Gloria In Profundis

GLORIA IN PROFUNDIS

G.K. Chesterton

There has fallen on earth for a token
A god too great for the sky.
He has burst out of all things and broken
The bounds of eternity:
Into time and the terminal land
He has strayed like a thief or a lover,
For the wine of the world brims over,
Its splendour is spilt on the sand.

Who is proud when the heavens are humble,
Who mounts if the mountains fall,
If the fixed stars topple and tumble
And a deluge of love drowns all-
Who rears up his head for a crown,
Who holds up his will for a warrant,
Who strives with the starry torrent,
When all that is good goes down?

For in dread of such falling and failing
The fallen angels fell
Inverted in insolence, scaling
The hanging mountain of hell:
But unmeasured of plummet and rod
Too deep for their sight to scan,
Outrushing the fall of man
Is the height of the fall of God.

Glory to God in the Lowest
The spout of the stars in spate-
Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest
And the lightning fears to be late:
As men dive for sunken gem
Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,
The fallen star has found it
In the cavern of Bethlehem.

It all started with Chuck, asking me if I could just explain one line of this poem:

For the wine of the world brims over,
Its splendour is spilt on the sand.

To which I said:

Chesterton is talking about the beauty of the world, the "wine" of the world, the gifts of the earth and all its beauty and splendor, and being spilt on the sand, I believe he is saying that we don't know what we've got, we don't appreciate the beauty we have, it's wasted on us who are blind to it (for the most part). We do occasionally partake of the wine of the world, glory in a sunset, stop and wonder at the beauty of a landscape, smell the roses, etc. But most of our lives, that beauty is wasted on us: spilt on the sand.

To which Chuck luckily said, tell me more. So, I asked some other Chestertonians, and a few who are poets, and got some great responses, which I have to share with you, and especially during this time of Advent, when this all seems so profound, as it were.

Peter said:

it is rather like things in The Everlasting Man.... maybe this is a poetic version extended into the prose of The Everlasting Man .... the idea that even pagan Rome, victorious over Carthage, could not fix the Fall. The sand makes me think of the Arena (Latin arena = English sand) see GKC's poem of that name - the scene of battle and death was converted by She who saw her Son die... the paradox in "She whose name is Seven Sorrows and the Cause of all our Joy"...

And Chris said:

I'm really not sure what to say here, except that in the context of the poem, GKC is saying that earthly, material pleasures don't count for much in the long run, since they are innately ephemeral and sometimes self-destructive. Wines can "brim over" when they're improperly stored or contaminated, making them impossible to pour neatly (such as when a heated bottle of champagne is opened- it makes an awful mess). Wines can become unstable due to gaseous accumulation, producing awful smells. "The wine of the world" could contrast with, say, the transubstantiated wine used in the Eucharist.

Sheila said:

had not read this poem before, so I pulled out my Collected Works volume and looked it up. It's amazing! I think I will blog on the complete thing tomorrow. But, in answer to the question about the one line about the wine of the world: I think the "wine of the world" is supposed to be its pleasures and delights. These Chesterton always acknowledged as great things--hence the word "splendour". But he always said we should thank God for wine by not drinking too much of it. When these worldly pleasures are excessive, they overflow their bounds and, as a result, are lost and wasted. A good portion of his book about St. Francis of Assisi discusses this very topic -- how, at the beginning of Christianity, hedonism was at a height, and the only cure for it was asceticism. When the pleasures of the world had been purged of their excess, they could be enjoyed again.

And Rob said:

The whole poem is in praise of humility, using Chesterton's favorite upside down imagery. The main idea is the humility of the Incarnation, contrasted with the pride of the fallen angels. In the first verse, there is a series of contrasting images of something great which God is greater than, and something humble which He is become humbler than: too great for the sky / fallen on earth, burst the bonds of eternity / into the terminal land. The wine and the sand line is one of these. The wine of the world is the same as the blood that is spilt, meaning the sacrament of the Eucharist, and the wine of the world running over is a reference to Psalm 32, so this is the exalted half of the image, whereas the blood spilt of the sand--I say it's a reference to the scourging at the pillar, my father thinks it might be to the martyrdoms and the sand spread on arena floors, though there's no reason it couldn't suggest both--is the humble half.

So then find those same pairs throughout the poem: in the second verse, note that this juxtaposition is what makes the proud ridiculous. In the third, note the reversal of the contrast in the fallen angels: desire to be exalted drives them to debase themselves. In the final verse note the result of all these inversions is the nativity. Note also the first line is an English translation of the title.

Which I think ties it all in nicely.

Thanks, Chuck, for this interesting question, and thanks Chestertonian folks, for providing such insightfully wonderful answers.

