Maronite Year XIII

The Feast of the Circumcision always occurs on January 1. In some calendars, the day is also called the 'Celebration of Peace' due to the fact that it's New Year's Day and thus the prayers of the day ask for peace for the coming year. Besides peace, particular emphasis is placed on Christ as fulfilling the law and on circumcision as a sign of baptism, thus making the day look forward to Epiphany.

The Feast of the Circumcision of the Lord Jesus
Ephesians 2:11-22; Luke 2:21

By His circumcision Christ fulfilled the Law.
His Name is salvation to Jew and Gentile;
His name was given by the angel.
In His fulfillment of Law we fulfill Law;
by His consecration we are made holy.

To Abraham God said, "Keep my covenant!
Every male among you shall be circumcised,
to be marked out a people of God."
By this passion He signified the Passion,
and by this seal He signified the promise.

Moses confirmed the law of circumcision,
that Christ might be the fulfiller of the Law.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord is one;
Love Him with all your heart, your soul, and your might;
circumcise your hearts that you may be holy.

Joshua, who shared the holy name of Christ,
at Gilgal renewed the holy covenant,
raising up the sons of Israel.
The reproach of old Egypt was rolled away,
the circle of the promise was completed.

Circumcision is not a mere physical sign;
it a seal of the Law and covenant,
a full consecration of the heart.
In Christ circumcision found its fulfillment,
the circle of the promise was completed.

Christ who is our peace has given us baptism,
in which we are adopted co-heirs of Christ,
dying to the Law but raised to life,
the life of Jesus who was raised from the dead.
By His consecration we are made holy.

Citizens of Israel we have become,
not by our circumcision but through our Lord,
citizens of Spirit, not of blood,
as through our baptism we have received peace
and by this seal He signified the promise.

Let all who have been baptized live their baptism,
the commandment of love to love our neighbor;
we are baptized into Christ's Passion.
Love your neighbor that you may abide in light;
circumcise your hearts that you may be holy.

Fortnightly Books Index 2015

We are somewhere around 100 books at this point.

December 13: Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz
Introduction, Review

November 29: Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events
Introduction, Review

November 15: Robert Louis Stevenson, The Master of Ballantrae
Introduction, Review

October 25: Charlotte Brontë, Villette
Introduction, Review

October 11: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland
Introduction, Review

September 27: Alexander Solzenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Introduction, Review

September 13: Diana Wynne Jones, Dark Lord of Derkholm; and Year of the Griffin
Introduction, Review

August 30: Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion: A Life; and Brideshead Revisited
Introduction, Review

August 9: Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe
Introduction, Review

July 19: The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2
Introduction, Review

July 12: Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
Introduction, Review

June 21: The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1
Introduction, Review

June 7: Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera
Introduction, Review, Locus Focus

May 24: Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before
Introduction, Review

May 10: Marshall Terry, Tom Northway
Introduction, Review

April 26: Jack London, The Sea-Wolf
Introduction, Review

April 12: Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days
Introduction, Review

March 29: Louis L'Amour, Sackett; and The Sackett Brand
Introduction, Review

March 15: The Mabinogion
Introduction, Review

March 1: Anton Chekhov, Two Plays
Introduction, Review

February 15: Lloyd C. Douglas, Magnificent Obsession
Introduction, Review

February 1: Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes
Introduction, Review

January 18: Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac
Introduction, Review, Cyrano's Ballade

December 28: William Shakespeare, Histories
Introduction, Review, Supplement

Fortnightly Books Index for 2014

Fortnightly Books Index for 2012-2013

Last Vigil of the Year

Watch with Me
by Christina Rossetti

Watch with me, men, women, and children dear,
You whom I love, for whom I hope and fear,
Watch with me this last vigil of the year.
Some hug their business, some their pleasure-scheme;
Some seize the vacant hour to sleep or dream;
Heart locked in heart some kneel and watch apart.

Watch with me blessèd spirits, who delight
All through the holy night to walk in white,
Or take your ease after the long-drawn fight.
I know not if they watch with me: I know
They count this eve of resurrection slow,
And cry, 'How long?' with urgent utterance strong.

