A couple of weeks have transpired since my last isolation reflection, and this is the eighth of that unspecified series. Both of these facts suggest it has been going on far too long. It promises to continue, at least in this part of Pennsylvania.
For many people, the containment doesn’t seem to have been going on at all, whether that’s because their usual business hasn’t involved much physical contact to begin with, their business has become unusually affected with the result of more contact (such as our noble first responders), or simply because they have been flouting the governmental directives.
As a parish priest, the core dimension of my ministry has not changed in the sense that I have not stopped offering daily the holy Mysteries entrusted to me by my bishop nearly 17 years ago. I have not stopped celebrating the Sacraments, proclaiming the Gospel, or caring for souls. I’ve just had to do it differently.
The World Online, like every novelty, has intrigued me since I first laid eyes on it. Here’s another shiny boulevard of Evangelization and self-expression! Which of those two purposes I have appreciated and enlisted more, varies depending on when you ask me what I’ve done with it today. I’m nothing if not inconsistent!
Sometimes those purposes look and sound rather similar. To this point, following up on an earlier post in which I laid out my ecclesiastical heraldry, I’ve actually changed a major component: my motto. It’s my expectation that you don’t fool with this stuff once it’s in print, but I do nothing if I don’t defy expectations, alone or with others.
My previous sacred slogan was Matthew 13:52, in which, after Jesus laid out a series of teachings on the kingdom of heaven in the form of parables, He closed out with a simple simile as the last parable in that series (like this episode, the 8th).
Ever the teacher, Jesus asked His followers, “Do you understand these things?” Upon their affirmative response, Jesus said, “then every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings forth from his storeroom both the new and the old” (profert de thesauro suo nova et vetera).
For my purposes (and those of the kingdom of heaven, I dare say), as a "scribe" I start off—and end up—both a recorder and an interpreter. That’s always the case whether the writings are sacred or secular. Traditore, tradutore: The one who hands things on for posterity, hands them over for betrayal. Not to say the original meaning is entirely lost, but like the genetic phenomenon of microchimerism, someone else gets handed on as well: something old, something new.
In jettisoning the phrase profert de thesauro suo nova et vetera, I am not altogether parting with it. Even though it will not appear below the crest, it still shows up in my thoughts, words, and actions. That’s how my new motto was germinating while I was working with the old one, and not surprisingly, that’s how the old one has been working since I’ve started with the new one. The more I cling to either of them, the more I suspect I am doing so in error: No rest for the wary.
I have turned my mind, for now, to chapter two of Saint Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians. He goes to some length and depth to make clear the purity of his ministerial motives. When it comes to human praise, he is not in it to win it. In verse seven, he compares the apostolic labors of his coterie to a nursing mother; in verse eleven, he compares it to a father's exhortation and insistence. There is something poignant to his inclusion of both parents in his comparison.
But the phrase that pays here is verse eight, where Saint Paul relays: "with such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the Gospel of God, but our very selves as well, so dearly beloved had you become to us" (non solum evangelium Dei, sed etiam animas nostras). When it comes to mottos, either one is somewhat large. Normally I don't see many over five words. So this is par for my course: why say in 500 words what you can say in 1000?
Speaking of which: This post had a main point, and I'm just getting to it. In an effort to convey "our very selves" as sometimes I do more than the Gospel of God as such, I sneaked up to the choir loft before my Zoom Pastoral Council meeting last night to record myself playing on the organ the operatic theme for the cash advance company J. G. Wentworth.
My only intention, to line the collective pockets with a little levity. That said, if they wanted to send cash now for a new Allen organ, I wouldn't refuse it.
The video has garnered a generous response from my friends on both the Facebook and the Twitter. I'm certainly humbled and grateful. It goes to show the solidarity of people in crazy times. We're all going through it.
As for my talent: Knowing the caliber of musicians alongside whom I've been playing in concert bands for thirty years, I make no claims at proficiency. What I lack in talent, I compensate for in willingness and schmaltz.
I just spied a quote from St. Jane Frances de Chantal: "Hell is full of the talented; heaven of the energetic." If I can bring the two together, following the "both/and" principle of Catholicism evident in both of my motto selections, I might hit the middle ground of Purgatory--and even that is temporary in favor of heaven.
Moving back to the Gospel of God, I include here my homily from this morning, in which I tried to tie together the readings and saints of the day to my exploits from last night. If we can't view current events--especially music and other cultural expressions--in light of the Gospel, why do we even culture?
Ut scribantur sermones mei (Job 19:23). Contents reflect my opinion, although Church teaching happens to be my opinion as well. Wherever there appears to be conflict, defer to the Church.
28 April 2020
08 April 2020
Containment Considerations 7: This Time It’s Personal
In my last post, Theophilus, I unpacked Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “The Wreck of the Deutschland.” Here I submit a poiema (Gk, handiwork) a little more personal.
One friend called it a curious thing to be about when bored. After a pause I rather suggest it is an item of culture emerging from leisure. Granted, ecclesiastical heraldry is not everyone’s area of interest, but it has been one of mine since I was a kid.
Back then it was tied up with fantasies of promotion and pageantry; now it exemplifies Job’s longing for his words to be written down (19:23, also in the subheading of this blog). Dangerous, the desire to codify and “emblazon” the self, for words so often fail the Word.
Learning it was not just a thing for bishops lent me some courage to concretize, even this early in life and ministry. Others far younger than I have done so, even “right out of the gate.” Much of it is consistent with the cultivated “brand” so essential for marketing and social media. I shall continue to cherish the photo of my classmate and me prostrating at our Ordination to Priesthood; in a very real sense that is the most personally-revealing image available for me, and my best side as well.
There’s the shield, and the explanation of it. The easiest part is the priest’s black galero (ceremonial clerical hat) from which two tassels suspend. Colors and numbers of tassels differ by ecclesiastical rank or office; priests will use varied elaborate patterns for the cords that extend from the galero.
