Well, here's old -- but true -- some advice.
Jesus' use of similes and metaphors in his teaching -- the expression of spiritual truths by likening them to very material facts of everyday life -- invites a kind of backwards thinking when we come to interpret these scriptural images. Our tendency is to treat them in the same way we treat the use of metaphor and simile in ordinary literature. A writer seeks some vivid way of conveying what his beloved is like, and so he looks around at the world and picks something beautiful or pure or mysterious or rare out of it to liken his beloved to. He may decide (as Robert Burns did) that she is "like a red red rose." Or he may decide (as William Shakespeare did) that she isn't very much like "a summer's day" after all.
Burns and Shakespeare (and every other writer), in searching for likenesses between something they want to describe and something that all their readers will know, are forced to take the world as they find it and pick the imperfect simile or metaphor that comes closest to serving their purpose. Burns in my example is satisfied with his comparison; Shakespeare is not quite.
But when Jesus likened God to a father, or himself to a shepherd or a bridegroom or a vine, he was not having to take the world as he found it. The world, after all, was made for and through him. God knew that his son would someday compare himself to a shepherd long before he created either shepherds or sheep. He knew that he would characterize his relationship to his creatures as that between a father and children before there were any human fathers or human children. God as metaphor-maker has the unique advantage of creating the raw material for his own metaphors.
Today is the day set aside by the universal Church to celebrate Jesus as the "bread come down from heaven." So here are three brief meditations by Msgr. Ronald Knox that get to the heart of this great feast. The first elaborates this point about divine metaphors.
The true bread, the living bread, is not the common bread which we eat. The common bread which we eat is only a sham, a copy, an image of that true bread which came down from heaven. And if we ask what is the true bread which came down from heaven, he has given us the answer: "I myself am the living bread; the man who eats my flesh and drinks my blood enjoys eternal life." You see, we are so materialistic, our minds are so chained to the things of sense, that we imagine our Lord as instituting the Blessed Sacrament with bread and wine as the remote matter of it because bread and wine reminded him of that grace which he intended the Blessed Sacrament to bestow. But, if you come to think of it, it was just the other way about. When he created the world, he gave common bread and wine for our use in order that we might understand what the Blessed Sacrament was when it came to be instituted. He did not design the sacred Host to be something like bread. He designed bread to be something like the sacred Host.
And here is another passage from the same homily. It's one I try to call to mind at every Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.
Always, it is the things which affect us outwardly and impress themselves on our senses that are the shams, the imaginaries; reality belongs to the things of the spirit. All the din and clatter of the streets, all the great factories which dominate our landscape, are only echoes and shadows if you think of them for a moment in the light of eternity; the reality is in here, is there above the altar, is that part of it which our eyes cannot see and our senses cannot distinguish. The motto on Cardinal Newman's tomb ought to be the funeral motto of every Catholic, Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem, Out of shadows and appearances into the truth. When death brings us into another world, the experience will not be that of one who falls asleep and dreams, but that of one who wakes from a dream into the full light of day. Here, we are so surrounded by the things of sense that we take them for the full reality. Only sometimes we have a glimpse which corrects that wrong perspective. And above all, when we see the Blessed Sacrament enthroned, we should look up towards that white disc which shines in the monstrance as towards a chink through which, just for a moment, the light of the other world shines through.
And finally, here is Msgr. Knox -- who died five years before the Second Vatican Council was convened -- sounding quite Vatican II-ish indeed.
The sacrament of Holy Eucharist is meant to have a social value -- a social value to which, I am afraid, we Catholics are sometimes less alive than our Protestant neighbours. We think of receiving holy communion as a solitary act which only affects ourselves; if others are receiving it at the same time, that is only to save the priest trouble....That is not, you know, the way in which our Lord meant us, or the way in which the Church means us, to look upon holy communion. It is a sacramental assertion of that bond of fellowship which unites all the faithful, which should unite them, alas, more closely and more sensibly than it does. As the bread is made from hundreds of ears ground in the same mill, as the wine is made from hundreds of grapes trodden in the wine-press, so we, being many, are one in Christ; we become one body among ourselves through our incorporation into him.
