From a Sermon by St. Fulgentius of Ruspe:

And so the love that brought Christ from heaven to earth raised Stephen from earth to heaven; shown first in the king, it later shone forth in his soldier. Love was Stephen’s weapon by which he gained every battle, and so won the crown signified by his name. His love of God kept him from yielding to the ferocious mob; his love for his neighbour made him pray for those who were stoning him. Love inspired him to reprove those who erred, to make them amend; love led him to pray for those who stoned him, to save them from punishment. Strengthened by the power of his love, he overcame the raging cruelty of Saul and won his persecutor on earth as his companion in heaven. In his holy and tireless love he longed to gain by prayer those whom he could not convert by admonition.

Armor up.

Merry Christmas, everyone.  Just coming up for air.  Christmas bustle and all.

God bless Terry from Abbey-Roads for his defense of the Virgin Birth:

Believe it or not, there was an enormous Church Council once convened in Ephesus to discuss these matters.  The result of which came the solemn definition (dogma) that the Virgin Mary is truly the Mother of God.  Therefore Mary was a virgin before, during and after giving birth.  Profane or even pious reasoning may not agree with that, but such ideas are mistaken.  People of good faith can never fully comprehend these mysteries through natural knowledge or understanding, but that is no excuse to deny it, dismiss it, reject it, or mock it.

Sometimes we can talk too much about that which we cannot understand, but which, however, God has made abundantly clear is true.  Or as St. John Chrysostom said in a Christmas homily:

Though I know that a Virgin this day gave birth, and I believe that God was begotten before all time, yet the manner of this generation I have learned to venerate in silence, and I accept that this is not to be probed too curiously with wordy speech. For with God we look not for the order of nature, but rest our faith in the power of Him Who Works.

Men of action don’t talk to death a mystery, or question the power of God. Rather, they defend His honor and that of His Holy Mother.

In last nights post about tonight’s discussion group topic, I asked the question:

How can men surrender to the mystery of Christ’s condescension without surrendering their dignity, responsibility and strength as men, husbands and fathers?

This morning Pope St. Gregory the Great indirectly answered my question in the second reading from the Office of Readings:

For unless the new man, by being made in the likeness of sinful flesh, had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless he had stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing the Father’s substance and, being alone free from sin, united our nature to his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the dominion of Satan. The Conqueror’s victory would have profited us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition. But through this wonderful blending the mystery of new birth shone upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth we too might be born again in a spiritual birth; and in consequence the evangelist declares the faithful to have been born not of blood, nor of the desire of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

St. Gregory speaks about the Redeeming power of Christ, his victory of Satan, sin and death in terms of His having shared “our human condition.”  As the battle takes place in the valley of human misery, so victory begins in a stable where His own received Him not (Jn 1:11).

A true leader, a father, for example, shares the condition of those whom he leads. We exhort our superiors to “lead by example.”  Our Lord criticizes the pharisees because they bind heavy and insupportable burdens, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but with a finger of their own they will not move them (Mt 23:4), and so He tells his apostles: All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not; for they say, and do not (3).

I am reminded of the story of how St. Louis, King of France, landed in Damietta with his men, refusing a safer passage away from the fighting:

When the King heard say that the Banner of Saint Denis was ashore he came hurrying across his vessel at a great pace, and despite the Legate who was with him, he would not be stayed, but sprang into the sea, up to his armpits in water, and waded, with his shield round his neck, and his helmet on his head, and his spear in his hand, to join his followers on the beach. When he got to land and discerned the Saracens, he asked: What people those were? and they told him:  They were Saracens; and he tucked his spear under his arm, put his shield In front of him, and would have rushed upon them, if his paladins who were about him would have allowed it.

Prior to the landing the King had exhorted them all:

Friends and followers, we are unconquerable if we are undivided. The divine will has brought us hither; let us land, be the enemy’s forces what it may. It is not I that am King of France, not I that am Holy Church: it is you yourselves, united, that are Church and King…. In us Christ shall triumph, giving glory, honour, and blessing not to us, but to His own Holy Name.’

In the condensation of Christmas the King rallies with the men on the ground and gives them His Name and His power to conquer.

