Shameless Plagiarism

Chronos

2011-08-19T17:40:00.001-04:00

"But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time. It does not accept that limit. Of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here. It is not explainable or even justifiable. It is itself the justifier. We do not make it. If it did not happen to us, we could not imagine it. It includes the world and time as a pregnant woman includes her child whose wrongs she will suffer and forgive. It is in the world but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here." (Jayber Crow)

Image: Greenwich Time by Charles Spencelayh

Advent Children

2010-12-14T12:07:00.005-05:00

The two facts which attract almost every normal person to children are, first, that they are very serious, and, secondly, that they are in consequence very happy. They are jolly with the completeness which is possible only in the absence of humour. The most unfathomable schools and sages have never attained to the gravity which dwells in the eyes of a baby of three months old. It is the gravity of astonishment at the universe, and astonishment at the universe is not mysticism, but a transcendent common-sense. The fascination of children lies in this: that with each of them all things are remade, and the universe is put again upon its trial. As we walk the streets and see below us those delightful bulbous heads, three times too big for the body, which mark these human mushrooms, we ought always primarily to remember that within every one of these heads there is a new universe, as new as it was on the seventh day of creation. In each of those orbs there is a new system of stars, new grass, new cities, a new sea.

There is always in the healthy mind an obscure prompting that religion teaches us rather to dig than to climb; that if we could once understand the common clay of earth we should understand everything. Similarly, we have the sentiment that if we could destroy custom at a blow and see the stars as a child sees them, we should need no other apocalypse. This is the great truth which has always lain at the back of baby-worship, and which will support it to the end. Maturity, with its endless energies and aspirations, may easily be convinced that it will find new things to appreciate; but it will never be convinced, at bottom, that it has properly appreciated what it has got. We may scale the heavens and find new stars innumerable, but there is still the new star we have not found--that on which we were born.

But the influence of children goes further than its first trifling effort of remaking heaven and earth. It forces us actually to remodel our conduct in accordance with this revolutionary theory of the marvellousness of all things. We do (even when we are perfectly simple or ignorant)--we do actually treat talking in children as marvellous, walking in children as marvellous, common intelligence in children as marvellous. The cynical philosopher fancies he has a victory in this matter--that he can laugh when he shows that the words or antics of the child, so much admired by its worshippers, are common enough. The fact is that this is precisely where baby-worship is so profoundly right. Any words and any antics in a lump of clay are wonderful, the child's words and antics are wonderful, and it is only fair to say that the philosopher's words and antics are equally wonderful.

The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect. We bow to grown people, take off our hats to them, refrain from contradicting them flatly, but we do not appreciate them properly. We make puppets of children, lecture them, pull their hair, and reverence, love, and fear them. When we reverence anything in the mature, it is their virtues or their wisdom, and this is an easy matter. But we reverence the faults and follies of children.

We should probably come considerably nearer to the true conception of things if we treated all grown-up persons, of all titles and types, with precisely that dark affection and dazed respect with which we treat the infantile limitations. A child has a difficulty in achieving the miracle of speech, consequently we find his blunders almost as marvellous as his accuracy. If we only adopted the same attitude towards Premiers and Chancellors of the Exchequer, if we genially encouraged their stammering and delightful attempts at human speech, we should be in a far more wise and tolerant temper. A child has a knack of making experiments in life, generally healthy in motive, but often intolerable in a domestic commonwealth. If we only treated all commercial buccaneers and bumptious tyrants on the same terms, if we gently chided their brutalities as rather quaint mistakes in the conduct of life, if we simply told them that they would 'understand when they were older,' we should probably be adopting the best and most crushing attitude towards the weaknesses of humanity. In our relations to children we prove that the paradox is entirely true, that it is possible to combine an amnesty that verges on contempt with a worship that verges upon terror. We forgive children with the same kind of blasphemous gentleness with which Omar Khayyam forgave the Omnipotent.

The essential rectitude of our view of children lies in the fact that we feel them and their ways to be supernatural while, for some mysterious reason, we do not feel ourselves or our own ways to be supernatural. The very smallness of children makes it possible to regard them as marvels; we seem to be dealing with a new race, only to be seen through a microscope. I doubt if anyone of any tenderness or imagination can see the hand of a child and not be a little frightened of it. It is awful to think of the essential human energy moving so tiny a thing; it is like imagining that human nature could live in the wing of a butterfly or the leaf of a tree. When we look upon lives so human and yet so small, we feel as if we ourselves were enlarged to an embarrassing bigness of stature. We feel the same kind of obligation to these creatures that a deity might feel if he had created something that he could not understand.

But the humorous look of children is perhaps the most endearing of all the bonds that hold the Cosmos together. Their top-heavy dignity is more touching than any humility; their solemnity gives us more hope for all things than a thousand carnivals of optimism; their large and lustrous eyes seem to hold all the stars in their astonishment; their fascinating absence of nose seems to give to us the most perfect hint of the humour that awaits us in the kingdom of heaven.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Defendant-Ch. 14: A Defence of Baby Worship
Images, Carl Schmitt

Themesong for a life

2010-10-11T15:04:00.001-04:00

2010-09-23T13:20:00.003-04:00

"For myself," said Faramir, "I would see the White Tree in flower again in the courts of the kings, and the Silver Crown return, and Minas Tirith in peace: Minas Anor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens: not a mistress of many slaves, nay, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves.
War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the men of NÃºmenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom. Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise."

Image: John Howe

Principles

2010-09-10T17:06:00.002-04:00

"The Church is intolerant in principle because she believes;
she is tolerant in practice because she loves.
The enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle because they do not believe;
they are intolerant in practice because they do not love."

Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

Agincourt Carol

2010-08-03T16:57:00.001-04:00

I am delighted to share the fruits of a recent evening with Chanticlear.

http://vimeo.com/12261313

2010-06-06T15:00:00.002-04:00

"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."
Hub- Second Hand Lions

Hoodlum 1: Hey, who do you think you are, huh?
Garth: Just a dumb kid, Hub. Don't kill him.
Hub: [to Garth] Right.
[Grabs Hoodlum 1 by the throat]
Hub: I'm Hub McCann. I've fought in two World Wars and countless smaller ones on three continents. I led thousands of men into battle with everything from horses and swords to artillery and tanks. I've seen the headwaters of the Nile, and tribes of natives no white man had ever seen before. I've won and lost a dozen fortunes, KILLED MANY MEN and loved only one woman with a passion a FLEA like you could never begin to understand. That's who I am. NOW, GO HOME, BOY!

Marvel of a Marvell

2010-05-05T14:47:00.000-04:00

THE DEFINITION OF LOVE
by Andrew Marvell

I.

MY Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis, for object, strange and high ;
It was begotten by Despair,
Upon Impossibility.

II.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

III.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed ;
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

IV.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close ;
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.

V.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel),
Not by themselves to be embraced,

VI.

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear.
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

VII.

As lines, so love's oblique, may well
Themselves in every angle greet :
But ours, so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

VIII.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

Song of the Pelagian Heresy

2010-04-19T20:49:00.004-04:00

Pelagius lived at Kardanoel
And taught a doctrine there
How, whether you went to heaven or to hell
It was your own affair.
It had nothing to do with the Church, my boy,
But was your own affair.

No, he didn't believe
In Adam and Eve
He put no faith therein!
His doubts began
With the Fall of Man
And he laughed at Original Sin.
With my row-ti-tow
Ti-oodly-ow
He laughed at original sin.

Then came the bishop of old Auxerre
Germanus was his name
He tore great handfuls out of his hair
And he called Pelagius shame.
And with his stout Episcopal staff
So thoroughly whacked and banged
The heretics all, both short and tall --
They rather had been hanged.

Oh he whacked them hard, and he banged them long
Upon each and all occasions
Till they bellowed in chorus, loud and strong
Their orthodox persuasions.
With my row-ti-tow
Ti-oodly-ow
Their orthodox persuasions.

Now the faith is old and the Devil bold
Exceedingly bold indeed.
And the masses of doubt that are floating about
Would smother a mortal creed.
But we that sit in a sturdy youth
And still can drink strong ale
Let us put it away to infallible truth
That always shall prevail.

And thank the Lord
For the temporal sword
And howling heretics too.
And all good things
Our Christendom brings
But especially barley brew!
With my row-ti-tow
Ti-oodly-ow
Especially barley brew!

Hillaire Belloc
Image: A Good Drink, Eduard Grutzner (1846-1925)

NO, I thank you

2010-04-16T19:21:00.004-04:00

"There are cetain things a man does well to carry to extremes..."

Solertia

2010-04-08T14:30:00.005-04:00

"...purity of heart,
says Kierkegaard,
is to will one thing..."

Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
Image: Architecture in Ancient Rome, Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema

Music for Spring, and for my friends in Paris

2010-04-04T19:52:00.001-04:00

We Have a Great High Priest

2010-04-04T19:27:00.004-04:00

The passage from the Letter to the Hebrews that we heard continues saying: "In the days of his flesh, with loud cries and with tears he offered prayers and supplications to Him who could save him from death." Jesus felt in all its crudity the situation of the victims, the suffocated cries and silent tears. Truly, "we do not have a high priest who cannot suffer with us in our weaknesses." In every victim of violence Christ relives mysteriously his earthly experience. Also in regard to every one of these he says: "you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40).

...

And also we Catholics wish our Jewish brothers a Good Passover. We do so with the words of their ancient teacher Gamaliel, entered in the Jewish Passover Seder and from there passed into the most ancient Christian liturgy:

"He made us pass
From slavery to liberty,
From sadness to joy,
From mourning to celebration,
From darkness to light,
From servitude to redemption
Because of this before him we say: Alleluia."[5]

The rest of Fr. Cantalamessa's homily can be found here

IMAGE: Gerrit van Honthorst (1590-1656) Christ before the High Priest

Laugh

2010-02-26T09:36:00.002-05:00

There is a saying that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

The converse is also true.

If God wants to make you laugh, he will tell you his plans for you

Jeff Miller
Image: Eowyn and the Nazgul
John Howe

Cam

2010-01-28T05:06:00.000-05:00

THERE is no remedy for this:
Good days that will not come again.

Since Adam lost the bower of bliss,
There is no remedy for this.

Till Oxford stand on Cam, I wis,
Or cedar spring from barley grain,

There is no remedy for this:
Good days that will not come again.

A Few Chesterton Verses

2010-01-24T15:20:00.000-05:00

"The Black Virgin"
[CW10:122-125]

One in thy thousand statues we salute thee
On all thy thousand thrones acclaim and claim
Who walk in forest of thy forms and faces
Walk in a forest calling on one name
And, most of all, how this thing may be so
Who know thee not are mystified to know -
That one cries "Here she stands" and one cries "Yonder"
And thou wert home in heaven long ago.

Burn deep in Bethlehem in the golden shadows,
Ride above Rome upon the horns of stone,
From low Lancastrian or South Saxon shelters
Watch through dark years the dower that was thine own:
Ghost of our land, White Lady of Walsinghame,
Shall they not live that call upon thy name
If an old song on a wild wind be blowing
Crying of the holy country whence they came?