[The quoted passages are from "Real Bread" and "Bread and Wine," collected in The Pastoral Sermons of Ronald A. Knox, published by Franciscan Herald Press.]
Our Lord in his mortal life began a work which was not finished when he ascended into heaven. He does not suffer, he does not labor now. And yet, it must be he who continues the work which he began; no human postscript could add to its value or enhance its efficacy. How is it, then, that he continues the work which his Ascension interrupted? For there is none that can continue it, save he.
The answer to that is the mystery of Pentecost. Pentecost commemorates the birth of the Church, and the birth of the Church is the second birth of Christ.
Think of Our Lady, as she was when the Angel Gabriel came to her at the Annunciation. The world all around lay overwhelmed by the deluge of sin; the Holy Spirit, like the dove that could find no rest for her feet when the waters were over the face of the earth, could find no lodgment among the souls of men, save here. Or, if you will, here was Gedeon's fleece, that alone, in a world of drought, was visited by the dew in the morning. Hers was the one heart that could be the accomplice of that momentous inspiration. Her virginity defied the assaults of sin, a fortress, locked safely against all human approach, yielding entrance only to the King. In devout expectation, scarce knowing what she was to expect, she waited until the angelic message came to her. And with that, the Holy Spirit overshadowed her, and in fullness of time she gave birth to the Christ.
Are we not to see, in the cenacle at Jerusalem, where Our Lady herself, with the apostles and those other faithful souls, waited for the day of Pentecost to be fulfilled, an image of that immaculate Mother whom the angel saluted at Nazareth? Those thirty-three years have come and gone, during which incarnate God walked on earth; and what is there to show for it in the end? A hundred and twenty souls waiting for the fulfillment of his promise. Others there may have been, perhaps, in Galilee, a faithful heart here and there which still cherished the memory of the Master who had been taken away from the earth. But this was all the nucleus left for the operation of the Holy Ghost, a hundred and twenty souls! All around, the world still went on its way, incredulous and unredeemed. But here the locked doors that keep the world at bay, and will open only to the touch of a divine hand, symbolize afresh the virginity of the Blessed Mother. In devout expectation, scarce knowing what they are to expect, they wait until the time appointed by the providence of God. And with that, the Holy Ghost overshadows them; and in a moment, Christ is born anew; this time in his mystical body, which is the Catholic Church.
Yes, it's that time of year again. Time to celebrate the 379th birthday of Charles the Second, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc.; and the 349th anniversary of his restoration to the throne of his fathers. (The name of the day derives from an unfortunate incident in which Charles, leading one last military campaign against the rebel army that had deposed and ultimately killed his father, was forced to hide from enemy troops in an oak tree.)
Unlike his more pious but less politic brother James, Charles recognized the practical difficulties attendant upon being the Catholic monarch of an unfortunately Protestant country. And so he postponed his reception into the Catholic Church until he was on his deathbed -- a risky strategy, admittedly, but...better late than never.
For a surprisingly entertaining fictional account of Charles's relationship with the Catholic Church, one could not do better than Robert Hugh Benson's Oddsfish! It's one of the most underrated of all historical novels, and provides a breathtakingly vivid portrait of the king who finally sent the Puritans packing and became known to history as the Merrie Monarch.
Long Live the King!
Lots of people have theories about when the final decline of Western civilization began. My own theory involves an event that occurred on May 24, 1935. It happened, I'm ashamed to say, in Cincinnati, Ohio, a city I love. It was the first major-league night baseball game, an abomination that I'm certain God never had in mind when he invented the sport. On that infamous night exactly 74 years ago, and underneath the garish jury-rigged lights of Crosley Field, the Reds beat the Phillies 2 to 1. (Which is worse -- winning the first night baseball game or losing it?)
I have attended many, many baseball games in my life, both day games and night games. And I can say with absolute certitude that baseball is a game that should be played in daylight. That's the way baseball is played by children (which, after all, is the way baseball should be played no matter what the age of the players). That's the way baseball was played for the first 100 years of its history, until some marketing genius decided that more money could be made playing baseball at a time when most of the children who love it are supposed to be in bed. And that's the way baseball is played (I am quite certain) in heaven, although I am still searching for a citation from the Summa Theologica to support this contention.
