Showing posts with label Christendom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christendom. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
12:35 PM
I was staying the night in Częstochowa for the Mass of the Assumption this time. There was perfect freedom this year in how I reckoned my time, and how blessed a gift that was! As today was Sunday, the Mass said at Jasna Góra would not be the vigil of Our Lady's feast, so on one of the rest stops, I paused to read the vigil Mass by myself. The Lesson of the fourteenth of August is one of my favourite passages in Holy Scripture, as well as from one of my favourite books. Truly, if our separated brethren had not rejected Ecclesiasticus, they would not stiffen at the embrace of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
As the vine I have brought forth a pleasant odour: and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches. I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue.
Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits. For my spirit is sweet above honey, and my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb. My memory is unto everlasting generations. They that eat me, shall yet hunger: and they that drink me, shall yet thirst. He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin.
They that explain me shall have life everlasting. (Ecclesiasticus XXIV:23-31)
As I leaned my brow upon my missal, I thought that perhaps I had not forfeited so much in being unable to petition anymore. Though not always possessing a happy or willing spirit on the matter, it was good for me that all I could hope for were these consolations spoken of here. Strangely, Father Grzegorz spoke to us, before we plodded on the next six miles, (with dear Ola translating again) that we should not be discouraged if our lives did not change after this pilgrimage. Rather, we should think of all our spiritual efforts being gathered like dew into a great bowl, from which God would portion out mercy according to His wisdom. There is no better way of perceiving the matter.
The wait to enter Jasna Góra did not seem so long this year, and the weather, so much more clement! The crowds gathered about as as congenially as all the souls we met, though naturally a few quirky incidents had to take place. One sweet, old lady came up to me, embraced me, and then asked if I were a Muslim, much to the amusement of my companions standing about. 
'Nie,' I responded hastily, though I hope graciously, and arranged my shawl in another manner. Yet, it had not been too different from the ladies in their kerchiefs and chapel veils about me. One day though, people of the Church will remember that “In doubt, the revocation of a previous law is not presumed,” (Canon 21), and women would again exploit their opportunity to catechize the world and reap the fruits of observing what was not abrogated in the Code of 1917. And on that day, it will not matter how a lady chooses to veil herself. Until then, she best make sure her wrists are showing to avoid confusion over her affiliation.
Singing and praying all continued as we stood. Other pilgrim divisions, which had arrived that morning, came to smile and chat. People moved and up and down the lines to greet those whom they knew, though swiftly returning to their place in the formation. The children were wonderfully patient, and we were often exchanging gleeful expressions with one another. We were so near.
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| Thanks to Marzena and Basia! |
It produced such a thrill, again like a culmination. Now it resembled that moment towards the end of G. K. Chesterton's novel The Ball and the Cross, when the hero has an epiphany:
It's hard to explain, anyhow. An apocalypse is the opposite of a dream. A dream is falser than the outer life. But the end of the world is more actual than the world it ends. I don't say this is really the end of the world, but it's something like that--it's the end of something. All the people are crowding into one corner. Everything is coming to a point. (Chapter XIX: The Last Parley)
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| Thank you Marzena and Basia! |
My eyes being like Evan MacIan's, I did not quite see the 'point' too 'large and plain' to be visible to puny human eyes, yet I did see something after we had passed through the gates, courtyard, and threshold of the Chapel of the Mother of God. We all gazed with love on the resplendent end of our journey. She is always the same, yet it is amazing how we change around her. We went to our knees, many I'm sure with tears in our eyes. As the year before, I wept and bowed my head, but this time I felt I heard her speak within me. This was the tone of Judith, Our Lady as the Hetmana, regal and strong as well as maternal and gentle:
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| http://fakty.interia.pl/galerie/religia/nowe-korony-i-sukienka-na-obraz-matki-bozej/zdjecie/duze,1327293,1,780 |
Will you be my subject?
I nodded, answering with nothing else for the moment. The next day, as the bus wound its way through narrow roads still under construction, back the 165 miles to Warszawa, I did finally ask. What does it mean for me to be your subject? I ask it still every night, but there is the grace to wait. The precious fruit of this pilgrimage (for me) may be summed up thusly: a soul in the Lord's service should not be discouraged by the words:
'Arise, and go into the city, and there it shall be told thee what thou must do.'
