What I love about the Divine Office is that you are plunged into the psalms, and like all poetry you are sometimes hit with a phrase or an image that strikes deep down below the rational faculties. It's like the Holy Spirit sends a dart into your heart and the beauty and power of the image touches you in a place beyond and below words.
This morning it was the phrase from Ps. 81 "I would feed them with the finest wheat and fill them with honey from the rock." Honey from the rock? What does that mean? When you meditate on the image it brings up a multitude of meanings. The Old Testament says that the manna from heaven tasted like honey, and the promised land is flowing with milk and honey. Then I remembered that in the early church the newly baptized, before the Eucharist, would be given milk and honey--the food of newborn infants and the food of the promised land. There's more.
My brother is big on honey as a health food and knows a lot about bees. He says that honey is the only natural food that doesn't rot or decay. It is a perfect preservative. As such it is a symbol, therefore for immortality. If you like it is the food of heaven. Also, honey has great healing qualities. It helps you battle infection if you have a cold. It helps you sleep at night. Furthermore, honey is made by bees, who gather nectar, and the metaphysical poets said the bees were like minute angels--flying around doing God's business, gathering the sweetness of the sun which the flowers had made and taking it home to feed one another and to store up sweetness for man. They saw the Queen as an image of Mary--the Queen of this tiny heaven, and the community of bees as a swarm of all the angels and saints.
To boil it all down, the honey can refer therefore to God's goodness and the sweetness of his grace, and where do we find that grace? It comes most powerfully and paradoxically from the rock. We find it where we did not expect to find it. We find the sweetest honey in the wilderness. We find it hidden in the rock, and in a world where we make ourselves and our ego the only authority what rock is harder to accept than the rock of an authority greater than ourslves--an authority to which I must submit and obey? This is the rock that is either a stumbling block or a stepping stone--and I am referring to the rock on which the church is built--Peter and his successors.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Mgr Graham Leonard RIP
Damian Thompson reports this morning that Mgr. Graham Leonard has died. I never moved in the Anglo Catholic circles of Graham Leonard, but came to know him well after we both found ourselves in the Catholic church in the mid 1990s. By then Mgr. Leonard had retired as the Anglican Bishop of London and had been received into the Catholic Church. He kindly contributed a chapter to my first book, a collection of conversion stories called The Path to Rome. The book has become a best seller in England, being re printed every year since it's publication.
Like John Henry Newman, Mgr. Leonard was from an Evangelical home. As a young man he would get involved in 'beach missions'--Anglican evangelical enterprises in which college kids would hit the beaches with flannel graph boards, Bible story books and games to entertain and evangelize kids on vacation. He eventually heard the master's call to 'come up higher' and became and Anglo Catholic, rising to be Bishop of Willesdon, then Bishop of Truro in Cornwall, and finally Bishop of London.
When he considered becoming a Catholic he recounted to me his conversation with Cardinal Basil Hume: Graham Leonard argued that he wanted to bring along with him all the important elements of the Anglican patrimony. Cardinal Hume asked what those would be specifically. "What elements of Anglicanism would you wish to bring in that are not already part of Catholicism or which you would not be able to practice within Catholicism?" Mgr. Leonard said he was stumped. While there were things from the Anglican patrimony that he wished to share with Catholics that was already possible. What Catholicism excluded Mgr. Leonard wished also to exclude. Mgr. Leonard took the rather pragmatic view that as a priest everything worthy within Anglicanism would be available to him within Catholicism. I agree.
He was famously ordained as a Catholic priest conditionally. He had convinced Cardinal Ratzinger that his orders (which had been cross fertilized by through the Old Catholic succession) were 'valid enough' for there to be some doubt. Mgr. Leonard would recount with a twinkle in his eye that Cardinal Ratzinger said to him, "I won't say that you're not a priest."
My own memories of Mgr. Leonard are of a warm hearted and courteous English gentleman priest of the old school. He always had a kind word for everyone. I never saw an ounce of snobbishness or arrogance in him. In addition to his wordly accomplishments he was most of all a holy man--a lover of God and of his fellow man. May he rest in peace.
Like John Henry Newman, Mgr. Leonard was from an Evangelical home. As a young man he would get involved in 'beach missions'--Anglican evangelical enterprises in which college kids would hit the beaches with flannel graph boards, Bible story books and games to entertain and evangelize kids on vacation. He eventually heard the master's call to 'come up higher' and became and Anglo Catholic, rising to be Bishop of Willesdon, then Bishop of Truro in Cornwall, and finally Bishop of London.
