Book Review: Francois Mauriac's "Holy Thursday"

My best friend and I read this book during Lent and got together after Mass on Friday last week to complete our discussion of Nobel Prize winning Francois Mauriac's Holy Thursday: The Night That Changed the World in the Sophia Institute Press edition and translation. It's evidently not in their catalog now, but Cluny Media has a different edition, The Eucharist: The Mystery of Holy Thursday, available.

I went through a Francois Mauriac phase after college, reading The Viper's Tangle, Therese, and The Woman of the Pharisees, in my pursuit of covering the "Catholic Revival" in Literature. This is a very different book as Mauriac describes his memories of attending Holy Thursday Mass, with the Stripping of the Altars and the Mandatum (the Washing of the Feet) as major events. 

It would have been helpful to the reader if Sophia Institute Press would have explained that the Mass on Holy Thursday was different than it is today when Mauriac wrote and when he experienced it as a child. The Stripping of the Altars and reposition of the Host for the Good Friday service (when only the priest received Holy Communion) took place before the Washing of the Feet. When he discusses First Holy Communions, a note to explain that until Pope Pius X's reform that Sacrament was sometimes delayed until the age of 14 would also have been helpful. It was like the "graduating" Sacrament then and Mauriac comments that many stopped receiving Holy Communion or attending Mass after that. A reader not knowing that in 1910 Pius X set the age of seven (7) as the appropriate time of receiving First Holy Communion wouldn't understand Mauriac's comment.

Writing in 1931, Mauriac also comments on how good it was that frequent reception of Holy Communion was encouraged; another contribution of Pope Pius X (in 1905). The influence of Jansenism had discouraged many from going to Communion more than once a year.

In spite of these criticisms, I wouldn't want anyone to be dissuaded from reading this book. There are some beautifully written (translated) passages, like this one:

The anniversary of that evening when the small Host arose on a world sleeping in darkness should fill us with joy. But that very night was the one when the Lord Jesus was delivered up. His best friends could still taste the Bread in their mouths and they were going to abandon Him, to deny Him, to betray Him. And we also, on Holy Thursday, can still taste in our mouths this Bread that is no longer bread; we have not finished adoring this Presence in our bodies, the inconceivable humility of the Son of God, when we have to rise hastily to follow Him to the garden of agony.

We should like to tarry, to see on His shoulder the place where St. John’s forehead rested, to relive in spirit this moment in the history of the world when a piece of bread was broken in deep silence, when a few words sufficed to seal the new alliance of the Creator with His creature.

Already, in the thought of the One who pronounced the words, millions of priests are bending over the chalice, millions of virgins are watching before the tabernacle. A multitude of the servants of the poor are eating the daily Bread which compensates for their daily sacrifice, and endless ranks of children, making their First Communion, open lips which have not yet lost their purity. (Chapter I, "The Breaking of the Bread", pp. 3-4)

Or this one:

It is not when He withdrew into the desert that He felt the greatest loneliness, but when He was in the midst of the flock of those wavering hearts which the Spirit had not yet kindled. Doubtless, it was necessary that the man in Him be reassured by the God so that He would not lose heart when confronted by the infinite disproportion between His message and the poor human race destined to receive it.

However, He did not dedicate Himself to solitude as have so many men of genius. He did not flee from the crowd, but gave Himself up to it. What gives Christ as a man a unique character among the masters of the world is first this gift of Himself, this complete abandonment of Himself to the crowd. Before being delivered, He delivered Himself. He does not belong to Himself, not having come to be served, but to serve. He is the slave of slaves. Nothing belongs to Him. He lives in the street, in the fields, in villages. Miserable bodies affected with leprosy crowd Him, suffocate Him. He seeks refuge in a fishing boat, in order to be able to breathe. Dirty hands grab His cloak; virtue springs from Him.

