Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Book Review: Francois Mauriac's "Holy Thursday"


My best friend and I read this book during Lent and got together after Mass on Friday last week to complete our discussion of Nobel Prize winning Francois Mauriac's Holy Thursday: The Night That Changed the World in the Sophia Institute Press edition and translation. It's evidently not in their catalog now, but Cluny Media has a different edition, The Eucharist: The Mystery of Holy Thursday, available.

I went through a Francois Mauriac phase after college, reading The Viper's Tangle, Therese, and The Woman of the Pharisees, in my pursuit of covering the "Catholic Revival" in Literature. This is a very different book as Mauriac describes his memories of attending Holy Thursday Mass, with the Stripping of the Altars and the Mandatum (the Washing of the Feet) as major events. 

It would have been helpful to the reader if Sophia Institute Press would have explained that the Mass on Holy Thursday was different than it is today when Mauriac wrote and when he experienced it as a child. The Stripping of the Altars and reposition of the Host for the Good Friday service (when only the priest received Holy Communion) took place before the Washing of the Feet. When he discusses First Holy Communions, a note to explain that until Pope Pius X's reform that Sacrament was sometimes delayed until the age of 14 would also have been helpful. It was like the "graduating" Sacrament then and Mauriac comments that many stopped receiving Holy Communion or attending Mass after that. A reader not knowing that in 1910 Pius X set the age of seven (7) as the appropriate time of receiving First Holy Communion wouldn't understand Mauriac's comment.

Writing in 1931, Mauriac also comments on how good it was that frequent reception of Holy Communion was encouraged; another contribution of Pope Pius X (in 1905). The influence of Jansenism had discouraged many from going to Communion more than once a year.

In spite of these criticisms, I wouldn't want anyone to be dissuaded from reading this book. There are some beautifully written (translated) passages, like this one:

The anniversary of that evening when the small Host arose on a world sleeping in darkness should fill us with joy. But that very night was the one when the Lord Jesus was delivered up. His best friends could still taste the Bread in their mouths and they were going to abandon Him, to deny Him, to betray Him. And we also, on Holy Thursday, can still taste in our mouths this Bread that is no longer bread; we have not finished adoring this Presence in our bodies, the inconceivable humility of the Son of God, when we have to rise hastily to follow Him to the garden of agony.

We should like to tarry, to see on His shoulder the place where St. John’s forehead rested, to relive in spirit this moment in the history of the world when a piece of bread was broken in deep silence, when a few words sufficed to seal the new alliance of the Creator with His creature.

Already, in the thought of the One who pronounced the words, millions of priests are bending over the chalice, millions of virgins are watching before the tabernacle. A multitude of the servants of the poor are eating the daily Bread which compensates for their daily sacrifice, and endless ranks of children, making their First Communion, open lips which have not yet lost their purity. 
(Chapter I, "The Breaking of the Bread", pp. 3-4)

Or this one:

It is not when He withdrew into the desert that He felt the greatest loneliness, but when He was in the midst of the flock of those wavering hearts which the Spirit had not yet kindled. Doubtless, it was necessary that the man in Him be reassured by the God so that He would not lose heart when confronted by the infinite disproportion between His message and the poor human race destined to receive it.

However, He did not dedicate Himself to solitude as have so many men of genius. He did not flee from the crowd, but gave Himself up to it. What gives Christ as a man a unique character among the masters of the world is first this gift of Himself, this complete abandonment of Himself to the crowd. Before being delivered, He delivered Himself. He does not belong to Himself, not having come to be served, but to serve. He is the slave of slaves. Nothing belongs to Him. He lives in the street, in the fields, in villages. Miserable bodies affected with leprosy crowd Him, suffocate Him. He seeks refuge in a fishing boat, in order to be able to breathe. Dirty hands grab His cloak; virtue springs from Him.

No one kept less aloof; no one was ever less guarded, more accessible — such He is still today in the tabernacle, given up entirely to all — yet nevertheless, He was alone with His Father, in that mysterious, ineffable union which He sometimes confessed, for this secret also escaped Him: “No one knows who the Father is, except the Son.”
(Chapter VIII, "The Secret of Holy Thursday", pp. 58-59)

Mauriac obviously loves and admires St. Therese of Lisieux: he cites her several times, and he relies upon St. Thomas Aquinas and his Corpus Christi Office and hymns when discussing Transubstantiation. He also cites Bishop Bossuet and Jacques Riviere without naming his sources and recommends Jacques Maritain's The Angelic Doctor.