When he considered becoming a Catholic he recounted to me his conversation with Cardinal Basil Hume: Graham Leonard argued that he wanted to bring along with him all the important elements of the Anglican patrimony. Cardinal Hume asked what those would be specifically. "What elements of Anglicanism would you wish to bring in that are not already part of Catholicism or which you would not be able to practice within Catholicism?" Mgr. Leonard said he was stumped. While there were things from the Anglican patrimony that he wished to share with Catholics that was already possible. What Catholicism excluded Mgr. Leonard wished also to exclude. Mgr. Leonard took the rather pragmatic view that as a priest everything worthy within Anglicanism would be available to him within Catholicism. I agree.
He was famously ordained as a Catholic priest conditionally. He had convinced Cardinal Ratzinger that his orders (which had been cross fertilized by through the Old Catholic succession) were 'valid enough' for there to be some doubt. Mgr. Leonard would recount with a twinkle in his eye that Cardinal Ratzinger said to him, "I won't say that you're not a priest."
My own memories of Mgr. Leonard are of a warm hearted and courteous English gentleman priest of the old school. He always had a kind word for everyone. I never saw an ounce of snobbishness or arrogance in him. In addition to his wordly accomplishments he was most of all a holy man--a lover of God and of his fellow man. May he rest in peace.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Why Try?
If you're like me and worried that the scales are going to crash when you step on them, that you won't be able to pay the bills this year, and most of all that your spiritual life seems to be going down the drain fast you might be tempted to throw in the towel and not bother with New Years' resolutions.
Let me advise you right now that New Year's resolutions on their own are probably not much use. I don't know many people who have overcome bad habits and really changed their lives through will power alone. Something more than that is needed, and this is where paying attention to the health of your spiritual life may actually be more practical than anything else you do.
What I'm talking about is roots and foundations. Your bad habits are only the symptom of the disease. The reason you do what you do is because you haven't had the healing and forgiveness and transformation you need at the deep down level. If the roots are bad the fruits are bad. We need new foundations, and only attention to our spiritual life can change things at that very foundation level of our personalities.
I really believe that if we want to lose weight, have a better marriage, be more successful in relationships, control our temper, stop swearing, be cured of lust and rage and really be different people then the only way that is possible is by being changed at the root level. The kind of prayer that really changes us is meditation and contemplation.
Meditation--especially the rosary--ministers to the deep areas of our hearts and minds. Through the meditative technique and the repetitious prayers the parts of our hearts that really need changing are touched in ways beyond explanation or explication. This is the theme of my book Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing and it is the content of the new booklet I'm writing called Healing the Mother-Father Wound.
Meditation helps to heal, but contemplation is even more life changing. Entering into the silence with God--especially through Eucharistic Adoration--touches us at a deep level. Pope John Paul taught that as we spend time in Eucharistic Adoration we begin to reflect the glory of the one we worship. We sort of soak up Jesus if you like, and his presence in our lives transforms us from glory to glory.
So I'm going to wade into this new year with some solid resolutions, but they're all going to be bolstered by the one resolution that supports them all: the resolution to pray more, to say the Rosary every day and to spend more time beholding the face of Christ in silent contemplation. If I can do this, then everything else will be possible because remember, "With God all things are possible."
EWTN Trip
We did last night's program live and taped next Monday's program. Both were on the Holy Father's Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus which establishes a personal ordinariate for Anglicans who wish to convert.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Predictions for 2010
Over at InsideCatholic they've put up some predictions for 2010. Here are mine (in no particular order or level of importance)
1. The Obama Administration will continue to accelerate and escalate the United States military adventures overseas. This may include a short invasion of Yemen, more troops to Afghanistan and increased saber rattling towards Iran with possible bombing raids.
2. As the economy continues to falter the mainstream media will increase their coverage of the Islamic threat. When things are bad at home it helps the powers that be to have a clear and present danger from outside.
3. American big government will get bigger. Taxes will be raised.
4. Protestant Evangelicals will continue to embrace the prosperity gospel and new versions of their self help gospel will be invented to deal with economic hard times.
5. Liberal Protestants will become more hardline in their support of feminism and homosexualism, thus dividing their numbers and furthering their decline.
