Happy Birthday Christianity!

...the Lateran Church is full of interesting objects; but of different
sorts that interest different people. I need not describe the only too
tempestuous statuary that stands all down the middle; in the last, and
possibly the worst, but at least the most boisterous stage of the
Baroque. The general impression is that the Twelve Apostles always
preferred to stand in a draught, but that they inhabited a curious
country where the wind blew in all the opposite ways at once. Perhaps
some such licence might be allowed to the supernatural wind of
Pentecost, which was truly a wind of liberty in the sense of a wind of
isolating individualism; bringing different gifts to different people; a
good wind that blew nobody harm. But the actual effect on the senses, in
this cold marble corridor, is merely that the bewildered Christians have
got into a heathen temple of the winds. All this sort of criticism is
trite, but it is true.
The Resurrection of Rome CW21:340-1

(remember that the parallel is in the very first paragraph of
Manalive - so suggestive.

or perhaps this you might like better...

[with the coming of the fourth man to follow St. Francis] an invisible
line was crossed; for it must have been felt by this time that the
growth of that small group had become potentially infinite, or at least
that its outline had become permanently indefinite. It may have been in
the time of that transition that Francis had another of his dreams full
of voices; but now the voices were a clamour of the tongues of all
nations, Frenchmen and Italians and English and Spanish and Germans,
telling of the glory of God each in his own tongue; a new Pentecost and
a happier Babel.
St. Francis of Assisi CW2:91

Happy Birthday to Christianity!

Dr. Thursday's Post

The Peril - and a Bridge into Light

We ended last week, smack in the Octave of Easter (the week of eight Sundays!) with a real cliffhanger:

...there is a great and possible peril to the human mind: a peril as practical as burglary. Against it religious authority was reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier. And against it something certainly must be reared as a barrier, if our race is to avoid ruin.
[CW1:236]

And I am sure everyone was wondering what that peril is. Good. So you can wonder just a little more, but you are about to find out - if you dare.

We are coming to the first really serious peak in our "study" (that is a pompous term for my boisterous and lengthy meanderings) of GKC's centennial book, Orthodoxy. We had a couple of weeks where we made a slight detour for the sake of the season - so just in case you let it slide and want to catch up, you ought to read (or re-read!) Chapter III called "The Suicide of Thought" - up to the paragraph end I have just quoted.

Very well. All ready to resume the hike? Good. As Hans the guide called out, "Forüt!" - "Forward!" (That's from Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, in case you've forgotten... we aren't going there today. Sorry. That leaves from Iceland in late June - wanna go?) Ahem.

What, then, is this peril? Actually, we were told about it, a paragraph or two ago:

The whole modern world is at war with reason; and the tower already reels.[CW1:235]

Yes, please read that again. These times are dark. Few things have been darker, been more misnamed than "the Enlightenment". These times, NOT the 13th century, are the Dark Ages. These times are emphatically NOT the "Age of Reason". You can find this discussed elsewhere; the philosophers, if any still are with us, must now go stand in the corner, for they have refused to help. But GKC is here, with light, with weapons, with truth... (Compare these with Milo's gifts in The Phantom Tollbooth - a book which in so many ways hints at the same things GKC tells us!)

So what is the peril? Summon all your courage, and read on - when you dare.

"That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself." [CW1:236]

Yes. You can, if you choose, think yourself into a state where you can no longer think. No alcohol, no drugs; nothing like that. You read the wrong books, listen to the wrong music, watch the wrong TV shows, visit the wrong web-sites... and Poof.

Your Mind - It's Gone!

By action of your own mind, you make yourself a PUPPET - and no longer think.

You may think this is nonsense, pure fantasy... I can think myself into NOT thinking? Ah, yes... Remember Milo, stuck in the Doldrums in The Phantom Tollbooth because he wasn't thinking? But this is not fantasy. This is for real. This can REALLY HAPPEN... and HAS HAPPENED. GKC is not so much giving a commentary (or predicting, considering its aptness for the present time!) but simply reporting.

Do you think this is profound, or find it unexpected? You will be even more surprised at what comes next:

Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape." The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all."

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own...
[CW1:236, emphasis added]

An aside: I wonder, did John Paul II read this before he wrote his 1998 encyclical called Fides et Ratio? (That is, "Faith and Reason"!) Alas, he did not quote GKC; I checked. (If you are seeking a doctoral topic, perhaps a study comparing these two great works might be most profitable.)

The surprise, I am sure you noticed, is that there is an answer, and it is in what MOST people nowadays consider the most unlikely place: the greatest support of Reason is in Faith. In fact, one cannot even have Reason unless one first has faith.

The few real philosophers with us are nodding happily. They are delighted that GKC has taken the Three Great Self-Evident Principles of Thought as his starting point, even though he doesn't state them explicitly. They will not mind that I review them for you:

(1) The existence of the thinking subject.
(2) The principle of contradiction: "A thing cannot at the same time be and not be."
(3) The natural capacity of our reason to know the truth.
These are also called the first fact, the first principle, and the first condition of certain knowledge.
[See Scholastic Philosophy by Michael W. Shallo, S.J.>

These three principles cannot be proven, but must be accepted, or you can do NOTHING AT ALL. Not even write a journal article for a philosophy magazine. Or even post a comment on a blogg...

Yes, if you never resume reading this book, nor ever read any GKC again, please memorise this ONE line.. OK, these three sentences - at least the one in BOLD:

"It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all."

Aren't you glad you kept reading? You thought all you were going to hear about was that awful peril - and here Chesterton is handing us a weapon! Wow. What a GREAT tool we now have! We have beaten flat most of the last few centuries of philosophers, and can now toss their books into the trash. They are all LIARS, rather, they are HYPOCRITES, doing what they refuse to admit is possible:

[The "moderate realism" of Thomism and Scholastic Philosophy] is the only working philosophy. Of nearly all other philosophies it is strictly true that their followers work in spite of them, or do not work at all. No sceptics work sceptically; no fatalists work fatalistically; all without exception work on the principle that it is possible to assume what it is not possible to believe. No materialist who thinks his mind was made up for him, by mud and blood and heredity, has any hesitation in making up his mind. No sceptic who believes that truth is subjective has any hesitation about treating it as objective.
[GKC, St. Thomas Aquinas CW2:542-3]

But you want to know more. GKC immediately gives an example from one of his "Heretic" friends, H. G. Wells. (Note: I call him that because of Chapter 5 in GKC's Heretics, and not from any personal criticism; GKC considered him a friend.)

...already Mr. H. G. Wells has raised its ruinous banner; he has written a delicate piece of scepticism called "Doubts of the Instrument." In this he questions the brain itself, and endeavours to remove all reality from all his own assertions, past, present, and to come. But it was against this remote ruin that all the military systems in religion were originally ranked and ruled. The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason.

Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all - the authority of a man to think. We know now that this is so; we have no excuse for not knowing it. For we can hear scepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. [That's almost literally the definition of the above three principles!] And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.
[CW1:236-7, emphasis added]

Wow, did you catch this: "in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority" - isn't that horrifying! For that is the secret aim of so many of these philosophers! It's a war, after all - remember GKC's last words? "The issue is now quite clear. It is between light and darkness and every one must choose his side." [Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 650] And we'll see, perhaps next week, how this idea will link to other matters - big, nasty, debate-making matters - that you might not expect.