O Antiphons (con't)

O Radiant Dawn,
splendor of eternal light,
sun of justice:
come, shine on those who dwell
in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Antiphons (con't)

O Key of David,
O royal Power of Israel
controlling at your will the gate of heaven:
come, break down the prison walls of death
for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death;
and lead your captive people into freedom.

Thank you, Dr. Thursday.

Dr Thursday's Third Thursday in Advent Post

Three Thursdays of Advent - a Trinity of Christmas Truths:
3. The Shepherds (and the Angels)

again with a subtitle:

News - and not N's

That last character is not an English N, but the capital Greek "nu". For we shall start with a bit of language lesson today:

Angel, ankle, anchor, sphinx
Are joined by Chestertonian links
There, gamma gives us nu's effects
Preceding G, K, C, or X.

Of course the person who wrote that is not very Greek-literate, or he would have written the last line differently. It ought to say "preceding gamma, kappa, chi, or xi". But then he would have had to change the rhyme, and the rhythm... well, it does not pay to criticise a poet. Besides, it's fun to see that G, K, C there. Uh-oh.

Eee-oo, Eee-oo.
"Yes, ossifer, I was rhyming without a license again..."
"Pay your bail,
Or it's off to jail."

Ahem. (Sorry, I got carried away. Christmas, Greek, and so forth...) Yes, in Greek, a gamma before these four letters (gamma, kappa, chi, xi) has the effect of a nu, or at least a nasalizing. Ask your neighbourhood Greek scholar if you want to know more.

I bring up this odd little effect of the Greek gamma, because I hunted up the word "angel" in my splendid GIGANTIC copy of Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. It weighs maybe 10 pounds, and is over 3.5 inches thick... whew! But as Greek scholars will point out, you will NOT find "angel" (OK, actually "angelos") if you hunt under alpha, nu, gamma... that's not how it's spelled. It's spelled aggeloV - that is, alpha, gamma, gamma, epsilon, lambda, omicron, sigma. Two gammas, but but it still sounds like angelos. It means, simply, "messenger" or "envoy". The related word angelia means "message", whether the substance (the information) or the conveyance (the media).

Why am I bothering about some abstruse detail about the word "angel" when I am supposed to be talking about the SHEPHERDS?

Well, partly because of what GKC pointed out about this matter. All too often, there is a loss of perspective in the matter of shepherds - especially when considered next to angels, which is where we really need to consider them:

...the more the artists learned of realism and perspective, the less they could depict at once the angels in the heavens and the shepherds on the hills, and the glory in the darkness that was under the hills.[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:305]

Hence, if we really want to know more about the shepherds, we have to know more about the angels, and what it was that was happening, there in the fields, during the night shift. (No we are NOT going to see them dancing on the pinheads. Not today. There's a form to be filled out if you want that.)
Read more.
First, and it bears repeating - an "angel" is NOT simply a "kind" of being - it is a being who is holding, or carrying out an office - specifically a messenger. The correct term for them is "Spirit" - specifically Good Spirit, to distinguish from those we glimpsed last week. Even though we have some hints, we don't quite know how else they occupy themselves - it seems every time we see them they are delivering a message to somebody. Kind of God's FedEx. One place where it seems we catch them out-of-uniform was in the vision of Isaias:

And they [angels] cried one to another, and said: "Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, all the earth is full of his glory." [Is 6:3]

Uh, oh. Nope. Read it again. It says they cried ONE TO ANOTHER. They're such perfect messengers when they're not busy, they keep in practice sending the same message over and over again to each other! And why not? The statement "The Lord God of hosts is holy, holy, holy" is perhaps the most sublime of all truths. It ought to be repeated. If we understood it - and angels, not having to bother with school and study and research and forgetting, and all that, certainly understand it. As I was saying, if we understood it, we would know it is not just a simple quibble like "2+2=4" or "the sun rises in the east" or whatever. For in this statement is contained infinite depth of truth which only God himself knows completely. Hence the angels, as they stand before him, gaze into this infinity and see more and more, and are moved to say it again and again, in utter and total joy. And there is no joy like the joy of satisfaction of grasping a truth!

Now, where do the shepherds come in?

