Wassail Wassail Mannheim Steamroller

1. Wassail! wassail! all over the town,
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown;
Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree;
With the wassailing bowl¹, we'll drink to thee.²

2. Here's to our horse, and to his right ear,
God send our master a happy new year:
A happy new year as e'er he did see,
With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.

3. So here is to Cherry and to his right cheek
Pray God send our master a good piece of beef
And a good piece of beef that may we all see
With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee.

4. Here's to our mare, and to her right eye,
God send our mistress a good Christmas pie;
A good Christmas pie as e'er I did see,
With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.³

5. So here is to Broad Mary and to her broad horn
May God send our master a good crop of corn
And a good crop of corn that may we all see
With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee.

6. And here is to Fillpail and to her left ear
Pray God send our master a happy New Year
And a happy New Year as e'er he did see
With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee.

7. Here's to our cow⁴, and to her long tail,
God send our master us never may fail
Of a cup of good beer⁵: I pray you draw near,
And our jolly wassail it's then you shall hear.

8. Come butler, come fill us a bowl of the best
Then we hope that your soul in heaven may rest
But if you do draw us a bowl of the small
Then down shall go butler, bowl and all.

9. Be here any maids? I suppose here be some;
Sure they will not let young men stand on the cold stone!
Sing hey O, maids! come trole back the pin,
And the fairest maid in the house let us all in.

10. Then here's to the maid in the lily white smock
Who tripped to the door and slipped back the lock
Who tripped to the door and pulled back the pin
For to let these jolly wassailers in.

THE BOAR´S HEAD / HERE WE COME A WASSAILING-Christmas Carol-Villancico

J.S. Bach - Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 - Part I 'For the First Day of Ch...

Today the Virgin Gives Birth... (Kontakion of the Nativity, Znamenny chant)

"Today the virgin gives birth to him who is above all being, and the earth offers a cave to him whom none can approach. Angels with shepherds give glory, and magi journey with a star. For to us, there has been born a little child, God before all ages."

Westminster Cathedral Choir - Music for Christmas(Palestrina)

Hodie Salvator apparuit;
hodie in terra canunt angeli,
lætantur archangeli;
hodie exsultant iusti, dicentes:
Gloria in excelsis Deo, alleluia.

Ave Maria I (Gregorian Chant) Chant group Psallentes in the context of t...

St. Nicholas of Myra

An Arabic Christmas Carol (Byzantine Hymn of the Nativity)

Westminster Cathedral Choir - Psalms

Bwv140 - Kantat - 01 - Koral - Wachet auf

Lo! He Comes With Clouds Descending

Veni Veni Emmanuel

Forty-Seven Years Ago Today

President John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley died on the same day, the assassination of the former overshadowing the other two.

On Creation and the Music of the Spheres

God created the heavens and the earth, but not only half-He created all the heavens and all the earth, creating the essence with the form. For he is not an inventor of figures, but the creator even of the essence of beings.-St. Basil of Caesarea, The Hexameron


But the soul receives the sweetest harmonies and numbers through the ears, and by these echoes is reminded and aroused to the divine music which may be heard by the more subtle and penetrating sense of mind. According to the followers of Plato, divine music is twofold. One kind, they say, exists entirely in the eternal mind of God. The second is in the motions and order of the heavens, by which the heavenly spheres and their orbits make a marvellous harmony. In both of these our soul took part before it was imprisoned in our bodies. But it uses the ears as messengers, as though they were chinks in this darkness. By the ears, as I have already said, the soul receives the echoes of that incomparable music, by which it is led back to the deep and silent memory of the harmony which it previously enjoyed. The whole soul then kindles with desire to fly back to (Fruatur, ad sedes) its rightful home, so that it may enjoy that true music again.-Marsilio Ficino, De divino furore (On Divine Frenzy)

St. Martin of Tours

 
Image credit



On this Armistice Day, we honour a saint who had been a soldier of the Roman Army, and whose life gained greater fame as Christ's soldier, as a missionary bishop in a hostile Gallic land.


O man of worth past telling, whom labour could not conquer, nor death discomfit; who neither feared to die, nor refused to live. -Third Antiphon for Lauds for the Feast of St. Martin of Tours, from the Monastic Diurnal

Here's his vita from The Golden Legend

Attack Ads Ca. 1800

Hat tip: John Beeler

The Late, Great Sobran on Patriotism vs. Nationalism

from The Western Confucian


 The Late Joseph Sobran hits the mark on an issue I have written about before. Here it is, in his own words:

Patriotism is like family love. You love your family just for being your family, not for being “the greatest family on earth” (whatever that might mean) or for being “better” than other families. You don’t feel threatened when other people love their families the same way. On the contrary, you respect their love, and you take comfort in knowing they respect yours. You don’t feel your family is enhanced by feuding with other families.

While patriotism is a form of affection, nationalism, it has often been said, is grounded in resentment and rivalry; it’s often defined by its enemies and traitors, real or supposed. It is militant by nature, and its typical style is belligerent. Patriotism, by contrast, is peaceful until forced to fight.

The patriot differs from the nationalist in this respect too: he can laugh at his country, the way members of a family can laugh at each other’s foibles. Affection takes for granted the imperfection of those it loves; the patriotic Irishman thinks Ireland is hilarious, whereas the Irish nationalist sees nothing to laugh about.

The nationalist has to prove his country is always right. He reduces his country to an idea, a perfect abstraction, rather than a mere home. He may even find the patriot’s irreverent humor annoying.
                                                                                                           

All Saints Day

An old article by Huw Raphael

IZ THAT Time of the year again when many folks will gang up on – really – those who let their kids dress up silly on 31 October. We will be bombarded with bad history and bad social science and bad theology. I won’t even bother to link to the most common Christian “proof sheet” that takes the Irish name of the holiday (Samhain) and makes it into a god’s name – a god to whom human sacrifices were offered. This deity never existed. Samhain is simply Irish gaelic meaning “End of Summer”. It is still the name of the Month of November in the Irish language. I will also not bother to link to sources produced by Modern Neopagans who get their history all wrong, too. This holiday was not stolen by the Church from them. Firstly because their patterns are modern – based on a Christian culture – so their patterns are not the “real, ancient practice” of any people. Secondly because their ancient feasts were not celebrated on fixed calendars. After ten-plus years as a pagan and twenty plus years as a Christian I’m just annoyed by all the politically-biased claims out there. Maybe some totally non-caustic and totally non-National Enquirer-worthy research and experience can add a little leaven to the discussion (doubt it).

