The Discalced Hermits of Our Lady of Mount Carmel

One cool thing about being Catholic (and there are many) is finding out about so many things by answering your mail. One way or another you’ve given to some cause, or given to your local diocesan appeal, or something that puts you on an uncommon mailing list. Sort of like getting on the credit card mailing list and you get offers several times a week.

Yesterday I got an appeal from The Discalced Hermits of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Discalced, btw, means without shoe. These guys are bad asses. I have always had a highly romanticized image of this sort of thing, and I think I would excel in certain parts of it. But I could not do it. It is the lack of sleep! And I usually require at least one day of what the Scots refer to as a little hurkle-durkle, that means laying in bed after the time one ought to rise.

You can get it off their website but here is their day:

0:00 -Rise
0:15 -Matins & Lauds
-Hour of Mental Prayer
-Retire by 3:00
6:00 -Rise
6:15 -Hour of Mental Prayer & Angelus
7:30 -Prime & Terce (End Grand Silence)
8:15 -Holy Mass and Silent Thanksgiving
-Optional silent Breakfast when Fasting is not obligatory
9:15 -Spiritual Reading
10:00 -Manual Labor
13:00 -Sext, None, Examen & Angelus
-Dinner
-Community Recreation
-Visit to the Most Blessed Sacrament
-Rest / Free Time
15:45 -Vespers
-Formation / Manual Labor / Study
17:30 -Compline (Begin Grand Silence)
18:00 -Hour of Mental Prayer & Angelus
19:00 -Silent Collation, or Supper when Fasting is not obligatory
-Reading or Free Time
-Retire by 21:30

What you’ll notice is a severe lack of sleep time. I bet some of the hermits in the private reading time take a snooze here and there, and probably not even voluntary.

They also have a promotional video on this page that is really well done. I like the part where the friar is swinging that axe into the tree, you wouldn’t want to fight these guys.

They live on the charity of their fellow man. So give and be a part of their battle.

Scriptural Rosary and The Agony at Gethsemane

I would like to first state that this is not going to be a religious blog where all I talk about is my religion. There is after all my interests of aliens, science fiction, writing, and playing the flute naked on LSD. But I have been trying to concentrate on getting my house in order as well. I committed, prepared and entered the Catholic Church under very chaotic conditions and I’m still trying to put it all into order. Chaotic, at least, for me. Some people thrive under it, some are just used to it. I am used to working 25 – 30 hours a week and reading in an apartment with no other obligations save a devoted wife.

So, some thoughts occur to me late in the game. As I mentioned in a previous post, I subscribed to an app called Hallow. It is fantastic (I should write a review on it sometime) and I use it in the morning, afternoon/evening and at night just before bed. One of the narrators is Jonathon Roumie who plays Christ on the show The Chosen. He is a very good voice actor and his pronunciation and diction is impeccable and deeply emotional.

One of the uses I have for it is the rosary. I simply do not, most days, have the time to simply sit and spend 20 or more minutes on the rosary. I simply don’t and it have been bothering me. So I started doing the rosary with Hallow saying it along with Mr. Roumie. That way I can be getting my food preparation done, or showering (hey, I used to drink and shower, I think this is somewhat more wholesome… or something) and say the rosary.

Today I started what is called scriptural rosary where for each mystery there is a verse or two said between each Hail Mary. You reflect on the mystery through the readings. This is an advantage over the regular saying of the rosary by yourself because it is hard to reflect while you are trying to recite.

Today was the sorrowful mysteries. And I reflected on the mystery of the Agony in Gethsemane that the story had always sat crooked with me. How could have Jesus been so pained by his coming death? I can understand how a mere mortal man, I, or you, dear reader, could tremble before such a fate. We act on faith and know ourselves to me creatures. But Christ knew himself as God, his victory and resurrection were assured. It was not faith, but knowledge.

But then I thought: what was the life of Christ anyway? Christ in his human nature was not our experience of human nature. Yes, he undertook our pains and sorrows and lived as us among us, eating, suffering depravations, discomforts, etc. But he was sinless, without stain, without wrong.

What a life, what a human nature to surrender! What a burden it must have felt to be without stain, and the total experience of such a state, yet to surrender it to the sins of mankind. It makes his agony more understandable.

Just some preliminary thoughts on that.

Christmas (Shouldn’t) Be More Commercial

As I try to do every year, it is time to take out Dr. Leonard Peikoff’s ridiculous article “Christmas Should Be More Commercial,” and beat it up a little bit.

Why do I do this every year?

Why do you think? In this day and age where people beat the living shit out of each other over toys, step over ailing fellow citizens, shoot each other over mall parking spaces, and “Black Friday Death Count” will give you enough results for days of readings – it a naive question to ask why.

So let’s dig in with the first paragraph.

Christmas in America is an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life. Yet all of these are castigated as “materialistic”; the real meaning of the holiday, we are told, is assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously.

