"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament... There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires."
Father, where did you find this? Is it a book, article, interview? I would be very interested to read more about this wonderful idea.
ReplyDeletethis is from a letter to his son, who eventually became a priest.
ReplyDeleteI love this. I wish he could have elaborated on what he meant though. Been trying to figure it out but it's great!
ReplyDeleteVery good quote.
ReplyDeleteLove this quote. I first saw it as a sort of prayer card in our adoration chapel. The meat of it seeming to be that through reception of the eucharist we receive the grace to die to self, and in so doing experience a glimpse of the joy that is to come.
ReplyDeleteI think people should realize that "romance" in this quote is likely to be taken in the old-fashioned medievalist sense of "knightly magical adventure". This frequently includes romantic love (unrequited or not), but also all sorts of other things.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, by receiving the Blessed Sacrament, dying to self, and being in Communion with Jesus and His Mystical Body, we truly enter into an adventure (in this life, if we follow Him well) of great strangeness, with supremely good and faithful companions, and with everything that is worth loving and being loved by. The Eucharist is the great adventure and the great rest from adventure and the great reward after an adventure is done. There is nothing greater except the Last Things to come, and it makes us already part of those things.
We can't always see or sense or think that; but it is always true, no matter how blinded we are by circumstance.
"Romance" in this quote is in the medievalist sense of a knightly adventure, even more than that of romantic love (though that colors medieval romance strongly).
ReplyDeleteIn receiving the Eucharist, we enter into a great adventure as one of the protagonists -- although obviously Christ is _the_ Protagonist.