deep furrows

facing darkness

2007-11-29T16:48:00.001-06:00

[crossposted at Cahiers Péguy]

«We see darkness and talk about darkness so many times. We mustn't pretend that the darkness doesn't exist; we shouldn't just think some spiritual thoughts about darkness; we can't do something "alongside" the darkness — we have to look it in the face! "I look into my depths and see endless darkness" [song: "Il mio volyo"]. What is it that the darkness can't quash? It can't stop my acknowledging this darkness, and it can't stop the moment "when I realize that You are there," when I realize that this circumstance, no matter how ugly it may be, is not made by itself; when I live through a dark period, even in that moment I am living, and even in the darkness, I do not make myself; it that darkness I have a radiant clarity: I do not make myself.

[...]

We can't avoid this road, nobody can spare us this road, and this is why Christ went deep to the bottom of the darkness: so that we can look at everything. This is anything but an intellectual exercise! It's simply the recognition of reality according to all its factors.»
Fr. Julián Carrón
Notes from the talks by Ciancarlo Cesana and Julián Carrón at the Beginning Day for CL adults in the Lombardy Region of Italy, September 29, 2007.
Traces Vol 9, #9 - 2007

I mention this apropos of the abuse article below, which offered a tentative judgment. If I link to these articles from time to time, it's because of an implicit need to look at the darkness and betrayals of my life, of our life together in the Church. I must remember, however, not to stop at the surface, but to seek the face of Him who conquers the darkness.

facing darkness

2007-11-29T16:48:00.000-06:00

[crossposted at Cahiers Péguy]

«We see darkness and talk about darkness so many times. We mustn't pretend that the darkness doesn't exist; we shouldn't just think some spiritual thoughts about darkness; we can't do something "alongside" the darkness — we have to look it in the face! "I look into my depths and see endless darkness" [song: "Il mio volyo"]. What is it that the darkness can't quash? It can't stop my acknowledging this darkness, and it can't stop the moment "when I realize that You are there," when I realize that this circumstance, no matter how ugly it may be, is not made by itself; when I live through a dark period, even in that moment I am living, and even in the darkness, I do not make myself; it that darkness I have a radiant clarity: I do not make myself.

[...]

We can't avoid this road, nobody can spare us this road, and this is why Christ went deep to the bottom of the darkness: so that we can look at everything. This is anything but an intellectual exercise! It's simply the recognition of reality according to all its factors.»
Fr. Julián Carrón
Notes from the talks by Ciancarlo Cesana and Julián Carrón at the Beginning Day for CL adults in the Lombardy Region of Italy, September 29, 2007.
Traces Vol 9, #9 - 2007

I mention this apropos of the abuse article below, which lacked a judgment. If I link to these articles from time to time, it's because of an implicit need to look at the darkness and betrayals of my life, of our life together in the Church. I must remember, however, not to stop at the surface, but to seek the face of Him who conquers the darkness.

April is the cruelest month

2007-04-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

It's Not My Grandfather's Protestantism

2006-12-26T12:45:00.000-06:00

[M]ainline Protestant churches and even some evangelical ones (in places like California, with a strong Mexican populace) are accepting the veneration of statues, which for decades has been misinterpreted as idolatry. Pastors of other Hispanic Methodist congregations objected too. Meanwhile, and curiously,

Roman Catholics in the neighborhood fret that the church might be selling itself as something it was not.

Excerpt from /The Journey to Truth Is an Experience/

2006-12-14T00:39:00.000-06:00

What has every single thing (from holidays to mathematics, from falling in love to social commitment) to do with Christ? This was the question that moved us: the rediscovery, in terms of experience, of the word "catholic."

[....]

All this was happening at a time when the traditional meeting places of young Catholics (parishes, youth clubs, etc.) were spending vast sums on entertainment equipment that they hoped would persuade youth to stay in touch.

p6 Fr. Giussani's 1995 introduction
The Journey to Truth Is an Experience

Behold, I make all things new ...

2006-12-13T21:59:00.000-06:00

CL Christmas Poster

God does not leave us groping in the dark. He has shown himself to us as a man. In his greatness he has let himself become small. God has taken on a human face. Only this God saves us from being afraid of the world and from anxiety before the emptiness of life.

--Benedict XVI

Christ ends up right here, in my attitutde and disposition as a human being, in my way, that is, one who expects, who awaits something because he feels that he is entirely wanting. He has joined me. He has proposed himself to my original needs.

--Luigi Giussani

Spengler makes some acute observations

2006-12-12T06:43:00.000-06:00

A new Jerusalem in sub-Saharan Africa

To sacrifice one's self for one's kind is the sine qua non of pagan cultures; revealed religion (Judaism and Christianity), unlike Islam, exempts the individual from this terrible requirement. Islam represents the last defense of traditional society with its demand for self-sacrifice of every adherent, uniting the tribes into the ummah whose definitive sacrament is jihad. Christianity lifts the mortal decree for those who repudiate traditional society, that is, abandon their own ethnicity for a new and universal ethnicity, namely that of Israel.

Something I really need to learn

2006-12-10T22:18:00.000-06:00

Overcoming Depression During Advent

I had assumed, as do many ostensibly committed Christians today, that the needs of my heart were irrelevant: bound to be left unsatisfied in this life, they weren't worth trying to satisfy. I had become resigned, trying to settle for what I thought was my duty, taking for granted that duty had little to do with what I really wanted but had failed to convince myself I didn't really want.

The Journey to Truth is an Experience

2006-12-09T19:16:00.000-06:00

Thank you, Amazon.ca!

Here are a couple of posts on this book:

The first intuition

Often we hold back from committing ourselves

Burn Out: a Lack of Love

2006-12-08T23:19:00.000-06:00

I find the original definition of burnout by author, Graham Greene, cuts right to the core:

"Burnout is not its own category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It’s not something that can be treated pharmacologically; it is not considered the same thing as depression or a midlife crisis, though sometimes they coincide. The term was first coined by a psychotherapist named Herbert Freudenberger, who himself probably took it from Graham Greene’s novel A Burnt-Out Case. (‘I haven’t enough feeling left for human beings,’ the book’s numb protagonist, Querry, wrote in his journal, ‘to do anything for them out of pity.’)"

[...]

for four years he’d struggled to stop his students from fighting with one another, and in spite of his best efforts he couldn’t even teach all of them to read. His classroom became a perverse experiment in physics, with energy never conserved (input always exceeded output), and he, a teacher in perpetual motion, always craving rest. Eventually, he began to pull away from his students — depersonalization, as the literature now calls it — justifying his seeming insensitivity by telling himself he wasn’t making a difference anyway. It was only when Farber went to graduate school at Yale that he learned that this syndrome had a name: Burnout. "The concept offered a perfect understanding of what teachers were feeling," he recalls. "It wasn’t in fact that they were racist and mercenary and noncaring but that their level of caring couldn’t be sustained in the absence of results."

Burnout Article

Compare the last sentence above to the words Dorothy Day often quoted from Dostoevski's The Brothers Karamazov: "Love in practice is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams." In the original context, a woman says that she wouldn't be able to bear it if those she helped were not grateful to her.

So, with burnout, love is the essential question. Unfortunately, love is taken for granted, presumed that it is a choice that we are capable of, that it is an act of the will. In fact, love is a gift, a gift that we must beg for in order to receive. Most folks don't find this out, however, because when confronted with their own lack of love, they give up, run away, or lower their expectations (as recommended in the above article).

Immaculate Conception

2006-12-08T00:00:00.000-06:00

The Church proposes that we look at Mary as one who lived her humanity in a complete way, without the mark of our original ambiguity. We are invited to look, that is, to a woman whose life can be summed up in her own phrase - fiat voluntas tua - in accepting her mission. Thus, in the face of the proud sons of the Enlightenment, the fragility of man who becomes great only in adhering to God was reasserted, as was the doctrine of original sin, already defined by the Council of Trent.

Fr. Luigi Giussani, Why the Church? p173

DarwinCatholic has posted a common sense examination of original sin.

Pop Quiz: name that genre!

2006-12-02T11:05:00.000-06:00

From what genre does the following quote come?

"Many events have defied our ability to explain, but we are convinced that we failed because we are still woefully ignorant about the universe and not because a deity altered the workings of nature."

A. Fantasy
B. Science Fiction
C. Hardboiled Detective Novel
D. Popular Romance

[Answer]
A. Fantasy: Eldest, the sequel to Eragon;
Eragon has recently been made into a movie.

[Answer]

Highlight the space between the two boxes above to see the answer.

Tip to Claw of the Conciliator who references a post at Sun and Shield.

And a more full quote is available here.

Christianity in Japan

2006-12-01T13:58:00.000-06:00

Documentary on the Kakure Kirishitan (Hidden Christians)

Butterfly wing mosaics

A Worthy Request

2006-11-25T20:45:00.000-06:00

A Call For Volunteers - Review Your Religious Education Material!

Two Ways of Reading

2006-11-24T17:12:00.000-06:00

One way to read is to look for the total effect of the elements in a story; the other way is to grasp some element as a hermeneutic key. A reading teacher, for example, recently praised a student who saw Jonas's sled ride (in The Giver) as a metaphor for dying. This second sort of reading is a form of do-it-yourself allegory which betrays a preference for one's own ideas to the totality of reality.

To quote a recent article on sociology: "Was it St. Augustine who taught that the human will is more powerful than the human mind?"

Product Placement: SNL, Studio 60

2006-11-21T21:32:00.000-06:00

SNL recently opened with Borat and had an ad for the Borat movie in the same episode. The musical guest has been sponsored by Budweiser for a couple of years.

Then, "The Option Period" of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip focused on product placement. Both iPods and Apple laptops are mentionned; I noticed an Apple laptop being used by a character and the show had an iPod commercial. Also, the fictional show has a new set design that will include many billboards - I imagine that these billboards will also be product placements.

I also wonder if the guest hosts on Studio 60 are product placements. When a certain actor is said to host the show that mention does give the actor a bit of credibility.

I'm not surprised by this development at all. After all, if you look at the early TV shows, the in-show advertising was very transparent. Harvey Cox noted the generic marketing of consumer electronics that happens when the Flintstones is watched in third-world countries. And when I worked in housewares, folks came in looking for wooden dish drainers like they saw on Home Improvement.

Television's purpose is to sell stuff. As a byproduct, some interesting and creative work is produced.

It also occurs to me that TV now is pressed to make its content very now-oriented so the broadcast can compete with the DVD version of the same show: e.g. the topicality of Studio 60, Law and Order: ripped from the headlines, etc.

A Great Thought Experiment

2006-11-19T10:28:00.000-06:00

Catholic to the Left has posted Turkey Worthy, which asks the question, who is worthy to receive the Thanksgiving dinner?

As CtotheL points out in the comments, Eucharist (good gift) has the same root meaning as Thanksgiving. In addition, food sustains our body while the Eucharist sustains us in totality: body and soul.

Do I deserve to eat? Do I deserve to celebrate a feast? Am I entitled to receive the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ in the Eucharist?

A great question, if you ask me.

From the Internet Archive

2006-11-18T17:29:00.000-06:00

A Catholic Page for Lovers

A here's the index

How To (Mis) Read The Giver

2006-11-17T21:21:00.000-06:00

--- HERE BE SPOILERS ---

Here's the ending of Lois Lowry's classic young adult novel, The Giver:

For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing.

Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo.

The last sentence is ambiguous (and tentative), but folks (teachers and students) often fail to closely recognize the locus of the ambiguity. That is, they tend to be cynical about Jonas's hearing and knowledge of what he hears. Many students feel cheated by this cynical reading, but many teachers tend to prefer it. The last two sentences are indeed ambiguous, but the ambiguity pertains to the fate of the community that Jonas grew up in. Either Jonas's family and friends hear music like Jonas does, or Jonas imagines that they do based upon his own experience.

---

On a related note, it seems to be seldom noted that Jonas moves from apprehension and anxiety to certainty. The last chapter focuses on the certainty and knowledge that Jonas has. Now, this certainty is described in emotional terms rather than as a reasonable judgment, but it is nonetheless an authentically Christian certainty.

What do you think?

The Inhumanity of a Neutral Point of View

2006-11-11T10:08:00.000-06:00

"The Great Failure of Wikipedia" by Jason Scott
Transcription of a presentation/speech given at Notacon 3, April 8, 2006.

When we look at something old (I'll leave it with this thought) when we look at something old, when you walk into an old church, when you walk into a place, and you find say a handrail, and your hand goes down, your hand goes down and touches the handrail. You do not find the hand rail up here, you do not find the handrail down here. This is because at some point, somebody who was a designer, who was an architect, looked at where human beings were, and put the handrail where human beings are, so that a hundred years from now, four hundred years from now you can still put your hand there.

That is an important design aesthetic, sometimes that is forgotten. Things where they forget that, for instance when language is written, which is full of hype and horror and whatever else, say in the 19th century talking about -- "oh, in the future airships will do this and there will be wondrous wires and you can..." -- those words are forgotten, they weren't designed for human beings, they were designed to sell a product.

