There would still be
That other, deeper beauty
The one, as it's said of the Blessed Virgin,
by which you outshine all around you
You are not the most beautiful
because your features are perfect
because your hair is lustrous
because your skin is flawless
because your eyes are bright
You are the most beautiful
because your beauty radiates from your luminous spirit
And shines through your exquisite soul
And that kind of beauty will last forever
Happy Birthday, Beautiful One
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
I said the other day that I didn't have a sense of close community yet at my new church. But I was surprised and touched this weekend by the warmth of the reception I received after my confirmation. I was congratulated by many people as if it were my birthday, or as if I'd just been married, and there were even gifts.
Ironically, the magazine in the bottom picture contains a piece by a former friend from my old church.
"Mary Magdalene was taller and more beautiful than the other holy women, including even the beautiful Dinah the Samaritan, but the Virgin Mary was the most beautiful of all. Although the beauty of her form was not unmatched by others, and in some respects Magdalene's beauty was even more striking, Mary stands out among them all, more especially through an indescribable silent blessing that emanated from her, and through her simplicity, meekness, youthfulness, earnestness, and purity."
-- Anne Catherine Emmerich
One of the visionaries at Medjurgorje asked Mary, "My Lady, why are you so beautiful?" The answer was "I am beautiful because I love."
I'm reading Anne Catherine's visions, and came across this last night, just in the ordinary course of my reading:
"I had a vision of a church with a high, elaborate tower, in a great city on a mighty river. The patron of the church is St. Stephen, by whom I saw another saint who was martyred after him. Around the church I saw many very distinguished people, among them some strangers with aprons and trowels who appeared about to pull down the church with the beautiful tower and slate roof. People from all parts were gathered there, among them priests and even religious, and I was so distressed that I called to my Lord for assistance. Xavier with the cross in his hand had once been all powerful, the enemy ought not to be allowed to triumph now! Then I saw five men going into the church, three in heavy antique vestments like priests, and two very young ecclesiastics who seemed to be in Holy Orders. I thought these two received Holy Communion, and that they were destined to infuse new life into the Church.
Suddenly a flame burst from the tower, spread over the roof, and threatened to consume the whole church. I thought of the great river flowing by the city--could they not extinguish the flames with its waters? The fire injured many who aided in the destruction of the church and drove them away, but the edifice itself remained standing, by which I understood that the Church would be saved only after a great storm."
I was confused by the reference to St. Stephen (surely Our Lady is the patroness of Notre Dame, right?) until I researched it and found that, indeed, Notre Dame de Paris was originally consecrated to St. Stephen, and the door which faces the Université is still called the St. Stephen Portal.
There is clearly also a symbolic meaning to this vision, applying to the Catholic Church metaphorically. But that doesn't preclude the literal vision being true as well, just as the fact that the Exodus and entrance in to the Promised Land are symbolic of salvation in Christ, but also literally happened in history.
Incidentally, the Visions are fascinating. Perhaps the most fascinating thing I have ever read.
How serendipitously apropos. Not only because of external events, but because what he's saying ties in to what I've been saying about my catholic faith. Also, I never realized it until he spoke of the Beatific Vision in relation to this window, but it does, from a distance, resemble what I saw when I saw God: a Sphere of complex and living blue-white light.
I have decided to take David as my confirmation name. In honor both of St. David of Wales, patron of poets, and King David, the greatest poet who has ever lived. It just feels perfect, as both are patrons of poetry (and writing, by extension): I'm hoping that I can invoke their aid in fulfilling my vocation of writing. And because I'm Welsh on my mother's side. St David his been historically linked to Arthur (he did live in the time that, if there was a historical Arthur, would have been his), and was even supposed in later legend to be either his nephew or his uncle.
Also, I've always felt a very deep affinity with King David, and very often, in my own trials and suffering, I've found great comfort in reading about his, both in the narratives of his life and in his own words, in the Psalms. I love that he was both such a great and fearsome warrior, and also so deeply sensitive and passionate, so devoutly devoted to the Lord, and so articulate and creative. The original warrior-poet.
"The second stage of the spiritual life is the illuminative. This belongs to those whose efforts in holiness have achieved the first stage of liberation from obsessive attachments. It is characterized by spiritual intuition of existent realities, by contemplation of the inner constitutions of created things, and by the communion of the Holy Spirit
In the illuminative stage, the spiritual intellect is purified by divine fire; a psychic opening of the eyes of the heart occurs, and the Logos is born in us, who brings mystical discernments of the highest order.
