Thursday, December 31, 2009

2009 in Pictures

These pictures were taken mostly by Clare or Kieron, and some may be from 2008 : ).

Winter

Kieron and Sean playing chess


Paddy feeling sick
Pikachu with a tea cup
Liam on graduation day

Spring

Frodo in the sunlight

Clare and her littlest cousin
Liam and Sean


KieronClare cooking something


Sean asleep in the car


Summer

Aidan goofing around
Aidan and Paddy next to a giant sequoia


Clare and Aidan
Paddy and Clare
Paddy at the beach


Brendan and Kevin on the mountain top
Kieron at a ridge near our house

Frodo at Grandma's cabin
Brendan
Aidan loves his dad, and the boat

Kieron confronting a marshmallow

Paddy ready to travelSean looking thoughtful

Fall

Liam feeling carsick, and a great sunset on the way back home from town

Sean and his big cousin Conor talking football.

Simplifying Chore List

More systems update -- I'm trying to make a list of all the "types" of housework I regularly do.

Cooking and laundry are ever-present and don't need special notice so I didn't put those down : ).

Tonight There's a Blue Moon

One of our calendars had tonight noted as a Blue Moon. My 13 year old has been looking forward to seeing what this meant for the past month. We looked at the moon and it was large, bright, full and slightly misty but not notably blue. This helped clear up our puzzlement.

Checking Systems for New Year

This may well be a very rambly post! As the New Year approaches I want to try to check all my systems and update them. That would be (trying to organize my mind first):

  1. Devotion/walk with God
  2. Family -- my involvement in their wellbeing -- husband, children, parents and other relatives.
  3. Personal Health
  4. Household Management
  5. Homeschool (related to #2 but uses up enough of my day to need its own category)
  6. Other community/volunteer Acts of Mercy type activities.

Obviously these all overlap quite a bit. Here's a visual -- since they stick in my head better than just a list:

During Advent I read something by Msr Ronald Knox about St Ignatius Loyola -- he made a point that stuck with me particularly because it seemed so appropriate to meditating on the Nativity and Our Lord's early days of life.

Before they (the Maccabeans) could muster their forces, and dispute with the heathen the mastery of their native soil, it was necessary for them to take refuge in the hill country.... Mathathias cried with a loud voice, "Everyone that hath zeal for the law and maintaineth the testament, let him follow me," and he and his sons fled into the mountains, and left all that they had in the city. It was in those same mountains that David had taken refuge, when he fled from the persecution of King Saul; and he has sung of those outlaw strongholds of his in words that still echo through the sanctuaries of Christendom; "I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, whence cometh my help, "the Lord hath brought me out, and set me upon a rock of stone" -- the Maccabees took him for their model and retired to the hill fastnesses till that had gathered the strength needed for their effort.

Before we can do any good in the world or to the world, we must go up to the mountains and learn to separate ourselves from the world; for us..... the preface to any victory must be a retreat. .... roughly speaking, you may say there was only one piece of advice he (St Ignatius) ever gave to anybody, and that was, "Go into retreat."

This brings to my mind how the Holy Family fled to Egypt; how many years Jesus spent hidden in the heart of His home before His ministry began; how Mary, as it said in the readings from the last mass:

kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.
Pope Paul VI wrote that:

Jesus' home in Nazareth is a school, teaching us the value of silence, family life, and the redeeming law of human work
That "work, family, silence" theme echoes one in All You Who Labor -- Cardinal Wyczynsky says:

"Laws that link the interior with the active life point to the existence of a joyous interdependence between them, betweeen, as it were, the "Martha" and "Mary" in us. .... In what does this joyous helpfulness consisten? One might express it in these words: the interior life supplies the active life with virtues and skills, and the active, working life tests these values in the fire of work...

The interior life is the school of all the virtues and therefore also of the social "working virtues" -- those virtues that share in the process of human work in a special manner. And which of them does not share in this process?


and later on in the book

Every great work and every great sanctification is born in silence and recollection. ... "the great silence" ought to be accomplished not only around us, but above all, within us. ... quiet is born, not so mmuch around us, as within ourselves. To be quiet and concentrated does not mean that one has to be in a peaceful, cloisterlike, deserted place, far from all tumult... To be quiet means to have quiet in one's soul.
Some things I am trying to remember for this year.

There's a very good discussion on Simplicity going on over at Real Learning. Over there I wrote something I wanted to bring over here to remind myself, since I go through this cycle every year:

I hope we can discuss at some point how to tell the difference between striving for simplicity for God's will, vs doing it for different reasons. Seems important to me, because I struggle with it all the time. I make some good change -- and feel like I'm actually growing away from God instead of towards Him -- because I'm making that new thing my new standard, and so to some extent substituting it for Him.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

salvation of souls the highest law of the Church

This is good -- from The Wine-Dark Sea. An excerpt:

Salvation, and thus missionary work, must be grounded in truth. The fundamental truth of all human affairs is that God's great love for us wills to save all men, and we must order our presentation of subordinate truths in a manner that will make them most credible. Missionary work, our proactive, evangelical share in this saving plan, requires patience, the Catechism tells us (CCC 854). That is because people are all coming from different places and experiences and will respond to different individual true statements in different ways; this also largely depends upon the person by whom they hear the truth proclaimed.

.... the salvation of souls - and not the simple proclamation of truth - is the highest law of the Church.

My summary of the whole thing:

1. There is a hierarchy of truths (all subordinate to Truth, of course)
2. Salvation of souls is the highest priority, not discrete "truth" (note: That does NOT mean you can lie or fudge for a good cause -- see #1)

From the Catechism:

Indeed, God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth";344 that is, God wills the salvation of everyone through the knowledge of the truth. Salvation is found in the truth. Those who obey the prompting of the Spirit of truth are already on the way of salvation. But the Church, to whom this truth has been entrusted, must go out to meet their desire, so as to bring them the truth.

