Today, in 1910, Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born. We know her better as Mother Teresa. Here is one of my favorite quotes: ""It is a great poverty to decide that a child must die so that you might live as you wish."
GKC wrote, "It is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most." Mother Teresa would certainly be a contender for such a saint. Her compassion and sacrifice stand as a testimony to Christ against the world's self-absorption and greed.
Showing posts with label Chesterton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chesterton. Show all posts
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Saturday, April 11, 2009
QUOTES: Chesterton on love, forgiveness, faith and hope
“To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”
--G. K. Chesterton (English Critic, Essayist, Novelist and Poet, 1874-1936)
Friday, December 19, 2008
QUOTES: More great Chesterton quotes
"To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once."
"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."
"Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car."
"The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost."
"Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist."
"There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people."
"I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean. "
"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."
"Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind."
"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."
"Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car."
"The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost."
"Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist."
"There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people."
"I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean. "
"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."
"Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind."
Monday, December 08, 2008
Gloria in Profundis, by GKC
CT has a fine online Advent Calendar, combining both word and image.
This entry, from Day 5, has a penetrating verse by G.K. Chesterton, accompanied by Kim Heung Jong's Christmas Scene.
Gloria In Profundis
There has fallen on earth for a token
A god too great for the sky.
He has burst out of all things and broken
The bounds of eternity:
Into time and the terminal land
He has strayed like a thief or a lover,
For the wine of the world brims over,
Its splendour is spilt on the sand.
Who is proud when the heavens are humble,
Who mounts if the mountains fall,
If the fixed stars topple and tumble
And a deluge of love drowns all—
Who rears up his head for a crown,
Who holds up his will for a warrant,
Who strives with the starry torrent,
When all that is good goes down?
For in dread of such falling and failing
The fallen angels fell
Inverted in insolence, scaling
The hanging mountain of hell:
But unmeasured of plummet and rod
Too deep for their sight to scan,
Outrushing the fall of man
Is the height of the fall of God.
Glory to God in the Lowest
The spout of the stars in spate—
Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest
And the lightning fears to be late:
As men dive for sunken gem
Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,
The fallen star has found it
In the cavern of Bethlehem.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
There has fallen on earth for a token
A god too great for the sky.
He has burst out of all things and broken
The bounds of eternity:
Into time and the terminal land
He has strayed like a thief or a lover,
For the wine of the world brims over,
Its splendour is spilt on the sand.
Who is proud when the heavens are humble,
Who mounts if the mountains fall,
If the fixed stars topple and tumble
And a deluge of love drowns all—
Who rears up his head for a crown,
Who holds up his will for a warrant,
Who strives with the starry torrent,
When all that is good goes down?
For in dread of such falling and failing
The fallen angels fell
Inverted in insolence, scaling
The hanging mountain of hell:
But unmeasured of plummet and rod
Too deep for their sight to scan,
Outrushing the fall of man
Is the height of the fall of God.
Glory to God in the Lowest
The spout of the stars in spate—
Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest
And the lightning fears to be late:
As men dive for sunken gem
Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,
The fallen star has found it
In the cavern of Bethlehem.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Sunday, September 30, 2007
GKC: St. Thomas and St. Francis
Here is G.K. Chesterton's masterful chapter comparing these two saints, courtesty of Ignatius Press. An extract:
"The Saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint is often a martyr; he is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always the same element in every age. Yet each generation seeks its saint by instinct; and he is not what the people want, but rather what the people need. This is surely the very much mistaken meaning of those words to the first saints, "Ye are the salt of the earth," which caused the Ex-Kaiser to remark with all solemnity that his beefy Germans were the salt of the earth; meaning thereby merely that they were the earth's beefiest and therefore best. But salt seasons and preserves beef, not because it is like beef; but because it is very unlike it. Christ did not tell his apostles that they were only the excellent people, or the only excellent people, but that they were the exceptional people; the permanently incongruous and incompatible people; and the text about the salt of the earth is really as sharp and shrewd and tart as the taste of salt. It is because they were the exceptional people, that they must not lose their exceptional quality. "If salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?" is a much more pointed question than any mere lament over the price of the best beef. If the world grows too worldly, it can be rebuked by the Church; but if the Church grows too worldly, it cannot be adequately rebuked for worldliness by the world.