6. Episcopalians will ordain a Lesbian bishop, and a white witch will be ordained as an Episcopal priestess.
7. Liberal Protestants will begin to endorse 'polyamory'.
8. The Anglican Ordinariate will get off to a small, but flying start, laying the foundations for the most interesting ecumenical development in forty years.
9. Most Anglicans won't jump on board. Liberal Anglicans will sneer. Anglican Evangelicals will stutter in incomprehension and Anglo Catholics will laugh at the initiative.
10. Conservative Catholics in America will experience increasing clarity of vision and purpose
11. More Liberal Catholics will stop going to church or become Protestants.
12. The Reverend Humphrey Blytherington will become a Rural Dean.
13. Todd Unctuous will choke on a meatball sandwich.
14. Mantilla Amontillado's business will enjoy roaring success as birettas in rich fabrics and colorful poms become a hot mainstream fashion item.
15. Caitlin O'Rourke will get kicked out of ballet class.
16. Duane Mandible will attempt to infiltrate the Bohemian Grove.
1. The Obama Administration will continue to accelerate and escalate the United States military adventures overseas. This may include a short invasion of Yemen, more troops to Afghanistan and increased saber rattling towards Iran with possible bombing raids.
2. As the economy continues to falter the mainstream media will increase their coverage of the Islamic threat. When things are bad at home it helps the powers that be to have a clear and present danger from outside.
3. American big government will get bigger. Taxes will be raised.
4. Protestant Evangelicals will continue to embrace the prosperity gospel and new versions of their self help gospel will be invented to deal with economic hard times.
5. Liberal Protestants will become more hardline in their support of feminism and homosexualism, thus dividing their numbers and furthering their decline.
6. Episcopalians will ordain a Lesbian bishop, and a white witch will be ordained as an Episcopal priestess.
7. Liberal Protestants will begin to endorse 'polyamory'.
8. The Anglican Ordinariate will get off to a small, but flying start, laying the foundations for the most interesting ecumenical development in forty years.
9. Most Anglicans won't jump on board. Liberal Anglicans will sneer. Anglican Evangelicals will stutter in incomprehension and Anglo Catholics will laugh at the initiative.
10. Conservative Catholics in America will experience increasing clarity of vision and purpose
11. More Liberal Catholics will stop going to church or become Protestants.
12. The Reverend Humphrey Blytherington will become a Rural Dean.
13. Todd Unctuous will choke on a meatball sandwich.
14. Mantilla Amontillado's business will enjoy roaring success as birettas in rich fabrics and colorful poms become a hot mainstream fashion item.
15. Caitlin O'Rourke will get kicked out of ballet class.
16. Duane Mandible will attempt to infiltrate the Bohemian Grove.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Elizabeth
Now the rest: Mary Tudor is portrayed as a sick and wicked witch in a dungeon. She's ugly. She's dark. She's got bad teeth. She's vengeful and nasty and neurotic. Think Geraldine McEwan's over the top witch in that Kevin Costner Robin Hood nightmare. Mary Tudor may not have been the Little Flower, but surely her character deserved more sympathy than the pantomime villain portrayed here.
The religious controversy? Catholic bishops are all dressed in black with big black miters. They're filmed from an ultra low angle making them seem like big, bad monsters. Gardner is a one-eyed, raging fanatic. The pope is seen fondling little boys before he signs the bull excommunicating Elizabeth. Then he commissions a black robed murderous priest to head off to England and assassinate Elizabeth. This guy is just one step removed from Dan Brown's ludicrous albino assassin.
Meanwhile pretty Elizabeth is trying to solve the religious crisis herself. Like a petulant eighth grader she cries, "But we all believe in God don't we?" Then she practices her speech in the mirror and wonders just what she will say to those awfully serious fellows in Parliament. "Let's all be nice to one another! Why not? I'm only getting rid of the Pope for the sake of my people!" What no arguments of any substance on anything? Then she flirts with those awfully serious men, "I'm only a weak woman you know!" Suddenly they all fall for her arguments and hey presto we've got the Act of Uniformity!
Then there is the use of the interiors of Durham Cathedral as Elizabeth's palace. Never mind that we all spotted it as Durham. While it looked splendid, the equivalent in the USA would be to use the interior of Grand Central Station for the Oval Office. Oh yes, Walsingham visits Mary of Guise in Scotland, jumps into the sack with her and kills her. She actually died of natural causes. The catalogue of inanities, historical idiocies, explicit and totally gratuitous violence, nudity and silliness is only compounded by a clunky script, bad acting (watch out for thicko English soccer star Eric Cantona) shallow characterization and simplistic history.