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Slowly, mellifluously, the keys of Franz Liszt began to tap in my ear. My head turned towards the music in a fog of vague incomprehension, until my blurry vision focused on the cerulean, dancing bell of my cellphone's alarm clock.I violently tore off the bedsheets and scrambled into my clothes. 4:00 ante meridiem, but I knew I had one stop to make before I went to the chapel for Mass. How could I have forgotten to bring my washing tub to the loading truck the night before? I glanced at the gallon sized water jug I had also forgfotten to bring. I hoped that's what the pilgrimage's website had meant in the words my dictionary translated as 'water tank.' Its purpose was for pooling resources, I had supposed, so I bought the biggest one available. Surely, I had understood all the important information on the website, and trying to ease my fretting, I made my Morning Offering.
Out the door, I sped, having checked the plugs and windows three times. Violating all the traffic lights betwixt the tram stop and myself, I made it onboard just as the doors shut. Still too excited to sit down, I slid a window upon and looked out, beholding a bright, magenta sun emblazoned against the grey velvet of the morning.What a beautiful morning! I thought I had caught it in its waning, but the sunrise's splendour only waxed, even as I unloaded my things at Plac Teatralny and hurried to the Immaculate Conception Chapel near Plac Zamkowy.
Krakowskie Przedmieście Street, at last! Before ducking into the small sanctuary, I spared a glance for the statue atop the charitable building, Res Sacra Miser. Our Lord, presented as the 'sweet pelican', stood atop a nest, feeding His young from the tissue of His own heart. Desiring to imitate those nestlings, I finally stepped inside.
It had been over six months since I had savoured the Mass of the Old Rite, and it flowed as it always did like balm over a wound, aloe over a burn. All parts made perfectly accessible to me from my missal, I savoured the Transfiguration story over again, letting the white, gilded walls of the church and the solemn beauty of the Liturgy catechize me. Losing only the homily, which Father Gregory Śniadoch delivered from the great pulpit as a priest should, I did take that moment to contemplate what I was doing.
* * *
I was walking to Częstochowa! This would be my sixth visit to the holy shrine of Jasna Góra, but the first time on such a pilgrimage. Walking! 265 kilometers/164 miles! Naturally the Luddite in me was thrilled at the prospect of mortifying the flesh so softly pampered by the modern world, but that was hardly my chief contemplation. I glanced at the devout Poles around me; all of them were strangers to me but for an elderly man whom I often saw at the SSPX Chapel (where I would go to say the rosary for the sake of some fellowship). I wondered if what this journey meant to them had any kinship with what it meant to me.
I do not meant to draw comparisons of devotion or to say that differences of culture may not be bridged by Him in Whom there is no east or west. I merely wish to observe that it must surely be different for Poles to visit a place of such great import to them from the moment when, as babes, they began to learn their history and their Faith. Bloodlines ran through their veins that would naturally quicken their hearts at the mention of the Black Madonna, and their devotion had been nurtured for a much longer time than mine. Yet, I might have one advantage--that of blessed shock, illuminated by wonder and joy.
As an American who did not travel abroad until quitting childhood, the history of the Old World sat aloof from me very much like the world of mythology from history. The still young United States, which had never experienced a Golden Age or a flowering of the Church, was sadly born in the time of the West's intellectual and spiritual decline. It flowered unhindered in a new land, eating the native blossoms that stood in its path, nurtured by a soil with no long history or extensive record of deeds either evil or holy.
The blood of eight martyrs has had to spread over a vast area, and but seven more canonized souls stand beside them on this territory. The Union grew largely with man's natural virtues and vices, avoiding many of the supernatural evils committed in other lands, but alas, some of the supernatural goods as well. For those of the New World who wish to grow higher, who yearn for the security of deeper roots, they must look east across the sea, searching for significance and identity. If any of these are fortunate enough to make the journey in the flesh to the founts of their blood and Faith, they hope the encounter between their book-learning and the material site will be as piercing as lightning.
* * *
Częstochowa. When I saw the sign at the train station the first time I visited, I could but stand agog. This was a name I only knew from history and devotion; its significance had always been that it was the home of the blessed icon. But this was also a town where people lived and in many ways much like any other. It was almost as wonderful and incongruous as stepping off a train at a stop labelled: 'Heaven.' My eyes were not yet fit for Heaven though, and there lay the rub.
