Apostle of the Nursery

Just recently, I found myself 'introduced' to a new friend. Her name is Venerable Anne de Guigne, and she is the Apostle of the Nursery. As seems appropriate, I was reading a child's catechism book with my four-year-old daughter, and there she was, completely grabbing the heart of me with her expression, her inner beauty drawing me to her. My daughter and I sat staring at her image for a minute or two (that is a long time for a four-year-old). Well, perhaps it was more me. I decided I must find out more about this young girl.

That Sunday, I was in the bookstore after Mass, and there she was again, the same photograph, staring at me from the bookshelf. Again I felt grabbed. I remember now a good friend once told me, "You do not get 'interested in' a saint- he or she calls you"- out of grace, in God's plan, I believe. I have felt this "drawing" a few times and it seems like someone in heaven is flyfishing for me and finally caught me; there is a distinctive tug. Often, I believe, it is an answer from Our Lord to prayer: He often sends His saints to walk alongside us for a time, or for the rest of our lives. We do foster devotion, but this can I think quite naturally wax and wane, depending on our journey of salvation.

So Little Anne caught me. I bought the biography and read it that night. I found myself at 12 am weeping and weeping, at the beauty of this child, who, "climbed the mountain of sanctity by going up a cliff face... God called her to come quickly and she came quickly.."

She was converted at four years old, the catalyst being the death of her father in the Great War: it is thought by those who knew her, that her father's sacrifice for his country and his family, his faith at the threshold of eternity, that these gained great graces that the father left his daughter as an inheritance. "The graces poured through this open wound...her soul was cleaved and she was no longer the bossy and willful child.."

She truly was the Apostle of the Nursery, in that her greatest efforts, somewhat like St. Therese of Liseux, were in little things- but done with heroic efforts to put to death the willful and sinful parts of her. She took the admonition, "Obedience is the Sanctity of Children" quite literally, as a child would do, quite literally in every little way. But her struggle is evident, all the way to the end. A reading of the biography by "A Benedictine Nun of Stanbrook" is the only way to really understand Anne.

I wept after closing the book upon the last page, after her death at eleven years of age, a death she was called to by love, and realized she was coming into my life as an answer to prayer for my three children, for whom I have been afraid in the culture we live. The end, that is, heaven, is all that matters: to know that your child is working hard towards God and not away from Him. To know that you are doing whatever He calls you to do in your great responsibility, this is peace within the vocation of parenting. And I know I cannot do it alone, we cannot do it alone, my husband and I. These days are too shrouded with the smoke of Satan. So Anne came, and I am so grateful. May she become better known, the Apostle of the Nursery and of Big Sinners.



Translated:
O Maria, my good mother,
Give to me your Son and
lay Him in my humble arms

O Maria, give Him to me
If you please, I desire
your Son
If you please, give Him to me

O Maria, it is that I desire
your Son
Give Him to me
Give Him to me

I am happy now
that He is with me.

Stabat Mater

This Lent, as usual, I decided to fast and give up sweets. True to my randomness, I didn’t give myself good specifications on what and when to fast…after a mildly hard week of unexpected sickness and tiredness, I lost my mind- well, not really- I just lost my willingness, and downed a couple cookies in a secluded parkinglot. I felt so lame, so weak, later (after the sugar high died down).

I’m not one to write authoritatively on suffering, for I am so bad at it. I tend to go numb, a kind of shock, wherein I can appear to function smoothly and calmly, much to the mistaken admiration of others. Then, later, in the recesses of the heart, the anger comes; and it is an old anger, born in the time when I was reaching the age of reason- and nothing seemed reasonable to me. It is the anger that frightens me now, because I do not wish it to turn into resentment and bitterness, as it was before I turned back to Our Lord from years of anger.

Anger dipped in pride becomes bitterness.

So it is that I am afraid of suffering, because I can’t deal with it, I can’t respond with love, with offering as I see the saints have done. I have never really resonated with St. Therese of Liseux as she wished for all the martyrdoms in the world. As I understand more about loving God, and His loving us, as I understand the traditional faith, I understand with my reason why St. Therese would say this: but I do not understand with my whole being. Can I honestly say I wish to?

