"Love follows knowledge."
"Beauty above all beauty!"
– St. Catherine of Siena

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Music Tuesday: “Wake, Awake, for Night is Flying”

In yesterday’s Sunday Meditation, which I embedded a video podcast from the Dominican friars, named Godsplaining, Fr. Jacob Bertrand Janczyk brings up an Advent hymn, “Wake, Awake, for Night is Flying,” to make his particular theological point.  You can hear him talk about the hymn from the 20:50 to 22:00 minute mark in the podcast.  I had never heard of that hymn before, and no wonder.  As I researched it turned out to be originally a Lutheran hymn.  If you want to learn its history on how it went from the German composer, Philipp Nicolai (1556–1608), how it was made popular by J. S. Bach, and how it entered the English language, through Catherine Winkworth (1827-1878), you can read about it here.  It has a really rich history. 

Here is a very beautiful choral arrangements by the Luther College Nordic Choir.



Very lovely but I think with a choir arrangement the lyrics are somewhat lost to the ear.  So let me embed an acapella rendition by someone named Aunnee Trampe from the Lutheran Songbird Project.  You can follow the lyrics posted below.



The lyrics don’t complete match with her singing, and neither did the choir above.  Perhaps there are alternative versions.

So here are the lyrics:

 

1. Wake, awake, for night is flying; the watchmen on the heights are crying: Awake, Jerusalem, at last! Midnight hears the welcome voices and at the thrilling cry rejoices; come forth, ye virgins, night is past; the Bridegroom comes, awake; your lamps with gladness take: Alleluia! And for his marriage feast prepare, for ye must go and meet him there.

 

2. Zion hears the watchmen singing, and all her heart with joy is springing; she wakes, she rises from her gloom; for her Lord comes down all-glorious, the strong in grace, in truth victorious. Her Star is risen; her Light is come. Ah come, thou blessed One, God's own beloved Son: Alleluia! We follow till the halls we see where thou hast bid us sup with thee.

 

3. Now let all the heavens adore thee, and saints and angels sing before thee, with harp and cymbal's clearest tone; of one pearl each shining portal, where we are with the choir immortal of angels round thy dazzling throne; nor eye hath seen, nor ear hath yet attained to hear what there is ours; but we rejoice and sing to thee our hymn of joy eternally.

 

Words by: Philipp Nicolai;

trans. by Catherine Winkworth

Music by: Philipp Nicolai;

harm. by J.S. Bach

 

Credit to TraditionalHymns

 

Now Catholics have not shied away from performing it.  Here is a pretty rendition by the Dominican Sisters of Mary.



Very lovely hymn.  I am glad I was introduced to it.  Happy Advent!



Sunday, November 28, 2021

Sunday Meditation: First Sunday of Advent, Godsplaining Style

I going to do something a little different this Sunday for the meditation.  I’m going to embed this Godsplaining episode to go over the Mass readings.  Just a little background.  Godsplaining is one of my favorite podcasts, and it provided by a particular group of young Dominican preachers.  On Sundays, what they like to do is read the Mass readings and then take turns reflecting on each of the readings.  Here we have Fr. Jacob Bertrand Janczyk, Fr. Gregory Pine, and Fr. Patrick Briscoe each giving their improvisational homily on all three readings.  Let me provide the readings so they are at hand for you to read, and then just click the video as they explain them. 

 

Reading I

Jer 33:14-16

The days are coming, says the LORD,

    when I will fulfill the promise

    I made to the house of Israel and Judah.

In those days, in that time,

    I will raise up for David a just shoot ;

    he shall do what is right and just in the land.

In those days Judah shall be safe

    and Jerusalem shall dwell secure;

    this is what they shall call her:

    “The LORD our justice.”

 

Reading II

1 Thes 3:12—4:2

Brothers and sisters:

May the Lord make you increase and abound in love

for one another and for all,

just as we have for you,

so as to strengthen your hearts,

to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father

at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.  Amen.