I like it because it puts into clear wording something I was struggling with this summer.

Monday, December 28, 2009

The Thousand Little Thorns

This is old news, but I'm very glad to hear it. You have no idea how much that "Yahweh" formulation bothered me when I was a recent convert to Catholicism.

Now that that's done, let's please get rid of hymns that require the congregation to speak God's own words in the first person. Like "I am the Bread of Life" and "Be Not Afraid".

And maybe this year we could give a miss to the Lenten"Ashes" hymn which my kids call the Pelagian Phoenix song because notably included in the lyrics are "we rise again from ashes to create ourselves anew". Maybe phoenixes do that, though I think even they need help from outside, but Catholics can't. God does both the original creation and the new creation, and that is why we are singing hymns to Him in the first place. I shouldn't have to tell my kids that the song sung at mass has it wrong.

In fact, while I'm at it, maybe we should stop using Scripture for hymns at all until our collective musical sense, or at least that of the OCP, gets better? Then beautiful passages of the Bible like "I will raise you up on eagle's wings" and "I will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day" won't get totally ruined for my kids by being sung to third-rate movie tunes.

Third-rate is possibly over-stating. Perhaps fifth-rate, as in "Here I am, Lord" which has the same tune as the Brady Bunch theme song -- no doubt admirably suited to make modern 50 plus seekers of God feel like they are back in the comfortable green and orange world of the 70's sit-com, but probably loses a bunch of the younger ones. And makes converts, who grew up with wonderful old hymns like Holy Holy Holy and Fairest Lord Jesus, feel like they are trapped in a nightmare world of formica and linoleum and plaid trousers.

And NO, I don't think the solution is forced LifeTeen masses, either, though my parish seems to, as it also seems to think an illicit ban on communion on the tongue is justifiable for fear of the H1N1 virus. I would like those things to stop, as well, but I'm getting away from the music theme, and once I start I will probably have a hard time stopping.

It all adds up to a shoddiness that doesn't have anything to do with our beautiful Chariot of orthodoxy, in Chesterton's words, that

flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect
It doesn't matter really, because the wild truth is stronger. It's like a crown of thorns, that doesn't change the fact that the wearer is the true King of Glory -- the Ancient and Ever New. The Eucharist is there, even if it's often hidden off to a side corner of the church, and the members of Christ's Body are there, even if they don't realize that a heritage of magnificence has been buried under tawdry wood panelling and pebbly-textured flooring.

But these thorns bother me and cause pain, the little tyrannies and tawdrinesses are unsuitable and just wrong. And I wish they would go away.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas Take Ten -- OK, Good Enough

Christmas pictures for a large family -- not an easy thing. Here's what reality looks like in

Christmas 2009

First you get them all on the porch dressed relatively nicely. Then you get out your mediocre camera and do your best with the settings.... snowy outdoors, dim porch, not the easiest lighting. You want the dog in the picture because he's 13 years old and you don't know how many more Christmases there will be with him.

Then you go for it.

Frodo looks so cute, but Kieron can hardly be seen. Too bad!

They're all looking away except two, and the flash bleached their faces.


Frodo looks very cute, and the others look pretty good too, but Brendan is completely out of the picture. That was SO close. No go though.

Frodo looks cute again but Paddy is pulling his ear and Sean looks like he's trying to opt out in spirit, and the picture got bleached again. What a pity.
Frodo gave up and wandered off, but everyone else looks OK, and the little ones aren't going to last for much more of this. I guess it's a wrap!


Merry Christmas All from our family to yours!

Christmas Eve

A Blessed Christmas Vigil to you all!

Aidan's idea of an Advent decoration -- the mama and baby wreath, mom wearing glasses and reading Aquinas, sitting on the couch together : ) -- very nice, don't you think?


Aidan adjusting his decorations.

Paddy is happy his sister is home

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Study index of Leisure, the Basis of Culture

This isn't very organized since I just blogged randomly about the book but I wanted to gather all the posts into one place:

  1. Sunday Reflections on Leisure
  2. Leisure: Intense Activity of a Different Kind
  3. Leisure, Light, and Looking-At
  4. The Philosophical Act, Chapter II
  5. Wakefulness
  6. A Gift of Heaven (Chapter IV)
  7. Leisure and Labor
Posts related to Leisure from my old blog:

  1. Otium Sanctam
  2. On Leisure
  3. Of Operas and Sparkling Streams

Some outside sources:

Sedes Sapientae

From Beauty for Truth's Sake

"Just as the Virgin was called to offer herself entirely as human being and as woman that God's Word might take flesh and come among us, so too philosophy is called to offer its rational and critical resources that theology, as the understanding of faith, may be fruitful and creative. And just as in giving her assent to Gabriel's word, Mary lost nothing of her true humanity and freedom, so too when philosophy heeds the summons of the Gospel's truth its autonomy is in no way impaired. Indeed, it is then that philosophy sees all its enquiries rise to their highest expression"
(John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 108).


Also, from an address given by Pope Benedict XVI HT: Blog by the Sea

"In our catechesis on the Christian culture of the Middle Ages, we now turn to John of Salisbury, an outstanding philosopher and theologian of the twelfth century. Born in England, John was educated in Paris and Chartres. A close associate of Saint Thomas Becket, he was involved in the crisis between the Church and the Crown under King Henry II, and died as Bishop of Chartres.

In his celebrated work, the Metalogicon, John teaches that authentic philosophy is by nature communicative: it bears fruit in a message of wisdom which serves the building up of society in truth and goodness. While acknowledging the limitations of human reason, John insists that it can attain to the truth through dialogue and argumentation. Faith, which grants a share in God’s perfect knowledge, helps reason to realize its full potential.

