Some great news to finish the month. Angelico Press has released the first book by (or about) Mother Mectilde de Bar in English, The Mystery of Incomprehensible Love: The Eucharistic Message of Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament. Translated by a Benedictine Oblate and with a foreword by the Prior of Silverstream, this book of meditative excerpts is sure to inject a new and healthy dose of sound French spirituality into the veins of the modern Church. It will also, I hope, help generate new scholarly interest in the considerable spiritual contributions made by Mother Mectilde.
Just in time for Walpurgisnacht, here’s a short story that will send chills up your spine. “The Funhouse” is a three-part horror now fully released to Patrons on my Patreon. Please consider becoming a patron today to enter the terrifying Funhouse…
Portrait of Robert Boyle, Father of Modern Chemistry. A scientist distinguished by his open-minded and empirical attitude towards paranormal, supernatural, and magical phenomena. (Source)
I am pleased and proud to announce that I have a book review up at the Genealogies of Modernity Blog. I examine a compelling recent work by historian of science, Michael Hunter. The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment (Yale UP, 2020) is well worth your time. I think it provokes really intriguing questions about the process of disenchantment – a transition that Hunter effectively describes as the methodological eclipse of Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle by Isaac Newton. You’ll understand what I mean when you read the review (and the book), so please head on over and give it a read-through!
Thank you to the GoM Blog for hosting my writing, and especially to Mr. Terence Sweeney for kindly asking me to contribute. It was an honor and a pleasure to write for a platform with such intriguing content.
Fishermen’s Devotions, Étaples, Henry Ossawa Tanner, c. 1916 (Source)
I must refer my readers to two very moving pieces written by two dear friends of mine. Both are intensely personal and both are profound meditations on the present moment as a lived reality. The first is an almost Pascalian intervention from Mr. Jackson Wolford, who writes that our first task in this crisis – before any interpretations of what is going on all around us – is to witness the suffering. The second is a quiet reflection on impending fatherhood from Mr. Nathan Goodroe. He considers what it means to face the birth of a child in the midst of suffering through an extended look at the Holy Family’s trek to Bethlehem. We may be in Holy Week, but I still found his words to be very timely. In fact, both are. Please give them a read.
I must refer my readers to a new recording of some Gregorian chant from Silverstream Priory. The beautiful responsory, Media Vita, is very timely during this pandemic. Here is the translation, passed on by the Prior:
In the midst of life we are in death; from whom shall we seek help, save Thee, O Lord? Who for our sins art justly angered. * Holy God, Holy mighty One, Holy merciful Saviour, hand us not over to the bitterness of death.
1. In Thee our fathers hoped; they hoped, and Thou hast liberated them. * Holy God, Holy mighty One, Holy merciful Saviour, hand us not over to the bitterness of death.
2. To Thee our fathers cried; they cried and were not confounded. * Holy God, Holy mighty One, Holy merciful Saviour, hand us not over to the bitterness of death.
3. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. * Holy God, Holy mighty One, Holy merciful Saviour, hand us not over to the bitterness of death.
Translation of the Media Vita
I know I speak for the monks when I encourage you to give it a listen and take some comfort from this ancient prayer of the Church in a time when death is all around.
I would particularly note the highly idiosyncratic harmonic arrangement used here. I have not heard any other renditions of this chant like it. I grew up listening to the Benedictines of Santo Domingo do Silos, and although I like their hauntingly pure Media Vita, the Silverstream version has a complexity and depth that feels very different, if just as moving.
The accompanying film is also of very high quality. I have known the monks of Silverstream for six years. This is by far the best video I’ve seen from them. It does a good job capturing the peculiar beauty of that monastery in Springtime, as well as the powerful sense of holiness that radiates throughout the house and grounds from the Blessed Sacrament. And for those who care about such things, there’s a lovely conical requiem chasuble from 3:23 on.
