Royal Viewpoint

Very interesting, acute, and incisive analysis about England from an insider if ever there was one here.

Knox - Creatures of Earth and Heaven

CREATURES EXIST TO REMIND us of God and make us think how much greater the Maker must be than the things he has made; how much more irresistible his power must be than the power of the whirlwind, how much more captivating his beauty must be than the beauty of the sunset. Creatures exist so that we can enjoy them and be grateful for them; so that when we have had a holiday we can go to bed thanking God, with a glow in our hearts, for all his goodness to us. Creatures exist so that we may make a right and wise use of them, mortifying ourselves and disciplining our appetites instead of being selfish about them, and making pigs of ourselves over them. All that is true of God's earthly creatures; but meanwhile, God made heaven as well as earth, and not only earth, but heaven, is ours, is meant for us to enjoy. Even now, the protection of the holy angels and the prayers of our Blessed Lady and all the saints are available to us, because we are his children.

How much more thrilling it will be when one day, please God, we put Purgatory behind us, and find, in heaven, the end for which we were really created, the existence which really satisfies the longings of our nature! Only then will the Artist put the finishing touches to his works; only then shall we be able to admire the grand scale of it, the perfect symmetry of it. The curtain will be drawn aside, and the Author of all that exists will stand there to take our applause.

- Ronald A. Knox

Belloc - Prophet of Our Times

Hilaire Belloc is lauded as a prophet of our times by Father C. John McCloskey at ZENIT in an excellent interview here. Remember Belloc's immortal words:

"One thing in this world is different from all other. It has a personality and a force. It is recognized, and (when recognized) most violently loved or hated. It is the Catholic Church. Within that household the human spirit has roof and hearth. Outside it, is the night."

Knox - That God Exists

WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG, YOU CAN always fall back on yourself for company, unless you are a very melancholy kind of person. When you go to bed at night, and can't get to sleep yet, you can be quite happy thinking about your own plans and your own pleasures, your own friends and your own ambitions; you can lie there day-dreaming, and tell yourself stories about what you are going to do when you grow up ... But when you've had fifty years and more of your own company, it ceases to be quite so enjoyable - you've got bored with it. And that breeds a dreadful loneliness inside the human soul, unless the human soul has learned, and has managed to remember, and still believes, that God exists. You have begun to see yourself as a pretty second-rate sort of article; your prospects of getting your way over this and that don't seem so frightfully important; your judgment of things and of people doesn't seem to matter so much; what the map of Europe will be like in a hundred years' time is a speculation that doesn't much interest you.

THEN, to believe that God exists means that you have something - better still, that you have somebody - to fall back upon; everything still matters, because there is God's will to be taken into account, God's glory to be considered. "I BELIEVE IN GOD"; forty years from now, if you keep then the faith you have now, you will be thanking God that God exists.

- Ronald A. Knox

God Wills It

As historian Thomas F. Madden (Director of Saint Louis University's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies) elucidated to Colleen Carroll Campbell, Christians in general and Catholics in particular need not scurry away when conversation turns to either the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition.

An excellent if slightly dated article on the former can be found here.

Lord - Age of the Blessed Sacrament

Madonna with the Host - Ingres

THROUGH THE GREAT MERCY OF GOD, we happen to live in the age of the Blessed Sacrament ...

The hatred that once reached out to fling the visible Christ into the plot of the Passion we have seen reach out once again to obliterate His priesthood, destroy the Mass, and make impossible the Eucharistic presence of the Incarnate God in His world. After all persecution is an act of perverted faith. Men cannot attack what they believe does not exist. The vicious persecution against the Catholic priesthood is the attack upon Christ and the Mass, the method by which He ordained He should enter the world. An age of persecution, like ours, is a glorious age of faith - angelic and demoniac - in the real presence ...

This is a great age, the age of the Eucharist and the age of Mary. The Eucharist and the Mother of the Savior are inseparable. The age that loves and honors one must love and honor the other. Our age gratefully and deeply loves them both, virgin Mother and virgin Son.

- Daniel A. Lord, S.J.

Christian Friendship - Close to Heaven

What a wonderful occasion of providential faith and hope and charity. After an hour and one-half of dealing with a "home health nurse" and my apparent prime directive, who should show up at my doorstep but fellow Mass'keteer, young D'Artagnan, (graphic artist of the above) and Lady Dawn Eden! Each bore not only lunch-for-one (for herself; D'Art and I had eaten) but other fine, fine gifts and delights.

And for the next two and one-half hours, old Athos was bathed and swathed in such milk of human kindness, Christian friendship, and called-out-of-the-world-of-woes extradition that he thought he had somehow missed that rending of soul from body and been taken directly to the third heaven of what our brother Saint Paul speaks:

"I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise. He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not permitted to tell." (2 Corinthians 12:2-4)

We chatted about books (ours and others') and new projects, one of which will take one of us far afield. We walked down to a nearby park and strolled next to a meandering stream. And then - the ceremonial exchanging of gifts!

Goodness! Lady Dawn, ever a keeper of what Tolkien called in hobbit terminology, mathom, brought out from her storehouse things old and new. And let us say, gentle reader, that D'Artagnan and Lady Dawn did not leave Athos' humble dwelling empty-handed. The former received in token of the chivalry which all of the Mass'keteers share in common brotherhood, and the latter is covered, though not yet blessed, in four-ways most blessed for her continuous deeds of errantry and pitched battle against the wicked and snares of the devil.

Can heaven come down and touch earth in any way more acceptably and nobly all of a Monday afternoon? Answer: Yes. For, before D'Artagnan and Lady Dawn left, we joined in prayer under the divine sign of the Most Holy Trinity and - gasp! - blessedly in the reliquarial presence (1st order) of Saint Dominic, compliments of a religious' gift to Lady Dawn in the wee hours at Notre Dame. D'Artagnan said he felt the great saint's hand on his shoulder as we knelt and prayed ...

May you have such an encounter with the true, good, and beautiful, gentle reader. And I will recount the deeds of two great friends and their superabundance of charity for long ages to come.

P. S. - Life is sweet and good if besides hosting friends like the above, one can field a phone call of concern on a Sunday afternoon, too, from a great friend, mentor, and all round great guy who now, again, lives in California.

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.