Saints

With All Saints and All Souls days this weekend, a look at what Chesterton and Lewis has to say about saints.

Chesterton

It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans.

The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.

Each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most.

“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.

There are saints indeed in my religion: but a saint only means a man who knows he is a sinner.

Lewis

The stamp of the saint is that he can waive his own rights and obey the Lord Jesus.

How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been. How gloriously different are the saints.

Lewis, being a Protestant, will never be recognized officially by the Catholic Church as a saint, but if he is in Heaven, he is a saint anyway.

As for Chesterton, the cause for his sainthood has stalled. Perhaps it will restart - certainly many Chestertonians hope so - but even if it's never official, if he is Heave he, like Lewis, is already a saint. 

Wonder and Pope St. John Paul II

On September 17, 1978, just before he was elected Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla preached a homily at the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa. In it he declared:

"We must wonder! We must create a climate of wonder! This task is closest to the family…Wonder is needed so that beauty might enter into human life, society and the nation. We need to marvel at everything that is found in man." 

He noted, "There is wonder over the first smile of a baby, over the first words of a child."

And he went on to observe, "We need this wonder, so that the lives of man, of society, of the nation may be filled with beauty. That beauty with is the foundation of the wellspring of culture. Culture cannot be created by administrative means! Administrative means can only be used to destroy culture. this is very important, and this must be remembered in our times."

In his encyclical, Fides et Ratio, he wrote: 

[F]undamental elements of knowledge spring from the wonder awakened in them by the contemplation of creation: human beings are astonished to discover themselves as part of the world, in a relationship with others like them, all sharing a common destiny. Here begins, then, the journey which will lead them to discover ever new frontiers of knowledge. Without wonder, men and women would lapse into deadening routine and little by little would become incapable of a life which is genuinely personal."

I came across these passages in an article in Aleteia "St. John Paul II thought we needed a “climate of wonder," so I can't take credit for uncovering them. But when I read the article, I thought of Chesterton.

“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.” (Tremendous Trifles) .

Chesterton had a child-like sense of wonder. He looked at things we tend to overlook, and saw in them beauty and magic. He explores this in "The Ethics of Elfland."

I suspect Chesterton would have understood and appreciated what Pope St. John Paul II was saying. 

And we know that the Pope St. John Paul II appreciated Chesterton, and often cited him in his own writings. In his General audience of January 26, 2000, for example, he said, "So, in beholding the glory of the Trinity in creation, man must contemplate, sing and rediscover wonder. In contemporary society people become indifferent 'not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder' (G. K. Chesterton)."

To be cited by a saint. That is a wonder!

Irish Eyes Were Crying

"The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad." - G. K. Chesterton

Back in 2014 I did a DNA test through Ancestry. As they have added more people to their data base, they have revised the results several times, refining them. The most recent results came yesterday.

All along Irish has been my dominant DNA ancestry, and that proved true once again. I have also had a bit of Scottish mixed in; after all, my mother was from Scotland, though she clearly had Irish roots. This time around the results were further broken down, and some new ones added in and organized under the general category "Celtic & Gaelic", which totaled 57% of my DNA..

Donegal, Ireland - 29%
Central Scotland & Northern Ireland - 23%
Northern Wales & North West England -3%
Munster, Ireland - 2%

Yep. Irish and Scottish. I like the Welsh added in - I've always been a fan of the Brother Cadfael mysteries.

There are also English/Dutch results through my father, but my focus today is on matters Irish.

Interestingly, I'm current reading a book about the Irish Potato Famine - Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-50 by Susan Campbell Bartoletti - and I recently read Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. 

I wondered if Chesterton had written anything about the Potato Famine, a tragedy that led to an estimated more one million deaths due to starvation and disease, and to more than two million Irish to emigrate. I knew he had written a book about Ireland - Irish Impressions - but I do not have a copy. I checked online about Chesterton and the Potato Famine, but found nothing. I glanced at Irish Impressions on Gutenberg, but didn't see anything mentioned (though it was a cursory glance). I then checked to see if our library had a copy of Irish Impressions. My local library does not; the central library has the only copy in the county library system, but it is restricted from circulation! I even checked Ignatius Press to see if they have a copy: Nope. I did finally find it in the Society of G. K. Chesterton store in Volume XX of the Collected Works. 