Reading this book by Mauriac makes me wonder about three books Cluny Media also publishes: The Son of Man, The Life of Jesus, and What I Believe. But they will have to wait for another day . . . before I decide to purchase them. There's a line!

Friday, March 22, 2024

Preview: Saint Thomas More: "Most Enemies" as Best Friends

On Monday, March 25--which would usually be the Solemnity of the the Annunciation of Our Lord--but this year is the Monday of Holy Week (the Annunciation will be celebrated on April 9, the Monday after the great Octave of Easter), we'll close out our Lenten series on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

Please recall that this Lenten series has been based upon two entries from Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day of the Year. Father Bowden titles the two entries, on pages 63 and 64, "In the Shadow of Death" (1) and (2) with the final verse from the Benedictus, "To enlighten them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death" and "To direct our feet into the way of peace" divided between them. (Luke 1:79)

We have come to the last grace St. Thomas More asked of Our Lord, and his summation of the value of the graces he has requested.


Image credit: (Public Domain) Children of Jacob sell their brother Joseph, by Konstantin Flavitsky, 1855.

In his last petition, St. Thomas More prays not just to forgive his enemies, but to be grateful to them! More uses the example of the Old Testament patriarch Joseph, and how his brothers' betrayal of him worked to not only his good but the whole family's good--and even to the eventual Exodus and foundation of the Kingdom of Israel!

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

To think my most enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favour as they did him with their malice and hatred.

At the beginning of Holy Week, as we will hear at Masses throughout the week and at the service on Good Friday how Judas betrayed Jesus, Saint Peter denied Him, and all the other Apostles, save Saint John, abandoned Him, it seems appropriate to meditate on More's choice of Joseph, this Old Testament type (foreshadowing) of Jesus in More's use of him as an example. Like the "happy fault" of Adam highlighted in the Easter Vigil Exsultet, this betrayal worked to the good. 

Because Jacob loved Joseph more than all his other sons, they were jealous of him and wanted to kill him. His brother Reuben tried to save him, but they sold him into slavery (for either twenty pieces of silver or thirty pieces of gold, depending on the version) and then returned to tell Jacob he had been attacked and killed, showing him Joseph's bloody coat.


Image Credit: (Public Domain) Joseph's bloody coat brought to Jacob by Diego Velasquez, 1630. (Note that the dog doesn't trust the brothers at all: it can smell the goat's blood on the coat!)

Joseph suffered at first in Egypt, but eventually became the Pharaoh's great advisor, interpreting a dream and preparing for a long famine by storing grain. So when Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain, Joseph and Jacob were finally reunited and the whole family moved to Egypt, thus setting up the Exodus and the great Covenant with Israel.

More wants to think of all that has happened to him as providential and for his ultimate good, as it had been for Joseph and Jacob and the Kingdom of Israel.

This is the source of his ability, during his imprisonment, the interrogations, the trial, the guilty verdict and sentencing to the death of a traitor, and the day of his execution, to wish that he and his former colleagues, his friends and family, would all meet "merrily in Heaven" some day.


Image Credit: (Public Domain) John Rogers Herbert (1810-1890) - Sir Thomas More and his Daughter (watching the protomartyrs of the English Reformation being taken to Tyburn for execution as traitors).

Father Bowden does not include this final line in the second entry:

These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasure of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and layed together all upon one heap.

What are"these minds" (these thoughts and petitions)? St. Thomas More says that "these minds" outweigh "all the treasure" of all the richest royal men, "Christian and heathen" if it could be all brought "together all upon one heap"!

Think of Tolkien's illustration of Smaug's treasure in The Hobbit!

Those "minds" are the graces More asked God to give him in his last months on earth; all the thoughts and prayers and actions God would help him think and pray and do and not do: the detachment from worldly things and the attachment to Christ and His passion; the repentance and penance he wished to experience to be ready for death and Heaven: to let Christ increase in his life as he decreased in the world and his own concern; to love God more and himself less. That seems to sum up all those petitions in one heap:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,
To set the world at naught.
To set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang
Upon the blast of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary,
Not to long for worldly company.
Little and little utterly to cast off the world
And rid my mind of all the business thereof.
Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking of God,
Piteously to call for his help.
To lean unto the comfort of God,
Busily to labour to love him.
To know my own vility and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God.
To bewail my sins past
For the purging of them patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here;
To be joyful of tribulations.
To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life,
To bear the cross with Christ.
To have the last thing in remembrance,
To have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at hand.
To make death no stranger to me,
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell.
To pray for pardon before the Judge come,
To have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me.
For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks,
To buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness.
Recreations not necessary to cut off;
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all
To set the loss at right naught for the winning of Christ.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Best wishes for a happy and prayerful Holy Week and Easter Sunday!

