The Secret Middle Ages

Author and scientist Carla Nayland has a review of an interesting book about the Middle Ages.

The Secret Middle Ages is a survey of the neglected arts and crafts of the medieval period (roughly 1100 to 1600) in Britain and continental Europe including France, the Low Countries and Germany. The author comments that most studies of medieval art present only a partial picture, confined to religious art and the precious objects owned by the elite. His survey, by contrast, sets out to explore what he calls the “other half” of medieval art, the everyday objects accessible to the bulk of the population – biscuit moulds, furniture, cheap lead jewellery, personal seals, floor tiles, woodcuts in books that illustrate contemporary stories and sayings, and decorative carvings in churches such as misericords and carved capitals.

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St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and the Mountain of Grace

Last winter I made a retreat about ten miles from the tomb of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born citizen to be canonized. Today is her feast-day. She was a beautiful, cultured, educated lady who suffered the loss of husband, two children, and social standing. Shunned by most of her family after she converted to Catholicism, Saint Elizabeth started a community of teaching nuns in what was called Saint Joseph's valley at the foot of Saint Mary's mountain near Emmitsburg, Maryland.

I often came to Emmitsburg during my childhood and young adulthood, visiting the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. It is the spot where my husband and I became engaged on Easter Sunday in 1996. We also visited it after our wedding in November of the same year, leaving the bridal bouquet at Our Lady's feet.

The grotto is a popular pilgrimage site and has a miraculous spring. My mother once injured her foot after she dropped a motor bike on it. We took her to the grotto. After bathing her foot in the icy water the pain disappeared, even as she was walking back to the car. There are many other healings that have happened there, both physical and spiritual. The daily Mass is in the glass chapel on the side of the mountain. Through the tall trees can be seen the blue expanse of Frederick County, "fair as the garden of the Lord," as the poet Whittier said. (Well, at least it used to be; now it is a bit congested.)

At the grotto is the rock where Mother Seton would come every Sunday and teach the children, those of the neighborhood and her own, the catechism, explaining the truths of the faith with clarity and love. Mother and her nuns would walk up from the valley, rain or shine, to spend Sunday on the mountain. It was in the first decades of the nineteenth century, before the Lourdes apparitions in France, but the grotto was seen as a venerable and holy place by Mother and the French priests who assisted her. Walking there in the twenty-first century one is still overwhelmed by the sense of being on holy ground.

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Facebook is Fun

One of my Canadian cousins lured me onto Facebook, and now I am hooked. It is indeed a great means of keeping track of one's relatives. It is also a handy way to find old acquaintances, make new ones, and strengthen existing friendships. My husband finds it helpful for political and professional networking. Here is an article about Facebook. (It is fun to join the various groups.)

Facebook’s social networking is based on association, as identified by the member’s email address, so that there are networks for schools and companies, and also on location, so there are networks for the region, town, or neighborhood the member claims calls home. There are also affinity groups, for, well, just about... anything. For example, there is a group, admittedly small and mostly English, dedicated to “HM King Francis II — our rightful Monarch” — Franz, Duke of Bavaria, senior descendant of Charles the Martyr. Were it not for the Inglorious Revolution and the infamous Act of Succession, “HM” would be living in Buckingham rather than Nymphenburg Palace. He is no doubt happier in Munich; I know I would be. Of course but for the Inglorious and Infamous Revolution and Act, King Henry IX Benedict would have been a statesman rather than a churchman and left behind generations of royal Stuarts rather than passing his claim on first to the house of Savoy, now Wittlesbach (by way of Habsburg), and eventually Liechtenstein. A slightly larger group proclaims, “Prince Charlie Was Overrated, But I’m Still A Jacobite,” which seems fair enough. “Return the House of Stuart to the Throne!” demands another, sadly, despite the exclamation point, for, as I have noted, that House passed into history with the Cardinal Bishop of Frascati and Duke of York. The more modestly named group of mere “Jacobites” seems more reasonable.

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The Holy Name of Jesus

January 2 is the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. Catholic Exchange has some reflections.