Root deep in Chartres the roses blown of glass
Burning above thee in the high vitrailles,
On Cornish crags take for salute of swords
O'er peacock seas the far salute of sails,
Glooming in bronze or gay in painted wood,
A great doll given when the child is good,
Save that She gave the Child who gave the doll,
In whom all dolls are dreams of motherhood.

I have found thee like a little shepherdess
Gay with green ribbons; and passed on to find
Michael called Angel hew the Mother of God
Like one that fills a mountain with a mind:
Molten in silver or gold or garbed in blue,
Or garbed in red where the inner robe burns through,
Of the King's daughter glorious within:
Change shine unchanging light with every hue.

Clothed with the sun or standing on the moon
Crowned with the stars or single, a morning star,
Sunlight and moonlight are thy luminous shadows,
Starlight and twilight thy refractions are,
Lights and half-lights and all lights turn about thee.
But though we dazed can neither see nor doubt thee,
Something remains. Nor can man live without it
Nor can man find it bearable without thee.

There runs a dark thread through the tapestries
That time has woven with all the tints of time.
Something not evil but grotesque and groping,
Something not clear; not final; not sublime;
Quaint as dim pattern of primal plant or tree
Or fish, the legless elfins of the sea,
Yet rare as this shine image in ebony
Being most strange in its simplicity.

Rare as the rushing of the wild black swans
The Romans saw; or rocks remote and grim
Where through black clouds the black sheep runs accursed
And through black clouds the Shepherd follows him.
By the black oak of the aeon-buried grove
By the black gems of the miner's treasure-trove
Monsters and freaks and fallen stars and sunken -
Most holy dark, cover our uncouth love

From thine high rock look down on Africa
The living darkness of devouring green
The loathsome smell of life unquenchable,
Look on low brows and blinking eyes between:
On the dark heart where white folk find no place,
On the dark bodies of an antic race,
On all that fear thy light and love thy shadow,
Turn thou the mercy of thy midnight face.

This also is in thy spectrum; this dark ray:
Beyond the deepening purples of thy Lent
Darker than violet vestment; dark and secret
Clot of old night yet cloud of heaven sent:
As the black moon of some divine eclipse,
As the black sun of the Apocalypse,
As the black flower that blessed Odysseus back
From witchcraft; and he saw again the ships.

In all thy thousand images we salute thee,
Claim and acclaim on all thy thousand thrones
Hewn out of multi-coloured rocks and risen
Stained with the stored-up sunsets in all tones -
If in all tones and shades this shade I feel
Come from the black cathedrals of Castille
Climbing these flat black stones of Catalonia,
To thy most merciful face of night I kneel.

G.K. Chesterton

Image: Madonna and Flowers- Carl Owens

2010-01-23T12:28:00.000-05:00

"Are not five sparrows sold for two small coins?
Yet not one of them has escaped the notice of God.
Even the hairs of your head have all been counted.
Do not be afraid.
You are worth more than many sparrows.”

Simplify

2010-01-22T12:19:00.000-05:00

"If we try to find what truth is by arguing, there will always be good arguments on both sides. At some point we must risk the dangerous decision for faith. And that means always standing on the side of the weak, always on the side of the poor, always on the side of the victims. As a rule that will make us unpopular."

-Richard Rohr, Simplicity: The Art of Living
Image: Tiepolo, Finding of the True Cross

In the moon of wintertime...

2009-12-29T14:18:00.004-05:00

"Faith is contagious. One does not catch something by hearing someone speak of a virus or by studying it, but rather by entering into contact with someone who has it."

"This proposition of new life should, however, translate itself immediately, without delay, into something specific, in a change, possibly something external and visible, in our life and in our customs. If the proposal is not fulfilled, Jesus is conceived, but is not born. It would be one of so many spiritual abortions, which, unfortunately, the world of souls is full of."

Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa
Read the whole homily here

Image: Madonna
Orazio Gentleschi (1563-1639)

Advent moments

2009-12-16T01:23:00.003-05:00

Cada objecto es un mundo

Jorge Carrerra Andrade

Arte Poético

Comprende, comprende, comprende:
en cada cosa guiňa un duende
o una ala invisible se tiende

Aprea en tus dedos la brisa
que pasa fugaz, indecisa,
No veas el mundo de prisa,
No aprendas efimera ciencia,
que es flor de la humana demencia.
La vida no es solo apariencia.

Las aves- lección del instante –
nos dan en su escuela volante
la clave de un mundo cambiante.
La roas es crisol de alegría.
Te ofrece tesoros el día.
Gotea el reloj ambrosia.

Comprende y venera al objeto:
Penetra en ese orbe secreto
Y ea la flor tu amuleto.

Know, know, know:
an invisible wing spreads out
or a sprite winks from every thing.

Grasp the fleeting, undecided breeze in your fingers
Pause to drink in the world.
Do not learn ephemeral science
For it is a flower of human insanity.
Life is more than appearance.

Birds - lesson of the instant –
Give us in their flying school the key to an ever-changing world.
The rose is a crucible of happiness
The day offers you treasure.
The clock drips ambrosia.

Grasp and venerate the object:
Enter that secret orb
And may the flower be your amulet.

Image: Memling: Advent and Triumph of Christ

Dare to build

2009-12-08T16:37:00.003-05:00

"To canonize a particular “style” of architecture only because of a historical association is an architectural aesthetic theology. However, the Modernist denial of historical styles precisely because of their historicity is also an architectural aesthetic theology. A Balthasarian solution beckons: begin by conceiving liturgical architecture as the form of Christ (Christus totus) in his sacramental, ecclesiological dimension in the liturgy. Liturgical architecture can therefore best be evaluated in light of its ability to bear the Christian message, that is, the “ontological secret” of the liturgical event, which by definition reveals beauty and results in joyfully rapturous discovery."

Dr. McNamara's new book is 2 weeks old. Do you have your copy?

2009-11-20T10:16:00.001-05:00

"There are some who desire knowledge merely for its own sake; and that is shameful curiosity. And there are others who desire to know, in order that they may themselves be known; and that is vanity, disgraceful too. Others again desire knowledge in order to acquire money or preferment by it; that too is a discreditable quest. But there are also some who desire knowledge, that they may build up the souls of others with it; and that is charity. Others, again, desire it that they may themselves be built up thereby; and that is prudence. Of all these types, only the last two put knowledge to the right use"
(St. Bernard, Sermon on the Canticle of Canticles)

Art

2009-10-21T16:53:00.000-04:00

"Poets aim either to benefit [enlighten, bring about insight, understanding,
compassion], or to please [delight with effects of engaging, subtle ideas, words, sounds, images]. ***
The man [or woman] who has managed to blend usefulness [not practical utility, but intellectual and spiritual deepening and eye-opening understanding] with pleasure
wins everyone's approbation [applause, cheers, seat thumpings, sighs of admiration...], for he delights his reader [listener]as he instructs him."-- Horace, *On Poetry.*

One Art

2009-10-12T16:16:00.001-04:00

by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Image: Robert Christie

LACHRIMAE AMANTIS

2009-09-05T18:25:00.003-04:00

What is there in my heart
that you should sue so fiercely for its love?
What kind of care brings you
as though a stranger to my door
through the long night and in the icy dew

seeking the heart that will not harbor you,
that keeps itself religiously secure?
At this dark solstice filled with frost and fire
your passion's ancient wounds must bleed anew.

So many nights the angel of my house
has fed such urgent comfort through a dream,
whispered "your lord is coming, he is close"

that I have drowsed half-faithful for a time
bathed in pure tones of promise and remorse:
"tomorrow I shall wake to welcome him."

Geoffrey Hill

courtesy of http://rmadisonj.blogspot.com/

Light Water Song

2009-04-12T08:44:00.000-04:00

Homily of Pope Benedict XVI, Easter Vigil, 2009

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Saint Mark tells us in his Gospel that as the disciples came down from the Mount of the Transfiguration, they were discussing among themselves what “rising from the dead” could mean (cf. Mk 9:10). A little earlier, the Lord had foretold his passion and his resurrection after three days. Peter had protested against this prediction of death. But now, they were wondering what could be meant by the word “resurrection”. Could it be that we find ourselves in a similar situation? Christmas, the birth of the divine Infant, we can somehow immediately comprehend. We can love the child, we can imagine that night in Bethlehem, Mary’s joy, the joy of Saint Joseph and the shepherds, the exultation of the angels. But what is resurrection? It does not form part of our experience, and so the message often remains to some degree beyond our understanding, a thing of the past. The Church tries to help us understand it, by expressing this mysterious event in the language of symbols in which we can somehow
contemplate this astonishing event. During the Easter Vigil, the Church points out the significance of this day principally through three symbols: light, water, and the new song – the Alleluia.

First of all, there is light. God’s creation – which has just been proclaimed to us in the Biblical narrative – begins with the command: “Let there be light!” (Gen 1:3). Where there is light, life is born, chaos can be transformed into cosmos. In the Biblical message, light is the most
immediate image of God: He is total Radiance, Life, Truth, Light. During the Easter Vigil, the Church reads the account of creation as a prophecy.

In the resurrection, we see the most sublime fulfilment of what this text describes as the beginning of all things. God says once again: “Let there be light!” The resurrection of Jesus is an eruption of light. Death is conquered, the tomb is thrown open. The Risen One himself is Light, the Light of the world. With the resurrection, the Lord’s day enters the nights of history. Beginning with the resurrection, God’s light spreads throughout the world and throughout history. Day dawns. This Light alone – Jesus Christ – is the true light, something more than the physical phenomenon of light. He is pure Light: God himself, who causes a new creation to be born in the midst of the old, transforming chaos into cosmos.

Let us try to understand this a little better. Why is Christ Light? In the Old Testament, the Torah was considered to be like the light coming from God for the world and for humanity. The Torah separates light from darkness within creation, that is to say, good from evil. It points out to humanity the right path to true life. It points out the good, it demonstrates the truth and it leads us towards love, which is the deepest meaning contained in the Torah. It is a “lamp” for our steps and a “light” for our path (cf. Ps 119:105). Christians, then, knew that in Christ, the Torah is present, the Word of God is present in him as Person. The Word of God is the true light that humanity needs. This Word is present in him, in the Son. Psalm 19 had compared the Torah to the sun which manifests God’s glory as it rises, for all the world to see. Christians understand: yes indeed, in the resurrection, the Son of God has emerged as the Light of the world. Christ is the great Light from which all life originates. He enables us to recognize the glory of God from one end of the earth to the other. He points out our path. He is the Lord’s day which, as it grows, is gradually spreading throughout the earth. Now, living with him and for him, we can live in the light.
At the Easter Vigil, the Church represents the mystery of the light of Christ in the sign of the Paschal candle, whose flame is both light and heat. The symbolism of light is connected with that of fire: radiance and heat, radiance and the transforming energy contained in the fire – truth
and love go together. The Paschal candle burns, and is thereby consumed: Cross and resurrection are inseparable. From the Cross, from the Son’s self-giving, light is born, true radiance comes into the world. From the Paschal candle we all light our own candles, especially the newly baptized, for whom the light of Christ enters deeply into their hearts in this Sacrament. The early Church described Baptism as fotismos, as the Sacrament of illumination, as a communication of light, and linked it inseparably with the resurrection of Christ. In Baptism, God says to the candidate: “Let there be light!” The candidate is brought into the light of Christ. Christ now divides the light from the darkness. In him we recognize what is true and what is false, what is radiance and what is darkness. With him, there wells up within us the light of truth, and we begin to understand.