Friday, March 15, 2024

Preview: St. Thomas More on "Vain Confabulations" and "Foolish Mirth"

On Monday, March 18, we'll discuss the penultimate section of St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

This may be the most difficult section of this meditation to think about because More seems willing to cast off many of the characteristics that made him More: his love of humor, of silly (sometimes rather off-color) jokes, of mirth, friendship, and gladness . . .  (less of More?)

Do we have to do that too?

And this section contains one of the most perplexing lines in the prayer: "To buy the time again that I before have lost" . . . 

How do we make up for lost or wasted time? 

In this fifth week of Lent, as we've entered Passiontide and in some parishes the statues and crucifixes are veiled, can we make up for our Lenten failures now?

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

To pray for pardon before the Judge come,
To have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me.
For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks,
To buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness.
Recreations not necessary to cut off;
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all
To set the loss at right naught for the winning of Christ.

The word "confabulations" has the word fable in its root: Merriam Webster defines it thus:


Confabulate is a fabulous word for making fantastic fabrications. Given the similarities in spelling and sound, you might guess that confabulate and fabulous come from the same root, and they do—the Latin fābula, which refers to a conversation or a story. Another fābula descendant that continues to tell tales in English is fable. All three words have long histories in English: fable first appears in writing in the 14th century, and fabulous follows in the 15th.

This line about "vain confabulations" recalls his earlier mention of "worldly fantasies", but here he's referring to a method of telling a story. He has to reject those methods if they are in vain, just for the exercise of showing what he can do. He wants to reject "light foolish mirth and gladness" in contrast to the joy and gladness mentioned in last week's meditation ("Gladly to bear my purgatory here; To be joyful of tribulations").

Nevertheless, More used the structure of fables in other Tower Works to make his points through stories. He wrote The Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation while in the Tower, imagining an old sick uncle counselling his frightened nephew on how to deal with the consequences of a Turkish invasion. He was certainly providing spiritual counsel to those afraid of suffering and death, with Christian philosophy and Catholic piety. And he exchanged letters with his daughters Margaret and Alice as his Dialogue on Conscience, using a fable of Aesop and another of the lion and the wolf, and the famous story about "Company" on the Jury to explain what he meant when he said he had to obey his formed and considered conscience. These were among  his usual methods of engaging in controversy, using stories to tell a lesson. He established fictional situations--like his Utopia--to showcase a discussion or dialogue about real issues with true consequences.

As readers of this blog know, he also wrote the Sadness of Christ and the Treatise on the Passion while in the Tower, as he desired to "have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me". In those works he explored the texts of the Gospels for their moral and spiritual implications for himself and other Christians.

Saint Thomas More's discernment of how to balance these issues of detachment and preparation for death and the life to come is what makes this "Godly Meditation" so deeply personal to him at that time and yet filled with inspiration for us. Even as he faced his past sins and his future judgment, he reminded himself and us that he should be intent upon his present, to make use of the time he had in reparation and preparation. That's what we do every Lent: practice acts of detachment through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; reflect on, confess, and repent of our sins; prepare for the celebration of Easter--all as the model of being prepared for the life to come in the hope the Resurrection and Heaven.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Friday, March 8, 2024

Preview: St. Thomas More, the Four Last Things and Purgatory

On Monday, March 11, the Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent 2024, we'll conduct our next segment on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation", focusing on another section of his prayer. I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

I've picked up a few lines from last week's post because they fit in so well with More's theme of repentance and preparation for the four last things: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. As part of his preparation, he suggests to us, I propose, the traditional meditation on death, and the desire to avoid suffering in Purgatory after judgment by accepting suffering while we live:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

To know my own vility and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God,
To bewail my sins past
For the purging of them patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here;
To be joyful of tribulations.

To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life,
To bear the cross with Christ.

To have the last thing in remembrance,
To have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at hand.
To make death no stranger to me,
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell.

These are all sobering thoughts: as Christians we all know that we will die, face judgment, and either spend our eternal life in Heaven or Hell. We know the choice we face: choose life or choose death. At times the notion of death can be abstract or distant from us, even as we attend the funerals of friends and family, but once we've been at a couple of deathbeds--as I have--we know it's inevitable.

