It’s
been a few months now, but our pastor at St. Rita’s Church has, at the request
of Cardinal Dolan to all parishes, moved the Tabernacle to the center of the
Sanctuary.Cardinal Dolan made this
request to all parishes in his diocese that if possible that the Tabernacles should
be moved to the center where they had traditionally resided before the Second
Vatican Council. For some reason, perhaps they just thought it was more hip
with the times, after Vatican II many parishes across the country, perhaps the
world, moved their Tabernacles off to the side.It was a mistake.Christ should
be at the center of the Mass, at the center of our vision, and at the center of
our hearts.We at St. Rita had no
problem accommodating the request.
First,
here’s a picture from Christmas 2017 as it had been for years.The red arrow points to the Tabernacle.
Here’s
how the full altar looks now with the Tabernacle in the center.
Here
is a zoomed in view of the Tabernacle with the lovely new headpiece that our
pastor, Fr. Eugene, added.
Here’s
a look behind the altar at the beautiful stand set up to hold the
Tabernacle.This was taken before the new
headpiece was added.
Changes
to the church are not always welcomed.This was more than welcomed, it was joyful!
One the most difficult tenets
of Christianity is that one must love our neighbor as ourselves, including the
forgiveness of our enemies.We are only
forgiven of our sins on the basis that we forgive other’s sins.This does not entail that one allows evil to
stand unchecked.
Chapter
8: The Great Sin
The greatest sin in
Christianity, and this differentiates Christianity from almost all other
religions, is the sin of pride or self-conceit.Pride, which is opposite the virtue of humility, is at the heart of all
other sins.Other sins may bring people
together, but the sin of pride brings enmity between man and man and man and
God.
Chapter
9: Charity
Charity, which means love
in a Christian sense, does not mean emotion or sentimentality.Charity is an act of the will, which makes it
irrelevant whether you are fond of other or not.Once you treat all people with charity you
will find that it will lead to affection for all people.
Chapter
10:Hope
Creatures are not born
with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. This means that a
continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people
think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a
Christian is meant to do.We are meant
to hope for our final destination that can only be achieved after this life has
ended.
Chapter
11: Faith
One sense of the notion
of Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in
spite of your changing moods.This
rebellion of your moods against your real self is why Faith is such a necessary
virtue: unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be
either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering
to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of
its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.
Chapter
12: Faith
Faith in the second
sense, the higher sense. arises after a man has tried his level best to
practise the Christian virtues, and found that he fails, and seen that even if
he could he would only be giving back to God what was already God’s own.All this trying leads up to the vital moment
at which you turn to God and say, “You must do this. I can’t.”Then you are living by Christian faith.
###
Manny’s
Comments:
The chapter on
forgiveness was fairly straight forward.His explanation of the sin of pride and the need for humility seems to
come right out of Thomas Aquinas.Lewis
has a great quote on pride that is worthy of memorizing: “For Pride is
spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or
even common sense.”
It is interesting Lewis
connects hope with the disparity of the imperfect of the earthly world with the
perfect of the heavenly world.He
doesn’t say this in these words but he seems to define hope as the desire to
close the gap between the imperfect and the perfect.That is an interesting way of thinking about
it.
My thought on hope jumped
to Dante’s Divine Comedy, where Dante
the character is questioned by St. James on what is hope in Canto 25 of Paradiso.Dante’s response is this:
'Hope,' I said, 'is the certain
expectation
of future glory,
springing
from heavenly grace and
merit we have won.
'This light comes down to
me from many stars,
but he who first
instilled it in my heart
was that exalted singer
of our exalted Lord.
'"Let them have hope
in you," he declares
in his god-song,
"those who know your name."
Among those who share my
faith, who does not know it?
'After he had imbued me
with his song,
you poured your epistle
down on me so that I,
overflowing, now rain
your rain on others.' (Par 25:67-78)
To Dante, and this is
right out of Medieval scholasticism, hope is the expectation of achieving
future glory (beatitude) instilled in him by God through grace.Hope is not something we do on ourselves, but
something given to us.
How does this compare
with Lewis?I think Lewis is much more
human centered than Dante or the Medieval scholastics.On the other hand, Lewis does say that
desires are innate and therefore must have their satisfaction somewhere, and
that somewhere is heaven.Hope I can’t
help feeling is overly simplified here.Hope is a virtue that is required.Despair, the opposite of hope, is a mortal sin, and so hope is not just
something that seeks satisfaction but something that is connected to
salvation.I’m not saying Lewis is
denying any of this, but that he makes it too mundane.