On one occasion when Christ looked upon the people who had come to listen to him, seeking some guidance from him, he felt compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd (cf. Mk 6:34). Amid the contradictory messages of that time, they did not know which way to turn. What great compassion he must feel in our own time too – on account of all the endless talk that people hide behind, while in reality they are totally confused. Where must we go? What are the values by which we can order our lives? The values by which we can educate our young, without giving them norms they may be unable to resist, or demanding of them things that perhaps should not be imposed upon them? He is the Light. The baptismal candle is the symbol of enlightenment that is given to us in Baptism. Thus at this hour, Saint Paul speaks to us with great immediacy. In the Letter to the Philippians, he says that, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, Christians should shine as lights in the world (cf. Phil 2:15). Let us pray to the Lord that the fragile flame of the candle he has lit in us, the delicate light of his word and his love amid the confusions of this age, will not be extinguished in us, but will become ever stronger and brighter, so that we, with him, can be people of the day, bright stars lighting up our time.

The second symbol of the Easter Vigil – the night of Baptism – is water. It appears in Sacred Scripture, and hence also in the inner structure of the Sacrament of Baptism, with two opposed meanings. On the one hand there is the sea, which appears as a force antagonistic to life
on earth, continually threatening it; yet God has placed a limit upon it. Hence the book of Revelation says that in God’s new world, the sea will be no more (cf. 21:1). It is the element of death. And so it becomes the symbolic representation of Jesus’ death on the Cross: Christ descended into the sea, into the waters of death, as Israel did into the Red Sea. Having risen from death, he gives us life. This means that Baptism is not only a cleansing, but a new birth: with Christ we, as it were, descend into the sea of death, so as to rise up again as new creatures.

The other way in which we encounter water is in the form of the fresh spring that gives life, or the great river from which life comes forth. According to the earliest practice of the Church, Baptism had to be administered with water from a fresh spring. Without water there is no life. It is striking how much importance is attached to wells in Sacred Scripture. They are places from which life rises forth. Beside Jacob’s well, Christ spoke to the Samaritan woman of the new well, the water of true life. He reveals himself to her as the new, definitive Jacob, who opens up for humanity the well that is awaited: the inexhaustible source of life-giving water (cf. Jn 4:5-15). Saint John tells us that a soldier with a lance struck the side of Jesus, and from his open side – from his pierced heart – there came out blood and water (cf. Jn 19:34). The early Church saw in this a symbol of Baptism and Eucharist flowing from the pierced heart of Jesus. In his death, Jesus himself became the spring. The prophet Ezekiel saw a vision of the new Temple from which a spring issues forth that becomes a great life-giving river (cf. Ezek 47:1-12). In a land which constantly suffered from drought and water shortage, this was a great vision of hope. Nascent Christianity understood: in Christ, this vision was fulfilled. He is the true, living Temple of God. He is the spring of living water. From him, the great river pours forth, which in Baptism renews the world and makes it fruitful; the great river of living water, his Gospel which makes the earth fertile.

In a discourse during the Feast of Tabernacles, though, Jesus prophesied something still greater: “Whoever believes in me … out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water” (Jn 7:38). In Baptism, the Lord makes us not only persons of light, but also sources from which living water bursts forth. We all know people like that, who leave us somehow refreshed and renewed; people who are like a fountain of fresh spring water. We do not necessarily have to think of great saints like Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Mother Teresa of Calcutta and so on, people through whom rivers of living water truly entered into human history. Thanks be to God, we find them constantly even in our daily lives: people who are like a spring. Certainly, we also know the opposite: people who spread around themselves an atmosphere like a stagnant pool of stale, or even poisoned water. Let us ask the Lord, who has given us the grace of Baptism, for the gift always to be sources of pure, fresh water, bubbling up from the fountain of his truth and his love!

The third great symbol of the Easter Vigil is something rather different; it has to do with man himself. It is the singing of the new song – the alleluia. When a person experiences great joy, he cannot keep it to himself. He has to express it, to pass it on. But what happens when a
person is touched by the light of the resurrection, and thus comes into contact with Life itself, with Truth and Love? He cannot merely speak about it. Speech is no longer adequate. He has to sing. The first reference to singing in the Bible comes after the crossing of the Red Sea. Israel has risen out of slavery. It has climbed up from the threatening depths of the sea. It is as it were reborn. It lives and it is free. The Bible describes the people’s reaction to this great event of salvation with the verse: “The people … believed in the Lord and in Moses his servant” (Ex 14:31). Then comes the second reaction which, with a kind of inner necessity, follows from the first one: “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord …” At the Easter Vigil, year after year, we Christians intone this song after the third reading, we sing it as our song, because we too, through God’s power, have been drawn forth from the water and liberated for true life.

There is a surprising parallel to the story of Moses’ song after Israel’s liberation from Egypt upon emerging from the Red Sea, namely in the Book of Revelation of Saint John. Before the beginning of the seven last plagues imposed upon the earth, the seer has a vision of something “like a sea of glass mingled with fire; and those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb …” (Rev 15:2f.). This image describes the situation of the disciples of Jesus Christ in every age, the situation of the Church in the history of this world. Humanly speaking, it is self-contradictory. On the one hand, the community is located at the Exodus, in the midst of the Red Sea, in a sea which is paradoxically ice and fire at the same time. And must not the Church, so to speak, always walk on the sea, through the fire and the cold? Humanly speaking, she ought to sink. But while she is still walking in the midst of this Red Sea, she sings – she intones the song of praise of the just: the song of Moses and of the Lamb, in which the Old and New Covenants blend into harmony. While, strictly speaking, she ought to be sinking, the Church sings the song of thanksgiving of the saved. She is standing on history’s waters of death and yet she has already risen. Singing, she grasps at the Lord’s hand, which holds her above the waters. And she knows that she is thereby raised outside the force of gravity of death and evil – a force from which otherwise there would be no way of escape – raised and drawn into the new gravitational force of God, of truth and of love. At present she is still between the two gravitational fields. But once Christ is risen, the gravitational pull of love is stronger than that of hatred; the force of gravity of life is stronger than that of death.

Perhaps this is actually the situation of the Church in every age? It always seems as if she ought to be sinking, and yet she is always already saved. Saint Paul illustrated this situation with the words: “We are as dying, and behold we live” (2 Cor 6:9). The Lord’s saving hand holds us up, and thus we can already sing the song of the saved, the new song of the risen ones: alleluia!

Amen.

The King Sleeps

2009-04-11T17:45:00.001-04:00

Homily given on Holy Saturday by Bishop Melito of Sardis:

Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell.

Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

Chocolate Easter

2009-04-10T17:47:00.000-04:00

"There is a stage in a child's life at which it cannot separate the religious from the merely festal character of Christmas or Easter. I have been told of a very small and very devout boy who was heard murmuring to himself on Easter morning a poem of his own composition which began 'Chocolate eggs and Jesus risen.' This seems to me, for his age, both admirable poetry and admirable piety. But of course the time will soon come when such a child can no longer effortlessly and spontaneously enjoy that unity. He will become able to distinguish the spiritual from the ritual and festal aspect of Easter; chocolate eggs will no longer seem sacramental. And once he has distinguished he must put one or the other first. If he puts the spiritual first he can still taste something of Easter in the chocolate eggs; if he puts the eggs first they will soon be no more than any other sweetmeat. They will have taken on an independent, and therefore a soon withering, life."

C.S. Lewis.
I'll remember you in my prayers during this Triduum, and may you taste Easter in your chocolate eggs!

Courtesy of the author of An Older Fashion.

Feast of St Blaise, Bishop and Martyr

2009-02-03T06:31:00.003-05:00

"Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world."
- Blaise Pascal

Image: 'The Christians Last Prayer' Jean-Léon
Gérôme

Feast of Thomas Aquinas

2009-01-28T07:23:00.006-05:00

It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes.

If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.

Beware of the person of one book.

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.

How is it they live in such harmony the billions of stars - when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds about someone they know.

Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious.

To convert somebody go and take them by the hand and guide them.

Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.

Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need.

The things that we love tell us what we are.

Wonder is the desire for knowledge.

Wisdom: Saint Thomas Aquinas

Images:
Anschutz "Boys Playing with Crabs"
Bougereau "Compassion"
Bougereau "Charity"
Bussiere "Joan of Arc"
Benozzo di Lese di Sandro Gozzoli (1453-1478)"Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas"

A New Year- A New Age?

2009-01-27T15:37:00.002-05:00

The first reading invites us to reflect on a particular talent that is both natural and spiritual: the talent of femininity, the talent of being a woman. This reading contains the famous praise of women that begins with the words: "A perfect woman, who can find her?" This praise, which is so beautiful, has one defect, which does not come from the inspiration but from the epoch in which it was written and the culture that it reflects. If we pay attention, we see that the praise has entirely to do with what the woman does for the man. Its implicit conclusion: Blessed is the man who has such a woman. She makes him nice clothes, brings honor to his house, allows him to hold his head high among his friends. I do not think women today would be enthusiastic about this laud.

Putting this limitation aside, I would like to underscore the relevance of this praise of women. Everywhere there is the demand to make more room for women, to value the feminine genius. We do not believe that "the eternal feminine will save us." Daily experience shows that women can lift themselves up, but also that they can let themselves down. They also need Christ's salvation. But it is certain that, once she is redeemed and "liberated" by him, on the human level, from ancient subjections, she can help to save our society from some inveterate evils that threaten it: violence, will to power, spiritual aridity, scorn for life, etc.

After so many ages that took their name from man -- from the ages of "homo erectus" and "homo faber," to the age of "homo sapiens" today, we might hope that there will finally come, for humanity, the age of woman: the age of the heart, of tenderness, of compassion. It was devotion to the Virgin that, in past centuries, inspired respect for women and their idealization in literature and art. The woman of today, too, can look to her as a model, friend and ally in defending the dignity and the talent of being a woman.

Raniero Cantalamessa
Image: Caravaggio, Madonna of Loretto 'Madonna of the Dirty Feet'

Light

2008-09-13T10:55:00.002-04:00

"In a scene in Paul Claudel’s play “The Humiliated Father,” a Jewish girl, beautiful but blind, alluding to the double meaning of light, asks her Christian friend: “You who see, what use have you made of the light?” It is a question that is asked of all of us who claim to be believers."
Fr. Cantalamessa
Image; The Blind Girl, Millais

Ecce Homo

2008-03-21T18:10:00.004-04:00

The Tunic was Without Seam

“When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four shares, a share for each soldier. They also took his tunic, but the tunic was without seam, woven in one piece from the top down. So they said to one another, ‘Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it will be,’ in order that the passage of Scripture might be fulfilled that says: ‘They divided my garments among them, and for my vesture they cast lots’” (John 19:23-24).