But for today, just look at this - doesn't something seem familiar here? Remember: "If thy head offend thee, cut it off; for it is better, not merely to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole intellect to be cast into hell - or into Hanwell."[CW1:224; cf Mt5:30, 18:8] Ah, yes - but here, there's someone else doing the pulling!

I was about to list names of these Dark Powers - but that would just make noise and waste your energy. (You'll hear one of them in the near future anyway; no it's neither "Sauron" nor "Voldemort".) Let them remain in the dark - you know who they are - I shall just call them the Dark Powers of Evil - those who have rejected the Good - these are all at work, claiming to advance "Reason" but really attacking it! They are hard at work, to pull off the mitres we all wear, in our sworn dedication to Faith... Indeed, the tower already reels.

You may think it is funny to consider all humans wearing the mitre, the conical hat of bishops, the symbol of pontifical power - but these things are serious, and come up in so many places in GKC. You need to ponder what it might mean to be a "pontiff" = "to build a bridge" - and how that must be both a matter of faith as well as reason. If you need a reading assignment, see GKC's memorial at the death of Francis Thompson, ILN Dec 14 1907 CW27:603, or look up the life and work of John Roebling (the Brooklyn Bridge designer), or of St. Benezet. Or, perhaps, even the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas, where you'll read:

Thus alms are besought for the building of a bridge, or church, or for any other work whatever that is conducive to the common good..." [Summa II-II Q187 A5, emphasis added]

But - yes, yes - unless you read it in GKC, some of you won't believe it. So:

"...when men wish to be safely impressive, as judges, priests or kings, they do wear skirts, the long, trailing robes of female dignity."
[What's Wrong With the World CW4:128]

Or if you prefer the fictional version:

"'All ceremony,' he said, 'consists in the reversal of the obvious. Thus men, when they wish to be priests or judges, dress up like women."
[Napoleon of Notting Hill CW6:247-8]

Why is this relevant? Because women are nearly always the first teachers of children. Remember, you cannot spell M-A-N without M-A - a truth which confutes all the feminists!

Let me end this very difficult and complex - but extremely important - stage of our journey with another quote from that excellent book on Education - no not Newman, but GKC. Another one you ought to memorise:

"A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching."
[What's Wrong With the World CW4:162]

I know at first you'll think that bit about women has NOTHING to do with pontiffs. You'll need to think about that - and perhaps read that book after we're done with this one.

Yes - please think carefully about all of this - while you still can. They are already attacking!

--Dr. Thursday

P.S. I must insist on this bridge matter as being a wonderful symbol for intellect and reason. Reason is, in a sense, a bridge we build from our inmost self to Reality - and like all bridges, requires faith and a firm foundation. It's most thoroughly human: "Building a bridge seemed such a clean, heroic thing for a man to do." [said of Roebling in David McCullough, The Great Bridge p.82-83] I could quote many additional demonstrations, but I shall give just the one which I first learned from Fr. Jaki:

The rebuilding of this bridge between science and human nature is one of the greatest needs of mankind.
[GKC, The Defendant 75 quoted in Jaki, Chesterton a Seer of Science 45]

ChesterTeens Create New Chestertonian Easter Egg

Creativity abounds.

Easter: Dr. Thursday

Authority: Riddles and Puns, Burglars and Police

Alleluia!!!

Ah - the Octave of Easter! It's a week of eight Sundays. (No this is NOT an allusion to The Man Who Was Thursday.) The Canadian rock group "Rush" has a song called "Time Stand Still" - but here we have just a hint of that mystic eternity as the Church suspends all other feasts for these eight days! (the Annunciation, which falls during this week in 2008, yet cannot be suppressed, shall be celebrated next Monday.) Yes, despite some curious and confused looks from the less attentive in the congregation, the careful and reverent priest will chant sed in hac potissimum die or "...on THIS EASTER DAY" in the Preface of each Holy Mass during this week.

Yes, indeed, O ye rockers! Time DOES stand still. How? Click here to find out.Truly we HAVE to celebrate during this week of Sundays, because this Son was dead and has come to life again - this Brother of ours was lost - and now He is found!!! [cf. Lk 15:24]

"Early in the morning of the first day of the week, when the Son had risen..." [cf. Mark 16:2]

Puns - did you say puns? Yes, of course - there are lots of puns to handle - one of the funniest is this thing about RISING - which occurs during the feast of Azymes, the ancient Pasch, the Time of the Unleavened - where we are the New Leaven. [1Cor 5:6-8] Leavening, for those of you who don't bake, is any agent added to dough to make it rise - to make it get lighter than it is... (And we hear our big-billed toucan friend murmur, "Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly." CW1:325) Typical leavening agents are lard or butter, baking powder, baking soda and some acid, and so on, but most of all, yeast, which is zumh = "zyme" (long E) in Greek.

An aside: if you're wondering why "zyme" sounds familiar, it's in the word "enzyme" (something found IN YEAST)... But we're not going to talk biology today, as exciting as it might be, and even though this feast is about the resurrection of the BODY...

No: instead, we'll take just a tiny glance at one paragraph from Orthodoxy, then we can resume our festival.

Here it is:

The sages, it is often said, can see no answer to the riddle of religion. But the trouble with our sages is not that they cannot see the answer; it is that they cannot even see the riddle. They are like children so stupid as to notice nothing paradoxical in the playful assertion that a door is not a door. The modern latitudinarians speak, for instance, about authority in religion not only as if there were no reason in it, but as if there had never been any reason for it. Apart from seeing its philosophical basis, they cannot even see its historical cause. Religious authority has often, doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable; just as every legal system (and especially our present one) has been callous and full of a cruel apathy. It is rational to attack the police; nay, it is glorious. But the modern critics of religious authority are like men who should attack the police without ever having heard of burglars. For there is a great and possible peril to the human mind: a peril as practical as burglary. Against it religious authority was reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier. And against it something certainly must be reared as a barrier, if our race is to avoid ruin.
[CW1:235-6]

We've had a pun or two already, and will probably have more. So... perhaps you are wondering, does GKC actually advise us to do physical harm to the officers of the law? Of course not. Perhaps you'd prefer to think of posting negative comments in a policeman's blogg, or writing editorials against the idea of Law Enforcement.... Well, again, it's not quite that either.

Let me try something. Anyone who has read many of the best "Boy's Books" - like, let's say, The Mad Scientists' Club or even The Phantom Tollbooth, or to vary the genre, the Sir Henry Merrivale mysteries by John Dickson Carr - if you HAVE read such things, you know that boys of all ages especially like to do daring tricks, and play hilarious pranks. Not real crimes of course, but pranks... Wrong, perhaps, but NOT (emphatically NOT) evil...

Such is the kind of "attack" GKC is suggesting. Pranks, I say, not crimes, things no "mature adult" would do, more out of embarrassment than out of "respect" for the Law, at the border where there's still some light to the humour even though some shadows are looming....

There is a certain rebel in so many of us, which gives rise to practical jokes, to boldness - but this is not a "Boy's Book". We are NOT talking about playing tricks in the town square! No, as usual, GKC is desperately trying to construct a metaphor about a exceedingly complex idea, and one which will bring out far more argument and debate than any merely civil power, police force, bad cops, or corrupt city governments have EVER had.

Let's just say, for discussion, that GKC really meant to "attack the police" - let us take this in its extreme sense to mean "to abolish the police utterly"... to destroy Authority.

BUT!!!!

GKC tells us how stupid it would be to reject the idea of police as if we had never heard of burglars...

