The violin composition by Ludwig van Beethoven: Romance #2 for violin and orchestra Opus 50 in F Major, played by violinist Josef Suk, Sir Neville Marriner, conductor [1] evokes a youthful fantasy, a place of peace and freedom where a carefree life could be lived in love with abandon.
Beethoven's Romance #1 Opus 49 in G Major is also beautiful but his Romance #2 Opus 50 in F Major stresses a sense of longing that always seems to arise during periods between romantic interludes which makes each successive romantic rendezvous much more ephemeral and precious than the last, and turns the longing for the next into an intense yearning.
Youthful fantasies fade away while realities of life set in insidiously as the years go by, erasing the innocence of youth, the spontaneity of laughter and the blissfulness of existence.
Despite the prevalence of disturbances and worries in the life of a grown-up, this Romance #2 for violin and orchestra by Beethoven recorded by Josef Suk, with Sir Neville Marriner conducting Academy of St. Martin of the Fields orchestra beginning at 7:25 awakens temporarily the dreams of youth that are closer to what Heaven must be like than the antipodal extremes of hijacked and tyrannical religions and unbridled and greedy capitalism.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwa0c-oKZSM beginning at 7:25.
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Completed My Confession - Conclusion
My penance is to reach out to the homeless and start a conversation, to volunteer at a soup kitchen and the like. Having compassion is not enough, apparently. Putting the compassion into action is my assignment. That is not easy for me, for I prefer solitude, but I will do it.
Fr. Joseph who heard my confession was the priest who gave the homily (in English) at the 11 a.m. Latin Mass. Coincidentally, or not-so-coincidentally, depending on one's perspective, the Good Samaritan [1], [2] was today's Gospel reading . The homily echoed the teaching of Jesus Christ Who asked us to do as the Good Samaritan had done, by interrupting life, going out of the way, to help a neighbor in need.
Fr. Joseph noted that St. Augustine likened the man on the road to Jericho who was beaten and robbed to Adam, and the Good Samaritan who paid the innkeeper two silver coins and however many more that were necessary to take care of the injured man to Christ Who came to purchase salvation for the descendants of the fallen Adam by paying the ultimate price--death by crucifixion.
While I am not brave or selfless enough to give up my life for another, perhaps I can give up a little bit, in order to share a laugh and a moment of comfort with another less fortunate [3].
[1] http://petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang.com/tag/parable-of-the-good-samaritan/
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2010:25-37
[3] Fr. Joseph also made us recall the victims of war in Ukraine, Iraq and Syria.
Fr. Joseph who heard my confession was the priest who gave the homily (in English) at the 11 a.m. Latin Mass. Coincidentally, or not-so-coincidentally, depending on one's perspective, the Good Samaritan [1], [2] was today's Gospel reading . The homily echoed the teaching of Jesus Christ Who asked us to do as the Good Samaritan had done, by interrupting life, going out of the way, to help a neighbor in need.
Fr. Joseph noted that St. Augustine likened the man on the road to Jericho who was beaten and robbed to Adam, and the Good Samaritan who paid the innkeeper two silver coins and however many more that were necessary to take care of the injured man to Christ Who came to purchase salvation for the descendants of the fallen Adam by paying the ultimate price--death by crucifixion.
While I am not brave or selfless enough to give up my life for another, perhaps I can give up a little bit, in order to share a laugh and a moment of comfort with another less fortunate [3].
[1] http://petercanisiusmichaeldavidkang.com/tag/parable-of-the-good-samaritan/
[2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2010:25-37
[3] Fr. Joseph also made us recall the victims of war in Ukraine, Iraq and Syria.
Planning My Confession - Part 3
I was determined to have my confession even though I did not know how to confess. This afternoon [1], I went to church and saw Fr. Joseph, the pastor, praying on his knees in the sanctuary. During a short break, he noticed my presence and waved to me to approach. I did not feel comfortable standing so I knelt on the padded communion rail kneeler (a long prie-dieu [2]) to speak with him. He told me he was saying his prayers but will meet with me afterwards. I returned to the pew to pray. When the church bell rang, I looked up. Fr. Joseph was done with his prayers. He motioned me to follow him.