In another work, the Policraticus, John defends reason’s capacity to know the objective truth underlying the universal natural law, and its obligation to embody that law in all positive legislation. John’s insights are most timely today, in light of the threats to human life and dignity posed by legislation inspired more by the "dictatorship of relativism" than by the sober use of right reason and concern for the principles of truth and justice inscribed in the natural law."

O Our Lawgiver, Our Desire

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, expectratio gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domines, Deus noster.

O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, desire of the nations, Savior of all people: Come and set us free, Lord our God.
This will be short, I hope.

I just liked that "lawgiver" associated with "desire of the nations" and it reminded me of Psalm 119:

10 I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.

11 I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you.
.....
16 I delight in your decrees;
I will not neglect your word.


Mary's Magnificat seems to evoke these words and indeed, she had the unique privilege of literally "hiding His Word" within her.

As a mother of seven I can clearly remember those last "hidden" days of expecting a baby. One wants to tuck down into the cosiness of one's home and spend those days "nesting" and gathering strength for the coming days. In her case, those last days were spent homeless. But lacking a physical home for herself, she made one for Her Child, but before that, He had made one for her.

He had allowed Himself to be her Child and Ours, the Son of Man. As Chesterton said, the world turned inside out and the centrifuge, the God all around, had become the center, the heart of the universe in a hidden cave in a corner of the world.

This sort of reciprocity graciously allowed by God seems a great mystery to me. When David reflects on the Law being his delight, he seems to anticipate how the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us, and how in this way the law became a relationship in a deeper sense than it had been before. Our Lord in some way that I can't fully understand became subject to the Law and showed the fullness of its delight by in some way being it and abiding by it at the same time.

"Lawgiver" sounds like imposing something, but in God's economy it wasn't so -- it was truly a "giving", a donation. In the book I am reading about the value of work, Cardinal Wyszynski talks about the parable of the laborers and the pain of standing around with nothing to do. It may be a bit of a stretch, but by analogy there seems to be a barrenness, a lack of fruitfulness, a sad desperation, in having no law at all, nothing to abide in, nothing to expect. It's a different kind of homelessness. The Prodigal Son said he would go home where even his father's slaves were treated better than he was in the world, but his Father welcomed him home as a son.

We are blessed to have through that new Life a Truth, a Way out of that nihilism of being stuck inside the natural wheel of things, where even prosperity and worldly virtue are just vanities in the end, a blowing of the wind.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

O King, O Keystone

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti.

O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart; O Keystone of the mighty arch of man: Come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust.
For some reason this antiphon reminds me of the point Chesterton makes in the Everlasting Man, that a true religion needs to be able to account for everything that exists, and that only Christianity has truly done that. As far as the specific highest acts of humans go, it needs to provide for worship-- man's reverent approach to mystery and the numinous, and for philosophy -- the highest science proper to man.

Yet that is not enough, it falls infinitely short of enough, for man can never approach God unless God provides the bridge. This was the despair of the noblest pagans. As Augustine said,
He...was willing to lay Himself down as the way by which we should return,
Our Lord had to provide us the Way, He had to reach down to pull us up where we could not go on our own.

In this antiphon, man is called both "dust" and "mighty arch", acknowledging both our humble perishable material nature and the greatness bequeathed us as beings made in the image of God. Nations and hearts are both mentioned; the most exterior outworks of our political and social structure, as well as the deepest inner workings of our individual hearts. Our Lord is Lord over all these reaches.

A few days ago I read this WSJ article about "Faith and the Life of the Mind" of Evangelicals and this Touchstone commentary on it. It's been sticking in my mind but I have been at a loss how to approach it. I'm a convert to Catholicism, but Evangelicalism was the cradle of my Christian faith. I owe it much, especially in the deep and undoubtedly real faith of some of its practitioners. If the author of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind speaks as a "wounded lover" I speak as a grateful child, and I hope it comes across that way.

The blogger in the Touchstone commentary makes a distinction between intellectualism, which he defines as

a developed (or sometimes overdeveloped) mental capacity for detailed abstract thinking and an acquired taste for ingesting (and/or producing) academic prose.
and something deeper, which he describes as follows:

... it's more often the case that someone with interest in studying his faith discovers the depth of Christian tradition, for love of Christ and for the things of Christ. This is what captivates the mind, not worldly intellectual fashion.
The first isn't enough in itself.... it may well be a good thing, but it isn't essential, and combined with an attraction to intellectual trends in thinking it can lead the person into some sort of liberal Protestantism or worldly compromise with error.

The second, he writes, often leads to Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or Anglicanism (though I really can't help wondering, in light of recent Anglican events, if that last door is closing for those who are truly captivated by "the things of Christ").

I grew up in an Evangelical church. At their worst, because of the conscious avoidance of intellectual rigor in favor of resting on the simplicity of Biblical faith, an Evangelical might be in danger of following into the problem described in the last article in this symposium.