There IS something real that threatens us, something dangerous in this life, something we need protection from...

GKC is about to reveal that the authority "in religion", just as the authority "in the police" or "in the Law", exists for a very good reason, and was placed there as a protection against a Very Real Threat.

And that threat is NOT what you might otherwise have guessed. But for the answer you will have to come back next week.

For now: back to the feast! It's still Easter Sunday for another three days...

--Dr. Thursday

Happy Easter!

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden,
in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.
--G. K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man CW2:345

Good Friday/Holy Saturday Chesterton The Everlasting Man

They took the body down from the cross and one of the few rich men among the first Christians obtained permission to bury it in a rock tomb in his garden; the Romans setting a military guard lest there should be some riot and attempt to recover the body.

There was once more a natural symbolism in these natural proceedings; it was well that the tomb should be sealed with all the secrecy of ancient eastern sepulture and guarded by the authority of the Caesars.

For in that second cavern the whole of that great and glorious humanity which we call antiquity was gathered up and covered over; and in that place it was buried. It was the end of a very great thing called human history; the history that was merely human.

The mythologies and the philosophies were buried there, the gods and the heroes and the sages. In the great Roman phrase, they had lived. But as they could only live, so they could only die; and they were dead.
--G. K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man CW2:344-5

Thanks to Dr. T.

George MacDonald: Mary Magdalene

A beautiful poem for today.

Good Friday Thoughts from Chesterton's Orthodoxy

God the rebel, God with his back to the wall, God for atheists

That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete.

Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point - and does not break.

In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt.

It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." [Mt 4:7 quoting Dt. 6:16] No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism.

When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. [Mt 27:46 quoting Ps 22:1] And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt.

Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist. [cf The Everlasting Man CW2:344]

--G. K. Chesterton Orthodoxy CW1:343
Thank you, Dr. T.

Holy Thursday

This is Holy Thursday, and just as the Church shifts the calendar of fixed dates to accommodate the variable, we also shall shift our focus. The wonder is that we shall nevertheless consider the very next bit of Orthodoxy, since it plays a role in today's considerations.

As those who attend the evening Mass today shall see, although this Mass is the Mass of Masses - the anniversary, as it were, of the first Mass - the gospel reading for today is not about the Eucharist. It's about Subsidiarity. Yes. Did Dr. Thursday just say subsidiarity? Why? Click here.It's where Jesus washes the feet of the Apostles [John 13] Here we see the truth set forth in very clear, though quite horrifying detail. Horrifying, that is, to the ancient Aristotelian view of society with its slaves serving at the bottom and its "best" people ruling (Greek "aristocracy"= rule by the best) at the top. Horrifying, too, to the modern corporate mind which sees their megastructures built from the top down, paying the do-nothing executives VAST amounts and the least minimum possible to the underlings who actually do the work. (What? Not much different in 2300 years?)

But from Subsidiarity, we learn that the higher orders exist to serve the lower - which Jesus demonstrated by washing the Apostles' feet. Ever think about that? Those were bare, or at best sandal-clad feet, that had recently stomped through dust and mud and trash and ... ah... other things one might find on the horse and donkey and camel-travelled roads of that time.

Hey! That's slave work - being done by the Master? Yes: "He took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men..." [Phil 2:7]

Why do I use this word "horrifying"? What does that have to do with Orthodoxy, or with the current moment in the liturgical cycle?

Well, when one is about to die, one has to try to deal with the most important matters in one's life. As we know from St. Paul, and from the three Synoptic evangelists, the Eucharist was established amid the Passover rituals, as the new and everlasting passover-covenant. St. John reports how Jesus repeated this dogma six times, [see John 6] utterly scandalizing many who heard it, so much that they went away. We also know, from St. John, the lengthy prayer-instruction which Jesus gave just after the evening meal [John 14-16] - within which are more clues to this mystery.

But as I said, echoing St. John (13:1), Jesus knew he was about to die. This is the single most talked-about death, the single most dramatic death, the single most important death to occur in history, or even in fiction. This death is, as I have harped on previously, an important thing to remember. Dickens told us how important it was that we know, at the outset of the "Christmas Carol":

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. ...
There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.
[C. Dickens, "A Christmas Carol"]

Likewise, we have to enter into this matter of Christ's death - and be fully convinced of it, in order to proceed into these next days.

But "Horrifying"? Why? Because of the death? Because of the manner of death?

No. Because it was so unreasonable, so inappropriate.

Peter, always the spokesman for the others, certainly thought so: "Lord, far be it from You [to die]..." (Mt. 16:22) And also, St. Paul called the crucifixion (1 Cor 1:23) a "stumbling block" to some - apparently the Greek word is "scandal" - that is, "the distressing effect on others of unseemly or unrighteous conduct". He also called it "foolishness" to others. That is, something quite irrational- the Greek word apparently is "moron".

Now, if you take just a few minutes from your day and read the next two or three paragraphs from Orthodoxy CW1:235-6. But don't worry if you cannot, we shall talk some more about them in the future. What does GKC tell us there? The critical line is in that first short paragraph, near the bottom of 235:

...what peril of morbidity there is for man comes rather from his reason than his imagination.

Well! Chesterton, if we are reading him right, seems to be hinting that the problem we men face comes from expecting REASONABLE things - presumably in places where things are just not going to be reasonable.

Or - maybe - just maybe - he's giving some kind of strange paraphrase ... ah ... of St. Paul.

Did I just write that?

Yes, I did. Just last week I was considering something, and I have begun to note some interesting alignments - maybe we might say that GKC is a disciple of St. Paul. I am not arguing this in any strict sense; nothing more, perhaps than a "slovenly poetry", without rhyme or even rhythm. Unreasonable, perhaps, but imaginative.

But there was one thing, NOT from Orthodoxy which hit me, as I thought of the events we recall this week, and considered my writing on our present book... this idea of a journey. And I recalled this, which I warn you may seem very blunt, and perhaps horrifying:

...the life of Jesus went as swift and straight as a thunderbolt. It was above all things dramatic; it did above all things consist in doing something that had to be done. It emphatically would not have been done, if Jesus had walked about the world forever doing nothing except tell the truth. And even the external movement of it must not be described as a wandering in the sense of forgetting that it was a journey. This is where it was a fulfilment of the myths rather than of the philosophies; it is a journey with a goal and an object, like Jason going to find the Golden Fleece, or Hercules the golden apples of the Hesperides. The gold that he was seeking was death. The primary thing that he was going to do was to die. [see Mt 16:21, Lk 12:49-50] He was going to do other things equally definite and objective; we might almost say equally external and material. But from first to last the most definite fact is that he is going to die.
[GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:339, emphasis added]

OK, now compare that with this:

For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ: and him crucified.
[St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 2:2)]

I know; the words are not even close. I said I was NOT making that kind of argument! But the thought is the same. It's what I said before; it's the Dickens opening. It's most unreasonable, it's putting the End - (isn't death an End?) at the very beginning. It's upside down. Of course it is! He told us so himself, feeding, as it were, GKC with whole rafts of paradoxes. "I have come to serve, not to be served, and to give his life..." [Mt 20:28, emphasis added; this verse is the very kernel and object of Subsidiarity!] Mary, his mother, carrying Jesus within her as an embryo of just a few cells, stated this of God: "He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble." [Luke 1:52] And Jesus repeated that this inversion shall occur [Lk 13:20] and, as we heard, demonstrated it by washing those dirty feet.