###
Manny’s
Comments:
It is interesting Lewis
divides faith into two parts: one that can be summarized as belief and the
other that can be summarized as trust.It
was very insightful for me.
The first definition of
faith is the belief that the God exists and that the Christian doctrines are
true.Lewis goes on to conclude that
faith in this sense is a virtue.Here is
a pertinent passage:
Now Faith, in the sense
in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your
reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will
change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I
am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable:
but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly
probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come
anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your
moods “where they get off,” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a
sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs
really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently
one must train the habit of Faith.
In this sense, a Christian
must maintain a strength against the fluctuations of doubts.I love the quote: “Now that I am a Christian
I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was
an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.”That is so true.I occasionally suffer from such a doubt when
in a particular mood, and when I was an atheist I had the same occasional
intuition.We are all prone to have
moments of doubts and moments of faith as our daily activities cause us to have
thoughts.Lewis is not saying it is
wrong to have such moments, or that we shouldn’t evaluate those moments, but he
is saying that a person of faith will not find the moments of doubts
compelling.
The other type of faith
is to live in the trust of God.We all
at some point realize that we don’t have the power to control the plan of our
lives.There are times when a crises or
multiple crises hit us that we should step back and “let go and let God” as the
saying goes.That’s not to say we
shouldn’t organize our lives and strive for our wellbeing, but at some point things
go awry and that is when we need to turn to the Lord.Perhaps one should think of it as God letting
it go awry to test your faith.Lewis
frames it this way: “All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you
turn to God and say, “You must do this. I can’t.”Lewis in the chapter speaks of this faith
when things come to a crises, but I think one should step back at various
points of one’s life and ask God to let Him lead you, crises or not.
Now that I’ve summarized
Lewis’s two concepts of faith, I would like to see how that compares to the
Biblical definition of faith.The Letter
to the Hebrews has two chapters on faith.First from chapter eleven.
Now faith is the assurance
of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 Indeed, by faith our
ancestors received approval. 3 By faith we understand that the worlds were
prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are
not visible. (Heb 11:1-3)
Indeed the rest of the
chapter provides Biblical examples of faith.Then in chapter twelve, there is more.
Therefore, since we are
surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight
and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race
that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our
faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross,
disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne
of God.(Heb 12:1-2)
Hebrews chapter 12 goes
on to give advice on how one should live one’s life, “enduring trials,” being
disciplined to bear “the fruit of righteousness,” strengthening feet and hands,
and accepting God’s graces without bitterness.Between the two chapters of Hebrews, I think we can see both sides of
Lewis’s definition of faith.I think
Lewis has explained a difficult Biblical definition of faith simply and well.
###
This
section of Mere Christianity is
focused on the theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity (sometimes named
as “love” but I think that “charity” is the more accurate term in our
contemporary English).I found this
video that fills out more of Lewis’s view of the theological virtues insightful. It’s a philosophical set of lectures from Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History called “Faith, Hope, Charity, and Love in CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: The Theological Virtues.”
The final week of the liturgical calendar is
dedicated as The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.The Solemnity only dates back to 1925 to the Encyclical
of Quas primas by Pope Pius XI.I wrote a post back in 2020 on the read of “Quas primas: The Institution of the
Feast of Christ the King.”For the Year B of the calendar, the Church chooses to read the passage from the
Gospel of John where Pontius Pilate integrates Jesus on the claim He is King of
the Jews.
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
Fr. Geoffrey Plant
provides a comprehensive understanding of the Pilate/Jesus confrontation and
what is meant by Kingdom and the Truth.
I also love this
short homily by a Dominican Brother from the Western Region of the regions in
the United State, Br. Anthony Maria Ackerman, O.P.
A point to take with
you from Brother Anthony, when Jesus says “my Kingdom is not of this world,” He
is not referring to a spiritual world, but of a Kingdom we are to make of this
world.
Sunday Meditation: "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."
Instead of a hymn, I want to provide a
dramatization of the Pilate/Jesus confrontation.Four years ago when expounding on the Gospel
of John, I provided the Pilate/Jesus confrontation as portrayed in the Jesus of Nazareth movie.Today I want to provide the confrontation as
portrayed in the Passion of the Christ
movie.