Every visit had felt wrong--had felt too easy. The moment was surreal, hardly appropriate for the Church of Reality. It was also over far too quickly, leaving me in a haze of confusion rather than revelation. I had never prepared properly to enter the chapel at Jasna Góra and so had never beheld anything but a very beautiful image, though one in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. I dearly wanted to at last rightly see her in the image painted by the Evangelist. I wanted to behold her in truth and holiness as well as in beauty, and then, having looked well upon the Hodegetria, turn my searching eyes towards her Son.
The homily ended, and I looked up from my musings. Father Gregory came down from the pulpit and the Liturgy of the Eucharist began.
* * *
How beautiful the banners were! There were two with horizontal fields of black and white, emblazoned with a red Maltese cross. There was a flag of indigo peppered with golden fleurs-de-lys, much like the Black Madonna's own robe. It was accompanied by a crimson flag bearing Lech's white eagle. Two Polish standards, one of Pope Benedict's, one of the Vatican's, of St. George's, and a blue one with a Jerusalem cross argent made up the glorious fanfare. In the front, two traditional medieval standards bore the phrase, one in Latin and the other in Polish: 'God, honour, and the fatherland.'
Even as I glanced about at all my fellow pilgrims chatting with one another, strange faces all, I couldn't be self-conscious knowing that we embraced such a commonality of beliefs. I was prepared for a silent, somewhat isolated sojourn, but one that would be surrounded with prayer and charity. Thank goodness that my Latin, though rusty, was not dead!
Suddenly, there broke in upon us a rather exuberant chant from one of the groups proceeding before us: 'Hey, hey, hey! Nanana NA! Hey, hey, hey! Alleluia! Hey, hey, hey! Nanana NA...' Overwhelmed with simultaneous feelings of horror, amusement, and shame I fixed my eyes on my feet and tried not to giggle. Yes, that was the other reason I chose the traditional group.
Even as I glanced about at all my fellow pilgrims chatting with one another, strange faces all, I couldn't be self-conscious knowing that we embraced such a commonality of beliefs. I was prepared for a silent, somewhat isolated sojourn, but one that would be surrounded with prayer and charity. Thank goodness that my Latin, though rusty, was not dead!
Suddenly, there broke in upon us a rather exuberant chant from one of the groups proceeding before us: 'Hey, hey, hey! Nanana NA! Hey, hey, hey! Alleluia! Hey, hey, hey! Nanana NA...' Overwhelmed with simultaneous feelings of horror, amusement, and shame I fixed my eyes on my feet and tried not to giggle. Yes, that was the other reason I chose the traditional group.
* * *
I gazed sleepily at the grey, unfinished dome of the Basilica of Divine Providence as we sat to take our first break. Happily, I had just bumped into a student of mine from a summer camp where I had been instructing. It touched my teacher's heart that he had been so glad and umembarrassed to see me, and it warmed me that I had made my first human contact since the trip had begun. My head bobbed again, and I took the moment to stretch on the dewy grass and sleep.
When I awoke, I was facing a fellow traveller dressed in a skirt of brilliant purple and fuschia, with chestnut brown hair that hung in waves long past her shoulders. 'Część!' she said sweetly. 'Hi,' I responded sleepily, unwittingly giving myself away. 'Oh, she said, her vivid blue eyes widening, 'You speak English?' And so it happened, according to God's clemency, that not only was I to be surrounded with prayer and devotion, but with fellowship as well. This began with meeting Basia (BAH-shuh). It was not long before we struck a half-Polish, half-English accord.
Yet, the greater part of the day was filled with joyous bursts of Polish songs, religious and patriotic, coupled with Latin hymns and Litanies of the Church Universal. Glancing to the left and right, we saw well-wishers waving us onward, even in the most secular districts of Warsaw. From the elderly to the very young, they waved us onward, the little ones holding holy cards that one of our several priests had handed out to them. Going forth with those gentle adieus, we left the city.
When I awoke, I was facing a fellow traveller dressed in a skirt of brilliant purple and fuschia, with chestnut brown hair that hung in waves long past her shoulders. 'Część!' she said sweetly. 'Hi,' I responded sleepily, unwittingly giving myself away. 'Oh, she said, her vivid blue eyes widening, 'You speak English?' And so it happened, according to God's clemency, that not only was I to be surrounded with prayer and devotion, but with fellowship as well. This began with meeting Basia (BAH-shuh). It was not long before we struck a half-Polish, half-English accord.