Down here in Texas Rangers country, even night games are played mostly in the daylight during July and August, which minimizes the horror of the phenomenon somewhat. But there still comes that inevitable moment, along around the bottom of the sixth inning, when the lights are turned on and the great, sunny, American pastoral fantasia that is baseball becomes suddenly transformed into just one more Klieglight-illuminated showbiz spectacle. Anyone who has ever seen the difference knows the difference. (I was never a Chicago Cubs fan, but I always cherished Wrigley Field as a last outpost of civilization, until it too was swamped by the barbarian wave on August 8, 1988.)
This holiday weekend, the Rangers are involved in inter-league play (we'll leave that unfortunate innovation for a later discussion) with the Houston Astros (we'll leave indoor baseball for a later discussion as well), in a couple of day games. Good for them. I just wish there were a lot more day games to look forward to this season.
(The picture accompanying this post, by the way, is a riveting painting -- "Baseball at Night" -- by the Russian-American painter Morris Kantor. It depicts a night baseball game in West Nyack, New York, in 1934, a year before nocturnal illumination made it to the major leagues, and long before night baseball was anything other than a cultural -- or visual -- oddity. The ballfield in West Nyack where this game took place also featured professional wrestling matches and performances by trained elephants. That pretty much says it all, doesn't it?)
UPDATE: What was I thinking? I don't need St. Thomas Aquinas to help me prove that there's no night baseball in heaven:
And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light shall the nations walk; and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it, and its gates shall never be shut by day -- and there shall be no night there.
Throughout most of the United States, the Feast of the Ascension will be observed liturgically this coming Sunday. In the ecclesiastical provinces of Boston, Hartford, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, and Nebraska -- and in the Woodward household -- 40 days still means 40 days, and the Ascension is celebrated on Ascension Thursday. Today.
The Ascension poses certain challenges to the Christian imagination. It did in the first century -- "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?" -- and it still does in the twenty-first. Here is a helpful comment from a man who was simultaneously one of the subtlest and one of the most straightforward of all Catholic preachers, Mgr. Ronald Knox.
Since the Ascension, it has been easier for us to imagine heaven as a desirable goal. Try as we will, the idea of heaven eludes us. Are we to think of it as a place, from which every element of unhappiness is excluded? But we know how much our love of places is conditioned by moods and sentiments, by the desire for change, by association and by history. Or are we to think of it as a state? But then, how are we to think of a state except in terms of selfish enjoyment? Or should we look forward to being reunited with those we have loved? But how frail they are, these earthly bonds; how time impairs them! No, when we have tried everything, we shall find no better window on eternity than St. Paul's formula, "to depart and be with Christ." If he has left us, and gone to heaven, it is so that we may no longer be disconcerted by the barrier of cloud that stands between us and it. We are not concerned to "go" here or there, or to be in this or that state of existence. We want to find him. So little, and so much it is given us to know about the ascended Christ.
I was not previously familiar with Gerald Warner. But I am instantaneously a big fan.
When one's credentials for speaking out on questions of moral theology are that one is (1) the wife of the President of France and (2) a "former supermodel"; then precisely how much attention are one's opinions entitled to?
Roughly about as much as mine, I would think.
(I apologize in advance to anyone who is offended by the photo of Mme. Bruni-Sarkozy, but honestly, isn't she the best-looking moral theologian you have ever seen?)
The Public Broadcasting Service is considering revoking the affiliation of local stations that broadcast "sectarian" programs. A few local PBS affiliates do apparently carry religious programming, such as weekly "Mass for shut-ins" broadcasts, and continuing to do so may mean the end of these stations' ability to include PBS programming in their schedules. If you want Big Bird, then you'll have to cancel Jesus.
The move under consideration by PBS would represent stricter enforcement of the corporation's bylaws (adopted in 1985), which allow member stations to broadcast only "noncommercial, nonpartisan, and nonsectarian" programs. (It's not a new rule, in other words, just a more faithful observance of an old one.) Anybody who has listened recently to the fulsome, lengthy, and obviously PR-firm-written descriptions of PBS sponsors that begin and end every PBS broadcast knows just how loosely the "noncommercial" stipulation in these bylaws is enforced. As for the "nonpartisan" stipulation...well, some jokes write themselves.
