Alfred Sisley and His Wife

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and his Wife, 1868

Penance is getting up on time ...

Penance is fulfilling exactly the timetable you have fixed for yourself, even though your body resists or your mind tries to avoid it by dreaming up useless fantasies. Penance is getting up on time and also not leaving for later, without any real reason, that particular job that you find harder or most difficult to do.

Penance is knowing how to reconcile your duties to God, to others and to yourself, by making demands on yourself so that you find enough time for each of your tasks. You are practicing penance when you lovingly keep to your schedule of prayer, despite feeling worn out, listless or cold.

Penance means being very charitable at all times towards those around you, starting with the members of your own family. It is to be full of tenderness and kindness towards the suffering, the sick and the infirm. It is to give patient answers to people who are boring and annoying. It means interrupting our work or changing your plans, when circumstances make this necessary, above all when the just and rightful needs of others are involved.

Penance consists in putting up good-humouredly with the thousand and one little pinpricks of each day; in not abandoning your job, although you have momentarily lost the enthusiasm with which you started it; in eating gladly whatever is served, without being fussy.

For parents and, in general, for those whose work involves supervision or teaching, penance is to correct whenever it is necessary. This should be done bearing in mind the type of fault committed and the situation of the person who needs to be so helped, not letting oneself be swayed by subjective viewpoints, which are often cowardly and sentimental.

A spirit of penance keeps us from becoming too attached to the vast imaginative blueprints we have made for our future projects, where we have already foreseen our master strokes and brilliant successes.

Josemaria Escriva, Friends of God,
quoted in In Conversation with God by Francis Fernandez

Broccoli-Cheddar Rice Casserole

 Perfect for a Friday in Lent, but we liked it so much that we're not going to limit it to just that time of year. Get it here.

The Battle for Middle Earth: Tolkien's Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings

This is the last of the major LOTR commentaries that I hadn't read. Somehow Lent during the time of Covid, social division, and angst seemed the right time for this and, indeed, it did prove to be very inspirational.

Instead of zeroing in on themes and then pulling examples from throughout the text, Rutledge takes the unusual tactic of working her way through the book from beginning to end, commenting along the way on the links between the book and Christian themes. It is very effective because we can see the themes develop and grow as the story itself grows in complexity. There are many good insights that open up the book even further for the attentive reader.

As others have commented, it isn't a perfect work. There are some points that are often repeated many times, often unnecessarily since the sort of person reading this book is already steeped in LOTR. (Also, what difference does it make that Tolkien didn't like Shakespeare? And why do we have to be told that three times?) I also didn't agree with all of the author's conclusions, though admittedly there weren't a lot of points I took umbrage with. Just enough to annoy me every so often.

None of that takes away from the fact that this is a really good commentary and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

The Conversion of Our Hearts

Moral conversion, or the conversion of the will, takes place along the frequently stony path by which we learn to choose what is truly good, and to do so freely and as a matter of habit. This is the lift of growth in virtue (the medieval synonym for "habit") and into true freedom. For freedom is not a matter of doing what we like (which is a slavish habit, but of freely choosing what truly makes for an authentically human life.

The conversion of our hearts is that lifelong process by which we disentangle ourselves, emotionally and psychologically, from unruly passions and disordered affections so that our hearts and wills are drawn, like iron shavings toward a magnet, to what is truly good, true, and beautiful: God, the Holy Trinity.

George Weigel, Roman Pilgrimage

Cosmos

"Cosmos" by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1902

 

The great mysteries of redemption unfold gradually

The great mysteries of redemption celebrated in the Church's liturgy always unfold gradually. Throughout Advent, the season of preparation for Christmas, the Church's worship slowly and steadily unfolds the mystery of God-made-man, until we see him in the flesh born of Mary "in Bethlehem of Judea" [Matthew 2.5]. The same process of unfolding takes place during Lent, intensifying its character as a pilgrimage. The "exterior" of that process takes us, with Jesus, up to Jerusalem, where the decisive events of human history will dramatically unfold. The process has an "Interior" as well: as the people of the Church walk with Jesus from his temptation in the desert to his temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then to the final temptation to despair on the Cross, we see unfolding before us (and within us) a cosmic struggle between good and evil—between God's purposes and all the forces that resist the power of divine love.

