Today,
June 24, 2022, on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus no less,
the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the 1973 ruling that took
abortion laws out of the hands of the people and essentially made it permissive
to kill unborn children at will.This is
a historic day!From the Catholic News Agency:
The Supreme Court has
overturned Roe v. Wade in a historic 6—3 decision released Friday that brings a
sudden and dramatic end to nearly a half-century of nationwide legalized
abortion in the U.S.
The opinion, in the
Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is
widely seen as the Supreme Court’s most highly anticipated and consequential
ruling since Roe. It not only overturns Roe, the landmark 1973 abortion case,
but also Casey v. Planned Parenthood, a 1992 decision that affirmed Roe.
"Abortion presents a
profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of
each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated
that authority," the opinion states. "We now overrule these decisions
and return that authority to the people and their elected
representatives."
I
thought this might have been anti climatic given the leak of this decision a
few weeks ago but frankly when I heard I started sobbing in tears of joy.So much of my politics, heart, and prayers
have gone into this.And for it to come
on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is too much of a coincidence.It is providential!
In
response Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and Archbishop William E. Lori of
Baltimore, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities issued a statement:
“This is a historic day
in the life of our country, one that stirs our thoughts, emotions and prayers.
For nearly fifty years, America has enforced an unjust law that has permitted
some to decide whether others can live or die; this policy has resulted in the
deaths of tens of millions of preborn children, generations that were denied
the right to even be born.
“America was founded on
the truth that all men and women are created equal, with God-given rights to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This truth was grievously denied
by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized and normalized
the taking of innocent human life. We thank God today that the Court has now
overturned this decision. We pray that our elected officials will now enact
laws and policies that promote and protect the most vulnerable among us.
“Our first thoughts are
with the little ones whose lives have been taken since 1973. We mourn their
loss, and we entrust their souls to God, who loved them from before all ages
and who will love them for all eternity. Our hearts are also with every woman
and man who has suffered grievously from abortion; we pray for their healing,
and we pledge our continued compassion and support. As a Church, we need to
serve those who face difficult pregnancies and surround them with love.
“Today’s decision is also
the fruit of the prayers, sacrifices, and advocacy of countless ordinary
Americans from every walk of life. Over these long years, millions of our
fellow citizens have worked together peacefully to educate and persuade their
neighbors about the injustice of abortion, to offer care and counseling to
women, and to work for alternatives to abortion, including adoption, foster
care, and public policies that truly support families. We share their joy today
and we are grateful to them. Their work for the cause of life reflects all that
is good in our democracy, and the pro-life movement deserves to be numbered
among the great movements for social change and civil rights in our nation’s
history.
“Now is the time to begin
the work of building a post-Roe America. It is a time for healing wounds and
repairing social divisions; it is a time for reasoned reflection and civil
dialogue, and for coming together to build a society and economy that supports
marriages and families, and where every woman has the support and resources she
needs to bring her child into this world in love.
“As religious leaders, we
pledge ourselves to continue our service to God’s great plan of love for the
human person, and to work with our fellow citizens to fulfill America’s promise
to guarantee the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all
people.”
I
wasn’t going to quote the entire response, but every sentence in there is worth
reading.I take humble pride in being
one of the millions whose prayers affected this outcome.Don’t ever think that prayers have no
effect.They do.
The
other thing is that now that we have accomplished this milestone, we must
prepare for the battle on the state level.Each state becomes a battle ground, and living in New York, I am at the
epicenter of Satan’s reign.May God give
us fortitude.
A
friend of mine sent me an email the other day with an urging to check out a
particular poem.Here is her note:
When you have time,
Manny, please look at this poem:
“Goshawk”By poet Peter Kane Dufault
I happened upon it and
was struck by its excellence yet violence. If you read it, tell me if it
reminds you of a dark, shadowy likeness of Hopkins’ “The Windhover.’’ It really
seems that way to me, a world without God.