Read the rest here.

Barbara Billingsley, +Requiescat in Pace

The Beaver's mother passed last Friday. +May her memory be eternal!!!

Here's a clip from the comedic film "Airplane" (1980), where she is...well...talking jive:



Impressive! I must say I only talk jive in Latin.

+May she rest in peace!

Hat tip: John Beeler

"Kids Today": Gavin McInnes on Today's Youth culture and Boomer Hypocrisy

From Taki's Mag

I have always been a bit of a "fogey": from my late teens to about 35 I could qualify as a "young fogey," and now that I'm settling into middle-age fogeyhood, it won't be long before the adjetive "old" will apply. The common denominator, of course, is "fogey."

My taste in clothing has always ranged between 1925 and 1960. I prefer wearing fedoras and donegals depending on what suit or tweed coat I'm wearing, and my "casual" clothes are casual by 1945-1955 standards: button-down shirts, sweaters (depending on the weather), . My taste in music ranges between Gregorian and Byzantine/Slavic chant and Renaissance sacred polyphony, to Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn, with a good rendezvous through the Big Bands: Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington. I also have a good, soft spot for Cole Porter.

But I also have some interest in what my students are up to. My students tend to be conservative, but by far not unaffected by contemporary youth culture (college coeds all) and articles like this one by Gavin McInnes peak my interest.

For the most part, he is spot-on. Many Boomer "critics" of modern youth culture complain about how "kids today" are so "materialistic" and "culturally void," but in reality they're just pursuing the same things they did: sex, more sex, some drugs, more sex, music, sex, music, more music, and then more sex. They are about what youth movements since the sixties have always been about.

This gem is my favorite from Mr. McInnes' article. He, as a participant in a panel discussion at UCLA on youth culture, tears into Professor Corey's own presentation, "The History of Cool," where she talks about the "White Negro," "Bourgeois" appropration of  lower class culture, and how youth culture has (again, bourgeois in it's essence" has always been stealing from the poor. Here's where he let's her have it:

"I interrupted her by asking if there was anything more bourgeois than being a professor—being paid to pontificate about leisure movements and then taking off every seventh year to go ruminate in Paris. Hearing today’s kids called mindless consumers drives me nuts. They get their clothes at secondhand shops, and the ones they do buy have fewer logos than when I was their age. They don’t buy music. They steal it. They can create their own band out of nothing by mixing samples and genres and new instruments, and they get these songs to their fans without a record label. They’re not stealing anything from blacks. They are black. Mailer’s essay is a half-century old, and today’s incarnation of cool is more inclusive than any before it. We all know how misogynist the hippies really were. The Free Love movement was only a groovy way to take advantage of women. Punk pretended to be open to everyone, but an Afro Mohawk was about as common as a well-respected white rapper. Today’s kids couldn’t care less who’s black, gay, rich, or poor.

Spot on, indeed!

Read the whole article here.

Thomas and Mencius on "Unintended Consequences"

The ethical problem posed by the spur and the fat man.

Thomas Aquinas and Mencius on unintended consequences and "collateral damage."


Read the whole article here

Hat tip: The Western Confucian

The Legacy of Joseph Sobran, Heir to Russell Kirk

New blog: The Rambling Medievalist

I have created a new blog, where many of my thoughts on medieval studies will be presented in rough form and will be developed for publication. My first post is from an abstract of my dissertation.

Here is the link: gregoriusmagnus.blogspot.com.

The text as performance

From Arturo Vasquez's blog:

Jorge Luis Borges, in his short essay, El culto del libro , writes that a watershed moment in the history of human thought is when St. Augustine found that St. Ambrose could read a text without moving his lips or reading aloud. Being a man of the world, one could only assume that St. Augustine found this to be an unusual skill. But to be mentioned in St. Augustine’s Confessions, it has to be more significant than just a cheap parlor trick. Borges explains:

Aquel hombre pasaba directamente del signo de escritura a la intuición, omitiendo el signo sonoro; el extraño arte que iniciaba, el arte de leer en voz baja, conduciría a consecuencias maravillosas. Conduciría, cumplidos muchos años, al concepto del libro como fin, no como instrumento de un fin.

(That man passed directly from the written sign to the intuition, omitting the audible sign; the strange art that it initiated, the art of reading to oneself, would lead to marvelous consequences. It would lead, after many years, to the concept of the book as an end, and not a means to an end.)

Read the rest here.

Vincent Price on Racial and Religious Prejudice

Not PC, just good common sense and decency from an American actor who was a class act.

Hat tip: John Beeler

Per Signum Crucis

Per signum crucis de inimicis nostris libera nos, Domine!

We praise the, O Lord, and we bless thee, for by thy Holy Cross thou hast redeemed the world!

Mark Shea: "The Economy is so bad that..."

From Mark Shea's blog

The economy is really bad!

How bad is it, Lou?

It's so bad that....

I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

I ordered a burger at McDonald's, and the kid behind the counter asked, "Can you afford fries with that?"

CEO's are now playing miniature golf.

If the bank returns your check marked "Insufficient Funds," you have to call them and ask if they mean you or them .

Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.

McDonald's is selling the 1/4 'ouncer'.

For more gems, read here.

Claus Philipp Maria Justinian Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, Hitler's Would-Be Assasin. RIP.

Image credit

Sixty-three years ago yesterday, this man, along with two other German army officers, Henning von Treskow and Hans Oster, attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler and the High Command of the Wehrmacht and remove the Nazis from power. He and his cohorts, Catholic aristocrats and lovers of their land, desired to save Germany from the devastating war Hitler had doomed the nation into, and saw it as their duty to bring this murderous regime to an end. They almost succeeded.

The plan was to have Colonel von Stauffenberg, chief of the army reserve, to plant a suitcase with a bomb inside at Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair), five miles east of the East Prussian town Rastenberg (now Kertzyn, Poland), one of Hitler's many command posts. Once the bomb would have done its work in desposing of Hitler, Operation Valkyrie would be put into action: overthrow the central government in Berlin, and make peace with the Allies. The conspirators had an inside man in Berlin-General Olbricht-who would coordinate the operations in the top command.