Through his Holy Name, Jesus can become the constant companion of our souls. By keeping His Name constantly within our hearts, He can be with us in all of our joys and sorrows. This is the secret of sanctity. One of the pitfalls that we must avoid in our spiritual life, especially in our distracted modern culture, is forgetting God. We may be able to carve out regular time to pray. But afterwards, does anything change? Or after our communion with God in prayer, do we live the rest of our lives as if He did not exist? By constantly remembering His Name, we constantly remember God and the true purpose of our lives. The more we remember Jesus, the more we see His presence and His grace everywhere, turning all the moments of our lives into opportunities for sanctity.

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St. Genevieve, Patroness of Paris

Today is the feast of Saint Genevieve, Patroness of Paris. She was a virgin consecrated to God from her earliest childhood, and displayed wisdom and courage. She guided kings, fed and taught the poor, worked miracles, cast out demons and courageously withstood the Franks and Atila the Hun. She encouraged the people of Paris to pray and do penance in order to avert the plague. She died in 512 and her tomb was for centuries a sight of pilgrimage and healings for all of France. Louis XV began to build a new church in her honor in 1764 after he was healed through her intercession. During the Revolution the church was converted into a pagan temple called the Pantheon. Most of the Saint's relics were destroyed in 1791.

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Happy Birthday, St.Thérèse!

With zeal have I been zealous for the Lord God of hosts. (3 Kings 19:10)
~Motto of the Carmelite Order

Today is the birthday of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face (1873-1897), whom Pope Pius XI hailed as being "the greatest saint of modern times." Her Little Way of love and self-surrender is vital to our modern materialistic age because she, like the sister of Lazarus, sought the "one thing necessary." (Luke 10:42) As she wrote to her sister Celine in 1889:

There is only one thing to do during the night, the one night of life which will come only once, and this is to love, to love Jesus with all the strength of our heart and to save souls for Him that He may be loved! (General Correspondence, Vol.I, ICS Publications, p.588)

In order to save souls, she was willing to embrace every suffering that came her way, from the petty annoyances of daily existence, to the physical and mental torments of the last months of her earthly life. In a letter to Celine, she exclaims:

Sanctity does not consist in saying beautiful things, it does not consist in thinking them, in feeling them!...It consists in suffering and suffering everything...A day will come when the shadows will disappear, and there will remain only joy, inebriation...Let us profit from our one moment of suffering...Let us see only each moment!...A moment is a treasure...one act of love will make us love Jesus better...it will bring us closer to Him during the whole of eternity...! (Ibid. pp 557-558)

Part of Saint Thérèse's secret of sanctity is that she kept the thought of eternity ever before her. "Just as this year passed, so also will our life pass, and soon we shall say: 'It is gone.' Let us not waste our time, soon eternity will shine for us." (Ibid, p.602)

Her profound realization of the shortness of life and her zeal for souls combined with a thirst for martyrdom. Through God's grace, she found the courage to face humiliations and disappointments that would have embittered lesser souls. Her father's mental deterioration and his committal to an asylum was a heavy trial for the teenage nun. Nevertheless, she wrote to Celine:

Let us die as martyrs! Unkown martyrdom, known to God alone, which the eye of the creature cannot cannot discover, a martyrdom without honor, without triumph....That is love pushed to the point of heroism....Let us hurry to fashion our crown; let us stretch forth our hand to seize the palm. And if we love much, if we love Jesus with a passion, He will not be so cruel as to leave us for a long time on this earth of exile....Celine, during the short moments that remain to us, let us not lose our time...let us save souls! (Ibid, p.578)

During her fatal illness, Saint Thérèse reflected upon upon a glass of brightly covered but foul-tasting medicine, comparing it to her own life.

