Swallows Return ~ The Lenten Spring

The Swallows which have been wintering in Central and South America since last autumn, started their spring migration back north in January. We might know the story of the Swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano Mission in California in time for the Feast of St. Joseph, March 19. It will be a little while yet before they arrive in North East Pennsylvania, but they are on their way.

Swallows are almost magical, acrobatic birds which seem to land only long enough to feed their chicks. Otherwise they are in full flight, swirling in great flocks called kettles. A swallow can fly upwards of 600 miles in one day, most of the time picking insects out of the air. 

At Lourdes in France, at night when thousands of pilgrims are in procession and carrying lighted candles, the air above fills with hundreds of swallows feeding on the insects drawn to the light. A pilgrim can't help but feel this great sense of connection to God's wild-world: the stone cave and the Lourdes spring, candle flame along the River Gave and the whirling swallows which seem to stitch together the pilgrim prayer and heaven. Very neat!

Psalm 84:3-4 references swallows while telling of the Jerusalem temple's open-air beauty; how the soul, full of longing and love, feels at home there: 

My soul is longing and  yearning,

is yearning for the courts of the Lord.

My heart and my soul ring out their joy

to God, the living God.

The sparrow herself finds a home

and the swallow a nest for her brood;

she lays her young by your altars,

Lord of  hosts, my King and my God.

For the Christian furthermore, the swallow symbolizes the soul crying out for spiritual food: 

• The Gospel Word,
• An en-visioned homily that challenges and inspires,
• The sayings of the saints,
• Christ's Eucharistic Gift,
• The food of God in nature's symbolic encounters,
• The lessons I learn through compassionate sharing,
• The nourishment offered through human creativity.

The Swallows of Lourdes

HERE IS A MARVELOUS picture of the candlelight procession that forms each night at Lourdes where the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette eighteen times in 1858.  As the light-procession gets underway, many dozens of swallows appear, flying over the great gathering. No mystical claim is being made. Someone will say, "Oh, the swallows are only interested in the bugs drawn to the light." So. That should never keep us from acknowledging the beauty of it, and what we might realize underneath, so to speak. 

The swallows seem to be stitching heaven and earth together - repairing the spiritual tear opened by the world's hatreds and failures in justice and love. My sister pilgrim-ed with us in 2004, working at the Accueil Notre Dame, the hostel for the sick. At the end of her trip she wrote this poem called a waka (following a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern).

The Saint's foot-path snakes
in candle-light procession - -
Cathedral swallows
drop from the sky -- their soft 'whoosh',
breath between Hail, Holy Queens

Karen Morris ~ July '04