Give it a listen, and please consider supporting the monks through a donation or by shopping at their excellent online store. The monks are streaming their masses and some of their offices throughout this crisis, and I recommend following them for what will no doubt be a stirring and holy Paschal Triduum (albeit at a distance).
What follows is an original translation of L’Horloge de la Passion, a brief meditative text written by the Solitaire of Port-Royal, Jean Hamon (1618-1687), a doctor of medicine, mystic, and exegete. Hamon wrote L’Horloge for the sisters of Port-Royal to use during perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, perhaps during the Triduum. Perpetual adoration was a central feature of life at Port-Royal from 1647, when Mère Angélique returned from the unsuccessful venture of the Institut du Saint-Sacrement.
Each hour represents a different mystery of the Passion and is calibrated to follow the Passion narrative in real time. Hamon concludes with several prayers, probably composed first in Latin and then put into the vernacular. I have take the liberty of reproducing the Latin below while translating from the accompanying French.
This document, though originating from the heyday of Port-Royal, was only published in 1739 in the post-Unigenitus ferment of Jansenist print culture. It remains a very edifying text and a testament of the vitality of the spiritual life that characterized those wayward ascetics clustered around Port-Royal. I offer it here both out of historical interest for those who, like me, look at Port-Royal for academic reasons, and because I felt that such a text may be of some use and consolation to the faithful in this very unusual Holy Week, when death hedges us all around.
Christ on the Cross, Philippe de Champaigne, before 1650 (Source)
L’Horloge de la Passion
At six o’clock in the evening: Jesus Christ washes the feet of His Apostles. Humility. Help to our neighbor.
At seven o’clock in the evening: Jesus Christ institutes the Most Blessed Sacrament. Recognition and perpetual memory of this benefit.
At eight o’clock in the evening: Jesus Christ prays to His Father for the salvation and union of His Elect. To renounce everything that can stops us from being one with Jesus Christ and our brethren.
At nine o’clock in the evening: Jesus Christ is sad even unto death. Confidence in the weakness of Jesus Christ, who is our strength in our dejection and our miseries.
At ten o’clock in the evening: Jesus Christ prays to His Father to take away the chalice of His sufferings. Submission to the will of God.
At eleven o’clock in the evening: Jesus Christ enters into agony. To resist sin with courage.
At midnight: Jesus Christ, after having turned back the Jews by a single word, allows himself to be caught. To see God in all that man cause us to suffer.
At one o’clock in the morning: Jesus Christ allows himself to be carried off by the Jews. Sweetness and humility in ill-treatment.
At two o’clock in the morning: Jesus Christ is presented to the High Priest. To revere God in secular and ecclesiastical authorities.
At three o’clock in the morning: Renunciation and penance of St. Peter. Fidelity in confessing the name of Jesus Christ. Humble return to Him after our falls.
At four o’clock in the morning: Jesus Christ is presented before the Council of the Jews. To listen to the word of God as being truly His word. To adorer the Truth, never to raise ourselves against it.
At five o’clock in the morning: Jesus Christ mocked and outraged by the servants of the Priests. To suffer humbly both scorn and injuries.
At six o’clock in the morning: Jesus Christ is brought before Pilate. Adoration and imitation of the silence of Jesus Christ, when we are accused.
At seven o’clock in the morning: Jesus Christ is sent to Herod. To pass as foolish before men even though we be truly wise.
At eight o’clock in the morning: Jesus Christ is scourged. To take part in the sufferings of Jesus Christ and His members.
At nine o’clock in the morning: Jesus Christ is crowned with thorns. To adore Jesus Christ as our King. To suffer with him, is to reign.
At ten o’clock in the morning: Jesus Christ is condemned to death. To die to one’s self is to live in Jesus.
At eleven o’clock in the morning: Jesus Christ carries His Cross. Let us carry ours after him; he carries it with us.
At noon: Jesus Christ is crucified. To attach ourselves to Jesus Chris, and to desire to be attached by Him to the Cross.