"Verification of a Living Proposal" by James Madden

A college professor in Kansas overhauls his approach to teaching. In Minnesota, a medical physicist goes in search of something more from life and discovers a new vitality, gratitude, and peace. Two modern verifications of Fr. Carrón’s recent insistence that "The charism will fascinate us ever more only if it becomes this greater humanity"

My first solo attempt at teaching was a summer course in natural theology. At the time, I was under the typically modern impression that a good instructor was one who presents material "objectively" by appearing to be utterly neutral regarding the truth of the claims being discussed. The point, so I thought, was nothing more than to present facts and give the students complete autonomy to “decide for themselves.” I led my first students through a rigorous treatment of the arguments for and against the existence of God while conscientiously leaving my own views out of the discussion. At the end of the course, I polled the students as to whether they believed their instructor to be an atheist or a theist and, to my great satisfaction at the time, I found that they were evenly divided on this issue. I succeeded in the tedious feat of speaking to young people about life’s most pressing question for weeks on end without revealing my own position.

Parenting: A shift from neutral
Today I think differently, because today I am primarily a different kind of teacher, a father. When I teach my four little pupils, the point is not to leave them to decide for themselves, but to teach them the truth. I am not neutral with respect to the truth when I teach my children; my role is to offer them a proposal for living a human life in light of the true principles I have come to accept through my own lived experience. Objectivity for the parent is not neutrality, but honesty regarding the truths of human existence and their implications for our practical lives. I now know that even if the students in my first natural theology course increased their factual knowledge and skills, I utterly failed them by that standard. I have no reason to believe that any of those students were changed fundamentally by that course. I did nothing to offer them a concrete proposal for living in light of the positions we discussed.

Giussani articulates the pedagogy of parenthood well when he teaches us that education must be provided in terms of a proposal for a certain kind of life, a living in light of a claim to truth. By remaining neutral with respect to the truth and thereby withholding one’s own life, the teacher leaves the student with nothing more than a shadowy play of disparate positions. If the educator instead acts as would a caring parent and invites the student to come along and think and live the way she does, the student is not offered an empty abstraction but a living example of the implications of a certain truth.

[more]

Infallible prayer

2006-11-07T17:33:00.000-06:00

St. Anthony, please help me find Jesus!

When one thing is torn away, another succeeds.

2006-11-04T09:49:00.000-06:00

On Christmas Eve 1842, H.A. Woodgate, rector of Holy Trinity Church, Birmingham, wrote Newman asking him if he could suggest a motto for a new house that his brother had recently built. Newman wrote back suggesting a tag from Virgil: Uno avuloso non deficit alter -- "When one thing is torn away, another succeeds."

As it happened, Woodgate's brother chose another motto, but it would have worked for Newman himself. However leery he might have been of success -- in one letter he says that "I do not think I have ever been sanguine of success in my day or at all" -- he did hope that in tearing himself away from the Church of England he was preparing himself for success of another kind, even if it looked to the world like the most dismal failure.

qtd at Amy Welborn
from a review at The Weekly Standard

Christ is present!

2006-11-02T01:05:00.000-06:00

He is and He will be.

Seated at the Edge of the Path

2006-10-29T08:41:00.000-06:00

Saint Gregory the Great (around 540-604),
Pope, Doctor of the Church
Homilies on the Gospels, no. 2

Son of David, have pity on me

Scripture rightly presents us with this blind man seated at the edge of the path and asking for alms, for Truth itself said, “I am the way” (Jn 14:6). Thus, whoever does not know the clarity of eternal light is blind.

Even if he already believes in the Redeemer, he is seated at the edge of the path. If he already believes but neglects to ask that eternal light be given to him, and if he neglects to pray, this blind person can be seated at the edge of the path, but he is not asking for alms. But if he believes, if he knows the blindness of his heart and prays so as to receive the light of truth, then he really is that blind man, who is seated at the edge of the path and also asking for alms.

Thus, may the person who recognizes the darkness of his blindness and who feels deprived of eternal light cry out from the bottom of his heart, may he cry with all his soul: "Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!"

via Daily Gospel Online

Some excerpts from an encyclical

2006-10-20T15:09:00.000-05:00

Dominum et vivificantem: On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World
(John Paul II - Pentecost 1986)

PART III - THE SPIRIT WHO GIVES LIFE

1. Reason for the Jubilee of the Year 2000:
Christ Who Was Conceived of the Holy Spirit

When at the moment of the Annunciation Mary utters her "fiat": "Be it done unto me according to your word," she conceives in a virginal way a man, the Son of Man, who is the Son of God. By means of this "humanization" of the Word-Son the self-communication of God reaches its definitive fullness in the history of creation and salvation. This fullness acquires a special wealth and expressiveness in the text of John's Gospel: ''The Word became flesh." The Incarnation of God the Son signifies the taking up into unity with God not only of human nature, but in this human nature, in a sense, of everything that is "flesh": the whole of humanity, the entire visible and material world. The Incarnation, then, also has a cosmic significance, a cosmic dimension. The "first-born of all creation," becoming incarnate in the individual humanity of Christ, unites himself in some way with the entire reality of man, which is also "flesh" - and in this reality with all "flesh," with the whole of creation.

5. The Church as the Sacrament of Intimate Union with God

64. If the Church is the sacrament of intimate union with God, she is such in Jesus Christ, in whom this same union is accomplished as a salvific reality. She is such in Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit. The fullness of the salvific reality, which is Christ in history, extends in a sacramental way in the power of the Spirit Paraclete. In this way the Holy Spirit is "another Counselor," or new Counselor, because through his action the Good News takes shape in human minds and hearts and extends through history. In all this it is the Holy Spirit who gives life.

When we use the word "sacrament" in reference to the Church, we must bear in mind that in the texts of the Council the sacramentality of the Church appears as distinct from the sacramentality that is proper, in the strict sense, to the Sacraments. Thus we read: "The Church is...in the nature of a sacrament-a sign and instrument of communion with God." But what matters and what emerges from the analogical sense in which the word is used in the two cases is the relationship which the Church has with the power of the Holy Spirit, who alone gives life: the Church is the sign and instrument of the presence and action of the life-giving Spirit.

Vatican II adds that the Church is "a sacrament. . . of the unity of all mankind. "Obviously it is a question of the unity which the human race which in itself is differentiated in various ways-has from God and in God. This unity has its roots in the mystery of creation and acquires a new dimension in the mystery of the Redemption, which is ordered to universal salvation. Since God "wishes all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," the Redemption includes all humanity and in a certain way all of creation. In the same universal dimension of Redemption the Holy Spirit is acting, by virtue of the "departure of Christ." Therefore the Church, rooted through her own mystery in the Trinitarian plan of salvation with good reason regards herself as the "sacrament of the unity of the whole human race." She knows that she is such through the power of the Holy Spirit, of which power she is a sign and instrument in the fulfillment of God's salvific plan

This document expresses everything in a splendid way. It also discusses sanctification and justification in a clearer way than I have done below.

