St Mary Preparatory High School - Eagle Yearbook (Orchard Lake, MI)

Page 23 text:

Folio I Folio IV General Introduction Customs of Summer Tradition, customs and culture Significant quotations on customs and culture Introduction to the religious customs of Poland Folio II Customs of Winter Introduction Advent Rogation Days Evenings of Spinning Eve of St. Andrew Feast of St. Barbara Feast of St. Nicholas Immaculate Conception Feast of St. Lucy Christmas The Vigil and Christmas Eve Supper Wafer Christmas Tree Santa Claus Midnight Mass Christmas Carols Christmas Day Marionette Theatre Nativity Plays The Twelve Days Feast of St. Stephen Feast of St. John Feast of St. Sylvester IV V VI VII ll III IV V. Introduction May In honor of Mary Marian Paintings and Shrines May Devotions May Processions SS. Philip and James Feast of St. Stanislaus Feast of St. Andrew Bobola Pentecost Fire Games Outings Constitution Day Corpus Christi Wreaths The Horse Festival Vigil of St. John The Harvest Harvest Festival Our Lady of Flowers Folio V Customs of Fall Introduction Feast of the Holy Rosary Feast of All Saints All Souls Day Feast of St. Hedwig ElQWhYe0f'S DOY I. Feast of St..Martin PIP 4'-mY Our Lady of the Candles Olhef Cl-'5I0m5 . Polish Hymns Follo Ill Polish Greeting Customs of Spring SUIUVCIUY Inf,-oducfion Polish Saints and Blessed Pre-Lenten Season Shrovetide and the Last Days Pre-Lenten Carnival Doughnuts Lent Ash Wednesday The Bitter Laments Feast of St. Casimir The Gregs The Annunciation Holy Week Palm Sunday Tenebrae Services Holy Thursday Good Friday Holy Saturday Easter Sunday The Easter Mass Hallow-Fare Easter eggs Easter Monday St. George's Day St. Adalbert Rogation Days-Feast of St. Mark With a picture of Our Lady of Czestochowa under his arm, the Polish immigrant stepped on American soil, trusting in God and confident of a bright future.

Page 22 text:

The Mass attended by the first large Polish immi- grant group to the United States was offered under a spreading oak tree at Panna Maria, Texas. We can come to know a country only through its people, and its 2 people only through their customs. They are a reflection of their every-day life, of their every hope and prayer, they are the expres- Xxx r Q sion of every basic human sentiment: love, thanksgiving, ioy, fear, hi' 4 fidelity, concern, forgiveness, prayer and devotion. They are the I f X X key to a national character, to an understanding and appreciation N l 4 X K of all those things which make the man, which influence him, and if l X l X X l which urge him onto struggle for his life, freedom, and happiness. ' tl l X,-' l The Eagle of l954 is our effort to present to America a key to Q l X ' X ffl the understanding ofthe American of Polish descent. Numbering 'Q Y hx over six million and constituting one-sixth of the Catholic popula- f l . tion of this country, these people, our people, we ourselves, feel ' ' 44 X l X, that the best of what was given to us by our ancestors can be given Bch to America and woven into its culture to enrich and beautify it. We 5 tx , are able to look at the cultures of other immigrations and appreciate X l the best in them, by sketching this picture of the customs of the l Americans of Polish ancestry we hope we can make easier for the , others an appreciation of the culture to which we are heirs. l i' The theme of The Eagle of i954 is then the body of Catholic K Religious Customs of Poland. It is the story of Polish feasts and fasts, X , of stern hardship and great gaiety, of plowing and praying and if T' X' -,A playing, of festival and dance, of religious service and unceasing 5 A X : devotion, oflthe Polish country-side and the modern metropolis. lt is , 12' Nw, LJ, H an effort to picture that characteristic beauty of the traditional ways of the life of a people who believe that their home is a true Church in miniature. The Pole has been a Catholic for one thousand years. He has never known infidelity to his religion, he has never deviated into error and schism, he has never rebelled against the authority of Rome. His whole life therefore is wholly permeated by the influence of his religion. For him work, religion and recreation are as insep- arable as life itself. Every phase of his daily routine of sowing, tend- ing, and reaping the crops is associated in some way with deep re- ligious beliefs. All his festivals are tied up with feasts in the Church Calendar and the periods of accomplishment of his work. Most holi- days are related to and named in honor of a Saint. Practically every day bears the name of some Saint which is frequently used instead of the numerical calendar designation. Countless proverbs incorpo- rating Saint's names mark the calendar of the peasant as they fore- tell the weather, give advice on farming or remark about phe- nomena in nature. Poland is a land of poetry and legend. No European country celebrates so many religious holidays, almost all of which are related in some way to the cycle of work on the land, because ninety-five per cent of Poland is Catholic and three-fourths of its population is rural. The home and the Church are the Pole's only interests. For Church which is the social center of the village he will dress as for a party. The piety of the Pole is practical not theoretical. For him God is a loving Father who helps him in his work, blesses his crops, cures his ills, provides his bread, gives him his children, and takes away his loved ones in death. God is not an abstract concept about whom he can make predications but a Person whom he can love, worship, and adore. Christ, Mary, and the Saints are intimately familiar fig- ures who come to his aid with counsel, guidance, sympathy and consolation. The Pole is often poor in wordly wealth but rich in spirit. He is proud and fiery, he is a hard worker who loves to play, though re- strained, he is capable of being free, realistic, hard-headed, sensi- ble, he believes in self-discipline, he is independent and much concerned about honor, and he has the genius for fusing every event of his intensely lived life into a deeply felt religious and national tradition. ' The history of Poland is not a history of external changes in rule and boundaries, but of internal integrity and solidarity in cus- tom and tradition. Because of its location in central Europe, it found itself at once the bridge and highway between East and West. Be- cause it had no natural boundaries, itwas constantly open to attack. Through the hundreds of years of its history it has endlessly and stubbornly resisted conquest. Almost all of its wars took on the ves- tige of religious Crusades for they were always fought in defense of not only a national entity but a religious heritage. The Turk, Tartar, Swede, Nazi, Communist-all tried to sever it from ,its Catholic foundation. Always the Pole resisted, as he continues to do today. The Pole iealously guards his religion, his language, and his customs. Because of its history, anyone who tries to take any of these away from him ia mortal enemyllho he thinks is trying to destroy him. The soil of Poland is a soil saturated with the blood of martyrs for whom religion and nationality-Catholic and Polish- were synonymous. The Pole has but one interpretation of life: the religious one. ln his country you don't see religion, in Poland you feel it. The Pole loves that which appeals to the aesthetic sense of the soul, he loves singing and dancing, processions and pilgrimages, flowers, warmth, color, pageantry and ceremony. That is why the richness of the Catholic liturgy and worship so suit his ebulient and effusive temperament. ln an essay entitled The Church in Poland Fr. I. M. Bocheriski, the eminent Polish Dominican, has pointed out that the Church of his native land is one of the greatest pillars of contemporary Cath- olic Culture. Though in its history it has provided as compared with other catholic countries, few great thinkers, little missionary activity, no great expeditions, it has accomplished in reality more than all of these taken together, because it has realized the end for which the Church was established. By creating a unified people living with faith and charity it has occupied itself with the very reason of its existence and not with its means, for essentially the work ofthe Church is not earthly fame, not a highly developed theology, not the conquest of foreign lands, but the salvation of souls. The Cath- olic characteristic of Poland is nothing like the splendor and mysti- cism of the Spanish nor anything like the profundity of French theory, words can't describe it, for it is fashioned of the intangible qualities of piety and devotion which are rooted in the heart and which meet the eye at every devotional service, at every prayer, every procession, in every Polish home. Through one thousand years the Church of Poland was able to create its own admirable and dis- tinctive body of custom, art, and Catholic life which on all levels seek to eFfe,ct a deeper realization of the teachings of the Gospel. The Poles, as Catholics, have many customs in common with other Catholic countries. Our treatment of their religious customs will omit those which are the same the world over, it will be limited only to those customs which have a distinctive aspect or flavor in Poland, or which are not at all found anywhere else in the Catholic culture of the world. We have chosen to describe these customs as they existed and still exist in Poland because those which have been brought to America are an extension or an adaptation of these original ones and can be more fully understood and appreciated in the light of the source from which they flowed and in which they had their origin. The mosaic of American culture is now in the process of being wrought. The descendants of the Spaniard, the Frenchman, the Eng- lishman, the lrishman, the German, the Pole, the Italian, the Greek, the Czech, the Swede, the Hollander are all lending the small color- ful fragments of their customs which will appear in the picture of beauty which will result. Without these roots of other traditions the tree of American culture will never give forth the full fruit for which it has the potential.

Page 24 text:

MAKE ,gf 2 ::- :-- -. A? E -...,1,- ,:,: gl : f55 ::5f 'Sis512g2:z ..1:,,: 5 U, V I , .:.,. : i ff E C33 .:L.4 Q O D ...t E an b:-::V. at ' 1 8 56