More had written a meditation on Death before in an unfinished collaboration with his daughter Margaret on The Four Last Things. In that work, he emphasizes how thinking of Death, based upon Sirach 7:36 ("Remember the last things, and you will never sin"), can help us avoid sin, especially the Seven Deadly Sins, and develop their opposite virtues in preparation for the joys of Heaven.

In this prayer More's traditional Catholic piety emphasizes the most somber side of this meditation on the Four Last Things: he does not meditate on the joys of Heaven, but considers the "everlasting fire of hell". The only hint of Heaven is that his preparation "leadeth to life". He is praying to find joy and gladness in the midst of his tribulations with the consolation that they can prepare him for the joys of heaven. In his desire to expiate the temporal effects of his past sins, confessed and forgiven, More wants to avoid Purgatory--a Catholic doctrine he'd defended in The Supplication of Souls in answer to Simon Fish's Supplication of Beggars--after death: to "go straight to Heaven" and the presence of God.

We can juxtapose this somber meditation with More's repeatedly stated hope that he and his family, friends, even those who would condemn him, sentence him, and prepare him for execution would "meet merrily in Heaven". As he prayed in his Treatise on the Passion:

Good Lord, give me the grace so to spend my life that when the day of my death shall come, though I feel pain in my body, I may feel comfort in soul and – with faithful hope of Your mercy, in due love towards You and charity towards the world – I may, through Your grace, depart hence into Your glory. Amen.

and

Almighty Jesus Christ, who would for our example observe the law that You came to change and, being Maker of the whole earth, would have yet no dwelling-house therein: give us Your grace so to keep Your holy law and so to reckon ourselves for no dwellers but for pilgrims upon earth that we may long and make haste, walking with faith in the way of virtuous works, to come to the glorious country wherein You have bought us inheritance forever with Your own precious blood. Amen.

I look forward to my discussion with Anna or Matt on Monday! 

Monday, March 4, 2024

Blessed Nicholas Horner, Tailor and Martyr

While we're focusing on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on the Son Rise Morning Show, I did not want to miss some of the great martyrs' and confessors' stories in Father Bowden's Mementoes this Lent. This one today, Blessed Nicholas Horner, is particularly affecting, as he suffered so much in prison and at the scaffold because of his loyalty to The Faith. And yet, he received many consolations:

A native of York, a tailor by trade and a zealous Catholic, he endeavoured, according to his ability, to persuade others to embrace the faith. Having come up to London to be cured of a wound in his leg, he was committed to Newgate for harbouring priests. There the heavy fetter on his leg and the deprivation of all medical aid rendered an amputation necessary. During the operation he sat upon a form, unbound, in silence, a priest the while ([Blessed John] Hewett [or Hewitt], who was afterwards himself a Martyr) holding his head, and he was further comforted by such a vivid apprehension of Christ bearing His Cross that he seemed to see it on His shoulders. Freed at the earnest suit of his friends, he worked at his trade at some lodgings at Smithfield. Again cast into Bridewell for harbouring priests, he was hung up by the wrists till he nearly died. At length condemned solely for making a jerkin for a priest, he was hanged in front of his lodging in Smithfield, 3 March 1590. On the night before his execution, finding him self overwhelmed with anguish, he betook him self to prayer, and perceived a bright crown of glory hanging over his head. Assured of its reality, he said: “O Lord, Thy will be mine,” and died with extraordinary signs of joy.

Father Bowden uses the title "The Vestments of Salvation" for this entry on March 4, and the Bible verse, "He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation" (Isaiah 61:10)

According to England's laws he was accused of two great offenses: encouraging others to become Catholic and assisting priests. The only thing he could be guilty of was making a jerkin (a kind of vest) for a priest! When Father Bowden wrote about him, Horner had been declared Venerable; Pope St. John Paul II beatified him with 84 other martyrs of England and Wales in 1987.

Blessed Nicholas Horner, pray for us!

Image Credit: (With Permission): Detail of a stained glass window in Tyburn Convent by Margaret Agnes Rope 

Friday, March 1, 2024

Preview: Thomas More on the World, God, and the Confession of Sins

Continuing our series on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on Monday, March 4, Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim of the Son Rise Morning Show and I will discuss this next arbitrarily chosen portion of More's prayer. 