All went awry, when the suitcase was removed several feet away from Hitler. It went off, but Hitler suffered minor injuries. In the meantime, von Stauffenberg was on his way to Berlin to carry out Operation Valkyrie, and he and General Olbricht arrested some top officials, inlcuding General Fromm, commander of the reserves, until word came back to them that Hitler was alive. Fromm was released, with the understanding he would support the conspiracy, but in the end, he turned on them. Staufenberg and Olbricht were shot the next day, Oster and Treskow were arrested and executed the following week, along with seven-thousand Germans suspected of conspiracy to assassinate Hitler (including German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel).

The plot failed, but the name of Claus von Stauffenberg is perhaps the most beloved and revered name in Germany, giving proof to many Germans that even in that darkest hour of their history, chivalry, honor and goodness were not lacking.

May Claus von Stauffenberg's memory be eternal! May God grant him rest eternal.

And may He also grant rest to his co-conspirators, Hening von Treskow and Hans Oster, as well as to Pastor Bonhoeffer and Field Marshal Rommel, and to all Germans of good will who died wanting to save their nation from a fiendish and monstrous regime.

Tsar Nicholas II

July 17, 1918. 92 years ago, a horrific crime was committed in the central Russian city of Yekaterinburg, in a house called the Ipatiev House. A man was brutally shot along with his whole family- wife, four daughters, and a son-shot dead by men who were self-styled "lovers of humanity". With Tsar Nicholas II, the rule of the Romanovs came to a violent and brutal end.

His abdication a year prior was greeted with joy by liberals and socialists in France, Britain and the United States. President Wilson felt that with the removal of the Tsar, the world was that much closer to being made "safe for democracy." What resulted? 70 years of the most brutal tyranny the world had ever witnessed. In Central Europe, the eradication of the Habsburg and Hohenzollern monarchies resulted in the rise of National Socialism. So much for making the world "safe for democracy."

No, he was not a perfect ruler. He had some black marls against him in terms of his political career, to be sure, but one thing is very certain: he loved his people, and his abdication showed how far he was willing to go to make sure his people didn't suffer from the ravages of civil war.

May their prayers in heaven, and those of all the New Martyrs of Russia, win for the Russian people peace, prosperity, and most importantly, a new zeal for the faith of their ancestors!

Bastile Day is Bunk

Read Article here

From TakiMag.com


Image Credit



It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like the morning star full of life and splendor and joy. 0h, what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor, and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone. It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.”-Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

The Aunt from Chicago

Greek comedy, ca. 1957, about a middle-aged man with four daughters, whose conservative life is disrupted by his sister, who visits from Chicago, and has some zany ideas about how to get her nieces married. Clue: clay jars. In Greek with no subtitles, but I think you'll get the gist of what's going on.

St. John the Baptist: Last of the Old Testament Prophets

A Sermon by St. Augustine of Hippo:

The Church observes the birth of John as in some way sacred; and you will not find any other of the great men of old whose birth we celebrate officially. We celebrate John’s, as we celebrate Christ’s. This point cannot be passed over in silence, and if I may not perhaps be able to explain it in the way that such an important matter deserves, it is still worth thinking about it a little more deeply and fruitfully than usual.

John is born of an old woman who is barren; Christ is born of a young woman who is a virgin. That John will be born is not believed, and his father is struck dumb; that Christ will be born is believed, and he is conceived by faith.

I have proposed some matters for inquiry, and listed in advance some things that need to be discussed. I have introduced these points even if we are not up to examining all the twists and turns of such a great mystery, either for lack of capacity or for lack of time. You will be taught much better by the one who speaks in you even when I am not here; the one about whom you think loving thoughts, the one whom you have taken into your hearts and whose temple you have become.

John, it seems, has been inserted as a kind of boundary between the two Testaments, the Old and the New. That he is somehow or other a boundary is something that the Lord himself indicates when he says, The Law and the prophets were until John. So he represents the old and heralds the new. Because he represents the old, he is born of an elderly couple; because he represents the new, he is revealed as a prophet in his mother’s womb. You will remember that, before he was born, at Mary’s arrival he leapt in his mother’s womb. Already he had been marked out there, designated before he was born; it was already shown whose forerunner he would be, even before he saw him. These are divine matters, and exceed the measure of human frailty. Finally, he is born, he receives a name, and his father’s tongue is loosed.

Zachary is struck dumb and loses his voice, until John, the Lord’s forerunner, is born and releases his voice for him. What does Zachary’s silence mean, but that prophecy was obscure and, before the proclamation of Christ, somehow concealed and shut up? It is released and opened up by his arrival, it becomes clear when the one who was being prophesied is about to come. The releasing of Zachary’s voice at the birth of John has the same significance as the tearing of the veil of the Temple at the crucifixion of Christ. If John were meant to proclaim himself, he would not be opening Zachary’s mouth. The tongue is released because a voice is being born – for when John was already heralding the Lord, he was asked, Who are you and he replied I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

John is the voice, but the Lord in the beginning was the Word. John is a voice for a time, but Christ is the eternal Word from the beginning.

Oldest Images of Christ's Apostles Found in Rome

Image credit

Art restorers in Italy have discovered what are believed to be the oldest paintings of some of Jesus Christ's apostles.

Read it here

Archbishop Chrysostomos of Cyprus' Address to Pope Benedict XVI

“It Is Here … That the Christian Roots of Europe Took Seed”

PAPHOS, Cyprus, JUNE 4, 2010 (Zenit.org) – Here is the address delivered today by the Cypriot Orthodox Archbishop Chrysostomos II during an ecumenical celebration at the archeological area of the Church of Agia Kiriaki Chrysopolitiss. [emphasis added]

* * *

Your Holiness, Pope Benedict of old Rome, welcome to the Island of Saints and Martyrs!

Welcome to the first Church of the Nations, founded by the Apostles Barnabas, Paul and Mark!

Welcome to the Church of the Apostles, after the establishment of which the Holy Spirit led the Apostles to separate themselves from their brethren and sent them towards the Nations!

“So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. When they arrived at Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews … they had gone through the island to Paphos” (Acts 13:4-6).

In this very spot, your Holiness, stood the synagogue of the Jews and from this place St Barnabas and St Paul preached the word of God to the Jews.

“But the word of God is not chained” (2 Timothy 2:9). It could not have been possible for the Spirit of Love of the Incarnate, Crucified and Resurrected Lord to remain restricted among the Jews. Jesus Christ came to the world “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:15).

The commandment of the Holy Ghost was for them to preach to the Nations. Thus, when the Roman deputy, Sergius Paulus, “a prudent man” according to St. Luke, invited the Apostles “to hear the word of God” (Acts 13:7) they gladly went forth to the place where the political administration of the island was based in order to preach the word of the Lord for the first time among the Gentiles also.