Everything on the shield is the meaty part. There are persons far more versed than I in these matters, whose opinions I have consulted online unbeknownst to them. They suggest that the shield is not a place to display one’s curriculum vitae or personal preferences (“favorite things“).
The presentation and description below indicate I have not taken that direction. I am not alone, I suspect, in this regard. If it is an offense punishable by law, I extend my hands for the cuffs.
Ever inclined to self-justify, my explanation of the “charges“ (elements) on the shield will reveal the extent of the infraction. A respected brother priest and fellow armiger (arms bearer) related how personal the coat of arms is. The bishop who ordained me uses his as an examination of conscience.
While I had a very intentional layout in mind, I entrusted the depiction of it to Luis Alves of Reidarmas.com, whose portfolio and pricing were equally acceptable. He worked with me, made suggestions based on his knowledge of the craft, and behold, the outcome:
Exceedingly close to my sketch, though far neater.
The official description:
“Front the point of view of the bearer, moving dexter to sinister, right to left:
A field of gules (red) is divided by a vertically flowing river (a pale wavy) of azure (blue) whose banks are argent (silver).
A pair of opposing swords, both silver with gold (or) ornaments, bisect the river diagonally, rising upward from right to left.
Two additional charges: at lower right, a blazing fire of silver; at upper left, a plow of gold.
The black galero with two black tassels, customary of a diocesan priest.”
The motto: profert de thesauro suo nova et vetera (Mt 13:52).
Continuing with my abridged yet amplified explanation:
Red and blue are colors in the Zelonis and Welker family coats of arms, at least according to the online researcher I consulted (not the same one as above). At any rate, they are also the colors of the Saint Clair School District where I attended Kindergarten through Sixth Grade. Saint Clair Catholic (grades 7 and 8) used a lighter blue. The crest of the Diocese of Allentown is predominantly red. One-third of the Lithuanian flag is red, and one-half of Poland’s as well. Blue is the quintessential Marian color.
Silver and gold are used for second and first place respectively—both high ranks, but ranks nonetheless. “Speech is silver, silence is golden,” says the proverb. Brass instruments typically are of one or even both colors. My alma mater, Nativity B.V.M. High School in Pottsville PA, claims gold (as well as green).
As the legend goes, Saint Christopher carried the toddler Jesus across a river, exemplifying priestly, sacrificial love. I enjoy running along rivers and roads.
The bottom, ascending sword recalls the Lithuanian heraldic “vytis” (knight), while the descending sword hearkens to Archangel Michael (the patron of my first parish, in Minersville PA)’s thrust into Satan. The priest preaches the “two-edged sword” known as God’s Word (cf. Heb 4:12).
Verbal and visual creativity accompany the swords crossing the rivers: together they form the ascending “sharp” symbol that indicates a musical note raised one-half step from its standard value. It also reminds of the “pound sign” or “hashtag” used in communications media. My linguistic love (including the language of music) attempts to share “not only the Gospel, but our very selves as well” (1 Thess 2:8).
I have cherished the burning bush of Exodus 3 since finding an icon of it during academic research (in a book). The Fathers of the Church compared Mary’s perpetual virginity to the bush aglow with, yet unconsumed by, divine love. I appreciate the connections between the Scriptures and the Church’s thinkers and pray-ers.
The plow is a charge on my alma mater St. Charles Borromeo Seminary’s crest. Alves used a different plow, for what it’s worth.
The elevation of golden plow above silver burning bush show how prophetic eloquence, however valuable, is nothing if not subordinated to deeds of love—putting hand to plow (and not looking back in regret as to how I could have said it better!). Since kings—leaders—“cultivate” service by performing and inspiring it, the plow completes the “prophet/priest/king” triad, even if it’s something of a stretch.
The motto was the hardest part to decide even though I came up with it fairly early in the crafting process. Before taking Latin in high school, I would see bishops’ mottos, all wrapped up in ribbons, and try to pronounce and translate them.
How bold it is for people to choose one particular phrase, from Scripture or elsewhere, to summarize or guide their lives! I enjoy reading each armiger’s rationale and weighing its personal applicability. Sometimes I spy a phrase and it becomes my motto du jour, eventually to be consigned to forgetfulness, occasionally to resurface years later; eventually I started to keep a file and highlight possibilities in my Nova Vulgata.
So why this one?
No possibility that I’ve ever considered is without merit, even if another succeeded it moments later. The new ones don’t invalidate the old ones. This pattern reveals a reverence for tradition and innovation, for archival dust and creative juices.
As a writer (“a scribe”), specifically one ordained for priestly service to the Church (the Kingdom in seed form), I am, as Jesus described, “like the head of a household (more so as a pastor, though no less as a teacher or a hospital chaplain) who brings forth from his treasury (thesaurus!) the new and the old.”
Church history has not ignored the testamental overtones of “old and new,” nor do I. Teachers try to present eternal verities in new packaging, to new generations of students, although they often find the older packaging is useful and beautiful as well. Social media, thanks to the current Corona-Crisis, has furnished a new or more frequented mode of operation for most of us to communicate the Gospel and our own “prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day.”
Since learning of it early in the seminary, the “Both-And” approach of Catholicism has become very important to me. The divine perspective harmonizes realities that seem contradictory at first, the Incarnation chief among them. How can God also be man? In Christ, He is fully both; to exclude the presence and operation of one nature in favor of the other is not only heresy, it is lunacy.
Human beings likewise must seek the middle path where virtue and sanity often reside, as hope strides the excesses of presumption and despair. It’s not “all on God,” nor is it “all on us.” That virtue registers highly with me: as the sharp sign raises a musical note, so my ministry, music, writing, life are called—in weakness and defeat as well as their opposites—to glorify God and make unto Him a pleasing offering.