Yet, the greater part of the day was filled with joyous bursts of Polish songs, religious and patriotic, coupled with Latin hymns and Litanies of the Church Universal. Glancing to the left and right, we saw well-wishers waving us onward, even in the most secular districts of Warsaw. From the elderly to the very young, they waved us onward, the little ones holding holy cards that one of our several priests had handed out to them. Going forth with those gentle adieus, we left the city.
* * *
I gave my skirt one last twist before acknowledging that it would yield up no more water. Assured it would not drip on anything else, I hung it from a beam in the barn's loft, alongside so many other damp garments. The rain that had poured on us at the end of the day had first come as a welcome respite from the heat, until arriving at Bogatki we saw that our luggage, unloaded from the truck, had also been soaked in the downpour. I could hear my pilgrim sisters whispering and giggling as they made their beds, and smiling to myself, I had to acknowledge that the affair was really quite funny.
Climbing into my sleeping bag, I was grateful that the boards underneath my mat were stacked in such a way that I could sleep on my left side, and laying my wet head against my pillow, I softly sang my favourite bedtime prayer:
Protect us Lord, as we stay awake. Watch over us as we sleep, that awake we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep rest in His peace.
And how did it go again in Polish?
Strzeż nas, Panie, gdy czuwamy, podczas snu nas osłaniaj, abyśmy czuwali z Chrystusem i odpoczywali w pokoju.
Climbing into my sleeping bag, I was grateful that the boards underneath my mat were stacked in such a way that I could sleep on my left side, and laying my wet head against my pillow, I softly sang my favourite bedtime prayer:
Protect us Lord, as we stay awake. Watch over us as we sleep, that awake we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep rest in His peace.
And how did it go again in Polish?
Strzeż nas, Panie, gdy czuwamy, podczas snu nas osłaniaj, abyśmy czuwali z Chrystusem i odpoczywali w pokoju.
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Thursday, June 10, 2010
I take God and all the world to witness that I have been to you a true, humble and obedient wife.
- Catherine of Aragon
Once in the fifteenth century, there was a troubled, young, English prince born to a morally bankrupt father and second in line to a brother who was equal to their father in personal laxity. Though devoted to the Faith and to study, this younger royal would likely have been distracted, sometime in his thirteenth or fourteenth year, by the many whisperings in court of the desperate struggle of the English to outpace the King of Scotland by securing a Spanish princess as bride for the heir to the English throne.- Catherine of Aragon
The turn of the tide in Spain--effected by Isabella's succession of her ineffectual half-brother, united with the efforts of her husband--had restored order in the now bonded realms of Aragon and Castille. So impressed were the British lords that they had taken arms to assist in the Reconquista, and wrought the beginning of what might have been a strong alliance betwixt Spain and England.
When the beautiful, sprightly, Spanish princess, Catherine, arrived at last on Britain's shore, Henry VII gloated. His son, Arthur, leered, and the young Henry VIII fell in love. So much so, that when he came of age he took no heed of his deceased father's connivance after a more profitable marriage for the new heir to the throne (Arthur having died from syphilis). After all, England now had the royal, Spanish widow--and cheaply too, as she was nearly starving in the damp castle where Arthur so quickly met his end. However, Henry immediately wed the still beautiful woman, though she was seven years his senior.
She became bone of his bone in everyway. His confidante, his aid, his co-ruler. She was willing to ride out with the troops to cheer them or to act as regent while he was abroad. In the early stages of her misfortunes in child-bearing, the 'Defender of the Faith' at first consoled her, bearing the pain with his wife as a true husband. But then, for some horrific reason, Henry VIII lost the Faith, or rather, he did his best to lose it.
Popular culture for once has it quite right when it either sternly or jokingly states that only the poison of lust can truly account for the king's defection. The argument of requiring a male heir or the scruples over the possibility of incest are as feeble as claims that Cardinal Wolsey was papist or that St. Thomas More was a pettifogger. Did Henry want a son? Undoubtedly. Did he need one? Come now! This was not the world that the Left would make it out to be.
Catherine was the daughter of the woman who had had the naked sword of sovereignty borne before her in the procession of her coronation--the woman and the one who had taken her nation's destiny back. When her husband, Ferdinand, felt a tinge of macho resentment at his wife's independence, she gently reminded him that as they only had daughters at that point in their marriage, even the feminine right to rule must be recognized. Ferdinand conceded this argument, and it is unlikely that Henry VIII was less reasonable.