Well. You see, there was this Roman poet Virgil. He wrote about shepherds, and country scenes. People had gotten citified with all that Roman stuff, and forgotten their roots: a simple people who worried about keeping their kitchen fire burning, their crops growing, their livestock increasing... Ah (you can imagine them sighing) back then we were HAPPY. Curious. The Latin word "felix" usually translated "happy" is derived from "fecund" - a crop-growing word - it first meant "fruitful". (It may be a shock to learn that fetus and female and related words come from the same root.) Virgil, as you may know, wrote a sequel to Homer (yeah, it's been happening for over 2000 years) called "The Aeneid". He also wrote a bunch of poems called the Bucolics, or Eclogues. (I always mix up if there are two sets or just two names.) One of these, the Fourth Eclogue, is perhaps the most famous poem in the world. I wrote about it previously, and GKC talks about it in our main reference (CW2:292, 307-8) But here I mention it not to explore it, but just to point out that the other big piece of the puzzle - the one not among our three present topics of study, which is Rome - was quite aware of a certain importance of shepherds - not just as the lowly people necessary if one wants wool and lambchops, but as forming an important element, and a simple (and HAPPY=felix) one, as part of the Roman thing.

There was also a Hebrew poet who we first hear about watching his sheep. He ended up getting another job - hard to say if it was a promotion, but he kept on writing poems in any case. One of the most famous of his poems is often quoted as a great prayer for peace, in which case either the quoter hasn't really read it, or he doesn't know much about life as a shepherd. I mean, of course, David, who later became King of Israel, and his psalm about how the Lord is his shepherd. It contains one of the most militant phrases in all the psalms: "For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me." [PS 22(23):4] And this provides the critical link to our topic of last week: How on earth can a shepherd guarantee peace to his flock if he is unarmed? But our Lord is the Lord of Armies, the God of Battles. David fought with God's help, attained victory over the enemies of Israel (remember Goliath? There was a lot more after that) and established peace. He knew what being a shepherd required.

Now that we've reviewed these two items, we come to the shepherds who "were in the same country, keeping night watch" that night when Jesus was born. Here we could get into the discussion of how that means it wasn't winter, or how there could not be snow, etc., etc. I am not going to go there, except to mention how it snowed when Gilbert and Frances visited Jerusalem in 1919. [See The New Jerusalem CW20:238]

Recalling that GKC had actually been to the Holy Land, then, let us now hear how GKC considered the shepherds. He gets to the matter in one of his penetrating insights, which is tied in to our discussion previously about how Christmas is the "invasion" from Heaven. And, like the Hobbits, there's a riddle involved:

...in the riddle of Bethlehem it was heaven that was under the earth.

There is in that alone the touch of a revolution, as of the world turned upside down. It would be vain to attempt to say anything adequate, or anything new, about the change which this conception of a deity born like an outcast or even an outlaw had upon the whole conception of law and its duties to the poor and outcast. It is profoundly true to say that after that moment there could be no slaves. There could be and were people bearing that legal title until the Church was strong enough to weed them out, but there could be no more of the pagan repose in the mere advantage to the state of keeping it a servile state. Individuals became important, in a sense in which no instruments can be important. A man could not be a means to an end, at any rate to any other man's end. All this popular and fraternal element in the story has been rightly attached by tradition to the episode of the Shepherds; the hinds who found themselves talking face to face with the princes of heaven. But there is another aspect of the popular element as represented by the shepherds which has not perhaps been so fully developed; and which is more directly relevant here. Men of the people, like the shepherds, men of the popular tradition, had everywhere been the makers of the mythologies. It was they who had felt most directly, with least check or chill from philosophy or the corrupt cults of civilisation, the need we have already considered; the images that were adventures of the imagination; the mythology that was a sort of search; the tempting and tantalising hints of something half-human in nature; the dumb significance of seasons and special places. They had best understood that the soul of a landscape is a story and the soul of a story is a personality. But rationalism had already begun to rot away these really irrational though imaginative treasures of the peasant; even as systematic slavery had eaten the peasant out of house and home. Upon all such peasantries everywhere there was descending a dusk and twilight of disappointment, in the hour when these few men discovered what they sought. Everywhere else Arcadia was fading from the forest. Pan was dead and the shepherds were scattered like sheep. And though no man knew it, the hour was near which was to end and to fulfil all things; and though no man heard it, there was one far-off cry in an unknown tongue upon the heaving wilderness of the mountains. The shepherds had found their Shepherd.

