Category Archives: quotes

Man recovers his true nature.

humanity, Lent, quotes,

“Fasting is the only means by which man recovers his true spiritual nature. It is not a theoretical but truly a practical challenge to the great Liar who managed to convince us that we depend on bread alone and built all human knowledge, science, and existence on that lie. Fasting is a denunciation of that lie and also proof that it is a lie.”
….
“Let us understand …that what the Church wants us to do during Lent is to seek the enrichment of our spiritual and intellectual inner world, to read and to meditate upon those things which are most likely to help us recover that inner world and its joy. Of that joy, of the true vocation of man, the one that is fulfilled inside and not outside, the ‘modern world’ gives us no taste today; yet without it, without the understanding of Lent as a journey into the depth of our humanity, Lent loses its meaning.”

-Father Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent

Have You Got a Brook?

Lent, nature, poetry, quotes, ,

This poem seems fitting for the season of Lent, when we make a special effort to lay aside distractions and turn inward — to make a spiritual journey, drawing near to the place where, as Christ told us, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” May we find our brook to be the River of Life, of which He also speaks: “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.'”

HAVE YOU GOT A BROOK IN YOUR LITTLE HEART?

Have you got a brook in your little heart,
Where bashful flowers blow,
And blushing birds go down to drink,
And shadows tremble so?

And nobody knows, so still it flows,
That any brook is there;
And yet your little draught of life
Is daily drunken there.

Then look out for the little brook in March,
When the rivers overflow,
And the snows come hurrying from the hills,
And the bridges often go.

And later, in August it may be,
When the meadows parching lie,
Beware, lest this little brook of life
Some burning noon go dry!

-Emily Dickinson

Love’s triad confronts modern man.

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This very meditative homily on the words of St. Paul, when he wrote about faith, hope and love, I found to be truly rich and encouraging. Father Patrick Reardon points out in his sermon the strange reductions of St. Paul’s teachings that came from various Christians writing many centuries after the apostle’s letters were circulating among the churches.

In fact, it can only be theoretical to separate love from hope and faith, as St. Paul does in I Corinthians 13, for the purpose of making clear that love is preeminent; true love is not manifested without faith and hope. We also learn in this Bible lesson of another fruit of the Spirit that makes up a second triad of virtues, further fleshing out the reality of what it means to live in love. The interrelated meanings of the several words and their contexts lift one’s mind right up to the throne of God where the Three Persons live eternally in Love, a Love in which we are invited to partake.

If you are interested in further contemplation about this Love that originates in the Holy Trinity, and how it contrasts with Faust, or is described by Dante, you will want to listen to the 16-minute talk on the Ancient Faith site here:  “The Supremacy of Love,”  or by means of the direct MP3 file linked at top.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

What is it I almost remember?

beauty, poetry, quotes, , , , , , ,

What Dorothy Parker describes in her poem below reminds me of what C.S. Lewis called sehnsucht, the heart’s longing, seemingly for its home – in God. These episodes often happen at moments when we experience something very good or beautiful, and realize deep in ourselves that it doesn’t quite satisfy, but only reveals our homesickness.

In The Weight of Glory Lewis describes this aching in our heart:

 “In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence….

“We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. 

“…These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”

Peder Monsted

TEMPS PERDU

I never may turn the loop of a road
Where sudden, ahead, the sea is lying,
But my heart drags down with an ancient load–
My heart, that a second before was flying.

I never behold the quivering rain–
And sweeter the rain than a lover to me–
But my heart is wild in my breast with pain;
My heart, that was tapping contentedly.

There’s never a rose spreads new at my door
Nor a strange bird crosses the moon at night
But I know I have known its beauty before,
And a terrible sorrow along with the sight.

The look of a laurel tree birthed for May
Or a sycamore bared for a new November
Is as old and as sad as my furtherest day–
What is it, what is it, I almost remember?

-Dorothy Parker

the poet