One friend called it a curious thing to be about when bored. After a pause I rather suggest it is an item of culture emerging from leisure. Granted, ecclesiastical heraldry is not everyone’s area of interest, but it has been one of mine since I was a kid.
Back then it was tied up with fantasies of promotion and pageantry; now it exemplifies Job’s longing for his words to be written down (19:23, also in the subheading of this blog). Dangerous, the desire to codify and “emblazon” the self, for words so often fail the Word.
Learning it was not just a thing for bishops lent me some courage to concretize, even this early in life and ministry. Others far younger than I have done so, even “right out of the gate.” Much of it is consistent with the cultivated “brand” so essential for marketing and social media. I shall continue to cherish the photo of my classmate and me prostrating at our Ordination to Priesthood; in a very real sense that is the most personally-revealing image available for me, and my best side as well.
There’s the shield, and the explanation of it. The easiest part is the priest’s black galero (ceremonial clerical hat) from which two tassels suspend. Colors and numbers of tassels differ by ecclesiastical rank or office; priests will use varied elaborate patterns for the cords that extend from the galero.
Everything on the shield is the meaty part. There are persons far more versed than I in these matters, whose opinions I have consulted online unbeknownst to them. They suggest that the shield is not a place to display one’s curriculum vitae or personal preferences (“favorite things“).
The presentation and description below indicate I have not taken that direction. I am not alone, I suspect, in this regard. If it is an offense punishable by law, I extend my hands for the cuffs.
Ever inclined to self-justify, my explanation of the “charges“ (elements) on the shield will reveal the extent of the infraction. A respected brother priest and fellow armiger (arms bearer) related how personal the coat of arms is. The bishop who ordained me uses his as an examination of conscience.
While I had a very intentional layout in mind, I entrusted the depiction of it to Luis Alves of Reidarmas.com, whose portfolio and pricing were equally acceptable. He worked with me, made suggestions based on his knowledge of the craft, and behold, the outcome:
Exceedingly close to my sketch, though far neater.
The official description:
“Front the point of view of the bearer, moving dexter to sinister, right to left:
A field of gules (red) is divided by a vertically flowing river (a pale wavy) of azure (blue) whose banks are argent (silver).
A pair of opposing swords, both silver with gold (or) ornaments, bisect the river diagonally, rising upward from right to left.
Two additional charges: at lower right, a blazing fire of silver; at upper left, a plow of gold.
The black galero with two black tassels, customary of a diocesan priest.”
The motto: profert de thesauro suo nova et vetera (Mt 13:52).
Continuing with my abridged yet amplified explanation:
Red and blue are colors in the Zelonis and Welker family coats of arms, at least according to the online researcher I consulted (not the same one as above). At any rate, they are also the colors of the Saint Clair School District where I attended Kindergarten through Sixth Grade. Saint Clair Catholic (grades 7 and 8) used a lighter blue. The crest of the Diocese of Allentown is predominantly red. One-third of the Lithuanian flag is red, and one-half of Poland’s as well. Blue is the quintessential Marian color.
Silver and gold are used for second and first place respectively—both high ranks, but ranks nonetheless. “Speech is silver, silence is golden,” says the proverb. Brass instruments typically are of one or even both colors. My alma mater, Nativity B.V.M. High School in Pottsville PA, claims gold (as well as green).
As the legend goes, Saint Christopher carried the toddler Jesus across a river, exemplifying priestly, sacrificial love. I enjoy running along rivers and roads.
The bottom, ascending sword recalls the Lithuanian heraldic “vytis” (knight), while the descending sword hearkens to Archangel Michael (the patron of my first parish, in Minersville PA)’s thrust into Satan. The priest preaches the “two-edged sword” known as God’s Word (cf. Heb 4:12).
Verbal and visual creativity accompany the swords crossing the rivers: together they form the ascending “sharp” symbol that indicates a musical note raised one-half step from its standard value. It also reminds of the “pound sign” or “hashtag” used in communications media. My linguistic love (including the language of music) attempts to share “not only the Gospel, but our very selves as well” (1 Thess 2:8).
I have cherished the burning bush of Exodus 3 since finding an icon of it during academic research (in a book). The Fathers of the Church compared Mary’s perpetual virginity to the bush aglow with, yet unconsumed by, divine love. I appreciate the connections between the Scriptures and the Church’s thinkers and pray-ers.
The plow is a charge on my alma mater St. Charles Borromeo Seminary’s crest. Alves used a different plow, for what it’s worth.
The elevation of golden plow above silver burning bush show how prophetic eloquence, however valuable, is nothing if not subordinated to deeds of love—putting hand to plow (and not looking back in regret as to how I could have said it better!). Since kings—leaders—“cultivate” service by performing and inspiring it, the plow completes the “prophet/priest/king” triad, even if it’s something of a stretch.
The motto was the hardest part to decide even though I came up with it fairly early in the crafting process. Before taking Latin in high school, I would see bishops’ mottos, all wrapped up in ribbons, and try to pronounce and translate them.
How bold it is for people to choose one particular phrase, from Scripture or elsewhere, to summarize or guide their lives! I enjoy reading each armiger’s rationale and weighing its personal applicability. Sometimes I spy a phrase and it becomes my motto du jour, eventually to be consigned to forgetfulness, occasionally to resurface years later; eventually I started to keep a file and highlight possibilities in my Nova Vulgata.
So why this one?
No possibility that I’ve ever considered is without merit, even if another succeeded it moments later. The new ones don’t invalidate the old ones. This pattern reveals a reverence for tradition and innovation, for archival dust and creative juices.
As a writer (“a scribe”), specifically one ordained for priestly service to the Church (the Kingdom in seed form), I am, as Jesus described, “like the head of a household (more so as a pastor, though no less as a teacher or a hospital chaplain) who brings forth from his treasury (thesaurus!) the new and the old.”
