Fair is the hue of your mantle, Mary --
(Take me to shelter, take me to hide!)
"From the deep skies of heaven it drank all its color,
In the deep pools of Heaven my mantle was dyed."
Fine is the cloth of your mantle, Mary --
(Take me to shelter, take me to hide!)
"Ah, careful was the carding and careful the spinning,
And piteous the shearing of my dear Lamb's side."
Warm is the web of your mantle, Mary --
(Take me to shelter, take me to hide!)
"It is woven of rare wool, woven of fair wool --
The soft white fleece of my Lamb Who died."
Draped like a queen's is your mantle, Mary --
(Take me to shelter, take me to hide!)
"Yea, God hath exalted His handmaid, Who made me
Mother of His Word and His Spirit's bride."
Full are the folds of your mantle, Mary --
(Take me to shelter, take me to hide!)
"That all generations be shielded and succored,
The cloak of their Mother is a deep cloak and wide."
Ah, wrap me around with your mantle, Mary --
(Take me to shelter, take me to hide!)
"Child of my sword-pierced soul, I shall guard you,
Little blood-brother of the Crucified."
--by Patrick O'Connor
I came upon this in the scriptorium of a Trappist monastery in Oregon (Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey, in Lafayette, to be precise) during my brief period of Observership there. I had never seen it before, and I have not seen it since. But it struck me so much that I had to note it down. It's not great poetry, by any means, and I know nothing about the author aside from his name. But the Marian piety, the child-like trust, the tenderness of it never fail to touch my heart and leave me deeply moved. I especially like: "That all generations be shielded and succored, the cloak of their Mother is a deep cloak and wide."
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Reflections on Ash Wednesday (1 day late!)
Scrutemur vias nostras et quaeramus et revertamur ad Dominum.
(Let us search our ways, and seek, and return to the Lord.)
- Lamentations 3:40
A wise man once said, "The one principle of Hell is: I am my own" (anyone know who?). Ash Wednesday is a good day to reflect on the fact that we are NOT our own; the ashes are a brand, marking us as the flock belonging to our Master, the Good Shepherd. We have all been bought and paid for with an awesome price.
"Sin needs both definition and acknowledgement. But if neither occurs, it remains, with its effects, on our souls and those of our neighbors. The classical authors teach us to look to our own wills when things go wrong. The cross of ashes -- "Remember, Man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return" -- is placed on the forehead of laity and on the crown of the monk's head. Ash Wednesday does not point to itself. But it does point, first to the man who needs to repent, then to the redemption in which alone repentance has its meaning in forgiveness."
- Father James V. Schall, S.J.
"What, I ask, is more wonderful than the beauty of God? What thought is more pleasing and satisfying than God's mercy? ... The radiance of the divine beauty is altogether beyond the power of words to describe."
- St. Basil
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.
-From Ash Wednesday, by T.S. Eliot
(Let us search our ways, and seek, and return to the Lord.)
- Lamentations 3:40
A wise man once said, "The one principle of Hell is: I am my own" (anyone know who?). Ash Wednesday is a good day to reflect on the fact that we are NOT our own; the ashes are a brand, marking us as the flock belonging to our Master, the Good Shepherd. We have all been bought and paid for with an awesome price.
"Sin needs both definition and acknowledgement. But if neither occurs, it remains, with its effects, on our souls and those of our neighbors. The classical authors teach us to look to our own wills when things go wrong. The cross of ashes -- "Remember, Man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return" -- is placed on the forehead of laity and on the crown of the monk's head. Ash Wednesday does not point to itself. But it does point, first to the man who needs to repent, then to the redemption in which alone repentance has its meaning in forgiveness."
- Father James V. Schall, S.J.
"What, I ask, is more wonderful than the beauty of God? What thought is more pleasing and satisfying than God's mercy? ... The radiance of the divine beauty is altogether beyond the power of words to describe."
- St. Basil
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.
-From Ash Wednesday, by T.S. Eliot
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Solitude
"If only men could see more deeply, they would find what a treasure is hidden in solitude and everyone would run to it."
- Dom Johannes Lanspergus, Carthusian
"Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne pas savoir demeurer au repos dans une chambre."
("All the unhappiness of men can be attributed to one thing, namely, not being able to sit quietly alone in a room.")
- Blaise Pascal
- Dom Johannes Lanspergus, Carthusian
"Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne pas savoir demeurer au repos dans une chambre."
("All the unhappiness of men can be attributed to one thing, namely, not being able to sit quietly alone in a room.")
- Blaise Pascal
Sunday, February 15, 2009
"It's easier not to be a Christian than to be a Christian today ..."
