Preview: Undset and Benson's "Christ in the Church" on the Son Rise Morning Show

Sigrid Undset read and translated another book by Monsignor Robert H. Benson, Christ in the Church (as Kristus i kirken in 1926) so we will discuss the influence it had on her on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, September 28.

Unlike The Friendship of Christ, which could be characterized as work of Catholic spirituality written for Catholics, Christ in the Church is a work of Catholic apologetics written for both Catholics and non-Catholics. Like The Friendship of Christ it is based on sermons Benson gave in both Rome and Kensington, England (plus Boston, Massachusetts). Benson particularly defends the Catholic Church's authority and infallibility and its role in salvation. There is a printed edition available and there is also an online version.

For example of this apologetic tone, Monsignor Benson starts with:

The charge brought most commonly in these days against Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, is that it claims in an unique and exclusive degree to contain the whole of truth. Surely, it is said, considering the religious history of the world - the numerous bodies that have flourished in East and West alike, in all the centuries of man's existence - such a claim is arrogant and impossible. We must find the truth, it is said, in the Least Common Multiple of the religious experiences of all men if we are intellectually democratic; or, if we have aristocratic leanings, in the unanimous conclusions (if any such can be found) of the best independent religious thinkers. Above all, we must be pliant and undogmatic; we must be willing to see the conclusions of this generation overthrown by the next; we must believe in progress even though we are not sure in what direction progress lies. For there is no absolute truth, no final revelation: creeds are no more than forms and symbols of the One Truth as held by various groups of minds and temperaments. [Saint John Henry Newman had called this the spirit of liberalism in religion!*]

No wonder Father Aidan Nichols includes the comment that Benson was among "the more hard-line English Catholic apologists". Remember that Benson was writing well before Pope Pius XII issued Mystici Corporis Christi in 1943, but as Nichols comments, Benson is writing about the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ--that's his model of the Catholic Church, and he concentrates on that image of the Body of Christ and each Catholic being a member of that Body:

But to the Catholic who sees in the Church a human society (often terribly human), but also a Body in which God dwells, an organism composed of countless individual cells, but indwelt by a Divine Personality - a Catholic who believes that this Society is actually redemptive of the human race, as well as the actually Divine Teacher - more than a school of thought, more than the best religious club in existence, more than the Ambassador of God, more than the Bride of Christ - to the Catholic who believes that the Church is not one among ten thousand, but One, unique, singular and final, between whom and other religious bodies there is no more comparison than between the creature and the Creator - to him, membership in that body, the position of a cell in that organism, is the one thing to which no other can be preferred; and the loss of that membership the one supreme catastrophe or crime. Certainly the Catholic holds that it is possible to belong to the Soul of the Church without external membership in the Body; it is possible, where there is no fault on the individual's side, that he may be united inwardly to the Person who inhabits that body; but such is not God's primary intention, and to forsake the Body is to forsake the soul. In any case the individual loses enormously by being forced to stand alone, without that grace and strength of unity which external membership in the external body can alone confer.

In "The Theological Controversialist", chapter 8 of Sigrid Undset: Reader of Hearts, Father Nichols emphasizes another aspect of this Mystical Body of Christ that seems contradictory: its holiness and the sinners within it. As Benson admits, just as it was when Christ was in the world:

we have the same environment - namely, the human nature of the world, human ambitions, interests, virtues, vices, circumstances, strengths and weaknesses, now as then. We should expect to find then, if the Catholic hypothesis is true, the same results now as then. So far as Jesus Christ was accepted or rejected then by the world into which He came, so will He be accepted and rejected now, and by the same kind of people for the same kind of reasons. . . .If, then, we find in the history of the Catholic Church the same psychological situations as those recorded in the Gospels continually reproduced under similar circumstances - if we find, that is, Peters and Judases and Pilates swarming round the Church's progress through the ages - if we find that the same comments are made, the same paradoxes generated, the same accusations leveled, the same criticisms, the same bursts of flame and thunder . . .

we shouldn't be surprised. It's not evidence against the holiness and infallibility of the Church Our Lord founded. Undset, the creator of unfaithful, sinful, and fallen "good" characters--and herself repentant--saw the truth in Benson's argument. The Church is holy because the Church is the Body of Christ and Christ is Holy.

When I attended daily Mass on Friday in the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, Father Hoffman at St. Paul's Catholic Student Center (the Newman Center) at WSU, made clear the contrast between the reading from Ecclesiastes (3:1-11*) about the variability of human life and the Gospel from St. Luke (9:18-22), with St. Peter's declaration is Jesus is "the Christ of God", Someone sure and certain. Then Father pointed out that's what the students coming to OCIA are seeking and seeing in the Catholic Church: that certainty and security in the midst of change and a seeming lack of "gain from the efforts they make" (Eccl 3:9). 