He led me to his office and he began by saying The Memorare prayer and two others before he started asking me questions. I told him that I was preparing to enter a new phase in my life, and asked if he was able to be my spiritual guide, and that I would like to have a confession except I did not know how to confess. He printed out a "checklist" that was almost one full page worth of single-spaced questions in four categories:
1. "God and My Faith in Him"
2. "Family Life and Friendships"
3. "The Gift of Sexuality" and
4. "Honesty".
The litany of questions under each category is embarrassing to approach on my own, let alone confessing my responses to a priest I met just today. Embarrassment aside, I have an appointment tomorrow to confess.
[1] This entry began on Saturday night but was posted after midnight.
[2] http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=prie-dieu
He led me to his office and he began by saying The Memorare prayer and two others before he started asking me questions. I told him that I was preparing to enter a new phase in my life, and asked if he was able to be my spiritual guide, and that I would like to have a confession except I did not know how to confess. He printed out a "checklist" that was almost one full page worth of single-spaced questions in four categories:
1. "God and My Faith in Him"
2. "Family Life and Friendships"
3. "The Gift of Sexuality" and
4. "Honesty".
The litany of questions under each category is embarrassing to approach on my own, let alone confessing my responses to a priest I met just today. Embarrassment aside, I have an appointment tomorrow to confess.
[1] This entry began on Saturday night but was posted after midnight.
[2] http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=prie-dieu
Saturday, August 30, 2014
The Face Of God
Nobody has seen the face of God. This opens the door to imagination, a limitless space the Creator shares with all the created.
In this day and age, surveillance cameras are virtually everywhere. Imagine that such a camera is a floating satellite, and that each person is assigned to one, and it records every moment of his or her existence until death. Every image captured is in 3-D, having a resolution indistinguishable from life itself. Over the course of any fractional picosecond, a very large number of such images can be available. Needless to say, over the course of one's lifetime, an even larger number of such images can be examined [1].
From this storage of images one can find a facial image that is the most beautiful relative to the rest [2]. This is one image of one's face at one's best moment in one's entire lifetime. Then imagine all the people that had existed, that now exists and will ever exist in the future, and from each life, only one beautiful facial image will be produced.
Imagine further that the one beautiful face from each individual are united to form a single face. This face, I imagine, approximates the face of God.
[1] Although the number of images captured in a lifetime is beyond my practical comprehension, it nonetheless is theoretically less than infinity because one's lifetime is a very short span relative to an eternity that does not have a beginning or an end.
[2] Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Therefore, one has to leave the judging to God and that will include images that has been transformed by accident and by choice, by diet and nutrition or lack thereof, by medication, drugs and hormones. The beauty of a face is the combination of the physical exterior and the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual interior, reflecting the totality of the being at any one moment.
In this day and age, surveillance cameras are virtually everywhere. Imagine that such a camera is a floating satellite, and that each person is assigned to one, and it records every moment of his or her existence until death. Every image captured is in 3-D, having a resolution indistinguishable from life itself. Over the course of any fractional picosecond, a very large number of such images can be available. Needless to say, over the course of one's lifetime, an even larger number of such images can be examined [1].
From this storage of images one can find a facial image that is the most beautiful relative to the rest [2]. This is one image of one's face at one's best moment in one's entire lifetime. Then imagine all the people that had existed, that now exists and will ever exist in the future, and from each life, only one beautiful facial image will be produced.
Imagine further that the one beautiful face from each individual are united to form a single face. This face, I imagine, approximates the face of God.
[1] Although the number of images captured in a lifetime is beyond my practical comprehension, it nonetheless is theoretically less than infinity because one's lifetime is a very short span relative to an eternity that does not have a beginning or an end.
[2] Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Therefore, one has to leave the judging to God and that will include images that has been transformed by accident and by choice, by diet and nutrition or lack thereof, by medication, drugs and hormones. The beauty of a face is the combination of the physical exterior and the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual interior, reflecting the totality of the being at any one moment.