It has always been asked what the evangelist John wanted to say with the importance that he gives to this particular detail of the Passion. One relatively recent explanation is that the tunic alludes to the vestment of the high priest and that with this John wanted to affirm that Jesus died not only as king but also as priest.

It is not said in the Bible, however, that the tunic of the high priest had to be seamless (cf. Exodus 28: 4; Leviticus 16:4). For this reason the most authoritative of the exegetes prefer to stick to the traditional explanation, according to which the seamless tunic symbolized the unity of the disciples.[1] It is the interpretation that Saint Cyrpian already gave: “The unity of the Church,” he writes, “is expressed in the Gospel when it is said that the tunic of Christ was not divided or cut.”[2]

Whatever be the explanation that one gives to the text, one thing is certain: the unity of the disciples is, for John, the purpose for which Christ dies. “Jesus had to die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God” (John 11:51-52). At the Last Supper he himself said: “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me” (John 17:20-21).

The glad tidings to proclaim on Good Friday are that unity, before it is a goal to be sought, is a gift to be received. That the tunic is woven “from the top down,” Saint Cyprian continues, means that “the unity brought by Christ comes from above, from the heavenly Father, and because of this it cannot be broken apart by those who receive it, but must be received in its integrity.”

The soldiers divided “the clothes,” or the “the cloak,” (“ta imatia”) into 4 pieces, that is, Jesus’ outer garments, not the tunic, the “chiton,” which was the inner garment, which was in direct contact with his body. This is also a symbol. We men can divide the human and visible element of the Church, but not its deeper unity, which is identified with the Holy Spirit. Christ’s tunic was not and can never be divided. It too is of a single piece. “Can Christ be divided?” Paul cried out (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:13). It is the faith the we profess in the Creed: “I believe in the Church, one, holy, Catholic and apostolic.”

* * *

But if unity must serve as a sign “so that the world believe,” it must also be a visible, communitarian unity. This is the unity that has been lost and must be rediscovered. It is much more than maintaining neighborly relations; it is the mystical interior unity itself – “one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God Father of all” (Ephesians 4:4-6) – insofar as this objective unity is in fact received, lived and manifested by believers. A unity which is not endangered by diversity, but enriched by it.

After Easter the apostles asked Jesus: “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” Today we often address the same question to God: Is this the time in which you will restore the visible unity of the Church? God’s answer is also the same as the one Jesus gave to the disciples: “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:6-8).

The Holy Father recalled this in a homily he gave on January 25 in the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls at the end of Christian Unity Week: “Unity with God and our brothers and sisters,” he wrote, “is a gift that comes from on high, which flows from the communion of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit in which it is increased and perfected. It is not in our power to decide when or how this unity will be fully achieved. Only God can do it! Like St Paul, let us also place our hope and trust ‘in the grace of God which is with us’.”

Today as well, the Holy Spirit will be the one to lead us into unity, if we let him guide us. How was it that the Holy Spirit brought about the first fundamental unity of the Church, that between Jews and pagans? The Holy Spirit descends upon Cornelius and his whole household in the same way in which he descended upon the apostles at Pentecost. So, Peter only needed to draw the conclusion: “If then God gave them the same gift he gave to us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?” (Acts 11:17).

For a century now, we have seen the same thing repeat itself before our eyes on a global scale. God has poured out the Holy Spirit in a new and unusual way upon millions of believers from every Christian denomination and, so that there would be no doubts about his intentions, he poured out the Spirit with the same manifestations. Is this not a sign that the Spirit moves us to recognize each other as disciples of Christ and work toward unity?

It is true that this spiritual and charismatic unity is not enough by itself. We see this already at the beginning of the Church. The newly formed unity between Jews and Gentiles was immediately threatened by schism. In the so-called Council of Jerusalem there was a “long discussion” and at the end an agreement was reached and announced to the Church with the formula: “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us...” (Acts 15:28). The Holy Spirit works, therefore, also through another way, which is that of patient exchange, dialogue and even compromise between the different sides, when the essentials of the faith are not in play. He works through human “structures” and the “offices” put in action by Jesus, above all the apostolic and petrine office. It is that which today we call doctrinal and institutional ecumenism.

* * *

However, experience is convincing us that even this doctrinal ecumenism is not sufficient and does not advance matters if it is not also accompanied by a foundational spiritual ecumenism. This is repeated with ever greater insistence by the major promoters of institutional ecumenism. In this centenary of the institution of the week of prayer for Christian unity (1908 – 2008), at the foot of the cross we would like to meditate on this spiritual ecumenism, on what this spiritual ecumenism is and how we can make progress in it.

Spiritual ecumenism is born through repentance and forgiveness and is nourished by prayer. In 1977 I participated in a charismatic ecumenical congress in the U.S., in Kansas City, Missouri. There were 40.000 participants, half of them Catholic – Cardinal Suenens among them – and half from other Christian denominations. One evening, one of the leaders of the meeting began speaking at the microphone in way that, to me, at that time, was strange: “You priests and pastors, weep and mourn, because the body of my Son is broken... You lay people, men and women, weep and mourn, because the body of my Son is broken.”

I began to see people around me fall to their knees, one after another, and to weep with repentance for the divisions in the body of Christ. And all of this went on while a sign reading “Jesus is Lord” went up from one part of the stadium to the other. I was there as an observer who was still rather critical and detached, but I remember thinking to myself: If one day all believers shall be reunited in one single body, it will happen like this, when we all are on our knees with a contrite and humiliated heart, under the great lordship of Christ.

If the unity of the disciples must be a reflection of the unity between Father and Son, it must above all be a unity of love, because such is the unity that reigns in the Trinity. Scripture exhorts us to “do the truth in love” – “veritatem facientes in caritate” (Ephesians 4:15). And Augustine affirms that “one does not enter into the truth if not through charity” – “non intratur in veritatem nisi per caritatem.” [3]

The extraordinary thing about this way to unity based on love is that it is already now wide open before us. We cannot be hasty in regard to doctrine because differences exist and must be resolved with patience in the appropriate contexts. We can instead “be hasty” in charity and already be united in that sense now. The true, certain sign of the coming of the Spirit, Saint Augustine writes, is not speaking in tongues, but it is the love of unity: “Know that you have the Holy Spirit when you allow your heart to adhere to unity through sincere charity.”[4]

Let us reflect on Saint Paul’s hymn to charity. Each verse acquires a contemporary and new meaning if it is applied to the love of members of different Christian denominations in ecumenical relations:

“Love is patient…
Love is not jealous…
It does not seek its own interests…
It does not brood over injury… (if necessary, of the injury done to others!)
It does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth (it doesn’t rejoice over the difficulties of other Churches, but delights in their successes)
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1Corinthians 13:4 ff.).

This week we have accompanied a woman to her eternal rest – Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare Movement – who was a pioneer and model of the spiritual ecumenism of love. She showed that the pursuit of unity among Christians does not lead to a closing to the rest of the world; it is rather the first step and the condition for a broader dialogue with believers of other religions and with all men and women who are concerned about the fate of humanity and about peace.

* * *

“Loving,” it has been said, “does not mean looking at each other but looking together in the same direction.” Even among Christians loving means looking in the same direction, which is Christ. “He is our peace” (Ephesians 2:14). It is like the spokes of a wheel. Consider what happens to the spokes of a wheel when they move from the center outward: as they distance themselves from the center they also become more distant from each other. On the contrary when they move from the periphery toward the center, the closer they come to the center they also come nearer to each other, until they form a single point. To the extent that we move together toward Christ, we draw nearer to each other, until we are truly, as Jesus desired, “one with him and with the Father.”

That which will reunite divided Christianity will only be the a new wave of love for Christ that spreads among Christians. This is what is happening through the work of the Holy Spirit and it fills us with wonder and hope. “The love of Christ moves us, because we are convinced that one has died for all” (2 Corinthians 5:14). The brother who belongs to another Church – indeed every human being – is “a person for whom Christ died” (Romans 14:16), as he has died for me.

* * *

One thing must move us forward on this journey. What is in play at the beginning of the third millennium, is not the same as what was in play at the beginning of the second millennium, when there was the separation of East and West; nor is it the same as what was in play in the middle of the same millennium when there was the separation of Catholics and Protestants. Can we say that the way the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father or how justification of the sinner comes about are the problems that impassion the men of today and with which the Christian faith stands or falls? The world has moved beyond us and we remain fixed by problems and formulas that the world does not even know the meaning of.

In battles in the Middle Ages there was a moment in which, after the infantry, the archers and the cavalry had been overwhelmed, the melee began to circle around the king. There the final outcome of the fight was decided. Today the battle for us also takes place around the king. There are buildings and structures made of metal in such a way that if a certain neuralgic point is touched or a certain stone is removed, everything falls apart. In the edifice of the Christian faith this cornerstone is the divinity of Christ. If this is removed, everything falls apart and faith in the Trinity is the first to go.

From this we see that today there are 2 possible ecumenisms: an ecumenism of faith and an ecumenism of incredulity; one that unites all those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and that Christ died to save all humankind, and an ecumenism that unites all those who, in deference to the Nicene Creed, continue to proclaim these formulas but empty them of their content. It is an ecumenism in which, in its extreme form, everyone believes the same things because no one any longer believes anything, in the sense that “believing” has in the New Testament.

“Who is it that overcomes the world,” John writes in his first letter, “if not those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1John 5:5). Sticking with this criterion, the fundamental distinction among Christians is not between Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants, but between those who believe that Christ is the Son of God and those who do not believe this.

* * *

“On the first day of the sixth month in the second year of King Darius, the word of the LORD came through the prophet Haggai to the governor of Judah, Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, and to the high priest Joshua, son of Jehozadak…: ‘Is it time for you to dwell in your own panelled houses, while this house lies in ruins?’” (Haggai 1:1-4).

This word of the prophet Haggai is addressed to us today. Is this the time to concern ourselves with that which only regards our religious order, our movement, or our Church? Is this not precisely the reason why we too “sow much but harvest little” (Haggai 1:6)? We preach and we are active in many ways, but we convert few people and the world moves away from Christ instead of drawing near to him.

The people of Israel heard the prophet’s reproof; everyone stopped embellishing his own house and began to work together on God’s temple. God then sent his prophet again with a message of consolation and encouragement which is also addressed to us: “But now take courage, Zerubbabel, says the Lord, and take courage, Joshua, high priest, son of Jehozadak, And take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord, and work! For I am with you, says the Lord of hosts” (Haggai 2:4). Take courage, all of you who have at heart the cause of the unity of Christians, and go to work, because I am with you, says the Lord!

