What Does The Prayer Really Say?
W D T P R S

I am sure you already know that today, in the new calendar, is the feast of St. Alphonsus Maria de’Liguori, the bishop and doctor of the Church so famous for his contributions to moral theology.

However, today is also the feast of the Seven Maccabee brothers.  They are listed in the Martyrologium Romanum . Here is their entry:

2. Commemoratio passionis sanctorum septem fratrum martyrum, qui Antiochiae in Syria, sub Antiocho Epiphane rege, propter legem Domini invicta fide servatam, morti crudeliter traditi sunt cum matre sua, in singulis quidem filiis passa, sed in omnibus coronata, sicut in secundo libro Maccabaeorum narratur. Item commemoratur sanctus Eleazarus, unus de primoribus scribarum, vir aetate provectus, qui in eadem persecutione, illicitam carnem manducare propter vitae amorem respuens, gloriosissimam mortem magis quam odiosam vitam complectens, voluntarie praeivit ad supplicium, magnum virtutis relinquens exemplum.

Maybe some of you good readers can produce your flawless English versions for those whose Latin is less smooth.

Who were the Maccabee brothers? 

The Maccabees were Jews who rebelled against the Hellenic Seleucid dynasty in the time of Antiochus V Eupator. The Maccabees founded the Hasmonean dynasty and fought for Jewish independence in Israel from 165-63 BC. In 167 BC, Mattathias revolted against the Greek occupiers by refusing to worship the Greek gods. He killed a Hellenizing Jew who was willing to offer a sacrifice to the Greek gods. Mattathias and his five sons fled to the wilderness of Judea. Later Mattathias’s son Judas Maccabaeus led an army against the Seleucids and won. He entered Jerusalem, cleansed the Temple, and reestablished Jewish worship. Hanukkah commemorates this victory. In the period 167-164 BC Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-163) killed and sold thousands of Jews into slavery. He violated the Jewish holy sites and set up an altar to Zeus in the Holy of Holies (1 Maccabees 1:54; Daniel 11:31). The people revolted and Antiochus responded with slaughter. He required under penalty of death that Jews sacrifice to the gods and abandon kosher laws. "Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment" (Hebrews 11:35-36). A chief of the scribes, Eleazar, an old man, did not flee. Pork was forced on him, into his mouth, he spat it out and was then condemned to death.

St. Ambrose, in his work On Jacob and the blessed life recounts Eleazar’s death along with the deaths of seven sons of a mother. The work is filled with Neo-platonic and Stoic themes, especially about virtue theory. Ambrose goes through all their deaths in detail, making commentary on them for what they meant.

The mother is venerated by the Greeks as St. Solomnis.

St. Ambrose, in his work On Jacob and the blessed life recounts Eleazar’s death along with the deaths of seven sons of a mother. The work is filled with Neo-platonic and Stoic themes, especially about virtue theory. Ambrose goes through all their deaths in detail, making commentary on them for what they meant.

In these scenes recounted by Ambrose from IV Maccabees, the mother is being tried by being forced to watch each of here sons executed in different ways, eldest to youngest. She urges them not to give in. Ambrose thus explores the theme of how God choses the weak and makes them strong. The ancient "priest" Eleazar should be weak and infirm due to age, but he is a tower of strength. The mother of the seven boys should be weak by nature but is unshakable.  The sons are not to be moved to infidelity, even the youngest.

Here is a taste of Ambrose in De Iacob et vita beata II, 12:

The words of the holy woman return to our minds, who said to her sons: "I gave birth to you, and poured out my milk for you: do not lose your nobility." Other mothers are accustomed to pull their children away from martyrdom, not to exort them to martyrdom. But she thought that maternal love consisted in this, in persuading her sons to gain for themselves an eternal life rather than an earthly life. And thus the pius mother watched the torment of her sons … But her sons were not inferior to such a mother: they urged each other on, speaking with one single desire and, I would say, like an unfurling of their souls in a battleline.

The texts from Ambrose are really interesting.

In the wake of stories about how Heath Ledger played the "Joker" in the new Batman movie will be one of the best/worst villains in the talkies, I started thinking about really creepy villains in movies I either have on my shelf in some form, or which immediately come clearly to my mind.

I have to separate them into humanoid and non-humanoid and just plain fun.