But the "nonsectarian" rule is one that PBS still feels honor-bound to enforce, and my guess is that they will do so with a vengeance. Good-bye Catholicism, hello Deepak Chopra.
The rank hypocrisy of this proposed move should trouble anyone who can read, and think logically...and pay taxes. But, in a spirit of "bringing us together," I would like to propose a compromise. Catholics should be willing to give up their PBS-broadcast Masses (just go to EWTN instead) in return for PBS's pledge (adopting PBS's favorite word) to drop its own "sectarian" programming, a few examples of which I'll be happy to list:
Bill Moyers: Faith & Reason
Bill Moyers Journal
Bill Moyers: NOW -- The Battle over Evolution
Bill Moyers: Genesis -- A Living Conversation
Bill Moyers: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth
Back in our courting days, my wife and I two-stepped to Vern Gosdin -- both live and on the jukebox -- many many times. He died on Tuesday. But here's why he will live forever.
They didn't call him "The Voice" for nothing.
In what is perhaps history's greatest display of advance planning, William Shakespeare arranged to get himself born on April 23, the feast day of St. George, the patron saint of England. That's a feat more or less equivalent to Abraham Lincoln having being born on the Fourth of July (which, of course, he wasn't).
It makes April 23 pretty much the greatest day on the English calendar. And it gives all of us -- Englishmen or not -- a chance to cleanse ourselves spiritually and intellectually from the neo-pagan slime of "Earth Day." (For the record, there was no singing of "earth songs" in the Woodward household today.)
There are so many occasions in life, aren't there, when we say to ourselves, "Now I really shall be able to make a new start"? We leave school; of course, all our troubles will disappear now. We go into business; now the world shall see what we are made of. We get married; that, evidently, is going to be the turning point of our lives. We rise to a position of responsibility; now, our chance has come. We grow rich, and have more opportunities for leisure; at last our true nature will have the opportunity to develop. We retire from active work; now, with old age to mellow us, we can live as we would wish to die. Yes, but tell me, is there really all that difference between one stage and the next?
But in the life of grace, ah, if we could only see it, there is a perpetual burgeoning of new life, not merely from one Easter to another, from one retreat to another, but with every worthy reception of the sacraments. Perpetual spring, perpetual renovation of our natures, if we could only catch the hour of grace, utilize it, make it our own. Whatever you are, and at whatever time of life you are, that possibility of spiritual renewal is with you no less surely than if you were a boy at school again, or just leaving school to make your way in the world. Christ is risen; those tidings can neither lose their force with age, nor be staled by repetition; Christ is risen, and life, for the Christian, is always new.
Jesus does not reject any who turn to him. At times we turn to him with little faith, at times with a mix of faith and doubt when we are more sure of the doubt than of the faith. Jesus is not fastidious about the quality of faith. He takes what he can get, so to speak, and gives immeasurably more than he receives. He takes our faith more seriously than we do and makes of it more than we ever could.
It's always fun to try and spot Judas in artistic representations of the Last Supper. One convention dictates that he be the lone disciple who is looking away from Jesus. In some other paintings, he is depicted as already on his way out of the room.
The great Spanish Renaissance artist Juan de Juanes, in his La Ultima Cena, makes it pretty easy to play this game. Here (click the picture for a better view) we see the group, with Judas about "to go to his own place" [Acts 1:25]. Not only are the disciples labeled for our convenience, but Judas (far right) is easily identifiable as the only one without a halo. What's more, look at where that knife is pointing.
O Son of God, bring me into communion today with your mystical supper. I shall not tell your enemies the secret, nor kiss you with Judas' kiss. But like the good thief I cry, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."
What element in the story of Christ's entry into Jerusalem would most attract the attention of a poet? Why, that donkey, of course. The image of the King of the Universe riding the humblest (and most unglamorous) of beasts is surefire material for any writer with even a smidgen of irony in his soul.
