Happy Catholic shares a quote that should be emblazoned as my epitaph:
"I'm sure God would have created the world very differently if he wanted us to be all business. Instead he generously sprinkles opportunities to laugh and play and adore and savor."
--Shemiah Gonzalez's friend Starlene, Undaunted Joy
This has become such an important liturgical calendar moment for me in my house. My son Ambrose in the Advent season with the candles beams when his patron saint is the one who blesses the bees who make the wax that makes the candles. My eldest daughter beams when she explains the St. Lucy tradition of an eldest daughter carrying the Christlight to her family. My daughter born in the third week of Advent beams when she lights the rose candle of Joy, which renders her middle name. Then comes the pivotal moment of Candlemas, when we close Christmastide and look towards the Paschal Candle, exulted for the work the bees did to make it, and we bless the candles that remind us that the Light of the World has Advented, and He will shine on us at the Easter Vigil. Then we take those blessed candles and place them on the throat of my beaming boy Blaise.
I am truly blessed in this wreath of children encircling me with Light!
"The One True Holy Catholic & Apostolic Church taking time out to bless my throat!" -Flannery O'Connor, from the homage of Amy Welborn
Crepes for Candlemas: https://ashley315.substack.com/p/candlemas-the-presentation-of-christ
I cannot chant the angels’ hymn
As did the hosts of seraphim.
I cannot even cross the wild
As shepherds did, to find the Child.
I cannot shine, a living star,
To guide grave magi from afar.
I have no incense, myrrh, or gold
For gift as had the kings of old.
In all the world there is nowhere
A place so poor, a spot so bare
Save the crude cave at Bethlehem town
Where Christ, my Savior, laid Him down.
Because I am like that mean stall
I may possess Him most of all.
-Sister M. Madeleva Wolff, CSC (1887-1964)
From The Happy Christmas Wind and Other Poems by Sister M. Madeleva; 1936, St. Anthony Guild Press © Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, IN.
In this crucifix in the reconciliation chapel at the Shrine in Knock, Ireland, I noticed the depiction of St.John the Beloved, reaching out his arm to comfort Mary, his new mother. It was a blessing to me at the time to consider my late wife, Amy, whose name means Beloved, reaching out to console me in my sorrow.
This would be a greeting card I could mail to a griever. O Tannen-- balm...
Joseph, our certain hope below,
Glory of earth and heaven,
Thou pillar of the world, to thee
Be praise immortal given.
Thou as salvation’s minister
God the Creator chose,
As foster-father of the Word,
As Mary’s spotless spouse.
Joyful thou sawest Him new-born
Of Whom the prophets sang,
Him in a manger didst adore
From Whom creation sprang.
Lord over lords and King of kings,
Ruler of sky and sea,
He Whom the heavens and earth obey,
Was subject unto thee.
Praise to the Three in One Who thee
Such signal honors lend,
And may thy merits be our aid
To joys that never end.
-Father Juan Escollar; translated by Father Edward Caswell (1814-1878)
From St. Basil’s Hymn Book compiled by the Basilian Fathers; 1925, Rogers Church Goods Co. In the Public Domain.
St. John of the Cross tells us that we do not truly know what it is we need, but Jesus knows. The soul properly disposed “does no more than represent its misery and pain to the Beloved … so that the beloved one may do what to him seems good.… The soul is more secured against self-love and self-seeking by indicating its necessity, instead of asking for that which it thinks is needed.” The Spiritual Canticle II.8.
The point is not simply to suppress our desire for things, as though desire was a weed in the garden. This is not at all what Catholic asceticism is about, in Advent or Lent or at any other time. God created all pleasures, and they are good, because He created them. The desire for pleasure, at its heart, is human and wholesome. The problem isn’t that pleasure is bad, but that we want it for selfish reasons. We become attached to the gratifications that are offered to us, and St. John of the Cross has a lot to say about the danger, not of desires, but of attachments. The disciplines he encourages are not meant to destroy desire but to teach us what desire is for.
In our overstimulated culture, we must struggle to avoid settling for meager comforts and cheap thrills, because our hearts are made for great things. To embrace this truth is hard, but profoundly liberating.- Spiritual Direction blog
May the intercession of the saints lead us to desire rightly, to long only for the only One who can satisfy our longings!
On this day in 1476 was born a girl named Lucy.
She would eventually become the prioress of a convent in Narni, where she received the stigmata.
St. Lucy of Narnia, pray for us!
What was the color of that Blossom bright?
White to begin with, immaculate white.
But what a wild flush on the flakes of it stood,
When the Rose ran in crimsonings down the Cross-wood.
In the Gardens of God, in the daylight divine
I shall worship the wounds with thee, Mother of mine.
-from the poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins
The great temptation of Advent, at least for me, is the petty sin of low horizons and little expectations — missing the moment to focus on the great sweep of the history of salvation and the glorious promise of heaven, held out to me in my baptism, and choosing instead to look ahead to the commemoration of Christmas.
And, of course, the great temptation of Christmas is nostalgia; to wallow in the thousand little seasonal customs of my own life and family, especially now I have a daughter just old enough to appreciate them.
For me, the great urge of nostalgia is to keep still, to stay home, to look back. But, of course, there is no keeping still, and there is no going back. We do not ever stop moving forward in time — and when you consider the orbit of our planet, the sweep of our solar system within the arc of the Milky Way, and that our galaxy is itself rocketing out into the ever expanding void, we never stop moving in space, either.
However much my desire is to stay home, the reality is my home, as a Christian, is not somewhere I can make or maintain for myself. And it is no fixed point on the map to which I can return.
My home, our home, is elsewhere, and we are all on pilgrimage toward it. The challenge, I suppose, is appreciating that reality and not allowing myself to give in to the illusion of a stationary life.
Advent is good for that.
The Pillar is right: our solar system is a vortex. I try to explain that this is the model for our liturgical cycle as well, since we are spiraling closer to Jesus each year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jHsq36_NTU
One of the most astute observations about the true meaning of the season I have ever read, Carl Olsen's substack article places my sorrow over the loss of my wife into its eschatological context. It is indeed What I Need Now:
We have been saved by the Lamb of God, but we still await the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Advent reminds us that this state of in-between is real and difficult, but also passing and temporary:
The Kingdom of God has been coming since the Last Supper and, in the Eucharist, it is in our midst. The kingdom will come in glory when Christ hands it over to his Father.” (CCC 2816; see 1405, 1682, 2861)
St. John Paul II, in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, his final encyclical, wrote at length about this tension, noting that the “Eucharist is a straining towards the goal, a foretaste of the fullness of joy promised by Christ (cf. John 15:11); it is in some way the anticipation of heaven…” (no. 18). He emphasized
Those who feed on Christ in the Eucharist need not wait until the hereafter to receive eternal life: they already possess it on earth, as the first-fruits of a future fullness which will embrace man in his totality. For in the Eucharist we also receive the pledge of our bodily resurrection at the end of the world: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn 6:54). (no. 18)
The “eschatological tension kindled by the Eucharist,” he noted, “expresses and reinforces our communion with the Church in heaven” (no. 19; emphasis in the original). Foremost among those, of course, is the perfect disciple of our Lord: his blessed Mother, the ever-Virgin Mary, as well as the one who is least among these (cf. Matthew 11:11), his cousin John the Baptist.
The readings during Advent focus on both; they are exemplars in the Faith and true family who have gone before us. The Theotokos bore and loved the Word perfectly; the Baptizer decreased to the point of martyrdom. Their lives were not easy in the least. What we need now is to remember and accept—not with resignation but with supernatural resolve—that Advent is not about easy living, but about eternal life.
