Burying A Saint To Sell A House?
This train of thought arises as my wife and I are currently selling our house. I often ask Mary and Saint Joseph to pray for us when we make decisions that affect our home and family (and other times as well), and this case is no different.
However, I've read about a practice some people have, in addition to (or, heaven help us, instead of) prayer, of burying a statue of Saint Joseph in the yard when selling a home. Seems like superstition on its face – but one could, I suppose, imagine an argument in which you saw the act as a method of facilitating prayer. As you bury the statue, you turn your mind toward the saint, and in beseeching him to pray for you, you turn your mind, of course, to God. And once the statue is buried, the knowledge of its presence could continue to return your mind to God, which could be important during a stressful and very matter-and-money--oriented process like selling a house.
Illustrating how prevasive this practice has become, the very secular Bankrate.com Web site has an article recommending the practice, and even quotes a Catholic who tackles the superstition versus devotion question.
Here's an interesting history and description of the practice of snopes.com – a site which debunks urban legends.
And Catholic.com's This Rock says, with its customary firmness, of the practice: "What you have been told is a superstition, which is a violation against the First Commandment (CCC 2110). Burying statues to sell your house is not an approved Catholic practice. If you want to ask St. Joseph for his intercession in selling your house, that's fine. But don't go burying statues of him for this purpose."
So, your take, superstition or tool for focusing prayer? I'd say, despite the fact that one could rationalize it, that it seems more a superstition than a form of prayer… However, despite This Rock's black-and-white take on the issue, I imagine there are a rich range of Catholic devotions across a number of cultural traditions that are not formally "approved" but are sincere devotions and generally accepted by the laity and clergy alike. And I also can't help but wonder if some our evangelical and protestant readers might not wonder why I'm distinguishing between a practice like this and some of our other more standard Catholic devotions (statues, rosary beads, lighting devotional candles, etc.)? My answer to a challenge on any of those practices would be that they are tools for focusing prayer, which I suppose is no different than what the Saint Joseph Real Estate statue proponents would say, but … it feels different.
However, I've read about a practice some people have, in addition to (or, heaven help us, instead of) prayer, of burying a statue of Saint Joseph in the yard when selling a home. Seems like superstition on its face – but one could, I suppose, imagine an argument in which you saw the act as a method of facilitating prayer. As you bury the statue, you turn your mind toward the saint, and in beseeching him to pray for you, you turn your mind, of course, to God. And once the statue is buried, the knowledge of its presence could continue to return your mind to God, which could be important during a stressful and very matter-and-money--oriented process like selling a house.
Illustrating how prevasive this practice has become, the very secular Bankrate.com Web site has an article recommending the practice, and even quotes a Catholic who tackles the superstition versus devotion question.
Here's an interesting history and description of the practice of snopes.com – a site which debunks urban legends.
And Catholic.com's This Rock says, with its customary firmness, of the practice: "What you have been told is a superstition, which is a violation against the First Commandment (CCC 2110). Burying statues to sell your house is not an approved Catholic practice. If you want to ask St. Joseph for his intercession in selling your house, that's fine. But don't go burying statues of him for this purpose."
So, your take, superstition or tool for focusing prayer? I'd say, despite the fact that one could rationalize it, that it seems more a superstition than a form of prayer… However, despite This Rock's black-and-white take on the issue, I imagine there are a rich range of Catholic devotions across a number of cultural traditions that are not formally "approved" but are sincere devotions and generally accepted by the laity and clergy alike. And I also can't help but wonder if some our evangelical and protestant readers might not wonder why I'm distinguishing between a practice like this and some of our other more standard Catholic devotions (statues, rosary beads, lighting devotional candles, etc.)? My answer to a challenge on any of those practices would be that they are tools for focusing prayer, which I suppose is no different than what the Saint Joseph Real Estate statue proponents would say, but … it feels different.
posted by Ernesto at 9:38 AM
10 Comments:
I guess this is where the Protestant/evangelical should chime in and remark that there might be some sense in extending the First Commandment to religious effigies of all sorts. Our fleshy nature inclines us to idolatry. If we use something to access God, we tend to attach to the thing that we can touch and see more than the thing we can't. A superstition is nothing more than psychologically embuing a physical object or behavior with supernatural qualities. The adoration of saints seems harmless and natural, but when the "saints" become mystical taps for power that we can carry in our pockets, how is that different from carrying a rabbit's foot or seeking counsel from astrological charts?