On page 134 in "The Theological Controversialist", Father Nichols cites Undset's Katholsk propaganda in which she wrote "that the Church's inner essence is indefectible, like God's." (Oslo: Some, 1927, p.4). As my best friend often reminds me, there's no comparison, really, between the number of Catholics living on Earth right now and the millions of Catholic souls, purified and purifying, in Heaven and Purgatory. They are the larger and holiest part of the Church: they are the fulfillment of that indefectibility.

* “Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy. Devotion is not necessarily founded on faith. Men may go to Protestant Churches and to Catholic, may get good from both and belong to neither. They may fraternise together in spiritual thoughts and feelings, without having any views at all of doctrine in common, or seeing the need of them. Since, then, religion is so personal a peculiarity and so private a possession, we must of necessity ignore it in the intercourse of man with man. If a man puts on a new religion every morning, what is that to you? It is as impertinent to think about a man’s religion as about his sources of income or his management of his family. Religion is in no sense the bond of society.” Biglietto Speech May 12, 1879

**I'm sure that other people of a certain age were hearing the Byrds singing "Turn, Turn, Turn" in their mind's ear.

Image Source (Public Domain): Albrecht Dürer - Adoration of the Trinity

Preview: Undset and Robert Hugh Benson: "The Friendship of Christ"

To begin our discussion of the English Catholic influences on Sigrid Undset's conversion to Catholicism on the Son Rise Morning Show, we thought it a good idea to start with a work we'd discussed in the Advent and Christmas seasons of 2025/2026 and during the Lent of 2026. We looked at Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ (at least the sections on "Christ in the Exterior" and "Christ in His Historical Life") quite extensively during those discussions.

So on Monday, September 21, we'll explore how Benson's spiritual advice to Catholics influenced Sigrid Undset to become a Catholic and why she'd want to translate The Friendship of Christ into Norwegian as Kristi Venskap in 1928, four years after her reception into the Catholic Church.

To understand why Undset was even looking at Catholic writers like Benson I think we need to look at her life during the late 1910s and early 1920's. She'd met and married a man already married with children and then found out that they had couldn't live together, that he was not reliable (!). She'd been raised to be artistic, observant, and critical and the man she married, Anders Castus Svasrstad, an artist, was "even more observant and critical" and she appreciated that, according to Tordis Orjasaeter (cited in Nichols, pp. 34-35). They were married in 1912 and he left for Paris in 1914. By 1915, she was reading Belloc, Chesterton, Christopher Dawson, and Monsignor Benson. Her relationship with her husband continued to deteriorate. 

What did she find in Benson's The Friendship of Christ? She clearly found something there that she could not find in Norway's Lutheran Church, her own creativity, or her criticism of contemporary feminism and other trends to help her deal with her married life.

In a chapter from The Friendship of Christ we have not looked at before extensively on the Son Rise Morning Show, Monsignor Benson describes friendship as a mystery--a fallible mystery, on the natural plane in contrast to Divine friendship:

Human friendships usually take their rise in some small external detail. We catch a phrase, we hear an inflection of a voice, we notice the look of the eyes, or a movement in walking; and the tiny experience seems to us like an initiation into a new world. We take the little event as a symbol of a universe that lies behind; we think we have detected a soul exactly suited to our own, a temperament which either from its resemblance to our own, or from a harmonious dissimilarity, is precisely fitted to be our companion. Then the process of friendship begins; we exhibit our own characteristics; we examine his: in point after point we find what we expected to find, and we verify our guesses; and he too, no less, follows the same method, until that point is reached (as it is reached in so many cases, though not, thank God! in all), either in a crisis, or after a trying period, when we discover either that we have been mistaken from the beginning, or that we have deceived the other, or that the process has run its course; the summer is come and gone, and that there are no more fruits to gather on either side.

Now the Divine Friendship -- the consciousness, that is to say, that Christ desires our love and intimacy, and offers His own in return -- usually begins in the same manner. It may be at the reception of some sacrament, such as we have received a thousand times before; or itmay be as we kneel before the Crib at Christmas, or follow our Lord along the Way of the Cross. We have done these things or performed those ceremonies dutifully and lovingly again and again; yet on this sudden day a new experience comes to us. We understand, for example, for the first time that the Holy Child is stretching His arms from the straw, not merely to embrace the world -- that would be little enough! -- but to embrace our own soul in particular. We understand as we watch Jesus, bloodstained and weary, rising from His third fall, that He is asking our own very self in particular to help Him with His burden. The glance of the Divine Eyes meets our own; there passes from Him to us an emotion or a message that we had never before associated with our own relations with Him. The tiny event has happened! He has knocked at our door, and we have opened; He has called and we have answered. Henceforth, we think, He is ours and we are His. Here, at last, we tell ourselves, is the Friend for whom we have been looking so long: here is the Soul that perfectly understands our own; the one Personality which we can safely allow to dominate our own. Jesus Christ has leapt forward two thousand years, and is standing by our side; He has come down from the painting on the wall; He has risen from the straw in the manger -- My Beloved is mine and I am His. . . . (Part I. Christ in the Interior Soul, Chapter II. The Friendship of Christ (Interior)