Therefore it is the paradox of history that each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most. St. Francis had a curious and almost uncanny attraction for the Victorians; for the nineteenth century English who seemed superficially to be most complacent about their commerce and their common sense. Not only a rather complacent Englishman like Matthew Arnold, but even the English Liberals whom he criticised for their complacency, began slowly to discover the mystery of the Middle Ages through the strange story told in feathers and flames in the hagiographical pictures of Giotto. There was something in the story of St. Francis that pierced through all those English qualities which are most famous and fatuous, to all those English qualities which are most hidden and human: the secret softness of heart; the poetical vagueness of mind; the love of landscape and of animals. St. Francis of Assisi was the only medieval Catholic who really became popular in England on his own merits. It was largely because of a subconscious feeling that the modern world had neglected those particular merits. The English middle classes found their only missionary in the figure, which of all types in the world they most despised; an Italian beggar.
So, as the nineteenth century clutched at the Franciscan romance, precisely because it had neglected romance, so the twentieth century is already clutching at the Thomist rational theology, because it has neglected reason. In a world that was too stolid, Christianity returned in the form of a vagabond; in a world that has grown a great deal too wild, Christianity has returned in the form of a teacher of logic. In the world of Herbert Spencer men wanted a cure for indigestion; in the world of Einstein they want a cure for vertigo. In the first case, they dimly perceived the fact that it was after a long fast that St. Francis sang the Song of the Sun and the praise of the fruitful earth. In the second case, they already dimly perceived that, even if they only want to understand Einstein, it is necessary first to understand the use of the understanding. They begin to see that, as the eighteenth century thought itself the age of reason, and the nineteenth century thought itself the age of common sense, the twentieth century cannot as yet even manage to think itself anything but the age of uncommon nonsense.
....Yes; in spite of the contrasts that are as conspicuous and even comic as the comparison between the fat man and the thin man, the tall man and the short: in spite of the contrast between the vagabond and the student, between the apprentice and the aristocrat, between the book-hater and the book-lover, between the wildest of all missionaries and the mildest of all professors, the great fact of medieval history is that these two great men were doing the same great work; one in the study and the other in the street. They were not bringing something new into Christianity; in the sense of something heathen or heretical into Christianity; on the contrary, they were bringing Christianity into Christendom. But they were bringing it back against the pressure of certain historic tendencies, which had hardened into habits in many great schools and authorities in the Christian Church; and they were using tools and weapons which seemed to many people to be associated with heresy or heathenry. St. Francis used Nature much as St. Thomas used Aristotle; and to some they seemed to be using a Pagan goddess and a Pagan sage. What they were really doing, and especially what St. Thomas was really doing, will form the main matter of these pages; but it is convenient to be able to compare him from the first with a more popular saint; because we may thus sum up the substance of it in the most popular way. Perhaps it would sound too paradoxical to say that these two saints saved us from Spirituality; a dreadful doom. Perhaps it may be misunderstood if I say that St. Francis, for all his love of animals, saved us from being Buddhists; and that St. Thomas, for all his love of Greek philosophy, saved us from being Platonists. But it is best to say the truth in its simplest form; that they both reaffirmed the Incarnation, by bringing God back to earth.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
What do I desire?
Psalm 37:4
Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.
I Kings 3
5 At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, "Ask for whatever you want me to give you."
6 Solomon answered, "You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.
7 "Now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?"
10 The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. 11 So God said to him, "Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, 12 I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. 13 Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both riches and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. 14 And if you walk in my ways and obey my statutes and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life." 15 Then Solomon awoke—and he realized it had been a dream.
From G.K. Chesteron's St Thomas Aquinas, the Dumb Ox, Chapter 5; http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/aquinas.html#chap5
But probably the most representative revelation of this side of his life may be found in the celebrated story of the miracle of the crucifix; when in the stillness of the church of St. Dominic in Naples, a voice spoke from the carven Christ, and told the kneeling Friar that he had written rightly, and offered him the choice of a reward among all the things of the world.