I was driving today, and these are the quietest times I have, real moments of solitude with Our Lord- anyone who has small children will know what I mean. I began to understand something- that we cannot suffer as a saint, we cannot be perfect as the Lord is perfect, ourselves. We will all suffer. There is no family that does not have immense tragedy and suffering- hidden, or not- but can we endure it and turn it to love instead of anger at God, instead of hurt pride and bitterness? For turning suffering to love is what a saint does, in imitation of Our Lord.

It is the Sorrow of Mary; to watch Beauty killed, to watch Love hated, and to feel it as only a mother can; and yet to turn and love, to receive again the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and send her Son’s apostles out to be killed also; it is her hope, hope vivified by faith and prayer, hope in suffering turned into love for sinners and saints alike.

I saw, in those quiet moments in the car, that the only way we can turn our suffering into love is to live within the Hand of God; I picture myself in His palm, taking the love and warmth, the grace from Him, along with the suffering. And as I was thinking of those in my life whom I want salvation and peace for, those for whom I would suffer, the realization came to me that offering the Lord our suffering for those we love is a prayer with real meaning, these the Lord takes gently and lovingly.

The ability to turn suffering into love is correlated directly with being in love with God. And all of it is a gift- any ability we have is a gift. Suffering purifies. Yeah, yeah suffering purifies, we hear it all the time; and sort of tilt the head to the side and give a little nod. Suffering doesn’t have to purify, though; it can embitter, without our willingness to turn in love to God and ask Him for the good out of it.

To give up things or people we want, to accept calumny, or poverty, or injustice, or illness, or failure; to bear with handicaps and disorder within ourselves, and most especially to give up these things for the sake of Christ, for the laws and desires of God: these can come to us and take off our thick skins, our scales on our eyes, our stone coverings for the heart. Like a crab molting, we become soft little creatures that can feel and understand others’ suffering in a real way; and we become more aware of God, more able to contemplate Him. But that little, vulnerable crab cannot long survive outside the hand of God.

A person who is suffering and contemplates a crucifix has a lightingbolt connection to the Suffering God on the cross. A person who suffers and deeply loves God hates sin the way it should be hated- and most of all when they find it in themselves. A person who suffers and yet loves, even the very person who causes them the suffering, loves more like Christ.

The figure on the cross, so vulnerable, so willing. The enormity of the crime and the enormity of Love live side by side. It is a mirror of the world as we know it. Only the Lord can make us be those who will turn suffering not into bitterness, but love. We must, however, be willing- and more than that: we must be willing to search after Him like the Beloved in the Song of Songs, each one in his own way, because the Lord loves us each, as if we were the only creature He had made. Be in love with God, because then you can resonate with the saints, everything then becomes Love. May it be so for me.

A Traditionalist Gone Mad

It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes.
- Saint Thomas Aquinas

Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
- Aristotle

A person is said to have a sense of humor if he can "see through" things; one lacks a sense of humor if he cannot "see through" things. No one has ever laughed at a pun who did not see in the one word a twofold meaning.

Archbishop Sheen

Note: The following IS fictional. Don’t get any ideas about the person in the picture, except that he has a great sense of humor in allowing this humiliating photograph to be posted.

A Traditionalist Gone Mad

You know, there’s something wrong here. Can a person be TOO traditional? What does that mean, anyway? How can you stand being TOO something that very few people have really even heard of? Or perhaps it is the danger in being in a marginalized setting, this TOO-ness. Like you get too close to the wacko magnet or something.

Look at that picture. He’s looking at something on the computer and it finally snapped him. Perhaps it was yet another photo from a church in some Scandinavian city, where the loose ends are getting really svelte and tight. I mean, those Germanic types know how to make blasphemy really – efficiently stylish; like the BMW of bad liturgy. You know, compare that to the loose-joint, cheapy plastic Tonka-toy liturgies of many American churches nowadays, bent on bringing the Protestant Mainline Sunday school classes into the church and letting them ‘design the liturgy’.