Last year on Palm Sunday I posted G. K. Chesterton's "The Donkey." Nobody does paradox better than Chesterton, although the seventeenth-century Metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw comes pretty close. Much of Crashaw's religious poetry was written in Latin (which is a problem for modern readers) or Greek (which is an even bigger problem). And many of the English poems are built on images and figurative language that, frankly, a lot of people nowadays will find overly graphic and repulsive. (Try Crashaw's epigram "Upon the Infant Martyrs" if you want a poem with a high "yuk" factor.)
Crashaw wrote two "donkey" poems about Palm Sunday. Or it might be more accurate to say that he wrote the same poem twice -- once in English, once in Latin. Here they are (with Crashaw's own spelling). If you don't read Latin, no problem. The English poem is just a slightly more elaborate working out of exactly the same ironic point -- that if there's going to be a talking donkey in the Bible, then Christ's deserved the gift of speech more than Balaam's.
In Asinum Christi vectorem.
Ille suum didicit quondam obiurgare magistrum:
Et quid ni discas tu celebrare tuum?
Mirum non minus est, te iam potuisse tacere,
Illum quam fuerat tum potuisse loqui.
Upon the Asse that bore our Saviour.
Hath onely Anger an Omnipotence
In Eloquence?
Within the lips of Love and Joy doth Dwell
No miracle?
Why else had Baalams Asse a tongue to chide
His Masters pride?
And thou (Heaven-burthen'd Beast) hast ne're a word
To praise thy Lord?
That he should find a Tongue and vocall Thunder,
Was a great wonder.
But o me thinkes 'tis a farre greater one
That thou find'st none.
Thomas Hardy's tragic novel Jude the Obscure is the story of a man who struggles through poverty and disappointed ambitions, only to have his young stepson kill all the family's children and then himself, leaving a note that explains the reason for his action: "Because we are too many."
There are still plenty of people today who think that we (i.e., human beings) are too many, although the "science" underlying that claim has been repeatedly refuted and exposed as little more than culture-of-death ideology tarted up with spurious "statistics." Read some of Paul Ehrlich's serially revised predictions about what life would be like in the 1970s -- and then the 1980s -- and then the 1990s -- because of "overpopulation," if you want an idea of just how respectable the population alarmists' theories are.
And yet, because there are some ideas so preposterous that only an intellectual could believe them (was that George Orwell?), the notion that the world is in imminent danger from too many people is still alive and well -- and flourishing right now at the highest levels of the United States government. Dr. Nina Federoff, science and technology advisor first to Condoleeza Rice and now to Hillary Clinton, has announced in an interview with the BBC that "there are probably already too many people on the planet." (I for one would like the names of those people, wouldn't you?)
It's a bit disturbing that this woman, whose academic credentials, by the way, are in the field of molecular biology, not any discipline related to demographics or population studies -- so don't be intimidated by the "Dr." -- is giving advice to Secretary of State Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, you may have heard, was the proud recipient last week of Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger Award. That's Margaret Sanger as in "stop the procreation of the pauper element"; "more children from the fit, less from the unfit"; "eliminate human weeds." So one can assume that Dr. Federoff is getting an attentive and sympathetic hearing. Foggy Bottom has never been foggier.
Apparently a hundred thousand or so Britons have done it.
Or think they have done it. Would it be mean to point out to these newly certified heathens that baptism, by its sacramental nature, is irrevocable?
Incorporated into Christ by Baptism, the person baptized is configured to Christ. Baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of his belonging to Christ. No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents Baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation. Given once for all, Baptism cannot be repeated.
This story is getting more play than it probably deserves.
Yes, it's moderately embarrassing that America's chief diplomat is completely ignorant about the defining cultural icon of the United States' nearest and arguably most important neighbor. (When she drives by Buckingham Palace, does she say, "Wow. Nice house. Who lives there?")
But Secretary of State Clinton is not obliged to believe that there's anything miraculous about the Tilma. (Neither are Catholics, for that matter.) Furthermore, it seems clear that she asked an honest question, and she listened intently to the story, which she obviously had never heard before. Hasn't she, in doing so, given us a gift? I have been reading over and over again the simple exchange between Mrs. Clinton and Msgr. Monroy, the rector of the Basilica de Santa Maria de Guadalupe, and I find it strangely powerful.
