Novena to Saint George

 

Today is his feast day.  Prayer courtesy of here.

NOVENA PRAYER TO ST GEORGE

ST GEORGE – FEAST DAY: APRIL 23rd

We all know St George as patron of England, and tamer of dragons. St George seems to have been a Roman soldier, probably of the late third century, who was martyred at Lydda in Palestine during the great persecution by the Emperor Diocletian, probably for refusing to renounce Christ and worship the Emperor as a god.
His cult was very widespread in the east from that time on; when English soldiers went to the Holy Land on Crusade, they were inspired by this warrior saint; Richard the Lionheart put himself and his army under St George’s protection. From then on his popularity in England only grew: Edward III founded the Order of the Garter, with St George as patron, in 1348; Henry V called on St George for aid before the great victory of Agincourt in 1415. Thereafter he was secure as patron of England (although the patronage of two Anglo-Saxon Saint-Kings, Edward the Confessor and Edmund of East Anglia, was not neglected), and his popularity survived the spoliation and wreckage of the Reformation.

This prayer to St George can be said for nine days as a novena:

PRAYER:
“Faithful servant of God and invincible martyr, St George, inflamed with a burning love of Christ, you fought against the dragon of pride, falsehood, and deceit.
Neither pain nor torture, nor the sword nor death could part you from the love of Christ. Pray for us, glorious St George, that through your intercession and example, we may work with all our strength for God’s greater glory, and continue unto death in imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.”

(Our Father…, Hail Mary…, Glory be…)

For Those who Died in the Boston Marathon Bombing

 

Eternal rest grant them, O Lord.  Also be mindful of the survivors.

Belatedly for Easter

Between being a bit under the weather and also involved in the Easter Vigil at our parish, I didn’t get anything up for the day itself.  Nevertheless, here is the full footage of Pope Francis’s first Easter Vigil Mass.

Three Chants for Saint Joseph

Today is his feast day, a solemnity of the Church.

A Prayer for St. Patrick’s Day

 

 

The Lorica (“Breastplate”), the most famous prayer attributed to St. Patrick.  Courtesy of here.

 

I bind unto myself today
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this day to me for ever.
By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;
His baptism in the Jordan river;
His death on Cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spicèd tomb;
His riding up the heavenly way;
His coming at the day of doom;*
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of the cherubim;
The sweet ‘well done’ in judgment hour,
The service of the seraphim,
Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word,
The Patriarchs’ prayers, the Prophets’ scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord,
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea,
Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need.
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, His shield to ward,
The word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility,
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart’s idolatry,
Against the wizard’s evil craft,
Against the death wound and the burning,
The choking wave and the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same.
The Three in One, and One in Three,
Of Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

A Chant for the New Pope

Habemus Papam!

 

I actually saw the live broadcast of the announcement, around 3 PM this afternoon, but didn’t get around addressing it here until now.

It was really a Rorschach test to read the responses.  Across the spectrum the responses were pretty much predictable  and could have been written beforehand, really.  ”He opposes gay marriage!  Booo!”  ”He’s for the poor!  Yaaay!”  ”The Church is still an eevul patriarchal institution!  Booo!”  ”He lives a simple life and eschews pomp!  Yaaay!”  ”He’s not in favor of the Latin Mass!  Booo!”  And so on–mindless fawning adulation, mindless venom, very little thought.

All I have to say is that he seems to be a good man who is certainly not perfect; that we should actually wait and see how he does things; that everyone ought to try to be charitable towards those of different ideological or theological beliefs or opinions; and that whether we’re Catholic or not, we ought to hope that Francis is what the Church needs at this difficult point in its history.

Vivat papa, et Deus eum benidicat!

I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

In this essay, the word in question is not “inconceivable”, but “God”.

My jumping-off point here is part of the interview with philosopher John Gray, excerpted back here (emphasis is in the original):

(Interviewer) You also say that ‘atheism does not mean rejecting belief in God, but up a belief in language as anything other than practical convenience.’ What are you getting at here?

(Gray) [Fritz Mauthner] was an atheist who thought that theism was an obsessive attachment to the constructions of language: that the idea of God was a kind of linguistic ideal. So that atheism meant not worshipping that ideal. But he took that as just an example of a more general truth: that there is a danger in worshiping the constructions of language. Of course religions like Christianity are partially to blame for this.  But for most of their history, these so called creedal faiths didn’t define themselves by doctrine. Instead they had strong traditions of what’s called Apophatic theology: where you cannot use language to describe God.