Salvation: Ethical or Ontological; Righteousness or Incorporation?

2006-10-20T10:40:00.004-05:00

David Jones has posted a link to an article which includes the following:

With regard to the material principle of the Reformation, sola fide, Van Til argues that Roman Catholicism (both before and after Vatican II) does not acknowledge that man was totally ruined by the Fall. Rather, Rome sees man's problem starting with his finitude. Man tends naturally toward evil because he is a creature, not because he is a sinner. Supernatural grace, then, was necessary before the Fall; it was lost in the Fall, but man's essential nature (rationality and free will) remained intact. Human reason is not radically depraved, and thus people can cooperate with God's grace toward final justification.[1]

For Van Til, any discussion of Rome and sola fide must start here. Strimple agrees: "The difference between the Roman Catholic doctrine of salvation (both in its traditional form and now in its modern, Rahnerian form) and the Reformed doctrine of salvation is the difference between an ontological concept (man as created needing some "additional" gift) and an ethical one (man's position being his disobedience, needing forgiveness and sanctification."

Danny E. Olinger - "Is the Reformation Over?"

I must add several clarifications to the above.

Yes, Catholics believe that nature is wounded and not destroyed by the fall.

Man is a sinner because he trusts in his own finitude (idolatry) instead of turning to God.

I would not characterize grace as an extra, added to man, but as an essential component for man that he cannot supply for himself. Thus, both rationaliaty and freedom are wounded when man spurns God. When grace is restored, man walks on the road toward being truly reasonable and truly free.

I detect a certain volantarism or pelagnianism in the statement that man with undisturbed reason and freedom cooperates with God's grace. Original sin means that man cannot consistently recognize and choose to cooperate with God as Adam did in the garden. Man's current state is dramatically different from the Edenic one.

The Exultet sung at Easter Vigil proclaims: "O happy fault that earned us so good and great a Redeemer." To redeem mankind, the Word became flesh, taking on human nature to reform it from within. To accomplish this task, Jesus established the Church, which has a physiological continuity with His incarnation and resurrection. For a Catholic to call himself totally depraved would be to deny the work of the Holy Spirit in him, incorporating him into Christ, and empowering him to do the Father's will.

This anthropological difference between Catholicism and Protestantism accounts in large part for the disagreement regarding Mary. For Catholics, salvation is something that every person as creature needs, whether they have personally sinned or not. It's also something that has only be achieved by the God-man's incorporation of humanity into His person. A sinless person would certainly be an exception to experience and the general rule, but as a mere creature they would have no capacity to redeem mankind.

After encountering Christ, the human person always continues to need salvation, to grow in Christ instead of betraying him; or rather to allow Christ to keep redeeming him despite all of his betrayals.

What do you think?

Wheat and Tares

2006-10-14T18:09:00.000-05:00

The Renaissance was when naturalism took its hold on Western culture. It was also the time when artists discovered the vanishing point.

Rome - 30 May 1998

2006-10-14T17:33:00.001-05:00

Left to right: Chiara Lubich, Jean Vanier, Don Giussani, Don Pino

30 May 1998 Meeting of the Ecclesial Movements with Pope John Paul II

I've been getting many hits off of the above photo since I took it offline, so I decided to put it back up.

The Roots of Christian Fraternity

2006-10-05T09:39:00.000-05:00

Wow! I'm only able to skim this dissertation at the moment, but you should read it in full if you are able to.

BROTHERHOOD AND COMMUNITY ON THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION:
CONFRATERNITIES AND PARISH LIFE IN LIEGE, 1450-1540
by D. Henry Dieterich

The Confraternity of Our Lady.
An account of the focus and common fund of a particular lay community, integrated in a particular parish.

The Members.
A fascinating look at the individuals who made up this Confraternity.

Conclusions.
Dieterich verifies and corrects the claims of other historians regarding "those terrible Middle Ages" (as Regine Pernoud would say).

And following are the final sentences of the dissertation:

"The Christian Church is now more and more in the position it held in the Roman Empire: a minority at variance with the outside world, at worst persecuted, at best ignored. In those days it survived as a network of firmly united, well-defined brotherhoods. Recovering such a vision of brotherhood and community could be its salvation today."

We stand by the Pope

2006-09-19T21:23:00.000-05:00

Press Release

Carrón (CL): «We stand by the Pope» In regard to the attacks against Benedict XVI by Islamic exponents, Fr. Julián Carrón, President of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, has issued the following declaration:

"Concerning the accusations against Benedict XVI, three things are evident: 1) The Pope certainly did not want to offend Islamic believers, but to call everyone to a correct use of reason; 2) the Pope has a clear awareness of some extreme aspects of the vicissitudes of Islam, which are truths of history before the eyes of all; and 3) there is an intolerance of peaceful criticism that is intolerable, both in terms of the preconceived positions of certain Islamic exponents, and in terms of the indifference and superficiality of many Western commentators.

"We stand by the Pope. In affirming that "not acting according to reason is against the nature of God," Benedict XVI said a true thing that holds for anyone, beginning with we Christians.

"This position of the Pope saves the possibility for an authentic religious experience for every man, and permits an encounter in peace. It is not a question of a clash of civilizations, but the elementary experience of the "poor of spirit" of every religion: those who live a reasonable relationship with God, beginning from the needs for truth, beauty, justice, and happiness that are in the heart of every man, and precisely for this cannot follow the violent degenerations of those who, in the name of an ideology, reject reason for a power, be they in the West or anywhere else."

The CL Press Office
Milan, September 15, 2006

Reading Meaning in Signs: St. Augustine & Fr. Giussani

2006-09-17T13:24:00.000-05:00

In The Risk of Education, Fr. Giussani quotes an observation from St. Augustine:

First, there is no profound motivation for belief. On this point, I find it useful to refer to an image from Saint Augustine's Sermons, where he uses reading as a symbol to evoke the positive quality of a strong, purposeful faith: "He who looks at the characters in a book, but doesn't know their meaning, what they refer to, will praise the book with his eyes, but his spirit will not understand. But someone who can read will praise this work of art and also understand its meaning, for he will be able to see, but he will also be able to read. And only someone who has learned to read can do so ..." (31)

St. Augustine: SERMON XLVIII.

3. Now we find that three dead persons were raised by the Lord "visibly," thousands "invisibly." Nay, who knows even how many dead He raised visibly? For all the things that He did are not written. John tells us this, "Many other things Jesus did, the which if they should be written, I suppose that the whole world could not contain the books."(7) So then there were without doubt many others raised: but it is not without a meaning that the three are expressly recorded. For our Lord Jesus Christ would that those things which He did on the body should be also spiritually understood. For He did not merely do miracles for the miracles' sake; but in order that the things which He did should inspire wonder in those who saw them, and convey truth to them who understand.