At this point, “Barnabas and Paul exchanged their roles. Here was a place not for the Cypriot, but the Roman citizen”.

As of that moment Paul became the leader of the mission. He also changed his name. From this moment on he was no longer called Saul in the New Testament, but Paul!

It was in this town that the first miracle of the Apostles was performed, as recorded in the New Testament. It was here that the first European citizen was baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity. It was here that the first official citadel of idolatry fell and in its place the glory of the Cross was raised in all its splendor, and would gradually spread to cover the whole of Europe and shape its historical future.

It is here, your Holiness, that the Christian roots of Europe took seed and from here its spiritual shoots first burst forth. The foundations of the edifice of Christian civilization in Europe were laid on this very spot where we now stand, deeply moved by the sense of history. It is for this reason that Cyprus is justly called “the Gate of Christianity in Europe”.

Here in Paphos, after the wondrous events that took place, Paul became established as the Apostle to the Nations, and went on to sow the seeds of the bread of life in your own cathedra and throughout the whole of Europe.

Your Holiness,

Since 45 AD when the Apostles first set their foot upon this island until the present day, the Church of Cyprus has had a long and fruitful Christian course. Throughout its long progress it has endured numerous troubles and difficulties, lived through dark nights, experienced many conquests, gone ‘through fire and water’, but guided always by the Holy Spirit, not only did it survive, but it continues to give its Orthodox Christian Testimony, and to fulfill its God-given mission.

But, alas, since 1974, Cyprus and its Church have been experiencing the most difficult times in their history.

Turkey, which attacked us barbarously and, with the power of its arms, occupied 37% of our territory, is proceeding — with the tolerance of the so-called ‘civilized’ world — to implement its unholy plans, first to annex our occupied territories and then the whole of Cyprus.

In the case of our island, as it has done elsewhere, Turkey has implemented a plan of ethnic cleansing. It drove out the Orthodox Christians from their ancestral homes and brought — and continues to bring — hundreds of thousands of settlers from Anatolia, thus altering the demographic character of Cyprus. In addition, it has changed all the historical place names into Turkish ones.

Our cultural heritage has been plundered relentlessly and our Christian monuments are being destroyed or sold on the markets of illicit dealers in antiquities, in an attempt to rid the island of every last trace of all that is Greek or Christian.

We hope that in this terrible ordeal, which has caused so much agony to the Christian congregation of our Church since 1974, the Good and All-Merciful Lord will not turn His face from our suffering people, but will grant us Peace, Freedom, and Justice, thus granting to us the all-fulfilling love given by His presence in our hearts.

In this struggle of ours, Your Holiness, which the Cypriot people are waging with the guidance of their Leaders, we would greatly appreciate your active support. We look forward to your help in order to ensure protection and respect for our sacred monuments and our cultural heritage, in order that the diachronic values of our Christian spirit might prevail. These values are currently being brutally violated by Turkey — a country desirous of joining the European Union.

Your Holiness,

In this joyful moment of your presence among us together with your retinue, we, the President of the Republic, the Government, the Holy Synod, the pious congregation of our Church, and I personally, would like once again to address to you a heartfelt welcome and wish you a pleasant stay.

+Chrysostomos Archbishop of Cyprus

Holy Archbishopric of Cyprus

4 June 2010

Biretta tip: Eirenikon

Ron Paul on "Why Governments Hate Gold"

Dr. Paul on how it is that Greek-style debt explosions spread to other nations, and what is at the root of falling currencies, massive debt and out-of-control inflation: fiat currencies that have no value, but we keep performing the ultimate alchemy: printing more paper money, based on...nothing!

As governments and central banks continue the cycle of spending and inflating, the purchasing power of their currencies is constantly being degraded. These currencies are what the people are working for and saving. This inflation guts the savings and earnings of the people, who have very limited options for protecting themselves against these ravages. One option is to convert their fiat currency into something out of reach of central banks and government spending, such as gold or silver.

Read the whole article here.

St. Conleth Blog

for readers interested in efforts in Ireland to preserve the ancient liturgy, I am happy to offer St. Conleth's Catholic Heritage Association blog. You will find links to articles from the Christus Regnat journal. Definitely worth a visit.

Meltup: the movie

This is not fiction, ladies and gentlemen!



After that, this:



Fasten your seat belts, ladies and gentlemen! After the meltup, it's certainly going to be a bumpy night for the world economy. Fiat money, higher debt to savings ratios, etc., and things will indeed come to this.

Lauda Sion

Sion, lift up thy voice and sing:

Praise thy Savior and thy King,

Praise with hymns thy shepherd true.

All thou canst, do thou endeavour:

Yet thy praise can equal never

Such as merits thy great King.

See today before us laid

The living and life-giving Bread,

Theme for praise and joy profound.

The same which at the sacred board

Was, by our incarnate Lord,

Giv'n to His Apostles round.

Let the praise be loud and high:

Sweet and tranquil be the joy

Felt today in every breast.

On this festival divine

Which records the origin

Of the glorious Eucharist.

On this table of the King,

Our new Paschal offering

Brings to end the olden rite.

Here, for empty shadows fled,

Is reality instead,

Here, instead of darkness, light.

His own act, at supper seated

Christ ordain'd to be repeated

In His memory divine;

Wherefore now, with adoration,

We, the host of our salvation,

Consecrate from bread and wine.

Hear, what holy Church maintaineth,

That the bread its substance changeth

Into Flesh, the wine to Blood.

Doth it pass thy comprehending?

Faith, the law of sight transcending

Leaps to things not understood.

Here beneath these signs are hidden

Priceless things, to sense forbidden,

Signs, not things, are all we see.

Flesh from bread, and Blood from wine,

Yet is Christ in either sign,

All entire, confessed to be.

They, who of Him here partake,

Sever not, nor rend, nor break:

But, entire, their Lord receive.

Whether one or thousands eat:

All receive the self-same meat:

Nor the less for others leave.

Both the wicked and the good

Eat of this celestial Food:

But with ends how opposite!

Here 't is life: and there 't is death:

The same, yet issuing to each

In a difference infinite.

Nor a single doubt retain,

When they break the Host in twain,

But that in each part remains

What was in the whole before.

Since the simple sign alone

Suffers change in state or form:

The signified remaining one

And the same for evermore.

