Tea at Trianon: The Night Office

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, June 14, 2018

The Night Office

Fr. Mark writes about the "watches of the night" in Scripture and Tradition. Many monastic communities still retain the custom of rising in the night to pray Matins. From Vultus Christi:

In some way, monks do nothing other than repeat the cry that rose from Mount Carmel after the fire of the Lord consumed Elias’s holocaust:

And when it was now time to offer the holocaust, Elias the prophet came near and said: O Lord God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Israel, shew this day that thou art the God of Israel, and I thy servant, and that according to thy commandment I have done all these things. Hear me, O Lord, hear me: that this people may learn, that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart again. Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the holocaust, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw this, they fell on their faces, and they said: The Lord he is God, the Lord he is God. (3 Kings 18:36–39)

So long as there are men rising in the watches of the night to say only this, The Lord he is God, the Lord he is God, there is yet hope for the conversion of the nations. You will recall that, in October 1917, when the Mother of God showed herself to the three shepherds of Fatima, there was a moment at which they recognised her as Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Various reasons have been advanced to explain this particular phase of the apparition. For me, at least, upon reflection, this was the Mother of God’s appeal to all those who, like the prophet Elias, stand before the face of the Lord of Hosts (3 Kings 18:15), and who perpetuate the cry of the adoring people on Mount Carmel, The Lord he is God, the Lord he is God. What do we chant in the Invitatory Psalm that opens the Night Office? (Read more.)