God in a Broken Frame and Shattered Glass

Blogger and fellow Bay Area resident Arturo Vasquez has just published an article in Catholic Exchange. Titled “God in a Broken Frame and Shattered Glass: Another Look at Sacred Imagery” and taking as its starting point the recent vandalization of a local parish, the essay is a meditation on the ways in which images draw us into worship and teach us about the nature of God. A small sample:

Recently, St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church here in Berkeley, California, was vandalized and robbed of various sacred images. Among them was a portrait of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, a favorite amongst the parishioners. The Byzantine-style icon was ripped out of its place, leaving nothing there but the empty frame and broken glass.

…

One Sunday after these events, I saw something a little strange, but touching, at least to me. At the early morning Mass, several people approached the empty frame with their usual candles and stopped to say a prayer in front of it. To those who think that praying to an image is silly in the first place, perhaps this would be something that would prove their point. Not only were these devotees having a picture fill in for Jesus and His mother Mary, but they were having an empty frame fill in for the picture. Having grown up with religious imagery in a Mexican household, I personally found this act of faith profoundly moving; just another example of how our Catholic Faith has to do with such little things that can mean so much.

Arturo is a profound thinker and an eloquent writer, and “God in Broken Frame and Shattered Glass” is worth reading in its entirely—which should come as no surprise to anyone who regularly follows his blog, Reditus: A Chronicle of Aesthetic Christianity. Congratulations, Arturo; may you be blessed with many more published articles in the future!

(On a more sober note, I would ask my readers to say a Hail Mary for the parishioners of St. Joseph the Worker, and another for the thieves who stole the icon of Our Lady.)

A Prayer for Life

O Mary,
bright dawn of the new world,
Mother of the living,
to you do we entrust the cause of life.
Look down, O Mother,
upon the vast numbers
of babies not allowed to be born,
of the poor whose lives are made difficult,
of men and women
who are victims of brutal violence,
of the elderly and the sick killed
by indifference or out of misguided mercy.

Grant that all who believe in your Son
may proclaim the Gospel of life
with honesty and love
to the people of our time.

Obtain for them the grace
to accept that Gospel
as a gift ever new,
the joy of celebrating it with gratitude
throughout their lives
and the courage to bear witness to it
resolutely, in order to build,
together with all people of good will,
the civilization of truth and love,
to the praise and glory of God,
the Creator and lover of life.

Through Christ our Lord,
Amen.

(Composed by John Paul II)

What Sort of Assurance Do We Have?

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes Him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” (John 5:24)

* * *

Can we, as followers of Christ, be certain of our salvation? Or, put another way, are we assured eternal life in heaven by virtue of our Christian faith?

Since the Protestant Reformation, a significant number of Christians have answered this question with a resounding “yes.” And not without reason: many passages of Scripture (John 5:24, Romans 10:9-11, and Acts 16:31 in particular) appear to provide support for the position that faith in Christ is an unshakable guarantor of salvation.

Prayer For the Soul of Alexiy II

Born February 23rd, 1929; Died December 5th, 2008

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.
Te decet hymnus Deus, in Sion,
et tibi reddetur votum in Ierusalem.
Exaudi orationem meam;
ad te omnis caro veniet.
Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Proposition 8

Thulcandra is not a political blog, nor will it ever be. I have opinions, which I like to hope are well-formed, on most of the important issues presently under discussion in our society; at the same time, I tend to approach temporal power and its associated mandates and limits as a necessary evil rather than something to be gloried in for its own sake. All of this is a fancy way of saying that, although I care (deeply, in certain cases) about what happens in the political sphere, I take little pleasure in debating the subject: the task is more of a cross to bear than anything else.

Have Mercy on Me, O God

Miserere mei, Deus: secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.
Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dēlē iniquitatem meam.
Amplius lavā me ab iniquitate mea: et a peccato meo mundā me.
Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognōscō: et peccatum meum contra me est semper.
Tibi soli peccāvī, et malum coram te fēcī: ut iustificeris in sermonibus tuis, et vincās cum iudicaris.
Ecce enim in inquitatibus conceptus sum: et in peccatis concepit me mater mea.
Ecce enim veritatem dilexisti: incerta et occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi.
Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundābor: lavābis me, et super nivem dēalbābor.
Auditui meo dabis gaudium et laetitiam: et exsultabunt ossa humiliata.
Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis: et omnes iniquitates meas dele.
Cor mundum crea in me, Deus: et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis.
Ne proiicias me a facie tua: et spiritum sanctum tuum ne auferas a me.
Redde mihi laetitiam salutaris tui: et spiritu principali confirma me.
Docebo iniquos vias tuas: et impii ad te convertentur.
Libera me de sanguinibus, Deus, Deus salutis meae: et exsultabit lingua mea iustitiam tuam.
Domine, labia mea aperies: et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam.
Quoniam si voluisses sacrificium, dedissem utique: holocaustis non delectaberis.
Sacrificium Deo spiritus contribulatus: cor contritum, et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies.
Benigne fac, Domine, in bona voluntate tua Sion: ut aedificentur muri Ierusalem.
Tunc acceptabis sacrificium iustitiae, oblationes, et holocausta: tunc imponent super altare tuum vitulos.