They have to be really creepy, evil, not just someone’s nemesis, like Lex Luthor to Superman (though the fellow in TV’s Smallville is getting there little by little).

Human and pretty much like a human:

Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil (Glen Close – Dangerous Liasons – ghastly evil wicked person – always leaves me upset, came to my mind first)

Archibald Cunningham (Tim Roth – Rob Roy – ghastly evil wicked person – always leaves me upset – really glad when he dies)

Hannibal Lecter (brrrrrrr Anthony Hopkins – The Silence of the Lambs, etc. and don’t forget Jaime Gumb… shoot him again, Agent Starling!!)

Warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton – The Shawshank Redemption – I would like him to go to prison, if you know what I mean, along with Clancy Brown as Captain Hadley)

... there are some wackos…

Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins – Psycho – who loves his mom, however)

John Doe (Kevin Spacey – Se7en – now this is seriously creepy – hard to top this guy)

... thugs abound …

Viktor Komorovsky (Rod Steiger – Dr. Zhivago – and dedicated Commies too, lots of them)

Michael Corleone (Al Pacino – The Godfather Part II - a deadly hypocrite)

... and, always bad, Nazis! Except when they are funny (see below) ....

Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes – Schindler’s List … sorry, Voldemort is not creepy enough … yet)

Dr. Christian Szell (Lawrence Olivier – Marathon Man … zzzzZZZZZZzzzeeeeeZzzzzz … ‘nuf said?)

The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton – well…. you know – along with people who hate dogs in movies)

speaking of witches…

The Queen (Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs – with dishonorable mention to Maleficent)

White Witch (Tilda Swinton – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – and anyone else who tries to screw up Christmas – like Mr. Potter and The Grinch (see below) )

Messala (Stephen Boyd – Ben-Hur – really mean)

Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – reminds me of some women religious I have suffered from over the years, like the nun who runs a certain press office I know)

Frank Nitty (Billy Drago – The Untouchables – oh ya… Al Capone too)

... and to stay with the alliteration…

Fanny Ferras Dashwood (Harriet Walter – Sense and Sensibility – what a rhymes with witch)

Darth Vader... who needs no additional defense or specification

Non-human

The Terminator (need I say more?)

Gollum (Lord of the Rings)

The Borg Queen (Alice Krige – Star Trek: First Contact)

The Dragon (Reign of Fire)

Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving – The Matrix)

The Cigarette Company (The Insider)

The Alien (Alien, etc. ... kicks the Predator’s butt)

The Alien Egg and Really Fast Contents (Alien, etc. – perhaps the creepiest critter in any movie)

HAL (2001 – A Space Odyssey)

Stinky Telepathic Critters With Dreadlocks (Independence Day)

The Asteroids (Armagedon and… it was a busy year… Deep Impact)

The Weather Fronts (A Perfect Storm)

The demon (The Exorcist)

Satan (The Passion of the Christ – see above)

Fun (well, aren’t they all? Except that last one?)

Sarris (Galaxy Quest)

Syndrome (The Incredibles)

Dr. Evil (Austin Powers)

Willy Bank (Al Pacino – Ocean’s Thirteen)

Khan (Star Trek… whatever it was… Wrath of Khan)

Bill (David Carradine – Kill Bill 1 & 2)

Edward Rooney (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)

The Grinch

Major Arnold Toht (Raiders of the Lost Ark)

The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (along with ZUUUUUL! (no relation) – Ghost Busters)

Captain Hook (Peter Pan)

Okay… there are some ideas.

I imagine you are itching to add your own really bad villains… from movies mind you.

Go ahead!  Eventually I will try to come up with my Very Worst and also Funnest lists.

Jesus said:

You serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of hell?

(Matthew 23:33)

You who are reading this might not be a "viper"... or even an asp… but this shows that Jesus thought hell existed and that it is very possible to go there.

Yes, folks, it is possible to go to hell.

As a matter of fact, it isn’t very hard at all.

Some will reject the merits of Christ, His offering to confirm us as heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. 

It is possible to kill the life of grace in the soul. 

When you die, you will be judged with the first judgment by the Judge who is justice itself, but who is also mercy incarnate.

His judgment we will have whether we want it or not. 

His mercy we must beg.

And He will give it swiftly.