I
love it when friends ask me questions on literature.It pricks something in me to
investigate.
First,
you can find the poem at Poetry Nook,
but here’s the poem.
Goshawk
by Peter Kane Dufault
That harbinger of God's
hardness, North
American Goshawk — storm-
grey above, ice-grey
beneath — segment
of a winter azimuth — de-
tached herself from this
morning and
seized a black hen and
caromed
thirty yards through the
soft snow, wrenching
feathers and flesh out,
too
blood-crazy to kill
clean. . . .
Tell me
if it's not hard how a
haggard
hasn't even the hangman's
mercy
but tears the heart out
alive — that she
should have been made so;
and so, too, that when
the dog
ran yapping and drove her
off,
the grey crucifer
levitated
in such a cold pride of
windblown
lightness over the tines
of the trees
you'd have forgiven her,
even
if she could have torn
in that worse way there
is:
with a word, never
breaking the skin.
I
had never heard of Peter Kane Dufault before.He’s got a Wikpediaentry and a listing in Poetry Foundation,
so he’s a poet of some merit.He lived
through most of the 20th century (1923-2013), fought in WWII, and
even ran for Congress on an Anti-Vietnam War platform.The Poetry
Foundation bio note says he was highly thought of by some more well-known
poets: “Poets such as Marianne Moore and Ted Hughes championed Dufault, as did
New Yorker editor Howard Moss, who published the poet 44 times.”Poetry
Foundation lists six poems attributed to him, but none are as good as
“Goshawk.”Searching the internet you
can find some two dozen poems of his. Again, nothing I found as good as “Goshawk,”
but of note you might want to read “After Boxing” and “Paramath.”
Perhaps
the best of the obituaries is by Brad Leithauser in the New Yorker, published on June 7, 2013, several weeks after Dufault’s
passing.Here’s his opening:
A marvellous poet whom
you’ve probably never heard of died some weeks ago. His name was Peter Kane
Dufault, and at the time of his death he was a couple of days short of ninety.
On the face of it, his lack of renown is surprising, for he had some prominent
supporters, including Marianne Moore and Richard Wilbur and Ted Hughes and Amy
Clampitt. He was also embraced by Howard Moss, the poetry editor of The New
Yorker from 1948 until 1987. Dufault published forty-four poems in the
magazine, nearly all of them during Moss’s tenure.
Leithauser
characterizes Dufault as that poet we’d all wished we had known, a “pure poet”
who lived his life in obscurity and simplicity.
It’s tempting to
overstate the virtues of the recently dead, so I’ll resist declaring that, at
the time of his death, Dufault was my favorite living American poet. But he was
certainly among the five or six whose work counted most for me. In one way, he
was preëminent: I came to think of him as the Pure Poet. If this was a romantic
image, it was a romanticism he encouraged.
Perhaps
if one had to reach for what Dufault’s themes centered around, I think this
little characterization captures it.
He was constantly posing
new theological questions, in an era often hostile to poetry of devotion. He
looked hard at the natural world, then looked hard at its spiritual
implications.
Here
Leithauser captures Dufault’s style.
I first came upon him in
the seventies, in “The New Yorker Book of Poems.” I fell hard for “In an Old
Orchard,” with its abandoned farm “still pitifully gathering all / windfalls
onto its damp lap of graves,” and looked up his two out-of-print collections,
“Angel of Accidence” (1954) and “For Some Stringed Instrument” (1957). I didn’t
know then that Marianne Moore had been a fan, but affinities between them were
easy to spot: Dufault, too, had an eerily sharp eye for the more idiosyncratic
dwellers of the animal kingdom. Manx cats and tarsiers and mud-dauber wasps and
mastodons inhabited his stanzas. He was like her, too, in being quite fanciful
in his imagery (an old turkey with a head “like a loading-hook from a drowned
galleon,” a hefty starling seen as a “sampler-shape whose bid / to be a bird /
suffers from thickness of the thread”) while always respecting his creatures’
fierce and inalienable reality: you never had the feeling that his was a
denatured zoo, a menagerie of mere symbols. A reader was in danger of getting
stung if he mistook one of Dufault’s wasps for an emblem.
