Our Lady of Ashes

In, The Seven Sacraments: Entering the Mysteries of God,  Stratford Caldecott explores the spiritual connections between the Seven Sacraments of the Church with other sets of seven in the faith: Seven Last words of Christ, Petitions in the Our Father , Theological + Cardinal Virtues ,  Gifts of the Holy Spirit , Days of Creation , etc. Neither the writers of scripture, nor the Fathers of the Church found sets sharing numbers as these to be coincidental, but reflective of a sacred order to Creation, especially when so ordered by the tradition of the Church. These organic spiritual links between all things bring a depth of understanding when meditating upon these sacred things and cause them to settle more firmly into our hearts, and minds and souls. This book of Ven. Fulton Sheen, (included in Caldecott's Bibliography as The Seven Capital Sins) focuses on two of those sets, the Last Words of Christ on the Cross and how those words demonstrate Christ's Victory over the ...

Someone asked me recently what to  do  as a Christian with all the violence and atrocities found in the Old Testament, many of them seemingly sanctioned if not commanded by God through the Law or the prophets. Even when not directly described there can be an apparently blood-thirst, especially in some of the Psalms (137 being of the worst) which is distasteful to our contemporary morality. How do reconcile that with "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness" ( 1 Tim:3:16 )? First, it's important to do what the person who asked was already starting to do: always read the Old Testament in light of the new, especially in light of the words and actions of Jesus Christ. One text my questioner mentioned was that Jesus said he came to fulfill the law not destroy it, which for him could mean a condoning of the violence within the Law. He's right about Jesus' saying as crucial to in...

The Octave of Easter is Drawing to a close, and throughout the week, the liturgy has focused on the mystagogy of the Neophytes and the newly initiated into the Mysteries of the Church. But drawing deeper into the Faith is a lifelong journey, and for the newly initiated, it can seem like there's either too little, or too much in the way of suggested direction. The book The Four Signs of the Dynamic Catholic by Matthew Kelly [ https://dynamiccatholic.com/the-four-signs-of-a-dynamic-catholic-free-copy ] would not be a bad place to start. It gives you a "program" so to speak of how to stay engaged in your Faith through Prayer, Study, Generous Giving, and Evangelization on top of regular participation in the Sacraments. After that, start reading the daily Mass Readings online [http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/index.cfm] which draws you into the liturgical rhythm of the church and will feed your prayer with the Word of God. For spiritual reading and study her...

Part three of my reflections on Coventry Patmore's short religious thoughts in  The Rod, The Root, and the Flower  [ Part I ,  Part II  and Part III ] From Magna Moralia: IV - 'Merit', as the word is used in Scripture and by the Church, means rather capacity  than right . Faith 'merits' because, without faith, there can obviously be no capacity. Christ took upon Himself the flesh and human nature of the Blessed Virgin, 'through whom we have deserved ' (or been made able) 'to receive the Author of Life.' Emptiness of self is the supreme merit of the Soul because it is the first condition of her capacity for God. 'My soul shall make her boast in the Lord: the humble shall hear thereof and be glad.' The Soul's boast and merit, as it were her vanity, is the God-seducing charm of her conscious nothingness. She becomes through her Mere emptiness of self, the female twin Of Fullness, sucking all God's glory in. The Secret of obtain...

'There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root.' [ Isaiah 11:1 ] 'My covenant shall be in your flesh.' [ Genesis 13:17 ] Part three of my reflections on Coventry Patmore's short religious thoughts in The Rod, The Root, and the Flower [ Part I and Part II ] From "Homo" VIII - Creation is nothing but a concerted piece, consisting of representative repetitions and variations of and harmonious commentaries upon the simple theme, God, who is defined by St. Thomas as an Act —the Act of love, the 'embrace' of the First and Second Persons, and their unity is the thence proceeding Spirit of Life, 'Creator Spiritus', the Life and Joy of all things. In this divine contrapuntal music, plagues, the sack of cities, and hell itself (according to St. Augustine) are but discords necessary to emphasize, exalt, and illustrate the harmony. If Beethoven and Back are but senseless noise to the untrain...

Faith is the light of the flame of love. Continuing my scattered commentary ( pt 1 here ) on parts from Patmore Coventry's The Rod, the Root, and the Flower . The quote above is from the final section of the book, "Aphorisms and Extracts" added posthumously by Patmore's son. Another of these Extracts sums up well the theme of Coventry's theme: God, in whose image we were made, Let me not be afraid To trace Thy likeness in what best we are. And this nicely sums up what Stratford Caldecott noticed as Prelude thoughts to the Theology of the Body: God has declared to his His mystic rapture in His Marriage with Humanity in twice saying, 'Hic est Filius meus dilectus in quo bene complacui'. [This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased] He expressly and repeatedly calls this marriage, and pronounces the marriage of Man and Woman to be its symbol. This is the burning heart of the Universe . A few more from the first section, "Aurea Dicta...

Coventry Patmore, portrait by John Singer Sargent The Rod, the Root, and the Flower  by Coventry Patmore is a collection of aphorisms expounding the culmination of Patmore's spiritual thought. Patmore is a poet of the the late nineteenth century, a member of the Christian Romantics, poets who found the Romantic movement in and of itself, too bereft of religion, intellect and philosophy, but found inspiration in the Romantics' rejection of the Rationalist philosophy, and their return to allegory, symbolism, and medieval imagery. Patmore was considered a mystic and was popular in his day though that waned after his conversion to Catholocism, which still made someone something of a persona non grata in England. Stratford Caldecott in " Why We Need Coventry Patmore " ( Communio  2014) notes that Patmore's writing is a poetic expression of St John Paul II's Theology of the Body almost a hundred years older than the Pope's groundbreaking exegesis of fa...