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Preliminary Note About Sv. Tomáš

I should preface this by explaining a little bit about Sv. Tomáš (St. Thomas’). The Church and monastery of Sv. Tomáš was established in 1285 by King Vaclav II, and we still pray for him every Sunday. It’s in Malá Strana and is staffed by Augustinians. Apparently the neighboring churches of Sv. Josef and Panny Marie Vítězné (Our Lady Victorious; home of the statue of the Infant of Prague) are also part of the parish, although I don’t understand how that works.

Besides being the official home of the English-speaking Catholic community in Prague and home to a Czech-speaking community, there is also a Spanish-speaking community that makes its home here. Mostly this isn’t much of an issue. On Sundays, there’s a Czech Mass at 9:30; the English Mass is at 11:00; while the Spanish Mass is at 12:30. On Christmas, it got a little more complicated, and the "Midnight Mass" in English actually took place at 6:00 PM, which I didn’t realize until after the fact and so it was that I attended the Czech Midnight Mass.

Palm Sunday

For Palm Sunday, then, the three communities that make up Sv. Tomáš had a joint celebration that started at 9:30 at Panny Marie Vítězné. When I arrived at the church, there was a donkey on the lawn in front of the church, placidly enduring the curious tourists with their cameras.

At the door of the church, attendants were handing out not palms, but pussy willow branches. Which makes more sense than importing palms, although the mental picture of throngs lining the road into Jerusalem with pussy willows and waving them as they sing their "Hosanas" makes me smile. (Last year, at Sacré Cœur, we didn’t receive palms either; instead, we got green branches of some kind – laurel, maybe?)

When the service started, we had opening prayer in English, Czech, and Spanish; the Procession Gospel was proclaimed each of the three languages; and the branches were blessed three times: once in each language. One of the boys of the parish was there, in a red hooded cloak; he was the "stand-in" for Jesus and was mounted on the donkey. We then wended our way in procession through some back streets of Malá Strana to Sv. Tomáš. Once there, I saw the main doors of the Church thrown wide open for the first time to allow our mounted "Christ" to go right up to the altar, where he dismounted. (I didn’t notice, but I’m guessing that the donkey was led into the cloister gardens.)

Once the Mass proper started, we had a quadrilingual (Czech, Spanish, English, and Latin) liturgy, with the languages trading off rather than prayers and readings being repeated. From a pastoral point of view, of course, it makes perfect sense. However, I was disappointed by the way in which it was implemented. Maybe I’m just spoiled, but the Oakland diocese certainly knows a lot more about how to put on a multi-lingual liturgy! As it was, it was impossible to fully participate in, and difficult even to follow, the non-English parts of the liturgy. I must say, though, that the Czech choir is absolutely exquisite!

The language issue aside, the Mass was unremarkable, except that Communion was given by intinction (i.e., the minister dipped the Host in the Chalice before placing the Host on the communicant’s tongue). The only other time I’ve seen that done was at Sacré Cœur last year, at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. But at Sacré Cœur, they usually don’t offer Communion under both species, while at Sv. Tomáš, they always do, so this departure from the norm seemed rather odd to me.

My Friday night visit to hear Martinů’s Řecké pašije (Greek Passion) marked my first visit to any serious theater since leaving California. The opera is based on Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel Christ Recrucified.

Brief synopsis:

The preparations for the annual Passion play in the Greek village of Lycovrissi are interrupted by the arrival of refugees whose village has been destroyed by a Turkish attack. The refugees are defended by the shepherd Manolios, who had been chosen for the role of Jesus Christ. Other villagers, particularly the Passion play’s Mary Magdalene (who in real life is also the village prostitute), St. James, St. Peter, and St. John, similarly attempt to help the refugees, but the priest, Grigoris, leads resistance to their presence. Finally, in an argument, the villager Panait, the Passion’s Judas, kills Manolios, and the refugees leave the village in search of a new home.

This was my first visit to the National Theater (Národní Divadlo), since it’s not open to visitors except for performances. It’s a really lovely theater (alas that I’m still camera-less).

The performance itself was wonderfully sung and beautifully staged, and I very much enjoyed the evening out.

Občan Havel is a documentary that follows Václav Havel during his terms as first President of the Czech Republic (1993-2003) (not to be confused with his term as tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992). It came out at about the same time as the latest presidential election that re-elected his successor, Václav Klaus. The filmmakers followed Havel for the 10 years of his presidency, and reportedly filmed 45 hours of images and recorded 90 hours of sound material.

It was shown (at least in some theaters) with English subtitles, so I went to see it as part of my ongoing efforts to understand my current country of residence. I was worried that it might be a bit obscure, and I did in fact spend a fair amount of time wondering, “Who are these people”? However, the movie was more focused on examining the man than on his politics, and so I was pretty well able to make sense of it. It also gave me plenty of fodder for conversations with my students, e.g., “What was Charter 77?” ” What do you think of Dagmar Havlová?” (Apparently Havel’s second wife is not universally beloved, unlike his first wife.)

