Cecilia
‘Cecilia’s Christian witness caused scandal in a city still largely pagan. She was arrested, then condemned to suffocation in the baths. When the city’s prefect heard she was still alive after 24 hours, he ordered decapitation. The henchman struck thrice, unable to sever the head from the trunk. Roman law did not permit a fourth attempt. He left Cecilia bleeding, therefore. She lived on for three days. Then she died, and was buried by Pope Urban. This story, told in ancient chronicles, was confirmed by observation in the jubilee year of 1600. During restoration works at the abbey of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, on the site where Cecilia’s family had held its titulus, the martyr’s remains were found. Not only were they in a state of incorruption. The twisted position of Cecilia’s head also corresponded exactly to the story of failed execution. The find was a sensation. Swiss guards had to be brought in to control the traffic of pilgrims wanting to pray in the physical presence of one of Rome’s most beloved saints.’ From Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses.
Poison
One of the papers I look at each morning is the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a good old-fashioned continental broadsheet with a deserved reputation for serious, well-researched journalism. Even here one senses a change of tonality these days. I have been struck to find, over little more than 48 hours, three front-page headlines that cry out: ‘Poison!’ The contexts were various, applying first to a political party (the AfD), then to the culture of victimisation, then to Platform X. The matters in hand are causes for concern, that is true. But what does it do to public discourse when bastions of measured analysis yield routinely to hyperbole? What does it say about journalism that such easy recourse is had to the semantic register of toxins? It goes my competence to attempt the psychoanalysis of a newspaper. But it seems to me these questions are worth asking. The task of the press is surely to articulate problems so that these can be addressed, not just to cry wolf.
Creating Order
One of my favourite books by Thomas Merton is his Seeking Paradise: The Spirit of the Shakers. The Shaker village of Pleasant Hill is unfar from Gethsemani. Engaging with the history of the place and its deep motivation, he was struck by parallels with monastic life. He summed up his findings in this little book, illustrated with his own photographs. We are treated to a precious collection of Shaker apophthegmata, like this one: ‘We are not called to labour to excel, or to be like the world; but to excel them in order, union, peace, and in good works – works that are truly virtuous and useful to man in this life. All things ought to be made according to their order and use.’ What a revolution might ensue in a time in which ‘manufacture’ has become an all but meaningless term, if this principle were heeded here and there. The Shakers also liked to say: ‘If you love a plant, take heed to what it likes.’ That counsel is transferrable to many aspects of living and relating.
Wounded Lion
The story of St Jerome and the lion reached its canonical form in The Golden Legend. It must have circulated long before, but its textual origin is shrouded in mystery. In the medieval telling, a lion turned up at Jerome’s monastery in Bethlehem one might. The brethren were aghast, but Jerome saw that the beast needed help. Its paw was wounded, pierced by a thorn. The saint extracted it, and the lion was delighted. It ‘ran joyously throughout all the monastery and kneeled down to every brother and fawned them with his tail, like as he had demanded pardon of the trespass that he had done’. The motif has been amply reproduced in art. I recently saw this charming depiction on the Lübeck altarpiece in St Nicolaus’s church in Tallinn. St Jerome looks as crusty as by all accounts he was, yet what precision and gentleness in his surgery. The thorn has become a nail fit to run through a portcullis. The fierce lion stands before us like a cub. The lesson is clear: sometimes we are fearful of things that are in themselves innocent; at the same time, small stings can have disproportionate impact.
Discovery
In an interesting interview already ten years old, Tamara Rojo speaks of her first experience of ballet, at the age of five. She’d been brought into the school gymnasium out of the cold while waiting for her mother to pick her up. A dance lesson was going on: ‘There was this quietness and harmony, it felt perfect, like a world I’d never seen. I didn’t want to leave. When my mother finally came, I said: ‘But we need to stay and watch this to the end, whatever it is!’ Because I didn’t know what ballet was. I didn’t understand that ballet was a performance.’
The precocious, mysterious insight small children can have regarding their call, the way they must follow. It calls for reverence.
Perspective
One day it’s enough,
you feel, to view the world
through the common lens
of history, content
with no vision wider
than that of the obvious.
Next day, caught by
a tumult of longing, you search
among the straw and
chaff of things for the golden
corn of meaning.
From Fr Paul Murray’s Light at the Torn Horizon.