Perhaps Undset responded well to Benson's caution that some Catholics neglect their friendship with Christ, either relying on their own efforts to pray and adore, sacrifice, repent, and worship. He provides faithful Catholics, as we highlighted in our series earlier this liturgical year, insights into responding to Our Lord's desire to make sure that we're not alone (Genesis 1:8) and that He is our true friend--our one true friend.

Another chapter that might have appealed to Undset is the one about Christ in The Saint. As the creator (or sub-creator as Dorothy L. Sayers would put it) of characters like Kristen Lavransdatter and Erland, Jenny, Marta and Otto, etc., she'd see the creation and development of sanctity in a person as something great and artistic:

. . . He is in them as a flame is in a lantern; that their lives are not mere imitations or reflections of His, but actually manifestations of it. The graces that they display are actually the same graces as those with which this Sacred Humanity was saturated; their horror of sin is His; the powers which they exercise are His. They are "the light of the world,"{7} since there burns in them the Supreme Light of the world. Their "life is hid with Christ in God."{8} They have, by the help of grace, hewn at the stone of their human nature, by mortification, by effort, by prayer -- even by the final strokes of martyrdom itself -- until, little by little, or all at once by sudden heroism, there has emerged from the gross material, not the angel of Michael Angelo, not merely a copy of the Perfect Model; but, in a real sense, that actual Model Himself. It is He Who has lived in them, as really, though in another manner, as in the Sacrament of the Altar; it is He Who now appears in them in the culmination of their sanctity, visible to all who have eyes to see. Certainly it is not He Himself, pure and simple; since there still remains in every saint that film or glass of his own personal identity which God gave him and can never take away. For it is exactly for the sake of this personal identity, and for the service which it renders to the promulgation of Christ upon earth, that the saint has been created and sanctified.

Again I wonder how Undset would have reacted to the fact that Benson published this book after giving a series of sermons in Rome and Kensington because he was concerned that faithful practicing Catholics might not fully understand the friend they had in Jesus. While he made great and true statements about the fullness of the Catholic faith, Benson acknowledged that everyone in the Church might not have "that intimate knowledge of and companionship with Him in which the Divine Friendship consists". He wanted to make sure that they realized an assume fact: "He must be known (if His relation with us is to be that which He desires) in all those activities and manifestations in which He displays Himself." Therefore she needed to know Christ in the Eucharist, in the Church, in the Priest, in the Saint, in the Sinner, in the Average Man, and in the Sufferer. For someone who wanted to give her all to her art, her family, and her country and who wanted to create characters and worlds as vividly and wholly as possible--as I think Father Nichols describes her in his book--I think that would have appealed to her.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Benson in 1907

Back on the SRMS: Sigrid Undset and English Catholicism

On Monday, September 14, we'll begin a new series on the Son Rise Morning Show, looking at how much English Catholicism influenced Sigrid Undset in her conversion to Catholicism. We'll lay the groundwork in this first episode and then look at certain works in finer detail during subsequent episodes.

One reason for looking at this subject is that the bishop of Oslo, Fredrik Hansen intends to open a Cause for Undset's canonization later this year. As Bishop Hansen noted that she won't be canonized because she's a great author and Nobel Prize Winner for her great trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter, nor because she lived a perfect moral life (she married a divorced man years before her conversion), but instead because she offers "the Catholic Church in Norway [ . . .] a concrete example of that calling lived out in public life, suffering, motherhood, and conversion" as she repented and pursued holiness in her life.

Another reason is that not only contemporary Catholic authors like Belloc, Chesterton, Monsignor Benson, etc., influenced her, but the stories of the English Catholic martyrs of the Elizabethan era offered her great examples of heroism and fidelity. Catholicism was a minority religion in Norway; she'd been raised in an irreligious family. Donald DeMarco described some of her background:

Her religious upbringing was virtually nonexistent. Both her parents were atheists. She abandoned Lutheranism, which was the state-supported religion, having found it to be anemic.

“I have never understood the meaning of the Reformation,” she said, “as other than a history of revolt of believing Christians who, subjectively pious, hoped that true Christianity agreed better with their subjective idea of Christianity than [with] the factual one.”

In her long, arduous journey to Catholicism, she could say that the Catholic Church is “the only explanation of existence.” . . .

