Hidden Delights

“The world is not only hungry for food, but also for beauty.” With those words, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta helps explain why Pope Benedict is encouraging us to return to Catholic art as a privileged place for prayer. The vision of a gifted, accomplished, faith-filled artist can reveal to us a glimpse of God’s beauty, sparking an encounter with his love – and that’s the heart of all Christian prayer.

When I was just discovering the Catholic faith, before entering the Catholic Church, I used to wander into churches and gaze at the works of art, sometimes for hours at a time (college students have plenty of free time). This high relief sculpture of the Annunciation caught my eye, and my heart, even before I discovered that the Renaissance master, Donatello, had carved it out of pietra serena (a type of gray sandstone native to Tuscany) in the early 1400s.

What I Wasn’t Looking For

I have to make a confession about this work of art. It is located in a famous Italian Gothic church in Florence, Santa Croce. This church is home to immortal monuments like frescoes by Giotto, chapels by Brunelleschi, and the tombs of Galileo and Michelangelo. The first time I visited this church, I was interested in those famous monuments, not in Donatello’s little relief sculpture. Likewise the second time, and the third. In fact, this Florentine treasure of a church became a favorite stop on my way to class – I would light a candle for prayer intentions there as a part of my morning routine.

These repeated visits brought me in regular contact with Donatello’s Annunciation. It is located on the right side of the nave, between other monuments and side altars. I would walk by it every time I went through the church. Gradually, day by day, it began to demand more attention.

An Elegant Drama

We are used to seeing this type of depiction of the Annunciation, the moment when the Archangel Gabriel appears to the Blessed Virgin Mary and invites her to be the Mother of our Lord. But Donatello was the first sculptor to depict this scene with such drama. And it was the drama that struck a chord with me.

On the one hand, we can see that St. Gabriel is interrupting Our Lady. She is just closing her little prayer book with one hand, and with the other hand she is pulling her cloak over her as if to protect herself. Her right knee is turning away from the angel, but her left foot is still planted and hasn’t yet caught up with her body’s motion. But even while her body is moving away from the angel, as if she is surprised or frightened, her face and head show that she is actually mesmerized by the vision and the angelic presence.

And isn’t that exactly how it is with all of us? When God breaks into our lives, interrupting our routine with an invitation to repent, or to serve in a new way, or to somehow follow him more closely, isn’t our automatic reaction one of fright or resistance? We say, “Well, Lord, I have a lot to do, and I don’t think your idea is going to fit into my plans.” And yet, even as we resist, there is a place in our hearts, way down deep, at the very core of our being, where we feel the excitement and the draw of the Christian adventure. We know that we are made for God and that his will is the path to the meaningful, worthwhile life that we truly desire. And so, our true self – represented in the sculpture by the Virgin’s face, since the face is always the fullest expression of the person – wants to pay attention to God’s voice and invitations as they stir our hearts and conscience. But our lower tendencies of selfishness, represented by the lower body of the figure in the sculpture, tend to flee from the Lord. As St. Paul put it: “For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind…” (Romans 7:22-23).

The Charm of Grace

The charming elegance and sincere reverence with which Donatello depicts that drama was something else that resonated with me, in addition to the drama itself. In Mary’s case, the interior battle was much less violent than in our case. She was preserved from original sin and free from personal sin. And so, though the angel’s message caused her to be “greatly troubled” (Luke 1:29), she recovered quickly. Donatello’s rendition captures in Mary’s postures and attitudes the graciousness and gracefulness of her soul: he says with pietra serena what Gabriel said in words: “Hail, full of grace!” How could I not be attracted and intrigued by such beauty? How could I not be inspired by seeing the Mary’s natural agitation being conquered by her supernatural affinity for God?

The year that I visited Santa Croce so frequently was the year that God first began calling me into his Catholic Church. Throughout that year, I played out in my own soul this drama that Donatello captures so beautifully. My lower self resisted God’s interruptions, but my soul was mesmerized, and dazzled, and won over by the sheer goodness and beauty of God.