Down the Mountain
A rereading of Mann’s The Magic Mountain leads George Packer to a conclusion that seems to me exact: ‘In driving our democracy into hatred, chaos, and violence we […] grant death dominion over our thoughts. We succumb to the impulse to escape our humanness. That urge, ubiquitous today, thrives in the utopian schemes of technologists who want to upload our minds into computers; in the pessimism of radical environmentalists who want us to disappear from the Earth in order to save it; in the longing of apocalyptic believers for godly retribution and cleansing; in the daily sense of inadequacy, of shame and sin, that makes us disappear into our devices. The need for political reconstruction, in this country and around the world, is as obvious as it was in Thomas Mann’s time. But Mann also knew that, to withstand our attraction to death, a decent society has to be built on a foundation deeper than politics: the belief that, somewhere between matter and divinity, we human beings, made of water, protein, and love, share a common destiny.’
Stranezza
Ostensibly the account of a writer’s block endured and overcome, Roberto Andò’s film La Stranezza develops into a kind of parable. The intensely particular becomes an image of universals: the film is really about what it means to be human; what is more, it is a humanising film. I watched it during a transatlantic flight, in the kind of half-stupor such passage induces, and am astonished to find that a number of scenes and dialogues not only remain fresh in my mind but present themselves as carriers of happiness. The ‘strangeness’ to which Luigi Pirandello is subject (a circumstance well known from the author’s life, dramatised with imaginative freedom) is at once constricting and liberating, enabling insight and representation without precedent, born of cordial encounters. Life as theatre: this is what the story is ultimately about. Gently and companionably, Andò prompts a question, addressed to each of us: And you, are you really playing your part?
Religion of the Self
I think of an essay Vito Mancuso published on 13 June last year, a day after the death of Silvio Berlusconi. Mancuso reflected not so much on the man as on the phenomenon he embodied, il berlusconismo, instantiating a global tendency that puts ‘the primacy of personal success before any kind of outreach to others, establishes applause as the measure of anything’s value and transforms citizens into spectators.’ The piece goes on: ‘You see, in earlier times one could imagine the transcendent in various ways: in the classical sense of Catholicism and other religions; in the socialist and communist sense of a classless, finally just society; in the liberal, republican sense of an ethical state like the Prussian one lauded by Hegel; in the sense of right, incorruptible personal conscience as in Kant’s moral philosophy; and in many other ways besides. All of them, though, have this in common: the conviction that something exists that is more important than the self, before which the self must quieten itself and serve. From the beginning of mankind, the concept of God has stood, exactly, for the vital sense according to which there is something more important than my self, my power, my pleasure […]. The triumph of berlusconismo represents the breakdown of this spiritual and moral tension. In as much as it constitutes a religion of the self, it proclaims the opposite: nothing matters more than me.’ Where this tendency is prevalent, what chance has any meaningful notion of society or of the common good?
Fragile Unity
The vocation of Abraham, our father in faith, was synodal. Having heard God’s call, ‘he took his wife Sarai, his brother’s son Lot, the persons whom they had acquired in Haran’, and set forth to go to the land of Canaan. At first it went well enough. As long as the journey’s destination is remote, susceptible of idealisation, synodality does not pose major challenges; travellers envisage the nature of the trip as they please. When the journey’s end approaches, when questions arise of dividing territory, tensions arise. The possessions of Abram and Lot were such that ‘the land could not support both of them living together’ . They split. ‘Separate yourself from me’, said Abraham, ‘if you take the left hand, then I will take the right’. This story helps us relinquish simplistic notions of synodality. If one does not have the same finality in mind, the same image of a paradise to restore, a centrifugal force will make itself felt. Unity, ever vulnerable, will then be liable to break.
The Crow
A fresh encounter with a movement from Schubert’s Winterreise becomes for Daniel Capó an occasion to reflect on the underlying malaise of our time. He writes, ‘The question of art is, above all, one that probes each of us and opens the future to new paths. Schubert’s romanticism, with its burden of anguish, translates into our era with all the hallmarks of the twentieth century: mass destruction, totalitarianism, the indiscriminate use of propaganda, rock music… No society can emerge unscathed from these experiences, nor can any recreation we attempt of past or present. Like the wanderer who sings in Winterreise, we journey in search of an authentic home. Civilization thus springs from a simple gesture repeated through time: welcoming hands and recognizing eyes that preserve us from dissolution.’ You can read his essay in its entirety here.
Angelus
Early this morning, standing at the bus stop in the rain, I suddenly heard the Angelus from St Olav’s cathedral pour out over the cityscape in sonorous benediction. Little gives me as much comfort as the sound of the Angelus bell. It is a marker of civilisation, a proclamation at once discreet and majestic of life’s purpose and sense, direction and finality, spreading its beneficial reach to those, too, who have not the slightest idea of what it stands for. I think of a few lines by Jehan Le Povremoyne set to music by Vierne: ‘The Angelus sounds across my city still asleep; the Angelus of bells in honour of Mary. See how the night flees. How joyfully the Archangel’s greeting resounds upon my city still asleep. As the doe’s fawn behind the hill, the sun will leap forth.’
