Friday, March 29, 2024

Good Friday


From Daniel Mitsui.

The Reproaches (Improperia)
I.
1 and 2: My people, what have I done to you
How have I offended you? Answer me!
1: I led you out of Egypt,
from slavery to freedom,
but you led your Savior to the cross.
2: My people, what have I done to you?
How have I offended you? Answer me!

1: Holy is God!
2: Holy and strong!
1: Holy immortal One, have mercy on us!
1 and 2: For forty years I led you
safely through the desert.
I fed you with manna from heaven,
and brought you to a land of plenty; but you led your Savior to the cross.
Repeat "Holy is God..."
1 and 2: What more could I have done for you.
I planted you as my fairest vine,
but you yielded only bitterness:
when I was thirsty you gave me vinegar to drink,
and you pierced your Savior with a lance.
Repeat "Holy is God..." 
II.
1: For your sake I scourged your captors
and their firstborn sons,
but you brought your scourges down on me.
(Repeated throughout by Choir 2)
2: My people, what have I done to you?
How have I offended you? Answer me!
1: I led you from slavery to freedom
and drowned your captors in the sea,
but you handed me over to your high priests.
2: "My people...."
1: I opened the sea before you,
but you opened my side with a spear.
2: "My people...."
1: I led you on your way in a pillar of cloud,
but you led me to Pilate's court.
2: "My people...."
1: I bore you up with manna in the desert,
but you struck me down and scourged me.
2: "My people...."
1: I gave you saving water from the rock,
but you gave me gall and vinegar to drink.
2: "My people...."
1: For you I struck down the kings of Canaan.
but you struck my head with a reed.
2: "My people...."
1: I gave you a royal scepter,
but you gave me a crown of thorns.
2: "My people...."
1: I raised you to the height of majesty,
but you have raised me high on a cross.
2: "My people...."
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The Devil & Communist China, with Steven Mosher

 From Christine Niles at Forward Boldly

Mao Zedong led one of the most diabolical regimes in human history, slaughtering literally hundreds of millions of Chinese in his implementation of communism. That legacy of oppression, control and killing continues to this day under Xi Jin Ping. Foremost China expert Steven Mosher joins Christine in this riveting interview on his new book, The Devil and Communist China: From Mao Down to Xi.

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C.S. Lewis Loved Weather

 From The Habit:

C.S. Lewis was funny about weather. For Lewis, it seems, an ability to enjoy all sorts of weather—not just endure it, but enjoy it—suggested that you were the right sort of chap. In Surprised by Joy he wrote of a favorite schoolmaster,
He communicated (what I very much needed) a sense of the gusto with which life ought, wherever possible, to be taken. I fancy it was with a run with him in the sleet that I first discovered how bad weather is to be treated—as a rough joke, a romp.
To appreciate bad weather, to Lewis’s mind, was to be willing to live in, indeed, to rejoice in the fullness of reality. For his Oxford friend A.K. Hamilton Jenkin, unpleasant weather was part of the “atmosphere” that was always offering itself to those who will receive it.
Jenkin seemed to be able to enjoy everything; even ugliness. I learned from him that we should attempt a total surrender to whatever atmosphere was offering itself at the moment; in a squalid town to seek out those very places where its squalor rose to grimness and almost grandeur, on a dismal day to find the most dismal and dripping wood, on a windy day to seek the windiest ridge. There was no Betjemannic irony¹ about it; only a serious, yet gleeful, determination to rub one’s nose in the very quiddity of each thing, to rejoice in its being (so magnificently) what it was.
A shared love of Weather, in fact, might be a reason for two people to get married. I love this bit of dialogue from That Hideous Strength:
“That’s why Camilla and I got married,” said Denniston as they drove off. “We both like Weather. Not this or that kind of weather, but just Weather. It’s a useful taste if one lives in England.”

“How ever did you learn to do that, Mr. Denniston?” said Jane. “I don’t think I should ever learn to like rain and snow.”

“It’s the other way round,” said Denniston. “Everyone begins as a child by liking Weather. You learn the art of disliking it as you grow up. Haven’t you ever noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children—and the dogs? They know what snow’s made for.”

