Merry Christmas

to all who visit here!

Christmas Eve
by Eric Milner-White (1884-1963)

Mary, in the days of her holy expectation,
            magnified the Lord;
her spirit rejoiced in the child of her womb,
            the Son of God.

For when all things lay in silence,
      and night was in the midst of her course,
there leaped down, O God, from on high,
      from thy royal throne,
            the Word, thy Christ, thyself;
      through woman to be born in human nature,
            born in time, born in us,
            and we in him.

Grant me, O God, thy divinest gift,
      that Emmanuel may be formed and born in me,
      and I may ever rejoice and magnify thee.
Say to my soul, Peace, be still,
            as was that silent night.
And send thy Word, into my soul,
      not for my merit, but by thy miracle;
      by my desire, but of thy sole gift;
      not in part, but in all
            which mortal can receive.

Father, let me be born in thee as thy child:
Christ, be born in me as my Lord:
Holy Spirit, travail and shine within;
      that I may live in thy life
      and love with thy love
            evermore and evermore.


E. Milner-White, My God, My Glory : Aspirations, acts, and prayers on the desire for God, intro. by Joyce Huggett (Triangle/SPCK, 1994), p. 56.

O little town of Bethlehem

O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night.

For Christ is born of Mary,
And gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth!
And praises sing to God the King,
And peace to men on earth.

How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him, still
The dear Christ enters in.

Where children pure and happy
Pray to the blessed Child,
Where misery cries out to thee,
Son of the mother mild;
Where charity stands watching
And faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks,
And Christmas comes once more.

O holy Child of Bethlehem!
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us to-day.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!


Phillips Brooks, 1868

All my heart this night rejoices

All my heart this night rejoices
As I hear
Far and near
Sweetest angel voices;
"Christ is born," their choirs are singing,
Till the air
Ev'rywhere
Now with joy is ringing.

Come, then, let us hasten yonder;
Here let all,
Great and small,
Kneel in awe and wonder,
Love him who with love is yearning;
Hail the Star,
That from far
Bright with hope is burning!

Ye who pine in weary sadness,
Weep no more,
For the door
Now is found of gladness.
Cling to him, for he will guide you
Where no cross,
Pain or loss
Can again betide you.


Paul Gerhardt, 1607-76, trans. Catherine Winkworth, 1827-78

Isaiah 45:8

Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the LORD have created it.

Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant justum; aperiatur terra, et germinet salvatorem ...

Fluellen
Henry V, Act IV, Scene i

If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb? in your own conscience, now?

Dappled Things
(the periodical)

The current (Advent/Christmas) issue.

This poem strikes me as especially good.

Hat tip: Meredith.

"How the world needs artists, poets"

A reflection at The Bride and the Dragon.

From the archives

Archbishop Sheen. It'll make you smile.

The old prophet

A poem by Teófilo at Vivificat!

Advent

A paragraph from a sermon by Msgr Ronald Knox.

The first post in several months at the Blog from the Core. A welcome return!

Huckabee news
also spotted at Clairity Daily

The presidential candidate has accepted an invitation to speak at an anti-Catholic preacher's church.

The Catholic Church is to blame for Adolf Hitler's hatred of the Jews? Things like that emanate from the "reverend" Hagee. Never mind the fact that Nazis persecuted Catholics (George Weigel's biography of Pope John Paul II mentions in passing a Polish priest who was buried alive in excrement for his opposition to the National Socialist régime). And the late Pope aforementioned was one of the most philo-Semitic figures in recent history ...

The charge is too stupid to attempt to refute. Just goes to show you: anti-Catholicism is alive and well on the right (Hagee, et al.) as it is on the left (examples too numerous to cite).

An Orthodox reflection at On the Square
the First Things blog

Icons Will Save the World by Susan Cushman. With sections entitled, "Spiritual Beauty," "Veneration vs. Worship," "Sanctifying the Sense of Sight," "Incarnational Art," etc.

Spotted at Clairity Daily, if memory serves.

Weighed and found wanting

William Luse assesses the crop of 2008 GOP presidential contenders.

Straight No Chaser

The men's a cappella group from Indiana University performs an ... interesting version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." At two minutes in, we get a serious early '80s flashback:

The O Antiphons


December 17

O Wisdom, which camest out of the mouth of the most High, and reachest from one end to another, mightily and sweetly ordering all things: Come and teach us the way of prudence.

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

December 18

O Adonai and Leader of the house of Israel, who appearedst in the Bush of Moses in a flame of fire, and gavest him the law in Sinai: Come and deliver us with an outstretched arm.