I heard this, or words to this effect, in a video, spoken by an Anglican clergyman, the guy who started the Alpha Course, as a matter of fact. (For those who don't know, the Alpha Course is sort of a new take on C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, but on DVD.) Of course, in one sense he's right. To live your Christian faith openly is to set yourself up for ridicule and contempt from strident secularists who believe religion in general, and Christianity especially, is laughable or downright dangerous. At the very least, you'll get funny looks and embarrassed silences from co-workers or fellow students if you stand up for Church teachings on any of the hot-button issues in the culture wars (you know the list: abortion, gay marriage, etc.). It's hard to get more counter cultural than the Catholic Church.
But in a more profound sense, he's wrong. The Gospel is "Good News": "For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting"; "I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly"; and one of my favorite passages: "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." A life without faith, now THAT is difficult, THAT is a heavy load to carry.
For the reality of life on earth is that no one escapes suffering. Probably the best expression of this idea is among the oldest, written by the first and greatest poet of the Western world, Homer. In Book 24 of The Iliad, Priam, king of Troy, comes by night to the Greek camp. He comes as a suppliant to Achilles to ransom the body of his son Hector. Achilles addresses him: "Ah, unhappy man, many indeed are the evils you have endured in your heart. How could you bring yourself to come alone to the ships of the Achaeans, to meet my eyes, I who have slain your sons many and noble? Of iron, surely, is your heart. But come, sit, and let us allow the woes in our hearts to rest, despite all our sorrow; for no profit comes from chill lament. For so have the gods spun the thread for wretched mortals, that they should live among sorrows; and they themselves are without care. For two urns are set on Zeus' floor of gifts that he gives, the one of ills, the other of blessings. To whomever Zeus who hurls the thunderbolt gives a mixed lot, that man meets now with evil, now with good; but to whomever he gives only the baneful, him he makes to be degraded by man, and evil madness drives him over the face of the sacred earth, and he wanders honored neither by gods nor by mortals." Homer knew that no one gets only blessings. A mixed lot is the best we can hope for.
The "why" of human suffering is a deep mystery. But I've always thought that the argument that human suffering proves that there is no God as Christians conceive Him, all-powerful and all-good, looks at things from the wrong end. The reality is that no one gets a pain-free life ("It is right it should be so; man was made for joy and woe"). The practical problem is: how do we cope? And it seems intuitively obvious that faithful Christians have resources for dealing with pain, physical, emotional, and spiritual, that nonbelievers don't have. Maximilian Kolbe transformed the horror of a starvation bunker at Auschwitz into the serenity of a chapel. Paul Miki and his companions, whose feast we just celebrated on Feb. 6, preached and sang psalms while dying on their crosses. It was reported that "joy glowed on all their faces". Almost the last words Paul Miki spoke were addressed to his torturers: "My religion teaches me to pardon my enemies and all who have offended me. I do gladly pardon the Emperor and all who have sought my death. I beg them to seek baptism and be Christians themselves." Immaculee Ilibagiza forgave the Hutus who hacked her family to death with machetes and turned her own life into a living nightmare during the Rwandan genocide (her story is movingly told in her books Left to Tell and Led by Faith.) Their Catholic faith brought them peace and joy in the midst of their terrible suffering. This is powerful testimony to the truth of Christianity.
So to those who say that suffering proves there is no God, I say it proves the opposite. Faced with suffering such as few of us will ever experience, which most of us can barely imagine, the people I've named and countless others turned to God, gave Him their pain, and received in return His consolation and the strength to persevere and to forgive. Anyone can experience this. God's grace is available to all who approach Him with their troubles, doubts, pains, and problems. Try it! All it requires is an attitude of prayerful openness and humility. And bear in mind: "If it tarries, wait for it, for it will surely come."
But in a more profound sense, he's wrong. The Gospel is "Good News": "For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting"; "I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly"; and one of my favorite passages: "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." A life without faith, now THAT is difficult, THAT is a heavy load to carry.
For the reality of life on earth is that no one escapes suffering. Probably the best expression of this idea is among the oldest, written by the first and greatest poet of the Western world, Homer. In Book 24 of The Iliad, Priam, king of Troy, comes by night to the Greek camp. He comes as a suppliant to Achilles to ransom the body of his son Hector. Achilles addresses him: "Ah, unhappy man, many indeed are the evils you have endured in your heart. How could you bring yourself to come alone to the ships of the Achaeans, to meet my eyes, I who have slain your sons many and noble? Of iron, surely, is your heart. But come, sit, and let us allow the woes in our hearts to rest, despite all our sorrow; for no profit comes from chill lament. For so have the gods spun the thread for wretched mortals, that they should live among sorrows; and they themselves are without care. For two urns are set on Zeus' floor of gifts that he gives, the one of ills, the other of blessings. To whomever Zeus who hurls the thunderbolt gives a mixed lot, that man meets now with evil, now with good; but to whomever he gives only the baneful, him he makes to be degraded by man, and evil madness drives him over the face of the sacred earth, and he wanders honored neither by gods nor by mortals." Homer knew that no one gets only blessings. A mixed lot is the best we can hope for.