“I’m sure I hated wet days as a child,” said Jane.

“That’s because the grown-ups kept you in,” said Camilla. “Any child loves rain if it’s allowed to go out and paddle about in it.”
Those of you who have been complaining about this week’s arctic temperatures and blizzard conditions and double-digit-below-zero wind chills in much of the US might want to think on that. (Read More.)
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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Holy Thursday

Let us prepare for the Last Supper with Our Lord. Dom Gueranger writes of the Mass of the Lord's Supper in The Liturgical Year, Vol. VI:
The Mass of Maundy Thursday is one of the most solemn of the year; and although the feast of Corpus Christi is the day for solemnly honouring the mystery of the holy Eucharist, still, the Church would have the anniversary of the last Supper to be celebrated with all possible splendour. The colour of the vestments is white, as it is for Christmas day and Easter Sunday; the decorations of the altar and sanctuary all bespeak joy, and yet, there are several ceremonies during this Mass; which show that the holy bride of Christ has not forgotten the Passion of her Jesus, and that this joy is but transient. The priest entones the angelic hymn, Glory be to God in the highest! and the bells ring forth a joyous peal, which continues during the whole of the heavenly canticle: but from that moment they remain silent, and their long silence produces, in every heart, a sentiment of holy mournfulness. But why does the Church deprive us, for so many hours of the grand melody of these sweet bells, whose voices cheer us during the rest of the year? It is to show us that this world lost all its melody and joy when its Saviour suffered and was crucified. Moreover, she would hereby remind us, how the apostles (who were the heralds of Christ, and are figured by the bells, whose ringing summons the faithful to the house of God), fled from their divine Master and left Him a prey to His enemies.


"And there appeared to Him an angel from Heaven, strengthening Him. And being in an agony, he prayed the longer." Luke 22:43
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Now, Voyager (1942)


 From The Easton Gazette:

The untold want by life and land ne'er granted, 

Now, voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find.

~"The Untold Want" from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

It is perhaps one of Bette Davis' best films, one in which she reputedly became quite caught up in the role, playing an active part in the production decisions. Perhaps that is why the sets, costumes, and screenplay, as well as the flawless acting, raise Now, Voyager above the soap operatic level to a serious drama exploring the psychological implications of certain moral decisions. Although Bette could be convincing as a Southern Belle, playing New England spinster Charlotte Vale, a Daughter of the Pilgrims, suited her mannerisms and natural accent impeccably. However, it is Bette's ability to depict Charlotte's transformation from a weepy neurotic into a vibrant and enthusiastic life participant that makes the film so engaging.

Now, Voyager, based on the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, shows the fascination with psychiatry that would come to consume America, beginning in the 1920's, so that in some circles it became a pseudo-religion. When used in the proper context, as a tool for healing, not as a substitute for Divine grace, psychiatry can certainly help people with emotional and mental problems. Charlotte Vale, the heroine of Now, Voyager, is certainly put back on course by the compassionate Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains), whose firmness, wisdom and tough love counteract the emotional abuse leveled upon her by her mother. The film is, overall, a study in bad parenting and good parenting. Charlotte's healing is completed not by psychotherapy but by nurturing a disturbed child. (Read more.)

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The Baltimore Bridge Collapse

 From The Western Journal:

By now, most people have seen the shocking images of the devastating collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, that happened on Tuesday morning. Indeed, it would be hard to forget the sight of the cargo ship hitting the 1.6 mile bridge, with the bridge almost instantly crumbling on impact into the Patapsco River.

What caused the cargo ship to ram into the bridge or what was faulty in the construction of the bridge to make it collapse so readily has not yet been discovered. However, as many users on the social media platform X have noted, the ramifications of this disaster will be devastating for Baltimore’s infrastructure.

User Matt Bracken was among the first to point this out. Sharing a map of the port of Baltimore, circling the location of the bridge, as well as the other main highways, Bracken noted, “All of the shipping north of the bridge is now trapped in place. No other shipping can get in. The tunnel shown has height and hazardous cargo restrictions, it can’t take the heavy trucking traffic that used the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which took YEARS to build back in the 1970s.”