O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti, et ei in Sina legem dedisti: veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.

December 19

O Root of Jesse, which standest for an ensign of the people, at whom kings shall shut their mouths, to whom the Gentiles shall seek: Come and deliver us, and tarry not.

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

December 20

O Key of David, and Sceptre of the house of Israel; that openest, and no man shutteth, and shuttest, and no man openeth: come and bring the prisoner out of the prison house, and him that sitteth in darkness, and the shadow of death.

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel: qui aperis, et nemo claudit; claudis, et nemo aperit: venit, et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris et umbra mortis.

December 21

O Day-Spring, Brightness of Light, everlasting and sun of Righteousness: Come and enlighten him that sitteth in darkness, and the shadow of death.

O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris et umbra mortis.

December 22

O King of the Nations, and their Desire; the Cornerstone, who makest both one: Come and save mankind, whom thou formedst of clay.

O Rex gentium, et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti.

December 23

O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Desire of all nations, and their Salvation: Come and save us, O Lord our God.

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, exspectatio gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos Domine Deus noster.

For what it's worth

Andrew Sullivan makes an endorsement in the GOP primaries.

Written five or six winters ago

Snow coats the mounds of snow already fallen;
When stars drift down to earth, who can be sullen?

Bill Clinton for SCOTUS?

Let's hope not.

Via The Daily Eudemon.

Timeless works of art

Cardinal Seán visits the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where one can find Sandro Botticelli's Virgin and Child with an Angel (c. 1470), and other fine works of holy inspiration; slowly scroll down.

A discovery

Sr. Genevieve Glen, OSB, editor of the daily offices in the monthly prayer book Magnificat, has her own blog : Take with You Words.

Hymn

O quickly come, great King of all;
Reign all around us, and within;
Let sin no more our souls enthrall,
Let pain and sorrow die with sin:
O quickly come; for you alone
Can make your scattered people one.

O quickly come, true Life of all,
For death is mighty all around;
On every home his shadows fall,
On every heart his mark is found:
O quickly come; for grief and pain
Can never cloud your glorious reign.

-- Lawrence Tuttiette (1825-97);
    from Magnificat, December 2003, p. 82

Saint John Damascene

Mary opened to us the unspeakable abyss of God's love for us. Through her the old enmity against the Creator is destroyed. Through her our reconciliation with him is strengthened, peace and grace are given to us, men and women are the companions of angels, and we, who were in dishonor, are made the children of God. From her we have plucked the fruit of life. From her we have received the seed of immortality. She is the channel of all our goods. In her God was man and man was God. What more marvelous or blessed? I approach the subject in fear and trembling.

With Mary, the prophetess, O youthful souls, let us sound our musical instruments, mortifying our members on earth, for this spiritual music. Let our souls rejoice in the Ark of God; the walls of Jericho will yield, I mean the fortresses of the enemy. Let us dance in spirit with David; the Ark of God is at rest. With Gabriel, the great archangel, let us exclaim, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you." Hail, inexhaustible ocean of grace. Hail, sole refuge in grief. Hail, cure of hearts. Hail, you through whom death is expelled and life is installed.

-- meditation in Magnificat for Thurs. 4th December 2003

From the Anchor Hold

A very moving tribute to the late Ms. Knapp, from her niece.

John Donne (1572-1631)

A Nocturnall upon S. Lucie's Day.

At the Commonweal blog
(which I rarely explore)

... a fascinating thread about classics that you never intend to read.

I wouldn't rule out Lord of the Rings, but I haven't read it yet, and probably never will.

I'll never read Middlemarch, or anything else written by a woman named George.

I was supposed to have read at least one Jane Austen novel in high school, but somehow avoided it.

Proust I might tackle, if I have a free decade.

On this date in 1968

The Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton died.

Some of his books were influential in bringing me back to the Church after a long absence.

He may need our prayers. Requiescat.

Thomas Campion
1567-1620

Now Winter Nights Enlarge.

On this date in 1979

the Servant of God, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, died.

Renew me, grown old from senseless sins, O most Immaculate One

Midnight Song to the Most Holy Mother of God. From the Eastern Church.

Booooorrrrrrrinnnnngggggg .......

Now, I'm fairly open-minded when it comes to poetry, perhaps culpably "catholic," but this is horrid.

It's not only nonsense (and I can take a little bit of nonsense; I have a high surrealism-tolerance quotient), it's uninteresting nonsense.

"[A]nticipating site-specific specificity ..." Wow. How ... transgressive, how radical, how ...