((An aside: Don't let anyone ever tell you Chesterton is the Master of Paradox. Really, that's just another title of our Lord. Just check out the gospels, and you'll see it's true.))

You look a bit concerned: Is that all? I'm still confused. Isn't there any more?

Sure there's more. There's a lot more - to Dickens, to St. Paul, to GKC - and to our remembrance of these next days. There will be, in a future chapter, very powerful and bitter - and shocking - comments about this death, and we shall see a courageous God, a God with his back to the wall, a God who was a rebel, a God who seemed to be atheistic (See CW1:343) But for today that is all you ought to consider.

May God give you the grace "to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified".... "to begin with. Or nothing wonderful can come of the story" you are about to hear. [1Cor2:2, cf. Dickens' "Christmas Carol"]

--Dr. Thursday

Thursday's Dr. Thursday Post

The Wind: Setting the Volume to Max

As I have mentioned in last week's posting, there are a lot of memories connected with September. It was in September of 1969 when I first picked up a bow and began to learn the bass fiddle, also called the double-bass or string bass, the largest of the orchestral strings.

It was a lot of fun... I was never very good, but I did play in the high school stage band, and also in the string ensemble at college. That first practice we began with Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" and it was so awesome that I forgot to play, I was just so amazed by being "inside" the orchestra.

But my playing the string bass had another outcome: a good friend who is now the organist of a cathedral. He provided the musical talent when I built the pipe organ in my basement, and played at its first (and only) recital. From him, from our music teacher at high school, from a number of books, and from direct experience, I learned a lot about pipe organs, which have some strange associations with computers. Computer scientists aren't the only ones who care about numbers like 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, and 1 - but organists must also deal with two-and-two-thirds and one-and-three-fifths, the so-called "mutation" stops, which we can talk about another time.

The first thing one learns about the pipe organ is that it is two major parts: a collection of pipes sitting on a box full of compressed air (the "wind chest"), and machinery to control them (keyboards, stops, and so on). One must have at least five dozen pipes - because each pipe can make only one sound. An organ pipe is not like a flute or clarinet, which has a number of holes, and various keys covering those holes. In an organ, the music comes by having a "rank" - a set of 61 pipes, each made as similarly as possible to the others, except for its size - one for each of the 61 keys of the standard organ keyboard. (That's five octaves and a note, from the "C" 2 ledgers below the bass clef to the second "C" above the staff.)

Most organs have several ranks of pipes. Each rank will have its own shape, which gives that rank its particular "timbre" or tonal quality... again this amazing topic is something for another time.

But I tell you about this very high "system" view of the pipe organ for this purpose: all the keyboards and other various switches (called stop knobs or tabs) are arranged simply in order to control getting the "wind" (the compressed air) to each single pipe. The particular key pressed determines which size pipe - what pitch. The stop knob selects which rank of pipes - what tonal quality. Obviously, when you press several keys, you play a chord, and notes sound in harmony (let us hope!). And, when you pull out more than one stop, you get an increased and mixed tonal effect. This is the origin of the phrase - "pulling out all the stops" - which is called "full organ". In rock and roll, it is called setting the amps to "ten" ("eleven" if you are in "Spinal Tap"). The first album of the rock group "Rush" directs the listener to "set the volume to maximum for best results" (See here for more on that.)

Now it may seem surprising to go into such details about music on a Chesterton blogg. It is said that he was nearly tone-deaf: "Yet it was all but impossible to teach Gilbert a tune, and Bernard Shaw felt this (as we have seen) a real drawback to his friend's understanding of his own life and career. Music was to Shaw what line and color were to Chesterton; but to Chesterton singing was just making a noise to show he felt happy." [Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 276, my emphasis] Father O'Connor, perceptive and careful, applies the scholastic distinguo: "[He] was tone-deaf, though most sensitive to musical rhythm or tempo. [O'Connor, Father Brown on Chesterton, 21, my emphasis]

But as usual Chesterton understood a lot more than we think.

To hear more about this, pull out all the stops and click here...


I think GKC would have greatly approved of the instructions from "Rush", or the "eleven" on the amps of "Spinal Tap" - because - of all things - he understood just what really happened on Palm Sunday.

Now, if that sounds like a Father Brown riddle, perhaps you have not yet read Tremendous Trifles, which is again available! Here is the solution:

I remember a debate in which I had praised militant music in ritual, and some one asked me if I could imagine Christ walking down the street before a brass band. I said I could imagine it with the greatest ease; for Christ definitely approved a natural noisiness at a great moment. When the street children shouted too loud, certain priggish disciples did begin to rebuke them in the name of good taste. He said: "If these were silent the very stones would cry out." [GKC, "The Tower" in Tremendous Trifles, quoting Luke 19:40, my emphasis]

As usual, there is something more to be discovered, if one takes the time. This is an example of where saying the Rosary can pay off - careful reading of Scripture, or real attention at Holy Mass have equal effects, but the Rosary is designed (ah, let use keep to our musical theme) to compose variations on a basso ostinato.

On that Sunday before Passover, as the palms were strewn and the children raised their voices, there was something more than just making noise - there was, to use a modern term, an advertisement, an attention-getter. Specifically the cheers and cries of "Hosanna!" called attention to something going on - to a piece of news - to a new event.

And, if one takes a look at the events exactly eight weeks later, one finds the exact same thing happening. But this time, the sound had a rather different origin:

And when the days of the Pentecost were accomplished, [the Apostles] were all together in one place: And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming: and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. [Acts 2:1-2, emphasis added]

Wow. Talk about setting the volume to max!

Here we see that Someone has controlled the wind! The master Organist of the Universe has "pulled out all the stops" in order to call attention to something new. ("Behold, I make all things new." [Rv 21:5])

This new wind is so powerful, and yet so subtle that Chesterton could not help but call upon it in his own writing:

"How The Great Wind Came To Beacon House"

A wind sprang high in the west, like a wave of unreasonable happiness, and tore eastward across England, trailing with it the frosty scent of forests and the cold intoxication of the sea. In a million holes and corners it refreshed a man like a flagon and astonished him like a blow. In the inmost chambers of intricate and embowered houses it woke like a domestic explosion, littering the floor with some professor's papers till they seemed as precious as fugitive, or blowing out the candle by which a boy read Treasure Island and wrapping him in roaring dark. But everywhere it bore drama into undramatic lives, and carried the trump of crisis across the world. Many a harassed mother in a mean backyard had looked at five dwarfish shirts on the clothes-line as at some small, sick tragedy; it was as if she had hanged her five children. The wind came, and they were full and kicking as if five fat imps had sprung into them; and far down in her oppressed subconsciousness she half remembered those coarse comedies of her fathers when the elves still dwelt in the homes of men. Many an unnoticed girl in a dank walled garden had tossed herself into the hammock with the same intolerant gesture with which she might have tossed herself into the Thames; and that wind rent the waving wall of woods and lifted the hammock like a balloon, and showed her shapes of quaint cloud far beyond, and pictures of bright villages far below, as if she rode heaven in a fairy boat. Many a dusty clerk or curate, plodding a telescopic road of poplars, thought for the hundredth time that they were like the plumes of a hearse, when this invisible energy caught and swung and clashed them round his head like a wreath or salutation of seraphic wings. There was in it something more inspired and authoritative even than the old wind of the proverb; for this was the good wind that blows nobody harm. [GKC, Manalive, first chapter]

As you may have expected, I bring all this up for a purpose. For in just over a week, the date of October 7 shall again occur on a Sunday, as it did in 1571, when the young Don John of Austria defeated the galleys of the Turks in the historic battle of Lepanto. That Sunday morning, he had small hope for victory - the Turkish fleet was far larger; the forces of the West were hodge-podge, barely united under Don John's command. Their hope, such as it was, was based on the plea of the Pope, who had asked for prayers to be said - in particular, the prayer of the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, wherein the various mysteries of the birth, life, death and glorification of Jesus the God-Man are recalled.