As you know by now, I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

More continues his concern with being rid of worldly concerns and delves more deeply into what it means to have his mind set "fast upon" God, including a good examination of conscience and confession of sins:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking of God,
Piteously to call for his help.
To lean unto the comfort of God,
Busily to labour to love him.
To know my own vility and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God,
To bewail my sins passed.
For the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity.

Later in this prayer, More refers to "vain confabulations", to avoid making up different versions of reality, imagining himself in different circumstances. He has to face what's happening to him now, face his dependence on God, and face the ways that he has failed to love God throughout his life.

He cannot imagine himself back home at Chelsea with his loving family and friends: the only way he can achieve that it by violating his conscience. He certainly doesn't want to think of himself at Court, trying to influence worldly events: that time has passed. He has already done all he could.

So he turns to God: thinking of Him; calling for His help; leaning on His comfort; working to love Him, mentally, prayerfully, spiritually.

As he strives to become more attached to God, More turns to an examination of conscience, reviewing the sins he committed in the past, repenting of them, and being ready to suffer for them in his current circumstances. 

Matt brought up conscience (referring to the Catechism of the Catholic Church) during our discussion last week, and here More prays to know, to humble himself, to become meek, to bewail his sins, and suffer adversity to purge himself of the temporal punishment due to those sins, all by examining his conscience thoroughly.

In his preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics volume of Selected Writings of Thomas More, Joseph W. Koterski, SJ, highlights More's "practice of a careful and daily examination of conscience in which he had steeled himself since his youth", "reserving a time and place for the examination of conscience", even creating a separate oratory at his home in Chelsea for that meditation. 

So, applying this portion of More's "Godly Meditation" to our 2024 Lenten observance, it points us to the Sacrament of Confession. Since Lent is the season of repentance and conversion, the Church highlights the Sacrament of Confession. My local parish has added opportunities for Reconciliation/Penance/Confession throughout the Lent and our pastor just highlighted the need for Confession, not just once a year, but more often, for very practical reasons: 

While the requirement is once a year, the Church encourages people to go to Confession once a month, because she knows how difficult it is to remember things that happened almost a year ago. Along with that, the less often we go to Confession we lose our sense of sin and then we do not clearly see sins that we might see if we regularly examine our conscience and bring ours sins to the sacrament of mercy. (Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church March 3 Parish Bulletin.)

And although More may have been faithful in his examinations of conscience and Sacramental Confessions, he admits that he still needs to make up for the consequences of those sins, so he is willing to endure suffering to expiate them. As another English saint, John Henry Newman, wrote in a Lenten sermon when he was an Anglican:

Let us be wise enough to have our agony in this world, not in the next. If we humble ourselves now, God will pardon us then. We cannot escape punishment, here or hereafter; we must take our choice, whether to suffer and mourn a little now, or much then. (PPS "Lent, the Season of Repentance.")

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Two Posts from "The Newman Review": Lost Voices and How to Read Newman

Just a couple of excerpts from two articles in the recent online Newman Review from the National Institute of Newman Studies:

The first is from Julia Meszaros and Bonnie Lander Johnson, editors of the Catholic Women Writers series from the Catholic University of America Press. They explain why these "Lost Voices of the Catholic Literary Revival" deserve to be heard, by being celebrated and read:

The work of these women indicates that the Revival lasted much longer than is usually thought (women were writing earlier and later than most of the men associated with the Revival) and that its writers were located in all areas of Britain and Ireland, not merely in the south of England. Novels by Catholic women are often concerned with different theological questions than we find in the work of Waugh and Greene. They are set in families and villages and in the institutional communities in which the writers themselves first encountered the faith: schools, convents, or convent schools. Almost wholly unrecognized by scholarship of the Catholic novel, or indeed the novel generally, are the frequent depictions of female religious life in novels of the twentieth century.

Highlighted is a book I've had on my "to be read" pile for awhile but now have started to read:

Another writer of the Revival now back in print in the Catholic Women Writers series is Sheila Kaye-Smith, until recently forgotten but a bestseller in the 1920s. Her 1925 novel The End of the House of Alard was written during her conversion from high Anglicanism to Catholicism and, long before Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, explores the post-war erosion of the aristocracy from a Catholic point of view. Faced with the decline of their family estate, Alard’s characters must discern between intrinsic and instrumental goods. In relaying their struggles, Kaye-Smith boldly takes all that was most loved about her own best-selling genre—the aristocracy’s glamour, its age-old traditions, and its role in community-building—and subordinates it to a higher truth. The novel in some ways dramatizes Kaye-Smith’s own experience of how many fruits of the world can, and at times must, be put aside by those who choose God, and how this sacrifice brings with it different riches entirely unseen and unknown by those who refuse to give up what is most dear to them.

