Exsurgamus!

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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.


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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!

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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...

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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!

Contra Khomiakov

It has often been taken for granted among some popOrthodox apologists that Khomiakov's notion of Sobornost is the normative rule in Orthodox ecclesiology. Not so, say various Orthodox theologians.

Read about it here, and do read the discussion that follows.

Father Hunwicke on Waspish Respectability and Hatred of the Sacrament of Confession

The sexual drive is certainly very, VERY strong. That's why The Rev. Nathaniel Woodard, founder of Lancing College in Sussex, insisted his boys go to confession...to the loathing of the Victorian gentlemen of his day!!!

Read the article here.

Is America Ungovernable?

From The Distributist Review

Otto von Bismark, the 19^th century Iron Chancellor and architect of modern Germany, once remarked that “If you like law and sausages, you shouldn't watch either being made.” One could observe that this is not quite correct; the process of stuffing offal into sausage skins is far less disgusting than that of stuffing bribes into legislators. Still, statute law will always be a matter of negotiations between those who have an interest in the bill at issue. Thus it has always been, and thus it will always be. In itself, this is not too bad; everybody should have a voice in drafting legislation, and compromise, while cumbersome, is likely to be better on the whole.

Democracy is supposed to solve the problem by giving everyone a voice in the process. And this would certainly be true, if we were speaking of a local assembly. But in a nation of 300 million plus, it can't be true; the very size limits the number of voices that can be heard. Hence, a “place at the table” becomes a scarce commodity, and like all scarce commodities it has a market price, a price that prices the public out of the process; as the nation grows, the size of the legislative “table” shrinks; there aren't enough places to go around, and the form of democracy is easily converted into the substance of oligarchy. But even at the local level, government must be guided by some notion of the common good, even when the parties are seeking their own interests. But as the cost of participation rises, this becomes less possible.

Read the rest here

The Great Depression of the Fourteenth Century

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Triumph of Death, 1562

An article by Murray Rothbard, excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith

in The Ludwig von Mises Institute Blog

The successful battle to establish the fact of the great decline has done little, however, to establish the cause or causes of this debacle. Focus on the devastation caused by outbreaks of the Black Death in the mid-14th century is partially correct, but superficial, for these outbreaks were themselves partly caused by an economic breakdown and fall in living standards which began earlier in the century. The causes of the great depression of western Europe can be summed up in one stark phrase: the newly imposed domination of the State. During the medieval synthesis of the High Middle Ages there was a balance between the power of Church and State, with the Church slightly more powerful. In the 14th century that balance was broken, and the nation-state came to hold sway, breaking the power of the Church, taxing, regulating, controlling and wreaking devastation through virtually continuous war for over a century (the Hundred Years' War, from 1337 to 1453).

SNL on U.S. Debt to China

The writers of Saturday Night Live must be listening to Peter Schiff.

From LRC

This must be the most substantive and the most anti-government sketch in the show’s history.

St. Michael and All Angels

Who is like God?

Icon of spiritual warfare, patron of the chivalric orders, patron saint of paratroopers, fighter pilots and police officers...ora pro nobis!

Do School Vouchers Pass the Anarcho-Libertarian Test?

Read article here

From The Young Fogey: The slippery slope here is the lesson of Notre Dame and other formerly RC colleges which have ‘taken the soup’ (assimilated; sold out to the larger culture): once you hand over control from the bishop to the state to get subsidies (long a goal of the RC schools, still under the bishops... founded to get away from the state and its de facto Protestantism), the state calls the shots on the content. Then there’s the problem nothing to do with the state of the clergy slinking off and joining the enemy.

Episcopacy and Reformation

From Energetic Procession:

First they revered the Episcopate, longed to retain it, and when they found they had lost the Apostolic Succesison, sought earnestly to recover it. It is well known how Luther and Melancthon believed in Episcopacy. Their confession of faith [Augs. pt. 1, art. 22], speaking of bishops, says: ‘The Churches ought necessarily and jure divino to obey them.’ Melancthon wrote : ‘I would to God it lay in me to restore the government of bishops. For I see what manner of Church we shall have, the ecclesiastical polity being dissolved.’ Beza protested [in his treatise against Saravia] : ‘If there be any (which you shall hardly persuade me to believe) who reject the whole order of Episcopacy, God forbid that any man of sound mind should assent to the madness of such men.’ Calvin, in his commentay on Titus (I.5), admits that there was no such thing as ‘the parity of ministry.’ Again he says: ‘If the bishops so hold their dignity, that they refuse not to submit to Christ, no anathama is too great for those who do not regard such a hierarchy with reverence and the most implicity obedience.’