The Passion
of the Christ movie, Mel Gibson used the original languages, and I think
Pilate and Jesus in this scene are speaking in Latin.
This week brings the readings to the end of the
Sunday lectionary of Mark’s Gospel, and we get part of Jesus’s Eschatological
Discourse, the discourse on the end times.The reading only gives us nine verses from Chapter 13 of Mark’s Gospel,
but the entire chapter is the full discourse.I recommend you pull out your Bible and read the entire chapter.Here is what is given as the Sunday Gospel
reading, a middle section from the chapter.
Jesus said to his disciples:
"In those days after that
tribulation
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its
light,
and the stars will be falling from
the sky,
and the powers in the heavens will
be shaken.
"And then they will see 'the
Son of Man coming in the clouds'
with great power and glory,
and then he will send out the angels
and gather his elect from the four
winds,
from the end of the earth to the end
of the sky.
"Learn a lesson from the fig
tree.
When its branch becomes tender and
sprouts leaves,
you know that summer is near.
In the same way, when you see these
things happening,
know that he is near, at the gates.
Amen, I say to you,
this generation will not pass away
until all these things have taken
place.
Heaven and earth will pass away,
but my words will not pass away.
"But of that day or hour, no
one knows,
neither the angels in heaven, nor
the Son, but only the Father."
~Mk 13:24-32
Bishop Barron has
given some great homilies, but this on today’s Gospel is one of his best.
Most other homilies
will see only the end of times in this reading, but Bishop Barron regards this
reading as unveiling Jesus’s time through His resurrection, unveiling the radical
transformation of our lives today, and, yes, unveiling the future end.With the unveiling, we come to a new
beginning.Bishop Barron’s scope in this
homily is breathtaking.
Sunday Meditation: “Heaven and earth
will pass away, but my words will not pass away."
For a hymn, let’s go with this Gospel song, "The
End of Time is Drawing Nigh" by Charles Johnson & the Revivers.
I know nothing of Charles Johnson and his
group but that was just wonderful.This
is the best little bio I could find on the Gospel singer.
I
have seen Madeleine Delbrêl’s name come up in the meditations in the Magnificat
magazine before, but I was not aware who she was.The Vatican declared her as Venerable, which
means she might one day be a saint.She
is sometimes called the French Dorothy Day, and indeed there are quite a few
parallels.Delbrêl grew up in an
agnostic home, and famously wrote an atheist manifesto at the age of seventeen
and lived a Bohemian lifestyle.When her
also atheist boyfriend broke up with her to join the Dominican Order—that must
have been some discussion—she started to re-evaluate her beliefs and ultimately
had a religious experience and conversion.I’m not going to get any more biographical but if you wish to learn more
you can read from Catholic World Report,
“Madeleine Delbrêl’s “writing reenchants everyday life….through Christ’s love”and from America, ”Who is MadeleineDelbrêl—the “French Dorothy Day” Pope Francis made venerable this weekend?”
Now
for her magnificent quote on prayer.
Praying is establishing normal relations between God and
ourselves.It is converting, returning
our spirit, our heart, our will towards God who is constantly our Father and
Creator.Prayer is already love.It asks for love; it receives love.But because we are sinners it will always be
at times heavy-going, painful, and disconcerting.From one angle it is already love.From another it is a kind of necessary but voluntary
virtue.
~Venerable Madeleine
Delbrêl
I
have taken the quote from Magnificat’s October
2024 issue.“Prayer is already love,” that
knocks my socks off!“It asks for love;
it receives love.”When I’m deeply
praying, I am feeling that.I know that’s
true.
It’s
Veterans Day today, and I’m off from work and Matthew is off from school.This morning he passed me in the upstairs
hall and did a double take.“Am I taller
than you now?” he said.I looked at him
and he did look ganglier than usual.He
stood by my side and I felt the top of our heads, and his head did ever so, lightly
peak above mine.I hated to admit it but
he was now taller.
So
on the eleventh day of the eleventh month but not the eleventh hour—I would estimate
the ninth hour—Matthew was officially taller than his father. (Here, if you don’t know what that’s a reference to.)
So
what do you think he did?Do you think
he quietly just went to the bathroom as he was about to do?Or go back to bed to sleep the morning?Of went downstairs to have something for
breakfast?He ran downstairs screaming, “Mommy,
mommy, I’m now taller than Daddy.I’m
now taller than Daddy.”