Lo! bread of the Angels broken,

For us pilgrims food, and token

Of the promise by Christ spoken,

Children’s meat, to dogs denied.

Shewn in Isaac's dedication,

In the manna's preparation:

In the Paschal immolation,

In old types pre-signified.

Jesu, shepherd of the sheep:

Thou thy flock in safety keep,

Living bread, thy life supply:

Strengthen us, or else we die,

Fill us with celestial grace.

Thou, who feedest us below:

Source of all we have or know:

Grant that with Thy Saints above,

Sitting at the feast of love,

We may see Thee face to face.

Amen. Alleluia.

O Salutaris Hostia: A Happy Feast of Corpus Christi

To all my fellow Western Orthodox, who celebrate this feast, as well as to all my Roman Catholicand Anglo-Catholic friends: A Happy Feast to all!

O saving Victim, opening wide

The gate of Heaven to us below;

Our foes press hard on every side;

Your aid supply; Your strength bestow.

To your great name be endless praise,

Immortal Godhead, One in Three.

O grant us endless length of days,

In our true native land with thee.

Amen.

Greece Urged to Give Up the Euro

If this happens, Greece would be the first in the many unravelings of the EU. Should Greece return to the Drachma, my only concern is that she do so by pegging its value not against any other paper currency, but against gold or silver.

Read the story here.

Hat tip: The Young Fogey

Arturo Vasquez on Lady Gaga, David Mills, and Being Played by the Culture Wars

Arturo weighs in on David Mills' article:

To get straight to the point: I think that, in a way, Mills and Co. commit the same errors that they accuse Lady Gaga and Co. of committing. The real ground of all religion in the modern world is cosmological agnosticism. The “spiritual not religious” crowd pretends to know nothing of God so that they can do whatever they want. The “orthodox religious” crowd pretends to know God so well that they can employ him for any agenda that is in their interest, all under the pretension that it is not their will, but God‘s. In either case, God is a puppet; he is a Caspar the Friendly Ghost-character who fulfils their true desires and makes them feel good about themselves.

Again, my study of “folk” Catholicism is very illuminating in terms of the issues involved here. Mills’ God is primarily a moral being: one who maintains societal order for the benefit of decency. In the more common, simple Catholic mind, God’s intervention in daily life was far less moralistic. People had needs and wants, and God could either grant or deny the satisfaction of these. If you ask God or a saint for something, you should pay them back or suffer the consequences. And of course, if you need something morally ambiguous, there were saints and prayers for those things as well.

In other words, a Catholic peasant a hundred years ago would never say that he was “spiritual but not religious”, but that did not make him a foot solider in a culture war either. He employed officially approved methods of interaction with the Divine as well as things that were off the beaten path. Within the context of societal propriety, he picked and chose what he believed just as much as any modern person. The institution does not completely govern the soul of any individual. People have always taken what they need from it, and left aside those things that they don’t need. The idea of a mass militant populace of “well-catechized” Catholics is a peculiarly American one, probably passed down to us from the Irish. For further reading, one should consult such books as The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller by Carlo Ginzburg to really find out the crazy things “average” Catholics believed.

Read the whole article here.

"Spiritual but not religious"

Rod Dreher addresses the big scam of the 21st century: "Spiritual but not religious."

Quoting David Mills:
It's one of those easily remembered phrases that work like a "get out of jail free" card for anyone who feels he has to explain his lack of religious practice, and as a claim to superiority for those who care about being superior to those who practice an established religion. It's the religious equivalent of "I gave at the office" or "There's a call on the other line" or "I don't eat meat."

And so it goes..."materialism in a tuxedo."

Read the whole article here.

I would post a picture of "Lady Gaga", cited in the article as the latest porn-pop-princess giving this profound spiritual self-revelation, but I'm afraid doing so would put me in trouble with my Christian university's web censors, thus giving them the wrong impression.

More on Sterligov

Former Russian tycoon finds a better life, and in the process, finds a better way out of the global economic crisis: bartering, and the gold standard.

It's not all "Greek" to Ron Paul

It's a currency issue, as Ron Paul schools the masses.

German Sterligov Schools the Masses on the Gold Standard

The "Virtues" of the Internet: Think Again

Evgeny Morozov says:

They told us it would usher in a new era of freedom, political activism, and perpetual peace. They were wrong.

"Et in Arcadia ego." Sin and death follow all of our best endeavors.

Read article here.

Hat tip: The Young Fogey

Presidentialising the Prime Minister

From Taki's Magazine

The PM’s job was long more human-scale job than the president’s, less insulated from normal life by security and by deference (which in Britain was paid instead to the Queen as head of state). For example, when I attended a conference with ex-PM Margaret Thatcher in 1999, she showed up accompanied only by a secretary and a bodyguard, wearing an old dress that had been mended with needle and thread. Tony Blair and his money-hungry wife Cheri were the first to indulge fully American superstaritis.

Read the entire article here.

Hat Tip: The Young Fogey

Russell Kirk's Wariness of Neoconservatives

From The Heritage Foundation

In their publications, the Neoconservatives thrust upon us a great deal of useful information, and obviously are posse ssed of considerable knowledge of the world about us. But in the understanding of the human condition and in the apprehension of the accumulated wisdom of our civilization, they are painfully deficient.

Infatuation with Ideology. An instance of this lack of wisdom is the Neoconservatives' infatuation with ideology. Some of you ladies and gentlemen present here today may have heard some years ago my exchange, on this very platform, with Mr. Irving Kristol, concerning ideology. He and various of his colleag u es wish to persuade us to adopt an ideology of our own to set against Marxist and other totalist ideologies. Ideology, I venture to remind you, is political fanaticism: at best it is the substitution of slogans for real political thought. Ideology animate s, in George Orwell's phrase, "the streamlined men who think in slogans and talk in bullets."

Read the entire article here.

Democracy and Universalism

Article by Fjordman, in The Brussels Journal: The Voice of Conservatism in Europe

Not only did Bush perceive his country to be a “democracy,” despite the fact that it was founded as a Constitutional Republic; he perceived it as being “universal.” Every person on planet Earth from whatever cultural background can move to the United States and become an equal citizen. The USA is thus a “universal” nation, and its universal democracy should be exported to all countries around the world. This version of “universalism” would have been profoundly alien to the ancient Greeks, yet has become a prominent feature of the post-Enlightenment West. “We no longer consider any human action legitimate, or even intelligible,” wrote the French late twentieth century philosopher Pierre Manent, “unless it can be shown to be subject to some universal rule of law, or to some universal ethical principle.”