“We sorely need the wisdom of the saint,” she declared. The Catholic saints of history are “the only thoroughly sane people … they stood in continual confrontation with the world.”

No wonder the English Catholic martyrs--not yet canonized at the time, but beatified with a cult developing more and more--as saints attracted her in their "confrontation with the [Elizabethan] world."

This website lists some of the English authors who had influenced her:

While Undset kept abreast of Catholic thought on the continent, it was the English who had the greater influence on her. Her library contains over sixty books by G. K. Chesterton and over thirty by Hilaire Belloc and Robert Hugh Benson each. Chesterton and Benson made such an impression on Undset that within a few years of her conversion, she set about several translations for the benefit of her compatriots. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man (1925) was translated in 1931 as the 450-page Den Evige Menneske and Benson’s Christ in the Church (1911) and The Friendship of Christ (1912) were rendered into Norwegian as Kristus i kirken (1926) and Kristi Venskap (1928) respectively.

In Sigrid Undset: Reader of Hearts, Father Aidan Nichols, OP, adds Belloc's The Catholic Church and History and Chesterton's The Catholic Church and Conversion to this list. He also refers to these writers as "the more hard-line English Catholic apologists"[!]. (p. 96) Father Nichols cites one Finn Thorn who "evidently regretted . . . her seeming lack of interest in John Henry Newman"[!!]. (p. 95)

So, we'll look these different English Catholic influences on Sigrid Undset's conversion over the next several weeks on the Son Rise Morning Show!

Image Source (Public Domain): Sigrid Undset Nobel laureate in Literature 1928

Preview: King Nebuchadnezzar and the form "like the Son of God" in Keble's "Christian Year"

Three of my favorite Old Testament stories to hear at daily Mass are from the Second Book of Maccabees and from the Book of Daniel. From Second Maccabees, the story of the martyrdoms of the Mother and her seven sons in chapter 7 as the drama builds with each exchange among the Jewish men, their mother, and King Antiochus. 

From the Book of Daniel: one is the story of Susanna and the Elders. I remember Father William Carr (RIP) at the WSU St. Paul's Parish-Newman Center, decades ago, telling me to read that long reading slowly, clearly, and deliberately. [“Are you such fools, O Israelites, as to condemn a daughter of Israel without examination and without learning the facts? Return to court, for these men have given false evidence against her.”] It's such a good story and needs to "be told" again well; Father Carr didn't want me to rush it.

The other story from the Book of Daniel: that of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as King Nebuchadnezzar's elaborately cruel attempt to roast the Jewish exiles to death is thwarted by the appearance of one "like the Son of God" joining them in the oven as they chant praises God.

On Monday, August 31, we'll look at how John Keble meditates on their story on the Son Rise Morning Show. He selects the verse "Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, 'Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?' They answered and said unto the king, 'True, O king.' He answered and said, 'Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.'" (Daniel iii. 24, 25.) for his inspiration on the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity in the Book of Common Prayer:

When Persecution’s torrent blaze
   Wraps the unshrinking Martyr’s head;
When fade all earthly flowers and bays,
   When summer friends are gone and fled,
Is he alone in that dark hour
Who owns the Lord of love and power?

Or waves there not around his brow
   A wand no human arm may wield,
Fraught with a spell no angels know,
   His steps to guide, his soul to shield?
Thou, Saviour, art his Charmèd Bower,
His Magic Ring, his Rock, his Tower.

And when the wicked ones behold
   Thy favourites walking in Thy light,
Just as, in fancy triumph bold,
   They deemed them lost in deadly night,
Amazed they cry, “What spell is this,
Which turns their sufferings all to bliss?

“How are they free whom we had bound?
   Upright, whom in the gulf we cast?
What wondrous helper have they found
   To screen them from the scorching blast?
Three were they—who hath made them four?
And sure a form divine he wore,

“E’en like the Son of God.”  So cried
   The Tyrant, when in one fierce flame
The Martyrs lived, the murderers died:
   Yet knew he not what angel came
To make the rushing fire-flood seem
Like summer breeze by woodland stream.

He knew not, but there are who know:
   The Matron, who alone hath stood,
When not a prop seemed left below,
   The first lorn hour of widowhood,
Yet cheered and cheering all, the while,
With sad but unaffected smile;—

The Father, who his vigil keeps
   By the sad couch whence hope hath flown,
Watching the eye where reason sleeps,
   Yet in his heart can mercy own,
Still sweetly yielding to the rod,
Still loving man, still thanking God;—

The Christian Pastor, bowed to earth
   With thankless toil, and vile esteemed,
Still travailing in second birth
   Of souls that will not be redeemed:
Yet steadfast set to do his part,
And fearing most his own vain heart;—

These know: on these look long and well,
   Cleansing thy sight by prayer and faith,
And thou shalt know what secret spell
   Preserves them in their living death:
Through sevenfold flames thine eye shall see
The Saviour walking with His faithful Three.

