Tea at Trianon: Paschaltide with Mary

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

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Paschaltide with Mary

Fr. Mark reflects upon entering into the Paschal mystery in the company of Our Lady.

The gift of faith is given most abundantly to the humble, to the little, and to the poor. That is why Our Lord says, “I told you that nobody can come to me unless he has received the gift from my Father” (Jn 6:66). True devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary —not to be confused with the merely routine practice of external acts of piety — reaches deep into the soul to pull out the roots of pride and of the other capital sins. The love of the Blessed Virgin renders the soul capable of receiving that gift of the Father by which one goes to the Son, not slowly, not sluggishly, but with winged feet!