The one who reaches this state by the intellect's mystical intuition rides like Elijah in a chariot of fire."
I've just learned of the fire at Notre Dame de Paris. How horrifying, and what an unspeakably tragic loss. I'm so thankful that I was able to visit it.
I have a gut feeling that this was terrorism. This is a great symbol, not only of Western culture, but of Christianity, and specifically of Catholicism, and was built during the Crusades. For this to have happened on the Monday of Holy Week is just too symbolic to be coincidental.
Here is another episode of the same series, talking about the role of beauty and order in spirituality. This is the story of how those things, especially as expressed in music, led a Jew from liberal atheism to Catholicism. I post it here because it expresses very powerfully and beautifully the same ideas and impulses that have led me into Catholicism from other forms of Christianity. In this, also, is articulated much of the role that You have played in my spiritual journey, in showing me the way to that Divine Order. This is what I've tried to express before by comparing you to Beatrice to my Dante.
"Mozart, when he wrote that piece [the 40th symphony], was witnessing to me, that: the truth of things, which is the relationship between Man and God."
When I made my first confession a few weeks ago, after going through the list that I had made and confessing each one, I ended with the confession that my greatest and most grievous sin of all was that I had done all the others while already knowing Christ. This was not empty rhetoric. I have known him as long as I can remember; I made my first confession of sin and invitation to his lordship when I was four, of my own volition, alone in my room, not being led by any other person. And thus every sin I have ever committed since then has, in addition to its own sinfulness, been to commit the infinitely more heinous sins of grieving the Holy Spirit and subjecting Christ again to his crucifixion (Heb 6). The Catholic church recognizes this truth: in the Tridentine catechism it says:
We must regard as guilty all those who continue to relapse into their sins. Since our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross, those who plunge themselves into disorders and crimes crucify the Son of God anew in their hearts (for he is in them) and hold him up to contempt. And it can be seen that our crime in this case is greater in us than in the Jews. As for them, according to the witness of the Apostle, "None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." We, however, profess to know him. And when we deny him by our deeds, we in some way seem to lay violent hands on him. Nor did demons crucify him; it is you who have crucified him and crucify him still, when you delight in your vices and sins. (emphasis mine)
I have long had this idea that in his passion, the Lord experienced in a very real way the weight and horror of each and every sin and evil ever committed by mankind. That it was not just some sort of symbolic act, but that he, in a mystical manner, re-lived (or pre-lived) them all. That he experienced, for example, both the horror, pain, and shame of the victim of a violent crime and, worse yet, the guilt and remorse of the offender (perhaps experiencing remorse for the crime even, or maybe especially, when the actual sinner didn't). There's a superhero movie in which one of the hero's powers is to grab hold of the perpetrator of some horror, and make him experience his crime from the victim's perspective. I've pictured it like that, but times infinity.
It turns out that I am not the first one to have this idea: it has been given to at least one mystic of the church. Anne Catherine Emmerich describes, in one of her visions:
When Jesus left His disciples, I saw a number of frightful figures surrounding Him in an ever-narrowing circle. His sorrow and anguish of soul continued to increase, and He was trembling all over when He entered the grotto to pray, like a wayworn traveler hurriedly seeking shelter from a sudden storm, but the awful visions pursued Him even there, and became more and more clear and distinct. Alas! this small cavern appeared to contain the awful picture of all the sins which had been or were to be committed from the fall of Adam to the end of the world, and of the punishment which they deserved. It was here, on Mount Olivet, that Adam and Eve took refuge when driven out of Paradise to wander homeless on earth, and they had wept and bewailed themselves in this very grotto.
I felt that Jesus, in delivering Himself up to Divine Justice in satisfaction for the sins of the world, caused His divinity to return, in some sort, into the bosom of the Holy Trinity, concentrated Himself, so to speak, in His pure, loving and innocent humanity, and strong only in His ineffable love, gave it up to anguish and suffering. He fell on His face, overwhelmed with unspeakable sorrow, and all the sins of the world displayed themselves before Him, under countless forms and in all their real deformity. He took them all upon himself, and in His prayer offered His own adorable Person to the justice of His Heavenly Father, in payment for so awful a debt. But Satan, who was enthroned amid all these horrors, and even filled with diabolical joy at the sight of them, let loose his fury against Jesus, and displayed before the eyes of His soul increasingly awful visions, at the same time addressing His adorable humanity in words such as these: “Takest thou even this sin upon thyself? Art thou willing to bear its penalty? Art thou prepared to satisfy for all these sins?”