As far as the first sentence is concerned this is not in anyone’s mind for Christmas. First, we can display the first two characteristics at anytime of the year. To take a negative example: if a drunk invites you to his party for Sunday night, you might want to ask what the occasion is since the man drinks all seven days of the week. As for the enjoyment of life it is not the commerciality of Christmas that marks the spirit of Christmas. No Christmas movie I grew up with extolled the enjoyment of life as getting a bunch of shit one morning.

What this is is Peikoff taking a few incidentals and, to makeshift some sort of holiday that fits under his philosophy (as he accuses the Christians of doing later) making them the essentials, the defining essence of the holiday. Note that children do not experience “human ingenuity” and “capitalistic productivity” they think the stuff comes from Santa Clause! A character which, under Objectivist thinking, is on equal par with Jesus or God.

And let’s not forget, in ObjectivistLand there already is a holiday celebrating capitalistic productivity; namely Thanksgiving. Yes, the nuts actually redefined Thanksgiving to honor Henry Ford. But this one is different because you are supposed to enjoy yourself this time?

Then Peikoff (is this only the first paragraph?) does the usual Objectivist either/or and says these characteristic are castigated as “materialistic.” Well, yes. But let’s note that only Objectivists actually extol this non-existent vision of Christmas. What is castigated is the championing of these characteristics to the exclusion of all others.

In fact, Christmas as we celebrate it today is a 19th-century American invention. The freedom and prosperity of post-Civil War America created the happiest nation in history. The result was the desire to celebrate, to revel in the goods and pleasures of life on earth. Christmas (which was not a federal holiday until 1870) became the leading American outlet for this feeling.

This is true and not true. Christmas as we celebrate it today in America is a 19th-century American invention. However, there were many other parts of the world that had similar festivities that centered around a certain Saint Nicholas, or derivatives from.

From History.com

18th-century America’s Santa Claus was not the only St. Nicholas-inspired gift-giver to make an appearance at Christmastime. Similar figures were popular all over the world. Christkind or Kris Kringle was believed to deliver presents to well-behaved Swiss and German children. Meaning “Christ child,” Christkind is an angel-like figure often accompanied by St. Nicholas on his holiday missions. In Scandinavia, a jolly elf named Jultomten was thought to deliver gifts in a sleigh drawn by goats. English legend explains that Father Christmas visits each home on Christmas Eve to fill children’s stockings with holiday treats. Pere Noel is responsible for filling the shoes of French children. In Russia, it is believed that an elderly woman named Babouschka purposely gave the wise men wrong directions to Bethlehem so that they couldn’t find Jesus. Later, she felt remorseful, but could not find the men to undo the damage. To this day, on January 5, Babouschka visits Russian children leaving gifts at their bedsides in the hope that one of them is the baby Jesus and she will be forgiven. In Italy, a similar story exists about a woman called La Befana, a kindly witch who rides a broomstick down the chimneys of Italian homes to deliver toys into the stockings of lucky children.

Then Peikoff goes off into sketchy history. I have never read a definitive account of the Christians purposefully taking over the pagan holiday and “faking” the date of Jesus’ birth to stamp out the pagan practice of the winter solstice celebrations. Never mind the derivativeness of the Roman holiday – Romans good! Christians bad!

To Be Continued…

A Good Question?

A thought occurred to me this evening as I was studying the Annunciation (that would be the Annunciation of the Incarnation). I don’t know if it is a good question. Here is the relevant material.

1. CCC 485:   The mission of the Holy Spirit is always conjoined and ordered to that of the Son.122 The Holy Spirit, “the Lord, the giver of Life”, is sent to sanctify the womb of the Virgin Mary and divinely fecundate it, causing her to conceive the eternal Son of the Father in a humanity drawn from her own.

and

2. Matthew 1:1-17  1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham: 2 Abraham begot Isaac. And Isaac begot Jacob. And Jacob begot [and so on with the begets – second question, has anyone ever read through the beget sequences of the Bible?]

Here is the question. A woman provides the egg, the man the sperm. Of course, the CCC says “divinely fecundate” so we can assume sperm wasn’t literally used. But the point is it certainly leaves Joseph off the table as contributor. Why then, have a genealogy for Christ on the male side? Would it not make more sense, if one were to have a genealogy at all, to have Mary’s ancestry here instead?

I haven’t really delved into any obscure Christology, but I guess an argument could be constructed as follows. The Holy Spirit, in fecundating Mary, divinely provided (at least some) DNA from Joseph’s lineage.

Otherwise I see no reason for the lineage of Joseph if he had no part of himself in Jesus. Or, I suppose, as an adopted son could be interested in the genealogy of his adopted family, so too could this be thought as.

The last stage of the begets ends differently than all the preceding ones.

16 And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

It seems to me it can be considered a genealogy of the adoptive father.