Church history has not ignored the testamental overtones of “old and new,” nor do I. Teachers try to present eternal verities in new packaging, to new generations of students, although they often find the older packaging is useful and beautiful as well. Social media, thanks to the current Corona-Crisis, has furnished a new or more frequented mode of operation for most of us to communicate the Gospel and our own “prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day.”
Since learning of it early in the seminary, the “Both-And” approach of Catholicism has become very important to me. The divine perspective harmonizes realities that seem contradictory at first, the Incarnation chief among them. How can God also be man? In Christ, He is fully both; to exclude the presence and operation of one nature in favor of the other is not only heresy, it is lunacy.
Human beings likewise must seek the middle path where virtue and sanity often reside, as hope strides the excesses of presumption and despair. It’s not “all on God,” nor is it “all on us.” That virtue registers highly with me: as the sharp sign raises a musical note, so my ministry, music, writing, life are called—in weakness and defeat as well as their opposites—to glorify God and make unto Him a pleasing offering.
06 April 2020
A Six-Pack of Containment Considerations BONUS: Recking the Wreck
Many of you know my devotion to Jesuit priest/poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. His magnum opus, the "Wreck of the Deutschland," seems to epitomize his faith, his ministry, his life.
For all the joy points of his life, and for all his virtues and talents, Hopkins labored under an incessant sense of futility. Disappointment from family; struggles in belief and experience of God's Presence; lackluster performance as a teacher and curate: these befell him and no doubt finally felled him, even if typhoid appeared on his death certificate.
He, too, was a fatality from a plague that was besieging Dublin in the late 1880s. Perhaps a coincidental detail, but not entirely.
Physical maladies are to some degree evidence of spiritual maladies. Sickness and death are consequences of sin. Now mental illness is not a personal fault, as if there were a direct correlation between "who sinned, this man or his parents?" and his plight (cf. Jn 9:2). They are, however, realities that as such are related causally. Even so, sometimes sins can catalyze conditions, as in the contribution of abuse or combat to PTSD.
By all accounts, Hopkins lived if not a charmed life, then certainly a comfortable one. The causes of his personal plague are, as for many of us, mysterious. Even if he knew their origin, daily decisions did not desist, and he attended to them carefully and heartfully. As with many artists, his art emerged through the rolls of his mental and emotional wringer, or at least it was in his soap.
Hopkins wrote considerably in his youth, winning a school prize for one poem, "The Escorial." Entry into the Catholic Faith, and soon into the Society of Jesus, convinced Hopkins he needed to set aside childish things (cf. 1 Cor 13:11) by burning his poetry and resting his quill.
Only after his Jesuit superior suggested that a poem be written about a recent nautical disaster did Hopkins (cue the Rocky theme) return to training, to retell a fight not in his beleaguered brain, but "in wind's burly and beat of endragonèd seas" (Wreck, 27).
In the manner that God brings forth good from evil, Hopkins' shipwreck reckoning won him a second wind, which lasted the rest of his harrowed days. Hopkins' interior torments and physical problems were the shipwrack that yielded a harvest of poetry, the "tempest [that] carr[ied] the grain" for God to us.
Storm-as-salvation, or salvation-through-storm, reflects the tension of opposites, much the work and play of Catholic theology and spirituality. No poem of Hopkins, I suggest, demonstrates this more starkly than "The Wreck of the Deutschland."
+++
Hopkins experienced his own conversion to Roman Catholicism as a turmoil in the first several stanzas. God is "giver of breath and bread," all things needful, but He seems to jilt as to Job. "Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh, / And after it almost unmade, what with dread, / Thy doing" (1).
Nobody forced him, but the forces within him were wild weather: "the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress" (2). There was nowhere else to turn except to the Eucharistic Lord Himself, and there he thrusted himself as a graceful pigeon to its destination (3).
"Mined with a motion" (4) was the title of a book that analyzed themes in Hopkins' poetic corpus. Not one whit witless, his words achieved their aim, precisely because his aim was Truth: the truth of his perceptions and experiences, yes, but above all Christ, the Way, Truth, and Life (Jn 14:6).
This truth is evident to one who seeks and "sifts" it from life's storms and assertions. "Since, tho' he is under the world's splendour and wonder, / His mystery must be instressed, stressed" (5). These last two words are Hopkins coinages: "instress" is the force that an image ("inscape") exerts upon the mind, to which the mind must apply itself ("stress") as vigorous teeth to a Red Delicious. God is dreadfully evident everywhere, but not without purposeful sensory and spiritual effort.
The mystery of God-Evident originates not in the magnificent mysteries we celebrate today, lamentably via-satellite for most, although the initial kerygma (apostolic proclamation of Christ) might try to convince us otherwise. What would have been the first thing on their minds? He is risen! This itinerant preacher ("going in Galilee") originated not only in the embrace of Father in the Holy Spirit, but in the "Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey; / Manger, maiden's knee;" (7).
Death and life commingle in every aspect of the God-Man's earthly sojourn, and in everyone else's. Our trials can move us, as they moved Hopkins, "To hero of Calvary, Christ,'s feet--" with a certain felt inevitability: "Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it--men go" (8).
Human hardships contain a salvific purpose, a literal salve (both in the English sense of healing and in its Latin root, the salutation made to Mary in the eponymous "Hail, Holy Queen." But herein lies the tension: divine purification presents as both "lightning and love...a winter and warm"; its Origin, a "Father and fondler of heart...hast wrung," at once producing obscurity and mercy (9).
God's purpose for us at every turn is our turning to Him, our conversion. He can accomplish this, according to Hopkins, after the striking strides of Saint Paul, or the waiting-working of Saint Augustine; either way, mercy and mastery "in all of us, out of us" are His objective (10).
Conversion and its sibling repentance are many-faceted, but in every respect a death. Though, like its sibling suffering, physical death is the consequence of original sin, it was meant to be the fire that welded a soul to its Fatherly Frame.