I have experienced faint echoes of this myself. Some years ago, after my son had come back from his first combat tour, he was suffering greatly, and I asked the Lord to let me bear some of his suffering for him. And he granted my request. I was immediately plunged into terrible emotional pain and mental torment, to the point of having memories which weren't mine, which lasted for quite a long time, weeks or months, afterward. And when I talked to my son again some time afterward, he told me that his burden had been considerably lightened just after the last time we'd talked.
It happened again, far more briefly, just the other day. While I prayed, I was overcome with the overwhelming deep pain, anguish, shame, and horror of a woman who had been assaulted. I don't know who or exactly what this was about: whether it was one specific person, or perhaps just women in general who have suffered it. Whether it was about a stranger or someone I know (unfortunately, there are several candidates). Or whether it was past, present, or (possible) future (I prayed that, if it was possible, that whoever and whatever it was might be prevented). I have always hated and detested this crime more than all others, but I had never truly felt the emotional depths of the victims' suffering like this. I hope I actually was helping someone, in some way.
Not to imply at all that any of this compares with Jesus's agony in the garden. To bring us back to the point, it is only in and through his agony that ours acquires any transcendent meaning or eternal value. Also, whereas Jesus's suffering was only on others' behalf, as he was truly innocent, anything I experience also comes back around, in the end, to my own sin and guilt. Although I may not be guilty of a particular crime, I still, in a way, share in its guilt, by having partaken of and participated in some sin of lesser magnitude but the same species, as in the parallels which Jesus drew, that anger equals murder and lust equals adultery.
This all ties, unintentionally (on my part) back into my prayer and meditation on the Sorrowful Mysteries during this Lent. I'm wondering now if perhaps it is a Grace given to me through those intentions.
Here, if you want to meditate further on these things, is an hour (or so) long podcast reading from and reflecting on the Passion and the Sorrowful Mysteries, from the perspectives of Scripture, mystical revelation, and forensic science. I especially love the point made that 'Gethsemane' means olive press, and the garden was the place where olives were crushed to produce pure oil. And that this evokes a beautiful and sorrowful picture of Jesus's human soul being crushed under the weight of all the sin which he was bearing.
Even more so, I am deeply moved by the reflections (and here it ties back in once again to my own spiritual journey) on how the Passion was experienced by the Blessed Mother of the Lord and how, in praying the Rosary and meditating on the mysteries, we are experiencing it through and with her.
I'm thinking of taking a trip. No, not a hike this time. Well, not only a hike.
I'd like to go to Medjugorje, to pursue and deepen my new relationship with Mary. Then I'd like to visit Lourdes, walk the Camino de Santiago, then down to Fatima. What I'm hoping to do is actually walk that whole way: Lourdes to the Camino, then from Compostela down to Fatima.
Depending on how things end up with the sale of my house, it could be an extended trip. What I'm hoping to do is to put all my stuff in storage rather than buying another place right away, then spending a longer time in Europe. Part of it would be doing regular travel things; castles, cathedrals, and museums, you know, and maybe seeing some old friends. But also, there's a place there in Medjugorje, a kind of semi-monastic community for men where one can stay a while and seek God and wholeness. And I'm thinking maybe I'd like to do that, before I decide on my next step.
Whether I can do this will depend on some things more or less outside my control. My house has to sell. And I've actually got a contract on another place. But it's provisional on my current one selling, and will expire after 90 days (or like 80 now, I guess) if it doesn't. And there could be other, unforeseen factors, which change my plan or prevent it. As everything, it's all "the Lord willing".
I've started backpacking again, to get back in shape for walking. I won't be carrying as heavy a pack on the Camino, and I've been told it's not nearly as physically difficult as the AT. But still, it's good to be in shape. And I need to anyway. I'm finally really losing weight again. I went to the doctor a week or two ago, and I was down 16 pounds since my previous visit at the end of December. Once Lent is over, I'm going to hit the gym again; I haven't lifted since before my long fast, over two years ago now, and I never really recovered the upper body muscle I lost during that fast.
What I'm praying is that my house will sell for close to what I'm asking, but not in the next 90 days (so I can get out of the other contract without losing my earnest money). I'll spend that time training and continuing to get fit, brushing up on my French (and seeing if I can pick up some Spanish while I'm at it), then when I close, move all my stuff into storage except my backpack, and hit the road. Or the sea, rather. I'd like to take a ship passage across, if it is practical to do so, rather than flying. Buy a Eurail pass, do my things, then decide where to go from there. Maybe I'll just never come back.
