Tea at Trianon: Healing Intergenerational Trauma with the Holy Souls

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

Friday, November 11, 2022

Healing Intergenerational Trauma with the Holy Souls

From Our Sunday Visitor:

I’m trying to regain my emotional footing after yet another temper flare. I just finished yelling at my youngest about something that definitely didn’t merit as much rage as I let fly. Now that she has stomped off to get some distance from me — and I can’t say that I blame her — I lean my hands against the cold stone of our kitchen counter and try to breathe. In the tightly wound breaths that follow, I remind myself to pray, to ask God to give me the courage to apologize in ways that I was not taught in my own family of origin for the poor self-control that I most certainly learned in said family.

Of course, my parents learned their anger from their parents, who learned them from their parents, who learned them from theirs, as far back as Eden. That’s the nature of intergenerational trauma. We sin, and in sinning, we teach the next generation of sinners how to destroy relationships with pride, wrath, envy and all the rest.

At this point, I think of all the souls of my ancestors, whose legacy has no small part in creating the shortcomings of my present-day relational habits. How many of those progenitors must be in purgatory, keeping so still while God heals them of their earthly failings with beatifying fire?

Leaning further into the counter, I whisper wryly to the soul of any ancestor in a position to hear me clarify my demand. “You people better pray for me. I’m here because of you.”

That thought gives me a bit of strange comfort. I know that it’s not entirely clear whether or not the souls in purgatory can pray for us. We know they can’t pray for themselves, because purgatory is that final chance to become selfless, to surrender all self-reliance. We know that, one day, the Holy Souls will be fully united with our God who is love and mercy, and then they will be able to pray for us. We also know that God is outside time, so even if my ancestors can’t pray for me in the time that I call “now,” one day, they will be entirely free to carry my intentions in their hands to the throne of God, and it will be as if it were my now. (Read more.)