Although Keble at first emphasizes the drama of the scene, narrating the King's shock at what he is seeing that defies all his commands: the blazing fire, the bound victims now unbound and unharmed by the flames, but most of all, the presence of a fourth man, one "like the Son of God"--he turns from that dramatization. 

King Nebuchadnezzar didn't know "what angel came/To make the rushing fire-flood seem/Like summer breeze by woodland stream", but Keble knows of people who do know: a widow, a father, and a pastor. They know, in the midst of their sorrows and troubles, who is there beside them. It is not one "like the Son of God": He is the Son of God! Keble urges the reader to look at them and learn from them, "Cleansing thy sight by prayer and faith". 

I think the words "secret spell" (to rhyme with "well") are unfortunate, but the poem ends with "The Saviour walking with His faithful Three"--or even six: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the Matron/Widow, Father, and Pastor.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Simeon Solomon - Shadrach Meshach Abednego

Preview: John Keble's Poem for Saint Bartholomew's Feast

Monday, August 24 is the feast day of Saint Bartholomew so naturally, we'll continue our Son Rise Morning Show series on John Keble with his poem for that Apostle.

The Vatican City State website has these notes about Saint Bartholomew:

Bartholomew was one of the twelve disciples who followed Jesus after the Baptism in the Jordan River. His name is included in the Synoptic Gospels as one of the Apostles linked to his contemporary Philip. We know little about this Apostle, whose Feast Day is celebrated on 24 August, the day Catholic tradition dates as his martyrdom. He was originally from Cana in Galilee, near Nazareth. Jesus said of him: “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile” (Jn 1:47). In his Gospel, John speaks of Nathanael, who is Bartholomew, at least according to the exegetes. . . .

The Acts of the Apostles also mention Bartholomew among the disciples who gathered together in Jerusalem with Mary, Mother of God: “Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away; and when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers” (Acts 1:12-14).

Keble's poem is inspired by Our Lord's words to Nathaniel when they meet in Saint John's Gospel and focuses on the sense of sight, especially the sight of very great things: "Jesus answered and said unto him, 'Because I said unto thee, I saw the under the fig-tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these.'" John 1:50.

Hold up thy mirror to the sun,
   And thou shalt need an eagle’s gaze,
So perfectly the polished stone
   Gives back the glory of his rays:

Turn it, and it shall paint as true
   The soft green of the vernal earth,
And each small flower of bashful hue,
   That closest hides its lowly birth.

Our mirror is a blessèd book,
   Where out from each illumined page
We see one glorious Image look
   All eyes to dazzle and engage,

The Son of God: and that indeed
   We see Him as He is, we know,
Since in the same bright glass we read
   The very life of things below.—

Eye of God’s word! where’er we turn
   Ever upon us! thy keen gaze
Can all the depths of sin discern,
   Unravel every bosom’s maze:

Who that has felt thy glance of dread
   Thrill through his heart’s remotest cells,
About his path, about his bed,
   Can doubt what spirit in thee dwells?

“What word is this?  Whence know’st thou me?”
   All wondering cries the humbled heart,
To hear thee that deep mystery,
   The knowledge of itself, impart.

The veil is raised; who runs may read,
   By its own light the truth is seen,
And soon the Israelite indeed
   Bows down t’ adore the Nazarene.

So did Nathanael, guileless man,
   At once, not shame-faced or afraid,
Owning Him God, who so could scan
   His musings in the lonely shade;

In his own pleasant fig-tree’s shade,
   Which by his household fountain grew,
Where at noon-day his prayer he made
   To know God better than he knew.

Oh! happy hours of heavenward thought!
   How richly crowned! how well improved!
In musing o’er the Law he taught,
   In waiting for the Lord he loved.

We must not mar with earthly praise
   What God’s approving word hath sealed:
Enough, if might our feeble lays
   Take up the promise He revealed;

“The child-like faith, that asks not sight,
   Waits not for wonder or for sign,
Believes, because it loves, aright—
   Shall see things greater, things divine.

“Heaven to that gaze shall open wide,
   And brightest angels to and fro
On messages of love shall glide
   ’Twixt God above and Christ below.”

So still the guileless man is blest,
   To him all crooked paths are straight,
Him on his way to endless rest
   Fresh, ever-growing strengths await.

God’s witnesses, a glorious host,
   Compass him daily like a cloud;
Martyrs and seers, the saved and lost,
   Mercies and judgments cry aloud.

Yet shall to him the still small voice,
   That first into his bosom found
A way, and fixed his wavering choice,
   Nearest and dearest ever sound.