The "why" of human suffering is a deep mystery. But I've always thought that the argument that human suffering proves that there is no God as Christians conceive Him, all-powerful and all-good, looks at things from the wrong end. The reality is that no one gets a pain-free life ("It is right it should be so; man was made for joy and woe"). The practical problem is: how do we cope? And it seems intuitively obvious that faithful Christians have resources for dealing with pain, physical, emotional, and spiritual, that nonbelievers don't have. Maximilian Kolbe transformed the horror of a starvation bunker at Auschwitz into the serenity of a chapel. Paul Miki and his companions, whose feast we just celebrated on Feb. 6, preached and sang psalms while dying on their crosses. It was reported that "joy glowed on all their faces". Almost the last words Paul Miki spoke were addressed to his torturers: "My religion teaches me to pardon my enemies and all who have offended me. I do gladly pardon the Emperor and all who have sought my death. I beg them to seek baptism and be Christians themselves." Immaculee Ilibagiza forgave the Hutus who hacked her family to death with machetes and turned her own life into a living nightmare during the Rwandan genocide (her story is movingly told in her books Left to Tell and Led by Faith.) Their Catholic faith brought them peace and joy in the midst of their terrible suffering. This is powerful testimony to the truth of Christianity.
So to those who say that suffering proves there is no God, I say it proves the opposite. Faced with suffering such as few of us will ever experience, which most of us can barely imagine, the people I've named and countless others turned to God, gave Him their pain, and received in return His consolation and the strength to persevere and to forgive. Anyone can experience this. God's grace is available to all who approach Him with their troubles, doubts, pains, and problems. Try it! All it requires is an attitude of prayerful openness and humility. And bear in mind: "If it tarries, wait for it, for it will surely come."
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Guess the author #3
(The answer to the last "Guess the author" was Blaise Pascal. The passage is from Pensees .)
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Guess the author: #2
Ainsi je tends les bras à mon Libérateur qui, ayant été prédit durant quatre mille ans, est venu souffrir et mourir pour moi sur la terre dans les temps et dans toutes les circonstances qui en ont été prédites ; et, par sa grâce, j’attends la mort en paix, dans l’espérance de lui être éternellement uni ; et je vis cependant avec joie, soit dans les biens qu’il lui plaît de me donner, soit dans les maux qu’il m’envoie pour mon bien, et qu’il m’a appris à souffrir par son exemple.
Translation :
And so I stretch out my hands to my Liberator, who, having been predicted for four thousand years, came to suffer and die for me on earth at the time and in all the circumstances which had been predicted concerning him; and, by his grace, I await my death in peace, in the hope of being eternally united to him; meanwhile, I live in joy, whether in the good things which it pleases him to give me, or in the ills which he sends me for my good, and which he has taught me to suffer by his example.
(The answer to the previous Guess the Author: St. Thomas More. The answer to the bonus question: Czeslaw Milosz.)
Translation :
And so I stretch out my hands to my Liberator, who, having been predicted for four thousand years, came to suffer and die for me on earth at the time and in all the circumstances which had been predicted concerning him; and, by his grace, I await my death in peace, in the hope of being eternally united to him; meanwhile, I live in joy, whether in the good things which it pleases him to give me, or in the ills which he sends me for my good, and which he has taught me to suffer by his example.
(The answer to the previous Guess the Author: St. Thomas More. The answer to the bonus question: Czeslaw Milosz.)
Friday, February 6, 2009
Guess the author: #1
Give me thy grace, good Lord, to set the world at nought,
To set my mind fast upon Thee, and not to hang upon the blast of men’s mouths;
To be content to be solitary, not to long for worldly company;
Little and little utterly to cast off the world
And rid my mind of all the business thereof …
Gladly to be thinking of God, piteously to call for His help,
To lean unto the comfort of God, busily to labour to love Him;
To know my own vilety and wretchedness;
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God;
To bewail my sins past, for the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity;
Gladly to bear my purgatory here, to be joyful of tribulations;
To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life;
To bear the cross with Christ …
To have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at hand;
To make death no stranger to me …
To have continually in mind the passion that Christ suffered for me;
For his benefits uncessantly to give him thanks …
To think my most enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favour as they did him with their malice and hatred.
These minds are more to be desired of every man, than all the treasures of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid together all upon one heap.
(I’ll give the answer in the next post.)