Vide supra. Title of this post.

More on Romney

Peggy Noonan. Mostly praise for his performance. But there was this bit I liked:

His text was warmly cool. It covered a lot of ground briskly, in less than 25 minutes. His approach was calm, logical, with an emphasis on clarity. It wasn't blowhardy, and it wasn't fancy. The only groaner was, "We do not insist on a single strain of religion--rather, we welcome our nation's symphony of faith." It is a great tragedy that there is no replacement for that signal phrase of the 1980s, "Gag me with a spoon."

Noonan also wonders why Romney doesn't include agnostics and atheists in his "moving portrait of the great American family." In fact, he does take appear to take a shot at them in his speech.

We should perhaps distinguish between someone who has a secular world-view and is virtuous, merciful, charitable, etc., etc., and the militant secularist, who has the intractable desire to expunge every trace of religion from the public square. When Romney spoke of those who would elevate secularism to a "religion," he clearly meant the latter sort of person.

Romney

At Erik's Rants and Recipes, we have an impassioned plea to Catholics: don't "swallow the kool-aid and vote for the Mormon"!

I should fess up. I voted for Romney in '02 for Massachusetts governor. His opponent, Shannon O'Brien, was a Roman Catholic who, in addition to having all the other baggage of your average Democrat, favored lowering the age of consent for prenatal infanticide from 18 to 16. So I voted for the Mormon, who maintained the status quo.

Now we have a Christian governor here in the Bay State, Deval Patrick, a Presbyterian who hasn't done what Ms. O'Brien promised to do, but who has expanded the buffer zone for protests around abortuaries to something like six and a half miles (actually, 35 feet). Mr. Patrick is also, predictably enough, an enthusiast for embryonic stem-cell research. But it's a good thing we don't have an infidel in the corner office!

Having said all that, I should say that I'm not in the Romney camp as far as the presidential primary goes. And the more I learn about Mormonism -- a late-night radio talk-show host around here recently devoted some time to enumerating some of their beliefs (e.g., Jesus and Satan are brothers) -- the more I detect some insalubrious eccentricities!

Sonnet

Of an excellence belying its author's claim that it is merely an exercise : In California from Meredith of For Keats' Sake.

He will be missed

Fr Jim Tucker of Dappled Things has decided to retire from blogging.

Advent

A poem by Thomas Merton.

Dream

Last night I dreamt ...

that I was at a Trappist monastery with a priest-acquaintance of mine, on retreat. I turned to him and said something like, "It is good for us to be here" ... a sentiment which soon changed as the Mass began and the opening "hymn" was ... "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones.

Hart Crane

O, I have known metallic paradises
Where cuckoos clucked to finches
Above the deft catastrophes of drums.
While titters hailed the groans of death
Beneath gyrating awnings I have seen
The incunabula of the divine grotesque.

from "For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen," section II

Hate crime in East Boston

A white firefighter was dining in a Latin-American restaurant in East Boston when he was approached by six Hispanic men who told him, "We don't want no gringos in here." He left, and drove to his fire station. The men followed him there, began punching him, and stabbed him twice in the chest. His injuries are described as non-life-threatening.

Heard this on the radio last night, WBZ (1030 AM). Can't find the link to the story on their website, nor can I find the story in either of Boston's two major daily newspapers.

Update : Here it is, from the Boston Herald.

But do I need to tell you, dear readers, that the incident was not described by the folks at WBZ as a hate crime?

Here we have a stabbing, where the victim is told he's being stabbed because he's a member of the "wrong" racial group. Not a hate crime.

Can someone please explain?

The Snow-Storm

The famous poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Advent

A meditation by the 20th-century Anglican clergyman Eric Milner-White.

December
by Adam Zagajewski (b. 1945)

December, herald of destruction,
takes you on a long stroll
through the black torsos of trees
and leaves scorched in autumn’s fire,

as if to say: so much then for
your secrets and your treasures,
the fervent trill of small birds,
the promises of summer months.

Your dreams have been dissected,
the blackbird’s song now has a rationale,
plants’ corpses clutter the herbarium.
Only the laboratory’s hard stone remains.

Don’t listen: they may take everything away,
but they can’t have your ignorance,
they can’t take your mysteries, strip you
of your third homeland.

Don’t listen: the holidays draw near
and frozen January, snow’s white paper.
What you’ve waited for is being born.
The one you’re seeking will begin to sing.


[Translated by Clare Cavanagh]

From the Boston Daily Globe
Wednesday morning, November 1, 1911

CROWD ATTACKS CHINAMAN.