[1] Cf. R. E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, vol. 2, Doubleday, New York 1994, pp. 955-958.
[2] Saint Cyprian, De unitate Ecclesiae, 7 (CSEL 3, p. 215).
[3] Saint Augustine, Contra Faustum, 32,18 (CCL 321, p. 779).
[4] Saint Augustine, Sermons, 269,3-4 (PL38, 1236 s.).

Homily of Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa
Images: Rembrandt

Notes from Fr Bullene's Homily

2008-03-18T18:11:00.003-04:00

We all think that Judas betrayed Jesus because he handed him over to be crucified. Judas' historical association with the Cross Christ chose to embrace out of love is incedental, perhaps even coincidental. It is the guilt and sin of the whole world that is ultimatle responsible for that crucifixion, after all. Judas really betrayed Christ in the same way Peter almost did, by refusing to be associated with the cross, once he began to understand what it meant for him. The only difference between Peter and Judas, really, is the Peter asked for forgiveness, while Judas left the table once he realized the Lord knew his sin, and went 'Into the Dark, for it was Night."

Image, Damien Baungartner

Richness and poverty

2008-03-04T17:41:00.004-05:00

"I swear to you, then," said MacIan, after a pause. "I swear to you that nothing shall come between us. I swear to you that nothing shall be in my heart or in my head till our swords clash together. I swear it by the God you have denied, by the Blessed Lady you have blasphemed; I swear it by the seven swords in her heart. I swear it by the Holy Island where my fathers are, by the honour of my mother, by the secret of my people, and by the chalice of the Blood of God."

The atheist drew up his head. "And I," he said, "give my word."

GK Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross (1909), part II: "The Religion of the Stipendiary Magistrate", last paragraphs

Image: Eugene Thirion, "Neronian Martyrs"

On Charity: for Lent

2008-03-04T17:37:00.003-05:00

Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
-James Russell Lowell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891)

Image: The Charity of St. Elizabeth of Hungary
Edmund Blair Leighton (1853-1922)

2008-02-18T09:15:00.003-05:00

A miracle is not the suspension of natural law, but the operation of a higher law.

Lovely books for children of all ages!

2007-11-27T10:41:00.000-05:00

The Next 12 Days of Studio Life

2007-11-26T22:32:00.000-05:00

Whether It Is Better to Draw In Company Or Alone:

I say and confirm that is is far better to draw in company than alone for many reasons: the first is that you will be ashamed to be seen among the draftsmen if you are unskillful, and this shame will cause you to study well. In the second place, a felling of emulation will goad you to try to rank among those who are praised more than yourself, for praise will spur you; a third reason is that you will learn from the methods of such as are abler than you, and if you are abler than the others you will profit by eschweing thier faults, and hearing yourself praised will increase your skill.

Leonardo Da Vinci
1452-1519

Just when you think School is too complicated...

2007-11-16T05:55:00.000-05:00

All men were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of God,
and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing him who is,
and from studying the works did not discern the artisan;
But either fire, or wind, or the swift air,
or the circuit of the stars, or the mighty water,
or the luminaries of heaven, the governors of the world, they considered gods.
Now if out of joy in their beauty they thought them gods,
let them know how far more excellent is the Lord than these;
for the original source of beauty fashioned them.
Or if they were struck by their might and energy,
let them from these things realize how much more powerful is he who made them.
For from the greatness and the beauty of created things
their original author, by analogy, is seen.
But yet, for these the blame is less;
For they indeed have gone astray perhaps,
though they seek God and wish to find him.
For they search busily among his works,
but are distracted by what they see, because the things seen are fair.
But again, not even these are pardonable.
For if they so far succeeded in knowledge
that they could speculate about the world,
how did they not more quickly find its Lord?

Wisdom: as I will proclaim it at today's Mass....

Intellectual Limitations

2007-11-14T10:49:00.000-05:00

One result of the stimulation of your intellectual life that takes place in college is usually a shrinking of the imaginative life. This sounds like a paradox, but I have often found it to be true. Students get so bound up with difficulties such as Buddhism, Mohmmedanism, etc., that they cease to look for God in other ways. Bridges once wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins and asked him to tell him how he, Bridges, could believe. He must have expected from Hopkins a long philosophical answer. Hopkins wrote back, "Give alms." He was trying to say to Bridges that God is to be experienced in Charity (in the sense of love for the divine image in human beings). Don't get so entangled with intellectual difficulties that you fail to look for God in this way.

The intellectual difficulties have to be met, however, and you will be meeting them for the rest of your life. When you get a reasonable hold on one, another will come to take its place. At one time, the clash of the different world relligions was a difficulty for me. Where you have absolute solutions, however, you have no need of faith. Faith is what you have in the absence of knowledge. The reason this clash doesn't bother me any longer is because I have got, over the years, a sense of the immense sweep of creation, of the evolutionary process in everything, of how incomprehensible God must necessarily be to be the God of heaven and earth. You can't fit the Almighty into your intellectual categories.

~ Flannery O'Connor

Image: Josh Mitchell

All Good Things Are One Thing

2007-11-08T09:39:00.000-05:00

All good things are one thing. Sunsets, schools of philosophy, babies, constellations, cathedrals, operas, mountains, horses, poems — all these are merely disguises. One thing is always walking among us in fancy-dress, in the grey cloak of a church or the green cloak of a meadow. He is always behind, His form makes the folds fall so superbly. And that is what the savage old Hebrews, alone among the nations, guessed, and why their rude tribal god has been erected on the ruins of all polytheistic civilizations. For the Greeks and Norsemen and Romans saw the superficial wars of nature and made the sun one god, the sea another, the wind a third. They were not thrilled, as some rude Israelite was, one night in the wastes, alone, by the sudden blazing idea of all being the same God: an idea worthy of a detective story.

- Letter to Frances Blogg (later his wife) (1899).
Quoted in Maisie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1943).

Image: Pierre Edouard Frere

Fall Break

2007-10-19T12:28:00.001-04:00

New Eyes

2007-10-15T20:08:00.000-04:00

"It seems to me that the most fundamental need of our society is . . . to have men and women who together will create communities of welcome for those who are rejected, alone and lost ---and their number is legion. It is more than ever essential to rediscover the sense of home as a place of tenderness and welcome, where each one can find the deepest value of his or her being ---the heart with its capacity to receive and to give."

I just discovered Jean Vanier

Restitution

2007-10-06T15:29:00.000-04:00

I just spent $200 on about a months worth of drafting supplies. To relieve my feelings at the injustice of the world and in particular of the commercial system (what is wrong with having wealthy patrons to supply these things for you, I ask???) I have searched out remenicences of an early time and examples to remind myself of what I'm trying to make anyway.

I love Allposters.com!!

It does help. But I'm still not opposed to being a little patronized...

Autumn Is Here!

2007-10-01T07:51:00.000-04:00

Look

and Listen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWa39e-Nnds"

Enchanted Garden by Waterhouse, Music courtesy of Jordi Savall and friends

The View From Here

2007-09-10T13:48:00.001-04:00

"In the last resort, becoming a believer always means the same thing: another reality looms before the man who was formerly enclosed in his own being, in his own world; before him, in him, or above him---however we may express it, it is another reality, belonging to another world, from above, from beyond. This reality, this 'beyond', becomes more concrete, grows in strength; its truth, goodness, and holiness become more definite and demand the allegiance of him who has been called. The decision to entrust one's own existence to the strange reality that surpasses it, the sacrifice of one's own self-sufficiency and of the independence of one's own world will be difficult. It will mean a rude shock and a gamble. Christ has said, "He who possesses his life, will lose it; but he who gives his life, will find it." Hence the soul must first lose itself by recognizing that there is a second goal, and then must recognize that beyond that lies the true goal."

Romano Guardini

Image, "Landscape with a Specific View" by David Ligare

Simplify

2007-09-10T12:25:00.000-04:00

"If we try to find what truth is by arguing, there will always be good arguments on both sides. At some point we must risk the dangerous decision for faith. And that means always standing on the side of the weak, always on the side of the poor, always on the side of the victims. As a rule that will make us unpopular."
-Richard Rohr, Simplicity: The Art of Living

Images: Searching for the lost Coin, the second by Millais

Sparrows Art

2007-09-09T14:21:00.000-04:00

And the beautiful philosophy behind it

I approve of such Cheerfulness

Read Something Beautiful

2007-09-09T14:10:00.000-04:00

HERE

“Let us blow trumpets”

2007-09-08T13:33:00.000-04:00

Ritualism will always attract much of healthy humanity, merely because ritualism is emphatically wearing your heart upon your sleeve; that excellent practice. It says in essence, “Wear your heart upon your sleeve; wear it blazoned in crimson and embroidered in gold. Break out into songs and colours as lovers do. Let others pretend to an inhuman delicacy and a quite sophisticated silence. Let us cry out as children do when they have really found something. Let us blow trumpets and light candles before the thing that we have, to show at least that we have it. And let them keep a decorous silence and a moderate behaviour, let them raise a wall of stone and draw a veil of mystery across something that they have not got at all.”

- The Illustrated London News, 28 July 1906.

More at Hebdomadal Chesterton

August

2007-08-08T11:43:00.000-04:00

August

The soldier month, the bulwark of the year,
That never more shall hear such victories told;
He stands apparent with his heaven-high spear,
And helmeted of grand Etruscan gold.
Our harvest is the bounty he has won,
The loot his fiery temper takes by strength.
Oh! Paladin of the Imperial sun!
Oh! Crown of all the seasons come at length!
This is sheer manhood; this is Charlemagne,
When he with his wide host came conquering home
From vengeance under Roncesvalles ta'en.
Or when his bramble beard flaked red with foam
Of bivouac wine-cups on the Lombard plain,
What time he swept to grasp the world at Rome.

Belloc

Not the usual door knob

2007-08-08T10:16:00.000-04:00

Imagine if more buildings were this whimsical!

HWTN

2007-07-05T11:32:00.000-04:00

Holy Whapping Television Network (HWTN)
(Partial)
Schedule for Week of June 25-30, 2007

Tuesday
8:00 PM. Desperate Hapsburgs. Franz-Josef wonders why his no-good son Prince Rudolf has been hanging around that old dump in Mayerling so long. Franz-Ferdinand (the archduke, not the band) attempts to seduce Jessica Biel. Music by Franz-Ferdinand (the band, not the archduke.)
9:00 PM. Altar Boy Meets World. Eccentric next-door neighbor Fr. Feeney teaches Corey an important life-lesson revolving around extra ecclesia nullam sallus, like just about every other episode. (Warning: This series has been given a rating of TV-MA by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Say ten Hail Maries after viewing, or go poke a badger with a spoon.)
9:30 PM. Savina the Teenage Martyr. Emperor Diocletian contnues to find another way to kill the seemingly indestructible and of course absurdly beautiful St. Savina (Melissa Joan Hart). This week: Razor-edged bamboo splints and something disturbing involving uncooked spaghetti, a tea-cosy and a video-loop of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. Let's say it all together, boys and girls: Ew.

