The Winter Solstice

Once again, we arrive at the shortest day of the year.  As the year progresses, the sun appears not only to move from east to west, but also to trace a path farther north or south in the sky.  This northerly or southerly travel continues until the solstice, when the sun appears to stand still and begin to reverse course.  Today is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, which, for us, means the shortest day and the longest night of the year.  After this, the hours of daylight will increase, and the darkness will decrease.

Which may have something to do with the fact that Christmas falls right about this time.  According to the Julian calendar, in use at the time of Christ, the winter solstice was regarded as occurring on -- December 25th.  To the extent they acknowledge the existence of Christ at all, the modernists and skeptics, who hold that we created God and not the other way around, like to cast doubt on the historical validity of December 25th as the day of His birth.  But it was God Who created us, and gave us our taste for symbolism, and He satisfies it without the need for us to make up for any lack of ingenuity on His part.  Setting aside the difficulties of perfectly transposing the Gregorian and Julian calendars, the simplest and therefore probably true explanation for why we celebrate Christmas on December 25th is because Jesus Christ really was born on December 25th.

As I hope I may never tire of pointing out, the changes of season are freighted with spiritual significance, and not because we give them that significance ourselves in order to satisfy some primitive instinct for religion.  They are significant because God, Who is a God of Order and Harmony, interwove nature and salvation history.  The winter solstice coincides with Christmas, when the Light of the World enters the world and the days begin to lengthen.  The summer solstice, when the days begin to shorten, coincides with the Nativity of John the Baptist, who said that he must decrease while the Savior increased.  The vernal equinox coincides with the Feast of the Annunciation,  the beginning of the Incarnation and the end of the winter of Satan's reign.  It also coincides with Good Friday, when the Cross became the Key that opened the gates of heaven, barred by sin.  Then comes the spoliation of hell, and Easter, which marks its decisive defeat, and takes place on the first Sunday on or after the first full moon on or after the equinox (say that one five times fast).  There are no huge feasts that coincide with the autumnal equinox; my own theory on that (and it's only my opinion) is that, since it coincides with the time for harvest, it stands for the harvest of souls at the End of Time.

Next to all this, neo-pagan change-of-season festivals are pretty lightweight.  This Christmas, may we all seat ourselves at the rich banquet of Christianity, and pass up the New Age baloney sandwich.

Idiocracy

For behold the sovereign the Lord of hosts shall take away from Jerusalem, and from Juda the valiant and the strong, the whole strength of bread, and the whole strength of water.  The strong man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the cunning man, and the ancient.  The captain over fifty, and the honourable in countenance, and the counsellor, and the architect, and the skillful in eloquent speech.  And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them.  

Isaiah 3:1-4

Repost: December 9: Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin

Well, I blew it.  This should have gone up yesterday.  But since heaven is outside of time, I trust St. Juan Diego will not mind.  Originally posted December 9, 2009.

-- A.M., O.P.

*     *     *

In 1474, Cuauhtlatoatzin ("Talking Eagle") was born a member of the Chichimeca people and a subject of the Aztecs in what is now part of Mexico City, during an epoch that was destined very soon to end. When he was 18, Christopher Columbus landed in the New World. By the time he was 47, Spain had conquered the advanced yet blood-soaked Aztec Empire. However, within a decade, the Indians were laboring under crushing oppression at the hands of corrupt Spanish officials. The first Bishop of Mexico, the Franciscan Juan de Zumárraga, struggled vainly to defend his new spiritual charges, who were close to rebellion. The harried bishop begged the Blessed Mother for her aid.

It was in this turbulent time, less than five years after the conquest of the Aztecs, that the Talking Eagle encountered the religion of the Spaniards. Even as a pagan, he appears to have led a life of penance and contemplation that no doubt laid the groundwork for what was to come to him in later life. The Talking Eagle became one of the earliest indigenous converts to the Catholic faith, accepting Baptism together with his wife and taking the name of Juan Diego in about 1524. Every Saturday and Sunday, a barefoot Juan Diego walked 14 miles to Tenochtitlan to attend Mass and receive religious instruction. After the death of his wife in 1529, Juan Diego moved in with an uncle, Juan Bernardino, which left him with only nine miles to travel to pursue his faith.