Death personified reads off a catalog of options (usually his, not ours): a sword, a flange (think the loose ligature on the space shuttle Challenger), a rail[road] accident, a beast's fang or a flood. There are more prevalent counterparts, such as the COVID Operation currently underway.
The time for perceived invincibility is long past. Our clever cloth masks are no firm prophylactic against a virus, though we may wear them to an optional outing. "But wé dréam we are rooted in earth--Dust!" There is little room for foolhardiness, for "Flesh falls within sight of us": every day the death toll climbs. Who among us is exempt from the reaper's swing? (11)
"Wreck" goes on to describe the details of the occasion: the passengers (12), the outset (13), and the impact both physical and spiritual (14ff), on the passengers and upon Hopkins himself as one who heard the news from an admittedly comfortable remove (24).
Several aspects merit Hopkins' attention: an heroic but fatal rescue attempt (16); the number five referring to both the nuns and to Our Lord's wounds (22); one nun's bold invitation for Christ to "come quickly" (24); the primacy of ordinary life ("the jading and jar of the cart"; 27) as the venue for spiritual insights and growth.
Christ came for salvation, much the need for Germany, which had far less to boast with Luther than with St. Gertrude (20). Salvation extended more intimately, in Hopkins' hopes, to the religious renegades of his native England. Just as St. Peter discerned the gruesome gravity of God ("the unshapeable shock night"), Hopkins noticed the poignant celebration surrounding this wreck, namely Mary's Immaculate Conception (it happened the day before that Solemnity).
This was all God's work, and Hopkins apprehended this after enough rumination on secondary points. "He was to cure the extremity where he had cast her" (28), and the nun's candid confession, he prayed, could help his own people repent and be converted, thus rendering this shipwrack a harvest (31).
God is in control (32). Harshly or gently, He wields the sword of mercy, swinging it even in the direction of the dead and the near-dead (33). Could that sword touch and "royally reclaim his own" British hearts? Everyone else's?
If so, it would happen as everything else has: in the tension of opposites: "kind, but royally reclaiming his own; a released shower...not a lightning of fire" (34).
The final stanza sums it up with the intensity of the last strains of Ravel's Bolero. The cavalcade of consonants, the arabesque litany spelling out the One Who fain would remember English souls all the way back to Himself.
+++
For all the joy points of his life, and for all his virtues and talents, Hopkins labored under an incessant sense of futility. Disappointment from family; struggles in belief and experience of God's Presence; lackluster performance as a teacher and curate: these befell him and no doubt finally felled him, even if typhoid appeared on his death certificate.
He, too, was a fatality from a plague that was besieging Dublin in the late 1880s. Perhaps a coincidental detail, but not entirely.
Physical maladies are to some degree evidence of spiritual maladies. Sickness and death are consequences of sin. Now mental illness is not a personal fault, as if there were a direct correlation between "who sinned, this man or his parents?" and his plight (cf. Jn 9:2). They are, however, realities that as such are related causally. Even so, sometimes sins can catalyze conditions, as in the contribution of abuse or combat to PTSD.
By all accounts, Hopkins lived if not a charmed life, then certainly a comfortable one. The causes of his personal plague are, as for many of us, mysterious. Even if he knew their origin, daily decisions did not desist, and he attended to them carefully and heartfully. As with many artists, his art emerged through the rolls of his mental and emotional wringer, or at least it was in his soap.
Hopkins wrote considerably in his youth, winning a school prize for one poem, "The Escorial." Entry into the Catholic Faith, and soon into the Society of Jesus, convinced Hopkins he needed to set aside childish things (cf. 1 Cor 13:11) by burning his poetry and resting his quill.
Only after his Jesuit superior suggested that a poem be written about a recent nautical disaster did Hopkins (cue the Rocky theme) return to training, to retell a fight not in his beleaguered brain, but "in wind's burly and beat of endragonèd seas" (Wreck, 27).
In the manner that God brings forth good from evil, Hopkins' shipwreck reckoning won him a second wind, which lasted the rest of his harrowed days. Hopkins' interior torments and physical problems were the shipwrack that yielded a harvest of poetry, the "tempest [that] carr[ied] the grain" for God to us.
Storm-as-salvation, or salvation-through-storm, reflects the tension of opposites, much the work and play of Catholic theology and spirituality. No poem of Hopkins, I suggest, demonstrates this more starkly than "The Wreck of the Deutschland."
+++
Hopkins experienced his own conversion to Roman Catholicism as a turmoil in the first several stanzas. God is "giver of breath and bread," all things needful, but He seems to jilt as to Job. "Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh, / And after it almost unmade, what with dread, / Thy doing" (1).
Nobody forced him, but the forces within him were wild weather: "the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress" (2). There was nowhere else to turn except to the Eucharistic Lord Himself, and there he thrusted himself as a graceful pigeon to its destination (3).
"Mined with a motion" (4) was the title of a book that analyzed themes in Hopkins' poetic corpus. Not one whit witless, his words achieved their aim, precisely because his aim was Truth: the truth of his perceptions and experiences, yes, but above all Christ, the Way, Truth, and Life (Jn 14:6).
This truth is evident to one who seeks and "sifts" it from life's storms and assertions. "Since, tho' he is under the world's splendour and wonder, / His mystery must be instressed, stressed" (5). These last two words are Hopkins coinages: "instress" is the force that an image ("inscape") exerts upon the mind, to which the mind must apply itself ("stress") as vigorous teeth to a Red Delicious. God is dreadfully evident everywhere, but not without purposeful sensory and spiritual effort.
The mystery of God-Evident originates not in the magnificent mysteries we celebrate today, lamentably via-satellite for most, although the initial kerygma (apostolic proclamation of Christ) might try to convince us otherwise. What would have been the first thing on their minds? He is risen! This itinerant preacher ("going in Galilee") originated not only in the embrace of Father in the Holy Spirit, but in the "Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey; / Manger, maiden's knee;" (7).
