Tea at Trianon: To the Center of Time

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

Sunday, December 29, 2019

To the Center of Time

From The Catholic Herald:

Christmas Day stands in the centre of all time. The moment when eternity enters time is the moment when time reaches its fullness. The world is opened up to divine grace from within by God now dwelling in it. The children of God are born anew. Christ’s humble and powerful light penetrates the hearts of all believers who communicate with the Bread of Life offered on the Eucharistic table of the mystical Bethlehem, the Church, the true “house of the bread”. Not a region in the world, not a single heart, is excluded from the invitation of divine Love. Communion with God is the horizon of life.

On Christmas Day, beginning at midnight – which is why a Midnight Mass should ideally not be celebrated before this symbolic hour – the Church offers Mass three times. In a wonderful exchange, Christ comes to us on the altar from the heights of the Father who sent Him into the world, and Christ reaches to the Father from the depths of our humanity which He made fully His own. At midnight, at dawn, in the day, Christ’s mystery shines. Christ sanctifies all times and all places by His presence. He opens the riches of God’s Mercy to all hearts. There cannot be an apter expression of gratitude than the threefold offering of Eucharistic thanksgiving which Mother Church presents us with on Christmas Day. (Read more.)