It was during one of these journeys in 1531 that the veil between heaven and earth was drawn aside for the humble farmer and mat-weaver. The 16th-century native scholar Antonio Valeriano describes what happened on that day in the Nahuatl-language Nican Mopohua (1556), the oldest and most authoritative account of the Guadalupe apparitions:

On a Saturday just before dawn, he was on his way to pursue divine worship and to engage in his own errands. As he reached the base of the hill known as Tepeyac, came the break of day, and he heard singing atop the hill, resembling singing of varied beautiful birds.

Occasionally the voices of the songsters would cease, and it appeared as if the mount responded. The song, very mellow and delightful, excelled that of the coyoltototl and the tzinizcan and of other pretty singing birds. Juan Diego stopped to look and said to himself: “By fortune, am I worthy of what I hear? Maybe I dream? Am I awakening? Where am I? Perhaps I am now in the terrestrial paradise which our elders had told us about? Perhaps I am now in heaven?” He was looking toward the east, on top of the mound, from whence came the precious celestial chant; and then it suddenly ceased and there was silence. He then heard a voice from above the mount saying to him: “Juanito, Juan Dieguito.” Then he ventured and went to where he was called. He was not frightened in the least; on the contrary, overjoyed.

Then he climbed the hill, to see from were he was being called. When he reached the summit, he saw a Lady, who was standing there and told him to come hither. Approaching her presence, he marveled greatly at her superhuman grandeur; her garments were shining like the sun; the cliff where she rested her feet, pierced with glitter, resembling an anklet of precious stones, and the earth sparkled like the rainbow. The mezquites, nopales, and other different weeds, which grow there, appeared like emeralds, their foliage like turquoise, and their branches and thorns glistened like gold. He bowed before her and herd her word, tender and courteous, like someone who charms and steems you highly.

She said: “Juanito, the most humble of my sons, where are you going?” He replied: “My Lady and Child, I have to reach your church in Mexico, Tlatilolco, to pursue things divine, taught and given to us by our priests, delegates of Our Lord.” She then spoke to him: “Know and understand well, you the most humble of my sons, that I am the ever virgin Holy Mary, Mother of the True God for whom we live, of the Creator of all things, Lord of heaven and the earth. I wish that a temple be erected here quickly, so I may therein exhibit and give all my love, compassion, help, and protection, because I am your merciful mother, to you, and to all the inhabitants on this land and all the rest who love me, invoke and confide in me; listen there to their lamentations, and remedy all their miseries, afflictions and sorrows. And to accomplish what my clemency pretends, go to the palace of the bishop of Mexico, and you will say to him that I manifest my great desire, that here on this plain a temple be built to me; you will accurately relate all you have seen and admired, and what you have heard. Be assured that I will be most grateful and will reward you, because I will make you happy and worthy of recompense for the effort and fatigue in what you will obtain of what I have entrusted. Behold, you have heard my mandate, my humble son; go and put forth all your effort.”

At this point he bowed before her and said: “My Lady, I am going to comply with your mandate; now I must part from you, I, your humble servant.” Then he descended to go to comply with the errand, and went by the avenue which runs directly into Mexico City.

To Juan Diego's great disappointment, Bishop Zumárraga, who had kept him waiting a very long time before granting him an audience, would not believe him. Dejected, he went back to the Lady on Tepeyac Hill and told her how he had been rebuffed. "For which I exceedingly beg, Lady and my Child," he said,

that you entrust the delivery of your message to someone of importance, well known, respected, and esteemed, so that they may believe in him; because I am a nobody, I am a small rope, a tiny ladder, the tail end, a leaf, and you, my Child, the least of my children, my Lady, you send me to a place where I never visit nor repose. Please excuse the great unpleasantness and let not fretfulness befall, my Lady and my All.

However, the Lady insisted that this important mission was for Juan Diego alone, and ordered him to go back and try again. He obeyed, and this time the bishop questioned him closely regarding what he had seen and heard, and told him to ask the Lady for a sign. When he returned to Tepeyac Hill after this second interview, the Lady told him to come back the next day, and then he would receive the sign that would convince the bishop to comply with her request.