See also the story of Lt. Michael P. Murphy, USN, Medal of Honor Recipient.

Tomorrow night I will be speaking to the men’s discussion group about the mystery of Christmas, in particular about how omnipotence and humility come together in what Anthony Esolen calls Child Everlasting:

But can we see the wonder from the other direction? It may be that the child Jesus does not conceal omnipotence so much as reveal what it really means to be omnipotent. That’s because the Word through whom were made the heavens and the earth was from before the foundations of the world the Word who would be made flesh: It is a world made to be redeemed by that child.

Perhaps Esolen is playing on Chesterton’s Everlasting Man:

Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet. Here begins, it is needless to say, another mighty influence for the humanization of Christendom. If the world wanted what is called a non-controversial aspect of Christianity, it would probably select Christmas. Yet it is obviously bound up with what is supposed to be a controversial aspect (I could never at any stage of my opinions imagine why); the respect paid to the Blessed Virgin. When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a newborn child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a newborn child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a newborn child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother, you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows I as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.

There is something momentous to be learned by men from the God of hosts who chose the path of childhood as the expression of his omnipotence.  Kings from far away bow down, and the king in whose jurisdiction He is born fears him and sends soldiers to kill Him.  What is it about the Virgin Mother and the stable of Bethlehem that reveals so much of what it means to be the King of Kings.

How can men surrender to the mystery of Christ’s condescension without surrendering their dignity, responsibility and strength as men, husbands and fathers?

Dawn Eden on Headline Bistro, with a couple of quotes from yours truly, and more importantly, Anthony Esolen whom I respect greatly.

The iconography of heaven referenced in my post for the Immaculate Conception, particularly as it relates to the Miraculous Medal, finds an antecedent in the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that was painted on St. Juan Diego’s tilma by the Virgin Herself.  She is clothed with the sun and is standing on the moon.  Though the artists rendition above includes the serpentine imagery from Apocalypse 12, the actual image on the tilma has no depiction of the serpent.  One might think that any reference to Genesis 3:15 is only indirect by way of the allusion through the commonality of The Woman.

But not so.  In fact, the heavenly iconography of Guadalupe passes from the prophecy of Genesis and the vision of St. John right into the history that it was intended to address.  The image itself is a miracle that manifests and perpetuates the Virgin’s presence.  We see what Juan Diego saw.  Once Our Lady’s command to build a temple was obeyed, the image came to rest on Tepeyac Hill, where formerly, before the conquest of Mexico by Cortes, there had been a shrine to the Aztec goddess Coatlicue (below).

Yes, she is the mother goddess with two serpent heads who wears a snake skirt and human body parts for a necklace.

There is a sense in which this idol (image) completes the iconography of the Virgin, insofar as image of cactus cloth smashes the stone idol. According to Carl Anderson and Msgr. Eduardo Chávez, the glyph for a conquered civilization was a burning temple turned on its side.  The building of a new temple, the original of which was completed within two weeks of the apparitions, was the sign of a new beginning, the founding of a civilization of love.  The serpent is not in the icon because the very icon itself is what crushes his head, through the force of Our Lady’s mediation.

Think about this:  Juan Diego was given a mission to be Our Lady’s instrument to crush the serpent’s head in New Spain.  He simply obeyed in trust and total abandonment.  All he really needed to do was take the message to the bishop.  The result was that the image was produced miraculously and then placed where our Lady wanted it, right over the serpent’s head, over the mockery of truth, life, beauty and motherhood.

Devotion to Mary is smashing dragons.

Click here for a homily of mine for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

While I was home with my mother in California I saw several old movies that carried the theme of manliness and fatherhood:  How Green Was My Valley (1941) and The Magnificent Seven (1960).

How Green Was My Valley is an American Film directed by John Ford based on the novel by Richard Llewellyn.  The story is set in South Wales in a small coal mining village and concerns the life and times of the Morgan Family as seen through the eyes of its youngest member Huw, played by a 12 year old Roddy McDowall.  Huw has five older brothers, all of whom work the coal mines with their father Gwilym, played by Donald Crisp who for this role won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. (The film also won Oscars for Best Film and Best Director, among other categories).