At one o’clock in the afternoon: Jesus Christ is lifted up upon the Cross. To raise our eyes and heart towards the mysterious and divine Serpent.
At two o’clock in the afternoon: Jesus Christ speaks to His Father, to the Blessed Virgin Mary His Mother, and to St. Jean. Attention to these divine words that comprehend our duties.
At three o’clock in the afternoon: Jesus Christ gives up the ghost. To adore His death; to unite ours to him.
At four o’clock in the afternoon: The open side of Jesus Christ sheds blood and water. Rest in the Side and in the Wounds of Jesus Christ. To honor the Sacraments established in the Church.
At five o’clock in the evening: Jesus Christ is buried, and placed in the tomb. To be buried with Him. To hope for the Resurrection.
Prayers – That one can say in adoring the Death of Jesus Christ
Ut beatam horam Mortis tuae adoramus, Domine, da nobis ut horam mortis nostrae, quam solus nosti, perfecto corde & vivendo & moriendo adoremus.
Vouchsafe unto us grace, O Lord, that in adoring the hour of Thy Death, we might adore, in living and dying with a heart perfectly submitted to Thine commands, the hour of our death, that is known to none but thee.
Domine Jesu, qui mori voluisti ne moreremur, sed de morte ad vitam transiremus, recordare Mortis tuae in tempore mortis meae, cum nec tui nec mei recordari potuero.
Lord Jesus, who hast desired to die to deliver us from death, and to cause us to pass from death to life, remember Thou Thy Death at the hour of mine, when I will be no longer in a state to think of either myself or Thee.
Mortem meam quae poena peccati est, tutetur & protegat Mors tua, quae tollit peccata mundi, ut jam pie cogitando quia mortuus es, tunc moriendo non moriar.
May Thy Death that nullifies the sins of the world be my protection in death, which shall be the penalty of sin; and in thinking with piety that Thou art dead, in dying even may I not die.
Versetur semper ante oculos meos tempus Mortis tuae, quae mihi sit fons vitae, cum vita mea defecerit, ut in Morte tua vitam invenire possim qui in vita mea mortem singulis diebus invenio.
May Thy Death always be present to me, so that it may be unto me a source of immortal life when I will lose this corruptible life; and instead of often finding death in my life, may I find life in Thy Death.
Fac, Domine, semper conjungam cogitationem Mortis tuae cogitationi mortis meae, ut quod in morte mea amarum esse potest, benedictione Mortis tuae dulcescat; sicque vitae permanentis amore, mortis transeuntis levem ictum non reformidem.
Vouchsafe unto me the grace, O Lord, of ever uniting myself to the thought of Thy Death in the remembrance of mine, so that what there might be of bitterness in my death might be sweetened by the blessing of Thine; and thus that the love of an eternal life might cause me not to dread anything of the blow, so light, of a voyaging death.
Bene vivam, Domine, ut bene moriar. Ut bene vivam, vivam de te. Ut bene moriar, moriar in te,. Vitam meam informet Vita tua, ut sancta sit; & mortem meam defendat Mors tua, salus nostra, ut sit salutaris,
Vouchsafe unto me the grace, O Lord, of living well, that I may die well. May I live in Thee, that I might live well: and to die well, may I die in Thee. May Thy life be the rule of my life, so that it may be holy; and may Thy Death, which is the cause of our salvation, safeguard my death so that it may procure unto me salvation.
Christ on the Cross. Another treatment of the Passion by Philippe de Champaigne. c. 1655. Given by the artist to his sister Marie, a Beguine in Brussels. (Source)
For this Friday in Passiontide, we have another offering in the Lenten Spirituality Series. This time it comes from the great Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle (1575-1629), mystic, founder of the French Oratory, and sponsor of the Carmelites of France. Immersed in the Fathers and dedicated to the reform of the clergy initiated at the Council of Trent, Bérullewas perhaps the most influential writer of the French School of Spirituality. His vast corpus has been rarely translated in English, so I present my own translation here from hisOeuvres Complètes, pg. 1045-46. In this excerpt from the “Opuscules Divers de Piété,” we encounter one of the key themes of the French School – the interior life of Christ.