When you go to confession and confess all your mortal sins in both number and kind, they are forgiven, removed from your soul, they are no more, they are taken away.

Though your sins be as red as scarlet, they will be made as white as snow.

Again, they are taken away by the Blood of the Lamnb.  They are not merely covered over, or set aside or over looked, as the deadly error of the Protestants has it.

When you sins are forgiven by a priest with valid orders and faculties to absolve they are no more and will never be held against you at your judgment.

"... et ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis…"

"... I absolve you from your sins…"

When was the last time your heard those words?

It may be that at death you will not have done adequate penance for the sins you committed and confessed and which were forgiven by Christ through the priest.

It may be that you have attachment for sins.

In this case, the mercy of God is even more beautifully extended to us.

Can we imagine a binary end of our lives?  Either die in absolute perfection, having done all necessary penance and having no attachment to sin or, on the other hand, die with even the smallest imperfection and therefore passing to the eternity of hell, with its perpetual physical and spiritual agony?

And so God permits those who die in His friendship but with imperfections to be purified and cleansed of their final flaws so that, when the moment is right, the soul may pass into the bliss of heaven and the beatific vision… forever.  

Once you are in hell, no one can vote you out.

But we can "vote" people out of the state of purgatory with our votive offerings and penances and into heaven by taking on some of their penance, by praying for them, by having Masses said. 

We are in this together.

What was the last time you did penance or sought an indulgence or had a Mass said for someone who died or the souls in purgatory?

Imagine the first five seconds of heaven, the greetings given you by those whom you aided to enter more swiftly in to the presence of God, all luminous in the beatific vision.

Now imagine the the first five seconds of hell… the shock of realizing where you are.

When we do things for the least of Christ’s brethren, we do them for Christ.  Souls of purgatory are also in need of your care.

During this long stretch of Sundays of Ordinary Time, of the Time after Pentecost, do not forget the basics of your Catholic identity.

We confess our sins regularly, because Catholics love God, fear hell and know neither the day no the hour of our death and judgment.

We do penance, especially on Fridays, because we Catholics pray for ourselves and others, especially the dead.

It has been a while since I have posted on the Sabine Farm.  I have been out and around and, then, busy.

Dawn.



From time to time the heavens open and it pours rain.

We actually wee more rain right now.



The raspberries are coming in so fast that I can’t pick enough and stay ahead.



Blueberries too.



Neither a raspberry nor a blueberry.



Sometimes a delivery truck swoops in with surprises. ... often involving more to read.

When you use my Amazon wish list, you tend to keep me buried in reading.



The other day I was terribly down about something.  Anyway… I got in the car and took a drive around various country roads with all the windows down and the music turned up.

Eventually I made my way to a little park where the rocks and river are nice.










Back at the Sabine Farm again, ....



Flowers flourish.



I don’t know what these are, but they are cool looking.



Someone once posted on one of these Sabine updates a recommendation that we should have a Sabine apiary.

Now we have a Sabine apiary… a very active apiary.



Oopps… wrong century.

This was shot with a big lens.



Bees help with the flowers and the veg, fruit trees, et al. I am sure.

I wonder about candles later… hmmm….

In the meantime, things are blooming nicely.  I cut hollyhocks for the chapel the other day.



But the Sabine Farm, to be true to its spirit and the original inspiration by the great poet, must have some grape vines.



PENJING REPORT!

Both Penjing and Irohamomiji are doing very well.

Penjing seems to thrive in the full sunlight of the long afternoons.  Irohamomiji, being much larger, needs to be watched, lest the shallow soil dry out too much.

An early morning constitutional.



I have to figure out how to trim Irohamomiji soon.



After full days, when the agenda list is pretty much complete (I go by the 8/10 rule), when the ball game is on (watching the Twins beat the White Sox last night was a pleasure, on the deck, with a cigar – I drag a TV out and patch it in to a cable or use a laptop and the Slingbox – a material proof that God loves us)...

... the vistas can be very nice indeed.



In any event, the day concludes with Compline in the Sabine chapel …



Then it’s off to read Ambrose or Augustine until late.

When big events in a pontificate have come and gone, it is good to return after a time and do a little analysis.  To that end there is an interesting article in the Muswellbrook Chronicle.

My emphases and comments.

