Tea at Trianon: The Star that Guides

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, January 7, 2008

The Star that Guides

In the words of Pope Benedict XVI:

Men and women of every generation, in this their pilgrimage, have need of direction: What star, then, can they follow? After coming to rest "above the place where the child was" (Matthew 2:9), the star that guided the Magi had completed its function, but its spiritual light is ever present in the word of the Gospel, which today too is capable of guiding every man to Jesus. That same word, which is nothing if not the reflection of Christ, true man and true God, is authoritatively echoed by the Church for every well-disposed soul. The Church too, for this reason, carries out for humanity the mission of the star. But something of this sort can be said of every Christian, called to help guide the steps of his brothers by word and the witness of his life.
How important it is, then, that we Christians are faithful to our vocation! Every authentic believer is always on a journey in his personal itinerary of faith and, at the same time, with the little light that he carries in himself, can and must be of help to those he finds at his side and who perhaps have difficulty finding the road that leads to Christ.