We Wish Many Joyous Moments for Gil & Kathleen

The Mass'keteers wish Gil and Kathleen many wonderful blessings on their marriage May 8th.

When my wife Ann and I tied the knot and now Gil and Kathleen I can't help but recall the image of love flowing.  (I insert my notes from Gil Bailie's taped lecture commentary series on Canto XXXI of The Divine Comedy Vol. II: Purgatory:)

The four Virtues said to Virgil, “Look deep, look well. However your eyes may smart, we have led you now before those emeralds from which Love’s shot his arrows through your heart.” They had led him to the transfigured Beatrice, who he had known in his youth.

Dante continues, “A thousand burning passions, every passion – every one hotter than any flame, held my eyes fixed on the lucent eyes she held fixed on the griffin.” So she is not looking at him, she is looking at Christ. (Christ is manifested in this pageant as the griffin, the figure that is part lion and part eagle. And the griffin represents for Dante the two natures of Christ, the divine and human nature.)

Dante says, “Like sunlight in the glass the two-fold creature shown from the deep reflection in her eyes.” So he looked into her eyes and he saw the reflection as in a mirror of Christ.

(108 – 126 from Mark Musa translation)

“It is us to lead you to her eyes. The other three, who see more deeply, will instruct your sight, as you bathe in her gaze of joyful light,” they sang to me; then they accompanied me up to the griffin’s breast, while Beatrice now faced us from the center of the cart.

“Look deeply, look with all your sight,” they said, “for now you stand before those emeralds from which Love once shot loving darts at you.”

A thousand yearning flames of my desire held my eyes fixed upon those brilliant eyes that held the griffin fixed within their range. Like sunlight in a mirror, shining back, I saw the twofold creature in her eyes, reflecting its two natures, separately.

Imagine, reader, how amazed I was to see the creature standing there unchanged, yet, in its image, changing constantly…

116. now you stand before those emeralds: Beatrice’s eyes are green, symbolizing Hope. Here we are presented with a clear indication of Beatrice’s two interconnected roles in the poem. The pilgrim is reminded first of the Beatrice of the “a thousand yearning flames of my desire,” the woman whose love should have sufficed to teach him to aspire to the Ultimate Good. But when he actually does look into Beatrice’s eyes, the Pilgrim sees the image of the griffin. One of Beatrice’s other roles, then, is that of Revelation. The mystery of Christ’s dual nature is still beyond the Pilgrim’s understanding, and so, allegorically, he is as yet unable to gaze directly at the griffin, the symbol of those two natures. But he can begin to comprehend through Beatrice’s (Revelation’s) green eyes.

122. I saw the twofold creature in her eyes: The Pilgrim encounters in Beatrice’s eyes, as in a mirror, the mystery of Christ’s dual nature. The words of Paul (1 Cor. 13:12) come to mind: “We see now through a mirror in an obscure way (darkly).” Just as Christ is both God and man in one, and at the same time, so he is represented by the griffin, which is part eagle and part lion. The Pilgrim can “see” the two natures of the beast imaged in Beatrice’s eyes, but he cannot comprehend their oneness; hence the natures are visible to him only alternately (“separately,”) and not simultaneously. He can only marvel at the mysteriousness of oneness by describing an image that changed natures (from eagle to lion and back again) while the creature itself remains unchanged.

A Little Bit Married, eh?

Dr. Christine B. Whelan gives essential advice to couples whose only catechism on marriage was prime time television: Are You A Little Bit Married? - How to know if it's time to walk down the aisle or go your separate ways.

Reverence (?) You decide? Pastor decide? Oh, what the heck?

A little sampling of reverence in the house of the Lord.

Marriage and Family - First Things

I posted a longer essay on the Public Square blog, the front window of the First Things site. Marriage, I contend is not a “right,” but a condition, an “estate,” as the Book of Common Prayer says it is: a human mating pair attains the condition of marriage by entering a holy congregation as bridge and groom, uniting the reproductive activity of man and woman with the eschatological hope for eternal life of the faith community. We fight off death in two ways: by raising children, and by expectation of salvation. Marriage unites both of these into a single condition. It uniquely fulfills our human nature, our need for eternal life. Without holy matrimony the human race will die, as portions of it already are dying in countries whence faith has been banished.

[ ... ]

This may be the first time in Western history in which the sacred foundation of society, whose irreducible fundamental unit is the family, faces explicit opposition. If militant secularism succeeds in banishing the sacred from social life, we will lose heart and perish, as the tragic victims of communism are perishing. There is nothing to be done for the infertile, aging peoples of the former Soviet empire. The best thing one can do for them is not to be like them. Secular Western Europe already has one foot in the demographic grave. If we lose the sacred in the United States, we will follow them into Sheol. We might as well make a stand now over the sacred character of marriage, because there is nowhere to fall back from here.

- David P. Goldman is associate editor of First Things.

Fr. Richard Neuhaus - Having The Courage to Decide

How is it that we have so many people, generation or 2 or 3, who simply have not the courage to decide?