 

Finally, brothers and sisters,

we earnestly ask and exhort you in the Lord Jesus that,

as you received from us

how you should conduct yourselves to please God

and as you are conducting yourselves

you do so even more.

For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

 

Gospel

Lk 21:25-28, 34-36

Jesus said to his disciples:

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars,

and on earth nations will be in dismay,

perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves.

People will die of fright

in anticipation of what is coming upon the world,

for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

And then they will see the Son of Man

coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

But when these signs begin to happen,

stand erect and raise your heads

because your redemption is at hand.

 

“Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy

from carousing and drunkenness

and the anxieties of daily life,

and that day catch you by surprise like a trap.

For that day will assault everyone

who lives on the face of the earth.

Be vigilant at all times

and pray that you have the strength

to escape the tribulations that are imminent

and to stand before the Son of Man.”


 


Check out their podcast.  They talk on all religious subjects and even subjects that don’t appear to be religious but may be, including literature.  There is usually a little more playful back and forth between the brothers, but I think it’s a little less so on the Sunday reflections on the Gospel. 

Thursday, November 25, 2021

Notable Quote: It is Truly Right and Just to Give Thanks

Today is the great American holiday of Thanksgiving.  It’s not a religious holiday, and yet it is religious.  It is a day to thank God for all the blessings he has given us.  Since all religions I think thank God in some way and since we have many religions in the United States living side by side, this is a perfect American holiday.  One that we can all share.

But we Catholics know gratitude to the Lord in a special way.  Every Mass as part of the Eucharistic Prayer we offer God our thanks.  This exchange which leads to the Eucharistic Prayer should be familiar to Catholics.

 

Priest:  The Lord be with you.  

People:  And with your spirit.

 

Priest:  Lift up your hearts.  

People:  We lift them up to the Lord.

 

Priest:  Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.  

People:  It is right and just.

The bold is my emphasis to highlight the formal gratitude to the Lord.  And then the priest goes into one of several Eucharistic Prayer choices, but each at the beginning recapitulate the words of the rightness and justness of being thankful.  I’ll just quote the opening of Eucharistic Prayer II, again my emphasis:

 

It is truly right and just, our duty and salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Father most holy, through your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, your Word through whom you made all things, whom you sent as our Savior and Redeemer, incarnate by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin. Fulfilling your will and gaining for you a holy people, he stretched out his hands as he endured his Passion, so as to break the bonds of death and manifest the resurrection…”

It goes on, but part of our liturgical prayer is a formal thanksgiving to the Father most holy.  As a liturgy it is repeated as a sacred rite.

And so in our “liturgical” calendar as Americans, we have this day to give thanks for all our blessings, personal and national, to the creator God of our understanding.  It is right and just and our duty to give thanks.  It is the sacred rite we come to every year, repeated with friends and family gathered together at our table of blessings.

Happy Thanksgiving!




Sunday, November 21, 2021

Sunday Meditation: Christ the King

On this, the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, we have a very special feast.  It is the end of the Catholic calendar, symbolic for the end of time.  The King, “like a Son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven” (Dn 7:13) tells us, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the one who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty" (Rev 1:8).

 

Pilate said to Jesus,

"Are you the King of the Jews?"

Jesus answered, "Do you say this on your own

or have others told you about me?"

Pilate answered, "I am not a Jew, am I?

Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me.

What have you done?"

Jesus answered, "My kingdom does not belong to this world.

If my kingdom did belong to this world,

my attendants would be fighting

to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.

But as it is, my kingdom is not here."

So Pilate said to him, "Then you are a king?"

Jesus answered, "You say I am a king.

For this I was born and for this I came into the world,

to testify to the truth.

Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."     

-Jn 18:33-37

 


Make sure you listen to the wonderful homily after the reading.  See, we Catholics let Jesus into our hearts all the time.  If you want to understand how the Christ the King Feast came about, last year I wrote up a post on Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quas primas establishing the feast.  