Where does this notion come from?

And the concept's connection to the Scientific Revolution?

Read the whole article here.

Hat tip: American Monarchist

Sonoma County's War against Voluntary Association and Property Rights

Two elderly gay men are forcefully separated by the Sonoma County authorities, and their property is auctioned off. Read the story here.

I take a traditional, biblical view about what constitutes marriage: a man and a woman in a covenantal union blessed by almighty God. Homosexual relationships fall short of this, and are sinful.

That being said, this is no grounds for taking away anyone's property! This is a clear attack on property rights and free association.

The Early Modern State, the Catholic Church, and the Sum of Disunities

This article by Arturo Vasquez reminds me of Nicholas Henshall's book, The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy, especially this passage: Only in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were legal customs written down, and even then there was no attempt at uniformity. In the eighteenth century Voltaire remarked that a traveller changed laws as often as he changed horses. (p. 8)

Up until the nineteenth century, people paid homage and loyalty to their towns, communities, their families, their regions or states, their lords and their kings, but hardly ever to their "country." This was especially true in the U.S., where, up until the Civil War, when men spoke of their "country," they were making reference to their state, not to the federal union.

Arturo's reflections here are especially worth pondering:

Modernity in its highest phase thus equals the death of the local. Local accents die, local foods die, local tales are cast into the oblivion of anthropological scholarship. They either die, or they are assimilated into the “national whole”, just as foods and language are changed to “fit into” the ethos of the dominant culture. (American “Italian” or “Chinese” food for example.) This is not so much a “tragic” thing, as an inevitable thing. I am not one to be reactionary for reaction’s sake, nor “localist” just for the sake of romanticist provincialism. After all, every time honored tradition is at bottom an adaptation of something else that has its origin in a not so pristine past.

But neither should we overlook the dangers of this drive to unify everything. Especially in our deepest philosophical and theological beliefs, we cannot disregard the fact that we function under a daily regime where difference is to be stamped out in the name of societal harmony. Even in the most “postmodern”, politically correct acceptances of “diversity”, there is a subtext of totalizing liberalism: it’s okay to be diverse, as long as you are diverse “like us”.

How do these reflections apply to the state of the Catholic Church today? Read the rest here

I leave it to my fellow Orthodox readers to draw conclusions about some attitudes concerning Western Orthodoxy for themselves.

Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia's Easter Message

Image credit

The great day of the Resurrection of Our Lord is upon us. The great day, that enlightened the world with joy and gave the purpose to our existence. The day above all days and the feast above all feasts. I am joined by my wife Crown Princess Katherine, sons Hereditary Prince Peter, Prince Philip and Prince Alexander in wishing that this Holy Day remind us that we are all God’s children and that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is a call to find within ourselves what is good, for our sake and for the sake of general salvation.

We pray to the Lord to give us strength and wisdom to overcome all pain and trouble. We pray that we will work together for the benefit of Serbia and everyone in our country for today’s and future generations. We pray that during these days, when the global economic crisis and various natural and human-inflicted disasters caused by negligence are threatening countries and nations all over the world, that people who are elected to govern will have the wisdom, strength and responsibility to envisage and implement measures of recovery, peace and progress during these difficult times that are upon us and that eventually await us in the future.

We pray to Lord Resurrected to bless and save our devastated compatriots in Kosovo and Metohija, and everywhere in the world where there is suffering, pain, injustice and violence.

Let Easter resurrect in us the noblest virtues that will make us endure as nation and as people. These are qualities of love for our neighbours, justice for every wrong, peace for the troubled, strength for the weak, help for the poor and needy, and unity to enable us to live and work together.

The resurrection of Jesus offers us a message of hope, love, and grace. Once again my wife and sons join me to extend our warmest wishes, and we do so in the very same spirit of Easter.

Christ is Risen!

Indeed, He is Risen!

ALEXANDER II

Government Health Insurance and Catholic Social Doctrine

Richard Aleman of The Distributist Review asks a key question: Is it a coincidence that, while critiquing largesse government, none of the bishops of these nations have ever objected to socialized medicine, which according to conservatives conflicts with the doctrine of the Church?

Read the whole article here.

On the Dangers of Unchecked Federal Power

From Ludwig von Mises Institute Blog

Abel Parker Upshaw (1790-1844) critiques Justice Joseph Story's Commentaries on the constitution of the United States and its support for expanded federal power. The expansion of federal power on the part of the Neo-Conservatives and the Liberal left has all but wiped out subsidiarity today, and Upshaw's warnings give us a sense of how we got to this point.

It is too late for the people of these States to indulge themselves in these undiscriminating eulogies of their Constitution. We have, indeed, every reason to admire and to love it, and to place it far above every other system, in all the essentials of good government. Still, it is far from being perfect, and we should be careful not to suffer our admiration of what is undoubtedly good in it, to make us blind to what is as undoubtedly evil.

When we consider the difficulties under which the convention labored, the great variety of interests and opinions which it was necessary for them to reconcile, it is matter of surprise that they should have framed a government so little liable to objection. But the government which they framed is not that which our author has portrayed. Even upon the guarded principles for which I have contended in this review, the action of the whole system tends too strongly towards consolidation.

Much of this tendency, it is true, might be corrected by ordinary legislation; but, even then, there would remain in the federal government an aggregate of powers which nothing but an enlightened and ever-vigilant public opinion could confine within safe limits. But if our author's principles be correct, if ours be, indeed, a consolidated and not a federative system, I, at least, have no praises to bestow on it. Monarchy in form, open and acknowledged, is infinitely preferable to monarchy in disguise.

Read the entire article here

St. Joseph, the Foster-Father of the God-Man

and the Blessed Virgin Mary's chaste spouse.

A faithful man shall abound with blessings, and he that waiteth on his Master shall be honoured.-Proverbs 28:20; 27:18, assigned for chapter reading for the first Vespers on the Feast of St. Joseph.

For my Italian brethren: Hope you had something good from the Tavola di San Giuseppe, paesani!

Image credit

The "Celtic Thing"

from The Young Fogey:

It’s linked to the long-standing English tendency to use the ‘Celtic fringe’ as sort of foil or mirror for their own society, sentimentalising or demonising it in the process. In the 19th century the supposedly poor, lazy Celts were the antithesis of modern industrial England. Now the supposedly spiritual, nature-loving Celts are the antithesis of modern, industrial England. What’s changed is how the English perceive themselves.