Considering that the Port of Baltimore is the main port for both Baltimore and Washington, D.C., this accident, as Bracken said, was a “MAJOR infrastructure hit.” (Read more.)
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Franz Joseph Washing the Feet of the Poor

In accord with the ancient custom.
In 1850, Franz Joseph participated for the first time as emperor in the second of the traditional Habsburg expressions of dynastic piety: the Holy Thursday foot-washing ceremony, part of the four-day court observance of Easter. The master of the staff and the court prelates chose twelve poor elderly men, transported them to the Hofburg, and positioned them in the ceremonial hall on a raised dais. There, before an invited audience observing the scene from tribunes, the emperor served the men a symbolic meal and archdukes cleared the dishes. As a priest read aloud in Latin the words of the New Testament (John 3:15), “And he began to wash the feet of the disciples,” Franz Joseph knelt and, without rising from his knees, washed the feet of the twelve old men in imitation of Christ. Finally, the emperor placed a bag of twenty silver coins around the necks of each before the men were led away and returned to their homes in imperial coaches.(Read more.)
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Wednesday, March 27, 2024

A Necessary Horror


 From The Dispatch:

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Mel Gibson’s earth-shaking film The Passion of the Christ. To be sure, this movie is earth-shaking in the sense that a serious film (in Aramaic, Hebrew, and Latin with subtitles, no less) about the torture and death of Jesus Christ could even appear in theaters across the country. The conventional wisdom in modern times is that box-office Christianity simply does not pay. But The Passion of the Christ would defy the odds and become an international theater smash, raising $612 million after a mere $30 million was spent in production.

But The Passion of the Christ did more than upend conventional market expectations. The world was rocked by the film’s very nature. For 127 grueling minutes, we are witness to the peak drama of the Christian narrative—the tumultuous last 12 hours of Jesus Christ’s life. From Christ’s Agony in the Garden to his betrayal by Judas Iscariot, from his scourging at the pillar to his crowning with thorns, from his relentless trudge down the Way of the Cross to his nailed, sword-pierced, last gasp on the cross. The bludgeoning and whipping, the pounding and stabbing, the mocking and spitting afflict this defiant-in-submission God-man amid the shame-filled silence of his petrified disciples and the heaving sobs of his despairing followers. 

The endured violence was bad enough, but the film’s personification of evil lent the Devil his day. The hooded, deathly pale Lucifer in the garden chillingly whispered to the agonizing Christ what I know I would have been whispering to myself: “No man can carry this weight alone. It is far too heavy. Saving men’s souls is too costly. No one ever … ” Then the Devil breaks, as if listening to Jesus’ inner rebuttal, and then continues in terse response, “No, not ever.” Even the scene where a smiling centurion is whipping Jesus, we are further jarred as the black-hooded Lucifer walks silently amid Roman soldiers while cradling a baby in its arms. At the far limits of torture, Christ’s gaze fixes momentarily on the Devil whose infant turns to reveal itself as a sneering grotesque. Some have conjectured this monstrosity symbolized the Devil’s prized victory against God’s creation—dignified man—which was the loss of innocence, original sin. 

It was brutal. A horror. But it was a necessary horror. 

In the Christian faith, we believe in a perfect God. A God of both perfect mercy and perfect justice. We also believe that we are dignified children of God imbued with glorious value quite simply for being. But to understand our Christian story is to understand that, though we are dignified, we are fallen, and in need of redemption. The cost of our fall, the price of our sin, is too great for any one of us to pay. And so, to pay an insurmountable debt (justice), we must rely on inextinguishable grace (mercy). In the Passion and Crucifixion of the fully human, fully divine Jesus Christ, the debt of the world’s sins is paid and the debtors are set free (that is, if we are willing to accept the payment on our behalf). This is the Christian narrative of enormity: enormous dignity, enormous fall, enormous redemption. 

But did The Passion of the Christ have to be so awful bloody and so bloody awful? In a word, yes. (Read more.)


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