St Agnes Church

under a cloudy sky:

Peter Kreeft

... we live in a flat world, an egalitarian world, while the ancients lived in a world full of spiritual heights and hierarchies, a world of spires and turrets.  But our hearts protest against our flatland, and yearn for their true country, their true dimension of verticality.  Love is, simply, superior.  It belongs on a throne.  It rightly brags, praises, exults, celebrates, sings its Song of Songs, its nonordinary song, its Greatest Song.  It deserves silver and gold and robes and crowns.  Heaven will be full of it (if the symbolism in Revelation means anything at all); had we not better practice living with it?

Peter Kreeft, from "Love is Triumphalistic," in Three Philosophies of Life (Ignatius Press, 1989), pp. 130-1

Arch Street

Exterior of St Anthony's (Franciscan) Shrine, 100 Arch Street, Downtown Crossing, Boston, Massachusetts.  Known to every Catholic Bostonian simply as "Arch Street."

Photographs

All photos are of my old beat-up New American Bible, bought used in 1992 in the basement of Harvard Book Store.  I taped the Blessed Elizabeth quotation onto the blank page preceding the New Testament.  The Scripture verse in the second photograph is from Psalm 22: "He has not spurned or disdained the wretched man in his misery, but when he cried out he heard him."

And yes, it is a worn-out old Bible, isn't it? It was probably 15 years old when I bought it 20 years ago!  It's being held together by masking tape, and corners of the cover have fallen off. Still, despite the poor condition -- and the vexingly cacophonous quality of the translation! -- I have a sentimental attachment to this Bible, my first "adult" Bible, bought when I was in the company of a dear, dear friend.

The mystery of the cross

is intolerable from without -- which is why it is intolerable for the large number of Christians who consider it as such.  If considered from within, one discovers the cross as the victory of love, and as a means.  The cross is not a stopping point.  The cross is a passageway; it is a Passover.  The cross is God's true "passage."  But one does not stop or remain there.  One does not abide in the cross; one abides in love.  Abiding in suffering is bad.  One does not abide in suffering, but in love. And because one abides in love, one assumes suffering; one assumes the cross. It is important to have a good understanding of this.  The cross is unbearable if viewed from the outside.  The cross is wisdom if viewed in the light of faith, that is, from the inside, as God himself views it.

~ Marie-Dominique Philippe, OP

[Meditation in Magnificat, September 2012, for Saturday the 15th, pp. 204-5]

Nos in cor tuum trahe

O most Sacred Heart of Jesus, in your wounds I find my consolation, in your pierced heart I find a companion for my sorrows.  O most Sacred Heart of Jesus, in your heart's joy I find my contentment, in your purity I find my hope.  O most Sacred Heart of Jesus, in the radiant light streaming from your heart, my blindness disappears; in your fiery love I am ablaze with awe.  O most Sacred Heart of Jesus, in your humiliation I can bear scorn from others, in your longings I am fulfilled.  O most Sacred Heart of Jesus, in the blood and water which gushed forth from your lanced heart I am reborn in you; you refresh my very being.  Forever beating in the love of the Holy Trinity is found your human heart, authoring life and radiating eternal affection.  Would that I could find God's treasure, it would be found in a humble and contrite heart.  You by your divinity know all things divine and by your humanity you feel all things human.  By the mystery of your Sacred Heart, you have united man to yourself forever.  Hold back nothing from me that could draw me more completely into the deepest recesses of your heart.  Whether peace or distress, bliss or grief, I accept all as an invitation to know you and love you more profoundly.  O Lord, perfect me in your love, confirm me in your grace and take delight in the richness of my surrender.  Where your treasure lies there will you find my heart.  Amen.

~ Pedro de la Cruz

women are always right

with regard to the subject of your letter:our nonhero has a single statement to make;not a generality,but a function of his own particular experience--women are always right

by this,I emphatically don't imply the merely logical or pragmatical or legal or whatever "right" which men(who are essentially cowards)have invented to cover a multitude of wrongs.  I do imply Something equally at right angles to "right" & "wrong";Something which is to "right" & "wrong" as Joy is to "pleasure" & "pain",or as Truth is to "fact" & "fiction"

today's "fact" is tomorrow's "fiction"--Copernicus supersedes Ptolemy--& only perhaps a billion fools confuse the transient with the timeless.  "Pleasure" & "pain" are heads and tails of the same coin:"pain" equals un-"pleasure","pleasure" equals un-"pain".  But Joy isn't un-anything;Joy IS

precisely so,while soidisant men are content to simply exist in the silly finite tiny trivial realm of either-or which their cowardice has evolved & their arrogance has entitled "reality",women(totally & mysteriously)ARE

this is what I imply;& can only imply,since the thing in itself(like all Good True & Beautiful things)eludes description,being strictly immeasurable.  Women ARE,not because or although or for any selfstyled reason,but like Birth & Life & Death.  They ARE like feeling & like breathing;like a bud exploding & a leaf spiralling:like the stars setting & the sun rising,& the moon closing & the moon opening

E E Cummings to Omar Pound, from a letter dated November 8 1954, in Selected Letters of E E Cummings, ed. F. W. Dupee and George Stade (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969), pp 236-7

Recently updated

the new Crystal Tambourine, with poems entitled "Late August" and "Verily."