Death and life commingle in every aspect of the God-Man's earthly sojourn, and in everyone else's. Our trials can move us, as they moved Hopkins, "To hero of Calvary, Christ,'s feet--" with a certain felt inevitability: "Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it--men go" (8).
Human hardships contain a salvific purpose, a literal salve (both in the English sense of healing and in its Latin root, the salutation made to Mary in the eponymous "Hail, Holy Queen." But herein lies the tension: divine purification presents as both "lightning and love...a winter and warm"; its Origin, a "Father and fondler of heart...hast wrung," at once producing obscurity and mercy (9).
God's purpose for us at every turn is our turning to Him, our conversion. He can accomplish this, according to Hopkins, after the striking strides of Saint Paul, or the waiting-working of Saint Augustine; either way, mercy and mastery "in all of us, out of us" are His objective (10).
Conversion and its sibling repentance are many-faceted, but in every respect a death. Though, like its sibling suffering, physical death is the consequence of original sin, it was meant to be the fire that welded a soul to its Fatherly Frame.
Death personified reads off a catalog of options (usually his, not ours): a sword, a flange (think the loose ligature on the space shuttle Challenger), a rail[road] accident, a beast's fang or a flood. There are more prevalent counterparts, such as the COVID Operation currently underway.
The time for perceived invincibility is long past. Our clever cloth masks are no firm prophylactic against a virus, though we may wear them to an optional outing. "But wé dréam we are rooted in earth--Dust!" There is little room for foolhardiness, for "Flesh falls within sight of us": every day the death toll climbs. Who among us is exempt from the reaper's swing? (11)
"Wreck" goes on to describe the details of the occasion: the passengers (12), the outset (13), and the impact both physical and spiritual (14ff), on the passengers and upon Hopkins himself as one who heard the news from an admittedly comfortable remove (24).
Several aspects merit Hopkins' attention: an heroic but fatal rescue attempt (16); the number five referring to both the nuns and to Our Lord's wounds (22); one nun's bold invitation for Christ to "come quickly" (24); the primacy of ordinary life ("the jading and jar of the cart"; 27) as the venue for spiritual insights and growth.
Christ came for salvation, much the need for Germany, which had far less to boast with Luther than with St. Gertrude (20). Salvation extended more intimately, in Hopkins' hopes, to the religious renegades of his native England. Just as St. Peter discerned the gruesome gravity of God ("the unshapeable shock night"), Hopkins noticed the poignant celebration surrounding this wreck, namely Mary's Immaculate Conception (it happened the day before that Solemnity).
This was all God's work, and Hopkins apprehended this after enough rumination on secondary points. "He was to cure the extremity where he had cast her" (28), and the nun's candid confession, he prayed, could help his own people repent and be converted, thus rendering this shipwrack a harvest (31).
God is in control (32). Harshly or gently, He wields the sword of mercy, swinging it even in the direction of the dead and the near-dead (33). Could that sword touch and "royally reclaim his own" British hearts? Everyone else's?
If so, it would happen as everything else has: in the tension of opposites: "kind, but royally reclaiming his own; a released shower...not a lightning of fire" (34).
The final stanza sums it up with the intensity of the last strains of Ravel's Bolero. The cavalcade of consonants, the arabesque litany spelling out the One Who fain would remember English souls all the way back to Himself.
+++
04 April 2020
A Fifth of Containment Considerations
Though there be "nothing new under the sun," we just keep on feigning innovation. Take this blog. Please!
"With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well, so dearly beloved had you become to us" (1 Thess 2:8); or this blog's byline from the Sufferer: "Would that my words were written down" (Job 19:23).
Whether these candid admissions are prescriptive or descriptive elements of Scripture, they reveal the desire to reveal that God has installed in the heart of every person by dint of his or her unique creation in His Image, which is Heaven-bent on Self-Disclosure.
Another snippet of personal revelation occurs to me, from None Other than Our Lord Himself. How much of an eisegetical stretch is it to hear a tinge of sadness* in His Sacred Voice (≠ disappointment, as if He didn't expect it) when people backed away from Him at the mountain of John 6:
Numquid et vos vultis abire? Certainly you also don't want to go away?
A brief review of Latin interrogative conjunctions suggests the expected answer to numquid? (elision of nunc quid--"now what?") is negative. "No, Lord, we don't want to leave"--whence Simon Peter's confession:
Domine, ad quem ibimus? Lord, to whom shall we go?
We can't readily dismiss Peter's prophetic pence as pietistic. "We have, not even as a matter of choice, nowhere else to go for what You are and have and give." The words of eternal life, the real-food Flesh and real-drink Blood--it's a Jesus of Nazareth Exclusive, the only Public House in town.
Wherefore the denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance that, vapor-like, haunts the airwaves as Holy Week approaches without the offering of public Liturgy. The stage (or better, dimension) I read of most, because the Online is nothing if not a vent, is anger:
This is unacceptable, criminal, cowardly...exhibitionist!
I know that Mind-Reader isn't one of the minor orders en route to ordination. I'm reading exhibitionism into the sentiments expressed passim. 'Splain yourself, Lucy--so that your name, which means "light," might make things plain. Such is always my Desire. And I have a Ball with it.
Sed contra:
By Christ's own Do-This, His Holy Sacrifice--Passover Renewed--is to be offered as the clearest expression of His ongoing Presence "until the end of the age" (Mt 28:20), for it encapsulates the Redeemer's Priestly, Prophetic, and Kingly service to a †.
Whether all the world gather for a Mass in one space or the priest alone celebrate it, everyone is present to Christ, Who is here-and-now submitting everyone to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. He re-presents that one, total, faithful, permanent, exclusive, and fruitful offering each time.
Far from dismissing the directive to "go (Ite), make disciples of all the nations," this truth reinforces evangelical efforts. It commands everyone to live the Gospel as loudly as your volume goes. 11: looks like two towers, two swords, two books (Covenants Old and New) not meant for a shelf.