Wednesday
8:00 PM. The Latin Grammys. Hosted by Vicar-General Schmitz, ICR, direct from Gricigliano. Musical guest: the entire monastery of Solesmes. Awards are expected for Best Indult Solemn High Mass of the Year, Best Sequence, Best Novus Ordo Celebrant, Best Cantilation in Tono Recto, Most Nasal Chanting by a Frenchman, Most Mangled Latin Phrases by a Catholic Blogger, and Quietest Low Mass.
12:00 Midnight. Vienna Roast “Feast of the Holy Name of Mary” Cappuccino Infomercial. Hosted by St. Marco d’Avellino and Jan Sobieski on behalf of Holy League Enterprises, Inc. (Dang Venetians, they commercialize everything.)

Don't thank me, thank Holy Whapping and be sure to read the rest of it!

Image: Immaculate Conception Church, Polish Hill, Pittsburgh

Coming soon, to a coffee house near you

2007-07-03T18:17:00.000-04:00

Memorial versus Preservation at the Concentration Camps

2007-06-17T20:13:00.000-04:00

An interesting article from the preservation movement point of view.

http://www.nationaltrust.org/magazine/archives/arch_story/100402.htm

2007-06-11T19:53:00.000-04:00

"With their slightly slanting eyes, their little nose in a round face and their unfinished features, trisomic children are more child-like than other children. All children have short hands and short fingers; theirs are shorter. Their entire anatomy is more rounded, without any asperities or stiffness. Their ligaments, their muscles, are so supple that it adds a tender languor to their way of being. And this sweetness extends to their character: they are communicative and affectionate, they have a special charm which is easier to cherish than to describe. This is not to say that Trisomy 21 is a desirable condition. It is an implacable disease which deprives the child of that most precious gift handed down to us through genetic heredity: the full power of rational thought. This combination of a tragic chromosomic error and a naturally endearing nature, immediately shows what medicine is all about: hatred of disease and love of the diseased."

Dr. Jerome Lejeune, the geneticist who discovered Trisomy 21, also known as Downs Syndrome. Click his name for more about his life and work!

More Summer Poetry: Visitation

2007-06-01T20:26:00.000-04:00

REGINA VIRGINEM, spinning
through sinless hand the
purple veil of the atoning
temple. Listening in the
angel's voice to the wings
of the Holy Spirit. Who
in your chastity brings
to us the Savior.
Give me back my innocence:
wrapped in purple,
hot with blood and sighs
sweet, as the singing children
in Nebuchadnezzer's furnace.
I have torn
all the veils - temple- womb-
and heart. Lend
me then your mantle
that I may again be
woman. Hailed
as mystery
and love.
Hailed as you are
for your answering.
Salve.

Image: Presentation of the Blessed Virgin, Titian

Just in from Thompson

2007-06-01T20:24:00.000-04:00

GRACE OF THE WAY

The windy trammel of her dress,
Her blown locks, took my soul in mesh.
God's breath they spake, with visibleness
That stirred the raiment of her flesh:

And sensible, as her blown locks were,
Beyond the precincts of her form
I felt the woman flow from her-
A calm of intempestuous storm.

I failed against the affluent tide;
Out of this abject earth of me
I was translated and enskied
Into the heavenly-regioned She.

Now of that vision I, I bereaven,
This knowledge keep, that may not dim:-
Short arm needs man to reach to Heaven,
So ready is Heaven to stoop to him;

Which sets, to measure of man's feet,
No alien Tree for trysting-place;
And who can read, may read the sweet
Direction in his Lady's face.

-Francis Thompson

Image: Autumn, by Goodward

Introducing...

2007-05-23T21:44:00.000-04:00

My amazing housemate

Jenny Jean Love

http://www.myspace.com/jennyjeanlove

I know, I know, but I treated myself to frivolity after a long exam...

2007-05-11T09:26:00.000-04:00

You scored as Edward Ferrars. Your husband/boyfriend is like Edward Ferrars of Sense & Sensibility. He is quietly impulsive, with an understated hint of romance. But once you get to know him, he's very affectionate, caring, and faithful. The two of you enjoy a calm, joyful life.

Edward Ferrars

65%

Knightley

65%

Col. Brandon

60%

Edmund Bertram

50%

Darcy

50%

Captain Wentworth

45%

Tilney

35%

Who is Your Jane Austen Boyfriend/Husband?
created with QuizFarm.com

Which Classical Composer are YOU??

2007-05-11T09:20:00.001-04:00

You scored as Hector Berlioz. You are Hector Berlioz! The son of a doctor, Berlioz dropped out of medical school to pursue music. He drew much of his inspiration from Shakespeare and his own life. Conductors and audiences alike found his music to sound quite outlandish at the time.

Hector Berlioz

100%

J.S. Bach

81%

Franz Liszt

44%

Antonin Dvorak

44%

Tchaikovsky

31%

Which Classical Music Composer are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

Arthur Rackham

2007-04-16T18:16:00.001-04:00

Midsummer Nights Dream illustration

Click here for more

Architectural History Class Applied

2007-04-11T22:21:00.000-04:00

Statement
Friedrich Nietzsche
Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs.

Illustration: Valhalla, Regensberg, Leo von Klenze

Reply
Mark Twain
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

Illustration: Easter, Fifth Avenue, New York in Black and White

Easter Women

2007-04-10T13:48:00.000-04:00

2007-04-06 Good Friday sermon of Father Cantalamessa, St. Peter's Basilica

"Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala" (Jn 19: 25). Just this once, let us not be thinking of Mary, his mother. Her presence on Calvary has no need of any explanation. She was "his mother", and this says it all; mothers don't abandon a son, even one condemned to death. But why were the other women there? Who, and how many, were they?

The gospels give us the names of some of them: Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James the younger and Joset, Salome, mother of Zebedee's sons, one called Johanna and a certain Susanna (Mk 15: 40; Lk 8: 2-3). They had followed Jesus from Galilee; they remained by his side, weeping, on the way to Calvary (Lk 23: 27-28), on Golgotha hill they stood watching "from a distance" (in other words, they were as close as they were allowed to be) and in a little while they would accompany him from there, downhearted and sorrowful, to the tomb, with Joseph of Arimathea (Lk 23: 55).

This fact is too well attested, and too much out of the ordinary, for us to pass it over and hurry on. With a certain male condescension we refer to them as the "pious women", but they are a great deal more than "pious women"; they are, rather, "Mothers of Courage"! They despised the danger of showing themselves so clearly in favour of one condemned to death. Jesus had said: "Happy the one who does not lose faith in me" (Lk 7: 23). These women were the only ones who did not lose faith in him.

For some time there have been lively discussions about who it was that wanted Jesus dead: was it the leaders of the Jews, or was it Pilate, or perhaps both. One thing, in any event, is quite certain: they were men, not women. No woman was involved, even indirectly, in his condemnation. Even a pagan woman – Pilate's wife – mentioned in the accounts, distanced herself from the sentence (Mt 27: 19). Certainly, Jesus died for women's sins too, but from the historical point of view they are the only ones who can truthfully say, "we are innocent of this man's blood" (see Mt 27: 24).

In this, we have one of the surest signs of the honesty and historical credibility of the gospels; the pitiful figure they portray of the authors of the gospels and of those who provided its details, and the wonderful picture they paint of the women. Who would have allowed the ignominious story of his own fear, flight, denial, made so much more shameful by the contrast to the very different behaviour of a few poor women, to be preserved, in imperishable memory – who, I say again, would have allowed this, if he were not constrained to remain faithful to the story of something that was seen to be infinitely greater than his own miserable behaviour?

* * * *

We have always asked how it was that the "pious women" were the first to see the Risen One and to be given the task of taking the news to the apostles. This was the surest way to make the resurrection hardly credible at all. The testimony of a woman carried no weight whatever in a judgment. Perhaps for this very reason no woman is mentioned in Paul's long list of those who had seen the Risen Christ (see 1 Cor 15: 5-8). The apostles themselves at first took the women's words as pure womanly "nonsense" and gave them no credence (Lk 24: 11).

Authors of antiquity thought they knew the answer to the question. The women, said Romanos Melodus, were the first to see Christ Risen because a woman, Eve, was the first to sin![1] But the true answer is quite different: the women were the first to see Jesus risen, because they were the last to leave him in his death, and even when he was dead they came to bring spices to the tomb (Mk 16: 1).

We need to ask ourselves why this was so: why did these women remain firm despite the scandal of the cross? Why did they remain close when all seemed to be over and even those who had been his most intimate disciples had abandoned Jesus and were getting ready to go home again?

It was Jesus himself who gave us the answer, in anticipation, when he replied to Simon, saying of the sinner who had bathed and kissed his feet, "she has shown great love!" (Lk 7: 47). The women followed Jesus for his own sake, out of gratitude for the good they had received from him, and not for any hope of making a career out of following him. No promise of "twelve thrones" was made to them, nor did any of them ask for seats on his right and his left in his kingdom. They followed, it is written, "to look after him; to provide for them out of their own resources" (Mt 27: 55; Lk 8: 3); they were the only ones, after Mary his mother, that truly made the spirit of the gospel their own. They followed for reasons of the heart, and these did not deceive them.

* * * *

Because of that, their presence at the side of the Crucified and the Risen One contains a lesson that is vital for us today. Our society, dominated by technology, needs a heart if humankind is to survive without becoming totally dehumanized. We need to give more room to "reasons of the heart" if, while the globe is physically warming, we do not want the planet to fall into an ice-age of the spirit. The big crisis of faith in our modern world is rooted in the fact that people don't listen to the reasons of the heart but only to the twisted reasons of the mind.

In this respect, quite differently from many others, technology has very little to offer that is helpful to us. For some time people have been working to develop a type of computer that can "think", and many are convinced that they will succeed. But so far no one has aimed to develop a computer that "loves", that can be moved, that can relate affectively to us, helping us to love, as computers have helped us calculate the distance between the stars, study the movement of atoms, and remember more and more data…..

The enhancement of intelligence and of humankind's cognitive powers has, unhappily, not been matched by any enhancement of our capacity for love. It seems, in fact, that this capacity for love counts for nothing, even though we know that to be happy or unhappy depends not so much on whether we know or don't know, as on whether we love or don't love, are loved or are not loved. It is easy to see why this is so: we are created "in the image of God", and God is love. Deus caritas est!

It is not difficult to see why we are so anxious to increase our knowledge and so unconcerned about increasing our capacity to love: knowledge automatically translates into power, but love into service.

One of the modern idolatries is the idolatry of the "IQ", the "intelligence quotient". We have found many ways to measure it. But who is there that has any concern for measuring the "quotient of the heart"? Yet it is love alone that can redeem and save, while science and the thirst for knowledge, on their own, can lead to damnation.

We see this in the closing words of Goethe's Faust, and hear it echoed in a recent film that shows, symbolically, the precious books of a library being nailed to the ground, while the leading actor cries out, "All the books in the world do not match the worth of a single caress"[2]. Long before either of these, Paul wrote, "'knowledge' puffs up, but love builds up" (1 Cor 8: 1 RSV).