As he who sees letters in an excellently written manuscript, and knows not how to read, praises indeed the transcriber's(8) hand, and admires the beauty of the characters;(9) but what those characters mean or signify he does not know; and by the sight of his eyes he is a praiser of the work, but in his mind has no comprehension of it; whereas another man both praises the work, and is capable of understanding it; such an one, I mean, who is not only able to see what is common to all, but who can read also; which he who has never learned cannot.

So they who saw Christ's miracles, and understood not what they meant, and what they in a manner conveyed to those who had understanding, wondered only at the miracles themselves; whereas others both wondered at the miracles, and attained to the meaning of them. Such ought we to be in the school of Christ.

For he who says that Christ only worked miracles, for the miracles' sake, may say too that He was ignorant that it was not the thee for fruit, when He sought figs upon the fig tree.(10) For it was not the time for that fruit, as the Evangelist testifies; and yet being hungry He sought for fruit upon the tree.

Did not Christ know, what any peasant knew? What the dresser of the tree knew, did not the tree's Creator know? So then when being hungry He sought fruit on the tree, He signified that He was hungry, and seeking after something else than this; and He found that tree without fruit, but full of leaves, and He cursed it, and it withered away. What had the tree done in not bearing fruit? What fault of the tree was its fruitlessness? No; but there are those who through their own will are not able to yield fruit. And barrenness is "their" fault, whose fruitfulness is their will. The Jews then who had the words of the Law, and had not the deeds, were full of leaves, and bare no fruit. This have I said to persuade you, that our Lord Jesus Christ performed miracles with this view, that by those miracles He might signify something further, that besides that they were wonderful and great, and divine in themselves, we might learn also something from them.

Today, the missionary priest stationed at my parish made some similar points:
"To know is good; to follow is better" and "the blind know about colors but do not see them."

May God heal our vision so that I may always look for and find the presence of Christ in my circumstances and in the Holy Mass.

As Eastern Christians repeatedly implore during Divine Liturgy, "Let us be attentive."

Good Advice from the Holy Father

2006-09-17T12:36:00.000-05:00

Please, go with your children to church and take part in the Sunday Eucharistic celebration! ... Sunday becomes more beautiful, the whole week becomes more beautiful, when you go to Sunday Mass together. And please, pray together at home too: at meals and before going to bed. Prayer does not only bring us nearer to God but also nearer to one another.

John Allen 15 September 2006

But wait! In this same dispatch, John Allen makes a striking observation about our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI:

After 18 months of Benedict's papacy, one defining characteristic is what we might call his "Chestertonian assurance," a tranquility in the face of diverse currents of thought, as well as the respect that one deeply cultured soul naturally feels for another.

USA: Order Traces Online

2006-09-16T15:51:00.000-05:00

It's a good thing ...

A thoughtful critique of Pope Benedict's recent scholarly comments

2006-09-15T23:45:00.000-05:00

Ghazan Khan [etc]

And Evangelicals should of course remember that there is a different tradition of Christian thought that is volutarist and sees reason and faith as often violently in conflict. They should also remember that one of the great writers in this voluntarist tradition was Martin Luther. And of course the Pope's aim in criticizing late medieval voluntarism is to implicitly link it to our Evangelical faith as another form of irrational religion.

As much as I enjoyed this post, I wonder at the validity of looking for criticisms of Protestantism in a text reflecting upon the differences between traditional Christianity and Islam. As the citation of Luther makes clear, the emphasis on voluntarism was already present in Catholicism before Lutheranism existed - and it also continues in some forms to this day (other examples that spring to mind are Dun Scotus and his admiring poet, G. M. Hopkins).

Of all the Protestant traditions, Luther and Lutheranism is probably the one that Joseph Ratzinger has studied the most. If anybody is seeking his opinion, they would do well to examine what he has written directly about this subject.

The blogger also asks a good question, one that I'm sure Pope Benedict has written about many time, especially since he would preach on the reading in question at least once a year:

And one can ask, in the Christianity Pope Benedict here recommends is there any place for praising a man willing to sacrifice his own son in obedience to a divine command?

Here's one answer, in Ratzinger's commentary on Pope John Paul's poetry:

Indeed at the end, Isaac is saved - the lamb is a mysterious sign of the Son who becomes the Lamb and a sacrifical victim, thus revealing to us the true face of God: the God who gives himself to us, who is entirely gift and love, to the very end (cf. Jn 13,1).

So, it would seem from this brief passage, that Pope Benedict sees the near-sacrifice of Isaac only through the lens of Christ, without which the command from God is unreasonable.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!

2006-09-09T10:20:00.000-05:00

Cardinal Kasper lays out a profoundly realistic way to think about world events:

Decisions about war and peace are taken not predominantly, or not only, by governments, military people or diplomats.

War and peace have a deeper origin; they spring from the hearts and minds of men and women. Evil or good intentions of individuals and peoples stem from the heart. And it is in the hearts and minds that conversion and renewal must begin. The heart is the breeding place of the will of reconciliation and peace, which is possible only if justice will include all.

Only God and his Holy Spirit can reach the heart of man. Only God can grant us a new heart, not a heart of stone but a heart of flesh and blood, a compassionate heart. No one but God can inspire in us feelings of peace. For this reason, the prayer for peace is a weapon which is definitely more powerful than missiles, bombs or grenades; prayer is the real superpower of this world. Jesus teaches us that faith can move mountains. Why should God, while listening to our common prayer, not unlock the complications, and solve the unsolvable -- from a human point of view -- quandary of the Middle East?

Those who say that this is just the usual Euro-ecclesiastical pacifism should perhaps take another look at Paragraph 2563 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Looking for a Job in Education? Something to Consider . . .

2006-09-02T09:14:00.000-05:00

If you graduated from a liberal arts college as I did, your professors would have persistently reminded you of the benefits of a rounded education: in a changing world, society needs people who can excel in a variety of fields and can apply insights from poetry, history, and science to new situations.

Resume and job interview counselors also highlight the need for job seekers to generalize their skills, to make the case that their experience in other areas makes them a stronger candidate for each particular position that they apply for.

Contrast these claims with a statement about John Dewey in the Wikipedia entry on Great Books:

Many of those involved with the Great Books curriculum had a populist agenda, stemming from their backgrounds in the Socialist movement. They were at odds both with much of the existing educational establishment and with contemporary educational theory. Educational theorists like Sidney Hook and John Dewey (see pragmatism) disagreed with the premise that there was crossover in education (e.g, that a study of philosophy, formal logic, or rhetoric could be of use in medicine or economics).

When I recently read this statement on Wikipedia, it made clear certain things that happened in my own job search. I found some interviewers to be skeptical of my claims to draw on previous experience to meet the demands of a new situation. These interviewers apparently did not believe in any sort of cross-pollination. For these educators, the only kind of knowledge that is valid is knowledge in particular contexts for particular purposes.

Day 3 at Rimini

2006-09-01T21:09:00.000-05:00

Michelle Riconsciente on Vatican Radio.

Wedding Service

2006-08-27T10:42:00.000-05:00

Eve of Pentecost, 1998

Entrance: Come Holy Ghost

Gloria, Worship #357

Reading I: Song of Songs 2:8-10, 14, 16a; 8:6-7a

Psalm 128 (127)

Reading II: Revelations 19:1, 5-9a

Gospel Reading: John 2:1-11

Offertory: Now the Green Blade Rises

Sanctus, Worship #389

Memorial Acclamation, Worship #394

Amen, Worship #408

Agnus Dei, Worship #425

Communion: Tantum Ergo

Closing Hymn: Holy, Holy, Holy

Benedict on Peguy's Joan of Arc

2006-08-20T23:56:00.000-05:00

Amy Welborn has the text and links at her Open Book.

More Peguy here.

Teaching Fact and Opinion

2006-08-12T21:54:00.000-05:00

Teaching students to distinguish between statements of fact and statements of opinion is a tricky business.

The link to Wikipedia's article on Fact above offers this definition:

A statement of fact or a factual claim is a statement that is presented as an accurate representation of a situation, event, or condition, and that is capable of being either proved or disproved.

The simplest, realist, and common sense definition would be:

A statement of fact or a factual claim is a statement that is presented as an accurate representation of a situation, event, or condition.

Thus, it's always been a fact that the sun and stars are burning balls of gas - even in ages when this could not be proven or verified.

Nonetheless, I am content even with the first definition so long as proof is not limited to empirical evidence.

It's one thing to differentiate between fact and opinion in advertisements and it's another thing to do so with the crucial issues of life. Does she in fact love me? Is it a fact that Christ is risen? Is truth only a category for non-essential questions?

Ambassadors of Jesus Christ

2006-08-07T13:03:00.000-05:00

I heard the following reading recently:

Since you are ambassadors and ministers of Jesus Christ in the work that you do, you must act as representing Jesus Christ himself. He wants your disciples to see him in you and to receive your teaching as if He were teaching them. They must be convinced that the truth of Jesus Christ comes from your mouth, that it is only in his name that you teach, that he has given you authority over them.

They are a letter which Christ dictates to you, which you write each day in their hearts, not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God. For the Spirit acts in you and by you through the power of Jesus Christ. It helps you overcome all the obstacles to their salvation, enlightening them in the person of Jesus Christ and helping them avoid all that could be displeasing to him.

You are engaged in a ministry wherein you are obliged to touch hearts. You cannot possibly do this without the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Beseech God to confer on you today, the same grace as He gave to the apostles so that after filling you with the Spirit for your own sanctification, He may confer it on you for the salvation of others.

from Meditations for Time of Retreat
by Jean-Baptiste de la Salle

Cool Jesus

2006-08-07T10:17:00.000-05:00

Cool Jesus by Rebecca Robinson

For more than two decades Cool Jesus has been right by my side. He’s got a big toothy smile, he hates my Church, and he’s always telling me I’ve got it all wrong. But he never tells me what’s right.

Leopardi: The Infinite

2006-08-06T19:09:00.000-05:00

The Infinite Canti XII

It was always dear to me, this solitary hill,
and this hedgerow here, that closes off my view,
from so much of the ultimate horizon.
But sitting here, and watching here,
in thought, I create interminable spaces,
greater than human silences, and deepest
quiet, where the heart barely fails to terrify.
When I hear the wind, blowing among these leaves,
I go on to compare that infinite silence
with this voice, and I remember the eternal
and the dead seasons, and the living present,
and its sound, so that in this immensity
my thoughts are drowned, and shipwreck
seems sweet to me in this sea.
Giacomo Leopardi
Translated by A. S. Kline

This poem strongly reminds me of Tennyson's poem "Ulysses," but from a more personal perspective.

Christ is not Nutella

2006-08-05T21:54:00.000-05:00

Thank goodness. This post reminds me of the Hank Hill line:

"Don't you see? You're not making Christianity better, You're making rock and roll worse."

Only the Lover Sings... Tony Kline

2006-08-05T10:49:00.000-05:00

I've stumbled over a poet and translator of poetry, Tony Kline. From his bio, I see that his training and professional life were in Mathematics and Information Services. From the passage quoted below, he does not even appear to be Christian. He is an amateur, a lover, and for precisely this reason, he could perhaps say something profound to those of us who are complacent in our answers. What he says about Dante is not to shore up his faith or to keep up his professional reputation - instead it's a response to something that has struck him.

Here's a snippet:

"Dante is a mask, it is time to humanise him. Dante is relevant beyond his age, it is time to rescue him from theologians and historians. Dante is a poet, it is time to rescue him from scholarship. He has more to say than most to those who are not Christians, not theologians, not historians and not scholars, but who still as human beings search for moral understanding, and have love, truth and beauty as realities in their lives.
[....]
Even to the unbelievers among us, he sends moral signals, a vision of humanised beauty, individual worth and shared possibility, a structuring of experience into that which is destructive, rejected, submerged, defied, that which is accepted, recognised, learnt and acted upon, and that which comes from outside us, is given, and aspired to, that beauty of the world and time, of love and experience, that joy of love granted and shared, that comes to us as final vision and benediction. All those signals we ignore at our peril.

Dante sounds all the notes of the flute that others played, and from whom our values have filtered. He does it in the name of Christianity, but he also does it in the name of Humanity and Poetry, of Love, Truth and Beauty."

{Meditations on the Divine Comedy: Introduction}

Kline has also translated the Canti of Leopardi. They look pretty good, but I haven't seen the recommended translation.

The Human Heart

2006-08-04T13:07:00.000-05:00

Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) #2563:

The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place "to which I withdraw."

The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully.

The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.

Although the CCC uses the term, heart, throughout its text, it doesn't define it expansively until the above passage in Section 4: "Christian Prayer."

As a teacher of literature, I stand in front of the heart of each student. Every day, I want to more deeply root the desire of my own heart. Every day, I want to invite students to recognize and follow the "king and center of all hearts."

____
photo is of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, wearing the habit emblazoned with the symbol he lived by: a heart beneath the cross.