No one kept less aloof; no one was ever less guarded, more accessible — such He is still today in the tabernacle, given up entirely to all — yet nevertheless, He was alone with His Father, in that mysterious, ineffable union which He sometimes confessed, for this secret also escaped Him: “No one knows who the Father is, except the Son.” (Chapter VIII, "The Secret of Holy Thursday", pp. 58-59)

Mauriac obviously loves and admires St. Therese of Lisieux: he cites her several times, and he relies upon St. Thomas Aquinas and his Corpus Christi Office and hymns when discussing Transubstantiation. He also cites Bishop Bossuet and Jacques Riviere without naming his sources and recommends Jacques Maritain's The Angelic Doctor.

Reading this book by Mauriac makes me wonder about three books Cluny Media also publishes: The Son of Man, The Life of Jesus, and What I Believe. But they will have to wait for another day . . . before I decide to purchase them. There's a line!

Preview: Saint Thomas More: "Most Enemies" as Best Friends

On Monday, March 25--which would usually be the Solemnity of the the Annunciation of Our Lord--but this year is the Monday of Holy Week (the Annunciation will be celebrated on April 9, the Monday after the great Octave of Easter), we'll close out our Lenten series on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

Please recall that this Lenten series has been based upon two entries from Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day of the Year. Father Bowden titles the two entries, on pages 63 and 64, "In the Shadow of Death" (1) and (2) with the final verse from the Benedictus, "To enlighten them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death" and "To direct our feet into the way of peace" divided between them. (Luke 1:79)

We have come to the last grace St. Thomas More asked of Our Lord, and his summation of the value of the graces he has requested.

Image credit: (Public Domain) Children of Jacob sell their brother Joseph, by Konstantin Flavitsky, 1855.

In his last petition, St. Thomas More prays not just to forgive his enemies, but to be grateful to them! More uses the example of the Old Testament patriarch Joseph, and how his brothers' betrayal of him worked to not only his good but the whole family's good--and even to the eventual Exodus and foundation of the Kingdom of Israel!

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

To think my most enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favour as they did him with their malice and hatred.

At the beginning of Holy Week, as we will hear at Masses throughout the week and at the service on Good Friday how Judas betrayed Jesus, Saint Peter denied Him, and all the other Apostles, save Saint John, abandoned Him, it seems appropriate to meditate on More's choice of Joseph, this Old Testament type (foreshadowing) of Jesus in More's use of him as an example. Like the "happy fault" of Adam highlighted in the Easter Vigil Exsultet, this betrayal worked to the good. 

Because Jacob loved Joseph more than all his other sons, they were jealous of him and wanted to kill him. His brother Reuben tried to save him, but they sold him into slavery (for either twenty pieces of silver or thirty pieces of gold, depending on the version) and then returned to tell Jacob he had been attacked and killed, showing him Joseph's bloody coat.

Image Credit: (Public Domain) Joseph's bloody coat brought to Jacob by Diego Velasquez, 1630. (Note that the dog doesn't trust the brothers at all: it can smell the goat's blood on the coat!)

Joseph suffered at first in Egypt, but eventually became the Pharaoh's great advisor, interpreting a dream and preparing for a long famine by storing grain. So when Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain, Joseph and Jacob were finally reunited and the whole family moved to Egypt, thus setting up the Exodus and the great Covenant with Israel.

More wants to think of all that has happened to him as providential and for his ultimate good, as it had been for Joseph and Jacob and the Kingdom of Israel.

This is the source of his ability, during his imprisonment, the interrogations, the trial, the guilty verdict and sentencing to the death of a traitor, and the day of his execution, to wish that he and his former colleagues, his friends and family, would all meet "merrily in Heaven" some day.

Image Credit: (Public Domain) John Rogers Herbert (1810-1890) - Sir Thomas More and his Daughter (watching the protomartyrs of the English Reformation being taken to Tyburn for execution as traitors).

Father Bowden does not include this final line in the second entry:

These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasure of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and layed together all upon one heap.

What are"these minds" (these thoughts and petitions)? St. Thomas More says that "these minds" outweigh "all the treasure" of all the richest royal men, "Christian and heathen" if it could be all brought "together all upon one heap"!

Think of Tolkien's illustration of Smaug's treasure in The Hobbit!