American evangelicalism is the quintessential adaptation to a society dominated by the marketplace and consumerism. ... To be sure, evangelicals are generally devout, church-going Christians who take the Bible seriously and try to live in obedience to their Lord. But study after study shows that they seldom understand the Bible very well, know little about theology, buy heavily into the therapeutic culture of feel-good-ism, and are caught up in a cycle of overspending and consumption like everyone else.
But that devotion, church-going and seriousness about the Bible in the context of a deep relationship with our Savior should not be underestimated. It is the groundwork of something deep, a commitment to the Way, the Truth, and the Life. ST Francis de Sales defines devotion as doing willingly and lovingly whatever Christ tells one to do and by this definition, there are many devoted Evangelicals, and also by extension many Evangelical converts to Catholicism. I suppose this could even somewhat explain some Catholic converts to Evangelicalism, because sometimes Catholics neglect to emphasize this personal core of our Faith, the "one needful thing" of sitting at His Feet and loving Him. (The solution ISN'T some touchy-feely warm-fuzzy catechetical program, either, any more than it is for the Evangelicals, but that's a side point)

I know another convert to Catholicism from fervent evangelicalism. He walked into a Catholic Church one day and simply recognized the Real Presence. He knew Him and thus recognized Him even in such a different appearance. My own process was different. Catholicism had the answers for parts of the Bible that had deeply puzzled me formerly, like John 6. I moved from verbal to actual, while this other convert moved in the opposite direction. We ended up in the same place, as Catholics with the Eucharist enthroned in our interior temples.

That's also aside from the point, however. The point I think I am trying to make is that Evangelicals have something that should not be underestimated. There is a humility about staying within the bounds of their own selves that is deeply Christian. If I had to choose one or the other, and had no other alternative, I would choose my Yupik former fellow church-members who fell in love with Jesus and did their best to praise Him in words and deeds and song every day of their lives, over the kind of quisling "intellectualized" Catholic who bestows on a deeply pro-abortion president an honorary Notre Dame degree, meanwhile allowing the manhandling and imprisonment of an elderly priest protesting the slaughter of our weakest and most innocent.

But that is not really the choice. Our Lord is King of all the nations, King of the matter of which we are fashioned, Keystone of all our works and days, as well as King of our hearts. He has dominion over all the possible forms of truth and thus, any Church of His is going to need to be able to engage on this wide scale, to ally itself with Truth. Not every individual member of the church needs to do this in every sphere, but the Church as a whole needs to, and for a Church, ignoring an aspect of the wider calling is going to mean going to the default -- too often, localized influences that aren't recognized as being out of harmony with true Christianity because there is no wider view.

At present Evangelicalism seems to draw most of its substance from Catholicism or some version thereof -- for instance, look at the recent proliferation of Evangelical books written about the Benedictine tradition, or the traditional respect of many Evangelicals for the monastic Imitation of Christ or the books of conservative Anglican CS Lewis or Catholic JRR Tolkien--- and I am not sure how this can be avoided without falling into error or trivial shallowness. But I don't think it's a bad thing, a thing that should be avoided -- I love being able to talk about Benedict or Tolkien or Kempis or for that matter Isaiah or St John with my Evangelical friends and relatives, and find it ironic that often they understand these things in a more Catholic sense than some Catholics I know.

But back to the main point -- Cardinal Newman said that where there is a vacuum, where a sphere of knowledge is ignored, some other subject will rush in to fill the gap. If you take theology out of its position as mistress of all the liberal subjects, the other subjects rush in to fill the vacuum, but badly, because that is not their proper job. So with secularism, you get Art becoming sterile aestheticism and then finally nihilistic anti-aestheticism, and the natural sciences dabbling in amateur and logically flawed metaphysics, as with naturalistic evolution.

But it seems to me that if you forsake the subjects in your theology, you end up compartmentalizing your religion and forcing it into a privatized form -- it defaults on its authority over the other subjects. A religion focused consciously into the heart and deeds alone runs the risk of being forced by default to be contained by the heart and deeds alone, and thus becoming a religion too small to fit Our Lord.

Both seem like dangers, though in my mind the liberal secularization leads one much further away from the Way and Truth than does the mere privatization. Still, both fall short of the comprehensiveness claimed by God of All.

Monday, December 21, 2009

O Dayspring -- help for the sorrows of the world

I woke up this morning already weary. Around our house, the abundant snowfall of two weeks ago has become dingy and icy; holidays are started, but my heart is having trouble finding a holiday spirit. I miss my father, who passed away last spring; I worry about my mother who is facing her first Christmas in half a century without him (please pray for her!) and I am haunted by various ghosts of Christmases past, and my lack of seeming spiritual progress in all ways that matter.

I know the remedy from long experience, if I can only carry it out. It is to turn your eyes past it; not ignore it or deny it, just go past it. You find work to do; you try extra hard to be kind to people around you in little ways. You rest in the Lord -- you admit your inability to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. You slow down, you take more "care" because caring is opposed to acedia. But you don't stop, you don't allow yourself to give in. You allow the sorrow to sink in to your soul, because that is the only way to realize something it is all too easy to forget, that the world needed a Saviour and you do too; but you do not succumb to it, because you know that Christ came and He was stronger than those things. You allow yourself to be heartened by tiny little things that could be irritating -- the 7 year old gravitating around you as if you were the center of the universe, the loud laugh of the teenager, the prancing of the dog that hears your footsteps coming down the stairs towards the kitchen where he will soon receive his morning kibbles. You say, think and do Acts of Faith, Hope and Love. They don't have to be big. In fact, the tiny ones are better, because after all, didn't our Saviour come as something small, unnoticed, humble?

The antiphon for today is appropriate, and it consoled me to read it; it seems that my sorrow is something real, not illusory, but Something Else is stronger than that :


O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: Come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.


It comes from Isaias 9:2:

The people that walked in darkness, have seen a great light: to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, light is risen.

Chesterton wrote in The Everlasting Man of the state of the world just as the Dayspring entered it:

A dreadful secret seemed to be written as in obscure hieroglyphics across those mighty works of marble and stone, those colossal amphitheaters and aqueducts. Man could do no more.....

There was nothing left that could conquer Rome but there was also nothing left that could improve it. It was the strongest thing that was growing weak. ...