The second article offers some insights into what makes reading Newman such a rewarding challenge. (The author, Luigi Rossi  was a Visiting Scholar at NINS during September 2023. He is Assistant Professor (Maître de Conférences) of Education at the Catholic University of the West in Angers, France.):

Compared to my usual diet of scholarly articles and books, Newman’s writings stood out for what appeared to me as their meandering character. Unlike most contemporary works, Newman does not state upfront what he is going to say and then take the reader through the motions of a demonstration delivered blow by blow. He begins, instead, with a puzzle, or a question, that he brings before his audience; he unfolds his thinking slowly, almost searchingly, from his initial questions; he also frequently refrains from tying up his argument, leaving whatever he said simply to “air” with the reader.4

After overcoming my initial disorientation at a style that looks unsystematic––from the standpoint of contemporary academic standards––I started to notice a growing curiosity in me: not just for what Newman says, but precisely for how he says it. To be more precise: I noticed myself referring back to the experience of reading Newman’s texts in order to get a firmer hold on his understanding of how reason operates in the ordinary conduct of life. As I did that, I eventually retrieved within myself a freer, more meandering style of reasoning, not unlike that which Newman practices in his writing. In a way, reading Newman brought me closer to what it is to read a text: making space for it to breathe, for its images to resonate, for its metaphors to blossom into rich associations, and eventually, to witness a meaningful figure come into being by this slow maturation. . . .

Please read the rest there.

I think this is one of the ways that Newman drew his listeners and draws his readers into their imaginations--not of fantasy--but of thought and reality. They were, as evidenced by the popularity of these sermons in their time, and those who read him today--or hear him read as I do at our monthly Newman reading gatherings--engaged in his exploration of an important spiritual, moral, religious truth.

After our most recent "Lovers of Newman" meeting, following a "Colloquy" tradition founded by the late Father Ian Ker in the 1990's, I realized that I could not think of another convert to Catholicism whose pre-conversion works we read with such attention and devotion. 

Can you?

And I'm thinking particularly of our reading of his Parochial and Plain Sermons and other sermons he wrote as an Anglican, not just as explorations of his developing thought, but as sources of spiritual, moral, and religious insights and guidance. Since I attended my first Newman School of Catholic Thought in 1979, I've been encouraged to read these Anglican sermons. It's true that at our monthly sermon readings we have discussions about a more Catholic understanding of some matters, but primarily, as Father William R. Lamm did so many years ago in 1934, we appreciate his spiritual legacy and his goals in those sermons (from my 2021 review of Father Lamm's book):

Father Lamm's thesis is that in Newman's sermons given as Vicar of the University Church of St. Mary's the Virgin in Oxford, he had a special purpose. He wanted to give general spiritual direction to those students in his congregation who wanted to be REAL Christians, who wanted to pursue holiness and perfection in the spiritual and moral life. Therefore, Father Lamm argues that Newman's spiritual legacy centers around these themes: what keeps us from becoming perfect (not considering grave, mortal sin) and what can help us become perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.

What Newman sees as keeping us from pursuing holiness and the realizing of God's Presence in our souls, according to Lamm, is our hypocrisy as we deceive ourselves about our spiritual state, deceive others, and attempt to deceive God. What will help us pursue holiness and the realizing of God's Presence is Surrender to God's Will through repentance, and the practice of a host of virtues, including love, faith, hope, obedience, and fervour, summed up as sincerity and simplicity--watching for God and developing the habit of prayer. . . .

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Friday, February 23, 2024

Preview: St. Thomas More on God's Grace and the "World"

On Monday, February 26, we'll continue our series on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on at our usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

We're going to begin with the prayer itself after our general introduction last week to More's circumstances and plan for his life and death in the Tower of London. Now we'll begin to see how applicable his plan is to our Lenten practices of fasting, almsgiving and prayer. Here are the lines for this conversation:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,
To set the world at naught.To set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang
Upon the blast of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary,
Not to long for worldly company.
Little and little utterly to cast off the world
And rid my mind of all the business thereof.


Give my thy Grace, good Lord; More begins in the right place, asking God's grace to accomplish his plan of life. I think that's where we should begin too. "Oh God, come to my assistance. Make haste to help me." We can't do this on our own, saving ourselves, manifesting our own willpower to achieve these ends. Whatever we set out to do or not to do, we have to discern that it's what is best for us to do, with God's grace, and then ask for His grace to help us persevere with our Lenten discipline so it transforms us by the end of the season, prepared for the Holy Triduum and Easter Sunday!