The records tell of the dramatic moment after Holy Mass, soon after sunrise, when the forces of the West rowed into the wind, towards the sun, in the battle-array of a cross - facing the west-sailing galleys arranged in the Crescent of the Turks....

But then! Ah, how to make this pivot dramatic... Then as the historian Beeching puts it in a paragraph of just five short words:

And then the wind changed.

The wind swung into the west (as it did on Beacon Hill for Innocent Smith!) aiding Don John and thwarting the Turks - and hope sprang up for the forces of the Cross.

Yes, that battle was won. But we must still face evil - not fearful galleys on a sunrise sea - but the hidden Powers of Darkness. They continue to assault our world, our country, our cities, our families, our own lives - not with swords or guns, but with every spiritual weapon, to destroy peace, wipe out hope, darken faith, quench love.

Where can we go for aid?

"And they came to him, and awaked him, saying: 'Lord, save us, we perish'." [Mt 8:25]

We must pray - we must ask for the Spirit of light, of strength, of love. We must again appeal to the One Who directs the wind, Who came upon the Apostles in tongues of fire!

And Jesus saith to them: "Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith?" Then rising up, he commanded the winds, and the sea, and there came a great calm. But the men wondered, saying: "What manner of man is this, for he winds and the sea obey him?" [Mt 8:26-27]

So, please join in the nine day novena of the Rosary, starting this Saturday, September 29, and continuing to Sunday October 7.

Thursday's Dr. Thursday Post

Thursday during the Great Novena

I am very busy just now, but even if I had time, I hesitate
to approach the profound harmonies which would link GKC's work with the
Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit... it will demand a greater discipline
and a purer holiness and a simpler and clearer mind than I have, sinful
as I am. But I will dare make a selection for our meditation today. It
is in very great resonance with the "Fairy Tale" essay by our beloved
J.R.R.Tolkien, and of course with many other writings of GKC like
Manalive. And I would especially mention that superlative
discussion on the "literary style" of Jesus and His bridge-building
fulfillment of the "granting of a real romance", discussed in the second
half of The Everlasting Man.

Please read it slowly, and think carefully, and deeply, while pondering
the story near the beginning of the "Acts of the Apostles" where the
great wind came, not to Beacon Hill, but to the upper room where the
Apostles where in prayer with Mary...

--Dr. Thursday.

For every mood there is an appropriate impossibility - a decent and
tactful impossibility - fitted to the frame of mind. Every train of
thought may end in an ecstasy, and all roads lead to Elfland. But few
now walk far enough along the street of Dickens to find the place where
the cockney villas grow so comic that they become poetical. People do
not know how far mere good spirits will go. For instance, we never think
(as the old folk-lore did) of good spirits reaching to the spiritual
world. We see this in the complete absence from modern, popular
supernaturalism of the old popular mirth. We hear plenty to-day of the
wisdom of the spiritual world; but we do not hear, as our fathers did,
of the folly of the spiritual world, of the tricks of the gods, and the
jokes of the patron saints. Our popular tales tell us of a man who is so
wise that he touches the supernatural, like Dr. Nikola; but they never
tell us (like the popular tales of the past) of a man who was so silly
that he touched the supernatural, like Bottom the Weaver. We do not
understand the dark and transcendental sympathy between fairies and
fools. We understand a devout occultism, an evil occultism, a tragic
occultism, but a farcical occultism is beyond us. Yet a farcical
occultism is the very essence of "The Midsummer Night's Dream." It is
also the right and credible essence of "The Christmas Carol." Whether we
understand it depends upon whether we can understand that exhilaration
is not a physical accident, but a mystical fact; that exhilaration can
be infinite, like sorrow; that a joke can be so big that it breaks the
roof of the stars. By simply going on being absurd, a thing can become
godlike; there is but one step from the ridiculous to the sublime.

[GKC, Charles Dickens CW15:49-50]

.....Come Holy Ghost, renew in us Your seven-fold gifts...

Pretend it's Thursday

The Ascension: Some Technical Aspects
From Dr. Thusday

I myself have little Latin and less Greek. But I know enough Greek to know the meaning of the second syllable of "enthusiasm," and I know it to be the key to this and every other discussion.
[GKC, The Thing CW3:139]
Note: the second syllable of enthusiasm comes from the Greek word QeoV which means God.

Yes, like GKC I have very little Latin and even less Greek - but I try to be enthusiastic. Hence, for me, and for the Chestertonians who like The Man Who Was Thursday, today's feast is a very special one. After all, it is always celebrated on a Thursday! Yes, so is Holy Thursday. And there is a very curious connection between these two great feasts.To find out the curiosity, continue reading.

Our modern world - no, the civilized world - makes much of connections, of linkings, of unitings, of tyings-together, bonds, unions, weddings, contracts. So many forms, so many purposes.

If there is one word which is the glaring trademark of civilization, from ancient Sumer and Egypt, out to the Magellanic Clouds and all points south, it is communication, which is the most fundamental and most grand form of joining. It links two minds, separated by years, or by distance, or by life-experience. The mystery of the spoken word, the written word: this is the linking which binds us in time. This is a reasonable, and even logical thing to recall today, for St. John calls Jesus "the Word" ("ho Logos in Greek)!

And from time immemorial, there have been ships, there have been carts and waggons, there have been beasts-of-burden - and there have been roads, both Roman and interstate. There's a method in my madness, however - for Jesus told us "I am the way" ("he Hodos" in Greek)!

Now today we see another road - the road to heaven, to eternity - taken by a Man who was dead, but now lives.

Today marks His "departure" from this world in that visible body with its five glorious wounds. Yet today is not at all sad - nor are His last words the usual words of departure or leave-taking. Yes, it is paradoxical - like oOur dear Uncle Gilbert, whose last words were "Hello, my dear" - the last words of Jesus were "Behold, I am with you always." (see the very end of St. Matthew for the details.)

So - this day is a kind of feast day of communication. (Speaking personally and quite technically, I would have to say that the real feast day for communication is March 25, but I will have to discuss that another day.)

Why? Well, partly because communication plays well into the haphazard structure of meditations for the Thursdays of Paschaltide which I stumbled into a few weeks back. We've been exploring the Great Vigil, and last week we had gotten up to the blessing of the water and the renewal of Baptism. But after that, except for the proper prayers and a special Hanc igitur, and the double Alleluias at the dismissal, there really isn't anything different in the bulk of the Vigil Mass from that of any Mass from the rest of the year. Just what is in that "bulk"? Chiefly, it is simply the "thanksgiving" prayer (which is what "eucharist" means) - but it is the re-presentation of Calvary, as Jesus taught us at the Last Supper.

In a word, it is Transubstantiation - it is the way in which Jesus is with us always.

Yes, that's a hard word, for us who deal with fuel injection and broadband and internet web pages and so forth. No, it's just the supreme form of commuication, whereby God communicates with us - and we communicate with God.