Turning aside a moment--it is bitterly ironic that Henry's son would perish from the disease Henry contracted in attempting to beget him. The rotund monarch's daughters would be his only successors, and yes, they remained on the throne until their deaths.
Did Henry truly have scruples over taking his brother's wife? What! after receiving a dispensation allowing the marriage from the Vicar of Christ in whose authority he believed? In fact, it was a dispensation that was only necessary in form, as Arthur's health did not permit him to consummate his brief marriage to Catherine. It is true that we have only the queen's word for this, but also no reason to distrust it. Her devotion to the truth and the physical condition of her bridegroom support her word.
Futhermore--concerning the king's conscience again--the same reasoning that would have nursed uneasiness in Henry's conscience would also have clearly forbidden him to have wed Anne Boleyn. Was she not the sister of Henry's former mistress? Where did those fastidious reservations fly? For whatever vile, sensual working in his mind, Henry was bent on union with a temperamental shrew, and likely for a reason as petty as this: Catherine's bloom was fading. As Hilaire Belloc said, the mind of a Tudor was acute, but not large.
What stood in this Tudor's way was the Church to whom he had always been devoted. He had hated the Protestant Revolution--both its doctrines and its habits from the beginning, but when Holy Mother Church would not let him have his way, he broke off all ties with Rome. Again, he was likely acting through his passions only, not seeing the ruin in store for the world of Christendom.
Henry then cruelly separated his wife from their daughter and left his spouse to die in the rotten hole from which he had previously rescued her. For the next 59 years (interrupted by the five year reign of Mary Tudor I), Henry VIII and Elizabeth I would spend their reigns stamping out vibrant English Catholicism via looting, persecution, and mass murder. A secular historian, who was documenting this era, spoke thus while touring a former home of Catholic nobility:
'What happened to Catholicism which had been so strong in England?' he opened a trapdoor, familiar to well taught schoolchildren as a priest's 'hidey hole,' and said curtly, 'It disappeared down here.'
What was left behind after this persecution? What was this new 'Anglican' Church? It looked like the Church of Rome ('tainted' with the 'gross shadow of popery' according to the Puritan and Pilgrim, William Bradford). But it was very much as if a man had murdered the woman he loved, constructed a machine, and did his best to fashion it after her image and being. Did this sect Henry fashioned to soothe his anti-Reformation sensibilities have any substance to it?
Cardinal Newman observed in the Development of Christian Doctrine that Protestantism, having rebelled against any religious authority, ritual, or devotion, often fades into agnosticism or atheism when it introduces logical speculation into its doctrine.
England's religious revolution was truly engineered by the powerful rich, the erstwhile 'reformers,' and the deluded Henry VIII. Of these three parties, that errant monarch died. The men who sought to revive 'primitive Christianity' quickly became irrelevant. Albania was left with a puppet of the opportunist aristocrats and the merchants who lived on generation after generation.
Their puppet of a church undoubtedly lost any right to the name 'creed' some time ago.
'I believed in the Church I joined, but it has been revealed to have no doctrine of its own. I personally think it has gone past the point of no return.' _Bishop Broadhurst [emphasis mine]
The disillusionment of orthodox Anglican bishops brought droves of converts into the Catholic Church last year. Now the American Episcopalians have been removed from the Anglican Communion's ecumenical dialogues. The African Anglican Church is wedged further and further apart from the modernist errors of the Anglican community. Some Anglican converts are even speaking of regaining the churches stolen from Rome long ago. One may at last be seeing the return of Mary's Dowry, at least as far as believers are concerned. The majority of England is unabashedly secular.
It's strange that it has taken so many centuries for the cleavage in England to show signs of healing. What would have been a slight tug of war between monarch and pope in any previous age, was a complete severance due both to England's economic circumstances and Europe's revolutionary climate. Henry VIII managed to destroy everything he cared for: Catherine, the Church's place in England, and within a century and two years, the monarchy.
I have heard it said that there is no such thing as private sin. Every time we look up to the Heaven and shake our fist, every time we say 'no' to Reality, we can be sure that we will not be able to keep what we have done to ourselves. Failing in our duties, failing those we love the most, and failing God are crimes too great to be contained in our personal lives. They will spill out into the world, and we will have made ourselves part of what's wrong with this life.
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About Me
- Jacobitess
- Warsaw, Poland
- Domine, spero quia mundum vicisti. Lord, I trust that Thou hast overcome the world. Panie, ufam, żeś pokonał świat.