Mrs. Clinton: "Who painted it?"
Msgr. Monroy: "God."
Don't we need to hear that question from time to time? And don't we need to hear that answer?
And if there is evolution in Texas, then, by golly, it's the biggest and best evolution anywhere.
But seriously.
Our state board of education voted this week not to require that teachers present the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories dealt with in the public school curriculum. Taken at face value, that would be a frighteningly anti-intellectual decree to hand down in connection with any subject. But if you know that the scientific theory being given special protection by the board's action is Darwin's theory of the origin of species by means of natural selection, then does the decree become reasonable -- or even more frightening?
That depends, I suppose, on whether you are an ideologically committed partisan on one side or the other. And make no mistake, there is partisan ideology on both sides.
Doesn't every scientific theory, no matter how safely ensconced within the velvet folds of intellectual orthodoxy, still have strengths and weaknesses? I was taught that it does, back in the 1960s, at a time when ideology had certainly taken over the humanities in public education but not yet the sciences. Didn't the Copernican theory kick the Ptolemaic theory's butt, based on the weaknesses of the latter? Didn't Einstein formulate his theory of general relativity by perceiving weaknesses in Newton's theory of gravitation? Isn't quantum mechanics a solution to the weaknesses of the atomic theory? Aren't cosmological careers being made today on the basis of weaknesses in the Big Bang theory, just as they once were made by Big Bangers on the basis of weaknesses in the steady state theory?
Well, we'll have no more of that in Texas. Truth may be relative, God may be dead, and what's good for General Motors may no longer be good for the country; but the one instance of ontological certitude remaining in this crazy world, by order of the Texas State Board of Education, is that the random occurrence of genetic variations tested in the crucible of procreative success is the mechanism that drives speciation at a macroevolutionary level. Credo ut intelligam.
I can be flippant because I have no dog in this fight. My wife and I are home schoolers, which means that we and our children are still free to assess the "strengths and weaknesses" of any intellectual theory we want. But I'm not unaware that a powerful coalition of bureaucrats, ideologues, and textbook salesmen would like to have it another way.
A movement is under way in Britain to repeal the Act of Settlement, a 1701 law that bars Catholics from occupying the throne or standing in the line of succession. A companion movement will attempt to do away with agnatic primogeniture, the rule that gives preference to male heirs over female. Between them, these measures are seen as redressing the outrageous sexual and religious discrimination that has so long disfigured the English monarchy.
Seriously.
Let's set aside for the moment the fact that this entire matter is moot. No occupant of the British throne since 1688 has been the rightful monarch of England in the first place. The real king of England, as all right-thinking people know, is Franz Bonaventura Adalbert Maria Herzog von Bayern and -- in direct defiance of the Act of Settlement -- he is a Catholic! But we'll take that up another time.
No, what interests me about the news report linked above is the absurdly self-righteous tone in which supporters of this "reform" are talking about it. The supporters include both the current British prime minister, Gordon Brown; and (shame on him) the current Catholic primate of England, Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, both of whom seem suddenly quite offended by the discriminatory nature of the British Crown. Don't they realize that, even if the current monarchical glass ceiling is shattered for Catholics and older royal sisters of younger royal brothers, far too much injustice will remain in this corrupt system? The throne will still be denied to anyone but a Briton, an instance of rank nativism. It will still be denied to anyone not connected by birth to the royal family -- class prejudice at its worst. And while homosexuals will enjoy full rights of succession (as they always have), it's very much doubtful that a transgendered person will ever have much of a chance. (So forget about improving your place in line by turning yourself from a first-born daughter into a first-born son.) As for any members of ethnic minorities who might harbor royal ambitions -- well, just remember what happened to the last Hispanic who claimed the British throne.
No, these piecemeal calls for equality are not enough. I for one will not be satisfied until any little American boy or girl can grow up to be "by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of His (or Her) other Realms and Territories King (or Queen), Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith."
Subscribe in a reader
