Knox - Audacious Friendship

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends ... (Jn 15, 15)

(T)HE BEST WAY OF ALL is to serve (God) because he is our friend, because we want to protest our love for him by our actions, and are sorry, sometimes, that he gives us so little chance of proving ourselves worthy of his friendship.

That is what God made us for, his human creatures, to be his friends, his personal friends. Not that he has need of our friendship; for his infinite beatitude would have remained unaltered if no soul had ever been breathed into a human body. But his overflowing Love is constantly forming new reservoirs, as it were, which it can fill with a human love that makes a response, however poor a response, to itself. As the single orb of the sun is reflected anew, whole and complete, by every puddle on the road-side, so in each insignificant human life that all-embracing love of God shines down, as if it had no other scope or aim for its self-fulfillment, and desires as far as our human imperfections will allow it to find its won image reflected there.

- Ronald A. Knox

Update on Athos

This is Athos' wife posting at his request:

During the surgery yesterday, metastatic seeds were found throughout the abdomenal area, part of the colon was removed, and an ileostomy put in place. Chemo will begin after appropriate recovery from surgery. His spirits are good; it is better to know something than to be in the dark. Already he is making good progress following the surgery. He deeply appreciates the prayers of all.

Acton - Liberty

Public discourse and behavior in our day are flat, boorishly predictable, slavishly partisan, and bereft of virtue and the virtues; they are, therefore, incapable of true liberty as Lord Acton understood it:

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.

Knox - Afraid of God, or Fear of God?

SURELY THAT'S A VERY extraordinary thing, when you come to think what God is and what we are; that we should only want him to exist, now and again, for our convenience, instead of trying to realize that he is there all the time? That is what we are doing, you see, all of us; we are afraid of God, which is not at all what the Bible means by "fearing God". If we are to become better Christians, we have got to conquer that phobia, that shyness, as far as possible - we shall not get rid of it altogether. Shall I tell you what it reminds me of, this God-shy attitude of ours? It seems to me we are for all the world like some strange pet, a mongoose or something like that, which is only half-tamed. Come and meet it with a saucer in your hand, and it is all over you; the rest of the time, it runs away.

- Ronald Knox

The Way - Sheen, Estivez

Let's keep our ears to the rails and see if we can find where this film will be showing. It is, according to one reviewer, the "perfect Easter family film."

St David of Wales

St. David of Wales

Monday News

Two brief announcements: old Athos will be appearing this evening on EWTN's The Journey Home with Marcus Grodi (8:00 ET). Check local listings for availability. It will be archived, however, for streaming at The Journey Home website.

Too, Athos will be facing more surgery in the not too distant future. Pity unnecessary, but prayers greatly appreciated. More information will be forthcoming. Thanks!

Prayer Fodder - Chivalry

Keep these words of Russian President Medvedev in mind. The locked mind of the Scimitar is, as Girard describes, firmly located in the culture of the primitive sacred.

This volatile situation in the cultural fabric of our global community should afford us plenty of fodder for prayer, vigilance, practice of the theological virtues, and, of course, chivalry.

UPDATE: Jesuit and Egyptian-born Father Samir Khalil sees hope in the revolutions taking place here.

Benedict XVI - Avoiding Activism

The Consideration by Saint Bernard is of course required reading for every Pope. There are great things in it, too, for example: Remember that you are not the successor of Emperor Constantine but rather the successor of a fisherman.

The basic theme is the one that you have noted: Do not become utterly absorbed in activism! There would be so much to do that one could be working on it constantly. And that is precisely the wrong thing. Not becoming totally absorbed in activism means maintaining consideratio, discretion, deeper examination, contemplation, time for interior pondering, vision, and dealing with things, remaining with God and meditating about God. One should not feel obliged to work ceaselessly; this in itself is important for everyone, too, for instance, for every manager, too, and even more so for a Pope. He has to leave many things to others so as to maintain his inner view of the whole, his interior recollection, from which the view of what is essential can proceed.

- Benedict XVI

GKC - Why Be Catholic

Dale Ahlquist writing of G. K. Chesterton (of course) says,

(W)hen we have our days of doubt, when we are confused by the incessant attacks and the personal disappointments, it is a good exercise to sit down and make a list of all the things that prove that the Catholic faith is true.

• The Church is the only consistent defender of morality and virtue. It defends marriage and the family. It defends children and babies and the unborn. It defends the poor. It defends peace and human dignity. It defends order and it also defends freedom. It defends the body and the mind and the soul.
  
• The Church is the only institution in history that has continually survived its own defeats. Chesterton even maintains that it has survived its own death. Several times in history the Church seemed to be done and destroyed. But it is still here. It has survived its own death, says Chesterton, "because it had a God who knew his way out of the grave."
  
• The history of Christianity is the history of the Catholic Church. The Church has not only carried the faith through history, it has carried the whole culture. The monasteries preserved the texts of the ancient world, keeping open our only windows to the past. When iconoclasts were smashing statues, Catholics preserved the art of sculpture. Catholic artists even brought sculpture inside paintings, giving them depth and dimension. They wrote music that we can still sing. The castles built in the medieval times are now museums or ruins. The Cathedrals built at the same time are still being used for their original purpose.
  
• All other Christian sects are a reaction against or a splitting off from the Catholic Church. They are always something less than the Catholic Church, never anything more. They lack something, whether it be a pope or a priest or a pronouncement. Whatever partial truth they cling to is something that they have received from the Catholic Church, whether it be the Bible or baptism or "bringing in the sheaves."
• History's greatest people, the saints, are Catholic ... Read all.