The
little ….%*^$$
Here
is a picture of us taken back on August 7 at an Orioles game in Baltimore.
As
you can see I was still a hair taller.
I
don’t have a picture of us side by side now but here is Matthew in Costco trying
out a new coat.
God
bless him.God bless his growth.May God continue to bless him.
Last week Jesus spoke about loving God with
everything, but this week He highlights someone who does, a poor widow who
gives to the Temple her two only coins.There’s
more.Last week he also praised a
scribe.This week He condemns scribes
for their rapacious behavior.
In the course of his teaching Jesus
said to the crowds,
"Beware of the scribes, who
like to go around in long robes
and accept greetings in the
marketplaces,
seats of honor in synagogues,
and places of honor at banquets.
They devour the houses of widows
and, as a pretext
recite lengthy prayers.
They will receive a very severe
condemnation."
He sat down opposite the treasury
and observed how the crowd put money
into the treasury.
Many rich people put in large sums.
A poor widow also came and put in
two small coins worth a few cents.
Calling his disciples to himself, he
said to them,
"Amen, I say to you, this poor
widow put in more
than all the other contributors to
the treasury.
For they have all contributed from
their surplus wealth,
but she, from her poverty, has
contributed all she had,
her whole livelihood."
~Mk 12:38-44
Dr. Brant Pitre gives
a gives a quick overview of the scene.
Just about all the
exegesis of the Widow’s Mite passage runs along that line, but I did find
someone who grasped it even further.Fr.
William Nicholas, who seems to have his own podcast which I will now stop by, finds
a common theme with the widow in the first reading.
That's very
insightful.I have not come across that observation. The widows are donating to the institutions, the prophet and the
Temple, not to any specific charity, not to any good deed. They are in essence donating to donating to an entity representing God.
What exactly is a “mite”?I did not really know.From Webster’s, the second definition.
The
occasion of thinking on this poem has to do with a recent event in our
household that has, as it turns out, some correspondence to the event that
inspired the poem.In the wee hours of
Monday morning (overnight Sunday into Monday) I heard a big crash and ruckus in
the hallway outside my bedroom.I
initially thought that Matthew had gotten up in the middle of the night to go
to the bathroom and stumbled into something.Then I heard another crash and ruckus.I got out of bed to investigate.Tiger, our cat, was chasing a mouse that had gotten inside the
house.He was swiping and lunging at him
with incredible violence, and at one point got him under his paw.The mouse played dead—he was motionless and I
thought he was killed—but when Tiger lifted up his paw the mouse scooted
away.This was all on the upstairs bedroom floor.
For
the next day and a half Tiger was on the hunt trying to sniff him out and wait
for him to come out.When my wife got home
Wednesday afternoon at about one o’clock she found him just inside the
vestibule on the main floor, downstairs from the bedrooms, lying dead.There must have been a battle.I guess he ran to try to get out but Tiger
caught him.Here’s a picture.
Poor
little mouse. I thought him cute.I put
the body across the street at an unkempt yard where feral cats live.Tiger as a kitten came from there, nine and a
half years ago.
This
made me recall the Robert Burns’ poem, “To a Mouse,” where the poet felt a
compassion for a field mouse he had disturbed.
To a Mouse
By Robert Burns
On Turning her up in her
Nest, with the Plough, November 1785.
The
occasion of the poem was said to be Robert Burns overturning a mouse’s nest
while plowing a field.Both Burns’s
event and my event disturb a mouse’s life in November.His mouse I think lived, unlike the
unfortunate end of the mouse in my house.Both Burns and I connected with the mouse on a compassionate level.We both meditated on our own mortality from a
poor mouse’s life and fate.If Burns’
mouse lived after the scene, she will probably not survive the winter given the
disruption of the nest.
Some
of Burns’ diction is a bit hard to grasp.One can almost make out the Scots words but it would be helpful with
annotations of the Scottish.I don’t
know if the Scots used here is considered its own language, a slang, a dialect,
or a creole (probably a dialect), but it does mix English words with what I
take are Scottish versions of English words.Some words seem to be purely Scotts Gaelic (“cranreuch,” “daimen”) and
some are English words transcribed from a Scottish dialect (“sleekit, cowrin,
tim'rous beastie”).Wikipedia has what
it calls an English translation of the original Scots, which I’ll post here.
Little, sleek, cowering,
timorous beast,
Oh, what a panic is in
your breast!
You need not start away
so hasty
With bickering prattle!