Friday, August 29, 2014
God Loves A Broken Heart
A broken heart, for purposes of this entry, is not a clinical condition [1] but an emotional one. When one loves another and that love is misunderstood, unrequited or no longer possible for any reason, such as death, the heart hurts.
The closer the relationship from which the love stems, the closest could very well be between parent and child, the more the pain when that love is missing, ignored, rejected, overlooked, under-appreciated or unappreciated, deemed superfluous or irrelevant, or is terminated. When the one giving love is not giving up, the heart can feel like it is in pieces. A broken heart is a heart God loves because it is broken out of love.
The heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary was broken when She saw Her Son suffer emotionally and physically before and during His crucifixion, and the heart of Jesus was broken when Judas betrayed Him, when Peter denied Him, when Thomas disbelieved in Him and when those whom He came to save rejected and crucified Him.
The sinful heart of man stands at a vast distance away from the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus in purity, but its brokenness is closely linked to Theirs by a commonality: the humanness of the organ that is vulnerable to being hurt. It is that humanness that God loves. When the heart is given freely to another out of unconditional love, man grows in the likeness of God, eventually returning to God when the scars of emotional pain from his broken and unfulfilled heart would be fully healed. [1]
[1] The thought that God's heart is broken because the children of the world are destroying each other, the earth and the Church seemed like a good idea at first but it is not (see contradicting paragraph below). In Heaven, everything is perfect--nothing is broken. God is whole and omniscient, forgiving and unconditionally loving. Anyone who is like God, who knows the Truth and who forgives all trespasses and loves all, is immune to pain, an immunity that the Mother of God and the Son of God did not have while they were on earth.
Having made an assertion that God's heart is not broken because God is perfect and perfection is whole, I contradict myself and come full circle. Perhaps brokenness is embodied within perfection and as such, God is perfect with a broken heart, broken because the children of the world are destroying each other, the earth and the Church.
[1] http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/broken-heart-syndrome/basics/definition/con-20034635
The closer the relationship from which the love stems, the closest could very well be between parent and child, the more the pain when that love is missing, ignored, rejected, overlooked, under-appreciated or unappreciated, deemed superfluous or irrelevant, or is terminated. When the one giving love is not giving up, the heart can feel like it is in pieces. A broken heart is a heart God loves because it is broken out of love.
The heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary was broken when She saw Her Son suffer emotionally and physically before and during His crucifixion, and the heart of Jesus was broken when Judas betrayed Him, when Peter denied Him, when Thomas disbelieved in Him and when those whom He came to save rejected and crucified Him.
The sinful heart of man stands at a vast distance away from the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus in purity, but its brokenness is closely linked to Theirs by a commonality: the humanness of the organ that is vulnerable to being hurt. It is that humanness that God loves. When the heart is given freely to another out of unconditional love, man grows in the likeness of God, eventually returning to God when the scars of emotional pain from his broken and unfulfilled heart would be fully healed. [1]
[1] The thought that God's heart is broken because the children of the world are destroying each other, the earth and the Church seemed like a good idea at first but it is not (see contradicting paragraph below). In Heaven, everything is perfect--nothing is broken. God is whole and omniscient, forgiving and unconditionally loving. Anyone who is like God, who knows the Truth and who forgives all trespasses and loves all, is immune to pain, an immunity that the Mother of God and the Son of God did not have while they were on earth.
Having made an assertion that God's heart is not broken because God is perfect and perfection is whole, I contradict myself and come full circle. Perhaps brokenness is embodied within perfection and as such, God is perfect with a broken heart, broken because the children of the world are destroying each other, the earth and the Church.
[1] http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/broken-heart-syndrome/basics/definition/con-20034635
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Monstrance
I want to know how often the Holy Eucharist is replaced in the receptacle that holds It, and what they do with It when it is replaced. I still do not know but I was told that the receptacle that holds the Holy Eucharist is called monstrance, derived from the Latin word monstrare which means "to show" [1]. It is also called ostensorium, derived from the Latin word ostendere which also means "to show" [2].