And the thing they found was of a kind with the things they sought. The populace had been wrong in many things; but they had not been wrong in believing that holy things could have a habitation and that divinity need not disdain the limits of time and space. And the barbarian who conceived the crudest fancy about the sun being stolen and hidden in a box, or the wildest myth about the god being rescued and his enemy deceived with a stone, was nearer to the secret of the cave and knew more about the crisis of the world than all those in the circle of cities round the Mediterranean who had become content with cold abstractions or cosmopolitan generalisations; than all those who were spinning thinner and thinner threads of thought out of the transcendentalism of Plato or the orientalism of Pythagoras. The place that the shepherds found was not an academy or an abstract republic; it was not a place of myths allegorised or dissected or explained or explained away. It was a place of dreams come true. Since that hour no mythologies have been made in the world. Mythology is a search. We all know that the popular presentation of this popular story, in so many miracle plays and carols, has given to the shepherds the costume, the language, and the landscape of the separate English and European countrysides. We all know that one shepherd will talk in a Somerset dialect or another talk of driving his sheep from Conway towards the Clyde. Most of us know by this time how true is that error, how wise, how artistic, how intensely Christian and Catholic is that anachronism. [GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:305-7, emphasis added]

There is so much meat here I would be at it for several more pages, going further and further into all kinds of interesting matters, and yet still not talking about the one which motivated me in the beginning. That is, the one which links shepherds with angels and Nu's, I mean News.

And you may delight because of it, because you'll get to hear just a tiny bit about Subsidiarity, which I still hope to get completed.

You see, God himself did what he told us at the Last Supper when he washed the feet of the apostles, as he told his apostles: the Son of Man did not come to BE SERVED but TO SERVE.... [Mt 20:28]

And that means THERE MUST BE AN INVERSION OF THE GREAT HIERARCHY OF BEING.

At Christmas, the great secret - the most marvellous of all secrets, the secret of new life which is known only to pregnant women, God's own secret that "the Word is made flesh" is suddenly made known by direct view. Mary sees her newborn. Standing vigil at the cave-mouth, Joseph hears the infant cry and comes in when Mary calls him - he sees, and now he also knows.

BUT THIS IS GOOD NEWS - IT MUST BE MADE KNOWN.

The great sea-going writer, Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, wrote one of the most priceless and most dramatic lines I have ever read in his book on Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea. Speaking of that incredible night from October 11 to 12 in 1492, he wrote:

Not since the birth of Christ has there been a night so full of meaning for the human race.

Elsewhere, he tells of how Columbus, struck by a storm during the return journey, was in agony, copying out his logs and sealing them in casks, anxious that his news be spread even if he be lost... For the first rule of discovery is to LET SOMEONE KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DISCOVERED.

Likewise, the fundamental law of ALL science: it is not science until it is "published" - somehow it must be told to others.

So what did God do?

Immediately, the full armies of heaven are dispatched, songbooks in hand, to the fields near Bethlehem. Why? Hard to find someone lower than a tired, stinky, hungry, poor, bored, sleepy shepherd on a hillside of a little town.

But God knew where they were. And what does God do? He sent the whole army - a "great multitude of the heavenly host" - here "host" means army. And you don't send armies around unless they have orders.

Remember - no need to keep things secret any more. The plan has begun. So, (as said in another story of a Close Encounter) the Son came out at night and they sang to Him. (hee hee! Ahem.)

As usual the angels (being angelic, in the Greek sense!) had a message. Here it is:

"Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be to all the people: for, this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger." [Lk 2:10-12]

If the great joy is for all people, the only way that can happen is for them to be TOLD about it.

Now, the shepherds, not being fools, saw that this news story could easily be checked. All they had to do was go over to the town mangers (in the cave, you know, everybody knows where that is) and see if there was a newborn baby boy there...

But the critical line, you see, comes a little further down: "And all that heard wondered: and at those things that were told them by the shepherds." [Lk 2:18, emphasis added] Just a line further on, the Latin has the verb reversi sunt (they returned) - this provides a clue. It's as if the shepherds were REVERSED - in a manner of speaking, they had been promoted. The lowest are now doing the work of the highest. (Inversion of the hierarchy, you see.) They were now performing the office of messenger. Exalted above even the principalities and powers, these poor folk were now the angels, and their feet are beautiful on the mountains [Is. 52:7] bringing the Good News: a Baby is born in Bethlehem.

It is all that is in us but a brief tenderness that is there made eternal; all that means no more than a momentary softening that is in some strange fashion become a strengthening and a repose; it is the broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended unbroken; as the strange kings fade into a far country and the mountains resound no more with the feet of the shepherds; and only the night and the cavern lie in fold upon fold over something more human than humanity. [GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:317]

Let us hasten to the cavern, pray there, then take on our duty to proclaim this good news, singing like the angels, singing the joy of good news over and over, again and again:

Doxa in `uyistoiV Qeon kai epi ghV eirhnh en anqrwpois eudokiaV.

Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

That is, "Glory in the highest to God and on Earth peace to men of good will."

A holy, merry, Chestertonian Christmas to all!