As to Transubstantiation, it is less easy to talk currently about that; but I would gently suggest that, to most ordinary outsiders with any common sense, there would be a considerable practical difference between Jehovah pervading the universe and Jesus Christ coming into the room.
[GKC, The Thing CW3:180]

As you read this, the signals of hundreds of television channels, of radio stations, of beams and signals from satellites, from cell-phone towers, from antennae of many kinds - all kinds of waves are pervading your presence. You, poor weak human, are completely unaware of them - the most that might happen is you would be cooked if you were too close to a high-power microwave source. But any detector, even a simple one, can turn those undetectable waves into a form we can perceive - it's as if their source walked into the room with you.

Behold, our God has not left us orphans. He is with us hidden in the sacred species, as hidden in His Manhood as He once hid His divinity on Calvary. And if there is one clear fact about the sacred species, it is that they are products of engineering: you have to grind wheat, crush grapes, add water, and do all the rest of the various steps in just the right way - ain't no philosophy there, buddy - it's reality.

So, too, in the Ascension, there is another kind of engineering. Jesus, the Way, shows us the way we also will go, if we choose to follow Him. He has built the "back-channel", the other side of the highway - the bridge which goes back from earth to heaven.

P.S. I've always wondered why there aren't some devout engineering titles for our Lord. Well - maybe there is at least one: the Pope is still called by a title of the high priests of ancient Rome - pontifex maximus - the Greatest Bridge Builder. And if the Pope is the Vicar of Christ, I guess Christ can have that title too. (You can just imagine Him out there with His hard hat and clipboard, blueprints rolled up under His arm, checking the traverses!) But though there are other liturgical phrases and prayers which hint at the technical character of our faith (like St. Joseph the worker!) there is always that beautiful line in the Litany of the Sacred Heart:

"Heart of Jesus, in Whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, have mercy on us.

[See St. Paul's letter to the Colossians 2:3 for the source.]

Thursday Post

Humbly Renewing the Renewal (of Baptism)

"Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley, only small things from the peak."
[GKC "The Hammer of God" in The Innocence of Father Brown]

Our story, so far:

The new fire, the light of the New Spring of the Universe, has been kindled.

The great candle has been claimed for Christ, the Alpha and Omega, redolent with the fragrance of His five glorious wounds, and alight with the New Life which comes from death, as He foretold: "if a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies..."

And therefore, we hear chanted the great Praeconium, the hymn of His victory, which is ours. We hear reading after reading, remembering why "this night is different from all other nights" when our doors were marked with blood and we followed Moses through the sea.

And then the bells rang out, and the Gloria was chanted! the very same song which was taught to us by the angels on another night of wonder.

Then we hear Paul, the persecutor-turned-Apostle, tell us that we have died, and our lives are now hidden with Christ in God.

Then the Alleluia, and the Good News is told: how just as the sun had risen, [What a pun. But I did not make it.] the women went to the tomb, forgetting about how the stone needed to be rolled back - and what they discovered...

Sure - you know all that. But like little children, we tell it to each other, over and over, because it is Good News - night is passed, and the Day is here!

A day of new life. So now it is time for us to consider how the new life begins.
Continue reading.It begins, as the story of the world began - with water. No, my dear subatomic physicists, no, my beloved big-banging cosmologists - I am not trying to talk about some literal interpretation of how "the Spirit hovered over the face of the waters". For most of human existence, water was seen as an elementary thing - how much more, now that we know so very much about water, do we know its vast, fundamental, critical, wonderful importance for life - and for us. Especially for us Christians.

Some time ago I wrote an essay about water, setting forth a mere handful of important facts and a comment or two, almost a kind of meditation... little guessing that in 2002 Pope John Paul II would practically give us what we might call the Five Hydrous Mysteries! Should you care to read my essay, you can find "The Division of the Waters" in my index here. (My discussion of how the Luminous Mysteries are connected with water appeared in my comments for Advent 2006, which begin here.)

But here and now, we are here considering the particular use of water during the Great Paschal Vigil.

How solemn this event is! The fire, the candle, the readings, the Doxa, the Epistle, the Gospel! The memory of the races at sunrise, people running around, telling each other something too good to be true - but it was true!

But now, we enter into a deeper layer of the mystery - for we now enter into the very womb of the Church, and we shall see the organs by which the New Life is communicated - and (as much as our earthly eyes can) see that Life itself.

Such an action cannot be taken lightly. We must humble ourselves, and ask for assistance. So the priest intones the ancient Litany of the Saints, asking God for His mercy, and the intercession of Mary and all the angels and saints - and we respond, Lord have mercy! All you angels and saints, pray for us!

Then the priest opens the baptismal font, filled with that marvellous liquid called water, or H₂O.
There it sits, quiet and shimmering in the Paschal light: one of the most unique and most fascinating substances formed by God. In nearly perfect balance within itself, its pH of 7 means that only one out of every ten million molecules is incomplete, and thus charged. Yet, its powerful electric dipole gives it a "fractional" charge, formed along the central axes of a tetrahedron, and thus having the form of a cross - it is this powerful activity which makes water one of the most difficult of all substances to make warmer, or colder - and why ice floats.

Meanwhile, we humans stand nearby in reverence, the warmth of our bodies keeping the water in unceasing motion within the cells of our body forces the various proteins in those cells to maintain their correct shapes... To say nothing of the heart's pumping of blood, which is another topic in itself.

Now, to all these, and so many other amazing physical powers, the priest comes, and speaks in persona Christi, exorcizing the water - it is no longer just a thing-of-the-world; blessing the water - it is to be used for divine purposes; dipping the Paschal candle into the water...

Ah, now we see a connection to the Luminous Mysteries (L1 to be precise; see Mt 3:13-17) And, strangely enough, to Genesis. For the Paschal candle is the symbol of Christ. And once, Jesus Himself was dipped into the water of the Jordan. Now, the water which was divided in Genesis, and which divides the hydrophobic amino acids from the hydrophilics in the countless places within our bodies - now, this water will have the power to act as Jesus commanded before His ascension: "baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" [Mt28:19]

This water can now perform division: dividing New Life from death.

Alas, I've got to stop now, or I will quickly fill a gigabyte or two. After all, next week is the Ascension, and I've got to leave some room for that. Ah, I know what's missing. So far, I haven't said much about Chesterton, and just in case you don't have time to hunt up my essay, here is a relevant GKC gem for you to ponder:

Chesterton was a very large man, and he began his autobiography by stating that he "was baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little Church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge. I do not allege any significance in the relation of the two buildings; and I indignantly deny that the church was chosen because it needed the whole water-power of West London to turn me into a Christian." [GKC Autobiography CW16:21]
This water tower played an important role in his story The Napoleon of Notting Hill, but even more important to him was the role of baptism: "I know only one scheme that has proved its solidity, bestriding lands and ages with its gigantic arches, and carrying everywhere the high river of baptism upon an aqueduct of Rome."[GKC The Thing CW3:156]
[above quoted from my essay]

But I ought not end this solemn renewal of the renewal-of-baptism with a quote of my own, or even of GKC's. Let me, rather, quote someone who was a living Paschal candle, bearing marks of the Five Wounds in his very own flesh. He also thought very much about water, whom he loved so dearly he called her his "sister" and even wrote her into a song! Here is the verse:

Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable to us, and humble and precious and clean.
[St. Francis of Assisi, "Canticle of the Sun" quoted in the Poetry Appendix of The Liturgy of the Hours]

Dr. Thursday on Fire and Light

via Dr. Thusday:
The Paschal Candle, or: What number is the opposite to 666?

