deposition of the sash of the Mother of God at Blachernae is celebrated every year by the Orthodox Church on July 2.

Later, the Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos (1347–1355) donated the sash to the monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos, where it remains to this day. (I was given a relic of the sash on Mt. Athos by a good friend of mine; I highly prize it. I have also been given a small stone from Golgotha by a parishioner and a small stone from the tomb of the Mother of God in Jerusalem as an ordination gift.)

July 2 was the traditional date for the Western Church to celebrate the Visitation of the Mother of God and St. Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist (Luke 1:39-57). Feeling the presence of his Christ in the womb of Mary, John, in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, jumped with excitement. Elizabeth greeted her cousin Mary as “the Mother of my Lord,” realizing that the baby was not just kicking in her womb for no reason. (Many western Christians moved the Visitation feast to May 31 in 1969.) Keeping the Visitation on July 2, however, strikes me as a fitting way to promote unity between Eastern and Western Christians and to foster goodwill among the adherents of a common, “mere” Christianity.

Read more about the Visitation here and here. You can read more about the Deposition here. See Mere Christianity here.

A contemporary icon depicting the Mother of God giving her sash to St. Thomas the Apostle after her Dormition (Assumption).

Corpus Christi: Wafer vs. Bread

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Contemporary hosts made for Holy Communion are often whole wheat and do not appear as glistening white as wafers produced with white flour.

Wafers have been used for Holy Communion by Western Christians since the late 1200s. Before that, unleavened bread–made without yeast–was used. (Western Christians adopted the use of bread without yeast in imitation of the matzah–unleavened bread–used at Passover and the Last Supper in the Gospels. The matzah was not like the crackers now sold in grocery stores; matzah and the unleavened bread used by Western Christians was more like tortilla or gyro bread.) Eastern Christians have always used bread made with yeast.

I remember in the 1970s how people joked, “It takes more faith to believe that a wafer is bread than it does to believe that it becomes the Body of Christ!” This was because the wafers do not look like anything most people think of when you ask them what bread looks like. It turns out this is because wafers are NOT technically bread at all! Both are baked goods made with flour but they are not the same just as cake and crackers are also baked goods made from flour but are not bread. Bread, by definition, is made from dough and must be kneaded and formed by hand; wafer is made from batter and is never touched until after it is baked. The first reference to Western Christians using wafers instead of bread are from the late 1200s and many people objected precisely that wafers were “not real bread.”

People also objected that the wafers were not made by monks as priests as the unleavened bread used at Mass had been. People did not think that layfolk–even nuns–should be baking the bread used for Holy Communion. (It did become common later for nuns to make wafers for churches to buy and this was a way for nuns to support themselves. Since the 1960s, making wafers for Holy Communion has become a big business that you can read about here.)

It is unclear how rapidly wafer-use spread among Western Christians but they became used uniformly across Europe by the late 1600s. Why did wafers become so popular? One reason might be that wafers did not spoil as quickly as real bread, even if it was made without yeast; this made it easier to keep the Blessed Sacrament reserved. Also, some people thought the bread or wafer used for Communion should be glistening white and it is easier to control the color of wafers than bread. Some people thought that the wafers never being touched until after they were baked was emblematic of Christ’s birth from the Virgin Mary; these people favored the use of wafers rather than bread that was touched as it was kneaded and formed.

It became standard to make a large wafer for the priest to elevate for people to reverence at the Elevation and just before Communion; the wafers that would be consumed by the layfolk were much smaller discs that were coin-sized. Preachers suggested that the coin-size wafers should remind people that God was like a vineyard owner who could hire people all day long and would pay all the workers the same coin at the end of the day (Matthew 20:1-16).

Want to know more? There are three books about the different kinds of bread used for Holy Communion:

1. Fractio Panis by Barry Craig (Germany, 2011).
2. Bread and the Liturgy: The Symbolism of Early Christian and Byzantine Bread Stamps by George Galavaris (Wisconsin, 1970).
3. The Bread of the Eucharist: Early Christian Eucharist and the Azyme Controversy, by Edward Martin (Rome, 1970).

The elevation of the Host in a contemporary celebration of the Solemn Mass by Dominican religious.