The Lord's Prayer Contains It All

Run through all the words of the holy prayers [in Scripture] and I do not think that you will find anything in them that is not contained in the Lord's Prayer.

St. Augustine

Magic Window

Magic Window, Remo Savisaar

 

The summary of the gospel

[The Lord's prayer] is truly the summary of the whole gospel.

Tertullian, De orat

The Meadow

 

The Meadow (1875), Alfred Sisley

Church in Moret

Church in Moret (1889), Alfred Sisley

 

Psalm 11 — Trust in the Lord

If anyone wishes to disturb you, hold on strongly to your confidence in the Lord and say Psalm 11.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

These days I think many of us can sympathize with the psalmist. Chaos is all around — the pandemic, rioting, political division, anger, and the foundations of what is "normal" all seem swept away.

Like the psalmist, we must keep our sense of perspective and lean on what we know to be true. The righteous man can lean on God who we know is unchanging and eternally in charge.

Bird hunter from Palace of Sargon II at Khorsabad, c. 725 BC
"Flee like a bird to the mountains. For look, the wicked bend the bow,
they have fitted their arrow to the string." (11:1-2)

Notice how the psalmist shows us some key truths about God.

11:4-6 Yahweh the Examiner

The dual description of Yahweh as "in his holy temple" and "on his heavenly throne" is significant. The former is an indication of God's immanent presence among humans (most particularly the faithful), while the latter emphasizes the transcendent power and authority that separates him from the chaotic futility of human power. God is at once among his people, strengthening, empowering, and saving, and at the same time above all the humans, ruling, examining, and rendering righteous judgment.

[...]

Contemporary Significance. Whatever else it means, taking refuge in God does not mean escape or avoidance of pain and suffering. Part of the reason for this is that fleeing is self-focused and self-concerned. We flee when we are concerned about protecting ourselves. By contrast, the kind of refuge that God offers calls us to give ourselves away: "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it" (Luke 9:24). Taking refuge in God is other-focused. Those who enter that refuge hold onto God by letting go of self and thinking instead of others.

Psalms Volume 1 (NIV Application Commentary)

I like knowing this ancient use for sulfur and coals.

11:6 Fiery Coals and Burning Sulfur

In Akkadian texts, sulfur burned on coals is described as a fumigating agent ... The terms here are reminiscent, though not identical, to those used in the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:24)

NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

Though the psalmist is saying the enemy will be destroyed it seems fit that fumigation from evil is the mental connection, and also fit that such "fumigation" was deemed just for Sodom and Gomorrah. These ancient contexts are fascinating.

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

St. Martin Canal

St. Martin Canal (1870), Alfred Sisley

Look at that light!

The Ties That Bind

True interior life and a loving relationship with God are excluded by anyone who does not break off the ties that bind him to things, to people and to his own self in a disordered way — no matter how casual and tenuous such bonds may seem. It makes little difference, says St. John of the Cross, whether a bird is tied by a thin thread or by a cord. For even if tied by a thread, the bird will be prevented from taking off just as surely as if it were tied by a cord — that is, it will be impeded from flight as long as it does not break the thread. Admittedly, the thread is easier to snap, but no matter how easily this may be done, the bird will not fly away before first doing so.

Detachment increases our capacity for loving God, people and all the noble things of this life.

Francis Fernandez, In Conversation with God: Lent and Eastertide

A Movie You Might Have Missed #37 — Everyone Says I Love You

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.   

If you've even heard of this movie, I tip my hat to you. It is a rare one. 

This hasn't been available for a while so when I saw the dvd at Amazon I grabbed it. Why had I been on the lookout for it? Because this is one of my favorites of Woody Allen's movies. Few people know that he wrote and directed a musical and for those few who do know it, no one is neutral. We really liked it and, upon viewing it last night I was surprised that it didn't seem to have aged. The only tell that this movie is 17 years old is how extremely young some of the actors seem.

This is Woody Allen's love letter to musicals, Hollywood love stories, and New York, this is the tale of a wealthy family's year. It is told as a musical, with the large cast of well known actors all doing their own vocals. The songs are classic, fit into unexpected situations, and occasionally accompany dance routines. The actors don't come off as professional singers or dancers, but have just enough awkwardness to lend everything a sincere, realistic feel. As with many musicals from earlier times, the plot is a simple vehicle to move everything along and much of the pleasure is in seeing the movie unfold.

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)