What struck me about the film was the way in which the father was portrayed as a strong but gentle man.  Gwilym is a real patriarch who has to deal with changing times and the vicissitudes of raising a family in a place with an uncertain economic future.  He is a stern old man, but never unkind.  He is committed to the welfare of his family and thinks little of himself.

There are two scenes that stand out in my mind.  In the first, the five sons who work with Gwilym respectfully disagree with him over the need to unionize the coalminers in the face of layoffs and pay reductions, a step that he would not support because of his objections to socialism.  The men are hesitant to cross their father, but are unwilling to be dishonest about their true convictions.  It is a very interesting vignette of a father maintaining his authority in a reasonable way without being overbearing.  The sons choose to leave home, but eventually come back in support of their father when the mother, Beth (Sara Allgood), defends Gwilym before all the minors in town.  There is a real sense of the burgeoning masculinity of the sons inevitably clashing against the authority of the father, and the old man managing it with both tenacity and self-restraint.

The other scene has to do with young Huw’s problems at school due to the prejudices of wealthier children and even of the teacher.  He takes a beating from one of the older boys and when he comes home bloody and bruised his father promises him a graduated monetary reward for each injury he will subsequently endure.  He then asks Huw if he is willing to go back to school and when the lad says yes, Gwilym sends for the town pugilist.  And so the boxing lessons begin.  Of course, Beth vehemently objects, but is overruled by Gwilym and the boy is on his way wholesome self-reliance and manhood.

There are several other examples of strength, compassion, good humor and selflessness on the part of Gwilym that make this film portrayal of a father highly memorable.

The Magnificent Seven is a Hollywood remake of the Japanese film by director Akira Kurosawa, The Seven Samurai (1954).  When Yul Brynner saw the Japanese original he immediately conceived the idea of recasting it as a Western.  The basic plot for both films concerns a townspeople of a small village that are being periodically raided by bandits.  Without any other solution at hand, the fathers of the town contract fighting men to protect them (samurai/gunfighters).  In the American film, the fathers of the town seek to defend themselves by purchasing guns, but are advised by Chris Adams (Yul Brynner) to hire men with guns instead.  Eventually, seven professional gunfighters, including Adams are found and the rest of the movie is a juxtaposition of the seven drifters and the fathers of the town, each group exchanging values and skills:  the gunfighters learning more profoundly the value of community and family life and the fathers learning the skill of self-defense.

One particular scene is striking both because of the positive light in which fatherhood is portrayed and because the spokesman for fathers is none other than Charles Bronson (playing Bernardo O’Reilly).  Several of the young boys of the town are taken with the macho gunslinger and want to hang out with him and imitate him.   One of the boys tells Bernardo that they are ashamed to live in their town because their fathers are cowards.  O’Reilly grabs the boy, throws him over his knee, gives him a good spanking and then lectures him:

Don´t ever say that again about your fathers.  They are not cowards!

You think l am brave because l carry a gun.  Your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility for you, your brothers, your sisters and your mothers.

This responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton.  lt bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground.

Nobody says they have to do it.  They do it because they love you and they want to.

l have never had this kind of courage.  Running a farm, working like a mule, with no guarantee what will become of it – this is bravery.  That´s why l never even started anything like that. That’s why l never will.

Admittedly, this assessment of fatherhood is ambivalent, as was American culture in 1960. Fatherhood is recognized as a good thing, but it is seen as unglamorous drudgery. At least the man is honest enough to admit where true courage lies. The most difficult things only cease to be burdensome when they are done out of love. Courage in its profoundest sense has to do with self-forgetfulness.

The dialogue and visuals in the movie are a bit kitsch, with plenty of cliché cowboy lines and silly swagger, as well as the annoying musical score that became the advertizing music for Marlboro cigarettes, but all of it was worth enduring just to hear Charles Bronson praise fatherhood.

Alas, Hollywood, how far thou hast fallen.

True knighthood is the Holy Grail of manhood, a revelation attainable only by the pure.  The proud are ever barred from taking a draught from it.