The “idea of God” is what I want to talk about here.

In the broadest sense, “theism” is the belief in one or more gods.  In this context, Gray is obviously speaking of monotheism.  One of the most persistent problems with theism, in my view,  is the problem of anthropomorphizing God, that is, conceptualizing Him as if He were human.  In a polytheistic religion, giving the various gods and goddesses human traits is more or less a feature, not a bug.  Even in a monotheistic religion, some degree of anthropomorphizing is unavoidable, since we have to use some categories in which to speak of God, and the categories of “human” and the various human attributes are the most accessible to us.  However, the danger of making God into a big man with a long white beard sitting in the sky is that it tends to end in attributing petty and nasty human characteristics (vengefulness, spite, hatred, favoritism, and so on) to Him, with bad results for believers.  After all, if God is OK with smiting the infidels, the believer might end up thinking it’s a good idea for him–and his armies–to do so, too.  Gray, however, seems to be taking it beyond mere anthropomorphism and locating the problem in language itself.

Some Postulates

Not geometric postulates, though!  This is a sort of continuation of my last post in this series, as well as trying to articulate what I’m postulating, what I”m trying to avoid, and why.

First, as I said way back here (allow me the luxury of quoting myself without seeming a total egotist!):

Nasty things–evils–existed long before humans came on the scene.  Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, droughts, tornadoes, predators, disease, pestilence, cancer, and so on have been around for eons.  Thus, any system that posits their existence as coming after the Fall of Man is not going to work.  [E]vils or Evil can’t be blamed on Eve’s apple.

Without claiming to give knowledge from on high, I suggested a possible (and in my mind, not unreasonable) theory as to the origin of pre-human evil, here.

For reasons that I’ve elaborated on in this series, as well as in the previous post, I think it’s hard to maintain the idea of Original Sin as a discrete, specific transgression by a particular individual or couple at a particular time in history.  Therefore, theories of the Atonement that are based on the traditional concept of a literal Adam, Eve, and Fall must be reworked and overhauled, perhaps massively.  Summarizing this,

1.  The evils in the physical universe are not caused by the Fall of Man,

2.  which could not have occurred as a discrete act by a specific person or persons.

I think these are fairly sound postulates, though I want to discuss objections to number 2 in an upcoming post.  The following two postulates are more speculative and will be revisited, but I’ll state them simply for now:

3.  Man was originally good in intention (metaphysically or from a supra-temporal or aeviternal perspective), if not temporally and/or historically, and this original metaphysical goodness was marred, if not temporally and/or historically (lots here to unpack, but let it be for now).

4.  Christ, through his life, death, and resurrection brings atonement to humanity (though how this is done is not yet clear, assuming one rejects the literal Genesis story.  Once more, let it be for now).

This is where I’m starting from as I try to pick my way forward on the Fall and what that may or may not mean.

Update:  It is Lent, so I will repent of my sins against mathematics.  I used the word “postulate” very loosely.  In mathematics (my field) a postulate (or axiom) is the most basic point from which one builds a proof or argument.  Postulates are not proved because they cannot be proved–they’re self-evident.  For example, postulate number one illustrated above (the illustrations show Euclid’s Postulates) is that two points in a plane give a unique line.  If one understands what “point”, “plane”, and “line” mean, this postulate is self-evident; it must be true; it can’t not be true.  The points above are certainly not like this.  None of them are self-evident, and given what we know about the origins of the cosmos, 1 can be reasonably proved (remember, postulates can’t be proved).  It would have been better to call these points my starting points or my basic assumptions.  Oh, well.

I also realized that I should have added another basic assumption; but I discuss that in the next post in this series.

Two Prayers for St. Valentine’s Day

 

Courtesy of here.

Praise to the One whose love stirs the ancient embers
sparks the breath of prayer

Praise to the One whose love entices the wandering
beckons the confused

Praise to the One whose love grows wings on the weary
dreams hope in the discouraged

Praise to the One whose love soothes with the ointment of mercy
transforms with the touch of compassion

Praise to the One whose love threads the energy of friendship
stitches the strength of fidelity

Praise to the One whose love tickles the soul with laughter
urges the heart toward joy

Praise to the one whose love embraces the untamed
dances with the passionate

All praise to this Gracious One
All gratitude to this Beloved
All love to this Mentor of Friendship
All devotion to this Shaper of Hearts.