Friday, November 19, 2021

Faith Filled Friday: You Are Bartimaeus

There was a marvelous meditation in last month’s Magnificat (October 2021, p. 356-7) taken from a St. Josemaría Escrivà homily regarding the Bartimaeus passage in Mark.   Escrivà (1902-1975) was a priest from Spain who founded the religious institution, Opus Dei, an organization where mostly lay people commit to a life of holiness.  Here’s the Gospel passage first:

 

They came to Jericho.  And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a sizable crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus, sat by the roadside begging.  On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”  And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he kept calling out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me.”  Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” So they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take courage; get up, he is calling you.”  He threw aside his cloak, sprang up, and came to Jesus.  Jesus said to him in reply, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man replied to him, “Master, I want to see.”  Jesus told him, “Go your way; your faith has saved you.” Immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way.  (Mk 10:46-52)




One certainly identifies with the blind man and we empathize with his predicament.  Escrivà puts us into Bartimaeus’ shoes. 

 

Don’t you feel the same urge to cry out?  You who are also waiting at the side of the way, of this highway of life that is so very short?  You who need more light, you who need more grace to make up your mind to seek holiness?  Don’t you feel an urgent need to cry out, Jesus, son of David, have pity on me?  What a beautiful aspiration for you to repeat again and again!  I recommend that you meditate slowly on the events preceding the miracle, to help you keep this fundamental idea clearly engraved upon your minds: what a world of difference there is between the merciful Heart of Jesus and our own poor hearts!  This thought will help you at all times, and especially in the hour of trial and temptation, and also when the time comes to be generous in the little duties you have, or in moments when heroism is called for. 

Yes, meditate on Bartimaeus’ helplessness, and that the only power he has is to call on Him.  That is us, today, here and now, in a desperate state with the only real power we have is to call on Him: Jesus, son of David, have pity on me. Escrivà continues to turn the screw on your Bartimaeus predicament:


Many of them rebuked him, telling him to be silent, as people have done to you, when you sensed that Jesus was passing your way.  Your heart beat faster and you too began to cry out, prompted by an intimate longing.  Then your friends, the easy life, your surroundings, all conspired to tell you: “Keep quiet, don’t cry out.  Who are you to be calling Jesus?  Don’t bother him.”  But poor Bartimaeus would not listen to them.  He cried out all the more.  Our Lord, who had heard him right from the beginning, let him persevere in his prayer.  He does the same with you.  Jesus hears our cries from the very first, but he waits.  He wants us to be convinced that we need him.  He wants us to beseech him, to persist, like the blind man waiting by the road from Jericho.  Let us imitate him.  Even if God does not immediately give us what we ask, even if many people try to put us off our prayers, let us still go on praying.

So when Escrivà puts us in Bartimaeus’ shoes, it’s not that we are transported to Bartimaeus’ time.  We are Bartimaeus in our contemporary time.  Imagine now our Lord approaching you, and just as Bartimaeus can’t see Jesus, so too are you blind to Him.  Escrivà continues for the climax:

 

And now begins a marvelous dialogue that moves us and sets our hearts on fire, for you and I are now Bartimaeus.  Christ, who is god, begins to speak and asks, What do you want me to do for you?  The blind man answers, Lord, that I may see.  How utterly logical!  How about yourself, can you really see?  Haven’t you too experienced at times what happened to the blind man of Jericho?  I can never forget how when meditating on this passage many years back, and realizing that Jesus was expecting something of me, I made up my own aspirations: “Lord, what is it you want?  What are you asking of me?”  I had a feeling that he wanted me to take on something new and the cry Master, that I may see, moved me to beseech Christ again and again.  Lord, whatever it is that you wish, let it be done.

And so you ask Him, I want to see, and if you let Him touch your eyes, you can see Him.  After this encounter, Bartimaeus followed Jesus all the way to Jerusalem to His Passion.  In those moments you do see Jesus, when you feel His touch on your eyes, you can do nothing else but follow Him all the way.