Jacques Sarazin’s monument for Cardinal de Bérulle (1575 – 1629), formerly at the chapel of the Carmelite nuns of the Rue Saint-Jacques, and now in the Louvre (Source)
Of the Interior Sufferings of Jesus – Of the Sentiments of the Son of God in Regards to His Most Holy Passion
…
If so many holy souls have been sacredly occupied with pious, devout, and admirable sentiments with regards to the Cross, the Son of God, who is the source, the principle, and the exemplar of the life of His saints, will not have been removed therefrom. On the contrary, He will have been occupied and filled with the same advantage that His incomparable life has over the life of the saints.
We adore and admire in the Son of God two types of life: the life of glory and the life of the Cross; two lives in the Son of God, two very different lives, two very busy lives, without either one of these lives and occupations impeding the other. On the contrary, that [life] of glory dignifies the sufferings of Jesus, in that they are established in the self-same glory: that only belongs to Jesus and to His sufferings, that had had these two privileges, to be established in the divine life, in the glorious life; instead of the sufferings of the saints that are only established in human life, in the holy life. The life of the Cross testifies to His grandeur and His power of finding and taking the same place of glory.
Each life has its object, its knowledge, and its sentiment, as it appears in the human life of the senses; how much more in the spiritual and divine life? The life of glory has its object, its light, and its suffering, which is its sentiment. The life of the Cross also has its object, its light, its suffering. The devout life has its objects, its thoughts, its sentiments. Oh! What are the sentiments of the life of glory! What are the sentiments of the life of the Cross!
These sentiments of the Son of God, in regard to the Cross, had been, as soon as its arrival in the divine life, glorious and passible, continuing during the whole course of His life, even unto death; some of anguish and others of languor towards His cross: Baptismo habeo baptizari, et quomodo coarctor donec perficiatur! “And I have a baptism wherewith I am to be baptized: and how am I straitened until it be accomplished?” (Luke 12:50 DRA)
These sentiments had been universal as those of glory, which spread through the soul, the powers, and the glorified body. His agony is one the sentiments of the Cross that had occupied and filled all parts of the Son of God’s body; because, by this mystery, all the parts of His body had been rendered capable and sensitive in view of the Cross.
Besides this mystery of agony…these sentiments of the life of the Cross occupied the heart, the soul, and the spirit of Jesus; everything therein had been penetrated, His heart had not waited even to be pierced by the lance to be pierced by this pain; this pain had wounded it living and the lance had pierced it in death.
Until we be introduced into the sanctuary of the life of the Son of God, let us adore these sentiments – so divine and so vast – upon a subject so grand.
There are three different principles of these admirable sentiments: thought, light, and the powerful hand of God himself, imprinting these sentiments immediately upon the heart and the spirit of Jesus. The light of glory, clearly seeing God in His grandeur and His essence, had perhaps been employed in its efficacy to operate these divine sentiments. Thoughts at once devout, luminous, and efficacious, but ordinary for the Son of God, had also operated sentiments in His soul, albeit inferior to those that the light of glory and the immediate hand of God had worked there.
Abandonment on the Cross is one of these sentiments imprinted by the Eternal Father immediately.
Recently I had the great honor of being interviewed on the podcast Poststructuralist Tent Revival (PTR) about my research into Anglo-Catholic hermeticism and occultism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thanks especially to Jacob Given for a great conversation. Please consider subscribing to PTR‘s Patreon! They do some really great stuff.
And for those who want to learn a little more about the broader phenomena I discuss here, you might want to check my brief article in The Church Times, Dec. 2018, on the same subject. While it doesn’t go as deeply as my actual academic work did, it gives an overview of the landscape.
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