Inner Structure
I recently came across an excerpt from a conference Cardinal Stanislas Dziwisz gave at the University of Lublin in 2001. Dziwisz, who had been John Paul II’s private secretary, recalled the aftermath of the assassination attempt in St Peter’s Square on 13 May 1981. Rushed to the Gemelli Hospital John Paul II was instantly submitted to surgery while the world held its breath and the whole Church prayed. When after some days the pope regained consciousness, opened his eyes, and prepared to speak, everyone was expectant. What profound mystical utterance would he make, after standing on the threshold between life and death? Dziwisz says that his first words were: ‘Have we said Compline?’ I find this a touching testimony. It shows the extent to which the inner life of this great Christian, artist, intellectual and statesman, was structured by the prayer of the Church; and is an incentive to remain radically faithful to it, certain that it will provide the nourishment needed for whatever task providence assigns us.
Queen of the Night
I gather there’s a plan to reboot Amadeus on Sky. Good luck to them. I’ve never understood why people bother to tamper with artistic creations that, within their idiom, achieve something close to perfection – like ridiculously remaking Brideshead. The producer’s promise of ‘a corrupting symphony of jealousy, ambition and genius’ is quite enough to make me resolve not to see the film. Mozart will forever remain a mystery unfathomable. The truest thing that can be said about him is what Piotr Anderszewski says in Monsaingeon’s portrait: ‘I have never been able to reconcile myself to the premature death of Mozart.’ Yet there’s something about the Miloš/Shaffer Amadeus that comes across as definitive. I love this scene in which a telling-off from a fierce mother-in-law makes Mozart touch the essence of one of opera’s most original characters. He must have operated a bit like that. If we were to discover just a fragment of his secret of sensation, how interesting, how rich life would be.
Blindness & Sight
The trajectory traced by St Teresa of Ávila reaches from the outset right to the loftiest end of spiritual life. She counsels souls who wobble ‘like hens, with feet tied together’ but also those who soar like eagles. Nor does she forget the perplexing darkness of the long intermediate stage when the soul, like a timid dove, is dazzled by rare glimpses of God’s Sun while, ‘when looking at itself, its eyes are blinded by clay. The little dove is blind’. Everything she writes, she tells us, is born of experience. For long years she herself ‘had neither any joy in God nor pleasure in the world’. She lived in an in-between state, a no-woman’s land. What changed it? No summary can do justice to her subtle account of the transformative miracle wrought in her by God. We can, though, get some sense of its impact. Teresa testifies how, at a decisive juncture, ‘todos los que me conocían veían claro estar otra mi alma’: her soul had become other; it was no longer what it used to be.
Vince malum in bono
This was the motto of Bishop Jurgis Matulaitis, a great confessor of the twentieth century. A man of learning and deep prayer, he loved the Church and poured himself out for her. He also loved his Lithuanian nation, which he sought to build up by nurturing, after centuries of Russian dominance, its specific national genius and its cultural and ethnic diversity. Bishop Matulaitis was a wise director of souls, not afraid to call a spade a spade. Here is an excerpt from a letter written in 1913 to a man wanting to become a priest: ‘It seems to me that your doubts stem from the fact that your life is much too dominated by self; your life revolves about your person as on an axis. You would like to put yourself and your life into a kind of bank so that your ego might realise as much interest as possible. You would like to protect and insure yourself well so that your ego would not perish or meet with an accident. But even the most cautious of men are sometimes unable to protect their wealth.’ Bishop Matulaitis was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987. You can find a wealth of resources, including his spiritual journal, on this site.
The Woods
Writes Helen Waddell about Boethius:
‘It was fortunate for the sanity of the Middle Ages that the man who taught them so much of their philosophy was of a temperament so humane and so serene; that the ‘mightiest observer of mighty things’, who defined eternity with an exulting plenitude that no man has approached before or since, had gone to gather violets in a spring wood, and watched with a sore heart a bird in a cage that caught a glimpse of waving trees, and now grieved its heart out, scattering its seed with small impotent claws’:
Interesting After All
Any writer hopes to interest his readers, not necessarily to convince them, but to make them reflect, and to count the time well spent. So I was happy to discover Harry Readhead’s recent review of Chastity. He writes: ‘Chastity is a curious little book. It is immensely readable, yet deals with something I never thought I would find remotely interesting. It reconsiders and reframes a virtue that has long been understood simplistically and scornfully. By the time the curtain, as it were, comes down, we have the impression that chastity, in its broadest definition, communicates something noble, something admirable, something freeing and — ironically — something desirable. We are, in other words, persuaded by the author’s argument, which is subtle but insistent, clothed in the language of reflection and meditation: for it is an argument for a life lived on our own terms, liberated by the racket and noise of ego.’
