Good morning, digital neighbors! Blessed Sabbath and Saturday to all you fine souls milling about on Substack and Locals in the various communities I visit and enjoy, especially my home crew at Padre's. I hope all of you had a wonderful week while I was away at the Lake of the Ozarks. The weather was great, perhaps even a bit too warm, but the mornings and evenings were outstanding autumn weather with that crisp tone. Buckle up: TL:DR is on the way.!
The late-summer drought continues. I doubt it will be a colorful autumn for any trees; they mostly look either green or that yellowish tinge of distress. I suspect this will be a "brown and down" kind of autumn with barely any vibrancy. Time will tell. At least Unsplash will provide some wonderful autumn photography. That is where most of my photos come from, with the photographer credited.
The main presentation of the week was Dr. Scott Hahn's six lectures on the Road to Emmaus as a paradigm for understanding the Sacred Scriptures and the Eucharistic Church that celebrates them. I am sure I will break it open in some of these morning missives, but in short, it explains Jesus' curious conversation with the two on the road and how He opened the Tanakh for them. In doing so, He reveals what we have believed as Christians from our earliest days: "The New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old is made manifest in the New."
It is astounding that so many Christians do not know or love the Tanakh. We believe God is faithful to His promises; how will you know what they are if you never bother to meditate on them? The God of our imagination is so small compared to the Giver of the Word and the Maker of Covenants. God gets reduced to a "gimme-machine," a Cosmic Santa who must fulfill our desires to earn our attention. I know that is not what many active disciples believe, but it is the whisper the Enemy slips into our thoughts all the time.
The Liar and his minions would have us believe that a loving God would seek to fulfill our will, rather than have us delight in His will. The Liar and his minions would have us believe that a loving God would let no harm or trial befall His children if He really loved them. The Liar would have us believe that creation is about us, when it only involves us. We are privileged guests invited to the table of life and the feast of faith. We are not irrelevant, but we are not first, not even second. Third is a good place for the faithful people of the Covenant that began with Abraham and, as Christians believe, reaches fulfillment in the Word made Flesh.
I leave you with a meditation from St. John Henry Newman, whose feast day was yesterday and whom I mentioned in the Humbuggery chat after returning to the parish. It is a great reflection on faith and acceptance; I hope I can one day match its intent.
God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission—I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.
Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an archangel in his—if, indeed, I fail, He can raise another, as He could make the stones children of Abraham. Yet I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.
He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.
Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us.
He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me—still He knows what He is about.
Autumn sunlight - Johannes Plenio - Unsplash
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.”