...The life of the great civilization went on with dreary industry and even with dreary festivity. It was the end of the world, and the worst of it was that it need never end.

In some ways every Advent is like that for us. I am sure it has always been that way to some extent, even when our society was more Christian than it is now. I am sure any person could always throughout history look around and see this person scurrying around like Martha doing all the right things but preoccupied with them and forgetting Who it was for, another person neglected and lonely and bereaved with the world rushing past him, another person, who looks more like me, lying in bed rather wishing the whole thing was over and "normal life" would return. You see magnificence alongside misery; you are tempted to ignore your own gifts and wallow in misery, or indulge yourself in luxuries and ignore others' misery. Dante describes the acedic in the Inferno:

Sullen were we in the sweet air that is gladdened by the sun, carrying lazy smoke within our heart...

Advent above all is a reminder that the bustling things, even the best festivities and the best philosophies of humans are simply not enough; they are nothing of themselves, but only something as they participate in the act of "caritas", of love and care. But we still have reason to be grateful, all the reasons in the world. The festivities, the busy-ness, the comforts are all gifts, if they are taken as such; not as things to rest in for their own sake, but things that represent what really matters.

Caryll Houselander writes of our Christian participation in Mary's task, which is the task of Advent, especially in these last days, and seems to sum up what we have by gift and what we can hope for:

...allowing the Infant Christ to rest in us, we wait patiently on His own timing of His growth in us, and give Him just what He asks, the extremely simple things that are ourselves – our hands and feet, our eyes and ears, our words, our thoughts, our love. Not only does He grow in us, but we are formed into Him.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

O Antiphons


Veni, Veni Emmanuel!

O Antiphons
(at O Night Divine)

said during the week before Christmas

Scripture references (HT Leonie)
Dec. 17:

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodisti,
attingens a fine usque ad finem fortiter,
suaviter disponensque omnia:
veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Wisdom, O holy Word of God,
you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care:
Come and show your people the way to salvation.



Dec. 18:

O Adonai, et dux domus Israel,
qui Moyse in igne flammae rubi apparuisti,
et ei in Sina legem dedisti:
veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.

O Sacred Lord of ancient Israel,
who showed yourself to Moses in the burning bush,
who gave him the holy law on Sinai mountain:
Come, stretch out your mighty hand to set us free.


Dec. 19:

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,
super quem continebunt reges os suum,
quem gentes deprecabuntur:
veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

O Flower of Jesse’s stem,
you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples;
kings stand silent in your presence;
the nations bow down in worship before you.
Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid.


Dec. 20:

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel,
qui aperis, et nemo claudit; claudis, et nemo aperuit:
veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris,
sedentem in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Key of David, O royal Power of Israel,
controlling at your will the gate of heaven:
Come, break down the prison walls of death
for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death;
and lead your captive people into freedom.

Dec. 21:

O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae,
et sol justitiae:
veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris,
et umbra mortis.

O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice:
Come, shine on those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death.

Dec. 22:

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum,
lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum:
veni, et salva hominem,
quem de limo formasti.

O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart;
O Keystone of the mighty arch of man:
Come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust.

Dec. 23:

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster,
expectratio gentium, et Salvator earum:
veni ad salvandum nos,
Domines, Deus noster.

O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver,
desire of the nations, Savior of all people:
Come and set us free, Lord our God.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

John Paul II "Venerable"

Just had to commemorate that. ... more here.

I loved that man even before I was a Catholic -- he came to Anchorage the year after I graduated from high school. I was in Europe when he was elected. It meant very little to me at the time -- I didn't even understand why it was such a big deal that he was Polish. Now that I know more about the history of this last century, I understand better. He was on the scene at some truly pivotal times in our civilization's progress. I don't think the reality of what the last century was about is yet understood by most historians, and perhaps it won't be really understood for some time yet, if ever. So many secular historians still seem to think the 20th century of "post-Christianity" was one of a new secular humanitarianism and tolerance and awareness, when what you actually see is almost the opposite. The Church, with its allies, was probably really the only "Witness to Hope" during this time, and Karol Wojtyla as boy, man, priest, bishop and pope seemed to be crucially involved in many of its key moments.

His willingness to be an ill, suffering Pope in his last days rather than step down as some would have had him do was a wonderful testament to the dignity of suffering and helplessness.

He had to breathe with the help of a respirator and receive nutrition through a G-tube in his last days, just as my Aidan did for long periods of time without the least loss to his human dignity and power to effect what really counted. Every time I think of that, I think of how it could really only be the grace of God that a handsome, athletic, intelligent man was willing to have his ugliness, incapacity and frailty exposed in detail through the whole world, to much worldly scorn and contempt. Surely this was a witness to Christ more than anything he could do in his "best" moments as a human being. As Chesterton says, the history of Christianity has been a history of defeat being stronger than victory.

I am thinking that John Paul may well have made some mistakes during his life; certainly there is no promise of infallibility for a Pope's every action. He lived in a complex time and dealt with challenges that most of us don't have to deal with. We live in a time when many of the laity are more ready to criticize and armchair-quarterback than to pray for our pope, and so possibly we did not do our share in helping him out. At any rate, I am trying to pray more heartily for our pope, bishops and priests these days than I probably did back then. However, one thing I am sure was not a mistake was his courage in his last days. I think we are still seeing some of the graces released during that time.

During the wrenching days of Aidan's liver transplant (he was desperately ill for several days before and after) my husband played over and over again on CD a Rosary spoken by the Pope. Aidan survived against great odds. If this was a miracle attributable to intervention by the saints, it was attributable to St Therese of Lisieux, Padre Pio and Mother Thecla Merlo.
However, once again John Paul seemed directly connected to our lives, as he did once again when Aidan spent the Jubilee of 2000 in the hospital.