Guardian Angels
The beginning of Newman’s poem The Dream of Gerontius speaks of a marvellous encounter. Just as Gerontius leaves this world, he realises he is not alone. A mysterious, discreet companion accompanies him into the hereafter. ‘Someone’, he says, ‘has me fast within his ample palm.’ Who? The answer is not slow in coming. His angel tells him: ‘My Father gave in charge to me this child of earth, e’en from its birth to serve and save, alleluia, and saved is he. This child of clay to me was given to rear and train by sorrow and pain in the narrow way, alleluia, from earth to heaven.’
Recipe for Prayer
‘My dear …
I expect the interior peace you would like to have is not attainable under the circumstances. But there is another peace, which consists in simply willing what God wills, even though it seems to be just the unpleasant distraction and exteriorising which one supposes to be bad for one. The only thing is to accept all the circumstances of one’s life, and all the effect they seem to produce upon one, and use them as means of annihilating one’s own will, cheerfully and willingly. There is no other recipe for prayer, I think. Ever yours affect.,
fr John Chapman OSB.’
A letter dated 30 June 1914 from Abbot Chapman’s Spiritual Letters.
Finding Your Feet
In a virtuoso paean to scansion, ‘fear for the layman, opportunity for the academic to display his obfuscating expertise, alas’, Craig Raine reflects on the importance of developing an ability to listen with intelligence. The rhythm of poetry (and prose) supposes acoustic exercise. ‘Metrical variation occurs when the assimilation of the part to the whole sounds forced and unnatural. The ear decides. But you have to have one.’ Not everyone does. By way of example Raine performs a deft analysis of Auden’s poem Night Mail. Re-reading these familiar lines made me want to watch again the 1936 film with the same title, which Auden coproduced. It left me thoughtful, and touched. The film presents the image of a nation with self-confidence, of high ideals of collaboration, of a people eager to stay in touch with itself. Qualities hard to come by in today’s Europe, which nonetheless yearns for them. Auden’s poem features in the final three and a half minutes of the film.
Fischer
Alfred Brendel has spoken of everything he owes the great Edwin Fischer, once remarking that he had never heard anyone make the piano sing like Fischer. One can hear what he means in this recording of Beethoven’s fourth concerto. The first movement cadenza is moving. Is it Fischer’s own? The greatest marvel, though, is the beginning of the second movement, which, as Ingmar Bergman observed in a famous radio speech, is a reluctant dialogue between the orchestra and the piano. ‘Beethoven lets the orchestra be in a bad mood – just listen and hear how angry it is! Then the piano comes in and says: “I will comfort you”‘, only to be told, ‘No one can comfort me!’ The piano, however, doesn’t give up: ‘What tenderness!’ ‘Eventually the orchestra starts listening, and the movement ends in peaceful understanding.’ Fischer draws us into this parable of gracious perseverance.
Don’t Procrastinate
From today’s Mass reading (Proverbs 3.27-34):
‘My son, do not refuse a kindness to anyone who begs it, it is in your power to perform it. Do not say to your neighbour, “Go away! Come another time! I will give it to you tomorrow”, if you can do it now.’
It can seem, perhaps, a simple counsel, but in fact, if taken seriously, the path indicated here is of high charity and self-transcendence. I have seen with my own eyes that it can be a path to holiness.
Presence
This bust of Marcus Aurelius, produced in the late second century, was acquired by Norway’s National Gallery in 1966. Standing in front of it this morning I was entranced. To call it lifelike is a banal understatement. There is life in it, somehow, and a quality of presence that carries through the centuries. What vitality there can be in marble; and how inadequate the verbiage we leave behind, now, as our putative legacy to posterity is to a single such portrait. The emperor is still young; an adolescent beard is struggling to form. What is striking is his gaze – probing, intelligent, lucid, and not at peace. We are confronted with the face of one alert to the earnestness of existence. It makes me think of a phrase from the Meditations: ‘Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power’ (IV.17).
Election & Call
Pope Francis has often referred movingly to the reading from St Bede that the Church gives us today, on the feast of St Matthew, especially to the phrase ‘miserando atque eligendo’, his episcopal motto. It is characteristic of Bede, that most humane of writers, to highlight the mercy at work in Christ’s election of his apostle – for a call is always gratuitous, independent of any merit real or imagined. It is equally characteristic that he, a monk through and through, should stress the utter self-surrender that must mark our response to such mercy, for to follow Jesus, he says, means ‘imitating the pattern of his life, not just walking after him’. Jesus subverted Matthew’s familiar world, not obliterating it, but showing its insufficiency to fulfil the supernatural desire that lay dormant in him. In this respect the drama of the apostle’s call remains paradigmatic for us all. It challenges us to consider afresh our own call and our loyalty to it now.