I would be loath to run
and chase you,
With murdering paddle!
I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's
social union,
And justifies that ill
opinion
Which makes you startle
At me, your poor,
earth-born companion
And fellow mortal!
I doubt not, sometimes,
that you may thieve;
What then? Poor beast,
you must live!
An odd ear in twenty-four
sheaves
Is a small request;
I will get a blessing
with what is left,
And never miss it.
Your small house, too, in
ruin!
Its feeble walls the
winds are scattering!
And nothing now, to build
a new one,
Of coarse green foliage!
And bleak December's
winds ensuing,
Both bitter and piercing!
You saw the fields laid
bare and empty,
And weary winter coming
fast,
And cozy here, beneath
the blast,
You thought to dwell,
Till crash! The cruel
coulter passed
Out through your cell.
That small heap of leaves
and stubble,
Has cost you many a weary
nibble!
Now you are turned out,
for all your trouble,
Without house or holding,
To endure the winter's
sleety dribble,
And hoar-frost cold!
But Mouse, you are not
alone,
In proving foresight may
be vain:
The best-laid schemes of
mice and men
Go oft awry,
And leave us nothing but
grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Still you are blessed,
compared with me!
The present only touches
you:
But oh! I backward cast
my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I
cannot see,
I guess and fear!
Like
most translations of poetry, the beauty of the sounds of the language is lost
in translation.Still it helps.Let’s analyze the poem, but I won’t go into
the social and economic context of the times in which the poem was written.You can find that online if you want to.I’ll stick with the immediate poem.
There
are eight stanzas of six lines of iambic tetrameter, each stanza with an
unusual rhyme scheme of A/A/A/B/A/B.The
fourth and sixth lines—the lines with the “B” rhyme—do not have eight syllables
of a tetrameter line but either five syllables or four syllables.Why sometimes five syllables and other times
four?I can’t see a pattern, so perhaps for
oral articulation or perhaps just out of convenience.Nonetheless, I really like this stanza form.
The
divisions of the poem I see in this way.
Stanzas
one and two provide situation of the event.The poor mouse is in a panic, jabbering at the person who disrupted his
modest home, and scooting hastily about.The second stanza I would say is the statement of the poem’s theme, the
breaking of some sort of an unspoken agreement between man and nature.
I’m truly sorry Man’s
dominion
Has broken Nature’s
social union,
An’ justifies that ill
opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor,
earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
The
last two lines characterizing the mouse as a “poor, earth-born companion/An’
fellow-mortal” lift the little mouse, one of the most insignificant and
despised of animals, to an equality with humanity.
Stanzas
three through six characterize the impact to the mouse of the overturning of
her nest.The mouse’s home is in ruin;
she is now exposed to the winter elements; the plowed field has removed any
source of food.
The
seventh stanza connects the mouse’s futility with humanity’s, “In proving
foresight may be vain,” giving us that great line that is truly a memorable
quote, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men/Gang aft agley” (“the best-laid
schemes of mice and men often go awry”).
The
eighth and final stanza, Burns concludes with a distinction between man and beast.The mouse is blessed because, as an animal,
he can only live in the present.He will
move on from this event and forget about it.The poet, on the other hand has memory that will bring back sorrow every
time he remembers such a catastrophe and, disrupted, will live in constant fear
of the future.It is interesting that
though not an overtly religious poem, a blessing is mentioned twice (third and
eighth stanzas).
This
is ultimately a nature poem, with man as an agent for disrupting nature for his
purposes.
There
are some great lines in this poem.I
already mentioned “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men/Gang aft agley” from
stanza seven.I would say the first four
lines are just so charming: “Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,/O, what a
panic’s in thy breastie!/Thou need na start awa sae hasty,/Wi’ bickerin
brattle!”The first four lines of the
fourth stanza are so musical: “Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!/It’s silly
wa’s the win’s are strewin!/An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,/O’ foggage
green!”As are the first four lines of
the eight stanza: “Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!/The present only
toucheth thee:/But Och! I backward cast my e’e,/On prospects drear!”
Such
a lovely poem.You can hear it read in
both the Scot’s dialect and a modern translation on this clip.
What
about my poor, little mousie?Well, though
I feel for his plight, I’m not exactly to blame.He intruded my space, and he faced a natural
enemy, Tiger!Behold the mighty hunter!
I
was wondering how I was going to get the mouse out.Tiger saved me the trouble.
