The narrow way

Dear Director,

Apart from the obvious things, I must admit to unhelpful habits of thought, around those obvious things. There are the maxims that float around, of the form "such is the cure for sich" --- and so I fall to thinking at God things like "See? You have to give me this-priceless-good, because otherwise I'll just keep falling into this-mortal-sin"; I become like the ersatz suicide holding himself hostage against God's mercy.

Each visit to God's Minister Through the Grille, I'm given an antidote against the deadliest part of this poison to which I seem to keep returning, and I'm prescribed a short course of purgatives --- or, sometimes, the chain of repeated forms makes me think of stitches; a row of sutures on my heart. I rejoice in the promise of health and healing. It hasn't, in the past, ever taken very long to play with the poisons again, to pull out the stitches. I read once that, outside the world of metaphor, if you DO need stitching in the same place twice in short order, it's better to use glue the second time, because the living tissues do something weird when they've been pierced mid-scarring. I wonder if that isn't somehow reflected in these human trials against temptation...

But today the stitching --- or however the patching is done --- today, it is fresh; I hear the echoes of temptations still, but now in this Day, let us rejoice. In this desert, my too-often too-parched soul, may I make a straight and level road for the Saviour to enter by; if I can see Him coming, perhaps then I shall see also the narrow way into Heaven.

in prayerful union

Interesting to note

Dear Christian,

Fr. Homilist today remarked on Our Lord's revelation and veiling today --- acts of the Divine Goodness, appearing contrary, but each suited to our needs.

I think it's a nifty observation that in today's Gospel (EF calendar) in fact we see the fulfilment of two petitions from Our Lord's Prayer: give us this day our daily bread --- the feeding of the multitudes --- and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil --- seeing they are in danger of a great sacrilege, He removes the immediate temptation of His presence.

Let us never give up hope that God fulfils His promises to us!

Your brother in Christ

On The Incarnation

Probably (hopefully!) there's nothing new here. But I wanted to make a legible note of it, just because...

The text I'm considering is from Genesis (stick with me): "Let us make Man in our own image". Lots has already been said about this, for instance "God is King of all creation: what does a King do to signify conquest? He erects a statue of himself". I don't remember my source for that line of reasoning --- and it's a paraphrase, of course. There's also Chesterton's observation (again, paraphrasing) "Men are indeed all like pennies; for their value in each case is exactly that they all bear the likeness of the King". In other words, God has put Men in the world at least partly as signs of His own kingship.

My observation is that when God makes a sign, He also makes a real thing. (God creates by saying, His words become what they signify) Since God has made an image of himself, a sign pointing to Himself, it's a fair guess He's going to make good on the sign. All of which is just to suggest that the Incarnation was promised even from the sixth Day of Creation. So, that conversation was interrupted for a few generations, we all know the story.

So it would seem that the Incarnation was foreseen and intended by God, from Creation, and its promise was revealed to the holy scribe and recorded in Genesis. ... I think. I will gladly defer to better learning on this matter.

Liber Generationis Jesu Christi

Epistula nullibus a nullibus...

From centuries past our Holy Mother Church has prescribed for Masses of this Feast of our Holy Mother Mary the Gospel text Mt.1:1-16, which runs between

The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.
...
and Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus: who is called Christ.

It might seem a bit ... odd... that this Marian feast is honoured with Joseph's genealogy.

The fact is, however, that all the attention paid Joseph adds up to a rather backhanded compliment if that were the whole tale. Joseph is remembered in this account and Luke's Gospel precisely because of his relationship to Mary, Maria mediatrix gratiarum, Maria radix et porta, Maria mater Dei. Joseph, patron saint of the Universal Church, unborn children, fathers, immigrants, workers, against doubt and hesitation, and of a happy death, &c.; it is through Mary that Joseph first came to know Christ.

Something to think about.

Alter nullus

More Evidence of God's Goodness

Dear Self,

For future reference

$$ \begin{array}{rl}
\mathrm{I} &\mbox{That strawberry}\\
\mathrm{II} &\mbox{Roses that look --- and smell --- like peaches}\\
\mathrm{III} & \mbox{Whoever it was thought to breed the previous item}\\
\mathrm{IV} & \href{http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG0jMkoKLJo}{\mbox{Tchaikovsky}}\\
\mathrm{V} &\mbox{My mountain bike --- and my survival in spite of that}
\end{array}
$$

That's all for now.

a grateful sinner

Scandals and Converts

Dear Friend,

Some thoughts, unsolicited. Let's start with the bad news we all know, and then move to something more hopeful!