Not all, I think, have appreciated the point of this particular story as applied to this particular saint. It is an old story, in so far as it is simply the offer made to a devotee of solitude or simplicity, of the pick of all the prizes of life. The hermit, true or false, the fakir, the fanatic or the cynic, Stylites on his column or Diogenes in his tub, can all be pictured as tempted by the powers of the earth, of the air or of the heavens, with the offer of the best of everything; and replying that they want nothing. In the Greek cynic or stoic it really meant the mere negative; that he wanted nothing. In the Oriental mystic or fanatic, it sometimes meant a sort of positive negative; that he wanted Nothing; that Nothing was really what he wanted. Sometimes it expressed a noble independence, and the twin virtues of antiquity, the love of liberty and the hatred of luxury. Sometimes it only expressed a self-sufficiency that is the very opposite of sanctity. But even the stories of real saints, of this sort, do not quite cover the case of St. Thomas. He was not a person who wanted nothing; and he was a person who was enormously interested in everything. His answer is not so inevitable or simple as some may suppose. As compared with many other saints, and many other philosophers, he was avid in his acceptance of Things; in his hunger and thirst for Things. It was his special spiritual thesis that there really are things; and not only the Thing; that the Many existed as well as the One. I do not mean things to eat or drink or wear, though he never denied to these their place in the noble hierarchy of Being; but rather things to think about, and especially things to prove, to experience and to know. Nobody supposes that Thomas Aquinas, when offered by God his choice among all the gifts of God, would ask for a thousand pounds, or the Crown of Sicily, or a present of rare Greek wine. But he might have asked for things that he really wanted: and he was a man who could want things; as he wanted the lost manuscript of St. Chrysostom. He might have asked for the solution of an old difficulty; or the secret of a new science; or a flash of the inconceivable intuitive mind of the angels, or any one of a thousand things that would really have satisfied his broad and virile appetite for the very vastness and variety of the universe. The point is that for him, when the voice spoke from between the outstretched arms of the Crucified, those arms were truly opened wide, and opening most gloriously the gates of all the worlds; they were arms pointing to the east and to the west, to the ends of the earth and the very extremes of existence. They were truly spread out with a gesture of omnipotent generosity; the Creator himself offering Creation itself; with all its millionfold mystery of separate beings, and the triumphal chorus of the creatures. That is the blazing background of multitudinous Being that gives the particular strength, and even a sort of surprise, to the answer of St. Thomas, when he lifted at last his head and spoke with, and for, that almost blasphemous audacity which is one with the humility of his religion; "I will have Thyself."
Or, to add the crowning and crushing irony to this story, so uniquely Christian for those who can really understand it, there are some who feel that the audacity is softened by insisting that he said, "Only Thyself."
What do I desire?
Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.
I Kings 3
5 At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, "Ask for whatever you want me to give you."
6 Solomon answered, "You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.
7 "Now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?"
10 The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. 11 So God said to him, "Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, 12 I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. 13 Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both riches and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. 14 And if you walk in my ways and obey my statutes and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life." 15 Then Solomon awoke—and he realized it had been a dream.
From G.K. Chesteron's St Thomas Aquinas, the Dumb Ox, Chapter 5; http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/aquinas.html#chap5
But probably the most representative revelation of this side of his life may be found in the celebrated story of the miracle of the crucifix; when in the stillness of the church of St. Dominic in Naples, a voice spoke from the carven Christ, and told the kneeling Friar that he had written rightly, and offered him the choice of a reward among all the things of the world.