George Weigel, Roman Pilgrimage

Psalm 10 — Plea for God's Judgment

In the Psalms we read how afflictions must be borne, and what should say both during and after the affliction.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

The psalmist makes a strong case for how God seems to be absent and the evil that is allowed and even applauded. I like the descriptions of the wicked — we all recognize it. 

When it gets to the part about sitting in ambush in the villages, murdering the innocent in hiding places I really thought of how many times I've seen that scenario in Indian films where evil village headmen are common characters and often are able to commit heinous crimes. It made me think of how we can still relate to the scriptures because human nature hasn't changed. 

That's also how we understand when the psalmist laments on behalf of the afflicted. We've had those feelings too.

Shema Yisrael at the Knesset Menorah in Jerusalem.
Verse 16 is part of the Bedtime Shema.

As with psalm 9 (part one of this two-part psalm), I love the fact that part of this psalm is included in daily prayers. According to Wikipedia, before going to sleep, the first paragraph of the Shema is recited. This is not only a commandment directly given in the Bible (in Deuteronomy 6:6–7), but is also alluded to from verses such as "Commune with your own heart upon your bed" (Psalms 4:4). 

 The wicked man boasts, the greedy man renounces the Lord, and the proud man thinks, "There is no God." Again, this is familiar territory. I like what St. John Chrysostom says and the lesson he draws for us to keep in mind in our own lives.

10:5 Out of God's Sight

The Peril of Flattery. Chrysostom: Do you see the folly? Do you see the unutterable ruin. Do you see the destruction gradually increasing? Do you see the things prized by the mindless, in reality full of deep misery, and now they sink from sight? Those people are applauded in their sins, commended in their wrongdoing. This is the first pitfall, sufficient to trip up the unwary. Hence it is much more necessary to welcome those who censure and correct us than those who applaud and flatter us to the point of destruction. The latter, in fact, prove the ruination of the stupid and impel them to worse evil—as though even by puffing up these sinners they led them on the way to folly.  Commentary on the Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

We briefly mentioned that this is related to Psalm 9 because of acrostic beginnings to each line which go in the order of the Hebrew alphabet. Here is a reflection that these two psalms are related to a larger grouping. Again, we're reminded that the editors of the big book are giving us the opportunity for a cumulative message.

The Relationship of Psalms 7-10

With the exception of Psalm 8, all of these psalms are pleas for deliverance from trouble. Singly and together these compositions call on Yahweh to serve as refuge and defender of the faithful and to act as righteous judge in revelation to the wicked. We can observe a shifting identification of the enemies from the more localized wicked who oppress the individual faithful person in Psalm 7 toward the more generalized criticism of the "nations"—the non-Israelite goyim—who are called to account for their treatment of the community at large (Pss. 9-10). ...

As a result of reading these four psalms as a thematic unit, a powerful message of divine power and human responsibility is displayed. this is not to say, however, that we only read these psalms rightly when we read them together. The ancient editors of the Psalter, who arranged the psalms in their present order, saw fit to preserve the psalms as individual compositions ... Each psalm has its own integrity, shape and voice that ought to be heard and appreciated.

What I am suggesting here is not an exclusive way of reading the psalms but another way to appreciate the ensemble that the ancient editors created and arranged in the Psalter. In reading the whole Psalter as an ensemble, one hears new voices and new tensions between voices that offer new and challenging insights that are overlooked in isolation. It is something like hearing the overture to an opera on a CD collection of overtures and then hearing it as it was originally intended—as part of the whole work. The music can be appreciated either way, but with different effects and understandings. The same is true of the music of the psalms.

