Never, ever forget the power of the Western Rite. Yes, it's more austere than its Eastern equivalent, perhaps less emotional, but cold and without feeling? No, it has all the power of the Crusades, of Charlemagne, of the Western Empire converted.
Of course you may well prefer a praise band, and that's OK too, if you must, but here's our music, the music of Western Christendom, playing out in Oxford, Solemn Vespers (Evening Prayer, all you Anglicans):
Europe, said Belloc, is the Faith. Both are under attack right now, egregiously. Rise up and reclaim your homeland as you, with the Immaculate Mother of God magnify the Lord.
I'd say this is as relevant now as it's ever been, which is very. Sainte Jeanne revenez nous sauver, transmettre votre courage, votre Foi au peuple, le Corps de l'Eglise.
I've been reflecting on the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13 because it's the Gospel for Sunday in our newfangled, confusing, tripartite lectionary. We all know the story and how it illustrates the four different conditions of human heart or soul upon which the Word falls.
Although the letter said On thistles that men look not grapes to gather, I read the story rather How soldiers platting thorns around Christ’s Head Grapes grew and drops of wine were shed.
Though when the sower sowed, The wingèd fowls took part, part fell in thorn, And never turned to corn, Part found no root upon the flinty road— Christ at all hazards fruit hath shewed.
From wastes of rock He brings Food for five thousand: on the thorns He shed Grains from His drooping Head; And would not have that legion of winged things Bear Him to heaven on easeful wings.
Christ, in Himself, transforms and redeems our fallen nature, turning hard, rocky, thorn-choked ground into abundant life. He invites us to share in this victory; God grant us the humility to enter into compassion and life, to repent.
Europe, and by extension the West, is the Faith, a Faith which is increasingly, vehemently under attack. The burning of Notre Dame serves as an apt symbol.
As news spread of the fire consuming the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, the first reaction of most people was shock and sadness. You don’t have to be Catholic or French to feel as if some part of you has been lost. That was not just an old building or a historically important place. It was a symbol of Western civilization. Stand inside a great church and you feel the awe and power that inspired the builders. That cathedral was the primal roar of a people celebrating their creator and the essence of who they were as a people.
Of course, it did not take long for people to notice that its burning was a metaphor for the current crisis in the West. As Europe is swamped by Muslims, promising to replace Europeans in their own lands, it is only a matter of time before the great churches are turned into mosques or destroyed. Despite the endless propaganda from our rulers, most people here and there, are well aware of what’s happening. They don’t know how to articulate it or react to it, but they know. Watching the fire, they knew what it meant.
Notre Dame still stands, thank God; does the Faith it represents? It does, though badly eroded in the West, but if it were to go and with it the soul of our culture, what would take its place, what will fill the vacuum?
Who will save Christian civilization with all its values and freedoms from the revolutionaries who want to destroy it?
The answer, of course, is the Church. As Belloc famously wrote, Europe is the Faith. The Faith, catholic Christianity, is at the foundation and heart of Western culture, it defines us and provides the necessary value to fight back against the anti-value of the destroyers.
“They build and we destroy,” says the Satanist Manasseh in Williams’ War in Heaven. Manasseh, in the grip of his hatred wasn’t wrong; the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, militant on earth, builds up with all the creative power of God Himself.
You can read the whole thinghereif you like and while you're at it...
One of the best things about the liturgical reform of the '60s and '70s was dance, that's right, liturgical dance. Have a gaze at the above infofovideo's distillation of 2000 years of Christian worshiping expression, the best we can offer to God as an act of spiritual sacrifice.
No wonder the liturgical reform succeeded in filling the pews, except that it didn't. Similar, when you think about it, to women priest and bishop figures.
Do you remember how they claimed no one would take us seriously if we didn't ordain women and now gender fluid transsexuals? Said, and continue to say, the dancing bishops and their Mantid friends.
Tomorrow's Palm Sunday and it always seems, liturgically, to be a bit of a double cross. We welcome Christ as King, Hosanna in the highest, and the next minute it's Crucify Him. But it's in the Passion that Christ's kingship is revealed.