Not all, I think, have appreciated the point of this particular story as applied to this particular saint. It is an old story, in so far as it is simply the offer made to a devotee of solitude or simplicity, of the pick of all the prizes of life. The hermit, true or false, the fakir, the fanatic or the cynic, Stylites on his column or Diogenes in his tub, can all be pictured as tempted by the powers of the earth, of the air or of the heavens, with the offer of the best of everything; and replying that they want nothing. In the Greek cynic or stoic it really meant the mere negative; that he wanted nothing. In the Oriental mystic or fanatic, it sometimes meant a sort of positive negative; that he wanted Nothing; that Nothing was really what he wanted. Sometimes it expressed a noble independence, and the twin virtues of antiquity, the love of liberty and the hatred of luxury. Sometimes it only expressed a self-sufficiency that is the very opposite of sanctity. But even the stories of real saints, of this sort, do not quite cover the case of St. Thomas. He was not a person who wanted nothing; and he was a person who was enormously interested in everything. His answer is not so inevitable or simple as some may suppose. As compared with many other saints, and many other philosophers, he was avid in his acceptance of Things; in his hunger and thirst for Things. It was his special spiritual thesis that there really are things; and not only the Thing; that the Many existed as well as the One. I do not mean things to eat or drink or wear, though he never denied to these their place in the noble hierarchy of Being; but rather things to think about, and especially things to prove, to experience and to know. Nobody supposes that Thomas Aquinas, when offered by God his choice among all the gifts of God, would ask for a thousand pounds, or the Crown of Sicily, or a present of rare Greek wine. But he might have asked for things that he really wanted: and he was a man who could want things; as he wanted the lost manuscript of St. Chrysostom. He might have asked for the solution of an old difficulty; or the secret of a new science; or a flash of the inconceivable intuitive mind of the angels, or any one of a thousand things that would really have satisfied his broad and virile appetite for the very vastness and variety of the universe. The point is that for him, when the voice spoke from between the outstretched arms of the Crucified, those arms were truly opened wide, and opening most gloriously the gates of all the worlds; they were arms pointing to the east and to the west, to the ends of the earth and the very extremes of existence. They were truly spread out with a gesture of omnipotent generosity; the Creator himself offering Creation itself; with all its millionfold mystery of separate beings, and the triumphal chorus of the creatures. That is the blazing background of multitudinous Being that gives the particular strength, and even a sort of surprise, to the answer of St. Thomas, when he lifted at last his head and spoke with, and for, that almost blasphemous audacity which is one with the humility of his religion; "I will have Thyself."
Or, to add the crowning and crushing irony to this story, so uniquely Christian for those who can really understand it, there are some who feel that the audacity is softened by insisting that he said, "Only Thyself."
What do I desire?
Lord, help me to desire You.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
My letter to Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D
apropos his response to Frances Beckwith's blog:
http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/2007/05/my_return_to_th.html
and his own blog entry:
http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2007/05/reversion-of-francis-beckwith.html
Dear Dr. Groothuis,
Can you please explain to me how you dare to include G.K. Chesterton in your list of favorite books on your blog profile? Haven't you read the final two chapters of St. Thomas Aquinas?
Surely this must pain "all true sons and daughters of the Protestant Reformation who lived and died for its truths." Aren't you in danger of embracing serious theological error by giving GKC such approval? After all, GKC certainly was "never well-grounded in the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, as articulated by the Five Solas of the Reformation." Why, the man even believed there was such a thing as (gasp!) philosophia perennis!
Until I hear how this inconsistency can be reconciled, I dare not take your criticisms of Dr. Beckwith seriously. And please, don't tell me its a matter of paradox. We protestants never have our cake and eat it too. It's Catholics like GKC that are into such paradoxes, not protestants! Once you let a paradox's nose in the tent, the whole Roman camel will follow. Sacraments! Thomism! Tradition! St. Theresa! The Culture of Life! Fides et Ratio! Whatever is true, noble, right, pure and lovely!
See what has happened to me? (grin) Reading Chesterton has just exacerbated things! I'd hate for it to happen to you!
P.S. Can you also please tell me, how can there be FIVE solas? I thought the only sola that mattered was Jesus. (Cf. Peter and Martha's confessions.)
Groothuis' reply:
http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2007/05/reversion-of-francis-beckwith.html
BB:There is no contradiction. I am listing authors who proved significant to me. That includes Roman Catholics like Pascal and Chesterson. So what? My favorite Chesterton book, Orthdoxy, was written before he became Catholic anyway.One need not believe everything a writer says to be shaped by him or her. I was helped enormously by John Searle's The Construction of Social Reality; it is one of the best defenses of realism I know. Searle is an atheist.
6:54 AM
7:18 AM
Karen LH said...