Those "minds" are the graces More asked God to give him in his last months on earth; all the thoughts and prayers and actions God would help him think and pray and do and not do: the detachment from worldly things and the attachment to Christ and His passion; the repentance and penance he wished to experience to be ready for death and Heaven: to let Christ increase in his life as he decreased in the world and his own concern; to love God more and himself less. That seems to sum up all those petitions in one heap:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,
To set the world at naught.
To set my mind fast upon thee and not to hang
Upon the blast of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary,
Not to long for worldly company.
Little and little utterly to cast off the world
And rid my mind of all the business thereof.
Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking of God,
Piteously to call for his help.
To lean unto the comfort of God,
Busily to labour to love him.
To know my own vility and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God.
To bewail my sins past
For the purging of them patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here;
To be joyful of tribulations.
To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life,
To bear the cross with Christ.
To have the last thing in remembrance,
To have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at hand.
To make death no stranger to me,
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell.
To pray for pardon before the Judge come,
To have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me.
For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks,
To buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness.
Recreations not necessary to cut off;
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all
To set the loss at right naught for the winning of Christ.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Best wishes for a happy and prayerful Holy Week and Easter Sunday!

Preview: St. Thomas More on "Vain Confabulations" and "Foolish Mirth"

On Monday, March 18, we'll discuss the penultimate section of St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

This may be the most difficult section of this meditation to think about because More seems willing to cast off many of the characteristics that made him More: his love of humor, of silly (sometimes rather off-color) jokes, of mirth, friendship, and gladness . . .  (less of More?)

Do we have to do that too?

And this section contains one of the most perplexing lines in the prayer: "To buy the time again that I before have lost" . . . 

How do we make up for lost or wasted time? 

In this fifth week of Lent, as we've entered Passiontide and in some parishes the statues and crucifixes are veiled, can we make up for our Lenten failures now?

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

To pray for pardon before the Judge come,
To have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me.
For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks,
To buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness.
Recreations not necessary to cut off;
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all
To set the loss at right naught for the winning of Christ.

The word "confabulations" has the word fable in its root: Merriam Webster defines it thus:

Confabulate is a fabulous word for making fantastic fabrications. Given the similarities in spelling and sound, you might guess that confabulate and fabulous come from the same root, and they do—the Latin fābula, which refers to a conversation or a story. Another fābula descendant that continues to tell tales in English is fable. All three words have long histories in English: fable first appears in writing in the 14th century, and fabulous follows in the 15th.

This line about "vain confabulations" recalls his earlier mention of "worldly fantasies", but here he's referring to a method of telling a story. He has to reject those methods if they are in vain, just for the exercise of showing what he can do. He wants to reject "light foolish mirth and gladness" in contrast to the joy and gladness mentioned in last week's meditation ("Gladly to bear my purgatory here; To be joyful of tribulations").

Nevertheless, More used the structure of fables in other Tower Works to make his points through stories. He wrote The Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation while in the Tower, imagining an old sick uncle counselling his frightened nephew on how to deal with the consequences of a Turkish invasion. He was certainly providing spiritual counsel to those afraid of suffering and death, with Christian philosophy and Catholic piety. And he exchanged letters with his daughters Margaret and Alice as his Dialogue on Conscience, using a fable of Aesop and another of the lion and the wolf, and the famous story about "Company" on the Jury to explain what he meant when he said he had to obey his formed and considered conscience. These were among  his usual methods of engaging in controversy, using stories to tell a lesson. He established fictional situations--like his Utopia--to showcase a discussion or dialogue about real issues with true consequences.

As readers of this blog know, he also wrote the Sadness of Christ and the Treatise on the Passion while in the Tower, as he desired to "have continually in mind the Passion that Christ suffered for me". In those works he explored the texts of the Gospels for their moral and spiritual implications for himself and other Christians.