The more I read reports (whatever for?) the more I suspect COVID-19 will re-surface in waves, and not disappear in such a way that justifies the wholesale return to civilization--certainly not to Western Civilization and its consumerism of things and persons.
Said civilization's economy won't countenance further isolation before long, and maybe another Great Depression? Did such not eventually follow the Spanish flu epidemic? Our stock-markety Internet-gasoline-driven age will hasten the days.
Saint Augustine famously said every age considers its times unprecedentedly and unrepeatably evil (physical and moral). I must find the reference, as I advert to it often, but the cursory Googling mentions, self-helpily (and what else is Google?), that we are, or make, the times we live in.
The only problem is, there's too many to "we." We're not all alike, so it's hard to construe our condition confidently and concertedly. Sorry, the coffee has commandeered my consciousness.
While I'm at it, then, I will share a tidbit of the elder Father Z of the Internet, whose stalwart blog "What Does the Prayer Really Say" has gone on to say more than the prayers, if it ever so constricted itself.
This episode seized me because its title resonated with the direction I thought he'd be going, and sure enough, he lambasts the new formulary "in time of pandemic" for having said too much, [but not having] said enough. Not his words, though not mine either: it's the only R.E.M. song I ever think of.
Be thou warned: you'd better go to the bathroom before clicking.
In its 10-year-old attempts to tighten up the verbiage of the Ordinary Form of the Mass, the liturgical PTB ineluctably inject some of the same into newer collects, and this trend long pre-dates the 2011 editio typica tertia. The new wine of wordiness, and the old skins of syntax.
Speaking of wordiness (and that I do), how to strew the invisible palms of this weekend's webcasted worship ought to occupy me hereafter. We'll see, and hopefully, you'll see and hear.
+ + +
Because I am not of the "Leave Well-Enough Alone" style of resource management, I add a response from the Twitters to @teawithtolkien who is concerned about explaining the continuance of containment to her children without traumatizing them. @FrAndrewHart observed, "This is a good analogy for our bishops and some of the faithful right now ["hmmm face" emoji]."
My pesky irascible drive prompts sharp rebuke for those who smart over the current Liturgical and Sacramental drought. I pull back when I think of it in terms traumatic.
Everybody hurts, if I must retract my earlier statement regarding R.E.M., and everybody needs--deserves, regardless of appearance to eye or ear--some compassion, especially from those Jesus appointed as watchmen over the house of New Israel (cf. Ez 3:17ff).
Watchmen are lifeguards, and they need to put the mask on themselves before--admit it, while--affixing it to others.
*I say eisegetical ("reading into") because Saint John scarcely hints at sadness and uncertainty in his Gospel. Even on the Cross, Jesus is large and in-charge.
"With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well, so dearly beloved had you become to us" (1 Thess 2:8); or this blog's byline from the Sufferer: "Would that my words were written down" (Job 19:23).
Whether these candid admissions are prescriptive or descriptive elements of Scripture, they reveal the desire to reveal that God has installed in the heart of every person by dint of his or her unique creation in His Image, which is Heaven-bent on Self-Disclosure.
Another snippet of personal revelation occurs to me, from None Other than Our Lord Himself. How much of an eisegetical stretch is it to hear a tinge of sadness* in His Sacred Voice (≠ disappointment, as if He didn't expect it) when people backed away from Him at the mountain of John 6:
Numquid et vos vultis abire? Certainly you also don't want to go away?
A brief review of Latin interrogative conjunctions suggests the expected answer to numquid? (elision of nunc quid--"now what?") is negative. "No, Lord, we don't want to leave"--whence Simon Peter's confession:
Domine, ad quem ibimus? Lord, to whom shall we go?
We can't readily dismiss Peter's prophetic pence as pietistic. "We have, not even as a matter of choice, nowhere else to go for what You are and have and give." The words of eternal life, the real-food Flesh and real-drink Blood--it's a Jesus of Nazareth Exclusive, the only Public House in town.
Wherefore the denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance that, vapor-like, haunts the airwaves as Holy Week approaches without the offering of public Liturgy. The stage (or better, dimension) I read of most, because the Online is nothing if not a vent, is anger:
This is unacceptable, criminal, cowardly...exhibitionist!
I know that Mind-Reader isn't one of the minor orders en route to ordination. I'm reading exhibitionism into the sentiments expressed passim. 'Splain yourself, Lucy--so that your name, which means "light," might make things plain. Such is always my Desire. And I have a Ball with it.
While we're out here suffering without the Rations we need (not "deserve," we daren't say that), you're showing off your 24/7 Eucharistic access with your sloppy Novus Ordo Masses and homiletic cliches to beat the band--and that's just what they do: beat this band of banned Catholics into a condition unrecognizable.Dramatic much? I have a history of it.
Sed contra:
By Christ's own Do-This, His Holy Sacrifice--Passover Renewed--is to be offered as the clearest expression of His ongoing Presence "until the end of the age" (Mt 28:20), for it encapsulates the Redeemer's Priestly, Prophetic, and Kingly service to a †.
Whether all the world gather for a Mass in one space or the priest alone celebrate it, everyone is present to Christ, Who is here-and-now submitting everyone to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. He re-presents that one, total, faithful, permanent, exclusive, and fruitful offering each time.
Far from dismissing the directive to "go (Ite), make disciples of all the nations," this truth reinforces evangelical efforts. It commands everyone to live the Gospel as loudly as your volume goes. 11: looks like two towers, two swords, two books (Covenants Old and New) not meant for a shelf.
The more I read reports (whatever for?) the more I suspect COVID-19 will re-surface in waves, and not disappear in such a way that justifies the wholesale return to civilization--certainly not to Western Civilization and its consumerism of things and persons.
Said civilization's economy won't countenance further isolation before long, and maybe another Great Depression? Did such not eventually follow the Spanish flu epidemic? Our stock-markety Internet-gasoline-driven age will hasten the days.