Pope John Paul II, after his death, was associated more explicitly with a small family miracle of ours. My daughter wished to be confirmed a year earlier than is standard in our diocese of California. She had prepared, petitioned, done everything she could with our help to have our wish granted. All the possible doors seemed to be closing. On April 2, Pope John Paul II died and we particularly asked for his intercession in her desire. And within the next couple of days, a completely unexpected door opened (through the human agency of some good friends) and Clare was confirmed during the Papal Conclave. During the moment of confirmation a wind gusted up and almost knocked over the tables laden with food for the post-confirmation reception.

The celerity and briskness with which Clare got confirmed was probably not a "true" miracle because it could be attributed to natural things; all the same it seemed that grace had breathed on human efforts. And we felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in a very direct way during that time.

All You Who Labor

If you've been reading Josef Pieper's book Leisure: The Basis of Culture and been somewhat puzzled by some of his points, a good book to read along with it might be All You Who Labor by Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski. We've had it around the house for years. My oldest son mentioned it recently and that reminded me that it might have something to say about the role of work versus leisure. Pieper can be difficult reading, though his style is clear; Wyszynski seems to write more directly to the normal layperson, and bases his thinking directly on theology and the tradition of the Church, while Pieper's approach is more informed by the philosophical tradition. So I am finding that the books fit nicely side by side, and I plan to spend some time during these Christmas holidays reading more of Wyszynksi's book (and also, if I blog again, learning to spell Wyszynski without having to stop and delete several times)

Wyszynski, writing contemperaneously to Pieper (his book was originally written in 1947 in Poland) deplored the "deification" of work and the tendency it has nowadays to be demeaning and vulgarizing. Nonetheless, he celebrates work itself as an essential part of our humanity. He quotes Jesus as saying "My Father has never ceased working, and I too, must be at work." He cites the example of Our Lord's closest companions on earth, most of whom were physical laborers -- fishermen and the like. He says that man was made to work (Genesis 2:15) even before the Fall; it was because of the fall that our work became difficult to perform as the "normal consequence of the corruption of the mind and the will through sin".

He writes:

"Christianity.... brought about the real liberation and elevation of humn work. The first Christians, even the rich ones, sometimes showed their memebership in the Church by doing physical work. They professed Christ not only in word but in deed. For is it not true that "faith without deeds to show has no life in it?" ... What is more, the Christian world emphasized the importance of uniting spiritual and physical work. We see this especially in monastic life, where the most sublime contemplation has gone hand in hand with manual labor.

I do not think his work contradicts Pieper's in any key respect, in spite of its difference in emphasis. He, too, writes that "man is made for both prayer and work"; he, too, deplores the drowning of man in the world of "total work":

"Man is lost in the pursuit of profit, driven by "duty" which he often understands rather as a sense of external need than as a moral value. Morever, we are becoming the slaves of things. We are so absorbed in and engrossed by the prefecting of what we do that we completely forget about ourselves. We even consider that excessive work frees us from the duty of molding our own souls.
and

Now, just as work perfects, so also the lack of it demoralizes the mind and weakens the will. The working day must help the progress of our mind and will.

The day's work should be such that it does not exhaust all our human powers. A man ending a day's work should still have some physical strength at his disposal.

Prudence and justice command man to refrain from the sort of work that would exhaust his strength completely, for work is not the most important task; it is not the only duty in the day, or in life, either.

The day's work should be of such a kind that one is able, with the strength left over to fulfil the other daily tasks of life. .... He should have some time, as well as some physical and spiritual strength."

Obviously, of course, the Cardinal in post war Poland was seeing that some men do NOT have this kind of time, through no fault of their own. His point was that this is a symptom of a sick society, if it is something imposed on the man; and if the man imposes it on himself or herself, it is a sickness in the person, and will not lend itself to sanctification. It will be like that "clanging of cymbals" St Paul talks about in efforts done without love.
Winter's definitely here -- our 13 year old dog Frodo curls up on the easy chair : )
Liam brings his work to the main room where it's warmer

Brendan sits by the fire


Our power went out for an hour or so

To Our Mother

Sheldon Vanauken, in A Severe Mercy which I read at my daughter's recommendation, included several sonnets he wrote in his book. This one was my favorite:

OUR LADY OF THE NIGHT

When this world hides the constant heart of light
We sink to chill despair through stars that wheel
In deathless unconcern; our senses reel
At nothingness, and darkness steals our sight.

Appearing wrapped in deep blue heaven, bright
With secret sun, the moon for tenderness
Looks down to earth where, reassured, we bless
The sun in her, our Lady of the night.

O Lady, eyes can neither bear the pain
Of utter light, nor see without it how
To walk, so blindly stumbling we are drawn
To seek that light in you who see it plain.
Be with us, Lady, through the darkness, now
And at the awful hour of the dawn.

Friday, December 18, 2009

On His Last Notes

When, Father, I did see thy last account
Of illness, written in a weary scrawl,
Pulse and effusions noted in amount,
Physician's habit in effect through all,

I thought how in many a still hour thou
O'er new or waning life a vigil kept.
As physician, so as father, did thou
Keep notes, concern thyself whilst others slept.

In likewise way the Author of our days,
Who counts our pulse and in us doth abide,
Must in those final days have bent His gaze,
And kept close vigil at His servant's side.

Thus in these last brief notes of thine I see
A pencil'd prescript of eternity.

