Announcement

This is the book after which this blog is named. You can order it from Amazon US, or Amazon UK, or through your local bookshop, or the publisher. ISBN: 978-1-59731-129-8. The spectacular cover art is by Daniel Mitsui. (Go to his web-site for a detailed view.) Review copies of All Things Made New can be requested from the publisher at Angelico Press, John Riess (jriess718@gmail.com).

All Things Made New explores the Christian mysteries by studying the symbolism, cosmology, and meaning firstly of the Book of Revelation (reading this as a prophetic and mystical commentary on the Divine Liturgy rather than a set of predictions) and secondly of the prayers and meditations of the Rosary, including the Apostles’ Creed and the Our Father.

Why put these together in one book? The shattering impact of the Incarnation was felt first by the Mother of Jesus and by his closest disciples. Its meaning was best understood by Mary as she pondered these things in her heart, and the beloved disciple, John, who took her into his home. Mary and John at the foot of the Cross, depicted on the cover by Daniel Mitsui, are witnesses and teachers of the mystery of God’s love. So the book attempts to explore the Christian Mysteries as much as possible "through the eyes" on John and Mary, with the help of the Book of Revelation and the Rosary.

I have run a series of posts discussing aspects and themes of the book that may be of interest to potential readers. The series runs in order as follows: Mystagogy, John and Mary, The Unveiling, How to read the Bible, Mysteries of the Rosary, How "Made New"? The series then continues through November and December 2011.

Readers interested in Mystagogy might like to know that All Things Made New forms a sequel to The Seven Sacraments: Entering the Mysteries of God. That earlier book, in turn, has been thoroughly revised, and will be republished in a new edition by Crossroad in due course.

To go to the Home Page of this blog click here or on the main title bar above.

Faith, reason, and imagination

The French poet Paul Claudel once wrote:

"The evil we have been suffering from for several centuries is less a split between Faith and Reason than between Faith and an Imagination become incapable of establishing an accord between the two parts of the universe, the visible and the invisible."

The quotation comes from an excellent article on Claudel by Michael Donley in the Temenos Academy Review for 2005 (p. 45). How might this thought be expanded? What is the role of the Imagination?

The imaginative faculty mediates between the sensory and the intellectual world in its own way just as the reasoning faculty does. But like all mediators it is ambiguous. It has two sides or faces, depending in this case on its relationship to the higher spiritual faculty. When the imagination faces "upwards" towards the archetypes of reality, assisted by the active imagination, it is capable of mediating and transmitting truth, as it does in the true visions received by prophets, and also in the works

The new Missal translation

It has been called "the flawed product of a flawed process", and so it is. But then so was the previous one; flawed in different and perhaps more serious ways. The new English translation of the Roman Missal being introduced across the whole English-speaking world from 4th September is more archaic in style, perhaps more dignified, richer in scriptural reference, and certainly more faithful to the underlying Latin. But the action of the Mass is the same and hasn't changed.

We have been explaining the changes in Magnificat month by month. One of the most obvious is in the greeting at Mass. The Priest says, "The Lord be with you," and we no longer respond, "And also with you," but, "And with your spirit" (which is exactly what the Latin says: "Et cum spiritu tuo"). What does it mean? As Lawrence Lew explained in the June issue of Magnificat, the expression comes from Saint Paul (cf. Ga 6: 18; Ph 4: 23; 2 Tm 4: 22), and is linked with the greeting from Ruth 2: 4. the “spirit” refers to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, specifically here with reference to the ordained who “performs the sacrifice in the power of the Holy Spirit”. In a sense, we are praying in charity that our priest might abide in the Spirit. A prayer always needed, and never more than today when priesthood is under such attack.

For Anthony Esolen's commentary for Magnificat on the poetry of the new translation, see Zenit or First Things.

Theology of the body

An old friend of mine (and long ago of Charles Williams), Lois Lang-Sims, recently said that “All these teachings about sex and about the sanctity of human life and the human body have their roots in metaphysics,” which, she added, is the last thing anyone these days wants to talk about. Pope John Paul II understood this and called for a renewal of metaphysics in his encyclical Fides et Ratio. The key to his Theology of the Body seems to me this:

“The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it.” – John Paul II, 20 February 1980, General Audience 

The same Pope talks about the “spousal” or “nuptial” meaning of the body, which he says is “not something merely conceptual” but concerns a “way of living the body” in its masculinity and femininity, an “inner dimension… that stands at the root of all facts that constitute man’s history”. This nuptial meaning has been limited, violated and deformed over time and by modern culture, until we have almost lost the power of “seeing” it, but it is still there to be discovered with the help of grace, like a spark deep within the human heart. The “language of the body”, therefore, must be recovered, and that is what the Pope seeks to do. But as he says, correctly reading this “language” results not so much in a set of statements as in a “way of living”.

Since I posted this item, a brilliant interview on the subject has appeared with Bishop Jean Lafitte. And if anyone wants to study the subject in depth, the best book-length introduction I know is Called to Love, by Anderson and Granados. I will return to this subject on another occasion.

Hortus Conclusus

The medieval mystics loved to meditate on the Virgin Mary as the “enclosed garden” or “walled garden” of the Song of Songs, and as the new “Garden of Eden”, Paradise restored. St Bernard of Clairvaux is frequently cited – as here, by St John Eudes in The Admirable Heart of Mary (Loreto Publications, 2004, 70):

Thou art an enclosed garden, O Mother of God, wherein we cull all kinds of flowers. Among them, we gaze with particular admiration on thy violets, thy lilies, and thy roses, which fill the House of God with their sweet fragrance. Thou art, O Mary, a violet of humility, a lily of chastity, and a rose of charity.” 

In the original Garden, St John comments, man hid from God and God had to call for him. In the new Garden, the second Paradise, God hid himself and his glory for love, so that the three kings who came from afar had to ask, “Where is he?”

The tradition of the hortus conclusus is entwined with that of the Immaculate Conception, because just as Adam was made from the earth before the Fall, so it seemed eminently fitting that the second Adam should be made from a woman similarly untouched by sin. God was making a new beginning for the human race. In order to plant the new Tree of Life, he had to establish around it an enclosed garden, protected from the corruption of the world outside. That garden was Mary.