Our world easily doubts truth; it is tempted, too, to despair in the goodness of being, but it is still sensitive to beauty. How many artists suffer in ways that can at times lead them to the verge of personal shipwreck, but the beauty that fascinates them also saves them from drowning. The beautiful opens the heart to another dimension, like a window onto the infinite.
Christ Himself vouchsafes to repeat in each of us in figure and mystery all that He did and suffered in the flesh. He is formed in us, born in us, suffers in us, rises again in us, lives in us; and this not by a succession of events, but all at once: for He comes to us as a Spirit, all dying, all rising again, all living. We are ever receiving our birth, our justification, our renewal, ever dying to sin, ever rising to righteousness.John Henry Cardinal Newman, From the sermon ‘Righteousness not of us, but in us’ (1840) Click here for the full text
I got this in my inbox this Easter morn, I pray you let me share it with you. :) Easter joy and blessings upon you all! Remember, Eastertide is 50 whole days, so don't stop the celebrating just yet. ^_^
Let us never forget that in proportion as our love is “rooted and grounded” in the next world, our faith must branch forth like a fruitful tree into this. The calmer our hearts, the more active be our lives; the more tranquil we are, the more busy; the more resigned, the more zealous; the more unruffled, the more fervent. This is one of the many paradoxes in the world’s judgment of him, which the Christian realizes in himself. Christ is risen; He is risen from the dead. We may well cry out, "Alleluia, the Lord Omnipotent reigneth." He has crushed all the power of the enemy under His feet. He has gone upon the lion and the adder. He has stopped the lion’s mouth for us His people, and has bruised the serpent’s head. There is nothing impossible to us now, if we do but enter into the fulness of our privileges, the wondrous power of our gifts. The thing cannot be named in heaven or earth within the limits of truth and obedience which we cannot do through Christ; the petition cannot be named which may not be accorded to us for His Name’s sake. For, we who have risen with Him from the grave, stand in His might, and are allowed to use His weapons. His infinite influence with the Father is ours,—not always to use, for perhaps in this or that effort we make, or petition we prefer, it would not be good for us; but so far ours, so fully ours, that when we ask and do things according to His will, we are really possessed of a power with God, and do prevail:—so that little as we may know when and when not, we are continually possessed of heavenly weapons, we are continually touching the springs of the most wonderful providences in heaven and earth; and by the Name, and the Sign, and the Blood of the Son of God, we are able to make devils tremble and Saints rejoice.
Such are the arms which faith uses, small in appearance, yet “not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds;” [2 Cor. 10:4] despised by the world, what seems a mere word, or a mere symbol, or mere bread and wine; but God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty, and foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and as all things spring from small beginnings, from seeds and elements invisible or insignificant, so when God would renew the race of man, and reverse the course of human life and earthly affairs, He chose cheap things for the rudiments of His work, and bade us believe that He could work through them, and He would do so. As then we Christians discern in Him, when He came on earth, not the carpenter’s son, but the Eternal Word Incarnate, as we see beauty in Him in whom the world saw no form or comeliness, as we discern in that death an Atonement for sin in which the world saw nothing but a malefactor’s sentence; so let us believe with full persuasion that all that He has bequeathed to us has power from Him. Let us accept His Ordinances, and His Creed, and His precepts; and let us stand upright with an undaunted faith, resolute, with faces like flint, to serve Him in and through them; to inflict them upon the world without misgiving, without wavering, without anxiety; being sure that He who saved us from hell through a Body of flesh which the world insulted, tortured, and triumphed over, much more can now apply the benefits of His passion through Ordinances which the world has lacerated and now mocks.
The Harrowing of Hell by Fra Angelico, c. 1437-1446So what does a “jeweled cross” indicate? It means that the suffering we endure for love has value—and even more so when joined to the salvific work of Christ. His is the cross that gives merit to our pain, and he is the one who shows what love can accomplish.
While we meditate on this truth in Lent, every tragedy, such as the loss of a child, can become its own Lent—of seeming endless duration. Its Easter mysteries may be shrouded in tears, and the victory of love over death may be clouded by the very ache of such love so tinged with fresh sorrow. That is entirely understandable...
Fides, by Sir Edward Burne-Jones
He weeps.
Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, by Jean-Hippolyte FlandrinIn ‘The Cross of Christ the Measure of the World’ (1841) Newman argues that this world can only be truly understood in the light of the cross of Christ, for we must experience the sufferings of this world before we can understand ourselves, our weakness and sin, and so realise our eternal destiny. So is this world somehow bad, and not to be enjoyed? No, says Newman, but: ‘they alone can truly feast, who have first fasted’.
And thus, too, all that is bright and beautiful, even on the surface of this world, though it has no substance, and may not suitably be enjoyed for its own sake, yet is a figure and promise of that true joy which issues out of the Atonement [for our sins which Christ worked on the cross]. It is a promise beforehand of what is to be: it is a shadow, raising hope because the substance is to follow, but not to be rashly taken instead of the substance. And it is God’s usual mode of dealing with us, in mercy to send the shadow before the substance, that we may take comfort in what is to be, before it comes. Thus our Lord before His Passion rode into Jerusalem in triumph, with the multitudes crying Hosanna, and strewing His road with palm branches and their garments. This was but a vain and hollow pageant, nor did our Lord take pleasure in it. It was a shadow which stayed not, but flitted away. It could not be more than a shadow, for the Passion had not been undergone by which His true triumph was wrought out. He could not enter into His glory before He had first suffered. He could not take pleasure in this semblance of it, knowing that it was unreal. Yet that first shadowy triumph was the omen and presage of the true victory to come, when He had overcome the sharpness of death. And we commemorate this figurative triumph on the last Sunday in Lent, to cheer us in the sorrow of the week that follows, and to remind us of the true joy which comes with Easter-Day.
And so, too, as regards this world, with all its enjoyments, yet disappointments. Let us not trust it; let us not give our hearts to it; let us not begin with it. Let us begin with faith; let us begin with Christ; let us begin with His Cross and the humiliation to which it leads. Let us first be drawn to Him who is lifted up, that so He may, with Himself, freely give us all things. Let us “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” and then all those things of this world “will be added to us.” They alone are able truly to enjoy this world, who begin with the world unseen. They alone enjoy it, who have first abstained from it. They alone can truly feast, who have first fasted; they alone are able to use the world, who have learned not to abuse it; they alone inherit it, who take it as a shadow of the world to come, and who for that world to come relinquish it.
(Reference: John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons Vol 6 (1842) Sermon no. 7, p. 92-3)
God has already given us His love, the fruit. It is not we who must produce the abundant fruit; Christianity is not moralism, it is not we who must do all that God expects from the world; rather, we must first of all enter into the ontological mystery: God gives Himself. His being, His love, precedes our action and, in the context of His Body, in the context of being in Him and identified with Him, ennobled with His Blood, we too can act with Christ.~ Pope Benedict XVI, Lectio Divina on the Feast of Our Lady of Trust, Major Pontifical Seminary of Rome
"Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back."And Dr. King's ideals and hopes and vision are grounded in God and essentially the old chivalric ideals. For though the knights of old did fight, true knights never fought unless necessary to defend themselves or others. There was no rampant killing, and mercy was considered a virtue. And they, ideally, believed in something greater than themselves, and were willing to die for it if need be.
"Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it."
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