Brief Solace

Here's a sonnet by Wordsworth:

Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
Some ways to practice penance during this new liturgical year.
  • Efforts at reconciliation with a family member or neighbor
  • Tears of repentance
  • Concern for the salvation of our sisters and brothers
  • Prayer to the saints for their intercession
  • Patient acceptance of the cross we must bear to be faithful to Christ
  • Defense of justice and right
  • Admission of faults to God and to one another
  • Mutual correction
  • Offer and acceptance of forgiveness
  • Endurance of persecution for the sake of God’s kingdom
  • Development of a spirit of penance
  • Witness to a Christian way of life
Also, Works of Mercy.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Truth is one and whole

From "St Thomas Aquinas" by Msr Ronald Knox; I thought it dovetailed, to use his word, with Pieper's last chapter:

"I would simply point to two principles, which jut out like buttressess from the great edifice he has left behind him, lucidly evident, yet in danger of being forgotten in our day no less than in his.

One is, that you must have a philosophy which covers the whole of your experience, which faces all the facts; not a philosophy which explains half your experience and explains away the other half.

And the second principles is, that truth is all one; that you must have a system which dovetails together the results of all your knowledge; not one kind of truth for the physicist and another for the philosopher, or one kind of truth for the philosopher and another for the theologian.

There is a constant tendency for the human mind, when it philosophizes, to cut the knots instead of untying them; to isolate one part of your experience and thrust away the other half into a corner as something that cannot be explained, or is unworthy of explanation. There is no more puzzling riddle for a philosopher to solve than the relation between matter and spirit, between the world which meets our eyes and the eyes with which we look out on it."

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

science and "conforming our souls to reality"

Science and the Demands of Virtue

Very well worth reading the whole thing, but here's an excerpt:

Contrary to the popular understanding, the natural sciences are not morally neutral. Not only do the findings of science have moral implications, the actual work of scientific research presupposes that the researcher himself is a man of virtue. When scientific research is divorced from, or worse opposed to, the life of virtue it is not simply the research or the researcher that suffers but the whole human family.

Take for example, the scandal surrounding the conduct of researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in the UK. Whether or not the recently revealed emails and computer programs from undermine the theory of anthropological global warning (AGW), it is clear that current public policy debate is based at least in part on the research of scientists of questionable virtue who sacrificed not only honesty and fair play but potential the well being of us all in the service of their own political agenda.

...C.S. Lewis reminds us of the danger here when he observes that, “Each new power won by man is a power over man as well.” While our scientific advances have made us stronger in some ways, they have made us weaker in others. While not without copious benefits, science represents a real and substantial risk for both our relationship to creation and to ourselves. Giving in, Lewis points out, means that we no longer seek to “conform the soul to reality” through “knowledge, self-discipline and virtue.” As with magic in an earlier age, modern science tempts us to “subdue reality to the wishes of men.”

A Gift of Heaven

This is about the last part of Pieper's section on The Philosophical Act -- chapter IV. In this conclusion, Pieper talks about the relationship of philosophy to theology. I'll put the questions that come up during the chapter in bold font to make it easier to read, since this is looonnng...

Can you have philosophy without religion or at least a theology?

A gift of heaven, which, as I conceive, the gods tossed among men by the hands of a new Prometheus, and therewith a blaze of light; and the ancients, who were our betters and nearer the gods than we are, handed down the tradition...Plato, Philebus

Pieper makes a case in the last chapter of The Philosophical Act that philosophy can't properly get its start without something that has gone before already; theology, defined as the "fund of revelation", "always already" precedes philosophy.

That doesn't mean that philosophy is simply an adjunct to religion, though; or that theology "has" what philosophy "wants" . Like all "human" sciences Philosophy has its own autonomy in that it starts from below, from what is around us, and THEN reaches up, or perhaps down, into the truth of things:

The "autonomy" of philosophy with respect to the "always already" given fund of tradition that results from divine revelation consists in the fact that the philosophical act begins with the investigation of the visible, concrete world of experience lying before one's eyes, that philosophy begins "from below" in questioning the experience of things encountered every day, a questioning which opens up ever newer, more "astounding" depths in the one who searches.
Theologians are "custodians and interpreters of revelation", while philosophers have a different, though complementary calling. This gives philosophy the freedom not to have to grasp, to "work", to be an achievement or a power trip. It gives it a humility, a consciousness of ignorance and lack of utility, which seems essential to the thing, as Pieper pointed out earlier and Plato pointed out long before him. Going back to the essays about Leisure, we see that religion -- revelation -- is something that is given.

Pieper points out that even the slightly grotesque and erroneous theology of the pre-Platonics gave Plato a starting point to consider; and that this starting point is necessary. If one is enquiring into the "roots" of things, one can't reject what one has been given.

The question then naturally arises, where nowadays the legitimate pre-philosophical tradition is to be found. What is the present-day form of what Plato calls 'the gift of the Gods, brought down to us by some unknown Prometheus'?
Pieper's answer is Christianity.

Here it would be easy to say so much! I have been reading Sheldon Vanauken's book A Severe Mercy; he quotes CS Lewis making the point that only two religions (Hinduism and Christianity) combined mystery and morality and in effect comprised a whole world view; that Buddhism was a simplification of Hinduism and Islam a simplification of Christianity (Chesterton and Belloc say something of the same thing). All others are basically offshoots. (He doesn't mention Judaism in this context). He says that simple materialism is logically insufficient, and of the other religions, there are those and versions of those, and nothing else, really. Now this could be arguable, perhaps; I haven't thought it through yet. But it reminded me of what Pieper says here that of all the world systems only Christianity fits the bill as far as revelation as "gift" goes.

If this is accepted, some questions might remain. Pieper addresses a few:

Does this mean that if you are a Christian you will necessarily be a philosopher.

No, not at all. Many Christians aren't.

Does it mean that you have to be a Christian to be a philosopher?

No, not that either. He said there have been many vigorous philosophies that are founded on critique of Christianity or on denial of it. In that sense, they are informed by Christianity, even in counterpoint.