After the many ages named after man (homo) – homo erectus, homo faber an era of the heart, of compassion, when the earth can finally cease to be "The little threshing floor that so incites our savagery"[3].

* * * *

On all sides the need is arising for us to give more scope to women. We don't believe that "the eternal feminine will save us"[4]. Everyday experience shows that woman can "lift us to the heights", but can also plunge us into the depths. Woman too needs to be saved by Christ. But it is clear that once she has been "set free", on the human level, of all the old subjections, she will be able to do much to save our society from certain inveterate evils that threaten us: violence, the will to power, spiritual aridity, the lack of regard for life…

We need only to avoid a repetition of the ancient Gnostic error according to which woman, to be saved, needs to cease to be woman and become man[5]. This prejudice is so rooted in our culture that even some women have ended by giving in to it. To affirm their dignity, some have believed it necessary at times to imitate men's behaviour or to minimize the sexual difference, reducing it to a mere product of culture. As one of their famous representatives said, "Woman is not born, she becomes"[6].

How grateful we ought to be to the "pious women"! On the way of the Cross, their sobbing was the only friendly sound to reach the ears of the Saviour; while he hung on the cross, their eyes were the only ones to rest on him with compassion and love.

The Byzantine liturgy honours the pious women, dedicating a Sunday in the liturgical year, the second after Easter, to them; it is known as "Sunday of the Perfume-Bearers". Jesus is happy to see them honoured in the Church, the women who loved him and who believed in him while he lived among them. About one of them, the woman who emptied a jar of perfumed oil on his head, he uttered this extraordinary prophecy, one that has proved true all down the ages: "I tell you solemnly, wherever in the world this Good News is proclaimed, what she has done will be told also, in remembrance of her" (Mt 26: 13).

* * * *

Yet the pious women are not only to be honoured and admired; they are also to be imitated. St Leo the Great said that "Christ's passion will continue to the end of the ages"[7], and Pascal wrote that "Christ will be in agony until the end of the world"[8]. The Passion is prolonged in the members of the body of Christ. The many women, religious and lay, who stand on the side of the poor, the sick, those afflicted by AIDS, the imprisoned, the many of every kind that society rejects, are heirs of the "pious women". To them – believers or not – Christ says again, "You did it to me" (Mt 25: 40).

It was not only the part they played in the Passion, but also the part they played in the Resurrection, that make the pious women an example for all Christians of today. Throughout the Bible, in chapter after chapter, we read the imperative, "Go!", spoken by God to those whom he sends. The word was spoken to Abraham, to Moses ("Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt's land!"), to the prophets, to the apostles: "Go into the whole world; preach the gospel to every creature".

Yet all of these calls were addressed to men. There is only one "Go!" spoken to women: the one Jesus spoke to the perfume-bearers on Easter morning: "Then Jesus said to them, 'Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers that they must leave for Galilee; they will see me there'" (Mt 28: 10). By these words he appointed them the first witnesses to the resurrection, "teachers of the teachers" as one of the ancient writers has called them[9].

It is a great pity that, because she has been mistakenly identified as the sinful woman who washed the feet of Jesus (Lk 7: 37), Mary Magdalene has ended up as fuel for an endless array of legends, ancient and modern, and has been taken up in art and piety almost exclusively as "the penitent", rather than in her primary role as witness to the resurrection, "apostle to the apostles" as St Thomas Aquinas called her[10].

* * * *

"Filled with awe and great joy the women came quickly away from the tomb and ran to tell the disciples" (Mt 28: 8). Christian women all, keep on talking to the successors of the apostles, to us priests who are their helpers, telling them the joyful news, "the Master is alive! He is risen! He goes before you to Galilee – which is to say, he goes before you wherever you go! Do not be afraid!"

Keep alive the sublime exchange between the Church and Mary Magdalene in the Sequence for Easter: Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando: dux vitae mortuus regnat vivus – "Death with Life contended: combat strangely ended! Life's own champion, slain, yet lives to reign". Life has triumphed over death: it happened for Christ, it will happen one day for us too. Together with all women of good will, you are the hope of humankind.

To the first of the "pious women" and their incomparable model, the Mother of Jesus, let us pray once more the Church's ancient prayer: "Holy Mary, come to the help of the suffering, support the fearful, comfort the weak: pray for the people, assist all in ministry, intercede for all devout women": Ora pro populo, intervene pro clero, intercede pro devoto femineo sexu.[11]

[English transl. by Denis Barrett]

[1] Romanos Melodus, Hymns, 45, 6 (ed. a cura di G. Garib, Edizione Paoline 1981, p.406)
[2] In Ermanno Olmi's film "Cento chiodi".
[3] Dante Alighieri, Paradiso, 22, v.151 (Mandelbaum Transl.).
[4] W. Goethe, Faust, finale of part II: "Das ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan".
[5] See Coptic Gospel of Thomas, 114; Extracts from Theodotus, 21, 3.
[6] Simone de Beauvoir, The second Sex (1949).
[7] St Leo the Great, Sermo 70, 5 (PL 54, 383).
[8] B. Pascal, Pensées, n. 553.
[9] Gregory of Antioch, Homily on the Perfume-Bearers, 11 (PG 88, 1864 B).
[10] St Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, XX, 2519.
[11] Magnificat antiphon, Common of Virgins.

Good Friday

2007-04-06T13:26:00.000-04:00

If you only listen to 2 pieces of music this lent, they should be the Vierne "Kyrie" and the canticles from Tenebrae.

Deposition of Christ by Antonio Ciseri

Virtual museum of education iconics

2007-04-05T22:58:00.000-04:00

An interesting place to visit

Especially if you ever need to personify one of the liberal arts

This is "Music" from Notre Dame

Everything you ever wanted to know about

2007-04-05T16:50:00.000-04:00

Carmelites

The girl child...

2007-03-19T12:03:00.000-04:00

“The United States is dismayed to see that much of the language in the Agreed Conclusions is more attentive to the political preoccupations of international conference goers than to the needs of women and particularly of girls. For instance, the document mentions “sexual and reproductive health” several times and life-saving immunizations only once. Some delegations insisted that the document could not contain an explicit reference to the violent and discriminatory practice of aborting unborn baby girls for the sole reason that they are girls – and yet they insisted on multiple references to programs and activities to help girls “understand their sexuality”….However, we are happy that the document condemns female infanticide and “harmful practices of prenatal sex selection,” which is universally understood to include sex-selective abortion, even if some delegations insisted that this practice not be called by its real name.”

Ambassador Brister, addressing the Commission on the Status of Women

The United States had initiated a formal resolution at the CSW that would condemn the now widespread practice of aborting baby girls because of their sex. The US took the position that the issue deserved to be highlighted in its own resolution, like the other four stand-alone CSW resolutions on issues such as female genital mutilation, HIV/AIDS, forced marriage and the plight of Palestinian women. This was especially relevant since the theme of the CSW this year was "discrimination and violence against the girl child." More Here

To Keep a True Lent

2007-03-16T20:51:00.000-04:00

Is this a Fast, to keep
The Larder lean?
And clean
From fat of veals and sheep?

Is it to quit the dish
Of flesh, yet still
To fill
The platter high with fish?

Is it to fast an hour,
Or ragg'd go,
Or show
A down-cast look and sour?

No: 'tis a Fast to dole
Thy sheaf of wheat
And meat
Unto the hungry soul.

It is to fast from strife
And old debate,
And hate;
To circumcise thy life.

To show a heart grief-rent;
To starve thy sin,
Not bin;
And that's to keep thy Lent.

Robert Herrick, 1591-1674

Image: Icon of the Ressurection

Think on it

2007-02-02T00:29:00.001-05:00

Imagine that it is you yourself who are erecting the edifice of human destiny with the aim of making men happy in the end, of giving them peace and contentment at last, but that to do that it is absolutely necessary, and indeed quite inevitable, to torture to death only one tiny creature, the little girl who beat her breast with her little fist, and to found the edifice on her unavenged tears—would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?

Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881), The Brothers Karamazov, bk. 5, ch. 4 trans. by D. Magarshak (1958).

Baptism Sunday...

2007-01-29T14:12:00.000-05:00

Poem for a Godson

Elizabeth Nannestad

My thoughts form a silent circle around you, equally anxious
not to put weight on you, or to leave you too alone.
Already you object to our world and we fail to guess
what troubles you. Your mother would remove it if she knew. Not I.
I have hopes that you will be like her (but not entirely), a world-leaper,
and like your father -- his bright eyes, his mouth.

I hope that your cruelties will at least be blind
and you then open your eyes, able to live without denying them.
I hope you will know love from its stem in your heart
and allow nothing to prevent it growing naturally
beyond yourself. I hope that you will find beauty where it lives and is free
in plain things.

For now you are our hazelnut, sweet and grumpy.
I'll keep these hard hopes to myself, and be your plaything.

Architecture of Conviction

2006-12-29T10:56:00.000-05:00

When I lately stood with a friend before [the cathedral of] Amiens, . . . he asked me how it happens that we can no longer build such piles? I replied: "Dear Alphonse, men in those days had convictions (Ueberzeugungen), we moderns have opinions (Meinungen) and it requires something more than an opinion to build a Gothic cathedral.
- Heinrich Heine,
Confidential Letters to August Lewald on the French Stage
(letter 9), translated by C.G. Leland

Habitat for Humanity homes designed to match historic district styles

2006-12-29T10:32:00.000-05:00

Habitat for Humanity and classical architects eye historic
districts to build traditionally-styled, affordable homes

Hopefully they'll look something like the Katrina Cottage

What a fun partnership for The Institute of Classical Architecture

New Links!

2006-12-27T13:16:00.000-05:00

Dappled Things: a literary journal

New Woman reflections on Christian Feminism

Institute of Christ the King

Architectural Record

Institute of Classical Architecture

Epiphany

2006-12-26T15:19:00.000-05:00

The Starlight Night

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare! --
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then! -- What? -- Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Merry Christmas

2006-12-26T11:05:00.000-05:00

God in the Streets of New York

2006-12-09T11:35:00.000-05:00

Happy Feast of St. Nicholas

2006-12-05T13:51:00.000-05:00

“Christ in Christmas is rooted in every child’s memories of an astonishing intervention of love in their life, found, of all places, in their stockings.”

Fr. Nicholas Ayo, on his latest book

It may be difficult to discern in the heroic and daunting figure of the fourth century Bishop of Myra, the “jolly old elf” of Clement Clarke Moore’s endearing and sentimental “Twas the Night Before Christmas” poem. The saint whose feast the Catholic Church celebrates on Dec. 6 may well have been such a pleasantly avuncular gentleman, but he is also remembered as a powerful leader who rescued many young women from sexual slavery, intimidated vengeful emperors, came between the executioner’s axe and the neck of a condemned prisoner, plucked despairing seafarers from perfect storms, and overwhelmed a threatened famine with a miraculous abundance of grain.