Phew, who know it would be so hard to find a book.

I'd like to read the book anyway at some point, but the focus here is on the Potato Famine. 

One of the factors that made the famine worse were the economic polices of the English and the landlords. In particular, the laissez-faire economic policies embraced by the English government led them to be reluctant and slow to offer aid. People died because of these policies, and various bad decisions by the London government. Compounding these policies were the greed of some landlords and landowners who in the name of capitalism put profits above people.

If G. K. Chesterton's distributism (localism) had been in effect the tragedy could have been averted. Local ownership, ownership by individuals and families, subsidiarity, policies that emphasize people would have saved lives.

Maybe the songs would have been less sad.

Lepanto

October 7 was the anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto, which halted expansion by the Ottoman Empire. Yes, It's been posted before, but Chesterton's great poem is worth reposting!

Lepanto
By G. K. Chesterton

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,

Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiple of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.

St. Michael’s on his mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed—
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

St. Francis of Assisi (poem)

 

October 3 is the Feast of the Transitus of St. Francis - the day he actually made the transition from earthly to heavenly life. But as he did so in the evening, the Church made the following day, October 4, he feast day. 

Chesterton is justly famous for his biography of St. Francis, published in 1923. But long before he published that biography, or became a Catholic, indeed, at a time when he was struggling with faith, he wrote a poem about St. Francis in 1892 when he was just 18. 

St. Francis of Assisi
by G. K. Chesterton

In the ancient Christian ages, while a dreamy faith and wonder
Lingered, like the mystic glamour of the star of Bethlehem,
Dwelt a monk that loved the sea-birds as they wheeled about his chapel,
Loved the dog-rose and the heath-flower as they brushed his garment hem;

Did not claim a ruthless knowledge of the bounds of grace eternal,
Did not say, “Thus far, not further, God has set the hopes of life.”
Only knew that heaven had sent him weaker lives in earth's communion,
Bade him dwell and work amongst them, not in anger nor in strife.

Aye, though far and faint the story, his the tale of mercy's triumph,
Through the dimmest convent casements men have seen the stars above;
Dark the age and stern the dogma, yet the kind hearts are not cruel,
Still the true souls rise resistless to a larger world of love.

Is there not a question rises from his word of “brother, sister,”
Cometh from that lonely dreamer what today we shrink to find?
Shall the lives that moved our brethren leave us at the gates of darkness,
What were heaven if ought we cherished shall be wholly left behind?

Is it God's bright house we dwell in, or a vault of dark confusion,
Yonder sunlit April meadows, with the singing brooks at play,
With God's daisies clustering wide-eyed o'er the breezy fields of morning,
And God's skylarks whirring westward to the cloudless deeps of day?

Laugh aloud, O death and darkness, grin the skulls of crypt and charnel,
All God's glorious flowers of being flame and fade upon a tomb;
Mystic woods and aureoled blossoms, spirit-birds and goblin lizards,
All that faerie-world goes downward, sloping darkly into doom.

Is it so, one half of nature choked beneath the breath of ruin,
Does death tread at last a victor on the lives we loved so well?
Take us, too, devouring chaos, hide us from the vast injustice,
Dust to dust be ours for ever, with the world wherein we dwell.

While the flush of kindred feeling at the cursed wrong and violence,
Done amid our human brothers, on the helpless and infirm,
Throbs, though fainter, to our being, down the cycles of creation,
For the shrivelling of the night-moth and the writhing of the worm.

While from things of field and forest, eyes of tenderness and trusting
Look to ours and link them to us, as we journey side by side
Shall we lift a blind denial to the brotherhood of nature,
Shall we break the bonds of kinship in the madness of our pride?

Shall not rather hope be with us: noble, broadened, undefined,
Since all life is as a riddle, since all faith is but a guess:
Hope that every life that liveth has a nobler way before it,
Has a deathless purpose founded on the everlasting yes.

He that in his mighty gardens shakes the meanest seed of nature,
Soweth with the seed a promise whence no power can make him free,
He that on his lonely summits feeds the narrowest stream of being,
Dooms its way through fields and forests on its eternal sea.