For Ash Wednesday

Today begins the Lenten fast. From Pope Benedict XVI’s Lenten Message for 2009:

…fasting represents an important ascetical practice, a spiritual arm to do battle against every possible disordered attachment to ourselves. Freely chosen detachment from the pleasure of food and other material goods helps the disciple of Christ to control the appetites of nature, weakened by original sin, whose negative effects impact the entire human person. Quite opportunely, an ancient hymn of the Lenten liturgy exhorts: “Utamur ergo parcius, / verbis cibis et potibus, / somno, iocis et arctius / perstemus in custodia – Let us use sparingly words, food and drink, sleep and amusements. May we be more alert in the custody of our senses.”

Hat tip to the ever-insightful Amy Welborn.

San Pellegrino

San Pellegrino is a brand of mineral water produced in San Pellegrino Terme, Lombardy, and it has been for some time my mineral water of choice (thanks largely to being introduced to it by a friend from high school).  Not that I’m inclined to frequently drink mineral water;  like the average American I’d prefer a cola or, better yet, a beer.  But when the opportunity arises to drink some San Pellegrino, I’ll never say no;  it’s quite refreshing.

The other day I happened to be sipping on some San Pellegrino in an Italian restaurant, which got me thinking:  just who is the San (or Saint) Pellegrino after whom the town San Pellegrino Terme was named?  The name’s similarity to the Latin peregrinus suggests that he was a wandering pilgrim, but I wanted to know more.

Some searching of the Internet revealed an article on the fantastical legend of St. Pellegrino.  It turns out he was Irish!  According to legend, he was a prince who traveled through the Holy Land preaching but won no converts, and he had several supernatural adventures before becoming a hermit in the Appenines.  After he died, allegedly on August 1, 643, he was interred in the shrine of San Pellegrino in Alpe, Tuscany.

Apparently there was another St. Pellegrino, a third century French bishop, to whom the shrine in Alpe may originally have been built.  Perhaps the historical origins of St. Pellegrino are from both this bishop and a first-millenium Irish pilgrim.  Whatever the truth of the matter, I think there is much to admire about the story of St. Pellegrino;  and I am now even happier to drink the mineral water that bears his name.

Nostra Aetate

Blogger Thom Curnutte offers a concise and insightful summary and analysis of the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate, which deals with the Catholic Church’s relations with other religions including Buddhism, Judiasm, and Islam.  Read the whole thing:  Part I and Part II.

Christianity & Mass Media

Daniel Mitsui offers poignant thoughts on Christianity & Mass Media, and the “New Evangelization”.  Read the whole thing.

On Perfectionism and Agrarianism

“…There is also the temptation, the very American temptation, of taking from Berry & Co. a moralist perfectionism. An all or nothing disposition which rots the soul, as it judges any effort which does not achieve a fast and secure perfection to be hell-fodder. There is a lack of pause with this sort of perfectionism, scarce disposition to cover the sins of others, few allowances, a poverty with regard to tenderness of heart. We have to live the life that we are given, and when we read Berry as moralist only, or moralist primarily, most of us end up under a load of impossible moral burdens. I will never get to the farm in KY. I have no way of getting there. I must concern myself with my own home, as Berry exhorts.

“In much of Berry’s literature there is that call to be who you are where you are, in as human a manner possible, but the overt moralism in much of his work provides something of a contradiction in tone at times, and one is best to follow Andrea Elizabeth’s reading and take this with a grain of salt. There is not going to be a Wendell Berry movement that changes America. You are not going to take part in some great motion of social change by getting your produce from a local farmer or growing one quarter of your caloric intake.

“This is not to say that such social movements do not exist and will not push and pull society in this and that way. It is to say that such an agenda betrays Berry and the whole notion of living an honest human life. Movement agendas are destructive abstractions. It is better to simply and quietly go about doing the best things one is able. There will always be the temptation to fight the Dark Lord of Mordor with his own Black Speech. Our focus must be upon the goodness of a row of okra where and when we find it, the goodness of the chicken in the backyard, the goodness of a pig allowed to run about, the goodness of grain and water getting under fingernails.

“These things are miracles always and only in their instances. As soon as we make of them a rule or a paradigm they are lost to us. God only ever loves this bruised reed, the one here, that you see trampled in front of you. The Society for the Protection of Bruised Reeds (S.P.B.R.) is not the work of angels, but a diversion. The poor in spirit hold up those reeds within their very short reach. And yet that greatest of miracles – the seemingly smallest reach that is the summit of all human affairs, of all human history, that short length from pierced torso to nailed hand, holds the entire universe in its mercied place. Today, right now, this world is kept on its rotational axis for the prayer of a little old nun, chanting O Heavenly King as she presses a cucumber seed into earth with her nub of a finger. There is no other way.”