This was a moving meditation.



Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Photo Essay: 2021 Fall Colors

This has been a beautiful autumn, and these past few days have been the peak fall colors around Staten Island.  I’ve lived here thirty years now, and I can’t remember a more beautiful turning of the trees on Staten Island.  We’re right on the coast, so we don’t get the chilly evenings that New England gets and which really helps create the colors.  I don’t know what’s different this year here.  Perhaps it was a dry fall this year.  Or perhaps I’m just noticing it and it’s always been this way.  I don’t know.  So here’s a little photo essay to show off the beautiful fall of 2021.These are all pictures from around my neighborhood.





That one just above is the entrance to our borough's nature center.  There are hiking trails in there.  












The last three are part of the summer camp Matthew used to attend.


The last one with the Madonna statue is part of an Egyptian Coptic religious center.  That's a drip of rain in the picture.



I love that last one with the basketball court.


Pictures don't quite bring the experience to you but they are worth posting.  I hope you liked them.

Monday, November 15, 2021

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, Post #3

This is the third post on my reading of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory.

You can read Post #1 here.  

Post#2 here.  

 


Another important pairing is the priest with Coral Fellows.  Coral is thirteen, just prior to puberty.  But she is profoundly intelligent, precocious in her empathy, and maybe even prescient in the sense that she seems to understand things in a way beyond limitations.  When her mother tells her father Coral has been entertaining a policeman at the house, her father goes to interrogate her.  Here’s her introduction to the scene.

 

She stood in the doorway watching them with a look of immense responsibility. Before her serious gaze they became a boy you couldn’t trust and a ghost you could almost puff away, a piece of frightened air. She was very young—about thirteen—and at that age you are not afraid of many things, age and death, all the things which may turn up, snake-bite and fever and rats and a bad smell. Life hadn’t got at her yet; she had a false air of impregnability. But she had been reduced already, as it were, to the smallest terms—everything was there but on the thinnest lines. That was what the sun did to a child, reduced it to a framework. The gold bangle on the bony wrist was like a padlock on a canvas door which a fist could break.  (p. 33)

She carries an air of responsibility (her parents stand as a “boy” before, that is she becomes their parent), is unafraid, and “reduced” from the sun which I take to mean thin and smallish.  But she comes across as “impregnable” because “life hadn’t got at her yet.”  Despite her intelligence and sense of responsibility—after all she takes care of her emotionally debilitated mother—there is a quality of innocence.  All these qualities and with perhaps a certain providential grace, she understands and gets correct the moral situation before her.  She keeps the priest hidden from the police.

What we learn is that she has lied to the lieutenant about a priest on their property and has hidden the priest while kept the lieutenant at bay.  It is through her directives that first she resolves the situation with the lingering policeman, then explains to her father there really is a priest hidden, and finally she takes her father to him.  The father has absolutely no empathy for the priest.  He is the exact opposite of Coral, refusing to give him drink and food, and insists he leave as soon as it gets dark. 

What is astonishing is that the “politics” of the situation is completely irrelevant to Coral.  As they are walking to the barn, her father snaps at the girl, “We’ve no business interfering with politics.”  But Coral responds: This isn’t politics. I know about politics. Mother and I are doing the Reform Bill” (37).  Her father is completely configured to the politics.  Coral is configured differently.  So she sneaks back out later.

 

Coral put down the chicken legs and tortillas on the ground and unlocked the door. She carried a bottle of Cerveza Moctezuma under her arm. There was the same scuffle in the dark: the noise of a frightened man. She said, ‘It’s me,’ to quieten him, but she didn’t turn on the torch. She said, ‘There’s a bottle of beer here, and some food.’

 

‘Thank you. Thank you.’

 

‘The police have gone from the village—south. You had better go north.’

 

He said nothing.

