Tea at Trianon: Act of Reparation

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

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Act of Reparation

It is Shrove Tuesday, a day of reparation to the Holy Face of Jesus. Fr. Mark says:

An integral part of our life at Silverstream Priory is the Act of Reparation (amende honorable) that we make every day after Holy Mass.

The original text, that is the source of the prayer we use today, dates back to those days of the thirteenth century when the Cathars and Albigensians were ravaging the south of France with their virulent heresies. Raymond of Toulouse, a Cathar, assassinated his brother Baudouin, who held fast to the Catholic faith. Baudouin had a daughter, Jeanne, who, to make reparation for her uncle's homicidal crimes, enclosed herself in a little house built against the wall of the Cathedral of Saint-Étienne; there she lived as a recluse. Peering through the hagioscope (a little window giving a view of the altar) of her cell, Jeanne adored the Most Holy Sacrament. Jeanne of Toulouse would be one of the first souls to practice day and night adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar in a spirit of reparation. When Jeanne died, the Act of Reparation that she had written on parchment was placed in her hand and buried with her. Each time her body was exhumed, the parchment of the Act of Reparation was seen to be intact in her hand. (Read entire post.)