My life in the eyes of others must have seemed to be filled with the most pleasant colors....To them, I seemed to be drinking an exquisite draft, but in reality it was bitterness. I say bitterness and yet my life has not been bitter, for I have been able to find joy and sweetness in all that bitterness. (Father Jamart, The Complete Spiritual Doctrine of St. Therese , p.217)

Truly her love for Christ and souls was heroic. In her autobiography, St. Thérèse wrote: "When thinking of the torments which will be the lot of Christians at the time of the Anti-christ, I feel my heart leap with joy, and I would like these torments to be reserved for me." (The Story of a Soul, trans. by Father John Clarke, p. 193) Such zeal led her to offer herself as a victim to the Merciful Love of God in order to save souls, longing to spend her heaven "doing good upon earth." (Ibid, p.263)

God has honored the desires of His Little Flower. The efficacy of her intercession has been experienced in every part of the globe; her writings have been pondered by popes, saints, and scholars; she has drawn many souls to holiness by her prayer and example. Her Christ-like humility is the antidote for the intellectual pride of our time. Her zeal counteracts our sloth and dullness of mind, so suffocated are we by an excess of comforts and stimuli. She is a prophet of eternal beatitude; a guide to heaven for those on the brink of despair. She is Carmel's gift to modern man. How appropriately a Carmelite nun expressed it in one of the hymns for October 1:

Yet joy itself could not portray
The surge of her immense desire
Nor cloister walls have strength to stay
A love that swept the world like fire.
(Sister Miriam of the Holy Spirit, OCD)

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Becoming Cary Grant

In my teenage years, I favored Humphrey Bogart among classic film stars. However, tastes do change. Yes, Bogie was a superb actor. But in mid-life, I have come to really appreciate Cary Grant, as have many other classic movie fans. His good looks make people forget what a gifted performer he was. Here is an article which explains why Cary was great. (Via LRC)

Moreover, with his sui generis accent (an amalgamation of low-born and refined, of West Country lilt and hard Cockney, overlaid with the clipped patter of baseball talk), his subtle phrasing, and the clean bite of his diction, he delivered lines with a precise sparkle never equaled (see in The Awful Truth how with cheery malice he turns the throwaway offer to sprinkle “a little nutmeg” on his rival’s eggnog into a threat). But he also joined a gift for quick, clever, complex dialogue with a brilliant comedic physicality. That physicality itself was at once delicate (watch him punctuate a joke by simply bending a knee or arching an eyebrow) and broad (James Agee wrote that the silent comedians “combined several of the more difficult accomplishments of the acrobat, the dancer, the clown, and the mime,” a skill set that was lost with the advent of the talkies; Grant more or less single-handedly recovered it, and could execute clumsy pratfalls without forfeiting his uncanny grace).

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Presentation at Court

Here is an article about presentation at the British court. Being presented at the French court was not too dramatically different. (I'll do a post on it sometime.)

There were only three qualifications for admittance to the throne room:

• First, that the lady wishing to be presented should be of good moral and social character.
• Secondly, presentation had to be made by someone who had already been presented.
• Lastly, the status of the actual presentée. The most obvious candidates, the wives and daughters of the aristocracy, had the privilege of being kissed by Queen Victoria (though no kisses were received if the Princess of Wales were acting as stand-in, and the practice was dropped entirely in the Edwardian era), then came the ranks of those candidates whose presentation would be sealed by the action of kissing the Queen’s hand. These included the daughters and wives of the country gentry and Town gentry, of the clergy, of naval and military officers, of professional men such as physicians and barristers, of merchants, bankers and members of the Stock Exchange, and “persons engaged in commerce on a large scale.”

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Octave-day of Christmas

It is the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God.

Your blessed and fruitful virginity is like the bush, flaming yet unburned, which Moses saw on Sinai. Pray for us, Mother of God. (Antiphon for Vespers of January 1)

We recall that on the eighth day after His birth, Our Lord shed His first drops of blood for the redemption of the world. Fr. Blake reminds us that this feast was formerly known as "The Circumcision of the Lord."

Up until recently today's feast had the title of the "The Circumcision of the Lord", it must have been incredibly embarrassing for nuns to explain to little girls, but today it seems a shame that we do not remember this very Jewish aspect of the Lord's life, such glorious material to preach on, especially when according to the Jewish Council of great Britain there is a rise of anti-semitism in Europe and the US. The Circumcision reminds us of the very Jewishness of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, of the importance of Jewish ritual and Law in his life. As lovely as it is to think of the Blessed Virgin as Mother of God, Theotokos, earlier title of the Feast gives us an great deal of catechetical material. I have no knowledge of why this feast's name should be changed but it does seem paradoxical that it should happen after the Council which called us to be ever more conscious of the Jewish origins of our faith.

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