 

She asked, with the cold curiosity of a child, ‘What would they do to you if they found you?’

 

‘Shoot me.’

 

‘You must be very frightened,’ she said with interest.

 

He felt his way across the barn towards the door and the pale starlight. He said, ‘I am frightened,’ and stumbled on a bunch of bananas. (39)

She feels his hunger, and feeds him secretly.  Not only has she lied to the police, she has disobeyed her father.  Why?  She doesn’t really know whether he’s innocent.  She helps him because there is a suffering man who seems to have his dignity reduced.  If the whisky priest is on a passion narrative in this novel—and that is one way to look at the story—Coral is Veronica wiping the face of Jesus at the sixth station of the cross.  Her reaction when he tells her of the consequences of being caught is empathy: “You must be very frightened.”  She looks into his heart and connects with it.  The politics of the world crumble when faced with the humanity before her.

They continue this heart to heart conversation.  At one point she offers a solution to his situation.


She said, ‘Of course you could—renounce.’

 

‘I don’t understand.’

 

‘Renounce your faith,’ she explained, using the words of her European History.

 

He said, ‘It’s impossible. There’s no way. I’m a priest. It’s out of my power.’

 

The child listened intently. She said, ‘Like a birthmark.’ (40)

“Like a birthmark,” she intuits the sacrament of Holy Orders.  Like Baptism, Holy Orders is a mark on your soul that cannot be taken away (see Ps 110:4 “The Lord has sworn and will not waver: "You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek” and echoed in Heb 7:17).  She understands his existential predicament.  And so she offers him to return any time to hide out.  She tries to tech him Morse code and asks him when he comes to signal with two longs and one short (41).  It is interesting that two longs and one short in Morse code stand for the letter “G.”  Why “G”?  Perhaps standing for God?

The conversation then turns toward God.  He asks her if she believes in God, and she says she has “lost her faith” at the age of ten.  Here now it is the whisky priest’s turn to talk to her heart.  He tells her twice he will pray for her and gives her hope that with a little brandy he can “defy the devil.” 

Again, as in the conversation with Mr. Tench, what we have is heart speaking to heart.  In these and other pired conversations with the priest throughout the novel, what I find is heart speaking to heart.  Now this recalls St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s episcopal motto, “Cor Ad Cor Loquitur,” Heart Speaks to Heart.  Newman took the phrase from a letter from Saint Francis de Sales, but today it’s identified with Newman.  Now Cor Ad Cor Loquitur could be referring to God’s heart speaking to man’s heart, or vice versa.  Or it could mean a human heart speaking to another human heart with God’s language.  For a full understanding of the motto see this article, “Cor ad cor loquitur” John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Coat of Arms” from the he International Centre of Newman Friends.   From the article, “The Church is the communion of Christians who are “one heart and one soul” (Acts 4:32), speaking the new language inspired by the Word of God: cor ad cor.” 



The priest speaks in this language of the heart, and all the characters respond in some measure also with their hearts, but that measure is perhaps a level of grace granted to the character.  Mr. Tench receives the language of the heart and is touched enough to break his apathy and write to his wife, who writes back granting him a divorce.  He is touched enough to feel the heartache of the priest’s death at the end of the novel. 

Coral responds the most, as I’ve pointed out here.  Later we see she has been touched by the priest when she brings up God and faith to her mother.  The priest’s conversation, heart, and, indeed, his prayers have been working on the girl.  In his dream of the night before the execution, the priest dreams of Coral.  She is there at the feast in heaven, where he sees himself eating hungrily just like he did when Coral fed him in the barn.  In the dream she, who we learn in the course of the novel has died, taps out Morse code for the priest.  Notice also that in heaven she taps out differently than what she proposed in the barn.  In the dream she taps out three longs and one short.  There is no single letter in Morse code for three longs and a short.  Three longs stand for “O” and one short stands for “E.”  I could be off base here but could those be the vowels surrounding the word “love”?  Of course that’s speculation, but the one thing for sure is that she communicates with him from heaven.  Heart speaks to heart.