Stages of Spiritual Starvation

At yesterday's Daytona 500 race, Jeff Gordon was sponsored by the AARP's new publicity stunt, Drive to End Hunger. How much did many minutes of commercial time cost during the Daytona 500? Vroom vroom.

A noble endeavor, you say? Perhaps; unless one looks behind the curtain at the man pulling the levers and turning the knobs. The AARP buckled and became an arm of the aspirations of Last Self-Help Administration even before the last election. If you see altruism in this new endeavor, I see an attempt to show even good-old boy racin' fans can be influenced by the cynical Left.

Instead of spending umpteen thousands of dollars on this new endeavor, AARP - and you, gentle reader - should with Monsignor Charles Pope consider a deeper analysis of hunger in the starving West; one that, I think, makes far more sense and, ultimately, can do far more good, here.

Invitation to Marian Chivalry

Do you want to go beyond pew-sitting membership in the Catholic Church? Hear a call of silver trumpets to give more of your life to serving Our Lord and Our Lady in chivalrous fealty? I recommend that you give attention to Corpus Christianum. From the website:

What do members do?

Relying on the intercession of Mary, Help of Christians, members pray daily for the renewal, unity, and spread of Christendom, for the protection of Christians, for the conversion of sinners and sanctification of all people, for Holy Mother Church, and for the reinstitution of family life. Members pray the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary as well as a short prayer to Mary, Help of Christians, the Corpus Christianum Preces, and a rosary. On Saturdays members also pray the Litany of Loreto. For members who want to expand their spiritual life even more, they can choose to follow the Acta Militum (see question further below)

Where are members located?

Currently there are men and women in nine countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, Nigeria, Philippines, Sweden, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States - with members in 28 different states in the U.S.).

What is the canonical status of the Association?

Corpus Christianum is an international Private Association of the Faithful.

The Association's Statutes have been reviewed and a nihil obstat has been granted by His Excellency, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska [USA] on August 2, 2010. His Excellency's reaffirm of support was confirmed again in a letter on January 24, 2011. These letters can be accessed here and here.

The Statutes mention the Acta Militum? What is that?

The Acta Militum is a document that can be used as a "plan" to expand one's spiritual life beyond the general Corpus Christianum prayers. Those persons who follow the Acta may also find it very useful as a discussion tool with their spiritual directors.

Rumbling Toward the Caliphate

With such illuminating rhetoric as the following, imams in Afghanistan promulgate the goals of the Scimitar:

Under the weathered blue dome of Kabul's largest mosque, a distinguished preacher, Enayatullah Balegh, pledged support for "any plan that can defeat" foreign military forces in Afghanistan, denouncing what he called "the political power of these children of Jews."

Across town, a firebrand imam named Habibullah was even more blunt.

"Let these jackals leave this country," the preacher, who uses only one name, declared of foreign troops. "Let these brothers of monkeys, gorillas and pigs leave this country."

It should be manifestly clear that while the blinders of secularism make such organs of the MSM as the WaPo see the "unrest" in the nations of the Middle East solely in terms of politics, there is a vast sea of persons of the Scimitar who see it as the beginnings of the Caliphate.

It would be a messy, sloppy, chaotic thing to be sure; a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption of power-driven maniacs. But so long as the Scimitar clings to its scapegoats par excellence - the Jews and downstream cousins the Christians - it will find for a while a unifying factor.

But who will notice the outlines of such a unifying goal, I wonder?

UPDATES: Gee, what a surprise.

* Raymond Ibrahim's analysis here.

Into the Clearing

I OFTEN IMAGINE A BOY who, not unlike Prince Caspian of C. S. Lewis's book, had a love for lore, for stories and legends of romance and greatness and great sacrifice for great causes, who chanced upon a clearing and structures ruinous the origins he knew not. It is my favorite kind of story.

Imagine my immense surprise when in my advancing years I found myself the protagonist in that story. It followed years of struggle, of having that kind of Story excised right out of me in the relativist blather of a "liberal arts education" followed by a different kind of relativism - a left-leaning form of Christianity that I call New Age Zen Protestantism.

And yet, here I stood at the age of 47, newly confirmed into full communion with the Holy Catholic Church. The words of Evelyn Waugh - fellow convert - were one with my own heart and mind:

“Conversion is like stepping across the chimney piece out of a Looking-Glass world, where everything is an absurd caricature, into the real world God made; and then begins the delicious process of exploring it limitlessly.”

To this moment, I have found nothing to contradict either the words of Waugh or the wonder of coming into the clearing of the Catholic World from the dark and cruel forest of derelict, atrophy, parody, and sin. And lo - what I had taken for a structure ruinous was not so at all. Rather, it was deeply old and immensely ancient, yet as new and vibrant as a fresh day of Spring and heart's ease. And at its center a lamb as though slain ... and His Mother, our good Lady, His most faithful and first and best disciple.

With all my days - however many or few there are - the best life, the only life, is to serve our good Lord and His good Lady in fealty and service. There is nothing for it but this. For I did not find my way in the Clearing. I got pulled into this Romance, undeservedly. And for that I am grateful.

Pearce - The Pub

Joseph Pearce waxes poetic on the origins, joys, and necessity of the English pub here.