Good morning, digital neighbors! Blessed Sunday to all you Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants & Lurkers roaming about on the Report. Good morning to all my dear Misfits and Pham marching to their own beat at Phetasy! Hello again to the Free Thinkers and Questioners among the Outspoken, and finally to the ADD Irregulars, WSN Curators, Curmudgeons and Curmudgeonettas who make @Padre’s my favorite place to visit when I roam about the interwebs.
Autumn is still a bit fresh for much color, but I look forward to the coming weeks and hope the late-summer drought did not mute or kill off the colors. Time will tell, and it will be here soon enough. The cooler weather is a most welcome change. Hot or cold, rain or sun, day or night, whatever the time or the weather, days are made for gratitude, and Sundays are days of overflowing gratitude for God’s goodness.
Yesterday I had the occasion to bless a bookstore opening down the road. I wish Christy and her partner the best in their new venture, and I pray that one day there will be a resurgence of reading in our culture. Their new business has other activities and offerings, so I don’t think it will be completely reliant on book sales alone. It carries a mixture of all kinds of genres, with shelves of contemporary authors as well as a few shelves dedicated to the classics. They will have coffee and tea, and I may find myself visiting if for no other reason than to have a cup of coffee and make patrons wonder why there is a priest there.
There is a fair amount of “New Age” crystals, paraphernalia, and books of that variety that her co-owner advocates. There are books there that I would never read, but here is the great thing: I don’t have to! Not only that, but I also don’t have to give them any more attention than noticing them, dismissing them, and moving on to things I appreciate. Imagine that! I am sure the easily offended will find something to activate their irrational outrage. God bless all the people who substitute emotional drama for actual meaning in their lives. I can’t think of a poorer substitute for meaning than letting your emotions run your life, when they are meant to add to its depth and beauty, not replace reason and understanding. The “devil under every rock” crowd will probably not patronize the shop. There’s not enough God stuff in it to make it worth their time, except perhaps to complain and protest.
I hope Christy and her business partner will be the exception rather than the norm among new businesses, and that they succeed. If they can attract a dedicated group of readers and supporters of their other activities, like yoga, reading clubs, and socializing (the shop is a renovated biker bar and restaurant), they might build a business that survives and even thrives. I met her husband, Mike, just before I left. He is retired and now does custom car detailing for fun, and it was great meeting him. Neither is Catholic, but I am sure thankful to have met them, and I wish them the best. Off to a quote from G. K. Chesterton and then the “liturgy” prayer from Every Moment Holy that I prayed with Christy when I blessed the shop.
“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.” — G. K. Chesterton
Author of Life and Author of My Life,
As I begin the reading of this book, give me a sensitivity to listen, not just to the story told, but to the responses of my own heart to what I encounter in these pages.
What does it draw out of me?
What joy?
What longing?
What fears?
What temptation?
What hope?
What mirth?
What love of beauty?
What awe?
What wonder?
What doubt?
What faith?
What resolve?
What unfinished grief?
What untended wound?
Give me ears to hear, O Spirit of God, what notes the reading of this story would strike and what melody it would draw forth from the tuned strings of my own soul.
Waste no moment in my brief years, O Lord. Let all things, and this book as well, be as tools in Your hands, to shape me and make me more truly Your own, more fitly a child of the hope of the restoration of all things in Christ, whose fullness dwells within them.
So let the honest responses of my heart to this reading grant new insight into the story Your grace is already telling in my own life, that I might be a more willing co-laborer in that process. Amen.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