It
sounds like Dufault’s work is similar to Marranne Moore’s, who had a sharp eye
for observation, a precise word or metaphor to capture it, and loved to write
about animals for their wondrous nature.Leithauser continues.
In 1993, a book of
selected poems, “New Things Come Into the World,” appeared, published by a
small press, Lindisfarne, which normally didn’t publish poetry. At that time,
I’d never met Dufault, though we’d exchanged some letters. I reviewed “New
Things Come Into the World” in the New York Review of Books, writing with that
special charged eagerness that comes of introducing a little-known treasure to
a potentially wide audience. I called him a “poet of vivid landscapes.” I
called him “as fine an ‘animal poet’ as any American now going.” I compared him
to Moore and Elizabeth Bishop and Clampitt and May Swenson.
Finally
Leithauser felt a certain pride in knowing a poet of distinction that lived in
obscurity.
Though he slowed down,
creatively, in his last decade, he continued to write beautiful poems, and did
so, nobly, in an undeserved obscurity. Now and then I’d come upon someone, in
person or in print, who shared my enthusiasm, and I’d feel that clandestine
bond which comes with membership in a small high-minded club. I felt this
keenly when I read Ted Hughes’s blurb for a later Dufault collection, “Looking
in All Directions” (2000): “So fresh and new and itself… wonderful stuff.
Snatches those uncatchable moments—like snatching a butterfly out of the
air—then letting it go undamaged. So nimble and delicate.”
###
Now
to the poem. It’s an interesting poem.It's not Gerard Manly Hopkins.It's very visual, so it captures the reader.Are there similarities to Hopkins?This is a very different poem that “The
Windhover.”(I provided a detailedanalysis of Gerard Manly Hopkins’, “The Windhover.”) It is quite possible Dufault is alluding to “The
Windhover” but I just don’t see the interdependence.Perhaps Dufault’s image of the goshawk “detaching
herself from the “winter azimuth” is an allusion to the Hopkin’s image of a “dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon,”Or it’s coincidental imagery or Dufault just
liked the image so much he reinvented it for his purpose.An allusion is more than just reference; it
requires significance, and I’m not getting the significance.
Other
than Dufault's use of alliteration I do not see other similarities.Dufault does not use any real rhythm, sprung
or conventional.He's very prosaic,
modernist, free verse, though his diction is terse, which gives it power,
especially for a violent poem.I'm
baffled by Dufault's use of breaking words and phrases at the end of a
line.Hopkins does it to keep
meter.Not sure why Dufault does
it.Perhaps as an aesthetic capturing of
the theme of ripping things apart?That
would be skillful on his part.
Dufault's
theme has been done many times: one finds in nature a certain viciousness, (he
calls it a "hardness") and one points to God for it, either to
condemn God, to "prove" God doesn't exist, or to point to some great
spiritual meaning in the act of animals killing animals.
Can
you tell which of the three Dufault is expressing?I think it's the latter but I'm not sure, and
if it is the latter then what is this great spiritual meaning in the act of a
hawk killing a chicken?I've pondered it
for a while.He sees in the hawk gliding
above a cross (“the grey crucifer levitated”), which is a nice metaphor, but
what does it suggest?Isn't Christ the
one who gets killed and not the killer?
Why
is the hawk the "harbinger" of God's hardness?Is this an allegory?A harbinger is one who comes ahead of
another.So is God going to come and
destroy us?Perhaps.Or is the allegory a representation of the Calvinist
interpretation of the crucifixion, where God's wrath is redirected on the Son
and thereby satisfied?I don't
know.And is that a reference to God at
the end, imagining the hawk killing with a word instead of with violence (“if
she could have torn/in that worse way there is:/with a word”)?God creates with a word; Christ is the Word
made flesh.And why is killing through a
word "the worse way"?You got
me.
