A Treasure To Be Shared

Was there a shift in how humans understand themselves, their place in the world, and their relationship to the divine or the transcendent? Axial Age is a term coined by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers. It refers to broad changes in religious and philosophical thought that occurred in a variety of locations from about the 8th to the 3rd century BC.  According to Jaspers, during this period, universalizing modes of thought appeared in Persia, India, China, the Levant, and the Greco-Roman world, in a striking parallel development, without any obvious admixture between these disparate cultures. - Wikipedia Ancient Greece: philosophers like Thales questioned the nature of reality, while Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle developed ethical and metaphysical systems. Ancient Israel: the development of monotheism, with Yahweh as a transcendent creator God, and a focus on ethical conduct and individual relationship with God. Ancient India: the rise of Hinduism with its emphasis on karma, reb...

Shakespeare's  The Phoenix and the Turtle  was written soon after Anne Line's death. In her 1935 novel,  My Shakespeare, Rise! , Clara Longworth de Chambrun proposed that the poem is a eulogy commemorating Anne Line. Clara Longworth first suggested that St. Anne Line is Shakespeare's phoenix and Mark Barkworth, a Catholic priest who reportedly embraced her body as it hung on the scaffold before he was also executed, is the turtle. John Finnis and Patrick Martin argued more recently that St. Anne Line is the phoenix and her husband Roger is the turtle. (Clare Asquith has proposed)  that the "bird of loudest lay" represents the composer William Byrd, who was a Roman Catholic convert, and that the crow is the Catholic priest Rev. Henry Garnet, SJ. Martin Dodwell argued further that Shakespeare used St. Anne and Roger Line to symbolise the Catholic Church itself, as disinherited and rejected by England. Colin Wilson and Gerard Kilroy have proposed allusions to ...

Divine Worship: The Offertory (Form I) Then he takes the chalice, and offers it, slightly elevating it and saying in a low voice: We offer unto thee, O Lord, the chalice of salvation, beseeching thy mercy, that it may ascend in the sight of thy divine majesty as a sweet smelling savour for our salvation, and for that of the whole world. Amen. Commentary The priest offers God, on our behalf, the wine that God will be changed into the very Blood of Christ. Aware of the truly awesome reality at his hands, the priest calls upon God to extend His mercy so that the offering will be accepted by God and transformed by Him, becoming the "sweet smelling savour for our salvation". Though, not only for us, but for the salvation of the whole world. Our hope is in the Lord. Later in the Mass we will hear: TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND DRINK FROM IT, FOR THIS IS THE CHALICE OF MY BLOOD, THE BLOOD OF THE NEW AND ETERNAL COVENANT, WHICH WILL BE POURED OUT FOR YOU AND FOR MANY FOR THE FORGIVENES...

Divine Worship: The Offertory (Form I) Standing at the altar, the Priest takes the paten with the bread and holds it slightly raised above the altar with both hands, saying in a low voice: Receive, O holy Father, almighty and everlasting God, this spotless host, which I, thine unworthy servant, now offer unto thee, my living and true God, for my numberless sins, offences, and negligences; for all here present; as also for the faithful in Christ, both the quick and the dead, that it may avail for their salvation and mine, unto life everlasting. Amen. Commentary The priest-celebrant rightly acknowledges the sovereignty of God and immediately acknowledges his own unworthiness. Spoken in a low voice, this prayer ensures the priest-celebrant is not putting on airs to impress anyone, for no one but God, and perhaps the MC or a deacon, may hear the words spoken sotto voce. The priest-celebrant is not reminding God of anything God does not already know, namely our utter dependence upon Him for...

John Lydgate, monk and poet, enjoyed significant fame during his lifetime, at times exceeding the reputation of Chaucer. John Lydgate, (born c. 1370, Lidgate, Suffolk, Eng.—died c. 1450, Bury St. Edmunds?), English poet, known principally for long moralistic and devotional works. In his Testament Lydgate says that while still a boy he became a novice in the Benedictine abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, where he became a priest in 1397. He spent some time in London and Paris; but from 1415 he was mainly at Bury, except during 1421–32 when he was prior of Hatfield Broad Oak in Essex. Lydgate had few peers in his sheer productiveness; 145,000 lines of his verse survive. His only prose work, The Serpent of Division (1422), an account of Julius Caesar, is brief. His poems vary from vast narratives such as The Troy Book and The Falle of Princis to occasional poems of a few lines. Of the longer poems, one translated from the French, the allegory Reason and Sensuality (c. 1408) on the theme of ch...

Doctor Esolen, professor at Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts, New Hampshire, conducts an autopsy on the lifeless corpse of a bad lyric. https://www.crisismagazine.com/2019/the-bad-poetry-of-modern-hymnody Thanks be to God, we in the Personal Ordinariates, like our brethren in tradition-minded groups such as the FSSP and ICKSP, are blessed with the rightly ordered sensibility that music by composers of the highest order is required to be offered in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Even if a choir be of modest skill, the presentation of works of acknowledged greatness by such a group is far preferable to polished presentations of pop schlock. Of course, brilliance is not ignored in the Ordinariate. Au contraire! A loss of attention to beauty would permit banality and thus betray an important aspect of the English Patrimony, which is not to deprive people of the opportunity to worship God in the beauty of holiness (Ps. 96:9). De-Formed In the years prior to l...

Excerpts from The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson (1859–1907) I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes I sped; And shot, precipitated, Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears, From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbèd pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat—and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet— ‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’ [...] I knew all the swift importings On the wilful face of skies; I knew how the clouds arise Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings; All that’s born or dies Rose and drooped with; made them shapers Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine; With them joyed and was bereaven. I was heavy with the even, When she lit her glimmering tapers Round the day’s dead sanctit...