Saint Thomas More's discernment of how to balance these issues of detachment and preparation for death and the life to come is what makes this "Godly Meditation" so deeply personal to him at that time and yet filled with inspiration for us. Even as he faced his past sins and his future judgment, he reminded himself and us that he should be intent upon his present, to make use of the time he had in reparation and preparation. That's what we do every Lent: practice acts of detachment through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving; reflect on, confess, and repent of our sins; prepare for the celebration of Easter--all as the model of being prepared for the life to come in the hope the Resurrection and Heaven.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Preview: St. Thomas More, the Four Last Things and Purgatory

On Monday, March 11, the Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent 2024, we'll conduct our next segment on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation", focusing on another section of his prayer. I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

I've picked up a few lines from last week's post because they fit in so well with More's theme of repentance and preparation for the four last things: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. As part of his preparation, he suggests to us, I propose, the traditional meditation on death, and the desire to avoid suffering in Purgatory after judgment by accepting suffering while we live:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

To know my own vility and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God,
To bewail my sins past
For the purging of them patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here;
To be joyful of tribulations.
To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life,
To bear the cross with Christ.
To have the last thing in remembrance,
To have ever afore mine eye my death that is ever at hand.
To make death no stranger to me,
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell.

These are all sobering thoughts: as Christians we all know that we will die, face judgment, and either spend our eternal life in Heaven or Hell. We know the choice we face: choose life or choose death. At times the notion of death can be abstract or distant from us, even as we attend the funerals of friends and family, but once we've been at a couple of deathbeds--as I have--we know it's inevitable.

More had written a meditation on Death before in an unfinished collaboration with his daughter Margaret on The Four Last Things. In that work, he emphasizes how thinking of Death, based upon Sirach 7:36 ("Remember the last things, and you will never sin"), can help us avoid sin, especially the Seven Deadly Sins, and develop their opposite virtues in preparation for the joys of Heaven.

In this prayer More's traditional Catholic piety emphasizes the most somber side of this meditation on the Four Last Things: he does not meditate on the joys of Heaven, but considers the "everlasting fire of hell". The only hint of Heaven is that his preparation "leadeth to life". He is praying to find joy and gladness in the midst of his tribulations with the consolation that they can prepare him for the joys of heaven. In his desire to expiate the temporal effects of his past sins, confessed and forgiven, More wants to avoid Purgatory--a Catholic doctrine he'd defended in The Supplication of Souls in answer to Simon Fish's Supplication of Beggars--after death: to "go straight to Heaven" and the presence of God.

We can juxtapose this somber meditation with More's repeatedly stated hope that he and his family, friends, even those who would condemn him, sentence him, and prepare him for execution would "meet merrily in Heaven". As he prayed in his Treatise on the Passion:

Good Lord, give me the grace so to spend my life that when the day of my death shall come, though I feel pain in my body, I may feel comfort in soul and – with faithful hope of Your mercy, in due love towards You and charity towards the world – I may, through Your grace, depart hence into Your glory. Amen.

and

Almighty Jesus Christ, who would for our example observe the law that You came to change and, being Maker of the whole earth, would have yet no dwelling-house therein: give us Your grace so to keep Your holy law and so to reckon ourselves for no dwellers but for pilgrims upon earth that we may long and make haste, walking with faith in the way of virtuous works, to come to the glorious country wherein You have bought us inheritance forever with Your own precious blood. Amen.

I look forward to my discussion with Anna or Matt on Monday! 

Blessed Nicholas Horner, Tailor and Martyr

While we're focusing on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on the Son Rise Morning Show, I did not want to miss some of the great martyrs' and confessors' stories in Father Bowden's Mementoes this Lent. This one today, Blessed Nicholas Horner, is particularly affecting, as he suffered so much in prison and at the scaffold because of his loyalty to The Faith. And yet, he received many consolations:

A native of York, a tailor by trade and a zealous Catholic, he endeavoured, according to his ability, to persuade others to embrace the faith. Having come up to London to be cured of a wound in his leg, he was committed to Newgate for harbouring priests. There the heavy fetter on his leg and the deprivation of all medical aid rendered an amputation necessary. During the operation he sat upon a form, unbound, in silence, a priest the while ([Blessed John] Hewett [or Hewitt], who was afterwards himself a Martyr) holding his head, and he was further comforted by such a vivid apprehension of Christ bearing His Cross that he seemed to see it on His shoulders. Freed at the earnest suit of his friends, he worked at his trade at some lodgings at Smithfield. Again cast into Bridewell for harbouring priests, he was hung up by the wrists till he nearly died. At length condemned solely for making a jerkin for a priest, he was hanged in front of his lodging in Smithfield, 3 March 1590. On the night before his execution, finding him self overwhelmed with anguish, he betook him self to prayer, and perceived a bright crown of glory hanging over his head. Assured of its reality, he said: “O Lord, Thy will be mine,” and died with extraordinary signs of joy.