Scriptural Rosary

2006-07-29T17:32:00.000-05:00

One practice that helps me renew my praying of the Rosary is the Scriptural Rosary: praying each mystery with short verses taken from Scripture. I use an older edition that features Greek-style illustrations; at some point, I'd like to get the updated version with the Luminous Mysteries (pictured left).

The Friendship of Christ

2006-07-26T22:56:00.000-05:00

I've been reading this beautiful, piercing book, The Friendship of Christ, by Robert Hugh Benson. It's one of the books recommended by Fr. Giussani in the Books of the Month list.

My hardback copy was $15 used, but you can read this book online, in a hypertext version: The Friendship of Christ. Or, if you like, here's The Friendship of Christ at CIN.

Other writings of Msgr. Benson are presented in the Archives of Notre Dame.

Project Gutenberg has a list of other Robert Hugh Benson books online including Lord of the World and Come Rack! Come Rope!

Crossposted at La Nouvelle Theologie

Communion and Liberation on Vacation

2006-07-26T12:18:00.000-05:00

Sharon has posted some beautiful photos.

And reflections:
Family Vacation Retrospective

Acquisitions

2006-07-24T00:35:00.000-05:00

I found all of these, except the Thomas Mann, at Loomes Theological in Minnesota.

The Quiet Light by Louis de Wohl

The Friendship of Christ by Robert Hugh Benson

The Angels and their Mission according to the Fathers of the Church by Jean Danielou

Prayer: The Mission of the Church by Jean Danielou

The Heroic Face of Innocence by Georges Bernanos
→ "Joan: Heretic and Saint"
→ "Sermon of an Agnostic on the Feast of St. Therese"
→ "Dialogues of the Carmelites" [treats the same subject as Song at the Scaffold]

Mediæval Christianity by Christopher Dawson
→ pamphlet of the Catholic Truth Society, 31 pages

The Historic Reality of Christian Culture by Christopher Dawson
{In this book, Dawson highly recommends European Literature and The Latin Middle Ages by E. R. Curtius - a book also highly recommended by my graduate Chaucer professor. }

"it is impossible to understand the development and interrelation of the different European vernacular literatures unless we have studied the common Western tradition of medieval Latin culture by which all the early vernacular literatures were so deeply influenced. [citation of Curtius] And if his conclusions are not more widely known and have not made a deeper impression on educated opinion, this is because there can be no public for such works so long as the study of Christian culture is nobody's business and finds no place in the curriculum of the modern university"
{Ch 7; p 111}

Religion and the Rise of Western Culture by Christopher Dawson

Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

The Education of Desire

2006-07-17T11:13:00.000-05:00

A friend of these notes has sent a link to an article that discusses Dead Poets Society (starring Robin Williams as the teacher, Mr. Keating) in the context of students who desire to study English at the graduate level. The article surveys some motives that are inadequate for those who wish to succeed in the academy. These students:

"are romantics who must suddenly become realpolitikers. Maybe that's why most drop out before they complete their doctorates. Those who stay have political commitments (and probably come from undergraduate programs where those commitments are encouraged early), or they develop them as graduate students, or they feign or exaggerate them to get through."

("Goodbye, Mr. Keating,"
THOMAS H. BENTON,
Chronicle of Higher Education,
July 7, 2006)

Professor Benton (a pseudonym, or more precisely, an allonym) has laid out for us the contradiction that Fr. Giussani examines in Chapter 3 of The Religious Sense.

r → f ← v

"The object of knowledge, in as much as it interests us (v), evokes a state of feeling (f) that conditions the capacity for knowledge (r) [reason]. The serious use of reason would requre either that f be eliminated or reduced to a bare minimum" (Giussani, The Religious Sense, p. 26).

In light of this dilemma, Professor Benton offers the following advice to those who would pursue graduate education in English:

"They must, ultimately, purge themselves of the romantic motives that drew them to English in the first place - or pretend to do so. If you want to be a literary professional, you must say goodbye to Mr. Keating."

Whereas Professor Benton emphasizes reason, his students emphasize feeling. Instead of resolving this contradiction in a unilateral way, Fr. Giussani proposes a method that does justice to both reason and feeling in the pursuit of value:

"The more vital a value, the more it is by its nature a proposal for life, the more the problem lies not in intelligence, but in morality, that is, a greater love of the truth than oneself. Concretely, morality is the sincere desire to know the object in question in a true way, beyond our attachment to our own opinions or those inculcated upon us."

(Giussani, The Religious Sense, p. 31)

This proposal has also been called the education of desire.

___________________________

UPDATE: More grad school advice at the Benton/ Pannapacker archive

An Evasion of the Question

2006-07-14T12:26:00.000-05:00

Rationalism claims: "only whatever I can do exists" (Why the Church?, p 59).

Inch by Inch, a picture book by Leo Lionni (1960), illustrates the evasion rationalism makes when confronted with the mysterious.

When asked to measure the distinctive feature in each of a series of birds, the inchworm obliges happily by measuring beaks, necks, legs. The nightingale asks too much, however. He demands that the inchworm measure his song. While the nightingale sings, the inchworm sneaks away.

Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Coming of Age of the 'I'

2006-07-13T00:14:00.000-05:00

I've just re-read Section One of Fr. Walter J. Ong SJ's book, Hopkins, the Self, and God (Univ. of Toronto Press: 1986).

Although I've read this work before, I decided to return to it in light of more recent readings: specifically, Chapter 3 of Fr. Giussani's Why the Church? and many related articles that stress the human experience of the 'I', the self. The following quote introduces the topic of Abraham and the Birth of the 'I':

"in order to understand things, it’s a good idea to investigate them at their origin: Abraham, or, in other words, the birth of the 'I.' Try for an instant to imagine God, as He addressed a man – Abraham – personally for the first time. Try to imagine that call, that relationship, and that promise. There, that time, God came in as a factor among the usual terms of things; there, in Abraham, began the deepening of awareness of mystery as something other than himself. Later, with Moses, God was able to reveal Himself more completely: 'I am he who is.' But it is there with Abraham that this opening of a relationship begins, a new factor among the usual terms of things."

Ong approaches the 'I' not at its origin but at a dramatic high point: the writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ.

The remarkable achievement of Hopkins in terms of the self was the confrontation of the 'I' with itself:

"Hopkins attends not to the search for identity as such but to the fact of identity, not to self-discovery but to self-possession and self-confrontation" (p. 26).

And here is this 'I' face-to-face with a 'you':

"although persons are utterly distinct from one another in the 'I' that each knows and utters, they relate profoundly to one another through the same 'I,' not via science (as the quotation from [Walker] Percy makes clear (but via the correlative of 'I,' that is, 'you,' which, like 'I,' is not a name. To put it another way, 'I' is not a label, but a voice, a cry, calling for response from a 'you' who must cry out his or her own 'I' " (p. 34).