There are many details to explicate here as Keble moves back and forth from the Gospel story to us; from Jesus's sight of Nathanial/Bartholomew beneath the fig tree to the sights that Apostle saw as he followed Jesus as a disciple and then Apostle, and finally to our efforts to see--and also to hear--what "child-like faith . . . because it loves" perceives in God's word and in His witnesses.

Here's the whole passage from the Gospel of St. John:

On the following day, he would go forth into Galilee, and he findeth Philip. And Jesus saith to him: Follow me. Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith to him: We have found him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets did write, Jesus the son of Joseph of Nazareth. And Nathanael said to him: Can any thing of good come from Nazareth? Philip saith to him: Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him: and he saith of him: Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile. Nathanael saith to him: Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered, and said to him: Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered him, and said: Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel. Jesus answered, and said to him: Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, thou believest: greater things than these shalt thou see. And he saith to him: Amen, amen I say to you, you shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. (1:43-51)

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Saint Bartholomew, pray for us!

Saint Philip, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public domain): St Bartholomew by Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1611

Sigrid Undset and the English Catholic Martyrs

I've almost finished a biographical study of Sigrid Undset by Father Aidan Nichols, OP, published by Ignatius Press: Sigrid Undset: Reader of Hearts. In the course of his discussion of her conversion to Catholicism, Father Nichols reminded me that she had written about a couple of English Catholic martyrs of the Recusant era, Saint Robert Southwell, poet and Jesuit missionary, and Saint Margaret Clitherow, wife, mother of two Catholic priests, and protector of priests. (Neither had been canonized at the time, however.) He also notes that English Catholic authors had some influence on Undset's conversion.

Father Nichols examines these interests and influences in two chapters, one describing those contemporary English Catholic writers like Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, Hilaire Belloc, and G.K. Chesterton (chapter 6, "The Thirties, or the Coming of War"). The other (chapter 9, "The Hagiographer") offers some details about how she depicted the lives, not just of Southwell and Clitherow, but also of Saints Edmund Campion and Philip Howard.

We'll be taking up this subject in a series on the Son Rise Morning Show in September, starting 9/14 (after the Labor Day hiatus), looking first at the contemporary English Catholic writers who accompanied Undset as she prepared to become a Catholic and then at those martyrs as she told their stories. English Catholicism, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, was essential to Undset's conversion.

Since Bishop Fredrik Hansen of Oslo declared on July 8 that he would be opening a Cause for Undset's sainthood, she's been getting more attention.

Stay tuned for future updates on this story, as they used to say on the radio!

Preview: John Keble's "Ave Maria"

Since August is traditionally a month of special devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I thought it appropriate to highlight a Marian poem from John Keble's The Christian Year on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, August 17 (especially after celebrating the Solemnity of the Assumption). He included a poem on "The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary" in his survey of the feasts of the Anglican liturgical year. 

He takes, of course, a verse from Saint Luke's Gospel as his inspiration, "And the Angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women." (1:28), but Keble also goes on at the end of the poem to reference Luke chapter 11 ("And it happened that, when he was saying these things, a certain woman from the crowd, lifting up her voice, said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you.” Then he said, “Yes, but moreover: blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” 27-28):

Oh! Thou who deign’st to sympathise
With all our frail and fleshly ties,
   Maker yet Brother dear,
Forgive the too presumptuous thought,
If, calming wayward grief, I sought
   To gaze on Thee too near.

Yet sure ’twas not presumption, Lord,
’Twas Thine own comfortable word
   That made the lesson known:
Of all the dearest bonds we prove,
Thou countest sons and mothers’ love
   Most sacred, most Thine own.

When wandering here a little span,
Thou took’st on Thee to rescue man,
   Thou had’st no earthly sire:
That wedded love we prize so dear,
As if our heaven and home were here,
   It lit in Thee no fire.

On no sweet sister’s faithful breast
Wouldst Thou Thine aching forehead rest,
   On no kind brother lean:
But who, O perfect filial heart,
E’er did like Thee a true son’s part,
   Endearing, firm, serene?

Thou wept’st, meek maiden, mother mild,
Thou wept’st upon thy sinless Child,
   Thy very heart was riven:
And yet, what mourning matron here
Would deem thy sorrows bought too dear
   By all on this side Heaven?

A Son that never did amiss,
That never shamed His Mother’s kiss,
   Nor crossed her fondest prayer:
E’en from the tree He deigned to bow,
For her His agonised brow,
   Her, His sole earthly care.

Ave Maria! blessèd Maid!
Lily of Eden’s fragrant shade,
   Who can express the love
That nurtured thee so pure and sweet,
Making thy heart a shelter meet
   For Jesus’ holy dove?