This
may all hold together and be a great poem, but given that I have all these
questions and still can't get beyond the surface events I wouldn't call this a
great poem.I do love how it reads.Alliteration can be showy and stilted, but when
done well as here it really drives the point as in the second stanza:
Tell me
if it's not hard how a
haggard
hasn't even the hangman's
mercy
but tears the heart out
alive — that she
should have been made so
And
one marvels at the absolute power of the central violence in that opening:
…de-
tached herself from this
morning and
seized a black hen and
caromed
thirty yards through the
soft snow, wrenching
feathers and flesh out,
too
blood-crazy to kill
clean. . . .
The
alliteration of “feathers and flesh” along with the hard C’s of “caromed,” “crazy,”
“kill,” and “clean” adds to the very visual moment of struggle and brutality.I am glad to have been introduce to Peter Kane
Dufault.I will have to remember him if
I run across his work again.
###
In
my search I found a couple of videos of Mr. Dufault.
First
an extemporaneously composed poem criticizing America:
Second,
here is a trailer to a documentary movie of his views”What
I Meant to Tell You: An American Poet's State of the Union.”
He
was definitely anti American, or of a different America to give him his due.In his obituary Leithauser did say he would
have edited out Dufault’s political poems.They are not that good.We would
have disagreed vehemently, but still in my engagement on his life and this poem
I grew to like Peter Kane Dufault.Yes I
can see how he was a “pure poet.”
###
Postscript:
I
received a reply from my friend who had originally sent me the email on the
poem.
Her
Comment:
I looked Peter Kane
Dufault’s work up a little more and found that he wrote a poem called
‘’Peregrines,’’ and in that poem he quotes directly from ‘’The Windhover.’’ He
had a rich imagination and an exceptional way with words but ‘’Peregrines‘ is
not his best work. Unfortunately, this reader found it empty and meaningless.
You mentioned that he was anti-American. Do you mean ‘’progressive left,’’
‘’woke’’ anti-American?
My
reply:
I really enjoyed
"Peregrines"!It's a poetic ramble, a jazzy improvisational piece that streams language
around an emotion and theme.It reminds
me of the Beat poets, Lawrence Ferlinghetti in particular.I have a secret crush for that poetry.It's lesser poetry than more structured and
sculpted but I find it fun.My trash
food addiction!;)
Dufault is an old time
Liberal, someone of the Beat Generation.I think that's a good analogy.He’s
definitely progressive and definitely "woke" but aren't they
all?In music he would be like the folk
music types.In fact he reminds me of
Pete Seeger.And amazingly they lived
almost the exact same years (1919-2014).
Today’s most interesting reading I find is
the first reading.
Thus says the wisdom
of God:
"The
LORD possessed me, the beginning of his ways,
the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago;
from of old
I was poured forth,
at the
first, before the earth.
When there
were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no fountains or
springs of water;
before the
mountains were settled into place,
Thus
says the wisdom of God:
"The
LORD possessed me, the beginning of his ways,
the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago;
from of old
I was poured forth,
at the
first, before the earth.
When there
were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no fountains or
springs of water;
before the
mountains were settled into place,
before the
hills, I was brought forth;
while as yet
the earth and fields were not made,
nor the
first clods of the world.
"When
the Lord established the heavens I was there,
when he marked out
the vault over the face of the deep;
when he made
firm the skies above,
when he
fixed fast the foundations of the earth;
when he set
for the sea its limit,
so that the
waters should not transgress his command;
then was I
beside him as his craftsman,
and I was
his delight day by day,
playing
before him all the while,
playing on
the surface of his earth;
and I found
delight in the human race."
-Prv 8:22:31
So the passage is
spoken from a first person perspective.Who is this person speaking?