His first petitions introduce the negative and positive aspects of his preparation, and ours: 

To set the world at naught.
To set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang
Upon the blast of men’s mouths.

First to treat the world as nothing of importance; to become detached from the world. How do we do this?

Like Thomas More, husband, father, and friend, diplomat and author, former Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Chancellor, if we're active laity, we have to be involved in the world in many ways, in our families, workplaces, our cities, states, and country. We can't abandon it.

I think he offers two ways to face this challenge: 

First, setting our minds fast upon the Lord, through prayer, spiritual reading, silence, and all the different ways Catholic tradition has given us. That's part of any Christian life, intensified during Lent.

Second, to avoid the "blast of men's mouths", the cacophony of talk and endless speculative debate. Perhaps not reading or listening to all the "talking heads" on television and radio discussing politics or sports to no consequence? When I heard some sports talk still discussing the Super Bowl two weeks after the event, debating who lost the game for the 49ers, I thought, how useless! They've got to fill the hours, but I don't have to listen or watch.

In the following lines, perhaps the first part ("To be content to be solitary,/Not to long for worldly company.") applies most directly to More's situation in the Tower of London, but the last part can apply to us as we try to "Little and little utterly to cast off the world/And rid [our minds] of all the business thereof", especially when it's not really our business . . .

I'm sure Matt or Anna will have other responses and suggestions . . .

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Friday, February 16, 2024

Preview: St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation": A Guide for Lent

For February 19 and 20 in his Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day of the Year (and he does include an entry for February 29 during a Leap Year!), Father Henry Sebastian Bowden chose one of the prayers Saint Thomas More wrote in the Tower of London. Some sources date this prayer to sometime in 1534 (More was imprisoned on April 17, 1534; he was tried on July 1, 1535 and executed on July 6), as he began his life in prison.

Since Saint Thomas More spent the last months of his life, as he said, meditating on the Passion of Christ and preparing himself for death, I thought it could make a good guide for the Lenten Season.

Therefore, on Monday, February 19, Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will start our discussion of this great prayer on the Son Rise Morning Show, continuing to reflect on its riches each Monday of Lent 2024. 

I'll be on at our usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later. 

Father Bowden titles the two entries, on pages 63 and 64, "In the Shadow of Death" (1) and (2) with the final verse from the Benedictus, "To enlighten them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death" and "To direct our feet into the way of peace" divided between them. (Luke 1:79)

For our first episode, we'll just review the issues More is dealing with in this prayer: all that he's lost and all that he hopes to gain. The entire text is a litany of petitions. As he wrote this in the margins of his breviary Thomas More was preparing himself for death, either in prison or by execution. He had already lost his freedom, his influence, his power, his friends, and many of the comforts of his family and he was praying to be reconciled to those losses. I don't think this was easy for Saint Thomas More: Although the petitions seem measured and calm, More was facing a great struggle.

Here is the text as Father Bowden presents it:

"In the Shadow of Death" (1)

Give me thy grace, good Lord,
To set the world at naught.

Note: you may see these first two lines written at the top and bottom of a page from More's breviary here.

To set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang
Upon the blast of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary,
Not to long for worldly company.
Little and little utterly to cast off the world
And rid my mind of all the business thereof.
Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking of God,
Piteously to call for his help.
To lean unto the comfort of God,
Busily to labour to love him.
To know my own vility and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God.
To bewail my sins past
For the purging of them patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here;
To be joyful of tribulations.

"In the Shadow of Death" (2)

To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life,
To bear the cross with Christ.
To have the last thing in remembrance,
To have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at hand.
To make death no stranger to me,
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell.
To pray for pardon before the Judge come,
To have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me.
For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks,
To buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness.
Recreations not necessary to cut off;
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all 
To set the loss at right naught for the winning of Christ.

To think my most enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favour as they did him with their malice and hatred.

Father Bowden does not include this final line in these two entries:

[These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasure of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and layed together all upon one heap.]

Saint Thomas More starts out preparing to lose much that he held dear; then he prays for what he needs not just to replace but to surpass those things; then he meditates on preparing for death and repenting of past sins--then he mentions again all the things he needs to give up and what he'll gain thereby. As Father Bowden concludes the prayer, More wants to be grateful, even, to those who've put him in the Tower of London, comparing his situation to the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. 