At any rate, even though my traditionalist-gone-off-the-deep-end-friend may be seeing things as they are, he seems to have lost it a bit. He is starting to feel like there must be a remnant of The Remnant; when I tell him “There’s an empty seat” he thinks I am talking about the dubitable status of the last five (or ten) Popes. He doesn’t see the strange irony in that there is a Pius X Society and then, somewhere in the shadows, there is a Pius V Society. Was that done on purpose? He can’t have a good laugh anymore, or revel in that Hillare Belloc sensuum Catholicus: “ Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, there’s always laughter and good red wine; at least I’ve always found it so, Benedicamus Domino”.

Well, actually, where does the Catholic sun doth shine? Malta? On certain bishops like little spotlights in the darkness? It certainly isn’t shining in beaurocratic offices with nameplates like: “Office of Extraordinary Ministers”. I’d like to take a permanent marker and change it: “Office of Ordinarily Extra Ministers”. It doesn’t shine on those architectural munsterpieces, churches that look like frozen tee-pees. It certainly doesn’t shine on stained glass windows that look like they were blown out of their frames and then put back together by the preschool catechism class. But it doesn’t shine either on those humorless, purse-lipped ninnies who haunt the coffee hours of the traditional masses and complain about how the congregation really shouldn’t make any sounds whatsoever, ever(even if the rubrics call for a little, quiet chant reply here and there). It doesn’t shine on neo-traddy-pharisees, and I’m afraid my friend here is heading that way. How to stop him? Take him to Malta?

I need to take him where the Catholic sun doth shine. A sun of love, and life, and hearty tradition, a place of families who can afford to be large and have the extended family to do it in peace and security. A place where the steeple rises in the middle of town, and one can hear the Angelus bells ring out and echo on the hills. A place where the priest is the Altar Christus, and the incense symbolizes prayer, and the focus is on the Lord, on His Body and Blood- and everyone knows it. A place where no one knows what the word “liturgy” means; instead, they only know the Mass as it has been for two thousand years. A place where table wine is part of lunch on a warm square, where neighbors chat and remind each other good-naturedly not to gossip. A place without the bitterness of betrayal, the bitterness of atheistic, secular, modern life. A place where women want to look like women, not prostitutes. A place where men laugh together. A place where the Lord walks freely among His own.

I guess I am hoping for heaven. But, like the Marshwiggle said in CS Lewis’ Narnia, “I will search for that sun, that Narnia, on in the dark- for it licks your "real" world hollow.” Hope is fed on faith in God’s providence, and prayer, and love: and humor.

Burning the Frankincense

I know I’m a little out of step with the liturgical calendar, but I finally finished this painting, in oil, titled “Burning the Frankincense”.

I imagined Our Lady holding the frankincense, just after it was given into her hands by the Wise Men, and pondering this gift in her heart. My thought, during this meditation, was that she would have wanted to burn it, in worship and homage to her tiny son; yet it was, somehow, a very private matter and a great priviledge of hers and of St. Joseph to burn the frankincense.

Why frankincense? The myrrh was safely kept, kept for the day of death, for the time when Our Lady would use it in anointing Him, the invisible scent of a Pieta. The gold? I do not know, perhaps it was a timely gift for use in escape and for life in Egypt. But the frankincense, when should this be used?

Frankincense, like myrrh, is made from the sap of a desert tree. It was so rare and expensive, that it was used almost exclusively for the shrines and temples of the ancient world, and incorporated into the rituals surrounding the Holy of Holies. Thus it was a powerful sign, through the hands of the Kings, that here was not a mortal King only, but here was Divinity.

In my imagination, the Kings give Our Lady the frankincense encased in a jade censer, or burner, along with some charcoal tablets, pressed and made for the purpose of burning the frankincense granules, or pebbles, easily. Our Lady and St. Joseph would probably not have been expert censer-starters, so perhaps they would have been shy for this reason as well, from doing this in the evening when anyone might have been around.

I picture them staring intently at the incense just starting to burn, as St. Joseph holds his cloak over as a ‘tent’ to catch the fragrant smoke. He also hides the scene, much as he was called to do as Our Lord’s human protector during the hidden years of childhood. This spark, this tiny, incandescent moment of lighted worship, both in the physical and metaphysical sense; this instant when, if one were looking with eyes of faith and love, one was allowed to see God laying in a crib, encircled by His Mother and Foster Father- holds greater beauty than all the evil and darkness of the world.