Fun fact: the Brooklyn Bridge opened 140 years ago today.
Our ancestors were not fools. —Rudyard Kiping
Buying a new painting by Devon Grimes. 🎨 🖌️
In Joyce’s Ulysses for hundreds of pages we have merely the successive & passive states of mind of one man during a few hours. —James Truslow Adams, “Is Science a Blind Alley?"
‘Lead us not into temptation.’
The presence of this phrase in the Lord’s Prayer reveals its author’s profoundly realistic appreciation of human nature. Why should we pray that we may not be led into temptation? For the excellent reason that, as all experience proves, whenever temptations to evil are sufficiently strong and sufficiently frequent, men and women generally succumb to them. —Aldous Huxley, Science, Liberty, and Peace
In spite of everything that has happened, everybody thinks he is right. —Aldous Huxley, Science, Liberty and Peace (1947) [emphasis added]
Meaning in the Our Father
The Our Father is not the prayer that our Lord Jesus prayed. It is the prayer that He taught us to pray. Who we are includes at the very least all who pray the Our Father, and most likely all the sons and daughters of Man. Whether prayed alone or in a group, the Our Father is a prayer for the prayer and the prayer’s brothers and sisters. Even when prayed alone – and the prayer never is alone, since the Our Father is always being prayed, and the Father is always listening – the Our Father is a people’s prayer: “Our. . . us. . . our. . . us. . . our. . . we. . . us . . . us . . . us.”
Our Father,
God is our parent, our maker. We are his sons and daughters, the brothers and sisters of his Son. We, male and female, are made in his image. We talk familiarly (as family) to our father.
Who art in Heaven,
Our Father is in heaven; heaven is our home. We are not necessarily far from heaven. The kingdom of heaven is at hand, and perhaps, within us. But heaven is not earth.
Hallowed be thy name.
Our first thought is for our Father. We obey the first commandment. We do not commit the faux pas of saying, Dear Father, I’m fine, how are you? Instead, we use the language of heaven and say, Hallelujah!
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Earth is not heaven. We pray that heaven come to earth. Heaven is the kingdom of God, not any human government; since we are the King’s children, our place is in His kingdom and our first loyalty is to Him. How is our Father’s will done in heaven? With joy. We should do likewise. What heaven and our Father’s will are we learn from our Lord and his Church, from our brothers and sisters, and from our minds and hearts. When we don’t know, are in conflict, or when our will differs from our Father’s, we pray that His will be done.
Give us this day our daily bread.
We ask our Father to give us today what we need for today, “every man according to his eating.” We do not ask for more than what we need today. We ask our Father for this, knowing that no matter what our own efforts, all gifts are from him. We trust that our Father knows what we need and will give us good things when we ask.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
We are aware of our sins, and the sins of others; we know sin in history, in our life, and in our heart. To forgive is hard for sinners. We ask our Father to forgive us, as he does when we forgive our brothers and sisters; when we forgive we do as our Father does, and become more like him.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
We know our weakness in the face of temptation; we ask that we be not put to the test. Temptation often ends in evil and our capture by the tempter, the evil one who is the enemy of our Father. We cannot free ourselves from evil. Our Father must free us.
Amen.
So be it. This is our agreement, as between a Father and his children.
What book last changed your thinking?
Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present – 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. It gave me a framework for how to absorb and interpret the current political strife and feeling that things might be imploding. “They are!” argued Barzun in 2000. His argument is that individualism, upon which we base our society, has become decadent and is falling off.
29150313 To receive Someone is not to get something.
20140306 Fasts are gifts to God.
20150129 A sanctuary without a communion rail is like picture without a frame.
20150113 “All pious practices come second to prayer.” —Père Lamy
“The Blessed Virgin takes her cloak to cover the souls who are good to her.” —Père Lamy
20150103 It is easy to say “I know”, but unless I am as saint I don’t know.
20140131
“Dear God, yes I realize what it was you revealed, what no human could conceive: your humility. You even humbled yourself beyond death on the cross when you descended into hell. The humility of God and the pride of men – that is what life is really about…Help me to be humble. I am so sharp, so harsh…Help me to be kind and patient …” —Judith, in Bryan Houghton, Judith’s Marriage, 1987, 211.
Original [?] missionaries to an alien (and superior?) culture: St. Paul and friends to the Gentiles.
Give to another the love you feel for God. (See JM above, 224 [“It was a relief to look after George and give to his little boy the love he felt for his mother."]
20141210
“A great man is one image – one thing, so to speak – to his valet, another to his son, another to his wife, another to his greatest friend. None of these must be stereotyped; all must be compared. To prohibit discussion is to prohibit the corrective process.” —Bagehot, “The Metaphysical Basis of Toleration” (1884)
How does it help the valet to correct his image of the great man by discerning it with the great man’s wife?
“Each epoch has its violent partisans, who will listen to nothing else, and who think every other epoch in comparison mean and wretched. These violent minds are always faulty and sometimes absurd, but they are almost always useful to mankind. They compel men to hear neglected truth. They uniformly exaggerate their gospel; but it generally is a gospel.” —Bagehot, ibid.