But in the meantime, Juan Diego's uncle, Bernardino, became so ill that his life was despaired of, and Bernardino sent his nephew to fetch a priest. Knowing that the Lady would be waiting for him on Tepeyac Hill, Juan Diego avoided the place so that he would not be diverted from his urgent errand. But the Lady accosted him and asked him where he was going. When he told her, she said:

Hear me and understand well, my son the least, that nothing should frighten or grieve you. Let not your heart be disturbed. Do not fear that sickness, nor any other sickness or anguish. Am I not here, who am your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my embrace? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything. Do not be afflicted by the illness of your uncle, who will not die now of it. Be assured that he is now cured.

She then told Juan Diego to climb to the top of the hill, where he found a variety of choice Castillian roses growing out of season and on a barren patch of land. He gathered them and brought them back to the Lady, who arranged them herself in his frail cactus-fiber tilma and told him to present them to the bishop. When, after yet another long wait, he finally saw the bishop, he unfolded the tilma, and the roses fell out; and as the roses scattered on the floor, the image of Our Lady as Juan Diego had seen her on Tepeyac Hill appeared on the tilma. This put an end to Bishop Zumárraga's doubts and convinced him that this was Our Lady's answer to his prayers.

In obedience to the Blessed Mother's request, a shrine was built at the foot of Tepeyac Hill, and the miraculous tilma was housed in the chapel. Juan Diego gave everything he owned to his uncle -- who had indeed been cured and had also seen the Lady at the very moment she told his nephew about his cure -- and moved into a small dwelling at the shrine, devoting himself to prayer, virtue, and the care of the shrine and the pilgrims who came to visit it. He received the then-extraordinary privilege of receiving Holy Communion three times a week, and died in the odor of sanctity on May 30, 1548 at the age of 74. Meanwhile, by means of the miraculous image -- not to mention the humility and obedience of her servant, Juan Diego -- the Blessed Mother won millions of souls for the Church, and averted the bloody rebellion that had loomed on the horizon in Mexico.

A footnote. Servant of God [now Venerable] Fulton J. Sheen was a great devotee of the Blessed Mother, and remarked that he prayed for the following intentions regarding his death: (1) that he "drop dead" at the age of 80; (2) that he die on a Saturday in honor of Our Lady, or (3) that he die on one of her feast days. In fact, he died in 1979 at the age of 84; on a Sunday; and not on a feast of Our Lady. He was disappointed on every count.

Or was he? The date of Fulton Sheen's death -- December 9th -- was the anniversary of the first apparition on Tepeyac Hill, and is now the feast of St. Juan Diego, whom Pope John Paul II canonized at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in 2002.

The Immaculate Conception

According to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Mary, the Mother of God, was free from the instant of her conception from the taint of original sin on account of the merits of Jesus Christ, Who was to suffer and die on the cross.  Bl. Pius IX defined this dogma in 1854, citing Scripture and Tradition.  Four years later, the Blessed Virgin appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes and identified herself as the Immaculate Conception -- a term the uneducated country girl did not understand.  The Mother of God had never before so identified herself: Queen of Heaven though she is, she waited until her Son's Vicar on earth stamped that title with his authority.

I look back on the blog and find a fair number of posts about the Immaculate Conception.  Here are the choicest:

Excerpts from Ineffabilis Deus, in which Bl. Pius IX defines the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

Mary's assigned role in the work of our redemption required the unparalleled grace of the Immaculate Conception.

The popular song "Mary, Did You Know" should be rejected by Catholics as a flat denial of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

Potuit, decuit, ergo fecit: those who reject the Immaculate Conception are hopelessly mistaken about God Himself.

The beauty of Mary in the wonder of her Immaculate Conception.