--Dr. Thursday


PS It strikes me, having read this over again, that there is a paradox between the Hobbit-like secret invasion and its news-flash reporting by angelic choir. Of course there's a paradox - we're talking about God-made-man here, what would you expect? Chesterton doesn't have a copyright on paradox, little buddy. God was quite aware of the leak, having lit up the star (whatever it really was!) as we saw previously - he knew he was drawing a line in the sand - or perhaps I should say on the Hill - and at the right time he would cross it. It was even so prophesied: "This child shall be a sign of contradiction..." [Lk 2:34] More on this some other time. But don't forget that Christmas is first and foremost a Mass - that is, a sacrifice. -- Dr. T.

O Antiphons (con't)

O Flower of Jesse's stem,
you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples;
kings stand silent in your presence;
the nations bow down in worship before you.
Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid.

O Antiphons (con't)

O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, who didst appear unto Moses in the burning bush, and gavest to him the Law on Sinai: COME and redeem us by Thy outstretched arm.

Thanks to Dr. Thursday.

The Bohemian Catholic Likes our Latest Gilbert

You can read her post here and comment if you wish. I'm taking my Gilbert on the road with me today and hope to devour it while passing the pastoral scenes of southeastern Wisconsin on our way to Madison to put up a relative's tree.

Happy Tuesday! One week till Christmas!

O Antiphons Begin Today

O Sapientia: “O Wisdom, O holy Word of God, you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care. Come and show your people the way to salvation.” Isaiah had prophesied, “The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be the fear of the Lord.” (11:2-3), and “Wonderful is His counsel and great is His wisdom.” (28:29).

My Gilbert arrived!

I have to admit, I haven't had an afternoon free yet to just sit down and read right through it.

I really like the cover. As you can see, it is the marvelous image of Gilbert gazing up at a star, perhaps he is meditating on the Star of Bethlehem. Anyway, because it's Christmas time, that's what I imagine. And swirling around the star, or emanating from it, are all these papers and letters, as if inspiration is coming to him just from gazing at the star.

The other way I see it is the letters and papers coming from Gilbert's head, going up to the star. Almost as if he is giving his writing to the Christ Child, and standing there free and child-like, emptying himself and offering everything to God, letting it all go.

I like that image because, as a writer too, I often get caught up in things that need doing, words that need writing, and forget To Whom I am Offering Everything. And sometimes, I am so busy staring at the papers (or the computer screen) that I forget to look up and see the Star.

This Christmas, my hope is that we will each take a little time to stare at the stars, and open our hearts to the coming of Christ. Let Him into your heart this Christmas, to be the Word, the strength, the whatever-it-is-you-need, to be the Love that you love with, the Faith that you believe with, the Hope that you hope in.

Only a few days remain, have a Blessed Advent.

Dr Thursday's First Thursday in Advent Post

Three Thursdays of Advent - a Trinity of Christmas Truths: 1. The Kings

Since in 2007 Advent is arranged so as to provide us with only three Thursdays, I have decided to take the ultimate GKC Christmas reference work - "The God in the Cave" from The Everlasting Man - and consider what GKC called "the trinity of truths symbolised here by the three types in the old Christmas story: the shepherds and the kings and that other king who warred upon the children." [CW2:316] Of course there are other ways of examining Christmas - there are countless ways - and while none of them shall really plunge to the depths of what really happened that night some 2000 years ago, it is part of the feast's true universality, not simply in its Chestertonian sense, that ALL of them happen to be true. The light, I mean the Light, pouring forth and radiating as from a great gemstone, is not lost in its fracturing - it is one of Dante's intangibles, and so is augmented. And each of us who take up the topic in our "hundred thousand hymns, carols, rhymes, rituals, pictures, poems, and popular sermons" [ibid CW2:301-2] by which that impossible "contrast between the cosmic creation and the little local infancy" is "repeated, reiterated, underlined, emphasised, exulted in, sung, shouted, roared, not to say howled" - each of us may have the satisfaction of being musicians in the Great Symphony of Christmas, where all who dare to play can give forth no dissonance.

And so, let us consider the Kings. (I must do them first as I can by no means treat Herod first, and I think it best to take Shepherds at the date closest to the Feast.)
Read more.

Who are these guys anyway? St. Matthew (chapter 2) calls them the "Magi". Most people, like GKC, call them "kings" or "Wise Men"; one modern translation calls them "astrologers". If we need to be modern, it would be far better to call them "scientists": the Bible text says very clearly "We observed his star in oriente". (The Greek and Latin term can be translated either "in the east" or "in rising".) Observed!!! Hmmm... astrologers concerned with the REAL sky? They are too busy with money, I mean charging people to tell about the future, crediting or blaming the poor wandering planets and the imaginary lines of the Zodiac. Never mind that no one is said to be born under the sign of Ophiuchus, though the sun definitely can be in that constellation, or that the twelve Zodiac constellations are hardly distributed evenly across the ecliptic, as reported in standard horoscopes. Never mind that the sun is still in Pisces at the Vernal Equinox - there are still some tie-dyed hippies with gray hair, swaying to the "Age of Aquarius" which is still over a century away. But people who actually look at the sky? Well, those of course have to be scientists, who are attentive to something real. If some of sky-watchers later went off and wrote silly predictions based on what they saw - who cares, whole reams of astronomers did that. (Another time we may explore this matter, as the history of science is most curious - think "phlogiston"!)

But why are they called "kings"? This is perhaps inferred from the fact that they brought royal treasures: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Also possibly from the fact that they had a rapport of dignity with King Herod. (Common folk strutting into the palace to ask riddles of the King? Ha!) But even more likely, from the "Epiphany psalm", 71 in the Vulgate, 72 in the Hebrew numbering:

"The kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents: the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring gifts."

And there is also this prediction:

Arise, be enlightened, O Jerusalem: for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold darkness shall cover the earth, and a mist the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall walk in thy light, and kings in the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thy eyes round about, and see: all these are gathered together, they are come to thee: thy sons shall come from afar, and thy daughters shall rise up at thy side. Then shalt thou see, and abound, and thy heart shall wonder and be enlarged, when the multitude of the sea shall be converted to thee, the strength of the Gentiles shall come to thee. The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Madian and Epha: all they from Saba shall come, bringing gold and frankincense: and shewing forth praise to the Lord.
[Is 60, emphasis added. Note that the bit about the heart being enlarged comes up in the "Grinch" story, whose heart grew three sizes on Christmas Day.]

That quote even has something about observation: "Lift up thy eyes round about, and see"! Perhaps that is the best (and oldest) explanation of the use of "kings". The number "three" has all the numerological hints of mystery and reality, from the trisagion of Isaias 6:3 ("Holy holy holy") which we sing at Holy Mass to the triple-consonant roots of the Semitic languages, from the Trinity to the 64 entries in the Watson-Crick code by which DNA/RNA is translated into amino acids. But commentators explain it simply because St. Matthew names three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

But if they are not (necessarily) kings, and are correctly called neither astrologers nor astronomers, what word should we use?

The Greek of St. Matthew uses the term "Magi" - the ancient word from Old Persian which also gives us "magic" - that is simply the "study" or discipline of the Magi. So perhaps we might say (with a bang on the table) that settles the Harry Potter debate. (hee hee) But really, the problem is simpler than that, though somehow connected. For the magic of the Magi was most likely neither sleight-of-hand (like a stage-magician) nor formal demonic invocation (which evil we give no references for). Neither was it simply a collection of superstitions, nor yet a compendium of science - but most likely an early hodge-podge of both, rather unfortunately hashed up and left unedited, since they had not yet had a true authority - an advisor, indeed a legal Advocate (or Paraclete, in the Greek) to come and assist them in their work.

Here I shall mention another word, sometimes scary in its use, but of no evil import in itself: the word "occult" - which simply means "hidden" (from claudere = to close or shut). Do not get mixed up here; this is not related to the word "cult" - another word with mixed senses - which comes from the root "to grow". When in the late 1600s Gilbert (I mean William Gilbert, not GKC!) wrote about the strange properties of amber (!) and of the strange stone of Magnesia, these things were considered occult. They, like Harry Potter's accio (Latin "I summon") caused the motion of things distant from themselves. Their forces were HIDDEN. No one knew how or why they worked. We now know somewhat more about them, though as our own Gilbert says, "we have to go on using the Greek name of amber as the only name of electricity because we have no notion what is the real name or nature of electricity." [The Common Man 170] You see, something "occult" is simply that - hidden. We use another Greek word, "mystery", which the Early Church used as we use "Sacrament" or "Eucharist" or even "Holy Mass" - to suggest something of a similar nature, and the word "mystery" can be just as liable to misunderstanding as "occult" can be. It is that sense of reversing that covering or hiding which gives us the opposite word, "detect" - with its derivatives "detection" and "detective" - and here we may possibly have the beginnings of a clue (sorry no pun intended) as to what the Magi were actually doing - though we must, at the same time, remember that there are things which are going to remain mysterious even when uncovered:

Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. ... The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:230-231]

OK, we've seen this important passage before, but how does this apply to the Magi and the Star? I will attempt to uncover a bit of the mystery.

People talk about this "Star of Bethlehem" as if it were something quite dramatic, something awesome, something utterly refulgent (fulgur=lightning) - a nova, a supernova, a rare conjunction of planets or of planets with bright stars. Perhaps. But it seems far more in keeping with the other parts of the Story to ponder a very different variation of quality.

Perhaps the dramatic truth of the Star was not its brilliance, but simply its location - its new appearance in that place! Perhaps it was, like the birth it heralded, something rather subtle. One had to be paying VERY CLOSE attention to the many stars of the ancient heavens in order to know whether they were the same from one night to the next - remember there was no amber-power - I mean electricity - and it was DARK at night. (Cf. the quote from Isaias above!) Obviously the common people knew, unlike we moderns, how there were some stars which "wandered" among the others, and so we still call them the Wanderers, though we say it in whittled-down Greek as "planets". But careful observers (the scientists, the wise, the Uncoverers?) might have seen something different - something NEW - that the Common Man might not have noticed.

Nor does this subtle, quiet, barely noticed astronomy become any less dramatic for the true scientist. There are so many examples of tiny, barely detected (note that word!) variations - which are no less important for being subtle: the proper motion of stars, the parallax of the "fixed stars", sunspots, the dark (or bright) lines in spectra... the list goes on and on. Indeed, with this idea, this part of the Gospel becomes a little more understandable. The scene of Herod's audience with the Magi changes to a much more human character. He asks for the "exact time of the star's appearance" - as if he's really saying, "Star? What star? (These Wise Guys say they saw a "new" star... yeah, sure.) Any of you see a new star? What star are they chattering on about? But just in case these Wise Guys are on to something, I'd better take steps..." Really - if there was something, star or planet or meteor - something obvious - out there to be seen, he would not have had to ask the Magi - he could have asked anyone. But perhaps, what the Magi saw was something subtle - something which only THEY saw, and only THEY interpreted. Something which spoke to them directly. But as true scientists, they acted on their discovery: they took almost incredibly expensive gifts and set off on an almost incredibly doubtful journey.

The thing we must remember is that their "research" found their desired result: they found the new-born king. He, like the star, was something subtle, something unexpected, something SMALL and NOT VERY SHINY, appearing in a place just about everyone else paid no attention to. But it was not at Herod's palace that they presented their gifts - outrageous gifts, symbolic gifts, gifts which may have meant the cessation of their own lifes, their research... gifts given to an Infant, asleep on His mother's lap! Later that Child would say to another, "Sell what you have and give it to the poor, then come and follow Me." They received a different order, to go back home another way. We know they did so, but we don't know anything more. Some stories tell that they were indeed Christians and went on to do the work of their Lord - their feast day is given in Butler's Lives of the Saints as July 23, and their bones are said to rest in the cathedral of Cologne, but no one can say more for certain.

What do the Magi and their work tell us today? How does such work apply to us living in a high-tech world 2000 years later? GKC tells us:

...they came out of orient lands, crowned with the majesty of kings and clothed with something of the mystery of magicians. That truth that is tradition has wisely remembered them almost as unknown quantities, as mysterious as their mysterious and melodious names: Melchior, Caspar, Balthazar. But there came with them all that world of wisdom that had watched the stars in Chaldea and the sun in Persia; and we shall not be wrong if we see in them the same curiosity that moves all the sages. They would stand for the same human ideal if their names had really been Confucius or Pythagoras or Plato. They were those who sought not tales but the truth of things; and since their thirst for truth was itself a thirst for God, they also have had their reward. [cf. Jn 7:37] But even in order to understand that reward, we must understand that for philosophy as much as mythology, that reward was the completion of the incomplete. Such learned men would doubtless have come, as these learned men did come, to find themselves confirmed in much that was true in their own traditions and right in their own reasoning. Confucius would have found a new foundation for the family in the very reversal of the Holy Family; Buddha would have looked upon a new renunciation, of stars rather than jewels and divinity than royalty. These learned men would still have the right to say, or rather a new right to say, that there was truth in their old teaching. But, after all, these learned men would have come to learn. They would have come to complete their conceptions with something they had not yet conceived; even to balance their imperfect universe with something they might once have contradicted. Buddha would have come from his impersonal paradise to worship a person. Confucius would have come from his temples of ancestor-worship to worship a child. ... Here it is the important point that the Magi, who stand for mysticism and philosophy, are truly conceived as seeking something new and even as finding something unexpected. That tense sense of crisis which still tingles in the Christmas story, and even in every Christmas celebration, accentuates the idea of a search and a discovery. The discovery is, in this case, truly a scientific discovery. For the other mystical figures in the miracle play, for the angel and the mother, the shepherds and the soldiers of Herod, there may be aspects both simpler and more supernatural, more elemental or more emotional. But the Wise Men must be seeking wisdom; and for them there must be a light also in the intellect. And this is the light: that the Catholic creed is catholic and that nothing else is catholic. [note: The Greek word “catholic” means “universal”] The philosophy of the Church is universal. The philosophy of the philosophers was not universal. Had Plato and Pythagoras and Aristotle stood for an instant in the light that came out of that little cave, they would have known that their own light was not universal. It is far from certain, indeed, that they did not know it already. Philosophy also, like mythology, had very much the air of a search. It is the realisation of this truth that gives its traditional majesty and mystery to the figures of the Three Kings; the discovery that religion is broader than philosophy and that this is the broadest of religions, contained within this narrow space. The Magicians were gazing at the strange pentacle with the human triangle reversed; and they have never come to the end of their calculations about it. For it is the paradox of that group in the cave, that while our emotions about it are of childish simplicity, our thoughts about it can branch with a never-ending complexity. And we can never reach the end even of our own ideas about the child who was a father and the mother who was a child.
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:308-9, 310-311]

