Furthermore…

Little girl to naughty baby brother:

“Billy, stop that! It’s probably a Myrtle sin!”

While I attened St Boniface School in Rochester, New York  in the ’40s we used to sing a hymn to Mary entitled O Queen of Lovely Blooming May.  I remember it fondly as my favorite. I’ve tried with no success to find some record of it - lyrics, music, author - to no avail. It occurs to me that the church organist at the time had a way of providing us with somewhat modified versions of well-known hymns, such as Silent Night, Sacred Night instead of Silent Night, Holy Night. In my searching I found hymn titles a bit similar to what I remember, but not exactly the same, so it could be that we had ‘our own’ local piece derived from something more widely known.  I come away wondering, tangentially,  if it was (or still is!) a widespread practice for organists and church musicians to come up with modified local versions of already existing hymns.  Sort of like doctoring up the canned pork & beans.

Kid to kid:

“You know what’s inside the flying saucers? Extra-celestials!”

Saying things about beauty falls far short of experiencing it. I took a course in the Philosophy of Art, and one of the ways beauty was defined was “that which, being seen, pleases”(id quod visum placet).

 I’m afraid our world today isn’t much ‘into’ beauty. To most minds, it refers to the designer clothes and jars of glop that women think they need to be beautiful. Girls, you don’t need that stuff! You’re beautiful, that’s the way God made you, that’s how it is, get real!

So if we are looking at “that which being seen, pleases,” we clearly aren’t talking about women, because they aren’t ‘that’s,’ inanimate things. Inanimate beauty is a quality, a quality that a woman, or a beautiful animal like a snow leopard, can possess, but not be. Even a man can be beautiful, like it or not.

There is a famous poem about the persistance of God seeking us by Francis Thompson called “The Hound of Heaven”; sometimes I think we are, at some deep level, ‘hounds of beauty.’ But the damn stuff (beauty) is so etherial, diaphanous and elusive that we keep getting off on other scents (to retain the hound image).

Maybe seeking, finding and enjoying beauty is what life is all about.  But it’s not what we’re all about, usually. We are caught up in such exercises in futility, chasing not-so-beautiful rabbits which we seldom catch.

 Be alert to God’s Beauty. It’s all about us.

Kid to kid:

“Saints are like priests and nuns, except they’re invisible!”

When a student at St John Fisher a priest teaching  English Lit used to invite one or another of us to read a passage aloud “in your best voice”. I always got a charge out of that phrase, as though any of us had a wardrobe of voices to choose from!

This evening I was at church for a rosary service, and I was enjoying saying our part of the prayers aloud, and I was sort of conscious of sounding very good to myself, almost as though it wasn’t really me that was speaking.

When the service ended, I started to leave, and an older lady in the pew in front of me turned around and asked if I am from Trinidad. When I said “No” she said, “Well then,

Why, she wondered, should you sound like you are from Trinidad? I told her that it was the Holy Ghost, thinking it seemed to resemble in a way the account of  speaking in tongues at Pentecost. I don’t know if she intuited my meaning. The whole business made quite an unusual impression on me. And I took her characterization as a great compliment: I love the speech patterns of the islands.

Penitent to confessor:

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned, my last confession the priest wanted to call for backup!”

Today, at our parish Day of Recollection,  we had general presentations for everyone present, and then we broke up into small groups at separate tables to discuss  certain of the principles that had made up the presentation.

One dear lady got up to report on what was discussed among the people at her table.  Spontaneously extemporizing, she remarked on how, at the time of a death in her family, she was weeping, and someone told  her how in  a friary a death is an occasion of joy, and a time to ring the bells.  She told the advisor that in truth, she definitely didn’t feel like ringing bells!

Editor to young reporter:

“Slantman, write me a review of the Pope’s message, but leave out the parts about Jesus, peace and sin!”

Those who think with the mind of ‘the world’ don’t have any clue about so many things that are  included in our Catholic mental furniture. They don’t know of, think about, or even imagine that there might be, perhaps not far from them in geographical terms, records  or traces of incorruption, cures, apparitions, liquification of blood, levitations, bi-location, and returning to life from the dead.

How interesting to consider how such things, which were widely accepted within a world which gave place to the Church, are now systematically ignored, pooh-pooh’d, and excluded from the commonplace records of civilization.