Much of "Section One: Particularity and Self in Hopkin's Victorian Consciousness," establishes Hopkins's approach firmly within the context of his time. Subsection 6 looks at the rise of consciousness of the self from the Delphic oracles (Know Thyself) and focuses on St. Augustine, who developed "an urgent sense of the human interior, or heart in confrontation with the living God and simultaneously with itself" (19), but wrapped in rhetoric, this description lacked the "intimacy" (19) and privacy" (20) - the immediacy of Hopkins. The Christian West continued to deepen its understanding of the self through Trinitarian and Incarnational dogma, both deeply concerned with person. This awareness is deftly traced through the Renaissance and the Romantics, up to the Victorian age in which Hopkins lived.

In a discussion that is almost Socratic at times in getting to essentials, Ong distinguishes the self described above, the self as fact that Hopkins recognized with a variety of other phenomena: self concept, self as totality of ideas, etc.

I can only summarize in a general way other points. For Hopkins the self becomes distinct insofar as it is more deeply integrated into Jesus Christ and His resurrection. Hopkins expressed an awareness of freedom both deeply rooted in the Spiritual Exercises and anticipating in many respects that of the existentialists, like Sartre.

As a convert, Hopkins was perhaps more a man of his age than most priests. Later in the book, Ong discusses Hopkins's uneasy relationship with the Catholic scholastic theology prominent in his times. But in this chapter, Ong compares Hopkins with Fr. George Tyrrell, SJ whose description of the human person is strikingly Cartesian (40), especially in comparison to Hopkins.

I wonder if the fascinating thing about Protestant theologians on American soil is not precisely the Christian personality in the context of socio-technological changes that intensified the self - in the absence of a scholasticism viewed through Descartes. So that, for example, Jonathan Edwards and others could discover anew the biblical and Augustine sense of the heart, freedom, etc.

_____________________________

Addendum: I found this fascinating dissertation on the use of technology in education which draws on the writings of Fr. Giussani and Fr. Ong: Quo Vadis: An Integrated Direction for Catholic Media Technology Engagement by Eugene Gan

Affordances

2006-07-12T12:30:00.000-05:00

In a Lifespan Development class I took recently, I learned about affordances. A person's development happens in the confluence between latent desires and opportunities to fulfill these desires. For example, if I get up early, I can fulfill my desire for fresh air and exercise by taking a walk. If the kids start playing happily with each other, I can read for 10 minutes or longer.

Sharon at Clairity's Journal found that insomnia offered an affordance for prayer.

Fr. Giussani observed that what people do with their free time reveals who they are and what they most desire. Turning one's back on these affordances is the sign of despair: "If a young person or an adult wastes his free time, he does not love life; he is a fool" (The Time of Freedom).

Desire is not merely intention, but action. What do you desire?

The Rosary: a School of Contemplation

2006-07-12T11:49:00.000-05:00

At Clairity's Journal, Sharon has highlighted the essential passage in Pope John Paul II's Rosarium Virginis Mariae (RVM): "the Rosary [...] represents a most effective means of fostering among the faithful that commitment to the contemplation of the Christian mystery."

Pope John Paul II recommended (RVM, #33) entwining relative clauses into each Hail Mary as a way of focusing on each mystery:

Pope Paul VI drew attention, in his Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus, to the custom in certain regions of highlighting the name of Christ by the addition of a clause referring to the mystery being contemplated. This is a praiseworthy custom, especially during public recitation. It gives forceful expression to our faith in Christ, directed to the different moments of the Redeemer's life. It It is at once a profession of faith and an aid in concentrating our meditation, since it facilitates the process of assimilation to the mystery of Christ inherent in the repetition of the Hail Mary.

Here's an example:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women and
blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus
who sweated blood for us.
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

Below are the relative clauses that I use when praying the Rosary. The Joyous, Sorrowful, and Glorious mysteries are traditional German wording, drawn from Hans Urs von Balthasar's book, The Threefold Garland. The clausae for the luminous mysteries are ones I developed to be parallel to the traditional ones and to incorporate the names of particular persons and places.

Joyful Mysteries
Jesus, whom you, O Virgin, conceived of the Holy Spirit
Jesus, whom you, O Virgin, took to Elizabeth
Jesus, to whom you, O Virgin, gave birth
Jesus, whom you, O Virgin, offered up in the temple
Jesus, whom you, O Virgin, found again in the temple

Luminous Mysteries
Jesus, whom John baptized in the Jordan
Jesus, with whom you, O Virgin, pleaded to reveal the best wine at Cana
Jesus, who preached the Kingdom of Heaven
Jesus, who was Transfigured on Mount Tabor
Jesus, who offered Himself as sacrifice at the Last Supper

Sorrowful Mysteries
Jesus, who sweated blood for us
Jesus, who was scourged for us
Jesus, who was crowned with thorns for us
Jesus, who bore the heavy cross for us
Jesus, who was crucified for us

Glorious Mysteries
Jesus, who rose from the dead
Jesus, who ascended into heaven
Jesus, who sent us the Holy Spirit
Jesus, who took you, O Virgin, up into heaven
Jesus, who crowned you, O Virgin, in heaven

*********************

One benefit of praying the Rosary has been to recognize the events of my life in the context of the life of Jesus. Thus, I ask that the Holy Spirit conceive and bring Jesus to birth in my life; I learn to see my sufferings and those of my loved ones in the context of Jesus's passion.

*********************

Other than these clausae, I tend to be something of a minimalist with regard to accretions to the Rosary. That is, I tend toward an essential Rosary composed of contemplation, Our Fathers, Hail Marys, and Glory Bes.

Discretion

2006-05-26T10:13:00.000-05:00

"All good and great things automatically build around themselves a protective layer. It lies in their nature to be esoteric. It is good that this is so, and we should resist the temptation to thwart this principle by making the private public, regardless of how urgent the need must appear."

The Grain of Wheat,
Balthasar, p 122-123

The Genre of Notes

2006-03-15T23:46:00.000-06:00

"One jots down a phrase; perhaps incompletely, and this note is the synthesis of an infinite number of things which are presupposed . . . The novel has a public, while the note has a user. The note is concise and, in reading it, the user imagines the unsaid between the phrases, what the period abandons to memory."

Luigi Giussani trans. by Viviane Hewitt,
At the Origin of the Christian Claim, p 44
McGill-Queens: 1998

This genre of notes provides a helpful way of looking at the Gospels, at Fr. Giussani's writings, and at blogs - especially this one. Lots of things are presupposed, but they may make sense to you if you have had similar experiences.