Tea at Trianon: Learning How to Die

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, March 26, 2013

Learning How to Die

Live the way you want to die. From Fr. Mark:

Death is not improvised. One dies as one has lived. The Eucharistic death of Saint Benedict was the seal placed upon a long Eucharistic life. (Blessed Schuster says that Saint Benedict would have been about eighty years old at the time of his death.) One will die as one has lived. In Chapter 4 of the Holy Rule, Saint Benedict enjoins his monk to "keep death daily before his eyes"; this means, in effect, that a monk is to live each day in the very dispositions in which he wants to be found at the hour of his death.

To die loving, I must love always. To die praying, I must pray always. To die forgiving, I must forgive always. To die in a state of adoration, I must live in a state of adoration. To die gratefully, I must live in gratitude. To die peacefully, I must live in peace. I die humbly, I must live humbly. To die united to Jesus in His Passion, I must live united to Jesus in His Passion. To die facing the Eucharistic Face of Jesus, I must live facing the Eucharistic Face of Jesus. (Read entire post.)