Tea at Trianon: My Portion Forever

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

Thursday, August 6, 2015

My Portion Forever

From Vultus Christi:

As you know well, in Middle Eastern culture, the supper hour is sacred. It is a moment of inviolable intimacy. To sup with an other is to offer him the supreme sign of friendship. You, dear Father Benedict, have been chosen to live in the Friendship of Christ, and this Divine Friendship is signified, and communicated, and sealed in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. God chose you for this monastery, and chose this monastery for you, because He wanted to give you in the Most Holy Eucharist the Divine Friendship for which He created you, the mystery of that Real Presence apart from which you will always suffer a cruel absence. Yours it is to pray, with Saint Peter Julian Eymard, those verses of Psalm 72 that have, I think, become to you both dear and familiar:

I am alway by thee; for thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and after that receive me with glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of thee. My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever. (Psalm 72:23–26)
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