This Advent, as we spend time contemplating Our Lady’s journey of faith, so full of joy and trepidation, perhaps admiring Donatello’s magnificent snapshot will release the adventuresome spirit within us, and give us a share of Mary’s courage so that we, like her, can answer God’s invitation (whatever it may be) with the perfect prayer: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).

Of Rosaries and Wars

On October 7th 1571 the Catholic Holy League of Europe met the invading naval power of the Ottoman Empire, and over 400 ships and 100,000 men fought on seas of western Greece. In what some historians describe as the most significant naval battle since the birth of Christ, a politically fractured Europe – led by the illegitimate son of Emperor Charles V, Don John of Austria – stood as the last line of hope against a full-scale Ottoman invasion of southern Europe.

The great British rhetorician and apologist G.K. Chesterton penned the poem of Lepanto in honor of the decisive victory. In part:

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain–hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.

Victory won and Europe preserved, the Crusaders lost 7,500 men and 17 ships. The Ottomans suffered their greatest naval loss in over a century with 17-50 ships sunk, 137-177 ships captured, and over 20,000 either wounded or captured. Don John of Austria was able to free an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Christian slaves.

Though the rosary finds its origin in St. Dominic’s struggles against the Albigensians and is even credited with the victory against them at the Battle of Muret – it was not until the victory at Lepanto that Pope Pius V instituted the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. As Don John fought upon the seas of Greece, Pope Pius V had called the Church together to recite the rosary in hopes that Europe would be saved from an Islamic invasion.

The feast was localized primarily to Spain until two military victories in the 18th century convinced Pope Clement XI to declare a universal celebration. The Church saw something undeniable when Catholics were willing to both stand for what was good and just, and humble themselves in prayer and meditation to the mysteries of Christ through the eyes of Mary.

We are all aware of the beauty and grace the Rosary can bring to our personal lives, but often we forget about its power to change human society. As Catholics, our liturgical rythym is shaped by holy days that call us to remember events that memorialize God’s love and action in human history. Remembering these events has a profound effect not only on our own spiritual formation, but also upon our vocation to shape society.

We – like our brave and holy forefathers – must be people of bravery and of the rosary. Financial hardships, global uncertainties, and military conflicts have presented us with a world in constant need of the spiritual and corporeal acts of mercy. And on the defensive, many are aware that the USCCB has created an ad hoc committee for Religious Freedom to combat the deterioration as observed in new HHS mandate and abandonment of DOMA.

To dig deeper into the treasury of the Church’s light on Mary Fr. Peter Cameron’s Mysteries of the Virgin Mary: Living Our Lady’s Graces is an excellent resource. Fr. Cameron’s book is not a theological or historical treatise, but rather a devotional guide that the Catholic reader can turn to throughout the year to understand and meditate on Marian events. Meditating upon Our Lady’s life and saying her rosary,can produce significant change extending far beyond individual hearts and even into the events of nations.

Fr. Cameron will be appearing on EWTN’s literary program Bookmark
on October 16th to discuss the implications of the mysteries of Mary’s life.

Catholics are people of action and prayer. Looking back over the history of the Church we see our fellow brothers and sisters who have acted bravely and prayed piously. Their actions shaped our world. Now we must shape ours.

Mary sees us

“Just try to imitate the Blessed Virgin,” my old pastor would always counsel me. This was when I was a teenager struggling with all the usual teenager sins. The only thing I could see that Mary and I had in common was the color blue: her mantle, my hair. So his advice, while technically excellent, was entirely unhelpful.

When I became a mother, I thought the imitation would come more naturally. But the opposite happened: The more I tried to imitate what I heard about Mary, the wider the gulf between us became. Imitate someone who was free from original sin, and so had no inclination to be impatient or sarcastic, self-pitying or lazy, lustful or arrogant? And whose Child, while clearly kind of a tricky case, never sinned either? Whose husband was a saint, and whose mission in life was clear as a bell?

And asking someone with four kids under the age of five to imitate a mother of one felt like asking someone who lives in a sod hut to be more like Martha Stewart. Imitate Mary? I might as well have tried to imitate a cirrus cloud, or pattern my life after a soap bubble or an innocent little butterfly. In Mary’s presence, I had to be on my best behavior, so as not to put a smudge on her pretty porcelain robes.