While I agree that the burying the saint practice seems very much like superstition, I don't think that statues or the use of them in religious practice is dangerous because of our tendency toward idolatry. For me (and well before I was a Catholic, or a Christian for that matter) the crucifix, the statues of saints, the stations of the cross in relief at Church and the many paintings depicting Christ, his family and his life on earth have always struck me so powerfully, humbled me and have helped me paint my own little picture of God and the all his unseen work, however inaccurate that picture is. It's so hard to wrap your head around God and his creation, particularly as a child without any religious education. These images that I remembered visiting churches with school age friends were what stuck with me, what kept me searching long after all my questions about religion went unanswered by cynical family and friends. I see the point you make about becoming attached to the objects instead of creating a direct line with God, but it never felt like that to me. I feel that if I didn't have those memories of those images, those saints made of stone, I might not have kept looking. I might not have continued to be compelled. I think I would have made my way to God eventually, but maybe not as soon as I did- because the words I had occasionally heard in Mass meant nothing to me. But the images were burned in my mind and I couldn't shake them. I knew there was a message in there for me and I wanted to figure it out. That's how God got to me and kept me in his fold.
A supersition? Absolutely! An approved Catholic practice? Absolutely not! I do believe though, that in doing such a thing a person is likely to be reminded of St. Joseph every time they walk by the spot and to ask him to intercede. I think it can bring someone to prayer, but there's no question that it is superstition.
Kristen's eloquent note reminds me that my heart was not really set on arguing this point too hard. I love the statues too. The closest thing you tend to get in an evnagelical Sunday School is felt board stories, plastic Bible figures and comical, plush Noah's Arks (how ironic is that?) These do not inspire the awe of the classic church iconography.
The world would be a poorer place without the gothic cathedrals. But the tendency to excess in all things has to be guarded against. In the Protestant churches the shift to austerity was so pronounced that some reformers, like Zwingli, abandoned the use of musical instruments. Music itself became suspect.
Still, the totemic quality of Catholic saints is what makes them adapt so easily to pagan syncretistic groups like Santeria. I guess the more treasure you have, the more you have to guard it.
Your point about the Santeria brings me back to the burying the saint in the yard thing. Ernesto and I were talking about that and how it seemed very voodoo-esque to us. Burying it upside down and all in a certain kind of material...all very creepy to me. There will always be people who have to take a good thing too far. I agree with Hector that people would be inclined to think about St. Joseph when they walked the spot where he was buried, but I think it's more appropriate to have the statue inside the house where it can be seen. Of course it's completely inappropriate for my house because my son would be likely to use it as a soccer ball, and I don't think saint Joseph would appreciate that.
Kristen,
if your son uses the statue as a soccer ball, then goes on Saturday and scores two goals, then a new tradition will start. you can then sell "Soccer Josephs"
Burying statues - that's a new one for me. I'm all for inspirational statues, art, music, architecture and so on. But to the extent they distract us from being centered on Christ, then we have taken them too far.
By the way, we are not planning on burying any statues, though we certainly ask daily that both holy parents pray to their divine Son on our behalf. And as Rick reminded me to ask during an e-mail exchange off-blog, I would be grateful for any prayers that our readers might be willing to offer that this go well for our family and for potential buyers, and that we use the stress of selling a house to remind us of the gratitude we should feel for having a house to sell, and that that gratitude spurs us to devote more time and treasure to making sure as many people as possible have a decent place to sleep and a good meal to eat every night.
I suppose every religious tradition has its "spells" that are designed to focus or accumulate divine favor in some manner or the other. The simplest one is simply prayer, but the problem with prayer is that it's roughly equivalent to work, i.e. ditch digging or housekeeping, and just about as romantic as that when it's done consistently by someone who has been on the job for a while.
I still remember one of the life lessons I learned from my dad that had to do with ditch digging. We were actually digging trenches for electrical lines on a farm where we lived in the 1970s. He said the trick to ditch digging is to take it easy and stay with it a long time. He learned this when he was a young man working on a WPA project. His first day on the job, there was an old black man in the same ditch. My dad was a college student. The depression made such strange workmates. The black man noticed that my dad was "attacking" the dirt with the shovel. He showed him how to take each shovelful slowly and treat each one as a separate task. This created the impression of a rather laconic approach to ditch digging, but at the end of the day, it was the old black men, accustomed to the work, who had cut the longest lines.
There's probably a parable in there somewhere.
Has any one ever heard of burying a Bible on a piece of land, then praying over the spot..prior to building a house on it?
A co-worker had just recently built a house,,strange things have been occuring.
She received via US Postal Service a letter from her builder saying that had taken it upon themselves to bury the Bible and pray over the site prior to starting the building.
She couldn't believe they had done this !!!
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