Watch with me Jesus, in my loneliness:
Though others say me nay, yet say Thou yes;
Though others pass me by, stop Thou to bless.
Yea, Thou dost stop with me this vigil night;
To-night of pain, to-morrow of delight:
I, Love, am Thine; Thou, Lord my God, art mine.

Music on My Mind

Chisu, "Tuu mua vastaan".

Trying to work through the lyrics of this song is a bit baffling; it's filled with colloquial and dialectal terms that are not easily recognized if you don't already know them and phrases no real person would ever say so they can't be guessed at beforehand. I had never seen mua before; it's a version of the first-person pronoun, as if Finnish needed yet more pronoun forms. The more formal form, I take it, would be minua. Tuu I don't recognize, but it seems to be related to tulla, and in particular to the imperative form tule, 'come'. Vastaan is one of those words that has infinite shades of meaning depending on how exactly it is used; its basic meaning is something like 'over against', but it can mean lots of other things derived from this. The lyrics translation sites translate tuu mua vastaan as 'come meet me', which I would never have guessed, but makes some sense.

There are a number of other words you wouldn't normally expect to hear, like Venukselta. The -lta ending means 'off of', so the phrase astun alas Venukselta means 'I will step down off of Venus'. So now you can use the phrase if you ever happen to be in Finland and have an occasion to make people think you are crazy. Although, to be sure, for all I know people in Finland might say things like this all the time.

Maronite Year XII

Depending on the day on which Christmas falls, there may be either one or two Sundays before Epiphany. The current liturgical norms for these are quite clear:

If there is one Sunday between the Glorious Birth of Our Lord and the Epiphany, the Finding of the Lord in the Temple is celebrated. If there are two Sundays between these feasts, the Glorious Birth of Our Lord is celebrated on the first Sunday and the Finding of the Lord in the Temple on the second Sunday.

Thus the Sunday after Christmas in the Maronite calendar is a reiteration of Christmas. (I believe that this is relatively new, and that the previous custom was that it was the Finding of the Lord in the Temple, rather than Christmas, that was twinned in two-Sunday years; at least, I have an old PDF of an English translation of the Qurbono in which this is pretty clearly how it was structured, although I cannot say that it was a universal rather than a local thing. There is also an exception to the above norm, which we will see this next year: the Feast of the Circumcision is always on January 1, so when the first of two Sundays after Christmas falls on January 1, it is the Feast of the Circumcision that is celebrated.)

Sunday after the Glorious Birth
2 Corinthians 11:1-11; Matthew 23:29-24:2

The Word of God Himself was made flesh,
from the Virgin Mary He was born;
He took the Church for His spotless Bride.
If any preaches another Christ,
he does not bring the good news of Christ,
he does not bring the Spirit of Christ,
he beguiles like a cunning serpent.

Israel's saints prepared for His birth,
Abraham, David, and the prophets;
He is the Lamb upon God's high throne.
If any preaches another Christ,
he does not bring the good news of Christ,
he does not bring the Spirit of Christ,
he beguiles like a cunning serpent.

He is greater than angels on high;
He is King of kings and Lord of lords;
He is the good and loving Shepherd.
If any preaches another Christ,
he does not bring the good news of Christ,
he does not bring the Spirit of Christ,
he beguiles like a cunning serpent.

From the Father He has come to us;
of the Father He is the icon;
save through Him the Spirit does not come.
If any preaches another Christ,
he does not bring the good news of Christ,
he does not bring the Spirit of Christ,
he beguiles like a cunning serpent.

Christ our Lord upon the cross was hung
to raise us to salvation and joy;
in His holy martyrs He is seen.
If any preaches another Christ,
he does not bring the good news of Christ,
he does not bring the Spirit of Christ,
he beguiles like a cunning serpent.

Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

Introduction

Opening Passage:

Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice's Lenten fast in the desert.

Summary: The story starts with Lenten vigil. Brother Francis is out in the desert discerning whether he has a vocation to the Albertian Order of Leibowitz when a brief series of interactions with an old Jewish wanderer leads him to discover a Fallout Survival Shelter, possibly associated with Blessed Leibowitz himself. In Part I of the Canticle we get the humorous story of the somewhat hapless Francis and one of the relics found in the shelter, a blueprint signed with Leibowitz's own name, entitled 'Transistorized Control System for Unit Six-B'.

