Tea at Trianon: The Divine Hospitality

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, August 12, 2017

The Divine Hospitality

From Vultus Christi:

Consider the actions of Abraham: he ran to meet his guests; he bowed low before them; he washed their feet; he offered them a place to rest in the shade; he offered them bread to eat and milk to drink. Abraham’s expression of hospitality passed into the liturgy of the Church: the ancient rites of Baptism may be interpreted as an expression of divine hospitality. In ancient times, the feet of the new Christian were washed, his head was anointed with oil, and milk and honey were given him. Water washes and soothes the way–worn feet of the weary seeker; oil is an ointment for the head and face burnt by the sun; food restores strength; and drink refreshes the parched tongue. All of these things, that passed into the rites of the Church, and also into the rites of monastic initiation, bespeak the munificent hospitality of the divine Host. The psalmist says it: “Blessed is he whom thou hast chosen and taken to thee: he shall dwell in thy courts. We shall be filled with the good things of thy house” (Ps 64:5).

In the early ages of the Church, hospitality was numbered, together with chastity and sobriety, among the essential and distinctive Christian virtues. The disappearance of the traditions of hospitality in contemporary culture is evidence of the crisis of dehumanisation that, ultimately, leads to the acceptance and institutionalisation of abortion and euthanasia. Among the Christians of the first centuries, and well into the Middle Ages, and even until the Protestant revolt, hospitality was not merely a personal or familial virtue; it was one of the chief characteristics of the hierarchical community of the Church. Bishops were charged, not only with serving at the altar, governing, and teaching, but also with ensuring an active and attentive hospitality. This hospitality extended beyond the welcoming of strangers and pilgrims to the “hospitalisation” of the poor, the outcast, the sick, and the shamed. (Read more.)