###

The next paired conversation with the whisky priest that leads to more insight of the novel is that with Brigitta, his illegitimate daughter.  Of all the people in the entire novel, we know that Brigitta is special to him.  It is almost the first thing he brings up when he comes to his village and sees her mother, Maria.

 

He said gently, not looking at her, with the same embarrassed smile, ‘How’s Brigitta?’ His heart jumped at the name: a sin may have enormous consequences: it was six years since he had been—home.

 

‘She’s as well as the rest of us. What did you expect?’

 

He had his satisfaction, but it was connected with his crime; he had no business to feel pleasure at anything attached to that past.  (p. 61-62)

And so we see here the paradox of pain and joy.  Later children come by to kiss the hand of a priest, and he looks for his daughter among them, though he has no idea what she looks like.

 

The real children were coming up now to kiss his hand, one by one, under the pressure of their parents. They were too young to remember the old days when the priests dressed in black and wore Roman collars and had soft superior patronizing hands; he could see they were mystified at the show of respect to a peasant like their parents. He didn’t look at them directly, but he was watching them closely all the same. Two were girls—a thin washed-out child—of five, six, seven? he couldn’t tell, and one who had been sharpened by hunger into an appearance of devilry and malice beyond her age. A young woman stared out of the child’s eyes. He watched them disperse again, saying nothing: they were strangers.  (62-63)

The continuity of faith between generations has been atrophied.  They don’t know the significance of a priest now that the persecution has been going on since before they were born.  It is the girl with the appearance of devilry that turns out to be his daughter.  In her eyes he sees a “young woman,” not a child.  It is also important to note that he attributes hunger (the “one who had been sharpened by hunger”) for what I’ll call a loss of innocence.  Yes, she is only seven but there is a lack of innocence in Brigitta that was there with Coral who was twice her age.  In fact, when the priest has a moment of personal anguish, it is Brigitta who laughs at him.  The anguish is in reaction to hearing that a man was executed from not turning in the priest.

 

He gave a little yapping cry like a dog’s—the absurd shorthand of grief. The old-young child laughed. He said, ‘Why don’t they catch me? The fools. Why don’t they catch me?’ The little girl laughed again; he stared at her sightlessly, as if he could hear the sound but couldn’t see the face. Happiness was dead again before it had had time to breathe; he was like a woman with a stillborn child—bury it quickly and forget and begin again. Perhaps the next would live.  (63-64)




At this point he still doesn’t know that this is his daughter.  Later he specifically asks for her.

 

He said shyly, ‘And Brigitta … is she … well?’

 

‘You saw her just now.’

 

‘No.’ He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t recognized her. It was making light of his mortal sin: you couldn’t do a thing like that and then not even recognize …

 

‘Yes, she was there.’ Maria went to the door and called, ‘Brigitta, Brigitta,’ and the priest turned on his side and watched her come in out of the outside landscape of terror and lust—that small malicious child who had laughed at him. ‘Go and speak to the father,’ Maria said. ‘Go on.’

 

He made an attempt to hide the brandy bottle, but there was nowhere … he tried to minimize it in his hands, watching her, feeling the shock of human love.  (65)

“The shock of human love” is what makes the priest transcend his sins.  It is his love for all humanity—not just in a general sense but with every specific human being—that makes him a true Christian.  Jesus commands us to love our neighbor, but it is John in his first epistle that describes it as more than a commandment but of a thing of the heart.

 

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.  Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love... Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.  No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us…We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us.  God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.  In this is love brought to perfection among us, that we have confidence on the day of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world.  There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.  We love because he first loved us.  If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.  This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.  (1 Jn 4:7-21)

It is a long passage, and though I took out part through ellipses, but I think that passage is central to the novel.  It is through being in God’s love that makes us love, and then there is no room for hate.  You cannot hate your fellow human being if you are in God’s love.  But there is an implied corollary from this as well.  How can you love your brother in general if you don’t love someone specific?  Love of brother is not an abstraction of general humanity, but of specific persons.

