Friday, December 30, 2005

Jake gave me for Christmas The Way of Silent Love by “a Carthusian.” A quote:

One of the most beautiful definitions of a monk is that he is a man of desire. . . . The day when he feels full to overflowing, he ceases to be a monk—and is living an illusion.

How many of our religious writers try to give the impression that they feel full to overflowing! The Carthusian adds:

God never surfeits us with the gift of himself but creates in us an ever larger capacity for love and, having done this, he replenishes us with a desire, a thirst, more ardent still. And it will always be this way with God for eternity without end, because God is without end. If we arrive at the end, it is not God.

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Am moving some things to blogs in anticipation of leaving hello.

Optical Illusion by Mary Murphy.
 

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Leo Wong is absent from Vleeptron without a note from the school nurse. After this I must plan another visit to Planet Vleeptron.

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Told Ted Adams that I will start reading Rousseau’s Confessions to him.

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Borrowed Jake H's Fisher tape deck, and will try to make a CD of Mary’s murphy stew tape. Am bidding for a Nakamichi LX-3 on eBay. The auction ends today. I hope I lose; if I do I'll been on another LX-3 that was put up yesterday, though the winning price will probably be higher because the seller worked to service the machine and provided a good detailed description.

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In Great Barrington yesterday, picked up a copy of Berlioz Remembered by Michael Rose.
 

Sunday, December 18, 2005

How little has this Advent been, for me, a preparation for, or even a looking forward to your coming.

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After Mass spoke to Father P and Kevin O about the interior of the Cathedral. They both say it will be “restoration,” not “reordering,” but I fear a plan like that for St. Colman’s. In the name of religion, our bishops destroy religion. Then a saint will come along to truly restore.
 

Saturday, December 17, 2005

As we did last year, got our tree at Veeder tree farm. We suspected, because of the name, and it was confirmed, that one of the family goes to school with O.

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David Dannenbaum recommends to me this essay by Harold Bloom.
 

Saturday, December 10, 2005

En la iglesia St. James, una misa en español para celebrar la fiesta de la Virgen de Guadalupe. Wanted to try the free food there afterwards, but O preferred to go out, so we ended up spending $60 on a forgettable supper at Mangia’s.
 

Friday, December 9, 2005

A snow day for O and other children here.

John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.
—Matthew 11:18–19

Each saint is like no other saint. To be “another ——” is not necessarily a recommendation.

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His way of celebrating another was to reward himself.

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Spengler on Iran
 

Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Belief today is impossible. Yet with God nothing shall be impossible. So be it: I believe.

Maria, Dominus tecum, ora pro nobis peccatoribus.

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. . . la mention du « sixième mois », qui est clairement un parallèle au « sixième jour » de la création, jour où fut créé le premier homme, introduit à cet éclatement de la force créatrice de Dieu dans l’apparition du fils de Marie, Fils de Dieu.

Alors que Zacharie et Élizabeth, par leur généalogies respectives représentaient la crème de l’aristocratie religieuse d’Israël, Marie et son fiancé Joseph, de la Galilée paganisée et d’un petit bourg jamais mentionné dans l’Ancien Testament, ne sont rien de ce point de vue. . . . Il s’agit d’une création nouvelle à partir du monde des petits, des « pauvres de Yahwé ».

Laissons-nous conduire nous aussi par le même Esprit.

—Dom Armand Veilleux, Homélie, 8 décembre 2005—Immaculée Conception

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The Friends of St. Colman’s Cathedral

And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise. And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.
—John 2:16–17

How many of the religious bureaucrats who “reorder” churches understand that they are more like sellers of oxen and sheep and doves, and changers of money than like true worshippers? Would that they were driven out of the temple.
 

Wednesday, December 7, 2005

It’s a better story when God is in the picture.

Your yoke is easy. We ourselves add to our burdens.

You are not the Church but the head stone of the corner.

My mother was hanging out the laundry 64 years ago when she saw planes flying overhead and wondered why there were so many of them.
 

Tuesday, December 6, 2005

Why should anyone but you be interested in one who is lost?

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. . . there can be no culture—and one cannot be conservative in any profound sense of the word if one applauds the incessant titillation of the vulgar mass's most frivolous inclinations as a wealth-generating mechanism. . . . What really, really annoys me is to hear the exponents of this Great Betrayal warble about their religious faith and offer themselves as champions of time-honored principles. Judas, too, threw his arms around God.
—John R. Harris, Speed Trumps Ease

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Il y a des personnes qui prônent une plus grande liberté dans l’Eglise, mais qui, à mon grand étonnement, ne veulent pas admettre une survivance plus large de la forme ancienne du rite romain. . . . Je crois que Benoît XVI va être extrêmement respectueux des différences légitimes. Il a dit dans un de ses livres qu’il n’est pas l’homme des institutions, des systèmes, des bureaux. Mais il a une foi profonde dans ce qui constitue le noyau de l’unité de l’Eglise, c’est-à-dire la foi, les sacrements, la prière.
—Cardinal Medina Estevez interviewed by Olivier Figueras

 

Sunday, December 4, 2005

So many Masses, so many messes.

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Albany Pro Musica concert at the Cathedral: “Handel’s Messiah (Christmas portion) and Seasonal Favorites.”
 

Thursday, December 1 , 2005

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
—Matthew 7:21

We who know you, and say we know you, how many of us will enter the kingdom of heaven?

At this moment [1941] we are the anvil rather than the hammer. Other men, strangers, renegades, are hammering us. . . . The anvil cannot and need not strike back: it must only be firm, only hard! . . . However hard the hammer strikes, the anvil stands firmly and silently in place and will long continue to shape the objects forged upon it. If it is sufficiently tough and firm and hard the anvil will last longer than the hammer. The anvil represents those who are unjustly imprisoned, those who are driven out and banished for no fault of their own.
—Blessed Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Münster, quoted in Justus George Lawler, Hitler’s Hammer, the Church’s Anvil, First Things, November 2005.

How many of us are anvils of sand?

If the principle is established that one is entitled to kill his unproductive fellow-man, then woe betide all of us when we become aged and infirm! If it is legitimate to kill unproductive members of the community, woe betide the disabled who have sacrificed their health or their limbs in the productive process! If unproductive men and women can be disposed of by violent means, woe betide our brave soldiers who return home with major disabilities, as cripples, as invalids!
—Clemens August von Galen, Ibid.

Along with Bishop von Galen, suffer me to do your Father’s will, to hear your words and do them, nec laudibus nec timore, neither for praise nor out of fear.

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For the priest:

1. Say Mass as though the people were not present. This means that the priest is thinking about, speaking to, and turned towards the Most High God. Paradoxically, it is this benign neglect of the people that gets the person of the priest out of the way and invites the people into the most intimate participation in the sacred mysteries. This is now counter-intuitive to most priests, who were taught that their first, last and constant job is make the people “feel welcome”, but it is absolutely and unconditionally true: say Mass as though they are not there, and they will start to say things like, “That’s the first time in 40 years I feel like I’ve been to Mass.” Guaranteed.
—Fr Jay Scott Newman, Worshipping the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness