The Confirmed

In honor of our Confirmation Class who is receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation this evening from our Bishop, here is Rainer Maria Rilke's poem which was composed in Paris in May 1903. The photo is from the Liturgia website of Schola St. Cecile on the occasion of Confirmations at Saint-Eugène in France.



In white veils the confirmed enter
deeply into the new green of the garden
They have survived their childhood,
and what comes now will be something changed.

So let it come! Does not now the interim begin,
the wait for the next striking of the hour?
The festival is gone, and noises fill the house,
and more slowly the afternoon drags by...

That was an arising to the white gown
and then through the streets an adorned walking
and a church, cool inside like silk,
and the long candles were like avenues,
and all lights glittered like jewelry
gazed at by festive eyes.

And it was silent when the chant began:
like clouds it rose inside the dome
and grew bright in its descent; and softer
than rain fell into the white children.
And their white fluttered as in the breeze,
and grew lightly colored in its folds
and seemed to hold hidden flowers--:
flowers and birds, stars and strange figures
from an old ring of stories, far away.

And outside was a day of blue and green
with a shout of red at bright places.
The pond kept retreating in small waves,
and with the wind came a distant flowering
and sang of gardens outside at the city's edge.

It was as if things wreathed themselves,
they stood brightly--infinitely light and calm;
a feeling was in every housefront,
and many window opened up and shone.

~from The Book of Images, Rainer Maria Rilke

In Hora Mortis Nostræ Podcast

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A deviation from our normal poetry podcast, here is a reflection on my experience at a prayer vigil for life.

It is late on the night of the tenth day of the 40 days for life prayer vigil. The half-lidded moon shines down upon us, thin clouds veiling its cold white light...but the pale yellow light from the street lamps dimly illuminates our faces. The bare branches of the oak tree eeriely silhouetted against the darkened inky blue sky, the branch tips splayed like gnarly fingers.. We are praying the rosary, eight souls standing at the bottom of the hill facing the darkened menace of the tower beneath which was housed a killing place. Our prayers fall softly from our lips, the night air muting our voices. We finish the Sorrowful Mysteries and after a short parting conversation, we disperse, our relief crew walking up the hill. We know that tomorrow, we will return.

Summer's Day Podcast

For Valentine's Day, I'm reposting the podcast that started it all....



Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

~William Shakespeare

If you want to listen to me read the sonnet:


Stopping by the side of the road whilst traveling through Tuscany one brilliant morning in May

Nunc Dimittis Podcast

~A reflection on when a priest dies on the Feast of Candlemas.


Click here to listen


A Song for Simeon

~by T.S. Eliot

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
The stubborn season has made stand.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.

Grant us thy peace.
I have walked many years in this city,
Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
Have taken and given honour and ease.
There went never any rejected from my door.

Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children’s children
When the time of sorrow is come ?
They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.

Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
Grant us thy peace.
Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
Now at this birth season of decease,
Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow.

According to thy word,
They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
With glory and derision,
Light upon light, mounting the saints’ stair.
Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.
Grant me thy peace.

(And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
Thine also).

I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
Let thy servant depart,
Having seen thy salvation.

Blow, blow, thou Winter Wind

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember'd not.
Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then heigh ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

from As You Like it, by William Shakespeare

photo from Argent's collection

Wounded by love

Oh, I so need this quote from yesterday's Divine Office.

What, I ask, is more wonderful than the beauty of God? What thought is more pleasing and wonderful than God’s majesty? What desire is as urgent and overpowering as the desire implanted by God in a soul that is completely purified of sin and cries out in its love: I am wounded by love? The radiance of divine beauty is altogether beyond the power of words to describe.

~from St. Basil the Great's Rule for Monks

I am simultaneously reading John Saward's Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty and von Balthasar's Glory of the Lord. There is so much in me that needs purifying, the interior burning up so that I may be more receptive to hearing God clearly. It's so easy to fall into the trap of self-satisfaction. How much I need humility. I suppose that's why I'm grateful to be teaching because it's always a reminder that to be a truly good teacher, one must first be a student.

Tonight, we will begin discussing the Our Father using Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth. Zadok asked me before Christmas to meditate on how Christ's earthly ministry was a continuous prayer and dialogue with the Father. I thought about how that relates to the Our Father. What a privilege then it is to prayer it as Christ himself gave us the words. And in Pope Benedict's book, he says that

...we must also keep in mind that the Our Father originates from his own praying, from the Son's dialogue with the Father. This mean that it reaches down into depths far beyond the words.

Pope Benedict goes on with his catechesis in showing that in Jesus' submitting himself to God's will, we come to know the mind and will of God himself, most eloquently in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the Cross.

Imminent

As if I needed another excuse to go to Rome, this event I wouldn't miss for the world.

Beatification of Cardinal Newman imminent.

Update:
Beatifications are now done at particular churches, so this beatification won't be in Rome. Although the Beatification of the Spanish Martyrs which happened just recently was at St. Peter's Square. The Church is returning to the former practice of beatifications at the local church and then Canonization at St. Peter's. Thanks to Fr. Z's explanation.