Through this Year for Priests, some folks have, for reasons of their own, struggled mightily to slander the whole Priesthood of Christ, by inflating crimes committed by a tiny fraction of all priests into an imagined problem endemic to the Priesthood itself. At the same time, the people who make money by estimating phenomenon frequency (insurance companies) inform us that Catholic Priests are among the least likely to commit such crimes. There are other, related problems to deal with --- tightening up vocation discernment on the part of seminaries, episcopal discipline and response protocol, etc. And I want to emphasize that no-one is suggesting the crimes themselves to be negligible, or that anyone should be less outraged than they are; the outrage we hear is indeed just, and suggests our fallen world to be capable of redemption still! It is the direction of the outrage that dismays me, even if it does not surprise. For many folk, children and adult, Christian and pagan and heathen, have been scandalized and led to stumble, perceiving the crimes of far-too-many, though thin and scattered.

Indeed, you should know the apostasy and the despair that follow from such scandals are a deeper and more lasting wound than the scars of abuse: in the resurrection, the hurts of abuse shall be comforted and redressed; but some may have so fallen away that they cannot appeal to God's mercy, and may suffer His justice for eternity. All the more heavily will it weigh on those who did cause these to stumble.

The scandal of such evils among the Priesthood may cause some to stray from the Faith. I promised at the opening to speak of hope, and it is this: the converse is also true, the holiness of the Priesthood can convert souls. Let me repeat for you some of the story of Alec Guinness:

... Then came the film Father Brown ... and on location in Burgundy I had a small experience the memory of which always brings me pleasure. ...

Night shooting had been arranged to take place in a little hill-top village a few miles from Macon. Scaffolding, the rigging of lights and the general air of bustle caused some excitement among the villagers and children gathered from all round. A room had been put at my disposal in the little station hotel three kilometers away. By the time dusk fell I was bored and, dressed in my priestly black, I climbed the gritty winding road to the village. In the square children were squealing, having mock battles with sticks for swords and dustbin lids for shields; and in a café Peter Finch, Bernard Lee and [the director] Robert Hamer were sampling their first Pernod of the evening. I joined them for a modest Kir; then discovering I wouldn't be needed for at least four hours turned back towards the station. By now it was dark. I hadn't gone far when I heard scampering footsteps and a piping voice calling, `Mon père!' My hand was seized by a boy of seven or eight, who clutched it tightly, swing it and kept up a non-stop prattle. He was full of excitement, hops, skips and jumps, but never let go of me. I didn't dare speak in case my excruciating French should scare him. Although I was a total stranger he obviously took me for a priest and so to be trusted. Suddenly, with a `Bonsoir, mon père', and a hurried sideways sort of bow, he disappeared through a hole in a hedge. He had had a happy, reassuring walk home, and I was left with an odd calm sense of elation. Continuing my walk I reflected that a Church which could inspire such confidence in a child, making its priests, even when unknown, so easily approachable could not be as scheming and creepy as so often made out. I began to shake off my long-taught, long-absorbed prejudices.${}^1$

Think about that.

When it is clear that Christ's Priests are trusty folk, little Catholic children can convert strangers, melting their "long-absorbed prejudices."

your friend in hope

${}^1$ Blessings in Disguise Alec Guinness 1985, Hamish Hamilton London

Yo, /dev?

echo <<eof >>/dev/null

Have an eye out for this series. I think it's going to be a keeper.

eof

<--!
addenda:
Our Father,
Who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done
on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day
our daily bread,
forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who sin against us;
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
-->

A Gospel Redux

Dear Neighbour,

It's not how I'd have put it, but sometimes, amidst the Dark Night of the Soul, it should be helpful to remember what our Dear Auntie expresses in the sixth comment here.

a meandering soul

Fourth Glorious Mystery

Dear JR${}^2$,

I was wondering if you might have any insight a conjectural thought I had regarding various Traditions --- actually, I thought of asking your friend Jack first, mostly because of his ocasional motif: "no-one is told what would have happened". Then I started to worry because these specific Traditions are particularly extrascriptural, and remembering his reticence which I hear troubled you also, I figured it'd be better to ask a fellow Roman. On the other hand, I then remembered how you once mused that Men were from the first given a new gift, to "seek beyond the world, and find no rest therein", so I wondered if maybe we were thinking along similar lines. But enough digression!