From a theologian to Pope of the people [I have a bit of a problem with this dichotomy, but we’ll leave that for now.]
21/07/2008 12:00:01 AM

World Youth Day under Sydney’s limpid blue skies has opened a new chapter in the story of Pope Benedict XVI, one which seasoned Vatican observers describe as a turning point in his papacy.  [Hmm… well see what they have to say about this.]

The shy professor of theology turned cardinal, chief inquisitor [they just can’t resist, can they] and keeper of the Catholic faith has shown the first glimpse of a mass communicator in the making [despite the fact of having published a couple dozen books and having been a teacher, priest and diocesan bishop.  Seriously, publishing and going in front of large crowds, the size a POPE gets, are very different.] – one whose DNA may not be infused with the star power of John Paul II but who has now, even if reluctantly, embraced the need to engage directly with his 1.2 billion global followers.  [It is interesting that so many people affirm that lots of people went to see John Paul II, but they go to hear Pope Benedict.]

"It is in Sydney that this Pope has truly learnt his job," said Andreas Englisch yesterday. Englisch, a German author, journalist and member of the Vatican press corps since 1986, has written seven books, including two on Pope John Paul II and one on Benedict XVI.  [I wonder.  It seems to me that his trip to the USA may have done that, to a certain extent.  Remember that incredible address he gave to young people at Dunwoody.]

"Ratzinger is a theologian. He knows his church but he knew it through books, through his writing, from his study but not from the people. In Australia, even more than in the United States, he has learnt the church from his people … they do not want to be kept at arm’s length.  [Perhaps that lesson was learned in the USA and then put into practice in Sydney.  Also, I don’t buy the premise that the Pope didn’t know the Church "from the people".  We mustn’t forget that the Pope was a parish priest, then a teacher, a university professor, then a diocesan bishop.  Sounds like John Paul II.  But no one says JPII didn’t know the Church "from the people".  I think there is a dichotomy at work here, which we see raise its ugly head all too often when discussing the Church these days.]

"In Cologne in 2006, 1.5 mill-ion people lined the Rhine to see him. He spoke only to the young people on the boat with him … there was no effort to wave, to smile, to acknowledge all those that came out to see him … There was much criticism of him, even from his bishops. Here in Sydney it has been different, completely different."  [And the crowd about a third of the size as that of Cologne?]

Pope Benedict, born and bred in the cold of Bavaria, [?!?] seems to have thawed in Australia.

When he faced the first phalanx of television cameras and microphones on board the flight to Sydney from Rome seven days ago he looked transfixed, hesitant in demeanour and rusty in English, the language of his soon-to-be hosts in Australia.  [Okay… you get up in front of a "phalanx" of journalists, knowing you are going to have questions is various languages and see what you look like.  And, by the way, how did John Paul II handle that?  Oh right… he didn’t.  He didn’t do what Pope Benedict has done from the beginning of his pontificate: wherever he goes he holds conferences and fields questions and answers them extemporaneously.]

"He was faced by a battery of cameras and lights … he is not at his best in a crowd, he looked like a deer caught in a spotlight," another veteran Vatican specialist on board the flight said.

"But just a few days later, if you talked to those 12 kids who had lunch with him at St Mary’s, you would not know it was the same man," she said.  [For pity’s sake… of course.  Again, he spent a lot of his life teaching young people rather than hanging out in front of cameras with journalists.]

"He laughed, he relaxed, he played with the stress ball that one of the American kids gave him. Theatrics go against his nature, but he has learnt here to play his audience [Or maybe it was…. genuine?] … even to punch his applause lines, to listen, to time delivery with them." [Again, they assume he didn’t know what a joke was before?  I can tell you from my own dealings with him years back that he always had a wonderful sense of humor and could kid around.]

In the past seven days the Pope, a man of undisputed fierce intellect and steadfast theological position, has gradually allowed a different part of his personality to emerge. At last he has provided a glimpse of the man behind the mitre.  [Ah… finally.]

At Government House, during his first official outing after resting at Kenthurst, the Pope was led through a review of the troops – an Australian protocol for a visiting head of state but one that departed entirely with papal tradition. It was clear from the Pope’s demeanour that he was unsure of what was expected of him – even mildly embarrassed – as the navy, army and air force military bands waited at attention and he was led past each one.

"It is simply not a papal thing to do … I think it has only ever happened once or twice, usually in small African nations," said a senior Vatican reporter and veteran of 19 papal trips.

