BooksThis week saw the launch, in Paris, of two books: the French translation of the retreat preached before Pope Leo XIV and the Roman Curia in February and a conversation with Nicolas Diat based on the lecture Pope Benedict XVI Read More
Amoris Laetitia‘The indissolubility of marriage […] should not be viewed as a yoke imposed on humanity, but as a gift’ (62). ‘Jesus, who reconciled all things in himself, restored marriage and the family to their original form’ (63). ‘The married couple Read More
Notre DameTo see the restored cathedral of Notre Dame is marvellous. The brightness of the stone, the clear brilliance of the rose window, the pristineness of everything let us share the exhilaration Medieval people must have felt on entering this space Read More
Hidden LifeLiving as we do in the midst of rapid societal change, certain questions haunt us. How do we emerge from isolation into community? Are there durable values without which civilisation withers? Does our constant flood of words carry meaning? These Read More
BooksThis week saw the launch, in Paris, of two books: the French translation of the retreat preached before Pope Leo XIV and the Roman Curia in February and a conversation with Nicolas Diat based on the lecture Pope Benedict XVI gave at the Collège des Bernardins, first set up as a Cistercian house of studies, in 2008. There has been some resonance in the press. Should you wish, you can follow these links to Le Journal du Dimanche, Le Point, Aleteia, Le Figaro, Valeurs actuelles and En quête d’Esprit. ‘Human beings crave understanding. They are defined by their need to ask: ‘Why?’ They need the Church’s clear thinking and Christ-centred hope. They need her confident sense of direction. They need her symbols, which are realistic, different from the world’s, focused on an historically wounded body, on the dying of death, on the eternal destiny of ‘the whole of man, composed of body and soul’. The sublime perspective of our faith is founded on realities that happened and that, within the communion of Christ’s mystical body, happen still. We profess that a transforming Benevolence has saturated human suffering even in its most extreme manifestations, reaching down into the very depths of hell, and that therefore no desolation is final. Such is our Gospel’ (Alight with Hidden Glory).
28 Sunday AIsaiah 25.6-10: On this mountain the Lord will prepare a banquet. Philippians 4.12-20: I know how to be poor, I know how to be rich. Matthew 22.1-14: Those who were invited would not come. The Jesuit Fr Paul Mankowski encouraged people to pray the divine office by telling them: ‘It’s good to have Iron Age words in your mouth every day.’ We who recite the Psalter day in, day out, know what he was getting at. There’s something about the taste of substantial ancient utterance that trains our palate to appreciate excellence and recognise mush. That’s always been the case; but how much more now, when God-knows-what percentage of the words we take in hasn’t even been conceived by a human mind, but churned out by an engine. That said, as any reciter of the Psalms knows, we may well utter certain Iron Age phrases for years without getting at what they mean. Then one day, suddenly, the penny drops. I was well into my monastic life before I saw the tragic import of a verse in Ps 105, the second of two that tell of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. The previous Psalm, number 104, recounts the story in an idealised key: it is all about the joys of liberation, grace, and homecoming. Ps 105 is more nuanced. It invokes Israel’s murmuring and rebellion, recalling that divine favour is not unfailingly met with an appropriate human response. The people, we are told, forgot God, their Saviour, dethroned him in their hearts, and preferred to worship the golden calf, a more manageable deity. And they lost interest in the goal for which they were bound: pro nihilo habuerunt terram desiderabilem: ‘They counted as nothing the desirable land’. A terrible affirmation! The Grail Psalter renders the verse, ‘They scorned the land of promise’, but that doesn’t carry the force of Jerome’s Vulgate. How can anyone recognise a thing as objectively desirable, and still spurn it? Ah! We know only too well. The impact of the existential and epistemological wound we know as ‘sin’ distracts us from choosing what will make us happy. ‘I do not do what I want, I do the very thing I hate. I do not understand my own actions’ (Rm 7.15). Paul’s weary admission will resonate, I dare say, with all of us. What knots we tie ourselves into; how weirdly, and absurdly, we impede our own thriving, silencing God’s ever new call by turning up the samey inner noise. Our Gospel tells of a marriage feast, an image used in Scripture for the joyful communion of eternal life, and explicitly presented in this text as a simile for the kingdom of heaven, an already present reality ‘within’ us (Lk 17.21). The groom’s proud father invites his friends, ‘but they would not come’. It seems they did not even observe the RSVP, which would have been a minimum of courtesy. The host sends out further invitations. The newly summoned ‘were not interested’ either. Not that they were detained by engagements; they just preferred their predictable routine down at the farm, in the business. They couldn’t be bothered to iron a shirt, think of a gift, talk to other people. It’s humiliating to plan a party, then to find yourself alone with the canapés and fizz while the hired band plays morosely to itself in a corner. The happy couple, in this scenario, must have been mortified. So we can understand the groom’s father’s grand, slightly aggressive gesture when, having had no response from the nice people for whom the festivities had been planned, he tells his staff to go to the crossroads and invite everyone in. Todos! There’s magnificent magnanimity in this word, and this is, of course, where the parable assumes