Psalms Volume 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

This also makes me think of the wisdom of continually meditating on the psalms so that one is familiar enough with them to pick up the themes and insights as threads in a bigger book — not only that of individual psalms to the whole collection, but of the psalms to the rest of the Bible.

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

100 Dante Cantos - 100 Videos

Tommaso Todesca is a Goodreads friend of mine who I know as Tom LA. It turns out he's a big fan of the Divine Comedy who has been working on 100 youtube videos, one for each canto. He's commenting on the Divine Comedy for his English-speaking friends, as an Italian amateur who loves the poem and is at Inferno 21 now.

He got the idea since this year is the 700th anniversary of Dante's death (Sep 14th 1321). I just found out about it and enjoyed the videos I samples.

Watch it here!

A Movie You Might Have Missed #36 — 12 Angry Men (1957)

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.  

So many strikes against wanting to watch this movie ... it is black and white, it is old, we "know" what it's about. But there is much more to it than that. 

I've seen so many jokes and references made to this classic that I thought it was time to actually see the movie itself.

In brief, 12 Angry Men is the story of a lone juror (Henry Fonda) who has reasonable doubt of the guilt of the defendant in a murder case. Everyone else is positive that the defendant is guilty. The jury must be unanimous either way. Complicating matters are intense heat in a time of no air conditioning, a wide range of personalities, and various personal needs that seemingly overrule the needs of careful deliberation.

This was legendary director Sidney Lumet's first feature film and the talented cast included Henry Fonda, E. G. Marshall, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Klugman, and Jack Warden. They truly created a film that is still great over 50 years after it was made.

12 Angry Men is an illustration that the story is what drives a film. As the one dissenting "not guilty" juror (Henry Fonda) asks the questions he wished would have come up in the trial and thinks things through aloud, I was pulled into the case details myself. Likewise, as the other jurors comment we are given insight into this very diverse group of men.

It works on so many levels including, not intended I am sure, how very different twelve white men can be even though we have been trained by society to think of them as peas from a pod. We also see why we can't just accept what we are told, why individualism and working as a team both matter, and much more. I have been on several juries and seen some very similar situations arise.

On a side note, I also appreciate my air conditioner anew.

Although unintended on my part, it was also the perfect movie to watch on Memorial Day weekend as I wound up feeling proud to be an American. Who'd have thought that I would have felt that way about jury duty? Just one more reason the movie is a classic.

God's distribution of talents

On coming into the world, man is not equipped with everything he needs for developing his bodily and spiritual life. He needs others. Differences appear tied to age, physical abilities, intellectual or moral aptitudes, the benefits derived from social commerce, and the distribution of wealth. The "talents" are not distributed equally.

These differences belong to God's plan, who wills that each receive what he needs from others, and that those endowed with particular "talents" share the benefits with those who need them. These differences encourage and often oblige persons to practice generosity, kindness, and sharing of goods; they foster the mutual enrichment of cultures...

1936-36, Catechism of the Catholic Church

I really love this and the way it elevates all our particular qualities for their place in God's plan. It really puts into perspective the fact that what we think are good or bad qualities are all being used for a purpose we can't see. In that way, for me, it links to "in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

Love of Winter

 

Love of Winter, George Wesley Bellows

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Naomi Novik is adept at weaving completely original and compelling stories from the merest thread of a fairy tale (Uprooted, Spinning Silver). Her Temeraire series is an imaginative telling launching from both the Master and Commander series and the Dragonriders of Pern series.

So when I was reading this book and the word "Scholomance" made me think of Dracula, I went looking for information. In this case, Scholomance originates in real folklore (read more about that here) that was used by Bram Stoker in Dracula. It's just a sentence or two about how Dracula essentially was schooled at, as a friend told me once, "the devil's Hogwarts" So I was thinking of that and ... found this from Dracula.