Read the rest here.

The Dormition/Assumption of Our Most Blessed Lady

Hail, thou unwedded Bride!

A Homily by St. Gregory Palamas: On the Dormition of our Supremely Pure Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary

The Case for Early Marriage

Bottom line: Biology is telling our young people to get married soon. Society, with its senseless expectation that everyone needs to go to college, is telling them to wait. Add to that the big corporate-inspired mobility that moves families around from place to place, forcing us to reduce the definition of the family as the "nuclear family" (sanz aunts, uncles and cousins) and you have a culture where young couples are estranged from the support of a larger family unit. The answer so far: Preach abstinence. Make virginity pledges. Have chastity balls. Push courtship.

All fine and good, but we still have the central problem: we expect these young people to wait ten, maybe fifteen years, before they can fulfill nature's call for them to marry. The answer? How about early marriage? Does everyone indeed need to go to college? Why not have apprenticeship programs that allow young people to start work and be productive as soon as possible (say, at 18 or 19)?

Maybe the economic slowdown, with peak oil and rising fuel prices, can be good for us, forcing us to live closer to our extended relatives, and providing the support needed for early marriage. If they are not called to a life of celibacy, then we should encourage some of our young people to marry soon, and facilitate, rather than get in the way of, their marriage with unrealistic expectations. That means making it possible for them to make a living that can sustain family life at a much earlier age. This will take the support of family (which will include grandma and grandpa, aunties and uncles, and a plethora of cousins, all living close by), church and community. The question is: Can, and will, our culture make such a transition?

Yes, it will mean early maturity, rather than extended adolescence.

Read the article here

Hat tip: The Young Fogey

Postscript: What might actually mitigate against early marriage is no-fault divorce.

Obamacare: A Distributist Perspective

Can a distributist support HR 3200?

Healthcare and subsidiarity: Local solutions are better.

Donald Goodman at The Distributist Review looks at the pros and cons of the proposed bill.

Are local systems possible? Certainly. The first hospitals in the Western world, of course, were Catholic hospitals, and they treated the poor---and everyone else---for free. In other words, they were operated on a purely charitable basis, generally by religious, who didn't expect payment for their work because they were doing it for the glory of God, not for their own pocketbooks.

Read article here

Tomas Luis de Victoria's Salve Regina

#t=502



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In honor of our Most Holy, Most Pure, Immaculate Lady Mother of God and Blessed Virgin Mary, the Birth-Giver of our God!

YouTube - Byzantine Chant "Agni Parthene" - Sung by Nana Peradze

YouTube - Byzantine Chant "Agni Parthene" - Sung by Nana Peradze

Eunice Shriver, Requiescat in Pace!

She has been hailed as the "Pro-Life Kennedy." Her work in establishing the Special Olympics, which transformed "America's view of the Mentally Disabled from institutionalized patients to friends, neighbors and athletes"-in short, full human beings, made in the image of God just like the rest of us-is a resounding testament to her conviction that all human life is sacred and must not only be protected, but celebrated.

May God receive her in His Kingdom, where the faces of the saints shine with the everlasting glory of Him who trampled down death by death.

+Memory Eternal! +Memory Eternal! +May her memory be eternal!

Caritas in Veritate: A Mixed Blessing

Or: "There is no such thing as Catholic (or Orthodox) economics, any more than there is any such thing as Catholic (or Orthodox) physics"-The Young Fogey (parenthetical addition mine)

The recent papal encyclical, I think, is sound. It all depends on how one interprets "society." If by "society" we mean "government," then I must voice my most vehement disagreement. The equation of "society" with "government" is a faulty one, since governments are formed by societies for the peace and well-ordering of citizens, allowing them to engage in their business lawfully and peacefully. Government is a product of society, and not the other way around.

If by "society" we mean the three pillars of civilization-family, faith and community-then I think the encyclical is right on, and could be a boon to the Distributist movement.

Read the whole article here, from The Distributist Review

Fires of Faith: Review of Eamon Duffy's New Book

From Tea at Trainon

Eamon Duffy, author of Stripping of the Altars, offers his alternative interpretation on the reign of Queen Mary Tudor, in contrast to the received "wisdom" of Whig historiography.

Read it here.