Here the whisky priest loves his daughter in this specific way.  And so he feels that “shock” of love. His empathy goes out to her.  He protects her against her mother’s castigation (67) and wants to show her magic tricks (68).  He wants to come down to her level and speak heart to heart.  The child’s impudence prevents him.  Still the child saves his life when the lieutenant enters the town and child identifies him as her father, which should rule out being a priest (76).  Later he tells Maria “The next Mass I say will be for her” (79).  The priest has one more conversation with Brigitta after the lieutenant leaves.  At the garbage heap while looking for his thrown out papers, the child comes to him.  They talk heart to heart.  She tells him “they laugh at her” and that “everyone else has a father” (81).  He is taken aback.

 

He was appalled again by her maturity, as she whipped up a smile from a large and varied stock. She said, ‘Tell me—’ enticingly. She sat there on the trunk of the tree by the rubbish-tip with an effect of abandonment. The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit. She was without protection—she had no grace, no charm to plead for her; his heart was shaken by the conviction of loss. He said, ‘My dear, be careful …’

 

‘What of? Why are you going away?’

 

He came a little nearer; he thought—a man may kiss his own daughter, but she started away from him.

 

‘Don’t you touch me,’ she screeched at him in her ancient voice and giggled. Every child was born with some kind of knowledge of love, he thought; they took it with the milk at the breast; but on parents and friends depended the kind of love they knew—the saving or the damning kind. Lust too was a kind of love. He saw her fixed in her life like a fly in amber—Maria’s hand raised to strike: Pedro talking prematurely in the dusk: and the police beating the forest—violence everywhere. He prayed silently, ‘O God, give me any kind of death—without contrition, in a state of sin—only save this child.’

And here we get more Christian anthropology: “Every child [is] born with some kind of knowledge of love” but “the world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.”  [Actually as I think on it, this is more Catholic anthropology then general Christian.  Some Protestant denominations believe in total depravity of humanity.  That doesn’t fit here.  Catholics believe we are born with the capacity for both.]  And so we see why Brigitta is alluded to as a “young woman” and not a child.  She has lost her innocence.  Hunger, her mother’s harshness, Pedro’s worldly diatribes have smudged her soul.  He makes one last effort to speak to her heart.  I can’t quote the entire scene, but it’s worth reading.  At one point he falls to his knees.

 

He went down on his knees and pulled her to him, while she giggled and struggled to be free: ‘I love you. I am your father and I love you. Try to understand that.’ He held her tightly by the wrist and suddenly she stayed still, looking up at him. He said, ‘I would give my life, that’s nothing, my soul … my dear, my dear, try to understand that you are—so important.’ (82)

I don’t think that giving up your soul for someone, which would be the ultimate death, is something the Catholic Church would approve (it smacks of making a deal with the devil) but he does say that several times in the novel.  And I think he’s sincere about it too.  It’s Greene trying to show he will die for his love.  Right after the priest says he loves her and she’s so important, we get this coming from the priest’s inner thoughts:

 

That was the difference, he had always known, between his faith and theirs, the political leaders of the people who cared only for things like the state, the republic: this child was more important than a whole continent.

And just like Coral, who separated the politics of a situation from the human connection, so too the whisky priest separates the politics of Mexico with his love for her.  The philosophic underpinnings are right out of John’s first epistle, the separation of the worldly with the love in God, as I quoted above.

Finally he tries again to reach her heart, manages a kiss, says goodbye, and when he departs can feel the “whole vile world coming round the child to ruin her.”  We never do hear about Brigitta again, but one hopes that just as the whisky priest’s heart to heart conversation and prayers effects Mr. Tench and his life, one hopes they will have a positive effect on Brigitta too in the future.