Part I ("Fiat Homo") occurs several hundred years after the Flame Deluge, the nuclear apocalypse that laid the world waste and created a Dark Age. Part II ("Fiat Lux") opens in 3174, with the rise of the empire of Texarkana and a new Enlightenment. There are wars and rumors of wars, but Thon Taddeo, the illegitimate cousin of Hannegan, the emperor of Texarkana,is interested in other rumors, namely, that the Abbey of St. Leibowitz has physics texts from the twentieth century. When he gets to the monastery after the dangerous trip, escorted by Hannegan's guard, he finds himself in for a shock: one of the monks of the monastery has invented a fantastic machine that he has only just barely conceived the theory for.

Part III ("Fiat Voluntas Tua") opens in 3781, and again there are wars and rumors of wars, this time nuclear. A nuclear explosion has created a profound need for medical camps, and the Abbey of St. Leibowitz opens its grounds for the purpose. But there is almost immediately a conflict between the Catholic abbey and the medical authorities over the practice of euthanasia, and it appears that the underlying nuclear tension is getting worse.

Each part poses an objection to the monks of St. Leibowitz -- How can they waste their time with something as trivial and useless as texts? How can they stand in the way of scientific progress? How can they stand in the way of mercy? But the monks merely continue on, as the objections fade into other objections and the challenges of one age give way to the challenges of another. They hold the line, as best they can in their fallible ways, enduring as they always have.

A consistent theme throughout is that states tend to arrogate to themselves ever-increasing power, without limit, effectively divinizing themselves, and that in the process of doing so, they destroy themselves. We get this in Part I with what we learn about the Flame Deluge, in Part II with the rise of Hannegan, and in Part III with the conflict between Church and state on matters like euthanasia. In every age Caesar tries to usurp the place of God -- may even apparently succeed for a while -- and collapses through his grasping for power. The Church stands against this; but one day, perhaps, it will shake the dust off its feet (Mt 10:14).

Favorite Passage: There are a number of good ones, but this one jumped out this reading:

There were spaceships again in that century, and the ships were manned by fuzzy impossibilities that walked on two legs and sprouted tufts of hair in unlikely anatomical regions. They were a garrulous kind. They belonged to a race quite capable of admiring its own image in a mirror, and equally capable of cutting its own throat before the altar of some tribal god, such as the deity of Daily Shaving. It was a species which often considered itself to be, basically, a race of divinely inspired toolmakers; any intelligent entity from Arcturus would instantly have perceived them to be, basically, a race of impassioned after-dinner speechmakers.

It was inevitable, it was manifest destiny, they felt (and not for the first time) that such a race go forth to conquer the stars. To conquer them several times, if need be, and certainly to make speeches about the conquest. But, too, it was inevitable that the race succomb again to the old maladies on new worlds, even as on Earth before, in the litany of life and in the special liturgy of Man: Versicles by Adam, Rejoinders by the Crucified.

Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

Exemplar Cause

In order to develop a life that is no less than a participation in the life of God, we must strive as far as is possible, to live a divine life. Hence, the need we had of a divine model. As St. Augustine remarks, men whom we see were too imperfect to serve us as a pattern and God, who is holiness itself, was too far beyond our gaze. Then, the eternal Son of God, His living image, became man and showed us by His example how man could here on earth approach the perfection of God. Son of God and son of man, He lived a Godlike life and could say: "Who seeth me seeth the Father." Having revealed the holiness of God in His actions, He can present to us as practical the imitation of the divine perfections: "Be you therefore perfect as also your heavenly Father is perfect." Therefore, the Eternal Father proposes Him to us as our model. At His baptism and His transfiguration He said: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Because he is well pleased in Him, the Eternal Father wills that we imitate His only-begotten Son....At bottom the Gospel is no more than a relation of the deeds and traits of our Lord's sacred person proposed to us as a model for our imitation: "Jesus began to do and to teach." Christianity in turn is nothing more than the imitation of Christ. St. Paul gave this as the sum-total of all our duties: "Be ye followers of me as I also am of Christ."

Adolphe Tanquerey, The Spiritual Life, 2nd ed., tr. by Herman Branderis, Society of St. John the Evangelist (Tournai, Belgium: 1930?) pp. 72-73.