Queen conceived without original sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

Remember Pearl Harbor

One of the best museum exhibits I have ever seen was held at the Reagan Library during the early to mid '90s.  Entitled "World War II: In Their Own Words," the exhibit took you from the last days of peace at Pearl Harbor through to the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and featured artifacts from every noteworthy event of the war.  In accordance with the theme, the exhibit also featured written documents, letters, diaries, and memoirs from every person of note on both sides, and from soldiers who recorded the events in journals as they happened. The Pearl Harbor section of the exhibit featured Franklin Roosevelt's pince-nez, and the typescript of his Day of Infamy speech with his penciled corrections.  One of the most poignant and gripping items in the whole exhibit was a Navy pharmacist's mate's white tunic, covered in blood stains from helping with the wounded after the attack.  It was quite a small tunic; the man wearing it had to have been very young.

Now, almost three quarters of a century after that fateful day, the United States is again in peril, only this time, from within.  Very few Pearl Harbor veterans have lived to see the 72nd anniversary of the date that would live in infamy.  I wonder how many of them are happy about the path taken by the country they suffered for so long ago.

December 5, 1933: A Toast to a Well-Deserved Failure

Prohibition is an awful flop.

We like it.

It can't stop what it's meant to stop.

We like it.

It's left a trail of graft and slime,

It's filled our land with vice and crime,

It don't prohibit worth a dime.

Nevertheless, we're for it.

Franklin P. Adams

It has just been brought to my attention that it was 80 years ago today that the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- Prohibition -- was repealed.  Now it isn't every day that an injustice gets remedied in our corrupt world, so when one is, that is a moment to celebrate and commemorate.

Yes, Prohibition was an injustice.  It was an unjust burden on individual liberty to outlaw drinking for all, even in moderation, because of the relative few who abused drink.  Deliberate drunkenness is a serious sin, because it deprives us of our capacity to reason; but there is nothing, however legitimate, that can't be abused.  Liberty itself can be abused, and is, every minute of every day; but that would not justify locking everybody up on the off-chance.  Besides, despite the religious justifications advanced for Prohibition, the absolute prohibition of alcohol is contrary to Scripture.  Our Lord Himself turned water into wine at the wedding at Cana: not grape juice, but actual wine, with alcohol and everything.  (Question: at the time of Christ, was there such a thing as non-fermenting grape juice?)  He also drank wine Himself -- for which the Pharisees criticized him (Matthew 11:19).  And St. Paul advises his brother bishop, Timothy, to take wine for his health (1 Timothy 5:23).  

Prohibition was an outstanding example of America's curious ideas about morality.  In his essay "On American Morals," G.K. Chesterton reflects on an article by an American writer calling for the abolition of what she called "righteousness," on the grounds that "righteousness" was incompatible with reality.  He sums up the American attitude:

The standard of abstract right and wrong apparently is this. That a girl by smoking a cigarette makes herself one of the company of the fiends of hell. That such an action is much the same as that of a sexual vampire. That a young man who continues to drink fermented liquor must necessarily be "evil" and must deny the very existence of any difference between right and wrong. That is the "standard of abstract right and wrong" that is apparently taught in the American home. And it is perfectly obvious, on the face of it, that it is not a standard of abstract right or wrong at all. That is exactly what it is not. That is the very last thing any clear-headed person would call it. It is not a standard; it is not abstract; it has not the vaguest notion of what is meant by right and wrong. It is a chaos of social and sentimental accidents and associations, some of them snobbish, all of them provincial, but, above all, nearly all of them concrete and connected with a materialistic prejudice against particular materials. To have a horror of tobacco is not to have an abstract standard of right; but exactly the opposite. It is to have no standard of right whatever; and to make certain local likes and dislikes as a substitute. We need not be very surprised if the young man repudiates these meaningless vetoes as soon as he can; but if he thinks he is repudiating morality, he must be almost as muddle-headed as his father. And yet the writer in question calmly proposes that we should abolish all ideas of right and wrong, and abandon the whole human conception of a standard of abstract justice, because a boy in Boston cannot be induced to think that a nice girl is a devil when she smokes a cigarette.

This muddled thinking persists to this day.  There are still many who look upon even the moderate use of alcohol and tobacco as vices, in a country that countenances, among other things, promiscuity, sexual deviancy, abortion and euthanasia.  Indeed, it is practically a vice to regard a vice as a vice.  We really do not have a standard of right or wrong.  William F. Buckley, Jr. once commented: "You can take the most disorderly, self-indulgent twenty-one-year-old sailing; he may smoke pot in his cabin while fornicating, but he will not throw the trash overboard.  How come?"  It is a species of the "formless fanaticism" that Chesterton called the great danger of the American temperament.