Father Bowden uses the title "The Vestments of Salvation" for this entry on March 4, and the Bible verse, "He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation" (Isaiah 61:10)

According to England's laws he was accused of two great offenses: encouraging others to become Catholic and assisting priests. The only thing he could be guilty of was making a jerkin (a kind of vest) for a priest! When Father Bowden wrote about him, Horner had been declared Venerable; Pope St. John Paul II beatified him with 84 other martyrs of England and Wales in 1987.

Blessed Nicholas Horner, pray for us!

Image Credit: (With Permission): Detail of a stained glass window in Tyburn Convent by Margaret Agnes Rope 

Preview: Thomas More on the World, God, and the Confession of Sins

Continuing our series on St. Thomas More's "A Godly Meditation" on Monday, March 4, Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim of the Son Rise Morning Show and I will discuss this next arbitrarily chosen portion of More's prayer. 

As you know by now, I'll be on at my usual time, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later.

More continues his concern with being rid of worldly concerns and delves more deeply into what it means to have his mind set "fast upon" God, including a good examination of conscience and confession of sins:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,

Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking of God,
Piteously to call for his help.
To lean unto the comfort of God,
Busily to labour to love him.
To know my own vility and wretchedness,
To humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God,
To bewail my sins passed.
For the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity.

Later in this prayer, More refers to "vain confabulations", to avoid making up different versions of reality, imagining himself in different circumstances. He has to face what's happening to him now, face his dependence on God, and face the ways that he has failed to love God throughout his life.

He cannot imagine himself back home at Chelsea with his loving family and friends: the only way he can achieve that it by violating his conscience. He certainly doesn't want to think of himself at Court, trying to influence worldly events: that time has passed. He has already done all he could.

So he turns to God: thinking of Him; calling for His help; leaning on His comfort; working to love Him, mentally, prayerfully, spiritually.

As he strives to become more attached to God, More turns to an examination of conscience, reviewing the sins he committed in the past, repenting of them, and being ready to suffer for them in his current circumstances. 

Matt brought up conscience (referring to the Catechism of the Catholic Church) during our discussion last week, and here More prays to know, to humble himself, to become meek, to bewail his sins, and suffer adversity to purge himself of the temporal punishment due to those sins, all by examining his conscience thoroughly.

In his preface to the Vintage Spiritual Classics volume of Selected Writings of Thomas More, Joseph W. Koterski, SJ, highlights More's "practice of a careful and daily examination of conscience in which he had steeled himself since his youth", "reserving a time and place for the examination of conscience", even creating a separate oratory at his home in Chelsea for that meditation. 

So, applying this portion of More's "Godly Meditation" to our 2024 Lenten observance, it points us to the Sacrament of Confession. Since Lent is the season of repentance and conversion, the Church highlights the Sacrament of Confession. My local parish has added opportunities for Reconciliation/Penance/Confession throughout the Lent and our pastor just highlighted the need for Confession, not just once a year, but more often, for very practical reasons: 

While the requirement is once a year, the Church encourages people to go to Confession once a month, because she knows how difficult it is to remember things that happened almost a year ago. Along with that, the less often we go to Confession we lose our sense of sin and then we do not clearly see sins that we might see if we regularly examine our conscience and bring ours sins to the sacrament of mercy. (Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church March 3 Parish Bulletin.)

And although More may have been faithful in his examinations of conscience and Sacramental Confessions, he admits that he still needs to make up for the consequences of those sins, so he is willing to endure suffering to expiate them. As another English saint, John Henry Newman, wrote in a Lenten sermon when he was an Anglican:

Let us be wise enough to have our agony in this world, not in the next. If we humble ourselves now, God will pardon us then. We cannot escape punishment, here or hereafter; we must take our choice, whether to suffer and mourn a little now, or much then. (PPS "Lent, the Season of Repentance.")

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!