The 8th August was the feast of St Dominic (it's the fourth in the old
calendar). I spent it at the IOSOT conference for work. IOSOT stands
for International Organisation for the Study of the Old Testament. The
society has a congress every three years, and this year it was in
Munich. I was very excited about this, I'd never visited Bavaria before
but felt sure it would be full of the Baroque Catholicism I love, and of
good heavy food and beer. I was not disappointed.
I'd also been hoping that my visit to Bavaria could help lay a few
demons at rest, with respect to the new pontificate. More on that story
later.
There has been a heat wave in Munich. It's been VERY, VERY, hot. The
conference did not have air-conditioning and by day four the inmates of
the book exhibit were tired and unhappy. I'd been planning to sneak out
for Mass at the Dominican church. But in all honesty I was just too tired
and zombified to do so. I was moderately fed up about this.
At about 4 o'clock, when I was almost fully catatonic, a small man came
into the book exhibit. He had a beard, a rucksack, and was barefoot
(which I didn't notice at first). I was vaguely aware that he was going
around the room talking to the publishers, but beyond that my mind
remained as utterly blank as it had been before. A few minutes later he
arrived at my stand, and held a small card out for me to look at. I sat
inert for a while longer before coming to. The man asked me what was on
the card. I saw that it was a picture of the Turin Shroud. So I said ,
it's 'The Turin Shroud'. He said something to the effect of; 'yes, but it
should really be called the "Christ" shroud, because it's Christ's
shroud not Turin's, the latter being a place'. I nodded in agreement, I
could not - and had no wish to - fault his logic. Then he said the card
was his gift to me. I said thank-you very much. He then offered me
another card, with a truly ghastly picture of Jesus on it. I politely
declined and said I liked the shroud better and to take two of his cards would be greedy. Then he said
'thank-you, you very nice. Goodbye', and pottered off around the room.
By this point my brain had woken up and I took more notice of my recent
conversation partner. I noticed his barefootedness, and beard, and
simple and direct approach. I also noticed that most people were
instantly refusing any conversation with him. This didn't seem to bother
him much and in a few minutes he was gone.
I sat and reflected for a while. My chief reflection was that had I been
in any way awake, or any less inert, I would not have been in any way
receptive to this man. I would have turned him away instantly. I'd have presumed him to be crazy, and indeed he may be so. As it was
I was given a small grace, for I also reflected that this man had asked
nothing of me. He was not a beggar - at least he did not beg anything
of me - and he did not push me to say, or react to, anything. It didn't occur to me to offer him anything in return, and this did not bother him. No, this man
had quite simply brought me Christ, on my feast day when I had been unable to go to Mass, and because of my inertia I had found
myself able to accept him. This made me well up a tiny bit -
the heat was getting to me - so I said a few Aves for the man, and
tucked the picture away. Here it is:
In the evening there was another feast day treat. The Archbishop of
Munich, represented by an auxiliary, hosted a full-on Bavrarian beer
garden evening for the whole conference. It was brilliant. I stuffed my
face with pork steaks, bratwurst, sauerkraut, kartoffelsalat, tomatoes,
pretzels, senf, obadzda, radishes, and sweet roasted almonds, and I
drank a lot beer... which was brought round regularly. After a week of
VERY tedious receptions where they'd served WATER on arrival followed by 40
minutes of speeches in German before the merest sip of a white wine spritzer I was worried the Archbishop would give us more of the same. But I'd had a large beer
and two pretzels within seconds of arrival, and the bishop's speech was two minutes long and mostly said 'drink, eat, be merry'. It was great, and I
could not stop smiling for most of the evening. It was partly all the
delicious food and beer, partly the oompah music - for which I have a high
tolerance - and partly that I knew this
exhausting - but useful - conference was nearly over.
It was a great way to spend my feast day, and I enjoyed the excellent company of a colleague from another publishing house and a few sundry academics during it. Here is one of the many plates of food I ate:
Sadly I can't find anything to link St Dominic to Bavaria. But I did go to the Dominican church in Munich on Sunday for the High Mass (because it was in the international Catholic language of Latin and not the alienating local language which I wouldn't have understood), and they we celebrating Dominic on the Sunday as well, so that was nice for me.
If you too feel like getting in the Bavarian mood I recommend you make a German potato salad. It's like an English one, but with more cream, gherkins, maybe some egg. There are many recipes online, I'm sure you don't need one from me. I'm also not going to tell you how to grill a Bratwurst, but you should do that too.