The failure of Prohibition is attributed, at least by some, to the shortcomings of law enforcement; by others, to the shortcomings of men in general; but the fact is, despite its noble intentions, Prohibition deserved to fail.  Tonight, before I go to bed, I will pull a cork and drink a toast to the correction of this extravagant societal over-correction.

“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,

There’s always laughter and good red wine.

At least I’ve always found it so.

Benedicamus Domino!”

― Hilaire Belloc

Things I Am Thankful For, In No Particular Order

Squanto, Thanksgiving icon: Catholic.  FYI.

I am thankful for the ankle sprain I suffered in January.  There are few physical torments to compare with an ankle sprain, and I have suffered more than my share of ankle sprains; but this one saved me from a bad situation.  This is not to say that I want to sprain my ankle again, ever.

I am thankful for all the times I have not gotten my own way.  Have you ever stopped to consider the fact that disappointment is very often a sign of divine protection?  When you are attracted to someone of the opposite sex, say, and that person is not free to marry, or finds you repulsive, or suddenly disappears on you, that is God's protection.  When you don't get a job you really want, or even think you really need, that is God's protection, even though it looks like a catastrophe.  Thwarted plans are God's protection.  There is no greater disaster than eternal damnation, and so any disappointment, however terrible, is worth it if it saves us from that final and irreparable failure -- and that, really, is the ultimate purpose of these disappointments.  How many miseries I have been spared, and how many occasions of great sin I have been prevented from falling into, because of the times I was not allowed to have my own way!  Think of Michael Jackson.  There was a man who always had his own way, by means of his vast wealth, and it was his ruin.

Which reminds me that I am thankful not to have been a woman of great means up to now.  How I might have ruined myself with huge amounts of filthy lucre, especially in my younger days, I do not care to think.

I am thankful for all the difficult people I have to deal with at work.  They teach me patience and forbearance.

I am thankful for all the talents and personal qualities I wish I had, but don't -- see thankfulness for the times I didn't get my own way, above.

I am thankful for all the trials and tribulations and sufferings I have endured.  There is more merit in five minutes of suffering than in 20 years of pleasure.

Under that same category, I am thankful to be living in dangerous and uncertain times.  I do not want to live in such times: I would much rather live in a time of peace (i.e., order and justice) and stability.  But that is not the time I have been given to live in.  God wants me to live in these times; He is in charge; and He has His reasons.

What is your list of things you are thankful for?  It should include even the things you don't want to be thankful for.  The time will come when those will prove to be worth the most.

Terrible Is This Place

Bernini's baldocchino at St. Peter's Basilica.
Photo by Ricardo Andre Frantz.

Last Sunday, before Mass, I happened to open my 1962 Missal up to the Common of Saints, and my eye fell on these lines: 

Terribilis est locus iste: hic domus Dei est et porta coeli: et vocabitur aula Dei.

Terrible is this place: it is the House of God, and the gate of Heaven; and it shall be called the Court of God.

That is the antiphon from the Introit of the Mass for the Dedication of a Church in the Extraordinary Form.  "Terrible" here is used in its older sense of "awe-inspiring."  I looked around the cathedral and thought of those words ringing inside that space at its dedication 92 Easter Sundays ago.  I must confess that it increased my anger and sorrow at the thought of the mutilation of that beautiful cathedral in 1979, and indeed the similar desecration of many other old churches, brutally inflicted against the will of the laity who built them, and in accordance with notions falsely attributed to the Second Vatican Council.

The Collect of this Mass:

Deus, qui invisibiliter omnia contines, et tamen pro salute generis humani signa tuae potentiae visibiliter ostendis: templum hoc potentia tuae inhabitationis illustra, et concede; ut omnes, qui huc deprecaturi conveniunt, ex quacumque tribulatione ad te clamaverint, consolationis tuae beneficia consequantur.  