We are investigating the great drama, that singular, once-a-year event, that most thrilling and awesome prelude to that Chief Act of all Human Life: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered at the Paschal Vigil.

Last week's scene was an almost perfect recollection of the man-half of Chesterton's The Everlasting Man: early in spring, in the darkness of night, outside the church, the priest (acting for all of us, in the primitive darkness like cavemen) kindles a new fire.

Now, in that fresh light, he comes before a gigantic candle, one of the biggest candles most of us shall ever see. On that candle he scratches certain symbols, marking the origin-point, the junction of all the axes, the zero or golden milestone, from which all our other measures will take place.

But unlike the 6-foot-tall mile-marking pillars of ancient Roma, or our reflective turnpike markers which count downwards to the south or the west, or any of the usual systems of cartesian or polar geometry, this meauring post marks not space, but time.Continue reading.
For it is here, the death and resurrection of Jesus, the culmination of His life, which gives us the system of time we are still using. Pagans, Mohammedans, Communists, French revolutionaries, even desperately frightened computer dullards in the late 1990s - none of these have broken out of the master-clock which first struck that Sunday morning just outside Jerusalem two millennia ago.

And so the daily offering of Mass, and the yearly recollection of the liturgical seasons, have proceeded, and counted out the times and seasons.

But here is the zero, the marking-point. And the priest now proceeds to mark it with mystical and high-technology. Yes, the highest technology, for it is the study (logos) of the art (techne) which links us to God - and what art is higher than that?

We should here note: since this is a solemn and sacramental action, the priest uses words and actions as well as something physical (the candle). The candle itself is has its own ritual meaning: it is
(1) something simple from nature, the wax of bees
(2) something humanly produced (a wick is added and it is molded into a long cylinder
(3) it is a vast collection of small and individual contributions (each bee has its own very small addition)
(4) which becomes something singular by something above nature (one does not find Paschal candles sprouting on bushes, or in the sea, or by mining; the transcendent - human activity - is also required, but would fail without the work of those bees!
And more, for when it is lighted, it becomes capable of doing something normally only possible to intangibles:
(5) the flame can be divided and yet remain itself undiminished! (Compare this to the discussion in Dante's Purgatory relating to theft and the properties of tangibles and intangibles.) Then again, the last time I tried, I found that fire is rather an intangible. Hee hee.

Ahem. I am a bit ahead of myself. Before the candle is lighted, the priest recites the following words, and traces the various parts of the following symbol with each verse.

Christus heri et hodie
Principium et Finis
Alpha et Omega
Ipsius sunt tempora et saecula
Ipsi gloria et imperium
per universa aeternitatis saecula.
Amen.

vertical beam of cross: Christ yesterday and today,
horizontal beam of cross: the Beginning and the End,
capital Greek Alpha: the Alpha
capital Greek Omega: and the Omega,
first digit of year: His are the times
second digit of year: and the ages,
third digit of year: To Him be glory and empire
fourth digit of year: Throughout all the ages of eternity. Amen.

Then the priest inserts the five grains of incense (1,2,3 in a vertical column, 4 on left, 5 on right), while saying:

1. Through His holy
2. and glorious wounds
3. may Christ our Lord
4. guard
5. and protect us. Amen.

Now, the candle is ready. It is consecrated - marked as belonging to Christ - and so now it is set aflame.

In a mystic sense, this lighted candle symbolizes the Risen Jesus, for the flame indicates the "life" of the candle. Then, the priest chants the Praeconium Paschale - the "Exultet" or Easter Canticle, a rich and detailed prose-poem which summarizes the history of salvation, recalling the felix culpa - the "happy fault" of Adam which gave us this great redeemer!

But let us back up just a little and examine that symbol a little more closely.

The Cross During Lent we have considered some aspects of the cross. The death of Jesus on the cross ("suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, and was buried" attested to by every Christian Creed, and nearly every Christian denomination and variety) is that singular marker, unrepeated in time, which shattered the endless cycles of the "Great Year" affirmed by nearly all forms of paganism throughout the world. (For lengthy but precise details on this, including scholarly attributions, see the first six chapters of Jaki's Science and Creation.) I might make a poetic allusion to the mathematics of the plus-sign, or quote the first chapter of GKC's The Ball and the Cross, but there is a better quote, linking well with Jaki's references to the cyclic Great Year:

As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:231]

The Alpha and Omega These symbols (and the accompanying words) are taken directly from the Bible:

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.
[Revelation (Apocalypse) 1:8]

This is simply the Greek version of what we mean in English when we say "from A to Z". Such a figure of speech is a synecdoche - naming the parts for the whole - "A to Z" means all the letters of the alphabet. In music, "gamut" means from "Gamma" to "ut" which are the old names for the note we call "C". The Greeks in those early years actually said "the Alpha and the W" which is an omega. Here sneaks in a curious and little-known secret code, which is the answer to my title-riddle. Some classical scholars (and even some fraternity members!) know that the Greeks (like the Hebrews) used their letters to stand for numbers. The mystic number for "AntiChrist" was given as 666 (or perhaps 616) by St. John (Rv. 13:18). One guess is that meant Nero. But if 666 is AntiChrist, what is the number of Christ? Clearly, since St. John also told us that Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, His number must be "Alpha Omega", which translates to 801.

But let us not struggle with mystic poetry just now. Rather let me talk high-tech just for a moment.

Computer scientists use something called the "star-closure" to represent the set of all strings (of finite length) produced by concatenation of a given finite set of characters. What do I mean? If you have God's Own Scrabble Set, with as many letters as you might need, and decided to make a "list" of all the possible "words", you could jot them down on some "infinite" paper He would also let you use. But it would take a whole lot of "time". So computer scientists, not having access to these divine tools, write it like this:
A*
and there is the whole infinite collection of finite strings, in one tidy little symbol. We use this tool for solving questions like what computers can do, and so on. But it is merely a symbol, standing for something which contains an "infinite number" of "words". It's useful, as far as it goes. (An example: since all computers are finite, all programs, no matter how complex, are able to produce nothing but outputs of the form AB*C. That is called the "pumping lemma" for finite state machines.)

But with Alpha and Omega, we have something lots easier to deal with here, and lots easier to explain. The English-speaking child learns that the letters start with A and go on to Z (some call it zee, some call it zed) and end there. There aren't any others. Likewise the Greek child knows from alpha to omega. That's it, all, and everything. If Christ-the-Word-Made-Flesh is this "gamut" of letters, then He is all and everything too. And so the marks on the candle proclaim the same thought as the words in the Creed: per quem omnia facta sunt - "through Him all things were made". He isn't "each" of all the various words (just as "A*" isn't "this" or "that" or "candy" or "cactus") - Jesus is THE Word.