Our very captivation with the Holy Grail consists in the fact that it has not been found and only few have even seen it.  And, of course, the reason that the mysterious cup remains ever out of reach for the ordinary man and is because its quest is fraught with danger:  fearful obstacles, inscrutable riddles, and deadly foes.

To those who possess true manliness, such obstacles are the reason why The Quest is so appealing.  By definition manliness is the penchant to overcome obstacles. The more hopeless the attainment, the bigger and better is the man who laughs in the face perils to be found there.  Those who are lesser men still aspire to the Grail, but fear leads them to experience the danger only vicariously by following along at a safe distance, through spectator sports, litrerature and movies.

And yet there is a temptation in that boldness to which those gallant men of the Round Table too easily succumb.  The bigger and better that a man thinks he is, the more likely he is to fail utterly in attaining the goal.  Gawain, for example, showed himself the fool for this very reason.  And Lancelot had to be taken down a few notches (many actually) before he was even granted a partial fulfillment of his desire.  Galahad attained the grail, not so much by his prowess, but more so, by his humility and purity.

There is a strange and wonderful coincidence of opposites in the embodiment of true chivalry:  courage, strength, boldness and skill, on the one hand; reverence, humility, meekness, and deference on the other.

In a sermon written during his Anglican Period, entitled, “The Weapons of the Saints,” Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman couched the spiritual life in terms of a war in which the stratagem for victory demands an inversion of worldly values:

But in that kingdom which Christ has set up, all is contrariwise. “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” What was before in honour, has been dishonoured; what before was in dishonour, has come to honour; what before was successful, fails; what before failed, succeeds.

It is this inversion that constitutes the real difficulty to the attainment of the Holy Grail of true knighthood.  It is the riddle of riddles.  The Black Knight, enemy of our souls, guards the bridge that leads to the hermit who is ensconced away from the manners of worldly men.  It is from him that we are to unlearn our pride and find the real weapons by which we are to succeed in our quest.

Cardinal Newman’s sermon is a commentary on Our Lord’s words: Many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first (Mt 19:30).  And he supports his thesis from many other passages of the New Testament concerning, for example, strength made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9), the of putting down the proud and the exalting of the humble (Lk 1:52), the blessedness of those who suffer and the woes of those who are satisfied (Mt 5:2-10; Lk 6:24-26), and God’s choice of the weak and despised to do his work (1 Cor 1:27).  It should be abundantly clear to anyone with a modicum of familiarity with scripture that God triumphs in and through those who have rejected worldly ambition and self-assuredness.

The invisible powers of the heavens, truth, meekness, and righteousness, are ever coming in upon the earth, ever pouring in, gathering, thronging, warring, triumphing, under the guidance of Him who “is alive and was dead, and is alive for evermore.”

Truth, meekness and righteousness, according to Venerable Newman, are the real weapons of the saints, the means by which they are victorious over Satan, sin and death.  The Holy Grail of Christian Knighthood is so hidden that in order to find it the knight must lose himself in the process.

This is that intangible, greater thing, after which young men aspire.  It is the stuff of true nobility.  It is strength without arrogance, command without self-interest.

Venerable Newman notes that “we like to hear marvellous tales, which throw us out of things as they are, and introduce us to things that are not.”  The paradox of the cross and of the victorious King who triumphs through His own death is the cosmic myth, the retelling of which is the incantation that opens the sealed doors of our hearts. He that openeth and no man shutteth, shutteth and no man openeth, is the only one with the key (Ap 3:7).

The beloved disciple saw Him mounted on a white horse, and going forth “conquering and to conquer.” “And the armies which were in heaven followed Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of His mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it He should smite the nations, and He shall rule them with a rod of iron.” [Rev. xix. 14, 15.]

The Quest of the Holy Grail is a lesser myth, as are all other stories when compared to the gospel myth in which the most fantastic tale is merged with history, and where what Tolkien called eucatastrophe, a literary climax beyond our wildest hopes, is made the substance of all our hopes and the ground upon which we walk in the daylight of this world.