O God, Who, though unseen, upholdest all things, and yet for the salvation of mankind dost visibly show signs of Thy power: give glory to this temple by the might of Thy indwelling, and grant that all who in their deep distress shall come and call upon Thee here, may receive Thy goodly comfort.

Imagine a bishop chanting this stirring prayer in a tiny church in a poor, humble town -- a tiny church that is no less the House of God and Gate of Heaven than a cathedral.  Indeed, how much more the Mighty Indwelling must uphold it in its littleness.  The Gradual:

Locus iste a Deo factus est, inaestimabile sacramentum, irreprehensibilis est.  Deus, cui adstat Angelorum chorus, exaudi preces servorum tuorum.

This place was made by God, a priceless mystery, it is without reproof.  O God, before Whom stands the choir of angels, give ear to the prayers of Thy servants.

The Lesson of the Mass for the Dedication of a Church is from Chapter 21 of the Apocalypse, the vision of the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven; and the Gospel is the story of Zacheus from the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus declares that "this day is salvation come to this house."

I don't know how the dedication of a church goes according to the Mass of Paul VI, but I can see here one of the many reasons Pope Benedict XVI took the Traditional Mass out of mothballs.  We have gotten so casual and careless anymore about where we are when we are in church: we talk, we laugh, we dress like slobs, we let kids roughhouse in front of the tabernacle.  Priests and deacons behave in church as though they are merely at work and not inside a sacred space.  Of course, it doesn't help that many new churches are sterile and ugly, and do not appear to be in any way connected with religion.

Every new Latin Rite church should be dedicated according to the Extraordinary Form, and every Catholic should meditate on these propers, so that we can be reminded of just where we really are every Sunday, and how we ought to act there.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi

Once again, Sunday Mass featured a visiting priest who evidently thinks it's All About Him. Today's narcissism took the form of constantly interrupting the Mass -- even the Canon -- in order to insert commentaries.  Can somebody point out where in the Missal it says to do that?  Must the priest's private views, which I did not come to church to hear, constantly intrude on the Mass, which I did come to hear?  Why can't we just have -- the Mass?  

The incessant attention-seeking from today's celebrant put me in mind of a religious sister I heard speaking once, a high-ranking official in the diocese at the time, who was publicly lamenting the fact that the Church contumaciously refuses to ordain women (read: her) as priests.  It pained her so much, she said, that she could only do so much before people had to turn away from her and seek out a priest.  In other words, she wanted to be a priestess because she wanted (a) power, and (b) to be the center of attention.  This distorted view of the priesthood is wholly foreign to the mindset of a man with a legitimate vocation, who understand himself to be called to a life of service and self-sacrifice.

Then I thought: after decades of attending Holy Mass under the guise of a fourth-rate vaudeville act, can the wymynpriest crowd really be blamed for thinking the priesthood is the key to satisfying their cravings for the spotlight?  Have not priests themselves fostered this gross misconception; and is this not due in large part to what has been done to the liturgy?  Turn the priest toward the congregation and hook him up to a microphone, and of course he will think he's supposed to play to the crowd, and begin acting accordingly.  Next thing you know, Holy Mass is transformed from the highest act of worship to a show that the priest feels the need constantly to try to steal.  And just to make sure of an adoring crowd, the people in the pews are strictly regimented, while he gets away with doing whatever he wants, whatever the Missal may say -- a phenomenon we have reflected on in this space before.  Was the women's ordination movement as noisy and pestiferous before the changes to the Mass and the ensuing abuses as it is now?

The abuses in the liturgy that are now so widespread are themselves a symptom of deeper problems in the Church; but they are the proximate cause of doctrinal derailments, which foster chaos and moral impotence that ripple out into the world at large.  No wonder it is said that to save the liturgy is to save the world.

A Coup d'Etat Is Under Way

Pay close attention to Rep. Tom McClintock (R.-CA) as he appears on the floor of the House of Representatives on October 14th and explains how that walking, talking constitutional crisis, Barack Hussein Obama, is usurping Congress' borrowing powers under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, and threatening to precipitate a default on sovereign debt in violation of Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

This is nothing short of a coup d'etat, and a brazen violation of Obama's oath of office, such as the most lawless of his predecessors never dreamed of.  The man needs to be impeached.