The pentacle, or five-pointed star, is an old symbol of magic - but, as J. R. R. Tolkien explains in his book on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight it was ALSO a symbol of the five wounds of Christ, the five Joyful mysteries, and other fives of Christian lore. It is also to be noted that the pentacle here described had not five, but six points, formed of two equilateral triangles, one inverted - also called the "Star of David"; GKC has more on this earlier in the same book [CW2:186-7]. You may recall that we ourselves have previously seen that same symbol in our discussion on fractals, which also "branch with a never-ending complexity". Yes, for even mathematics has its place at Christmas, in order that every topic "from pork to pyrotechnics" will illustrate "the truth of the only true philosophy". [GKC The Thing CW3:189]

Next week we shall see about the "steps" Herod took as a reaction to the stellar discovery (whatever it really was) of the Magi.

--Dr. Thursday

Chesterton and Christmas

Well, I got my wish, and am now the proud owner of Advent and Christmas Wisdom from G.K. Chesterton. I liked the back cover:

People are losing the power to enjoy Christmas through identifying it with enjoyment. When once they lose sight of the old suggestion that it is all about something, they naturally fall into blank pauses of wondering what it is all about. To be told to rejoice on Christmas Day is reasonable and intelligible, if you understand the name, or even look at the word. To be told to rejoice on the twenty-fifth of December is like being told to rejoice at quarter-past eleven on Thursday week. You cannot suddenly be frivolous unless you believe there is a serious reason for being frivolous. G.K Chesterton, "The New War on Christmas," December 26, 1925

This Advent, let us join G.K. Chesterton as he approaches the child Jesus. "You will come to find, as others before you, that Gilbert Keith Chesterton has walked into your life to make you laugh and think, to serve as your friend and mentor" (From the Introduction).

This Advent with Chesterton and Jesus

Published by Ligouri.

"As one of the few relatively recent Christian writers who are admired and quoted by Christians at all ends of the spectrum, G.K Chesterton, the great English convert to the Catholic faith, was known as a remarkable and diverse but extremely influential English writer. His inexhaustible and wide ranging portfolio of works includes journalistic writing, poetry, biography, Christian, fantasy and detective genres. His style is distinctive and always marked by humility, consistency, irony, wit and wonder. Some of his most enduring books include The Everlasting Man, which led C.S. Lewis to become a Christian and The Napoleon of Notting Hill which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish independence.

G.K. Chesterton is sometimes referred to as the most unjustly neglected writer of our time. One reason might be his versatility and the inability for modern thinkers, theologians and commentators to pigeonhole him. We challenge you to enjoy his remarkable style, eloquence and faith-based writing at this joyous time of the year.

In this edition of Advent and Christmas Wisdom, each day's reflection includes a selection from one of Chesterton's finest works, a suitable Scripture verse, an appropriate prayer, and an exercise. This addition to one of Liguori's bestselling series is truly a refreshing, prayerful preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas."

It's on my wish list for this advent. Here is one more review which I found on amazon.com:

"This contains many of the great writers wittiest and most profound observations on faith and the meaning of Christmas. Some of them are taken from his well known books, but there are also many taken from his lesser known writings. For the Chesterton fan, there may be a surprise or two; for others, this is an enjoyable introduction. It also contains bible readings and prayers for each day of advent, related to the Chesterton quote. But the best part is the activity for each day. They are practical, creative ideas for putting into practice the spiritual values of the readings for the day. The activities are appropriate for adults and school age children. Its a great way to make this advent a memorable one."

One contributing writer is someone Gilbert readers will recognize: Robert Moore-Jummonville. Congratulations, Robert.