"Are you a king then?" asks Pilate. Yes, he is a king. "Thou sayest it." Yes, he is a king. But kingship is not what Pilate thinks it is; not what the world thinks it is. Yes, he is a king: "But now is my kingdom not from hence, if it were, then would my servants fight...but now is my kingdom not from hence."The ways of God's Kingdom are not the world's ways, and the glory of its kingship is altogether different. Its kingship is the kingship of a servant, its liberty is the liberty of free obedience; its virtue is humility. "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus."That is the essential message of this day.
Its virtue is humility or blessed are the poor in spirit. Theirs, we learn, is the kingdom of heaven. By the grace of God.
It's the Feast of St. Matthew, who was a publican and a bad sinner who got the call. Here's the Collect:
O ALMIGHTY God,who by thy blessed Son didst call Matthew from the recipt of custom to be an Apostle and Evangelist; Grant us grace to forsake all covetous desires, and inordinate love of riches, and to follow the same thy Son Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
Mary exults in the Magnificat, which we heard in today's Gospel. Here it is: MY soul doth magnify the Lord, * and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded * the lowliness of his handmaiden. For behold, from henceforth * all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath magnified me; * and holy is his Name. And his mercy is on them that fear him * throughout all generations. He hath showed strength with his arm; * he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, * and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things; * and the rich he hath sent empty away. He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel; * as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed, for ever.
I'd say that was as relevant now as it's ever been.
I know it's terribly confusing, but there's a movement, or a shadow of a movement, within Anglicanism that asserts catholicity for our part of the church. Scripture, creeds, sacraments, apostolic tradition, piety, liturgy, salvation, the nature of the church herself, all these and more are viewed and believed in through a catholic lens.
Now, as a part of this movement, such as it is today, I have a confession to make -- and yes, make yours before Christmas, if you can -- there was a time, not so long ago in the greater scheme of things, when I felt that if I didn't have this:
St. Nicholas du Chardonnet
I wasn't somehow cutting it. But I got this:
Rural missions in Texas. Not shrines in Boston, New York, Philly, Chicago, or even Texas, for that matter. And you know what, I don't feel shortchanged for a moment.
Don't get me wrong, I love a Solemn High Mass as much as I loathe, scorn and despise liturgical dance, or the monstrous regiment of priestesses, women bishop figures and associated clowns. But here's the thing -- don't let yourself become that most ridiculous and pathetic of creatures, a church snob. God will surprise you. In my case, that's been for the good.
Don't Teacup, Fool
In related news, I've reminded the bishop that it'd make a lot of sense to put a new rule in place regarding postulants for ordination. Viz. If you can't ride and you don't shoot, you can't get in.
Every year or so I read Europe and the Faith, written in 1920 by Hilaire Belloc. In it, Belloc sketches the history of the late Western Roman Empire, explaining its evolution under the aegis of the Church, into what, for him, was the high watermark of European civilization, the Middle Ages of the 13th Century. He then describes the Reformation and its aftermath, the dislocated culture of the past four centuries, in which the human soul and her endeavor has become increasingly alienated, fragmented and miserable.
As an aside, the author believes that the Reformation only succeeded through the defection of a civilized Roman Province, England, to the various forces in mutiny against the Church and her culture. An interesting theory and one which, I think, originates with Belloc alone.
Whether you agree with him or not, Belloc's unconventional, clear-sighted and always sharp reading of history is certainly provocative, sometimes aggressively so, and, for me at least, always entertaining. I find his conclusion prescient:
So things have gone. We have reached at last, as the final result of that catastrophe three hundred years ago, a state of society which cannot endure and a dissolution of standards, a melting of the spiritual framework, such that the body politic fails. Men everywhere feel that an attempt to continue down this endless and ever darkening road is like the piling up of debt. We go further and further from a settlement. Our various forms of knowledge diverge more and more. Authority, the very principle of life, loses its meaning, and this awful edifice of civilization which we have inherited, and which is still our trust, trembles and threatens to crash down. It is clearly insecure. It may fall in any moment. We who still live may see the ruin. But ruin when it comes is not only a sudden, it is also a final, thing.
In such a crux there remains the historical truth: that this our European structure, built upon the noble foundations of classical antiquity, was formed through, exists by, is consonant to, and will stand only in the mold of, the Catholic Church.
Europe will return to the Faith, or she will perish.
The Faith is Europe. And Europe is the Faith.
Orthodox catholics will love this book, others perhaps less so. I count myself amongst the former, albeit from an Anglican perspective.
