Tea at Trianon: Beautiful Holiness: A Review

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, August 11, 2023

Beautiful Holiness: A Review

A review from Rose Folsom at Catholic Exchange:

It is said that every book is a kind of autobiography. Because what does an author have to draw from but his or her own life? Kathleen Beckman’s latest book, Beautiful Holiness: A Spiritual Journey with Blessed Conchita to the Heart of Jesus, is a “dialog of two hearts” between the author and Blessed Conchita Cabrera de Armida (1862-1937), Mexican mystic and mother of nine.
From the depths of her own intimacy with God, the author plumbs Conchita’s writings on fruitful suffering, purity, and prayer, especially for priests. The author’s insights from her experiences of trauma, interior suffering, and the healing that comes from prayer, are the “connective tissue” that gives a lifetime of Conchita’s writings a narrative thread that takes the reader on a journey to the heart of the Holy Trinity. Further, the author’s spiritual path has been greatly informed by Conchita, not least that both founded communities that pray for priests. (Read more.)