Here
is another distinctive quote by this wonderful prose writer.
“What we need at present for our Church's well-being, is not
invention, nor originality, nor sagacity, nor even learning in our divines, at
least in the first place, though all gifts of God are in a measure needed, and
never can be unseasonable when used religiously, but we need peculiarly a sound
judgment, patient thought, discrimination, a comprehensive mind, an abstinence
from all private fancies and caprices and personal tastes,—in a word, Divine
Wisdom."
In
the first main clause he provides a list of negatives (“not, nor, etc.) of what
the Church doesn’t need.Then he pauses
with a subordinate clause qualifying those negatives before he gives a second
main clause providing a list of what it does need, including an “abstinence” which
is another form of negation.Then he
tops it off with a summation, “Divine Wisdom.”That is just so beautiful.
Today’s most important reading I believe is
the first reading.
When the time for
Pentecost was fulfilled,
they were all in one place
together.
And suddenly there came
from the sky
a noise like a strong
driving wind,
and it filled the entire
house in which they were.
Then there appeared to
them tongues as of fire,
which parted and came to
rest on each one of them.
And they were all filled
with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in
different tongues,
as the Spirit enabled them
to proclaim.
Now there were devout Jews
from every nation under heaven
staying in Jerusalem.
At this sound, they
gathered in a large crowd,
but they were confused
because each one heard
them speaking in his own language.
They were astounded, and
in amazement they asked,
“Are not all these people
who are speaking Galileans?
Then how does each of us
hear them in his native language?
We are Parthians, Medes,
and Elamites,
inhabitants of
Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia,
Pontus and Asia, Phrygia
and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the districts of
Libya near Cyrene,
as well as travelers from
Rome,
both Jews and converts to
Judaism, Cretans and Arabs,
yet we hear them speaking
in our own tongues
of the mighty acts of
God.”
-Acts 2:1:11
What is interesting
is that the Vigil reading to Pentecost Sunday is different, and it’s Genesis
11:1-11, the passage pertaining to the Tower of Babel.Let me post that side by side for your
comparison and meditation.
The whole world spoke the
same language, using the same words.
While the people were
migrating in the east,
they came upon a valley in
the land of Shinar and settled there.
They said to one another,
"Come, let us mold
bricks and harden them with fire."
They used bricks for
stone, and bitumen for mortar.
Then they said,
"Come, let us build ourselves a city
and a tower with its top
in the sky,
and so make a name for
ourselves;
otherwise we shall be
scattered all over the earth."
The LORD came down to see
the city and the tower
that the people had built.
Then the LORD said:
""If now, while they are one people,
all speaking the same
language,
they have started to do
this,
nothing will later stop
them from doing whatever they presume to do.
Let us then go down there
and confuse their language,
so that one will not
understand what another says.""
Thus the LORD scattered
them from there all over the earth,
and they stopped building
the city.
That is why it was called
Babel,
because there the LORD
confused the speech of all the world.
It was from that place
that he scattered them all over the earth.
-Gen 11:1:11
So in what way is the
diversity of language central to both passages?
Happy Pentecost
Sunday, the birthday of the Church.
At
Catholic Thought Book Club at Goodreads, we’re reading St. John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, his great
autobiography on his evolution to Roman Catholicism.If Apologia were a work of fiction, it would
be considered a Bildungsroman, that
is a story about the development of a young man to who he became in
maturity.Perhaps after St. Augustine’s Confessions,Apologia is the greatest autobiographical conversion story in
history. Of course I will be posting on
it once our read is over, but for now I want to post what I think is a great observation
and a memorable quote.This quote comes
from the very first chapter, which details his beliefs and works up to the age
of thirty-two.The context of the quote
is while speaking of a particular mentor of his at Oxford, a Dr. Hawkins.Most certainly an Anglican, Dr. Hawkins had a
very High Church theology.He impressed
this understanding upon the young Newman.
