Our Pelican
Dei via est íntegra
In Christian art the "Pelican vulning herself" or the "Pelican in her piety"-- a mother bird cutting into her own flesh to feed her young with her blood -- is a symbol of Jesus Christ shedding His Precious Blood for the redemption of God's adopted sons and daughters, and a symbol of His Catholic Church distributing the graces of His redemption in the Mass and Sacraments; nourishing the members of His Mystical Body with the fullness of of His Truth. Saint Thomas Aquinas made use of this symbolism in his beautiful hymn, "Adoro te devote":
| Pie pellicane, Iesu Domine, me immundum munda tuo sanguine; cuius una stilla salvum facere totum mundum quit ab omni scelere. | Deign, O Jesus, Pelican of heaven, me, a sinner, in Thy Blood to lave, to a single drop of which is given all the world from all its sin to save. |
| Latin from the Roman Missal. Translation by John O'Hagan (1822-1890). | |
Saint Padre Pio, who lost considerable quantities of blood each day through the Stigmata, wounds in mystical emulation of the crucifixion wounds of Christ, is pictured here with the Pelican
Saint Padre Pio - Mother Pelican
Fr. William
Hart McNichols
The very similar pelican graces the flag of the State of Louisiana in these United States. The Brown Pelican is the State Bird, and the European Catholics who settled the territory pictured her in the traditional manner:
The Pelican is often incorporated in the decoration of churches:
The Colleges "Corpus Christi" at both Oxford and Cambridge display the Pelican on their crests:
Wikipedia:
Lewis MacDonald
Corpus Christ College, Cambridge
The arms of Cardinal Pell of Melbourne Australia boast a "Pelican in her Piety," for the Cardinal is a graduate of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and because it likewise indicates the ministry of the Bishop to sanctify his people." Perhaps there is also a similarity between "Pell" and "Pelican."
Arms
of George Cardinal Pell of Melbourne
Australian
Broadcasting Corporation
The Society for Creative Anachronism refers to its members who have "received a patent of arms from the Crown (the highest level of award) for unrelenting service to the Kingdom and the Society, along with their consistent display of the virtues of Grace, Courtesy and Chivalric Demeanour."
Society for Creative
Anachronism
Google Search for "Pelican in her Piety"
The Pelican Lara
A lara is a place of prayer and reflection. In quantitative terms, it is somewhere between a hermitage and a monastery; usually uniting more than one but less than the twelve souls that make up the traditional cenobitic community. In qualitative terms, a lara strives to approximate the monastery's ideal of praising God in the Hours of the Divine Office, and its work of preserving the knowledge of God as we have received it through the Scriptures and the writings of the great fathers and doctors of the Church. The spelling varies -- sometimes "laura," sometimes "lauvre," or something similar. We have elected to use "lara," which pronounces about the same, and seems appropriate in the English language. We refer to the rectory as our lara, and have named it for the Pelicans which grace the nearby Atlantic littoral, often seeming to hang in the sky between heaven and earth, and occasionally coming down to walk among God's earthbound creatures.
