Pelicans on vestments/Did Jesus rise twice?

Q  On some of father’s vestments I have noticed a pelican.  Was this symbol taken from our Louisiana state flag that has a mother pelican feeding its chicks with its own blood?
A  Some vestments do have a mother pelican feeding its young but it has nothing to do with Louisiana.  If anything, Louisiana might have borrowed this symbol from the Catholic Church.  Louisiana did not become a state until 1812.  At that time, the state seal was changed from an eagle holding a laurel wreath with 15 stars to a pelican sitting on its nest, plucking its breast to draw blood to feed its young.  We are not sure why Governor William Claiborne changed the state seal but it may have been to recognize the state’s Catholic heritage.  The pelican flag was not officially adopted until 1912.
The story of the pelican saving its young with its own blood goes back much farther than 1812, at least as far back to the second century.  A Christian text titled “Physiologus” states, “The little pelicans strike their parents, and the parents, striking back, kill them. But on the third day the mother pelican strikes and opens her side and pours blood over her dead young.  In this way they are revived and made well.”  
Does this sound familiar? The mother pelican sheds her blood for her young; Jesus shed his blood for us.  The pelican pierces her breast to start the blood flowing; Jesus’s side was pierced by a lance, and blood and water flowed.  The mother pelican’s blood revives the chicks after three days; Jesus rose from the dead after three days, opening up heaven for us, giving us eternal life.  Because of these similarities, the pelican with her chicks became a symbol of the Eucharist for early Christians.
There is another legend, that in times of famine, the mother pelican would wound herself by striking her breast with her beak to draw blood.  That blood was used to feed her young preventing their starvation.  Again, a direct connection with the Eucharist, where Jesus feeds us with his body and his blood.
The pelican has been a part of Catholic tradition for a very long time.  St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century wrote the hymn “Adoro te devote.”  The sixth verse states, “Lord Jesus, Good Pelican, wash my filthiness and clean me with your blood.  One drop of which can free the entire world of all its sins.”  The image of the pelican with its young adorns many altars, the doors of tabernacles, stained glass windows and other Christian art.  
Q  In both the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed, we say Jesus “rose again” from the dead.  What does that mean?  Did Jesus rise twice?
A  I think we are dealing with semantics here.  “Again” can mean “an additional time,” but it can also mean “anew” or return “to a previous place of condition.”  
On Oct. 7, 2020, Father Kenneth Doyle, published this in The Pilot, America’s oldest Catholic newspaper: “No, Jesus did not rise from the dead a second time. The most common meaning of the word ‘again’ is ‘once more,’ which prompts your question.  But another valid and oft-used meaning is ‘anew,’ and so we hear things like, ‘The runner fell rounding first base, but he got up again and made his way to second.’ So, Jesus rose from the dead only once, on Easter. He lived once, he died once and now he lives again.”  

Deacon Hooper is a deacon assistant at Immaculate Conception Church in Denham Springs. He can be reached at [email protected].