The Draculas were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though now and again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings with the Evil One. They learned his secrets in the Scholomance, amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims the tenth scholar as his due.
...
He dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay.

What Novik has done with these beginnings is to turn the Harry Potter magical boarding school on its head. This is a school where there aren't any teachers, where supernatural monsters roam the halls, and where students form alliances hoping that they will survive graduation. There is a lot more to this magical world and, as always, Novik's world building is wonderful, with all the ramifications followed through to logical conclusions, sometimes in surprising ways. It is told by El who has the power to destroy multitudes but whose New Age mother taught to be respectful of life. Which really puts her in a bind when it comes to exercising enough power to pass her classes.

In many ways, this is a typical school scenario where the heroine is an outcast who has to gather a band of fellow students around her to accomplish their goals. There's a high level of angst which I found somewhat tiresome by the end. However, it is a great adventure told with humor, irony, and a certain innocence that worked for me. And, its heart is in the right place.

I’ve been taught any number of ways to manage anger, and they really work. What [my mother's] never been able to teach me is how to want to manage it. So I go on seething and raging and knowing the whole time that it’s my own fault, because I do know how to stop.

El's mother taught her well and El draws a number of thoughtful conclusions which enrich the story and give it a good anchor. I'm looking forward to the second part of the series.

Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Paris (World’s Fair) 1900

 

   Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Paris (World’s Fair) 1900

Psalm 9 — Confidence in God

When the enemy is being accused and creation saves, do not take the glory for yourself but know that this is the victory of the Son of God and sing to him in the words of Psalm 9.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

This is one psalm in Greek but two psalms (9 and 10) in Hebrew. We follow the Hebrew numbering. The reasons for thinking of it as one long psalm are because psalm 10 has no title and seems to be loosely connected to the theme of psalm 9. Also the psalms actually form a single acrostic poem. Each verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

This psalm is a real celebration of God from all angles even though the psalmist is still suffering and awaiting deliverance. But he is confident in God's faithfulness.

A shofar, symbol of the Rosh Hashanah holiday.
Verse 4 of psalm 9 is found in the repetition of the Amidah on Rosh Hashanah.

I like the mention above that part of this psalm is used in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy. Because that is how we Catholics experience the psalms — as part of the liturgy.

On this psalm, Didymus the Blind is the one who caught my attention with the two points made below.

 9:10 Those Who Know God's Name

God Never Abandons Us. Didymus the Blind: Those who have a perfect knowledge of your name trust in no other thing. They are not abandoned by God. This word must be understood with wisdom and reverence, considering that one should not think that the person who lives rightly in his daily affairs is abandoned by God. One who thinks thus is deceived. Indeed several of the impious have thus believed. Some say that Abel, who was killed, was abandoned, as also the prophets and apostles, for these individuals were afflicted continuously, and many of them even murdered by people. With this distinction made, we say that the person who is with God up to his last breath is not abandoned, even if he suffers innumerable wounds from his enemies. Fragments on the Psalms

===================

 9:15 The Pit They Made

The Wicked Caught in Their Own Sin.. Didymus the Blind: Secretly [the wicked] build traps of deceit with their own plans and words, so they may seize someone unsuspecting. But by that very trap that they have hidden they are punished, for vindicators will keep those very ones they have caught. This punishment is done by the providence of God. For what other is the judgment of God than that the sinner is caught by his own deeds, because he holds the reason for his own condemnation for those who live unrighteously. This agrees with that which is said before: "He who has opened a pit for his neighbor will fall into it (Ps. 7:15)." Fragments on the Psalms

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here. 

Some Good Pandemic News - For a Change

I receive The Dispatch's free morning roundup newsletter. It was so refreshing to read some of this good news, instead of continually being bombarded with gloom and doom. I'm not saying everything is sunshine and roses but it is really nice to look at both sides, because there is positive to go along with the unrelenting negative I see on the news.