Call me an old cynic if you like, but I suspect that quite a lot of our modern ‘Celtic stuff’ would be dismissed as sentimental rubbish or dangerous syncretism if we were to preach it to a congregation of 5th-century Christians.

And as Serge is quick to remind us: "St. Patrick actually prayed in Latin." Which would be perfectly proper, given the fact that he was a ROMANIZED Briton. Patrick is actually a perfectly good Latin name. It was the name of St. Augustine's father: Patricius

A Sweet Invitation

Image Credit

After exhorting his monastic charges to "listen" and "arise" from spiritual slumber, St. Benedict continues along the same train of thought to include a solemn invitation to holiness in the form of a kind of scriptural "dialogue." The Lord seeks his workmen and, crying out, poses the quintessential question in this section of the prologue (14-19): "What man is there that desires life, and deign to see good days?" (Psalm 43:12) Quoting the Psalmist, he poses the question that is at the center of all Christian experience: the longing for life, and the desire for good days, i.e. eternal life. This is no mere rhetorical question, but is one that is posed to every monk, every priest, every lay Christian laboring int he world-the housewife, the father, the schoolboy and schoolgirl.

The monk, responding to the voice like a soldier responds to the call of his commanding officer, hails "I am the one.!" St. Benedict expects his monks respond to this call without a moment's hesitation.

St. Benedict responds to this summons, this invitation, with another scriptural quote: "If you desire true and eternal life (veram et perpetuam vitam), keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn aside from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it." (Psalm 34: 13-14) The answer to the summons is one of directness, drawn again from Scripture, from the same Psalm, exhorting us to seek this eternal life by turning aside from evil, like a Roman legionary who, upon taking the oath, the sacramentum, turned away from civilian life and devoted himself completely to the "Senate and People of Rome." Likewise, St. Benedict's monks were to turn from the world, and live a life of total dedication to God in such a way that their tongues, and their lips, were no longer their own, but God's.

"And when you have done these things, my eyes will be upon you and my ears towards your supplications; and before you call upon me I will say to you: Behold, I am here." (18; Isaiah 58:9) The rhythm of dialogue, scripture, and response come to a close in this prophetic passage, where our Lord promises his people his eagerness to hear their prayers. In this context it serves as a promise, a covenant, that the total consecration of life, of speech, will bring us into the very presence of God, holding out the hope of an intimate encounter with God where He, before we even utter a word, says to us "I am here, my son."

This section ends in verse 19, where St. Benedict culminates this dynamic scriptural dialogue with an almost ecstatic affirmation of God's loving graciousness: "What can be sweeter to us (dulcius nobis) than the voice of the Lord inviting us, dearest brothers? Behold, in his loving kindness the Lord shows us the way of life."

The prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian:
O Lord and Master of my life,
Drive away from me the spirit of despondency, negligence, avarice, and idle talk.
But grant unto me, thy servant, the spirit of chastity, obedience, patience and love.
O Lord and King, grant me to see mine own transgressions, and not to judge my brother.
For blessed art thou unto the ages of ages, amen.

On the Origins of the Church's Feast of Feasts

By Dr. William Tighe

For all Christians today who observe a “liturgical year,” the high point of that year is the annual commemoration of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection at the end of Holy Week. Good Friday recalls to the faithful the Lord’s suffering and death, and in most Christian traditions is a day of ascetical practices, particularly fasting. Holy Saturday commemorates his entombment and descent to hell, and thus is also a day of asceticism. Easter Sunday, by contrast, is the joyous celebration of his resurrection, and of the resurrection of mankind in him.

Despite these discrete “episodes,” however, most Christian churches or denominational traditions have not completely lost track of the ancient sense that what we commemorate in the course of these three days is a process rather than separate events: the Lord’s “passing over” from life through death to new and eternal life, as both a realization and a promise to those who, by faith and baptism, have been incorporated into Christ. How and when the Church came to observe this annual “feast of feasts” has long been a matter of dispute, and in recent decades the areas of disagreement have grown greater—or at least a longstanding scholarly consensus has been strongly challenged.

“Easter” is, of course, an English word, and one lacking the multivalence of the more widespread term “Pascha.” This term, which has different forms in different languages, derives ultimately from the Hebrew Pesach, or “Passover,” and thus can mean both “Easter” specifically and more generally the “triduum” of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday.

Read the rest here

Exsurgamus!

Image credit

Exsurgamus ergo tandem aliquando, excitante nos scriptura ac dicente: Hora est enim de somno surgere, et apertis oculis nostris ad deificum lumen, attonitis auribus audiamus divina cotidie clamans quid admonet vox, dicens: Hodie si vocem eius audieritis, nolite obdurare corda vestra. Et iterum: qui habet aures audiendi audiat quid spiritus dicat ecclesiis.Et quid dicit? Venite, filii, audite me; timorem Domini docebo vos. Currite dum lumen vitae habetis, ne tenebrae mortis vos comprehendant. (Let us therefore arise at last, since the Scripture arouses us, saying "The hour is come for us to arise from sleep." Let us open our eyes to the deifying light, attune that we may hear the divine voice daily crying out "Today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." And again: "He who has ears to hear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." And what does he say? "Come, my sons, and listen to me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord." Run, while you have the light of life, lest the darkness of death overtake you.)

This part of the prologue forms an organic union with the first exhortation to "listen." This is the part of the rule that moves us to action. Listening with the aurem cordis, the ear of our hearts, where we listen to divine realities most directly with fear and love of God, leads us to arise from the sleep of ignorance, from the stupor of forgetfulness, and be attentive to the voice that comes to us in the silence of our hearts and tells us "harden not your heart". It is the call to wake up, to remember that our time on this earth is short, so therefore "run" to the "deifying light" that seeks to exalt us from the darkness of death.


Image credit

The "darkness of death" is the last word in this part of the exhortation, but it is not ultimately the "last word." It is, rather, a memento mortis which St. Benedict adds in order to add force to the command to rise from sleep. Antony van Dyck's painting of a Benedictine monk pointing to a skull communicates our common human destiny. "Dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return." And yet, it is not really the last word. Echoing Evelyn Waugh in the last scene of Brideshead Revisited, "it is not even an apt word," for the remembrance of death is not an end in itself, but a reminder to look to the "deifying light", that light that descends to us from within the life of Holy Trinity, giving us the promise of lifting us up to the divine life. Our need to listen, then to rise, from sleep is not merely to remember that we must die, but that we must rise from concern for worldly power and from the illusions that beset us, and to wake up to that which is more real, true and alive than we are.