theological significance. Picking up a promise made by Isaiah, another sharply distinct voice from the Iron Age, the Lord would have us remember that any particularism in God’s providential plan of salvation has a universal purview. The mount of the Lord that epitomised ‘the desirable land’, the mount designated by David as God’s earthly throne, to which the tribes went up with rejoicing, was destined, ultimately, to provide rich foods, fine wines for all peoples. God hates nothing, and no one, he has made (Wis 11.24). He does invite everyone in, wanting all to be saved (1 Tm 2.4). On this point, Scripture is clear. Let’s not forget, though, how the parable ends, on a note of caution. The host opens his door freely, glad to share his riches with all; but that’s not to say all can turn up just as they are. A gracious invitation calls for a gracious response. There’s a dress code to be observed. The wedding garment stands for resolve not to take God’s gift for granted, to live up to it. Whether we’re of the group first called or turn up just as the feast is about to start, we must be fit for the banqueting hall, having washed off and left life’s dirt and sweat. Our garment may be frayed, we’re poor fellows, after all, but it must be orderly and clean, worthy of our host. The wedding garment is our baptismal robe. Let’s take good care of it. And let’s daily nurture our desire to find our home in the desirable land, to know the fulfilment, there, of the promise of which that garment is a pledge, so as not perversely to stay roaming alone outside, exposed to the dark, surrounded by howling jackals, as the marriage feast begins. Amen. Sir John Everett Millais (1829–96), ‘The Marriage Feast’ from The Parables of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Amoris Laetitia‘The indissolubility of marriage […] should not be viewed as a yoke imposed on humanity, but as a gift’ (62). ‘Jesus, who reconciled all things in himself, restored marriage and the family to their original form’ (63). ‘The married couple are […] a permanent reminder for the Church of what took place on the cross’ (72). ‘[The child born of the mutual love of spouses] does not appear at the end of a process, it is present from the beginning of love as an essential feature, one that cannot be denied without disfiguring that love itself’ (80). ‘When the search for pleasure becomes obsessive, it holds us in thrall and keeps us from experiencing other satisfactions’ (126). ‘To believe that we are good simply because we feel good is a tremendous illusion’ (145). ‘Families should not see themselves as a refuge from society, but instead go forth’ (181). ‘God has given the family the job of domesticating the world’ (183). ‘Nothing is more volatile, precarious and unpredictable than desire. The decision to marry should never be encouraged unless the couple has discerned deeper reasons that will ensure a genuine and stable commitment’ (209). ‘Each must set aside all illusions and accept the other as he or she actually is: an unfinished product, needing to grow, a work in progress’ (218). ‘In order to avoid all misunderstanding, I would point out that in no way must the Church desist from proposing the full ideal of marriage’ (307).
Notre DameTo see the restored cathedral of Notre Dame is marvellous. The brightness of the stone, the clear brilliance of the rose window, the pristineness of everything let us share the exhilaration Medieval people must have felt on entering this space at a time when the Gothic style was not only not old, but cutting-edge. How it has endured, though, transcending time. The same cannot be said for the peculiar new altar. It stands for an urge to leave a contemporary mark that already, after a couple of years, seems dated. It disturbs the eye. Oh well, one has but to raise it. I was enchanted by a feature I’d never noticed before: the sculpted wall along the back of the choir, a fourteenth-century work showing scenes from the life of Christ. This account of the apostles asleep during Christ’s prayer in Gethsemani is touching. There is intimacy in the men’s dereliction. Huddled together, they display a wholly natural tendency to seek comfort in human warmth when faced with the solitude of Christ’s Sacred Passion. That tendency is not sinful – the sleepers are haloed – but must be cleansed and directed. What is human in us has to rise to face God’s awesome holiness, something each of us must do in his or her own name. No one can do it on our behalf.
Hidden LifeLiving as we do in the midst of rapid societal change, certain questions haunt us. How do we emerge from isolation into community? Are there durable values without which civilisation withers? Does our constant flood of words carry meaning? These are among the questions addressed in a book published this week, a conversation with Nicolas Diat structured on the discourse Pope Benedict XVI gave at the Collège des Bernardins in 2008. That text remains a powerful summons recalling us to the monastic roots of western culture. For my part, I’d venture to maintain that ‘the theologian’s task is to say the unspeakable with purified words, not to invent, but to restore. It is humble work, a discourse born of silence, on our knees. […] A monastic theologian resembles a restorer of paintings. First he removes impurities, accumulated layers of dust, in order to find his way back to the original, pure form of words; then he undertakes to use these with reverence. To accomplish anything in this respect, humility is called for. This search for transformed words is intimately linked to the pursuit of silence.’
Today we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The month of October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary. Known for several centuries by the alternate title of “Our Lady of Victory,” the feast day takes place in Read More 2 Comments
Cloyne Diocese Thanks to Cobh Parish for the prayer 