Saint Augustine famously said every age considers its times unprecedentedly and unrepeatably evil (physical and moral). I must find the reference, as I advert to it often, but the cursory Googling mentions, self-helpily (and what else is Google?), that we are, or make, the times we live in.
The only problem is, there's too many to "we." We're not all alike, so it's hard to construe our condition confidently and concertedly. Sorry, the coffee has commandeered my consciousness.
While I'm at it, then, I will share a tidbit of the elder Father Z of the Internet, whose stalwart blog "What Does the Prayer Really Say" has gone on to say more than the prayers, if it ever so constricted itself.
This episode seized me because its title resonated with the direction I thought he'd be going, and sure enough, he lambasts the new formulary "in time of pandemic" for having said too much, [but not having] said enough. Not his words, though not mine either: it's the only R.E.M. song I ever think of.
Be thou warned: you'd better go to the bathroom before clicking.
In its 10-year-old attempts to tighten up the verbiage of the Ordinary Form of the Mass, the liturgical PTB ineluctably inject some of the same into newer collects, and this trend long pre-dates the 2011 editio typica tertia. The new wine of wordiness, and the old skins of syntax.
Speaking of wordiness (and that I do), how to strew the invisible palms of this weekend's webcasted worship ought to occupy me hereafter. We'll see, and hopefully, you'll see and hear.
+ + +
Because I am not of the "Leave Well-Enough Alone" style of resource management, I add a response from the Twitters to @teawithtolkien who is concerned about explaining the continuance of containment to her children without traumatizing them. @FrAndrewHart observed, "This is a good analogy for our bishops and some of the faithful right now ["hmmm face" emoji]."
My pesky irascible drive prompts sharp rebuke for those who smart over the current Liturgical and Sacramental drought. I pull back when I think of it in terms traumatic.
Everybody hurts, if I must retract my earlier statement regarding R.E.M., and everybody needs--deserves, regardless of appearance to eye or ear--some compassion, especially from those Jesus appointed as watchmen over the house of New Israel (cf. Ez 3:17ff).
Watchmen are lifeguards, and they need to put the mask on themselves before--admit it, while--affixing it to others.
*I say eisegetical ("reading into") because Saint John scarcely hints at sadness and uncertainty in his Gospel. Even on the Cross, Jesus is large and in-charge.
Containment Considerations, Parta Quarta
The Merriam-Webster dictionary app provided me the definition of vapor, which is as multifaceted as many other words. I know it is trite to begin a talk with a dictionary definition, so maybe I can weave it throughout this reflection, where the dictionary entry will appear in quotes.
The act of ingesting nicotine is perhaps the most recent version of vapor. Like the cloud of tobacco smoke it means to replace, vaping spreads through the air and “impair[s] transparency.”
According to Qoheleth, “something unsubstantial or transitory” describes all things, which he summarizes as hevel hevelim, a chase after wind. For him, a belief in the hereafter culminates in the earthly delights he is here after, and get ‘em while you can.
The most curious dictionary entry, employing the plural form, is an archaic one: “Exhalations of bodily organs (such as the stomach) held to affect the physical or mental condition”; alternately, “a depressed or hysterical nervous condition.”
It’s as if our physical maladies had a spiritual dimension to them, and our emotional ones too.
This “novel” coronavirus (as if there were anything new under the sun): from the outset I was intrigued by the appearance of corona, the Latin word for “crown” that I recall in Revelation 2:10: Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life (esto fidelis usque ad mortem, et dabo tibi coronam vitae).
I don’t much concern myself with the peculiar details of the last book of the Bible, preferring a broader perspective: it is bookended by Genesis, suggesting that the first and the last contain significance for everything in between. The primeval preface of Genesis’ first eleven chapters has a super-historical quality to it, as does the entirety of Revelation, a declaration of Christ’s triumph over the Ancient Oppressor.
Rev 2:10 has a way of summarizing the upshot of the whole book. Through all these tribulations, be faithful... Trials are hevel hevelim, the vapor of vapors. They seem and are very real, but their potency (Latin vis, whence “viral”) is limited. They are, finally, “blustering, or idle talk.”
Anyhow, the “corona” component of the virus has to do with the corona, or halo, that appears around each molecule.
The act of ingesting nicotine is perhaps the most recent version of vapor. Like the cloud of tobacco smoke it means to replace, vaping spreads through the air and “impair[s] transparency.”
According to Qoheleth, “something unsubstantial or transitory” describes all things, which he summarizes as hevel hevelim, a chase after wind. For him, a belief in the hereafter culminates in the earthly delights he is here after, and get ‘em while you can.
The most curious dictionary entry, employing the plural form, is an archaic one: “Exhalations of bodily organs (such as the stomach) held to affect the physical or mental condition”; alternately, “a depressed or hysterical nervous condition.”
It’s as if our physical maladies had a spiritual dimension to them, and our emotional ones too.
This “novel” coronavirus (as if there were anything new under the sun): from the outset I was intrigued by the appearance of corona, the Latin word for “crown” that I recall in Revelation 2:10: Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life (esto fidelis usque ad mortem, et dabo tibi coronam vitae).
I don’t much concern myself with the peculiar details of the last book of the Bible, preferring a broader perspective: it is bookended by Genesis, suggesting that the first and the last contain significance for everything in between. The primeval preface of Genesis’ first eleven chapters has a super-historical quality to it, as does the entirety of Revelation, a declaration of Christ’s triumph over the Ancient Oppressor.
Rev 2:10 has a way of summarizing the upshot of the whole book. Through all these tribulations, be faithful... Trials are hevel hevelim, the vapor of vapors. They seem and are very real, but their potency (Latin vis, whence “viral”) is limited. They are, finally, “blustering, or idle talk.”
Anyhow, the “corona” component of the virus has to do with the corona, or halo, that appears around each molecule.
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