Dr. Groothuis,I had the same reaction as Beth to your including Catholics like G.K. Chesterton (and Pascal) in your list of influential authors.The reason has to do with the tone of your post here about Dr. Beckwith's reversion. It's one thing to say something like: "I disagree completely with Frank's reasons for returning to Catholicism." It's another to say: "Frank has done some excellent work over the years, but was apparently never well-grounded in the essential doctrines..."In other words, Catholics are not too intelligent and are poorly informed. I guess you're entitled to your opinion, but if that's what you think of them -- that they are not only wrong but stupid -- then it's a little strange that you would include them on a list of recommended authors.Chesterton wrote somewhere regarding his conversion (I looked and can't find the exact quote) something like the following: "When I became a Catholic, I thought that people would say: 'That Chesterton fellow is pretty smart: maybe there's something to the Catholic Church.' Instead they said: 'That Chesterton fellow used to be pretty smart: I wonder what happened to him.'"This seems to be the way a lot of people are treating Dr. Beckwith. If he "has done some excellent work over the years", then maybe he is still doing excellent work. If you disagree with him, then by all means say so and say why. But he deserves to be treated with more respect than a condescending dismissal.(As for Orthodoxy, while it's true that Chesterton wrote it before becoming a Catholic, as I recall it's an extremely Catholic book. Chesterton himself was Catholic for years before he entered the Church. You must know that.)
8:30 AM
http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/2007/05/my_return_to_th.html
and his own blog entry:
http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2007/05/reversion-of-francis-beckwith.html
Dear Dr. Groothuis,
Can you please explain to me how you dare to include G.K. Chesterton in your list of favorite books on your blog profile? Haven't you read the final two chapters of St. Thomas Aquinas?
Surely this must pain "all true sons and daughters of the Protestant Reformation who lived and died for its truths." Aren't you in danger of embracing serious theological error by giving GKC such approval? After all, GKC certainly was "never well-grounded in the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, as articulated by the Five Solas of the Reformation." Why, the man even believed there was such a thing as (gasp!) philosophia perennis!
Until I hear how this inconsistency can be reconciled, I dare not take your criticisms of Dr. Beckwith seriously. And please, don't tell me its a matter of paradox. We protestants never have our cake and eat it too. It's Catholics like GKC that are into such paradoxes, not protestants! Once you let a paradox's nose in the tent, the whole Roman camel will follow. Sacraments! Thomism! Tradition! St. Theresa! The Culture of Life! Fides et Ratio! Whatever is true, noble, right, pure and lovely!
See what has happened to me? (grin) Reading Chesterton has just exacerbated things! I'd hate for it to happen to you!
P.S. Can you also please tell me, how can there be FIVE solas? I thought the only sola that mattered was Jesus. (Cf. Peter and Martha's confessions.)
Groothuis' reply:
http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2007/05/reversion-of-francis-beckwith.html
BB:There is no contradiction. I am listing authors who proved significant to me. That includes Roman Catholics like Pascal and Chesterson. So what? My favorite Chesterton book, Orthdoxy, was written before he became Catholic anyway.One need not believe everything a writer says to be shaped by him or her. I was helped enormously by John Searle's The Construction of Social Reality; it is one of the best defenses of realism I know. Searle is an atheist.
6:54 AM
7:18 AM
Karen LH said...
Dr. Groothuis,I had the same reaction as Beth to your including Catholics like G.K. Chesterton (and Pascal) in your list of influential authors.The reason has to do with the tone of your post here about Dr. Beckwith's reversion. It's one thing to say something like: "I disagree completely with Frank's reasons for returning to Catholicism." It's another to say: "Frank has done some excellent work over the years, but was apparently never well-grounded in the essential doctrines..."In other words, Catholics are not too intelligent and are poorly informed. I guess you're entitled to your opinion, but if that's what you think of them -- that they are not only wrong but stupid -- then it's a little strange that you would include them on a list of recommended authors.Chesterton wrote somewhere regarding his conversion (I looked and can't find the exact quote) something like the following: "When I became a Catholic, I thought that people would say: 'That Chesterton fellow is pretty smart: maybe there's something to the Catholic Church.' Instead they said: 'That Chesterton fellow used to be pretty smart: I wonder what happened to him.'"This seems to be the way a lot of people are treating Dr. Beckwith. If he "has done some excellent work over the years", then maybe he is still doing excellent work. If you disagree with him, then by all means say so and say why. But he deserves to be treated with more respect than a condescending dismissal.(As for Orthodoxy, while it's true that Chesterton wrote it before becoming a Catholic, as I recall it's an extremely Catholic book. Chesterton himself was Catholic for years before he entered the Church. You must know that.)
8:30 AM
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