I thought I'd excerpt it.

• If you’re looking for some coronavirus optimism these days, you don’t have to squint too hard to find it. On the infection and hospitalization data itself, just take a look at the chart above. Per our analysis, the seven-day rolling average of confirmed new COVID-19 cases peaked on January 11 at 257,927. Today, that number is 70,591—a 73 percent decrease in six weeks.
• It’s not just cases, either. The seven-day average of test positivity—another marker of virus prevalence—has dropped from over 14 percent in the first week of 2021 to 5.3 percent this morning. On January 6, 132,464 people were hospitalized with COVID-19. That figure has decreased for 40 straight days, and is now nearly 60 percent lower at 55,403. Deaths are a lagging indicator, but they, too, are beginning to fall off after a sustained plateau above 3,000 per day.
• And then there are the vaccines. Last March, you’d have been laughed out of many rooms if you said the United States would be on track to inoculate about 50 million people against COVID-19 by the end of February 2021. The laughter would have only grown louder if you added that those vaccines would be 95 percent effective at preventing symptomatic illness, and close to 100 percent effective against hospitalization and/or death.
• In recent days, the news has only gotten better. One study found that Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine is up to 85 percent effective after a single jab, and that it doesn’t actually need to be stored in burdensome, ultra-cold freezers as previously believed. A second (preliminary) report from Pfizer, BioNTech, and Israel’s Health Ministry found the companies’ COVID-19 vaccine to be 89.4 percent effective at preventing infections, meaning the vaccine limits most asymptomatic transmission of the virus as well.
  
  
Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said the news couldn’t be much better. “The two mRNA vaccines we have been using have 95 percent efficacy against all manner of disease: mild, moderate, and severe. And [they] may—likely, I think, probably—reduce shedding, it just hasn’t been studied carefully,” he told The Dispatch. “And to date in the preapproval studies, we couldn’t find any evidence for serious adverse events in tens of thousands of people. And now the vaccine has been in tens of millions of people, so you can say with some confidence that the vaccine doesn’t even cause a rare serious adverse event. So I’d say it’s remarkable. I don’t think anybody could have predicted this a year ago.”

A Movie You Might Have Missed #35 — Searching for Sugar Man

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed. 

In America we've never heard of Rodriguez, an enigmatic rock musician from the early 70's whose two records flopped. In South Africa, his records are bigger than Elvis. The legend surrounding him always includes a colorful death on stage ... by self immolation, pistol to the head, drug overdose, etc. Two South Africans set out to find out how Rodriguez died.

Why Rodriguez is so well known in South Africa is worth a movie of its own. When you include the discovery made by the men tracking down his legend, it propels this story into the "truth is stranger than fiction" category.

The documentary is put together like a well told piece of detective fiction and we were riveted by the story of the American musician we'd never heard of before.

Le Songe de Jacob (Jacob's Dream)

Nicolas Dipre, Le Songe de Jacob, c.1500

 

Moët Chandon Crémant Impérial poster

Moët Chandon Crémant Impérial poster, Alphonse Mucha
via My Daily Art Display

 

Sin most clearly manifests during the Passion

It is precisely in the Passion, when the mercy of Christ is about to vanquish it, that sin most clearly manifests its violence and its many forms: unbelief, murderous hatred, shunning and mockery by the leaders and the people, Pilate's cowardice and the cruelty of the soldiers, Judas' betrayal - so bitter to Jesus, Peter's denial and the disciples' flight. However, at the very hour of darkness, the hour of the prince of this world, (Cf. Jn 14:30) the sacrifice of Christ secretly becomes the source from which the forgiveness of our sins will pour forth inexhaustibly.

1851, The Definition of Sin section,
The Catechism of the Catholic Church

Of course, that makes so much sense and is so true.

I'm left with no insightful observations of my own because this is just something that never occurred to me. It is something I will try to keep in mind especially during Lent.