Not once do we get the idea that anyone in the movie or anyone associated with the movie has the slightest understanding of the religious and political complexities of the time. A comic book would have be more subtle and profound. To top it all, the movie ends with the ludicrous idea that Elizabeth slaps on the wig and white make up in order to look more like a statue of the Virgin Mary and because Catholics die for the Blessed Virgin if she makes herself look like a statue of Mary they will die for her instead.
If only we could see this film for what it is: a kind of Black Adder treatment of English history. Unfortunately, polls have shown that most people's understanding of history is determined by the history flicks they watch. People swallow Kevin Costner's bogus JFK. Hoi polloi actually believe Dan Brown's version of the Catholic Church and most folks think the ridiculous Elizabeth is some kind of documentary.
Ah well. At least the frocks were pretty.
Adoration of the Magi
Why do we say there were three kings when the Gospel of Matthew says no such thing? We say they are kings because they behaved like kings. That is, they came to pay homage. In the ancient world lesser kings traveled to establish a treaty with a greater king by bringing rich gifts from their lands in homage to their Lord. Why do we call them 'kings' when the text says they were 'astrologers' or 'wise men' or 'sages'? In the ancient Eastern world the ideal king was also a philosopher or even a monastic type spiritual leader. These may have been 'philosopher kings', or even if they were not kings they were probably emissaries from Eastern potentates. In addition to this they are identified as kings because of the readings for the day. Isaiah 60 speaks of the kings who walk by his radiance and Psalm 72 sings of the kings of the gentile lands who will come to pay homage.
So why 'three' when it doesn't say 'three'? Because of the three gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, also because three is a perfect number--a number of completion and wholeness--thus the three kings represent all the Gentile nations who will eventually come to worship the glory and majesty of the infant king.
More from Sandra Miesel here.
EWTN Tomorrow
You can catch me on The Journey Home with Marcus Grodi on EWTN tomorrow at 8pm EST. We'll be discussing the new Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus along with former Episcopal priest Fr. Eric Bergman.Wot I Did on My Vacation
On Thursday travelled with Ali Ben Maddy Theo Elias Mother and Father in law all crammed in Honda Odyssey to Folly Beach met up with brother Don his wife nephew Mark his wife nephew Joel brother Daryl his wife nephew Ambrose aged 3 went to Wendy's en route annoyed wife but delighted kids by buying fireworks at big firework supermarket met the Coffeys who happened to be at the beach too set off fireworks burning my thumb but preserving all other limbs intact ate big meal drank beer saw the New Year in with hooters and poppers promised to not say ugly things about people (unless they deserve it) slept late wrote a chapter went to cathedral for Mother of God Mass wept at Mass for the beauty of God's bounty and wondered why anyone doubts transubstantiation because that seems more real to me than all the other silly illusions most people who read the news think is real bumped into friends endured jibes about how fat I am getting and vowed to lose weight walked on the beach resisted temptation to do polar bear plunge (easy) ate fried turkey and ham with family all together watched O Brother Where Art Thou? with Ben and Maddy "We thought you was a toad!" went wall climbing in which my son fell on my nephew and made him cry visited the USS Yorktown and a submarine took English people to yet another fast food joint drove home wishing American cars and roads were like the slot cars I had when I was a kid just drop the runner into the slot hit cruise control and sit back to watch a movie Vacation over. AMEN.
Mother of God
Pancake and circus tent churches just don't cut it. This is because they have been designed by followers of the 'form follows function' school of architecture. Even if this is a proper dictum for architects, it overlooks the fact that one of the functions of a Catholic church is to inspire and uplift the heart, and the only way to do that is through beauty. Why does the heart lift in a church with high ceilings, lofty stained glass and pointed arches? Because as they eye is lifted up the heart is lifted up. The eye, the mind and the heart ascend in an act of worship simply by entering a lofty building. The beauty and richness of marble and stone and glass take the worshipper into a new dimension--a less mundane dimension.
Of course the Mass is the Mass, and the Christ child who was born in a stable is still present in the humblest of settings. But that Christ child of Bethlehem is also the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We should try our hardest and make the sacrifices necessary to build a temple fit for the one before whom the kings of the East prostrated themselves.
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