What baffled me was that so many other women clearly found such solace and strength in Mary. I knew that I must be missing something—that this wasn’t her fault, it was mine. I regretfully concluded that I just wasn’t one of those Mary People.

But my thinking has changed. Here’s the key: I was misunderstanding sin—and so, of course, misunderstanding Mary, conceived without sin.

Intellectually, I knew sin is the cause of all pain and suffering in the world; but emotionally, it just felt like sin was life. How could the Immaculate Conception be helpful at all with Real Life? I imagined Mary as a blank slate, a polished, glossy fondant of womanhood. Pretty to look at, but who can get a foothold in such a featureless landscape?

But here’s the thing. Mary was conceived without sin, but that clearly did not mean she didn’t suffer. Think of this: Sin, in a peculiar way, protects us. It makes a comfortable shield or buffer between us and the truth. When I hurt someone, I protect my conscience by telling myself that so-and-so deserved it, that I was tired or overworked, and not much to blame, that it wasn’t such a big deal, that I’ll do better next time, and so on.

If Mary, though, full of grace, saw someone hurting someone else, even in a minor way—she must have seen the full horror of it. Far from being dainty and pristine, detached and removed from the mess and struggle of the world, she must have seen with utter clarity what harm we do to each other, and to ourselves, and how we offend against God. Imagine a Civil War-era mother watching the battlefield from high ground: It’s all very well to be protected yourself, but how dreadful to witness all those wounds.

And then there is the matter of what happened to Mary’s Son. The closest I come to being a decent human being is when one of my children is hurt. That is when I’m most able to put aside my own needs and desires, and just do what I’m here to do: to help, to make it better, to work like a furious machine to right the wrong. This is because I love my children. I can see them better, I know them more than anyone else does—and because of what I know, I have the strength to fight for them.

So imagine Mary, who was the only one who could see her Child for who he really was—whose life was linked to His. Imagine not only seeing your child suffer, but knowing that he was the only truly innocent one in the world. A sword of sorrow is putting it mildly. In her immaculate state, she had no selfishness to work through, no “compassion fatigue”—only sheer, unmixed anguish at seeing the truth of the most outrageous injustice in the universe. Mary alone saw not only her Son’s suffering, but saw clearly how the whole world was wounding itself as it tortured and killed this innocent one. She was not shielded by sin; she saw.

Mary is not, in her immaculate state, detached from us. On the contrary, she sees us—she sees more than anyone else sees. This is why she loves us: not because she is nice enough to blink politely and pretend not to notice our human grotesqueries—but because she sees it all, the good and the bad. She knows us better than anyone else, and she loves us because of what she knows, not despite it. When we cry to her, she doesn’t gather up her mantle to keep it free of our filth—she scoops us up like any mother would, and holds us tight until we feel strong enough to stand on our own again.

And so this is how I pray to Mary: Help me see my children clearly. Help me to see as Mary sees. Sin blinds and divides us; but grace reveals, and grace gives us strength.

by Simcha Fisher: To read more from Simcha go to www.NCRegister.com

Happy Birthday, Mary!

“Your birth, O Virgin Mother of God, proclaims joy to the whole world, for from you arose the glorious Son of Justice, Christ our God; he freed us from the age-old curse and filled us with holiness; he destroyed death and gave us eternal life.”

It would be a great day to offer just one minute (really, just 60 seconds) to her wouldn’t it? Click here – pause - pray – and then send this post to someone who might also like to wish Mary a “happy birthday.”

“Father of mercy, give your people help and strength from heaven. The birth of the Virgin Mary’s Son was the dawn of our salvation. May this celebration of her birthday bring us closer to lasting peace. Grand this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.”

Liturgy of the Hours

Do you have a minute?

Click here – pause - pray – and then send this post to someone you know who needs to take a minute too.

Here’s a tip, 1) click on the link, 2) take your hand off of the mouse (no, really, take it off), 3) okay, now, join that hand to your other hand…  you know the rest.