“The sacred text was
never intended to teach doctrine, but only to prove it, and that, if we would
learn doctrine, we must have recourse to the formularies of the Church.”
Now
you can see how this understanding of scripture would be an undermining of
Protestant rudiments.Certainly with
this understanding, the Bible could not stand alone, and obviously you would
need a “Church” to instruct you on the doctrine.
Newman
places himself under Dr. Hawkins between the years 1822 to 1825, which would span
his twenty-first to twenty-fourth years.He would convert to Roman Catholicism in 1845 at the age of forty-four,
some twenty years later.
Chapter
5: “The New Testament,” Paragraphs 17 thru 20:
The
fifth chapter delineates the importance of the New Testament.It begins with the manifestation of the
incarnation “when the fullness of time arrived (see Gal. 4:4), the Word was
made flesh and dwelt among us in His fullness of graces and truth (see John
1:14).”This was a significant and
climatic moment in salvation history.
This mystery had not been
manifested to other generations as it was now revealed to His holy Apostles and
prophets in the Holy Spirit (see Eph. 3:4-6, Greek text), so that they might
preach the Gospel, stir up faith in Jesus, Christ and Lord, and gather together
the Church. Now the writings of the New Testament stand as a perpetual and
divine witness to these realities. (17)
Through
the writing of the Gospels we arrive at the full knowledge of Jesus Christ, so
the Word made flesh is revealed in the words of the scriptures.
It is common knowledge
that among all the Scriptures, even those of the New Testament, the Gospels
have a special preeminence, and rightly so, for they are the principal witness
for the life and teaching of the incarnate Word, our savior. (18)
The sacred authors wrote
the four Gospels, selecting some things from the many which had been handed on
by word of mouth or in writing, reducing some of them to a synthesis,
explaining some things in view of the situation of their churches and
preserving the form of proclamation but always in such fashion that they told
us the honest truth about Jesus. For their intention in writing was that either
from their own memory and recollections, or from the witness of those who
"themselves from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the
Word" we might know "the truth" concerning those matters about
which we have been instructed (see Luke 1:2-4). (19)
For the Lord Jesus was
with His apostles as He had promised (see Matt. 28:20) and sent them the
advocate Spirit who would lead them into the fullness of truth (see John
16:13).(20)
So
we obtain the “fullness of truth” through the written word and through the
spoken word of tradition guided by the Holy Spirit.
† † †
Christine
BoMass Commented:
Manny wrote: "The
other takeaway from that passage you quote that should be noted is "we now
await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our
Lord Jesus Christ." That is important. Revelation has stopped with the
apostles. Stuff like the Book of Mormon or the Koran can never be seen as
revelation because revelation has ended. Any revelation by saints or mystics is
private revelation and while it may be useful for devotional purposes cannot
add to inspired revelation."
What about the experiences of the Saints? I am thinking of St Faustina in
particular here, though there are more.
Manny
Replied:
Christine, are you
referring to private revelation? St. Faustina's diary is considered private
revelation. Revelation given to saints and people alike is not considered
official revelation. Official revelation ended with the New Testament. Whatever
private revelations have come to people is not considered full or clear or
complete. It may not be suspect, but the person who received the revelation,
even if he/she be a saint, may be filtering it through the prism of their
understanding or consciousness. Ultimately these private revelations come from
fallible sources. Not only that, if you really started looking at the private
revelations of many saints, you will probably find distinctions and
contradictions. We Catholics may find useful material in private revelations
but we are free to choose to believe or not private revelations.
For instance from what I understand St. Faustina has a vision of an angel of
the Lord ready to strike the earth and destroy it. I personally find that hard
to believe. It doesn't even seem like Divine Mercy. Perhaps I'm picking a bad
example because I haven't read the details. I'll eventually get to reading her
diary, but for me that sort of private revelation is something I am free to not
believe.