Writing of these older and more stirring accounts of his patron saint, Father Ayo remarks that “it does not take much imagination to wonder if the Santa Claus, who descends upon our roof, or the comic book superman, who swoops down upon our city, owe some of their inspiration and the cut of their figure to the original aerial wonder-worker, good Saint Nicholas.”

Computer generated reconstruction of the face of St. Nicholas from Discovery Channel

On a Vulgar Error

2006-11-14T18:46:00.000-05:00

No. It's an impudent falsehood. Men did not
Invariably think the newer way
Prosaic, mad, inelegant, or what not.

Was the first pointed arch esteemed a blot
Upon the church? Did anybody say
How modern and how ugly? They did not.

Plate-armour, or windows glazed, or verse fire-hot
With rhymes from France, or spices from Cathay,
Were these at first a horror? They were not.

If, then, our present arts, laws, houses, food
All set us hankering after yesterday,
Need this be only an archaising mood?

Why, any man whose purse has been let blood
By sharpers, when he finds all drained away
Must compare how he stands with how he stood.

If a quack doctor's breezy ineptitude
Has cost me a leg, must I forget straightway
All that I can't do now, all that I could?

So, when our guides unanimously decry
The backward glance, I think we can guess why.

C. S. Lewis

More Lewis Poetry Here

Images: Matthew Alderman proposal for a city church

New Link

2006-10-28T14:52:00.000-04:00

Society of Saint Barbara

Father Jenkins on Catholic Universities

2006-10-28T14:21:00.000-04:00

A Harvard curriculum committee proposed this month that, among other things, a graduate should know "the role of religion in contemporary, historical, or future events -- personal, cultural, national, or international." Some of the President of Notre Dame's reply follows:

"The Harvard committee rightly noted that students coming to college today struggle with an academy that is "profoundly secular." This was not always the case, at Harvard or at many other universities. For centuries scholars, scientists and artists agreed that convictions of faith were wholly compatible with the highest levels of reasoning, inquiry and creativity. But in recent centuries this assumption had been challenged and assertions of faith marginalized in, and even banished from, academic departments and university curricula.

The Harvard committee hastens to explain that its proposal is not for "religious apologetics." Rather, the courses it envisions would offer an examination of "the interplay between religion and various aspects of national and/or international culture and society." They would deal not so much with the relationship between reason and faith as with reasoning about faith, religion and religious institutions and their impact in the world... Such courses are unquestionably needed...

But universities can do more than just familiarize students with the world's religions in survey-course fashion. The rise of religious fanaticism stems in part from a failure of intellectuals within various religious traditions to engage the faithful of their traditions in serious and reasoned reflection, inquiry and dialogue. The marginalization of faith within universities contributes to this failure...

It's time for universities to explore the reasoning that is possible within a tradition of faith, and to help their students appreciate this possibility and the rich resources in great religious traditions. Such efforts would enhance the ability of those with faith to engage in thoughtful, reasoned and self-critical spiritual reflection.

Read the rest of the essay here

Images: John Cassidy: Theology,Science and Art Raphael-School of Athens

If You Don't Understand Spanish

2006-10-05T08:51:00.000-04:00

At least look at these pictures!

More on Schinkel here
And Asociación Centro Arquitectura Metropolitana is a new permanent link

Pope Benedict and the Cross

2006-09-25T19:36:00.000-04:00

The masterful lecture that the pope-theologian delivered at the University of Regensburg really did send shivers throughout the world. Because what Benedict XVI said there is just what happened afterward. The pope explained the distance that runs between the Christian God, who is love, immolated in Jesus on the cross, but also “Logos,” reason; and the God worshipped by Islam, so transcendent and sublime that he is not bound by anything, not even by that rational assertion according to which there must not be “any coercion in matters of faith.” The Qur’an says this in the second sura, to which the pope conscientiously made reference, but it then makes other and opposite statements. And the violent eruption in the Muslim world against the pope and Christians confirms that this other tendency has the upper hand, giving form and substance to the way in which myriads of the faithful of Allah view the world of the infidels. The other side of pope Joseph Ratzinger’s lecture in Regensburg is the blood poured out in Muslim Mogadishu by sister Leonella Sgorbati, a woman veiled and yet free, a martyr whose last words were addressed to her killers: “I forgive you.”

Read the rest of this brilliant essay by Sandro Magister here!

Read what the man actually said

2006-09-25T10:22:00.000-04:00

It's a sad world where being a good scholar gets you into this much trouble.

Actual text from Pope Benedict's discussion of Isalm

Intelligent discussion of the same at Holy Whapping

Image:Inside of a Greek Orthodox church in Tulkarm this Sunday

On Architecture in a Virtual World

2006-09-25T10:12:00.000-04:00

Interesting discussion here
Image by Philippe Paul Froesch

Veritas et Venusitas is linked!

2006-09-25T09:58:00.000-04:00

click here or check out the sidebar!

Del dicho al hecho, hay mucho trecho.

2006-08-26T09:49:00.000-04:00

I take courage in remembering, as William Ware is so fond of reminding his reader, that following the Orders will not stifle a good architect's talent and creativity, but they will keep a bad architect from designing complete trash.

Note the new link: Humanist Art Review

Begining to Understand the Orders

2006-08-26T09:40:00.000-04:00

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst of architects from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement.

Marx, Capital
Image: Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Le meilleur des mondes possibles

2006-08-14T15:27:00.000-04:00

Beux arts to illustrate theological imagination:

The phrase "the best of all possible worlds" was coined by the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu. It is the central argument in Leibniz's theodicy, or his attempt to solve the problem of evil. Leibniz was concerned with the question of theodicy: how, if God is good and omnipotent, do we account for the suffering and injustice that exists in the world?

Imagine that all the world is made of good and evil. The best possible world would have the most good and the least evil. Courage is better than no courage. Yet without evil to challenge us there can be no courage. Since evil brings out the best aspects of mankind evil is regarded as necessary. So in creating this world God made some evil to make the best of all possible worlds.

I think the Beaux-Arts style is an attempt, though conventions, to remind us that this is the best of all possible worlds: it is, in fact, orderly!

What do you think?

Ecole des Beaux-Arts image by D'Espouy. Click for more!

What I Learned About This Week

2006-08-13T17:04:00.000-04:00

Lithography

Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in Bohemia in 1798, and it was the first new printing process since the invention of relief printing in the fifteenth century. In the early days of lithography, a smooth piece of limestone was used (hence the name "lithography"—"lithos" is the ancient Greek word for stone). After the oil-based image was put on the surface, acid burned the image onto the surface; gum arabic, a water soluble solution, was then applied, sticking only to the non-oily surface and sealing it. During printing, water adhered to the gum arabic surfaces and avoided the oily parts, while the oily ink used for printing did the opposite.

Hymn: Enter the New Adventure

2006-07-30T11:18:00.000-04:00

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard,
Beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow Thee.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.

Text, John G. Whittier
Sung to setting by Parry this morning in the Basilica

Notre Dame

2006-07-29T11:58:00.000-04:00

"The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation."
C. S. Lewis - The Weight of Glory

Visit my new school here!

Watercolor by Francis Parkes Bonington

kings chapel

2006-06-28T17:44:00.000-04:00

Within King's College Chapel, Cambridge

Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the architect who planned
(Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed scholars only) this immense
And glorious work of fine intelligence!
Give all thou canst; high heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more:
So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering -and wandering on as loath to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.

by William Wordsworth

Feast of the Presentation

2006-02-02T10:19:00.001-05:00

In honour of the divine mystery that we celebrate today, let us all hasten to meet Christ. Everyone should be eager to join the procession and to carry a light.
Our lighted candles are a sign of the divine splendour of the one who comes to expel the dark shadows of evil and to make the whole universe radiant with the brilliance of his eternal light. Our candles also show how bright our souls should be when we go to meet Christ.

The Mother of God, the most pure Virgin, carried the true light in her arms and brought him to those who lay in darkness. We too should carry a light for all to see and reflect the radiance of the true light as we hasten to meet him.

The light has come and has shone upon a world enveloped in shadows; the Dayspring from on high has visited us and given light to those who lived in darkness. This, then, is our feast, and we join in procession with lighted candles to reveal the light that has shone upon us and the glory that is yet to come to us through him. So let us hasten all together to meet our God.

The true light has come, the light that enlightens every man who is born into this world. ... Let us be shining ourselves as we go together to meet and to receive with the aged Simeon the light whose brilliance is eternal. Rejoicing with Simeon, let us sing a hymn of thanksgiving to God, the Father of the light, who sent the true light to dispel the darkness and to give us all a share in his splendour.

By faith we too embraced Christ, the salvation of God the Father, as he came to us from Bethlehem. Gentiles before, we have now become the people of God. Our eyes have seen God incarnate, and because we have seen him present among us and have mentally received him into our arms, we are called the new Israel. Never shall we forget this presence; every year we keep a feast in his honour.
From a sermon by Saint Sophronius, bishop

Images: Giovanni Bellinni 'Presentation of the Child Jesus at the Temple'
Rembrandt 'Presentation in the Temple'

The 'Magnificat' and the 'Temple' of God's Word

2006-02-02T10:09:00.000-05:00

Mary's poem - the Magnificat - is quite original; yet at the same time, it is a "fabric" woven throughout of "threads" from the Old Testament, of words of God.
Thus, we see that Mary was, so to speak, "at home" with God's word, she lived on God's word, she was penetrated by God's word. To the extent that she spoke with God's words, she thought with God's words, her thoughts were God's thoughts, her words, God's words. She was penetrated by divine light and this is why she was so resplendent, so good, so radiant with love and goodness.

Mary lived on the Word of God, she was imbued with the Word of God. And the fact that she was immersed in the Word of God and was totally familiar with the Word also endowed her later with the inner enlightenment of wisdom . . . .

Thus, Mary speaks with us, speaks to us, invites us to know the Word of God, to love the Word of God, to live with the Word of God, to think with the Word of God. And we can do so in many different ways: by reading Sacred Scripture, by participating especially in the Liturgy, in which Holy Church throughout the year opens the entire book of Sacred Scripture to us. She opens it to our lives and makes it present in our lives.

Pope Benedict XVI 'Homily for Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary' (August 15, 2005)
Image: Presentation of the Child Jesus

Happy Birthday Mozart

2006-01-27T10:18:00.000-05:00

250 years old and still going strong...

Click HERE for an audio quiz to test your expertise in 'Mozart-ology'

Click question mark boxes for other images and links

'Kit Out' The Priest

2006-01-26T23:22:00.000-05:00

Click here and have fun!

Rainy Day

2006-01-17T17:56:00.000-05:00

Geburt und Grah
Ein Weschselnd Weber
Ein glühend leben

So scharf’ ich am sausenden Wehstühlderzeit
Und Wirhe de Gottheit lebe3ndiges Kleid

Birth and death
A changing web
A glowing life
Thus do I work at the humming looms of time
And fashion the living garment of God.”

Song of the Earth Spirit
Goethe
Image: Waterhouse ‘Boreas’

New Links on Side Bar

2006-01-17T17:48:00.000-05:00

Pay After Abortion and New Dream a visit and let me know what you think...