On the road, with ...

Wallace and Wystan, or as both men would have doubtless preferred, Messrs Stevens and Auden: from the Poetry Foundation.

The First Pentecost

All the Apostles looked at one another;
words curled in fire through the returning gloom.
Something had changed and colored all the room.
The beauty of the Galilean mother
took the breath from them for a little space.
Even a cup, a chair or a brown dress
could draw their tears with the great loveliness
that wrote tremendous secrets every place.

That was the day when Fire came down from heaven,
inaugurating the first spring of love.
Blood melted in the frozen veins, and even
the least bird sang in the mind's inmost grove.
The seed sprang into flower, and over all
still do the multitudinous blossoms fall.


~ Jessica Powers (Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD) (1905-88)

8th-century Irish litany

O Great Mary,
pray for us.

O Mary, greatest of Maries,
pray for us.

O Greatest of women,
pray for us.

O Queen of angels, 
pray for us.

O Mistress of the heavens, 
pray for us.

O Woman full and replete with the grace of the Holy Spirit, 
pray for us.

O Blessed and most blessed, 
pray for us.

O Mother of Eternal Glory, 
pray for us.

O Mother of the heavenly and earthly Church, 
pray for us.

O Mother of Love and Indulgence, 
pray for us.

O Mother of the Golden Heights, 
pray for us.

O Honor of the sky, 
pray for us.

O Sign of tranquillity, 
pray for us.

O Gate of Heaven, 
pray for us.

O Golden Vessel, 
pray for us.

O Couch of Love and Mercy, 
pray for us.

O Temple of Divinity, 
pray for us.

O Beauty of virgins, 
pray for us.

O Mistress of the tribes, 
pray for us.

O Fountain of gardens, 
pray for us.

O Cleansing of sins, 
pray for us.

O Purifying of souls, 
pray for us.

O Mother of orphans, 
pray for us.

O Breast of infants, 
pray for us.

O Solace of the wretched, 
pray for us.

O Star of the sea, 
pray for us.

O Handmaid of the Lord, 
pray for us.

O Mother of Christ, 
pray for us.

O Resort of the Lord, 
pray for us.

O Graceful like the dove, 
pray for us.

O Serene like the moon,
pray for us.

O Resplendent like the sun, 
pray for us.

O Cancelling Eve's disgrace, 
pray for us.

O Regeneration of life, 
pray for us.

O Beauty of women, 
pray for us.

O Leader of virgins, 
pray for us.

O Garden Enclosed, 
pray for us.

O Fountain sealed up, 
pray for us.

O Mother of God, 
pray for us.

O Perpetual Virgin, 
pray for us.

O Holy Virgin, 
pray for us.

O Prudent Virgin, 
pray for us.

O Serene Virgin, 
pray for us.

O Chaste Virgin, 
pray for us.

O Temple of the Living God, 
pray for us.

O Royal Throne of the Eternal King, 
pray for us.

O Sanctuary of the Holy Spirit, 
pray for us.

O Virgin of the Root of Jesse, 
pray for us.

O Cedar of Mount Lebanon, 
pray for us.

O Cypress of Mount Sion, 
pray for us.

O Crimson Rose of the Land of Jacob, 
pray for us.

O Blooming like the palm tree, 
pray for us.

O Fruitful like the olive tree, 
pray for us.

O Glorious Son-bearer, 
pray for us.

O Light of Nazareth, 
pray for us.

O Glory of Jerusalem, 
pray for us.

O Beauty of the world, 
pray for us.

O Noblest-Born of the Christian flock, 
pray for us.

O Queen of Life, 
pray for us.

O Ladder of Heaven, 
pray for us.

Rilke

Und fast ein Mädchen wars und ging hervor
aus diesem einigen Glück von Sang und Leier
und glänzte klar durch ihre Frühlingsschleier
und machte sich ein Bett in meinem Ohr.

Und schlief in mir. Und alles war ihr Schlaf.
Die Bäume, die ich je bewundert, diese
fühlbare Ferne, die gefühlte Wiese
und jedes Staunen, das mich selbst betraf.

Sie schlief die Welt. Singender Gott, wie hast
du sie vollendet, daß sie nicht begehrte,
erst wach zu sein ? Sieh, sie erstand und schlief.

Wo ist ihr Tod ? O, wirst du dies Motiv
erfinden noch, eh sich dein Lied verzehrte ? …
Wo sinkt sie hin aus mir ?.. Ein Mädchen fast ..

+ + +


And it was almost a girl and came to be
out of this single joy of song and lyre
and through her green veils shone forth radiantly
and made herself a bed inside my ear.

And slept there. And her sleep was everything:
the awesome trees, the distances I had felt
so deeply that I could touch them, meadows in spring:
all wonders that had ever seized my heart.

She slept the world. Singing god, how was that first
sleep so perfect that she had no desire
ever to wake? See: she arose and slept.

Where is her death now? Ah, will you discover
this theme before your song consumes itself?—
Where is she vanishing? … A girl almost . . . .


(trans. Stephen Mitchell)