The monstrances or ostensoria I have seen look ostentatious. In my opinion, they take away attention from the Holy Eucharist, the humble Body of Christ. Dissatisfied with the gaudy designs that demonstrate the richness of the container, I decided to do an image search on Google and found one that I like (see above) [3]. It is not the most basic of monstrances nor is it the most glittery. It seems to strike a balance between the purity of the sacred Host it contains and man's attempt to capture the glory of Christ in Heaven with imagination, talent, and gold.
[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/monstrance?s=t
[2] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ostensorium?s=t
[3] "Monstrance manufactured in France in the first half of the twentieth century. Immaculée-Conception de Bellerive Church.
Photo : Sébastien Daviau, Musée régional de Vaudreuil-Soulanges, 2011." See http://www.frh-europe.org/category/features/page/2/ (need to scroll down to see the image copied above).
Monday, August 25, 2014
Is There Love In Hell?
Hell? No.
One ends up in Hell because he has made his final rejection of God, Who is Love. Accordingly, Hell has no God and no love. It also does not have compassion and forgiveness, the precursors of love.
It does have justice, however--not the justice that landed the soul there in the first place, but the justice the soul continuously seeks because it believes it should not be in Hell, but the fact that it is, it believes that being in Hell must have been a result of unfairness.
The kind of justice a soul in Hell seeks to have never ends because it is never perfect. It is merely an attempt at perfection, trying to make things whole again. Each attempt that is made necessarily fails because justice cannot make things whole--only love can. Love perfects justice; indeed, it replaces justice, making it obsolete. Thus, in Heaven, where God's love is in abundance everywhere, justice is not part of the knowledge and consciousness of souls. Its existence has simply been rendered unnecessary.
The absence of compassion and forgiveness in Hell allows justice to show its scales that never balances. The atmosphere is full of blame and recrimination, similar to earthly vendettas that never ends. The explosive situation in the Mideast is an example. Bitter family fights are another.
The scales of justice cannot deliver a remedy that brings peace to the Mideast, to quarreling family members or to the souls in Hell. Something is always missing, the perfect remedy always being elusive. They think perfect justice is lacking, but they are wrong, for the justice they seek is never perfect because it has no compassion, and it has no forgiveness.
The souls that seek justice from the depths of Hell were very people who clamored for justice in life and who failed to have compassion for and show forgiveness of others, including their enemies. These souls will never have the love of God.
One ends up in Hell because he has made his final rejection of God, Who is Love. Accordingly, Hell has no God and no love. It also does not have compassion and forgiveness, the precursors of love.
It does have justice, however--not the justice that landed the soul there in the first place, but the justice the soul continuously seeks because it believes it should not be in Hell, but the fact that it is, it believes that being in Hell must have been a result of unfairness.
The kind of justice a soul in Hell seeks to have never ends because it is never perfect. It is merely an attempt at perfection, trying to make things whole again. Each attempt that is made necessarily fails because justice cannot make things whole--only love can. Love perfects justice; indeed, it replaces justice, making it obsolete. Thus, in Heaven, where God's love is in abundance everywhere, justice is not part of the knowledge and consciousness of souls. Its existence has simply been rendered unnecessary.
The absence of compassion and forgiveness in Hell allows justice to show its scales that never balances. The atmosphere is full of blame and recrimination, similar to earthly vendettas that never ends. The explosive situation in the Mideast is an example. Bitter family fights are another.
The scales of justice cannot deliver a remedy that brings peace to the Mideast, to quarreling family members or to the souls in Hell. Something is always missing, the perfect remedy always being elusive. They think perfect justice is lacking, but they are wrong, for the justice they seek is never perfect because it has no compassion, and it has no forgiveness.
The souls that seek justice from the depths of Hell were very people who clamored for justice in life and who failed to have compassion for and show forgiveness of others, including their enemies. These souls will never have the love of God.
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