Indeed, the return of the king in Tolkien’s mythology is an ascendency by way of descent.  Aragorn and the Dúnedain are content to be despised if that will better equip them to protect and defend the peoples of Middle Earth.  Aragorn himself must choose the path leading downward, literally underground, through the Paths of the Dead under the White Mountains, like Christ in His harrowing of hell, if he is to triumph on behalf of those entrusted to his care.

After Gandalf  had “passed through fire and deep water,” and had completed his own christic transformation, he delivered a message to Aragorn from the Lady of Light, Galadriel:

Where now are the Dúnedain, Elessar, Elessar?
Why do thy kinsfolk wander afar?
Near is the hour when the Lost should come forth,
And the Grey Company ride from the North.
But dark is the path appointed for thee:
The Dead watch the road that leads to the Sea (Book III, Chapter V).

Aragorn chose the path of truth, meekness and righteousness.  He was prepared to face his fear, and he was not afraid to confront his own ego with the double-edged sword of God’s truth.  He chose to go down in order to go up, to be last in order to be first.  Yet the myth of Aragorn cannot be a vicarious substitute for our own humiliation.  We must really experience it.  Newman has it right:

We so love the idea of the invisible, that we even build fabrics in the air for ourselves, if heavenly truth be not vouchsafed us. We love to fancy ourselves involved in circumstances of danger or trial, and acquitting ourselves well under them. Or we imagine some perfection, such as earth has not, which we follow, and render it our homage and our heart. Such is the state more or less of young persons before the world alters them, before the world comes upon them, as it often does very soon, with its polluting, withering, debasing, deadening influence, before it breathes on them, and blights and parches, and strips off their green foliage, and leaves them, as dry and wintry trees without sap or sweetness.

We must not loose our idealism as we grow older, but “heavenly truth” should purify our tendency to experience knighthood vicariously through its trappings and shards.  Ours is to be the knighthood of the real Dúnedain, a hidden knighthood in search of the hidden, but very real Holy Grail.

As a Franciscan, I have had many opportunities to reflect upon the militant example of Saints Francis and Maximilian, and of the great tertiary St. Louis of France.  The Holy Patriarch of the Seraphic Order, Our Holy Father St. Francis, was well aware of the Arthurian legends and aspired to knighthood and the Holy Grail himself.  Later, after he too had chosen the path downward, he called the simple brothers who lived in seclusion and despised status and pomp, his “Knights of the Round Table.”

In this last week of ordinary time, during the “octave” of the Feast of Christ the King, we look for His return at the end of the world, when he will preside over the cosmic resolution to the perennial struggle of St. Michael and the dragon.  Then He will raise his wounded hands over the universe and all of us will be witnesses of the full revelation of His truth, a more powerful illumination than possession of the Grail itself.  Then we will all know what true chivalry is and whether we are worthy to drink from the cup filled by the hands of Him who carried the sword of truth and slayed the dragon by His humble acceptance of our condition and by His willing suffering and death.

The weapons of the true knight are those of the saints: truth, meekness and righteousness.  They are best fitted to help us along the way of our Quest, a path that leads up a narrow crag in a mountain.  But this path to the heights strangely leads us downward by many uneven steps, until we arrive in the sanctuary of the Holy Grail and find rest in the yoke of Christ on the Holy Mountain of His Passion, Death and Resurrection.

Made it on Headline Bistro, thanks to Dawn Eden.

For all the saints, who from their labours rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

I am not sure why I never noticed how militant this hymn is, especially verses 7-10.  I guess it is because we never sing that many verses in America.  The words were written by Anglican Bishop William Walsham How in 1864:

Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

When How released his work to the Church of England, I wonder how the English Catholics who had been singing the words of Father Frederick Faber already for 20 years thought about the irony:

Faith of our fathers, Mary’s prayers
Shall win our country back to Thee;
And through the truth that comes from God,
England shall then indeed be free.

Catholic Emancipation  and the Oxford Movement had led to many conversions, like that of Father Faber, and a spirit of Catholic militancy was in the air, perhaps the Anglicans wished to share in it.  It is a gift of the Blessed Mother for which we should all pray.

Virtually anything that can be said of the Church can be said of the Blessed Virgin.  England is Our Lady’s Dowry.  I pray that the Church of England finds its way.

All the Holy Martyrs of the England, pray for us.