Listening, then, involves action, action that is geared towards making our hearts more open to the life-giving words of Christ. For St. Benedict, the relationship between abbot and monk is one where the one receiving the instruction-the monk-is the one who actively hears the instructions of the master, the abbot, who stands as an image of Christ. Behind the abbot stands Christ, and the charge to every monk is to listen to, and obey, the abbot as one would obey Christ. One is immediately brought to St. Paul's exhortation in Colossians 3:22: "Slaves, obey your masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service, as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God..." The abbot-monk relationship is predicated on this principle, and the reason St. Benedict ties the two themes together, i.e. "listen" and "arise," is to impress on his monks the necessary rhythm of listening and obedience. The center of rhythmic relationship is the heart, for it is the "ear of the heart" that receives the instructions of Christ through the abbot, as it is then fired to arise out of its spiritual slumber to "hear the Spirit." Obedience is predicated here on that tension between fear and love that St. Benedict establishes in the beginning of the prologue. We listen not only with our ears, but with our hearts, and obey the commands of "a loving father." The voice of our loving Father bids us, with that mixture of love and authority, to arise from spiritual slumber in order to attune ourselves, our hearts, to his instructions, and it is his Spirit that empowers us in Christ to the task of the opus Dei, the work of God. Knowing that we have such a short time, let us arise!

Exsurgamus!

Obsculta!

Image Credit

Obsculta, o filii, praecepta magistri, et inclina aurem cordis tuis et admonitionem pii patris libenter excipe et efficaciter comple; ut ad eum per obedientiae laborem redeas, a quo per inobedientiae desidiam recesseras. (Listen, my son, to the precepts of the Master, and incline the ear of your heart, and willingly receive and faithfully fulfill the admonition of your loving father; that you may return by the labor of obedience to him from whom, through laziness and disobedience, you had departed.)-Prologue to the Rule of St. Benedict

"Listen!" This is the first word of the Rule, the word St. Benedict uses to awaken the heart from spiritual lethargy. He appeals, not to our physical ears, but to the aurem cordis truis, to the ears of our heart, for it is there that the truths of God are communicated directly to the soul. Benedict quotes liberally from the opening of the book of Proverbs, as the king enjoins his son to listen to the precepts of his loving father, as he presents him with two paths, the one that leads to wisdom and life, and the other to folly and death. It is also reminiscent of St. Basil's Admonition to a Spiritual Son, bringing to his audience both the lessons of Scripture and the teachings of the monastic fathers. (Fr. Adalbert de Vogue, Reading St. Benedict, p. 23) In this, the spiritual relationship that exists between abbot and community is established, and the call to obedience as the path to God illuminates the need to the novice's first duty: to listen with the ears of his heart.

The call to listen with the ears of the heart is a call to do more than just hear words, but to bring those words down to the heart. This is the real meaning of reciting something "by heart": going beyond mere memorizing of words to a meditation of their meaning, and thereby hearing God's message to the human heart. It is a process where the words we hear become a part of us, as food becomes part of the body as it is consumed through the digestive track.

St. Benedict, following the Rule of the Master, links this listening with the ears of the heart to the "labor of obedience". What is the relationship between hearing with the ears of the heart and the call to obedience? Fr. Adalhbert de Vogue offers a clue: "Like Basil and the inspired scribes of the Book of Proverbs, Benedict experiences himself as a 'father' as well as a 'master' (magister). He shares these two qualities with God, who speaks though him. At the end of the passage we will meet God the 'father' and 'Lord' (dominus) once more, but kindness will have given way to wrath. Entrance into monastic life thus stands between a loving call and a fearsome judgment." (de Vogue, p. 23) It is in that nexus between love and fear that Benedict will have his novices stand as he enjoins them to "listen." Listening comes from an attitude of love, as we relate to God as Father, and also from a place of fear, as we relate to God as the righteous judge. Listening to the voice of God, then, comes from this crucible of love and fear. The fear, of course, is not a fear rooted in despair, but a fear that, according to Proverbs, is the beginning of wisdom. St. Maximus the Confessor demonstrates the close connection between these two seemingly opposite attitudes by using ladder imagery: "If you have faith in the Lord you will fear punishment, and this fear will lead you to control the passions. Once you control the passions you will accept affliction patiently, and through such acceptance you will acquire hope in God. Hope in God separates the intellect from every worldly attachment, and when the intellect is detached in this way it will acquire love for God." (St. Maximus the Confessor, "Four-Hundred Texts on Love", Philokalia, p. 53) In the same way, fear of God causes us to listen for fear of punishment, which leads to self-control, ultimately leading us to hope in God, and then love of God. We listen to God as we not only fear him, but also love him.

It is this crucible between fear and love that St. Benedict wants to situate the novice, for it is there that the heart becomes refined in listening to his spiritual father, as he relates the life-giving words the the Heavenly Father. Obedience comes as a result of listening, and listening comes from a heart that is refined by the fear and love of God. Listening is the first command, the first rule; all that follows in St. Benedict's rule is predicated on this one word: Obsculta!

Reditus

Sorry for the long absence. A full teaching load, plus editing my dissertation for the third time, have kept me from blogging regularly. My meeting with my main reader has assured me that the dissertation needs just a little more finessing, especially the introduction, which is quite do-able. That, and taking care of the typos, will make it ready for defense. New date for final submission: March 15.

This leaves me with quite a bit of time for blogging, since the revisions are not very rigorous. During Lent, I will be posting my own musings on the Rule of St. Benedict as they touch everyday life. The Benedictine motto Ora et labora (pray and work) will be the focus of much of what I write, as I seek ways of consecrating all of life to Christ, in my prayer, and my work. I hope you will derive some benefit from it. If you do, dear Christian soul, praise God, and not my strength and powers for it. All errors are entirely my own. Pray for me, a sinner!

Calling all Anglo-Catholics...

Image credit

It's been a good run, chaps, but now it's time to get serious about being Catholic.

This way to Rome

This way to Antioch

What to bring with you: The Prayer Book (as printed by Lancelot Andrewes Press, which is the best Prayer Book for Catholic use out there), the Coverdale Psalter, and the great tradition of hymnody, chant and anthems ever sung in the English language.

What to leave behind: Latitudinarian moralism and Katherine Jefferts-Schori.

Come, dear friends! We're waiting for you!