* * *

Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love;
According to thy abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in thy sight,
So that thou art justified in thy sentence and blameless in thy judgment.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Fill me with joy and gladness; let the bones which thou hast broken rejoice.
Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners will return to thee.
Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation,
And my tongue will sing aloud of thy deliverance.
O Lord, open thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.
For thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
Do good to Zion in thy good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, then wilt thou delight in right sacrifices,
In burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on thy altar.

The LION & the CARDINAL

As a publishing medium, the internet holds much in common with that almost limitless canvas of free expression, the bathroom stall wall: a few odd displays of artistic or conceptual brilliance drowning in an ocean of idiocy. Blogs follow the same general principle and range widely in terms of prosal quality and intellectual acumen; thoughtful discussions of religion and politics and world events find room on the same servers as the gossip columns of barely-literate 13-year-olds.

The Catholic blogosphere undeniably has its share of dreck, certainly; but it’s also home to a number of blogs that are reverent, informative, and literate. One of the strangest and most wonderfully unique among the latter is The LION & the CARDINAL, maintained by Daniel Mitsui.

An artist by training and a staunch traditionalist—he was received into the Church at the renowned St. John Cantius Parish in Chicago—Mitsui is almost impossible to pigeonhole. Unwavering in his support for the pre-Vatican II liturgy, he also reserves harsh criticism for many Renaissance and Baroque artists held sacrosanct in the Western world—Michaelangelo, for instance. His views on the sources of and solutions to the Church’s current problems are not in total accord with mine; neither are his artistic opinions. At the same time, I discern from his writing that he knows a heck of a lot more than I do about both subjects and would doubtless crush me like a bug if I ever tried to challenge him on any particular point. For the time being, then, I will recommend The LION & the CARDINAL simply with the mild caveat that I don’t endorse every opinion expressed therein (which could likely be said of just about any blog mentioned on Thulcandra).

It’s difficult to do the site justice in words; heavy on images, it’s better seen than talked about. One of the main reasons I wanted to write this entry in the first place, though, was to provide a space to link to his essays—which, at the present moment, are rather difficult to find, being often scattered amidst dozens of other, more graphic-intensive entries. (Mr. Mitsui has been promising to do this himself for awhile; recent events, however, lead me to doubt that this will happen anytime soon.)

So, without further ado, here are the essays. Enjoy.

Stand-alone Articles:

• Conversion and Consumerism
• Legend and Apocrypha
• Bonfire Motets and Missionary Icons
• Devils in the Green Wood

Loss, Archaelogy, and Recovery:

• Part I
• Part II

Eric Gill:

• Perversion and Iconoclasm
• On Art and Artists
• Last Words on Gill

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Incidentally, Mr. Mitsui has a PayPal donation button on his site. Given that he’s a talented, tradition-minded Catholic artist—not to mention young and recently married—it would be good for those of us who can to support him in his endeavors.

Stories from Spain: Airplane Food, The Da Vinci Code, and Lost Luggage (Alternate Title: A Promising Start)

For those of you who, after the last post, were eagerly awaiting on-the-minute updates about my trip to Spain, I have good news and bad news. The bad news—let’s get that out of the way first—is that I’m no longer in Spain: I returned home a little over a week ago. So, at this point, any news you hear about the time I spent there will be old news.

I will, however, be giving a full account of my stay over the next few days and weeks, which is the first bit of good news I can relate. The second I hinted at in the last paragraph with the words, “at this point.” If all goes according to plan, I may well be returning to Murcia within the next month or so in order to study and hopefully work at UCAM.

If this hope turns into a reality, I will, of course, post something to that effect on Thulcandra. For right now, though, you will have to content yourselves with what has already transpired.

A Shift in Focus

I launched this blog last September with only the vaguest notion of what its contents would likely consist of. Yet, in the course of looking back on what I have written here over the past 10 months, I have made a rather horrifying discovery.

Thulcandra is, to a painfully obvious degree, the blog of a Catholic convert.

Frankly, I shouldn’t be surprised by this. Faith, for better or worse, is a topic for study as well as a way of life; and I have an unfortunate tendency to focus on the former at the expense of the latter. This is partly the result of fear and human weakness—it’s much easier for me to think about religion as a concept than to actually approach the Divine face-to-face—but I can also lay part of the blame on how my mind works (and has worked for as long as I can remember): thoughts tend to bounce around in there and drive me crazy until I make them concrete, either in a spoken conversation or on paper. Having been conceived a mere five months after I entered the Church, I would be slightly skeptical about the authenticity of Thulcandra’s authorship if it hadn’t become a sand trap for my ongoing musings about Christianity.

The Agony of Priesthood

Of the many battles raging within the increasingly beleaguered Anglican Communion today, women’s ordination is perhaps the most conspicuous. In saying this I do not mean to imply that the question of whether women can be validly ordained as priests is the pivotal issue facing Anglicanism in the 21st century; its allowance is merely a symptom of a more general breakdown in agreement within the communion’s ranks about what is and isn’t orthodox Christianity. Nor am I asserting that the subject has garnered a more significant amount of media attention than have others. Even the Episcopal Church’s 2006 enthronement of Katherine Jefferts Schori as the first female Anglican bishop received far less coverage than its appointment of Gene Robinson to the same office in 2004.