"He is never made to walk past like that … but it was obviously local tradition, and so he stopped each time, he waved; he obviously seemed to want to make a human connection."  [Of course.]

According to his spokesman, the Jesuit priest Padre Federico Lombardi, the previous pope, John Paul II, had come from a pastoral tradition. [Or maybe they are just different men?] "All of us see the difference in their personalities, the difference in their approach to people. You only need to watch them to see that difference. 

"I think that for John Paul II this [a World Youth Day event] was a very spontaneous thing. He also had a personal past in pastoral work with youth. He used to take canoe trips, nature walks in forests with them. His gestures, his ripostes to curious questions [from youth] were all spontaneous.

"Pope Benedict XVI was a university professor. You can see that too in the way he imparts his speeches, his relationships, the way he expresses himself and so on … he has a rapport with the young but is more shaped by his students. I think though that he has shown a great willingness to live this new pastoral experience, which he inherited from his predecessor but which he has now infused with his own characteristics, of simplicity, of humility and availability to all."  [This is good.]

Padre Lombardi said what was most visible in Sydney was the Pope’s direct participation with young people and that he allowed himself to become involved.

The changes observed in the Pope during his Australian trip are particularly significant as no cardinal of the Roman curia had ever enjoyed the celebrity status – but as an intellectual not a populist – enjoyed by Joseph Ratzinger in Europe when he was cardinal.

According to John Allen, the Pope’s unauthorised biographer, the then Cardinal Ratzinger’s fame "transcended the borders of church life; [making him] a bona fide public figure with a cultural profile similar to [the conservative commentator and writer] William F. Buckley jnr’s in the United States."  [Fair enough.]

In his biography, which the Vatican did not receive warmly as it meticulously and critically analyses Joseph Ratzinger’s dramatic evolution from early libertarian theologian to arch-conservative, Allen points out that in German newspaper polls at the time he was cardinal, Ratzinger came in the top 30 of German’s most important and powerful nationals. He was placed ahead of the then head of the German central bank and even the tennis player Steffi Graf.

Allen’s final analysis rejects critics who portray the Pope as a man driven only by fear – of losing power, of women, of sex, of modernity. He argues that the very few people who know the man, and even those who disagree with his theological positions, describe him differently: "… He is a refined man with a lively sense of humour, [indeed yes] not someone working out his personal pathologies through the power of his office," [like progressivists and feminists… but I digress] he writes. When asked once, on Bavarian television, what he was afraid of, Allen writes that his quick-witted response was "I’m afraid only of the dentist".  [Sounds like a pretty good one-liner to me, and that was even before he learned in Sydney how to make jokes.]

On Sydney Harbour, during a welcome usually afforded rock stars, the Pope surprised many when he moved out of the papal entourage and ensconced himself at the front of the boat, looking as excited as the teenagers who flocked around him.

Similarly, his triumphant tournee around the racecourse at Randwick yesterday was markedly populist and warm. His security men turned a blind eye to the many babies and toddlers thrust through the open window for the Pope to kiss.  [Perhaps another things learned in the USA where the security detail was truly stiffling, I understand.]

The only real criticism of the week revolved around the complexity of his homily at the Saturday night vigil on the St Augustine’s theology of the Holy Spirit. [Here again is that ugly dichotomy.]

Some youngsters found the teachings impenetrable, and even Padre Lombardi, in a flash of great humour, admitted that he and others who had read the homily found it difficult "on first impression". [Really?]

But that, he said, was a good measure of this Pope. "It was his choice, to choose issues that invite reflection, that require work to understand, that may need you to come back and return to them to seek clarity. There are other things that he might have said that might glean greater applause … but they would not have stimulated thought."   [The best paragraph of the whole article.  Lombardi nailed it.  Well done.]

Here is my problem.

Often on this blog I have made the observation that there is prevalent a dichotomy between "pastoral" and "intellectual".  If you are one, you can’t be the other.

And in this dichotomy, the "pastoral" is nearly always exalted at superior, in such a way that to be "pastoral" often winds up fostering an anti-intellectual condescension.

This is a common trait in many clerics, I’m afraid.

I see Pope Benedict breaking down this dichotomy, which is causing some people to scratch their heads in confusion.