The digits of the year The old liturgical calendar used the term "Sundays after Pentecost"; the new one calls them "Sundays in Ordinary Time" - which really means "ordinal" as in counting, not the opposite of "special" as in dull, bland or banal. (But then I am just a computer scientist, and all Chestertonians know there is no such thing as a boring subject.) All Sundays in the last 1950-plus years have been Sundays after Pentecost, and we could write their ordinals (fifty-second, two-hundred-and-fifth, seventy-six-thousand, four-hundred and ninety-sixth...) if we wanted to. But that's very tedious. It's lots easier just to track how many years it has been since Jesus was born - and since this candle is the marker-thing which links this present year in its relation to that singular event from which all measures derive - yes, the Golden Milestone in the center of Roma! - well, we need to note on this milestone its appropriate distance, so we don't get lost in some cyclical view that history is going to repeat itself. After all, the Mass is a re-presentation, and a link to the one and only sacrifice of Calvary - but we "do it again" (as GKC says God commands the sun and moon). Indeed, we do it again and again because Jesus told us to do it. (See Lk 22:19; 1Cor11:25) True, the Mass is offered around the clock - yet normally a priest says Mass only once in a day. Here, at the Vigil, in a kind of parallel, we have something unique we do just once in a year - its singularity helps us remember, even after two millennia, that the Event Being Recalled happened only once.

To summarize, then:

Heaven has descended into the world of matter; the supreme spiritual power is now operating by the machinery of matter, dealing miraculously with the bodies and souls of men. It blesses all the five senses; as the senses of the baby are blessed at a Catholic christening. It blesses even material gifts and keepsakes, as with relics or rosaries. It works through water or oil or bread or wine. Now that sort of mystical materialism may please or displease [someone]. But I cannot for the life of me understand why [someone] does not see that the Incarnation is as much a part of that idea as the Mass; and that the Mass is as much a part of that idea as the Incarnation. A Puritan may think it blasphemous that God should become a wafer. A Moslem thinks it blasphemous that God should become a workman in Galilee. And he is perfectly right, from his point of view; and given his primary principle. ... If it be profane that the miraculous should descend to the plane of matter, then certainly Catholicism is profane; and Protestantism is profane; and Christianity is profane. Of all human creeds or concepts, in that sense, Christianity is the most utterly profane.
[GKC The Thing CW3:258-9]

Even more:

Mythology had many sins; but it had not been wrong in being as carnal as the Incarnation. With something of the ancient voice that was supposed to have rung through the groves, it could cry again, “We have seen, he hath seen us, a visible god.”
[GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:308]

It must be so, in order that the priest might "give you God out of his own hands." [GKC The Ball and the Cross]

Thus, in this beautiful lighted candle, scribed with symbols, blessed with words, giving its light to others and yet in its division never diminished, (cf. the Sequence for Corpus Christi: "sumit unus, sumunt mille; quantum isti, tantum ille") we have an "icon" - an image - of the Risen Jesus, the God-man marked with His five Glorious Wounds, Who has supreme command over all times and seasons. And thus, in the Mass which shortly follows, we see fulfilled those words of Malachi the Prophet:

For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts. [Mal 1:11]

In every place, in every time: Blessed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. (Rev 19:9)

Thursday's Dr. Thursday Post

This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad, Alleluia!

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn. [See Rv 21:1, Jn 20:15, cf Gn 2:15 and Gn 3:18] [GKC, The Everlasting Man CW2:345]

Happy Easter Thursday!

Among the many thrills of this holy time there is one which I find to be exceedingly high-tech. As we know, ever since God created the "Great Light" to rule the day, and the "Lesser Light" to rule the night, and the stars, and set them in motion to govern times and seasons, we have marked off intervals of time by a variety of means: calendars, priests calling out the "kalends", suns, moons, years of the reign of King-x-Son-of-King-y, counting the AUC: Years since the Founding of the City, or the years since the signing of the Declaration, counting the crazy somersaulting motions of the earth and the moon, the long slow motions of the galaxy, the insanely rapid vibrations of electrons leaping from shell to shell in the atoms of krypton or of cesium (whichever is the current standard).

And by many other means.

But none of those is the high tech one.

Not even the French Revolution (Say, just when is the Fifth Thermidor of An 4???), no, not even that Great Fear of 1999, solemnizing the coming the Eetook Comet, making people replace vacuum cleaners, doorknobs, and lightbulbs because they might contain a chip which would fail, could change the demarking of the years since the birth of Jesus.

But there is something which does stop this marking off of time - at least a tiny little bit. Read more.Actually two somethings. Christmas and Easter.

Yes, the highest-tech mechanism of time is the accurate placement of ribbons in the Books of Worship of the Roman Catholic Church: the Lectionary and the Divine Office. (Along with that grand and deeply mystic tech code on the Paschal Candle, but I shall save that for another today.)

For this most solemn octave of days, the Great Clock pauses. No, we are not lunatics, hee hee - the moon and also the sun, the cesium and krypton, the various civil and other demarkings, are proceeding uninterruptedly. We - yes, even the most solemn of us - know that today is Thursday, the day of Sun, Moon, and Stars (See TMWWT for more on that.)

But at Holy Mass today, the priest says: "We praise You with greater joy than ever on this Easter Day, when Christ became our Paschal Sacrifice..." And at Morning Prayer, and Evening Prayer, the psalms repeat (and GKC and the choirs of heaven murmur, "Do it again!") each of these eight days, the same happy psalms of Easter.

Yes, like a little kid, our ancient Holy Mother Church "does it again". The Easter Day lasts a whole 8 days.

Why is this?

This is but our childlike attempt (alas, so weak) at telling each other what Eternity is like. And this is very hard to do, even for the Church. Chesterton admitted the difficulty:

There are twenty tiny minor poets who can describe fairly impressively an eternity of agony; there are very few even of the eternal poets who can describe ten minutes of satisfaction. Nevertheless, mankind being half divine is always in love with the impossible, and numberless attempts have been made from the beginning of human literature to describe a real state of felicity. Upon the whole, I think, the most successful have been the most frankly physical and symbolic; the flowers of Eden or the jewels of the New Jerusalem. Many writers, for instance, have called the gold and chrysolite of the Holy City a vulgar lump of jewellery. But when these critics themselves attempt to describe their conceptions of future happiness, it is always some priggish nonsense about "planes," about "cycles of fulfilment," or "spirals of spiritual evolution." Now a cycle is just as much a physical metaphor as a flower of Eden; a spiral is just as much a physical metaphor as a precious stone. But, after all, a garden is a beautiful thing; whereas this is by no means necessarily true of a cycle, as can be seen in the case of a bicycle. A jewel, after all, is a beautiful thing; but this is not necessarily so of a spiral, as can be seen in the case of a corkscrew. Nothing is gained by dropping the old material metaphors, which did hint at heavenly beauty, and adopting other material metaphors which do not even give a hint of earthly beauty. [GKC, "Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens" CW15:311]

One might suspect Tolkien had this in mind when he explained how Bilbo had a good time at Rivendell, but took only a line or two to tell about it, whereas the terrors of the "goblins" and other such things took whole chapters... Well, unlike either the goblins or the dwarves, GKC is hardly a "minor" poet (hee hee) yet he wrote one of the most mathematically perfect poems about eternity, which of course is about the one real thing we know we're going to be doing there: thanking God.

"Eternities"

I cannot count the pebbles in the brook.
Well hath He spoken: 'Swear not by thy head,
Thou knowest not the hairs,' though He, we read,
Writes that wild number in His own strange book.

I cannot count the sands or search the seas,
Death cometh, and I leave so much untrod.
Grant my immortal aureole, O my God,
And I will name the leaves upon the trees.

In heaven I shall stand on gold and glass,
Still brooding earth's arithmetic to spell;
Or see the fading of the fires of hell
Ere I have thanked my God for all the grass.
[GKC Collected Poems CW10:210]

Amen, Amen. This IS the Day the Lord has made: Let us rejoice and be glad indeed.

Alleluia, Alleluia.