Fr. Richard Neuhaus - Having the Courage to Be Manly

Choice the Dragon

Anthony Esolen looks at tales from The Quest of the Holy Grail, written by an unknown Cistercian monk of the 12th century, and sees a dragon that still devours hoards today.

Choice is the dragon of our day. It smuggles into its charcoal-smelling barrow not goblets and gilt pommels but human souls, one after another after another, enticing them there with “choices,” all of them more or less trivial, while it sits upon the hoard and snores away in its inhuman sleep.

We like that dragon. We eat the fruit of the land in season, out of season. We surf the speckled Internet for spiky games and delights, or for the sheer satiation of ennui, only a click away. We shop for schools, we demand “electives.” We shop for churches (alas that we should have to shop for churches), even shop for creeds. We will give the dragon our gold for the privilege of wider choice in how we may put our brain waves to sleep for a couple of hours a day, irritable and unaccountable as those brain waves are.

We find arranged marriages abominable. What, no choice? And after we marry, we retain a fail-safe, lest married life prove to be married life and not the predictable scripts of our own writing. We are the first people in the world who expect that our children will live far away from us and from each other. Why should anyone be subject to the geographical accident of having been raised in Bag-End, near a certain hill or beside a certain brook?

We even believe in the “freedom to choose,” a lizardly slogan that darts past the silent object of the infinitive: as if we feared that the children of our own wombs would be reptiles themselves, now come to prey upon our precious choice. We like that dragon. We like our choice ...

The dragon has a name; it is Choice. [ht: Mary Victrix]

What was your best St. Valentine's Day gift?

"Chivalry might be called the baptism of Feudalism," says Chesterton. "It was an attempt to bring the justice and even the logic of the Catholic creed into a military system which already existed."

And from chivalry came the idea of romantic love... and St. Valentine's Day.

So hoping that THIS trend does not catch on anymore than what it has already I thought I would ask folks to comment on what was their best valentine's day gift received or given.

Take a quiz on the history of St. Valentine's Day HERE and notice how mimesis played a role in this tradition.

Holy Fellowship of the Rings

[ht: Whapping]

Aña and Mike Tie the Knot

A super duper batch of photos and a vvery proud pop: Gil Bailie shares wedding pictures of his daughter, Aña's and her new husband, Mike Orsi, here. Joy, blessings, and "Here's hail! for the rest of the road," from the Mass'keteers!

R-E-S-P-E-C-T One Another - Do we know how today?

Interesting article in Prism magazine by Bruce Wydick that I found over at The Dawn Patrol.

Below is how Wydick explains his goal in writing about this subject.

My goal here is to help us understand why sex outside of marriage violates God’s laws and to reconnect it to some of the basic guidelines we find in Scripture concerning love for our neighbor, social justice, and a respect for the welfare of other human beings.

I will attempt to demonstrate why I believe sex outside of marriage violates these core values and is not an arbitrary rule imposed by a God who wants to ruin all our fun. On the contrary, I believe that the more closely we study this issue, the more we discover that God’s laws reveal his deep love for us as a creator who desires genuine happiness for us.

He builds a good case however I have to agree with Andie, who left this comment on Dawn's blog;
The analogy is very good, but would be better if it were extended to men and women (who are both exploited, both in industry and in our sexual culture).

I've often noted that arguments for chastity focus on the emotional well-being of women while ignoring that of men, as if men are impervious to harm from extramarital sex. This seems, to my admittedly unstudied mind, to deny the critical truth that men are human too, and as such carriers of the same dignity (and emotion) as women.

It also seems to indirectly make chastity a matter of taking care of fragile, emotional women, which is selling it short. Chastity is about women and men respecting and looking after each other, mutually and with charity.

To me we commit violence on both women and men when we over-simplify the biological differences the way that Wydick does however his connection of the "love your neighbor" macro and the micro with a sense of social justice is solid. I also like his analogy:

—consensuality is an insufficient condition for social justice. But many male college students today will sleep out on the steps of the Capitol protesting sweatshop labor and then sleep with their girlfriends, completely unaware of the inherent contradictions of their beliefs and lifestyle.

and his closing argument...

...sexual purity is at its root an act of social justice, and understanding this can help us to steer clear of sexual landmines. Because God is good, walking in obedience to his ways is what will ultimately give us the most joy.

Can you imagine all the "liberal" social justice crowd realizing that sexual purity is at the root of their cause and in fact at the very root of their being?

Rabbis & Bishops Defend Marriage

A lengthy excerpt, yes, but one that is vital to read. My comments appear after it.

ROCKVILLE CENTRE, New York, SEPT. 5, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Marriage should be protected as a relationship between a man and a woman, affirm Jewish and Catholic leaders.