From of old we celebrate both the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption to Heaven of Holy Mary the Theotokos; and also it is clear that these points are importantly interlinked. What I started wondering was whether the latter honour accorded to Mary should not have been the destined state of all Men had our first parents not fallen? To flesh out this notion, so to speak, while Mary indeed finally fell asleep, it would seem that she did not suffer the same sundering of body and spirit which is the fate of all Men marked by original sin.

And so, to phrase the question as I might ask it to trouble Jack, does Mary's Assumption show us "what would have happened" to us had we not sinned? I do expect he'd say "no-one is told", meaning that it is a distraction to speculate on such counter-factuals, but it seems to me that his other proscription doesn't apply here: we are told her story --- if not in full, still at least with these important highlights.

A distantly-related thought that occurs to me in this connection is that we often speak of Purgatory as having its own sort of time --- it works a process, gradually --- which suggests to me that it's tightly linked to the world we inhabit in our beginning, and I might even guess that purgatory was created after the fall, an invention as it were to make up for the defects we adopted in sinning. But it's also an important fact of purgatory that our souls pass through it without our bodies; even that our bodies would, echoing Jack's notions, "get in the way" of the cleansing flame. One might say that Mary could keep her body because her soul didn't need such cleansing, but I think it would be more proper to say we must lose ours for half of Time specifically because our souls do need it.

In the back of my head, at the same time, I've this notion that Mary's assumption holds an important confirmation of the Easter Promise: Specifically, Easter promises that death is not the terminus of our existence, but a new birth; but in the assumption we see that this new life isn't a "new thing", rather it's the promised return to us of our proper nature as seen in the entirely human Mary, lost under our sins, and liberated through God's merciful and gratuitous forgiveness.

Of course, this doesn't give the least inkling of the real mystery in Easter, or the Assumption; I'm keen to learn what you make of my nonsense?

Sincerely,
an avid reader

PS. Now I've learned to count...

Detachment

We hold that God has made us for His love
And for His sake to give love of our own.
His sake alone: for all our love's from Him
Who beauties made and very light declared
One ancient day of youth, and called it good.
And He made Man with freedom, that we should
Full freely love Him. And in this He shared
With dusty Man His Holy Image bright.
He made us, men and women, love and friend
To share one life, one flesh unto life's end,
Yet not to be life's end: that were God's right.
Pray I may be detached from breath and limb;
Salvation hangs not on thine, nor my own,
But on His cross who died, and lives above.

--some guy on the street

"Benedicta tu inter mulieres"

echo <<eof >>/dev/null

In some circles, this day recalls the visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, which is also the first look we get at John the Baptist --- `a voice crying out in the wilderness saying "Prepare ye the way of the Lord"'. And what does he do? He leaps for joy in Elizabeth's womb, thus announcing the approach of the Lord Jesus in Mary's womb! Not even born yet and already working in his prophetic ministry. That's pretty cool!

eof

It's the Third Wednesday After Easter!

Which, in the old Calendar (at least as of 1953... my missal is *old*) is a Solemnity of St. Joseph Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Confessor and Patron of the Universal Church.

A very blessed one to you all. As it happens, we get another Joseph feast in two days, for which give thanks to God!

From the Offertory:

Lauda Jerusalem, Dominum: quoniam confortavit seras portarum tuarum, benedixit filiis tuis in te, alleluia, alleluia.

Well worth a look

echo \
"Via the Whapster Drew, and well worth the five minutes, a beautiful exposition of contemplative life" \
> /dev/null

Just follow the link

Your Holiness,

What a joy to hear of our beloved brethren in the Eastern Churches!

But I want to hear more of your impromptu speaking, too! I seem to recall that you are very good at Quod Libet.

A very small child