Anyway, here are two articles that explain public versus private revelation by
Jimmy Akin from Catholic Answers. First
If there is something in either article that contradicts what I just explained,
let me know. I wish to learn further myself.
Manny
Replied:
No! You have not been
wasting your time. The saints provide great example and learning but their
private visions are for instructive purposes, not doctrine. That angel ready to
strike the world from St. Faustina's diary can be seen as showing God's
displeasure toward the sin in the world. It has instructive value. But whether
it actually happened is for us to choose.
For instance, St.
Catherine of Siena had a vision that Christ had exchanged her heart with His.
On this I believe. It did change her. But I can understand someone saying,
"come on, how could that happen?" He would be free not to believe
that.
Here I found the excerpt
from St. Faustina that describes this:
As written in the Diary
of St. Faustina:
"[The angel] was
clothed in a dazzling robe, his face gloriously bright, a cloud beneath his
feet. From the cloud, bolts of thunder and flashes of lightning were springing
into his hands; and from his hand they were going forth, and only then were they
striking the earth.
When I saw this sign of
divine wrath which was about to strike the earth, and in particular a certain
place, which for good reasons I cannot name, I began to implore the angel to
hold off for a few moments, and the world would do penance. But my plea was a
mere nothing in the face of the divine anger.
Just then I saw the Most
Holy Trinity. The greatness of Its majesty pierced me deeply, and I did not
dare to repeat my entreaties. At that very moment I felt in my soul the power
of Jesus' grace, which dwells in my soul. When I became conscious of this
grace, I was instantly snatched up before the Throne of God. Oh, how great is
our Lord and God and how incomprehensible His holiness! I will make no attempt
to describe this greatness, because before long we shall all see Him as He is.
I found myself pleading
with God for the world with words heard interiorly. As I was praying in this
manner, I saw the Angel’s helplessness: he could not carry out the just
punishment which was rightly due for sins. Never before had I prayed with such
inner power as I did then. The words with which I entreated God are these:
Eternal Father, I offer
You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord
Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world; for the
sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us.
The next morning, when I
entered chapel, I heard these words interiorly:
Every time you enter the
chapel, immediately recite the prayer which I taught you yesterday.' When I had
said the prayer, in my soul I heard these words: 'This prayer will serve to
appease My wrath . . ."..
For God to have that kind
of "wrath" strikes me as attributing to God an extremely
anthropomorphic personality. It just doesn't feel correct to me. But those who
have a very Old Testament view of God's personality may find that natural.
Christine
BoMass Replied:
Thank you Manny. I will
look into this. I do read a lot on the Saints as they are great examples. I was
taken aback a bit there, concerned that I have been wasting my time.
I read St Faustina's
diary. Stream of consciousness...very difficult to read. I don't recall the
striking bit, however I could have easily missed it.
Yes we are all still
learning. It is a blessed thing. :)
† † †
Chapter
6: “Sacred Scripture in the Life of the Church.” Paragraphs 21 thru 26:
The
sixth chapter brings all this context into a culminating point.We see here why the Word of God is so
important.
The Church has always
venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord,
since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to
the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God's word and of
Christ's body….Therefore, like the Christian religion itself, all the preaching
of the Church must be nourished and regulated by Sacred Scripture. (21)
… Since the word of God
should be accessible at all times, the Church by her authority and with
maternal concern sees to it that suitable and correct translations are made
into different languages, especially from the original texts of the sacred
books. And should the opportunity arise and the Church authorities approve, if
these translations are produced in cooperation with the separated brethren as
well, all Christians will be able to use them. (22)
And
so we come to what I think is the completion of thought of Dei Verbum.