Ave Maria!  Mother blest,
To whom, caressing and caressed,
   Clings the eternal Child;
Favoured beyond Archangels’ dream,
When first on Thee with tenderest gleam
   Thy new-born Saviour smiled:—

Ave Maria! thou whose name
All but adoring love may claim,
   Yet may we reach thy shrine;
For He, thy Son and Saviour, vows
To crown all lowly lofty brows
   With love and joy like thine.

Blessed is the womb that bare Him—blessed
The bosom where His lips were pressed,
   But rather blessed are they
Who hear His word and keep it well,
The living homes where Christ shall dwell,
   And never pass away.

He begins with meditation upon Our Lord, but turns soon to the relationship between Jesus and His Mother Mary. The use of "Ave Maria", a very Roman Catholic phrase, is balanced by Keble's reticence about devotion to the Mother of God ("All but adoring love may claim"), even though he hints at a coronation ("To crown all lowly lofty brows/With love and joy like thine.") I'd also call attention to the lovely reference to Mary at the foot of the Cross in the Gospel of John ("E’en from the tree He deigned to bow,/For her His agonised brow,/Her, His sole earthly care.") as a special aspect of Our Lord's love for His Mother, the Mother of God.

Nevertheless, his poem demonstrates the delicacy of the Oxford Movement leaders when they touched on matters that would seem "too Catholic" to some Anglicans. But when Newman prepared a sermon for the Annunciation in one of his Anglican Plain and Parochial Sermons, "The Reverence Due to the Virgin Mary" (Sermon 12 in Volume 2, with the verse from Luke 1:43 "From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed."), he seems to have to hinted at her sinlessness and virtue-- in contrast to our condition--although not according to our Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception:

Observe the lesson which we gain for ourselves from the history of the Blessed Virgin; that the highest graces of the soul may be matured in private, and without those fierce trials to which the many are exposed in order to their sanctification. So hard are our hearts, that affliction, pain, and anxiety are sent to humble us, and dispose us towards a true faith in the heavenly word, when preached to us. Yet it is only our extreme obstinacy of unbelief which renders this chastisement necessary. The aids which God gives under the Gospel Covenant, have power to renew and purify our hearts, without uncommon providences to discipline us into receiving them. God gives His Holy Spirit to us silently; and the silent duties of every day (it may be humbly hoped) are blest to the sufficient sanctification of thousands, whom the world knows not of. The Blessed Virgin is a memorial of this; and it is consoling as well as instructive to know it. When we quench the grace of Baptism, then it is that we need severe trials to restore us. This is the case of the multitude, whose best estate is that of chastisement, repentance, supplication, and absolution, again and again. But there are those who go on in a calm and unswerving course, learning day by day to love Him who has redeemed {137} them, and overcoming the sin of their nature by His heavenly grace, as the various temptations to evil successively present themselves. And, of these undefiled followers of the Lamb, the Blessed Mary is the chief. Strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might, she "staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief;" she believed when Zacharias doubted,—with a faith like Abraham's she believed and was blessed for her belief, and had the performance of those things which were told her by the Lord. And when sorrow came upon her afterwards, it was but the blessed participation of her Son's sacred sorrows, not the sorrow of those who suffer for their sins.

Of course, as a Catholic priest, Newman would not only accept but defend the definition of the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, engaging in a written debate with another old Oxford Movement friend, E. B. Pusey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us! 

Preview: John Keble's "Silent Solitary Walk"

As we've been discussing John Keble's poems inspired by the readings and/or feasts of the liturgy, I've commented that they are not the greatest poetry in the English language but that they are well-composed and thoughtful compositions. In 1887, when Cassell and Company, London, published an edition of The Christian Year, the anonymous editor commented on Keble's verse, comparing and contrasting it to that of George Herbert or Henry Vaughan:

The power of Keble’s verse lies in its truth.  A faithful and pure nature, strong in home affections, full of love and reverence for all that is of heaven in our earthly lot, strives for the full consecration of man’s life with love and faith.  There is no rare gift of genius.  Keble is not in subtlety of thought or of expression another George Herbert, or another Henry Vaughan.  But his voice is not the less in unison with theirs, for every note is true, and wins us by its purity.  His also are melodies of the everlasting chime.

On Monday, August 10 on the Son Rise Morning Show, we'll examine the introductory poem, "Dedication" in which Keble admitted that he knew his limits; he can't compete with David or a "high-souled bard" like Herbert or Vaughan; he is feeble, "earth-palsied", wavering, and frail. Nevertheless, he seeks inspiration in prayer:

When in my silent solitary walk,
I sought a strain not all unworthy Thee,
My heart, still ringing with wild worldly talk,
Gave forth no note of holier minstrelsy.