Finally, More compares worldly treasures to spiritual goods, with the latter far surpassing the former.

Each Monday of Lent, we'll discuss More's " A Godly Meditation" as a pattern for Lent, as it serves as a model of detachment, repentance, and faith in God. Some of the things More gave up may easy for some of us, or as hard or harder for some of us as they were for him, but what he stood to gain--"the comfort of God" and "the winning of Christ" are as precious to us as they were to him.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Friday, February 9, 2024

Preview: The End of Shrovetide/Mardi Gras/Carnival/Fasching on the Son Rise Morning Show


In order, from the title: Shrovetide in England/Mardi Gras in Louisiana/Carnival in parts of Europe/Fasching in Germany; not to mention the Liturgical pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima! These are all different names for the lead-up to Lent, which was at least partially a practical matter of emptying out the larder of meat and meat by-products before the very strict Lenten period of fasting and abstinence. 

On the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, February 12, we'll talk about Shrovetide and the Pancake Races held in England and in Liberal Kansas (!): the background for Pancake Day and free short stacks at various locations in the USA! I'll be on at our usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later. 

Here is a good source for a description of Shrovetide and Shrove Tuesday:

Shrove Tuesday is the last day of what traditionally was called "Shrovetide," the weeks preceding the beginning of Lent. The word itself, Shrovetide, is the English equivalent for "Carnival," which is derived from the Latin words carnem levare, meaning "to take away the flesh." (Note that in Germany, this period is called "Fasching," and in parts of the United States, particularly Louisiana, "Mardi Gras.") While this was seen as the last chance for merriment, and, unfortunately in some places, has resulted in excessive pleasure, Shrovetide was the time to cast off things of the flesh and to prepare spiritually for Lent.


That excessive merriment and pleasure--that is, gluttony and drunkenness--is the reason that some churches started the tradition of the Forty Hours Devotion (Quarant'ore in Italian) leading up to Ash Wednesday, from the last Sunday of the Septuagesima "season", Quinquagesima, through Tuesday. Instead of partying, Catholics were encouraged to adore the Blessed Sacrament in the Monstrance.

Actually, the English term provides the best meaning for this period. "To shrive" meant to hear confessions. In the Anglo-Saxon "Ecclesiastical Institutes," recorded by Theodulphus and translated by Abbot Aelfric about AD 1000, Shrovetide was described--as follows: "In the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him as he then may hear by his deeds what he is to do in the way of penance." To highlight the point and motivate the people, special plays or masques were performed which portrayed the passion of our Lord or final judgment. Clearly, this Shrovetide preparation for Lent included the confessing of sin and the reception of absolution; as such, Lent then would become a time for penance and renewal of faith.

While this week of Shrovetide condoned the partaking of pleasures from which a person would abstain during Lent, Shrove Tuesday had a special significance in England. Pancakes were prepared and enjoyed, because in so doing a family depleted their eggs, milk, butter, and fat which were part of the Lenten fast. At this time, some areas of the Church abstained from all forms of meat and animal products, while others made exceptions for food like fish. For example, Pope St. Gregory (d. 604), writing to St. Augustine of Canterbury, issued the following rule: "We abstain from flesh, meat, and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese, and eggs." These were the fasting rules governing the Church in England; hence, the eating of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.

And the eating of bacon on Collop/Shrove Monday!

Here is a recipe for pancakes from the Tudor era: specifically, from The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin from 1588:

To make the pancakes:

Take new thicke Creame a pinte, four of five yolks of Egs, a good handful of flower, and two or three spoonfuls of ale, strain them altogether into a faire platter, and season it with a good handful of Sugar, a sooneful of Synamon and a little Ginger: then takea frying pan, and put in a little peece of Butter, as but as your thombe, and when it is molten browne, cast it out of your pan, and with a ladle put to the furthesr side of your pan some of your stuffe, and hole your pan aslope, so that you stuffe may run abroad all ouer all the pan, as thin as may be: then set it to the fyre, and let the fyre be verie soft, and when the one side is bakes, then turne the other, and bake them as dry as ye can without burning.

After one Tudor housewife starting making her pancakes, she heard the church bells ring and ran to church, carrying the frying pan with a pancake in it, still wearing her apron, and tying a scarf around her head--and that's how the tradition of Pancake Races began. Since 1950, ladies in Olney, England and Liberal, Kansas (USA) have competed in the International Pancake Day races!