He Draws Revolver and Holds Men at Bay -- Was Punishing Boy Who Played Halloween Tricks on Him.

A party of boys started a disturbance early last evening at the corner of Massachusetts and Shawmut avs. when they played Halloween tricks upon a Chinaman.

Armed with bean blowers they bombarded the Chinaman's shop and pelted him with their beans. One missile hit the Chinaman in the eye and hurt him severely. He chased the boys and caught one, whom he proceeded to punish. A crowd of colored men heard the lads cries for help and started after the Chinaman.

Then the laundryman backed into a corner and drew a revolver. He held the angry men at bay until their passions were somewhat cooled. He finally escaped to his laundry.

Some excited citizen telephoned to police headquarters, and Lieut Daly of the East Dedham-st station was asked to send out his men to quell the disturbance, which was promptly done.

_______________

A few things are noteworthy here:

(1) Obviously, how the language referring to ethnic groups has changed over the last ninety years;

(2) How the attitude toward brandishing firearms has changed over the last ninety years;

(3) How the attitude toward corporal punishment has changed over the last ninety years (Massachusetts is considering a ban on spanking);

(4) How journalistic prose has changed ("until their passions were somewhat cooled").

If this same incident had occurred on Halloween 2007, the Chinese man would have been arrested, for punishing the young hooligan (presumably by beating him), and for aiming the revolver at the crowd of African-Americans.

Playing with templates
and fonts and colors

Well, this is it, for the time being. The "Snapshot Sable" template, with the Times font for the text.

There are some things I don't like about this one, but I think I'll keep it for a while.

***

Update, Friday morning

Changed back to Rounders 3. I couldn't enlarge the type on the Snapshot Sable template without throwing it out of whack (a big gray square would interpose itself between the header and the most recent post); green fonts came out as blue, for some reason, and the problem with the youtube screens was also difficult to fix ...

Recent reading

Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison. Fascinating. Two "skimmable" chapters of too much jargon, charts and graphs -- skimmable for me, perhaps of interest to the diagnostician -- and a whole chapter dedicated to Lord Byron, whose poetry I've never cared for -- but an interesting study, citing the lives of many poets, painters, and composers. It poses the question: Is a certain amount of mania necessary to the creative process? It raises concerns about eugenics: how, in the not too distant past, the mentally ill were sterilized. I didn't regret reading this book.

Saint Benedict on the Freeway by Corinne Ware. Contemplative "chic" by a modern Episcopalian. It has its silly moments, which, alas, outnumber the moments of genuine insight.

Cushing of Boston: A Candid Portrait by Joseph Dever. From 1965. A very enthralling biography, and a time-machine of American (and especially, Bostonian) Catholicism. For instance, we read about "the hard-shell conservatism of the New England Jesuit province" (!). I'm a little more than halfway through this one, and I'm enjoying it thoroughly. For instance, when the biographer mentions the prelate's "sometimes too lengthy eloquence of pulpit and platform," I'm reminded of my mom's anecdote about Cardinal Cushing speaking to her high-school graduating class. It was June 4, 1963 -- the day after Pope John XXIII died. The archbishop kept the graduates in the sweltering 90-degree heat as he eulogized the late pontiff at sesquipedalian length. To most readers of this blog, this book will be unfindable. But it is highly recommended.

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh. I've often heard that this is a literary masterpiece, but for some reason I can't quite get into this one. To anyone who has read the collection of the painter's letters and derived enjoyment therefrom: Should I give it another chance?

C. S. Lewis: Letters to an American Lady and Mere Christianity. I found myself wishing that the Letters occupied more than the scant 120 pages. I was thoroughly edified, entertained, and instructed by this slim volume. And Mere Christianity has been lauded elsewhere: a salutary reminder of the basics of orthodox Christian faith.

Psalm 122. Laetatus sum.

1 I was glad when they said unto me, * We will go into the house of the LORD.

2 Our feet shall stand in thy gates, * O Jerusalem.

3 Jerusalem is built as a city * that is at unity in itself.

4 For thither the tribes go up, even the tribes of the LORD, * to testify unto Israel, to give thanks unto the Name of the LORD.

5 For there is the seat of judgment, * even the seat of the house of David.

6 O pray for the peace of Jerusalem; * they shall prosper that love thee.

7 Peace be within thy walls, * and plenteousness within thy palaces.

8 For my brethren and companions' sakes, * I will wish thee prosperity.

9 Yea, because of the house of the LORD our God, * I will seek to do thee good.