Rabbis and bishops joined in affirming their common beliefs regarding marriage in a joint statement titled "Created in the Divine Image." The statement was signed by Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld of Young Israel Synagogue in Kew Gardens Hills, New York, and Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, with other Catholic and Jewish leaders

The bishops and rabbis affirm "our shared commitment to the ordinance of God, the Almighty One, who created man and woman in the divine image so that they might share as male and female, as helpmates and equals, in the procreation of children and the building up of society."

In June, California became the second U.S. state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriages. The governor of New York earlier this year instructed authorities in his state to recognize same-sex marriages contracted in states or countries where the unions are legal.

Not discrimination

The Catholic-Jewish statement contests the claim that refusing to recognize same-sex unions as marriage is discrimination against homosexuals.

"We recognize that all persons share equally in the dignity of human nature and are entitled to have that human dignity protected, but this does not justify the creation of a new definition for a term whose traditional meaning is of critical importance to the furtherance of a fundamental societal interest," they said.

The statement continues: "God's design for the continuance of human life, as seen in the natural order, as well as in the Bible, clearly revolves around the union of male and female, first as husband and wife, and then as parents. A unique goal of marriage, which is reproduction and the raising of families, exists apart from that of same sex unions, which cannot equally participate in this essential function."

The rabbis and bishops affirmed that a legal classification of private relationships between people of the same gender "dilutes the special standing of marriage between a man and a woman."

"Since the future of every society depends upon its ability to reproduce itself according to this natural order and to have its young people reared in a stable environment, it is the duty of the state to protect the traditional place of marriage and the family for the good of society," the religious leaders added. "While others have the freedom to disagree with us, we hope that even those outside of our common religious traditions will recognize that we speak from the truth of human nature itself which is consistent with both reason and the moral life.

* * *

This group of rabbis and bishops clearly understands the fragile nature of prohibitions and their role in the present cultural "crisis of distinctions." The proponents of chaotic antinomianism - a.k.a. the gnostic myth of unbridled "I can and must do anything I can think to do" - are slaves to the overarching power of the primitive sacred's false transcendence. It only feels like freedom.

The difference between an Al-Qaeda terrorist and a western hedonistic pansexualist is negligible.

Read more here

The Joy of Mary's Marriage of Joseph

(the following taken from The Franciscan Crown small booklet - The mosaic above is from the Sanctuary of Perpetual Adoration at the shrine of Marytown, Libertyville, IL)

In 1399, the Franciscan Order began commemorating the betrothal of Saint Joseph with a liturgical office that was later developed into the feast day of Joseph as the "Husband of Mary" (now a solemnity celebrated on March 19th). In 1741, the Franciscans requested that Pope Benedict XIV consecrate the whole Seraphic Order to Saint Joseph. Before opening the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII (a Secular Franciscan) declared Saint Joseph the "Paternal Patron of the Universal Church." This proclamation formally recognized Joseph's role as inseparable from Mary's role as "Mother of the Church."

With this long history of devotion to the spousal relationship between Mary and Joseph, it is fitting that those meditating on the traditional seven joys in the life of a married woman, complete their prayer with an eighth joy - Mary's marriage to Joseph.

And, just as Francis could no longer keep his desire to wed "Lady Poverty" a secret from his closest friend, so too Joseph must have sung an anthem of praise at being chosen from all time to wed the most beloved of God.

The Beauty of Nuptiality and Wonder of a Trinitarian Existence

tip to Gil Bailie in the final session of the Emmaus Road Iniatitive of the 2007-2008 season.

The Annunciation
Edwin Muir (1887-1959)

Now in this iron reign
I sing the liberty
Where each asks from each
What each most wants to give
And each awakes in each
What else would never be,
Summoning so the rare
Spirit to breathe and live.

Then let us empty out
Our hearts until we find
The last least trifling toy,
Since now all turns to gold,
And everything we have
Is wealth of heart and mind,
That squandered thus in turn
Grows with us manifold.

Giving, I'd give you next
Some more than mortal grace,
But that you deifying
Myself I might deify,
Forgetting love was born
Here in a time and place,
And robbing by such praise
This life we magnify.

Whether the soul at first
This pilgrimage began,
Or the shy body leading
Conducted soul to soul
Who knows? This is the most
That soul and body can,
To make us each for each
And in our spirit whole.


Let us gaze once more on the first stanza:

Now in this iron reign
(this constraint found in a sacramental marriage)
I sing the liberty
(the paradox of that sacramental sensibility - freedom joined in obedience)

Where each asks from each
What each most wants to give
And each awakes in each
What else would never be,
(perfect description of nuptiality and Trinitarian existence)

Churchgoing Men & Fathers

W. Bradford Wilcox opines at MercatorNet: Churchgoing men are not a hangover of the old patriarchy but a new breed who are closely connected to their families.

"People Think We're a Great Team"

John Paul II the Great's Theology of the Body, a favorite of all four Mass'keteers, emphasizes that love between husband and wife must be free, total, faithful, and, if God wills it, fruitful. So it is a delight to see this marital love exhibited in Christine and Gerry Kuhlman. See if you don't agree.