The bride of the
incarnate Word, the Church taught by the Holy Spirit, is concerned to move
ahead toward a deeper understanding of the Sacred Scriptures so that she may
increasingly feed her sons with the divine words. Therefore, she also
encourages the study of the holy Fathers of both East and West and of sacred
liturgies. Catholic exegetes then and other students of sacred theology,
working diligently together and using appropriate means, should devote their
energies, under the watchful care of the sacred teaching office of the Church,
to an exploration and exposition of the divine writings. This should be so done
that as many ministers of the divine word as possible will be able effectively
to provide the nourishment of the Scriptures for the people of God, to
enlighten their minds, strengthen their wills, and set men's hearts on fire
with the love of God. The sacred synod encourages the sons of the Church and
Biblical scholars to continue energetically, following the mind of the Church,
with the work they have so well begun, with a constant renewal of vigor.(23)
The
Word of God is God, and one of the key ways to know God and to love God.The religious and the laity need to
understand it, through the teaching of the Church, for it builds our foundation
as Christians.
For the Sacred Scriptures
contain the word of God and since they are inspired, really are the word of
God; and so the study of the sacred page is, as it were, the soul of sacred
theology. By the same word of Scripture the ministry of the word also, that is,
pastoral preaching, catechetics and all Christian instruction, in which the
liturgical homily must hold the foremost place, is nourished in a healthy way
and flourishes in a holy way.(24)
The
document lays down the gauntlet: we Catholics are Bible Christians.We use the Bible as much as Protestants, and
we should all do so with frequency.
The sacred synod also
earnestly and especially urges all the Christian faithful, especially
Religious, to learn by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures the
"excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 3:8). "For
ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ." Therefore, they
should gladly put themselves in touch with the sacred text itself, whether it
be through the liturgy, rich in the divine word, or through devotional reading,
or through instructions suitable for the purpose and other aids which, in our
time, with approval and active support of the shepherds of the Church, are
commendably spread everywhere. And let them remember that prayer should
accompany the reading of Sacred Scripture, so that God and man may talk
together; for "we speak to Him when we pray; we hear Him when we read the
divine saying."(25)
And
why must we do so, that is, read scripture more frequently?To evangelize!
In this way, therefore,
through the reading and study of the sacred books "the word of God may
spread rapidly and be glorified" (2 Thess. 3:1) and the treasure of
revelation, entrusted to the Church, may more and more fill the hearts of men.
(26)
I
know we Catholics have a lot of devotionals and non-scriptural means of
building a relationship with all three persons of the Trinity and with the Body
of Christ, and that is a good thing.But
one should not exclude the frequent reading of scripture.Indeed, one needs to integrate scripture to
fully nurture those devotionals.I found
Dei Verbum a wonderful and clearly
argued document.
† † †
Here
is a fine exegesis of Dei Verbum by
Bishop Robert Barron.
† † †
My
Goodreads Review:
What
an important Church document.And for a
Papal document, how easy to read.This
document from Vatican II is on the nature of divine revelation, that is, how
God made Himself known in the world, how that manifestation was written in
inspired texts we call scripture, how that those scriptures are understood by
the Church through the eyes of tradition, how the Church preserves that
understanding, and how she promulgates it to the world.All in about nine or ten pages.Two quotes which sum up the document, from
paragraphs 21 and 24:
The Church has always
venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord,
since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to
the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God's word and of
Christ's body….Therefore, like the Christian religion itself, all the preaching
of the Church must be nourished and regulated by Sacred Scripture. (21)
For the Sacred Scriptures
contain the word of God and since they are inspired, really are the word of
God; and so the study of the sacred page is, as it were, the soul of sacred
theology. By the same word of Scripture the ministry of the word also, that is,
pastoral preaching, catechetics and all Christian instruction, in which the
liturgical homily must hold the foremost place, is nourished in a healthy way
and flourishes in a holy way.(24)
If
you are only going to read one papal document, read this one.All thoughtful Catholics should read Dei Verbum because the Bible is a
Catholic book, and you should understand why it exists and how the Catholic
Church preserves the Apostolic teaching from sacred scripture.