I kept trying to picture a similar documentary about President Bush (or indeed, to be fair, any other American president), and couldn’t. Any such attempt would be stage-managed to a fare-thee-well. Havel, though, appears to be largely indifferent to the presence of the cameras, although we occasionally see him being friendly with the crew (and his staff is not always similarly unaware of the cameras). And, while it’s certainly a partisan portrayal, we do sometimes see Havel being superficial and/or petty, fretting over his dandruff or sniping at Václav Klaus. Mostly though, it’s simply a thoroughly human portrait of courageous and principled man.

Last fall, I visited the French Embassy, which was open to the public for the day as part of European Heritage Days. When I got to the main dining room, the little brochure told of François Mitterand’s 1988 visit to still-Communist Czechoslovakia and Mitterand’s insistence, as a condition of his visit, that he be allowed to meet some of the dissidents. The Czech government complied, and Havel was among those invited to have breakfast with Mitterand. Reportedly, he showed up with his toothbrush, just in case he ended the visit by being arrested (again).

I don’t suppose that the movie is likely to play in the U.S., or even to come out on Netflix, but it would be worth checking out if it does become available. There’s another review here: prague.tv/articles/cinema/obcan-havel.

I wrote about Czech pedestrians and their willingness to wait on traffic lights several months ago. This past weekend, I particularly noticed the phenomenon again. I was waiting at a traffic light, and on the other side of the street, there were a couple of Prague police officers and another couple. The couple, after checking to make sure that there was no oncoming traffic, started across the street. One of the police officers started calling after them, but they ignored her until they had crossed the street. Only then did they look behind them to acknowledge the officer. I couldn’t understand what the officer said, but from her gestures and her tone, I would guess that it was something along the lines of, "Get back here and wait for the light". The couple shrugged and went on, while the pair of officers waited for the light. I turned around to peek after crossing the street, but no, the officers did not set off in hot pursuit of the jaywalking pair.

I mentioned this to the students in one of my classes and found that the penalties for jaywalking, in Prague at least, are quite stiff. In fact, if you’re the victim of an accident that occurs when you are crossing against the light, you will leave the hospital only to be hit with a citation and a hefty fine. That "The pedestrian has the right of way" is apparently an entirely foreign concept here.

The winter weather has been making me restless, but of late, it has turned relatively mild. It’s still too early in the year to venture outside of Prague, so I turned my thoughts to sights within Prague that I’ve not yet visited. On consulting with some of my students, I was advised to check out the Zoo, Troja Château, and the Botanical Gardens. This sounded like a pleasant excursion, so I took myself off to Nádraží Holešovice and the bus for the Zoo.

Now I must say at the outset that I’m no great fan of zoos: I always feel so sorry for the animals. However, the Prague Zoo is very nicely laid out, and the animals have plenty of space. I still worry about the predators especially: some of the big cats were looking very restless, and I can’t say as I blame them. I particularly enjoyed visiting the penguins and the gorillas: their pavilions are very nice.

Since it was so early in the season, it wasn’t very crowded, although a good number of families were taking advantage of the relatively mild day to have an outing.

The amount of space given the animals means that the zoo is very large, and even after five hours wandering around, I think I saw only about 2/3 of it. But I was getting tired of animals and had other stops on my day’s itinerary.

Conveniently enough, Trojský Zámek is just across the road from the main entrance to the zoo. The grounds are perfectly lovely: I’d like to come back later in the Spring to enjoy them in their full glory. I had to wait for about half an hour for the next tour of the zámek, so I had ample opportunity for strolling the grounds.

The tour was rather disappointing. While the architecture is lovely, I was unimpressed by the exhibits. The art struck me as rather pedestrian. I also thought that the ceiling frescoes had been badly restored: the colors were too strong and had been applied without subtlety. The resulting frescoes looked like the products of paint-by-numbers kits.

Language Note

Zámek is usually translated château, which of course is just French for "castle", while hrad is usually translated "castle". So what, I asked one of my students, is the difference between a zámek and a hrad? Well, he told me, a hrad is a stone, defensive structure, usually Gothic, while a zámek is a later, more luxurious, less defensive building. Fair enough, but then what is the difference between a zámek and a palác ("palace", predictably enough). Well, a palác is usually within the city limits and has no grounds, whereas a zámek has extensive grounds and is usually located on the outskirts of the city, if not actually in the country. Zámek is sometimes translated as "villa", which strikes me as more accurate.

There’s also a wine museum: it’s small, but interesting. It describes the viticulture of Bohemia and Moravia, and offers a wine shop. I didn’t buy anything, though.

By the end of my visit to the zámek, it was nearly 5:00, so I decided to save the Botanical Gardens for another visit…