-The Ochlophobist (with apologies for my insertion of paragraphing)

Cormac Murphy-O’Connor on Charles Darwin

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, offers his thoughts on Charles Darwin.  Excerpt:

“This week we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, one of Britain’s most extraordinary scientists. His theory of evolution, one of the greatest discoveries of all time, gives us a way of understanding the connectedness of all life and the uniqueness of human life within it. Together with other branches of scientific exploration, evolution begins to unfold and illuminate the interplay of forces that make our universe such an extraordinary dynamic reality. In this sense, science is itself a journey of learning and exploration. This I find exciting and humbling.

“Towards the end of his life Darwin wrote: ‘It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist and an evolutionist.’ The science opens me not only to puzzles and to questions about the world I live in; it leads me to marvel at its complexity. Here, I find science is a good friend to my faith. It also calls me to a journey of learning and understanding. One of the things that mars our culture is the fracture between faith and science. It impoverishes our inquiry into the realities that make up our life and world. This is a false opposition. [...]

“Darwin’s theory does not take away the reality of that freedom and the moral responsibility it gives us. It also teaches us a certain humility before the wonderful complexity and process that life is. Yet because humanity is a free agent in this, we cannot ultimately predict the future. Christianity understands human freedom. It knows that all life, but especially human life, is summoned to a perfection that it cannot attain through natural processes or through human agency alone. That future is God’s gift and it summons us to a new spiritual and moral maturity. Could it be that this is the next stage in that evolutionary adventure? The discovery that God is the destiny of life; that Christ is not only the Alpha, the one in whose image we are made, but also the Omega, the one in whom we are completed.

“Science and religion are not mutually exclusive. They are partners on the journey of a mystery that unfolds, a truth that is everywhere present in the very creativity and variety of life itself. As St Augustine wrote, ‘Let us seek with the desire to find, and find with the desire to seek still more.’”

Read the whole thing.  H/T The Internet Monk.

Science & Religion Lectures

I just learned of a series of videos & mp3s from The Faraday Institute
for Science and Religion, offering thoughtful commentary on the engagement between the spheres of science and religion.  I have not listened to any of them yet, but some of the authors and titles certainly pique my interest, and I commend them to you.

Just a few of the titles that are making my brain salivate:

• Can a Scientist Believe the Resurrection? –  N.T. Wright (!)
• The Doctrine of the Fall and the Epistemological Foundations of Modern Science Prof. Peter Harrison
• Naturalistic Explanations of Religion: Explaining or Explaining Away? – Prof. Jeff Schloss
• A Scientific Theology? Parallels and Convergences in Science and Religion — Prof. Alister McGrath
• Darwin’s Loss of Faith — Dr John van Wyhe
• Developments in Neuroscience and Human Freedom: Some Theological and Philosophical Perspectives — Prof. Alan Torrance

Michael Dubruiel, Requiescat in Pace

Please pray for Michael Dubruiel, who passed away today, and for his wife Amy Welborn and their children.

28 January: Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas

Today is the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas, priest and Doctor of the Church.

"All my works seem like straw after what I have seen"

I have a bit of a devotion to St. Thomas myself.  He is the patron of students, and the church dedicated to him at Purdue University was where I regained my faith.  I also have a deep appreciation for his synthesis of Aristotle and Christian doctrine.  And who couldn’t love St Thomas’s hymns?  Adoro Te Devote and Lauda Sion especially.

However, what I find really remarkable about him is the tale of the end of his life:  he began to have mystical experiences.  From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

On one occasion, at Naples in 1273, after he had completed his treatise on the Eucharist, three of the brethren saw him lifted in ecstasy, and they heard a voice proceeding from the crucifix on the altar, saying ‘Thou hast written well of me, Thomas; what reward wilt thou have?’ Thomas replied, ‘None other than Thyself, Lord.’ (Prümmer, op. cit., p. 38 )

On December 6, 1273, he experienced an especially intense ecstasy at Mass that left him in awe.  He refused to write any more, leaving his magnum opus, the Summa Theologica, incomplete;  he reportedly said, “All my works seem like straw after what I have seen.”  Upon receiving last rites, he made the following profession of faith:

“If in this world there be any knowledge of this sacrament stronger than that of faith, I wish now to use it in affirming that I firmly believe and know as certain that Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, Son of God and Son of the Virgin Mary, is in this Sacrament . . . I receive Thee, the price of my redemption, for Whose love I have watched, studied, and laboured. Thee have I preached; Thee have I taught. Never have I said anything against Thee: if anything was not well said, that is to be attributed to my ignorance. Neither do I wish to be obstinate in my opinions, but if I have written anything erroneous concerning this sacrament or other matters, I submit all to the judgment and correction of the Holy Roman Church, in whose obedience I now pass from this life.”

His intellect and scholarship gave remarkable gifts to the world;  his unwavering faith and devotion make him an exemplar for all Christians.  St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

New Artwork

Daniel Mitsui has produced another gem:  this time an allegorical drawing of a journey of faith — check it out.