To be vital and true, philosophy must be the counterpoint to a true theology, and that,post Christum natum, means Christian theology.
Christianity can only be replaced or supplanted, in this respect, by another belief, however carefully it may be decked out as purely 'rational', for rationalism has its own creed. And in that case, the structure of philosophy, as Plato understood it, as the counterpoint to faith, is still retained.
I think the basic point here is that philosophy, in order not to be a "closed system" or loop, has to reach beyond itself, and that means theology in some form -- even a negative form of denial of Theos. To do otherwise, to refer merely to what is inside the loop, is something like seeing without acknowledging the existence of the sun.

So -- philosophy needs Christianity, in a sense, at least post-Incarnation. But philosophers don't have to be Christian to philosophize. Almost by default, they have to consider the claims of Christianity, but they don't necessarily have to accept them.

(I would think personally that it would be sad to have to waste time going consciously "away" from revelation, but maybe it could be a long indirect journey towards Truth. I hope so, anyway).

However, there are several ways in which acceptance of revelation is valuable in the philosophical endeavor. By the "light" of the revealed Word, the philosopher is able to see what would otherwise remain hidden, yet his knowledge is not a theological way of knowing, but is "demonstrated in the things themselves".

In regard to this, another question comes:

CAN there be a Christian philosophy?

That is, isn't revelation like a cheat sheet -- you already have the answers, so you don't have to work out the problems?

Pieper's answer is No.

the truths of Christianity are in a very special way inconceivable ; the truths of reason are generally inconceivable; but the distinguishing mark of the truths of Christianity is that in spite of being revealed, they still remain hidden'.
The blind men with regard to the elephant, though prevented from gross error if their blindness was healed, would still have a lot to investigate before they comprehended the elephant -- and in fact, as Aquinas says, no man has really even comprehended a fly wholly.


Christian philosophy is not, in fact, less intellectually arduous because, as one might be tempted to think,faith 'illumines'' reason.

If it reaches back to theological arguments (as it does in the philosophy of Aquinas for example), that is not a way of making ready answers possible but a way of breaking down methodological barriers in order to give the most genuine philosophical impulse, the loving search for wisdom, a wider field a way of introducing it into the realm of mystery, a realm which is by definition boundless, and to enter into that infinite realm is to enter on a path along which one can continue for ever without coming to an end.
Christianity is not just a set of doctrines, though. It is a manner of living, and in fact, a relationship. It involves the whole person:

to say that a man is Christian in the act of philosophizing does not mean that his point of view is that of Christianity considered as doctrine. For Christianity is essentially reality and not merely doctrine. The problem before a Christian philosophy does not therefore lie in harmonizing natural and supernatural knowledge theoretically; nor does it consist in the choice of the method to be adopted to that end. The point is that a man's existence should be so deeply rooted in the Christian reality, that his philosophy, too, should become, as a result, Christian
Even where natural knowledge is concerned, the discovery of the truth is not merely a matter of hard thinking, and when the truth concerns the meaning of the world, a good brain is not enough: the whole human personality is involved.

There is a participatory, "connatural" aspect to Christianity -- you become wise as a fruit of becoming closer to the divine Source of Wisdom.

Perhaps it is in that respect, through relationship, that in the beatific vision our questions will be resolved even though we will still remain finite. "We see now through a glass darkly".

A final question, then:

Do Christians "need" philosophy?

Again, he answers No.

only one thing is necessary, and it is certainly not philosophy. The Christian does not and cannot await an answer from philosophy on the subject of his salvation, nor, of course, salvation itself.And so he cannot philosophize as though his salvation depended upon his understanding of the world.
He doesn't say much more about this except this:

It sometimes seems as though Aquinas's conviction that such a thing as 'a comprehensive understanding' of anything in the world is impossible, were tinged with delight and almost with humour.

Philosophy is as necessary and as superfluous as the natural perfection of the human being. As we saw, to philosophize is to realize the natural bent of the human mind and spirit towards the whole. But who could possibly calculate the precise degree of that necessity in individual cases ?
That leaves me some things to ponder. Sure, it's obvious that salvation does not depend in any way upon philosophy. It seems to me that a denial of the value of philosophy would be destructive of the Christian endeavour, however.

When Pieper talks about Aquinas' conviction as being "tinged with delight and almost with humor" I somehow think of his earlier reference to Wisdom as "playing before Him" from the beginning of time:

22 The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before he made any thing from the beginning. 23 I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made. ....I was with him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times;

31 Playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men.32 Now therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways. 33 Hear instruction and be wise, and refuse it not.
Wisdom's delight is to play before Him, and to be with the children of men; and would think it sad to ignore her to chase shadows and contingent things, when she is ancient and beautiful.

I can't help thinking that Martha's sister Mary's "one needful thing" of sitting at His feet and listening had a bit of the loving search for Wisdom, but perhaps I am failing to make a distinction that needs to be made. Maybe it goes back to the distinction between a "gift" freely given and gratefully received, and something slightly different, a "search", even if loving and receptive. Anyway, I am reserving that for future pondering.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Quiet but Not Still

It's so funny how you can tell a newly literate person -- by the silence. Paddy's been reading for a couple of years now, but he's just made a jump in fluency.... or integrated maturity level, perhaps. As a consequence there are new stretches in the day when I don't hear his high little voices playing pretend games or talking to his siblings or to me. When I go and look for him I see some variation of the pictures below.

Even when he's quiet, though, he's never quite still. These were taken during a five-minute period (sorry they are so blurry -- I thought the natural light would be enough, but it wasn't) . And this level of activity during concentration is very typical of my brand new 7 year old. I wonder how things would go for him at school?