To set my mind fast upon Thee, and not to hang upon the blast of men’s mouths;
To be content to be solitary, not to long for worldly company;
Little and little utterly to cast off the world
And rid my mind of all the business thereof …
Gladly to be thinking of God, piteously to call for His help,
To lean unto the comfort of God, busily to labour to love Him;
To know my own vilety and wretchedness;
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God;
To bewail my sins past, for the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity;
Gladly to bear my purgatory here, to be joyful of tribulations;
To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life;
To bear the cross with Christ …
To have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at hand;
To make death no stranger to me …
To have continually in mind the passion that Christ suffered for me;
For his benefits uncessantly to give him thanks …
To think my most enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favour as they did him with their malice and hatred.
These minds are more to be desired of every man, than all the treasures of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid together all upon one heap.
(I’ll give the answer in the next post.)
Pity the poor atheists …
By their own reckoning, no matter how brilliant they are, no matter how much knowledge they accumulate in their lives, be they ever so long, all that learning dwindles to insignificance compared to the vastness of their ignorance. They will die in ignorance, and that will be that. The more ardently they burn for the truth, the more tragic their life of unrequited love must appear, even to them. It’s not surprising that atheists are at risk of succumbing to relativism, or even outright nihilism.
But for us who believe in the One Who said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” not only do we love the Truth, but the Truth loves us back. Our Lord has promised, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” If we are faithful and persevere in faith, hope and charity, we can look forward to the time when we “will all be taught by God.” Father Richard Neuhaus (God rest him!) used to say that human beings are hardwired for truth. It is in our nature to long for the truth. That longing can be, and for the faithful will be, fully satisfied.
It’s interesting to me that some of the more famous atheists out there now are scientists. The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce wrote: “The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds … that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale …” In his book The Last Word, Thomas Nagel finds Peirce’s views “entirely congenial”, yet he is troubled by their “alarmingly Platonist” tone. He goes on: “They maintain that the project of pure inquiry is sustained by our “inward sympathy” with nature, on which we draw in forming hypotheses that can be tested against the facts. Something similar must by true of reason itself, which according to Peirce has nothing to do with “how we think”. If we can reason, it is because our thoughts can obey the order of the logical relations among propositions – so here again we depend on a Platonic harmony.” (p. 128-9).
Why is this view “alarming”? Nagel explains: “… it is hard to know what world picture to associate with it, and difficult to avoid the suspicion that the picture will be religious, or quasi-religious … even without God, the idea of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow gradual development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at home in the universe than is secularly comfortable. The thought that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental makes many people in this day and age nervous. I believe this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.” (130).
Nagel has the honesty to admit: “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers … I don’t want there to be a God: I don’t want the universe to be like that.” (130). Atheism as wish fulfillment. That’s a nice twist! Here’s another one, by a famous poet, a Nobel laureate:
“Religion, opium for the people. To those suffering pain, humiliation, illness, and serfdom, it promised a reward in the afterlife. And now we are witnessing a transformation. A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged.”
(Bonus question: guess this author! Answer next time.)
But for us who believe in the One Who said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” not only do we love the Truth, but the Truth loves us back. Our Lord has promised, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” If we are faithful and persevere in faith, hope and charity, we can look forward to the time when we “will all be taught by God.” Father Richard Neuhaus (God rest him!) used to say that human beings are hardwired for truth. It is in our nature to long for the truth. That longing can be, and for the faithful will be, fully satisfied.
It’s interesting to me that some of the more famous atheists out there now are scientists. The philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce wrote: “The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds … that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale …” In his book The Last Word, Thomas Nagel finds Peirce’s views “entirely congenial”, yet he is troubled by their “alarmingly Platonist” tone. He goes on: “They maintain that the project of pure inquiry is sustained by our “inward sympathy” with nature, on which we draw in forming hypotheses that can be tested against the facts. Something similar must by true of reason itself, which according to Peirce has nothing to do with “how we think”. If we can reason, it is because our thoughts can obey the order of the logical relations among propositions – so here again we depend on a Platonic harmony.” (p. 128-9).
Why is this view “alarming”? Nagel explains: “… it is hard to know what world picture to associate with it, and difficult to avoid the suspicion that the picture will be religious, or quasi-religious … even without God, the idea of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow gradual development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at home in the universe than is secularly comfortable. The thought that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental makes many people in this day and age nervous. I believe this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.” (130).
Nagel has the honesty to admit: “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers … I don’t want there to be a God: I don’t want the universe to be like that.” (130). Atheism as wish fulfillment. That’s a nice twist! Here’s another one, by a famous poet, a Nobel laureate:
“Religion, opium for the people. To those suffering pain, humiliation, illness, and serfdom, it promised a reward in the afterlife. And now we are witnessing a transformation. A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death – the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged.”
(Bonus question: guess this author! Answer next time.)
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