Prayer is the secret, to myself I said,
Strong supplication must call down the charm,
And thus with untuned heart I feebly prayed,
Knocking at Heaven’s gate with earth-palsied arm.

Fountain of Harmony! Thou Spirit blest,
By whom the troubled waves of earthly sound
Are gathered into order, such as best
Some high-souled bard in his enchanted round

May compass, Power divine! Oh, spread Thy wing,
Thy dovelike wing that makes confusion fly,
Over my dark, void spirit, summoning
New worlds of music, strains that may not die.

Oh, happiest who before thine altar wait,
With pure hands ever holding up on high
The guiding Star of all who seek Thy gate,
The undying lamp of heavenly Poesy.

Too weak, too wavering, for such holy task
Is my frail arm, O Lord; but I would fain
Track to its source the brightness, I would bask
In the clear ray that makes Thy pathway plain.

I dare not hope with David’s harp to chase
The evil spirit from the troubled breast;
Enough for me if I can find such grace
To listen to the strain, and be at rest.

I warned Anna Mitchell that I would try to resist my English Major enthusiasm, but the mention of George Herbert and Henry Vaughan proved too much. One of my favorite English Lit classes was English 522A "Donne & the Metaphysical Poets", taught by the late Professor Frank Kastor (RIP) in the Spring of 19-- at Wichita State University. 

From Pastor Herbert: "Prayer (I)" in which each image invites meditation:

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth
Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

And from Henry Vaughan, "Peace":

My Soul, there is a country
Afar beyond the stars,
Where stands a winged sentry
All skillful in the wars;
There, above noise and danger
Sweet Peace sits, crown’d with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious friend
And (O my Soul awake!)
Did in pure love descend,
To die here for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flow’r of peace,
The rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.
Leave then thy foolish ranges,
For none can thee secure,
But One, who never changes,
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.

Book Review: Part Two: Nussbaum on Mozart's two "Masonic" Operas

Earlier this year when I reviewed Dietrich von Hildebrand's MOZART BEETHOVEN SCHUBERT from the Hildebrand Project I mentioned that he did not include any of Mozart's opera seria (Lucio Silla, Idomeneo, or La Clemenza di Tito). He referenced Mozart's Freemasonry and highlighted Die Zauberflöte, admitting the Masonic influence on that work:

It is true that Mozart was a Freemason, for at that time Freemasonry was not yet seen as incompatible with the Catholic faith [sic*]. This humanitarian fraternization was so much in fashion that Mozart and his father Leopold Mozart were Freemasons. But both were above all devout Catholics. . . .

Mozart's only significant work in which one could find a relation to Freemasonry is "The Magic Flute." . . . (page 20) 

They are not significant but Mozart did compose several Masonic themed works for specific lodge events in Vienna. 

*Since Pope Clement XII in 1738 had issued In eminenti apostolatus specula, forbidding Catholics to join Masonic lodges, I think that von Hildebrand is wrong.

But Martha Nussbaum argues in The Republic of Love that Mozart's 1781 opera seria, Idomeneo, Rei di Creta shows the influence of that "humanitarian fraternization" particularly in the characters of Idamante, the son of Idomeneo, and Ilia, the Trojan princess whom Idamante loves and who loves Idamante in spite of herself. Although Mozart had not yet joined a lodge in Vienna when he wrote Idomeneo, she notes he was already attracted to the fellowship and spirit of Freemasonry. 

She finds elements of the "Republic of Love" in this beautiful work, one I've watched on DVD or on-line and listened to several times on CD (the 1982 Metropolitan Opera production; the 1983 Glyndebourne production; the 1991 Philips CD, for example). The Glyndebourne production features a tenor Idamante--there's an earlier (1964) Glyndebourne production with Luciano Pavarotti in that role--he sang Idomeneo's part in the Met production when it premiered in that House. The Met has always had a mezzo-soprano Idamante in its casts, a practice Nussbaum believes appropriate.

2. Mozart and the Freemasons: Idomeneo and The Magic Flute

    Mozart the Freemason

    Mozart's Vienna

    Mozart Joins a Lodge

    Idomeneo: The Reign of Love

    The Magic Flute: Noble Ideals, Imperfect People

Some notes about the first three sections listed above: Nussbaum contends that by 1773 Mozart was drawn to Freemasonry. In Vienna in 1784 he joined the Beneficence Lodge, a more working-class, less elite gathering, and later joined New-Crowned Hope, which absorbed the membership of Beneficence. The Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II, a man of the Enlightenment, allowed the Masons to gather, but dissolved the Catholic monasteries and convents (and controlled the ordination of priests in his empire). Nussbaum describes this as allowing religious freedom "within the bounds of Enlightenment rationalism" (p. 45). He did, however, reduce the number of Lodges in December, 1795 for fear of secret societies. Nussbaum also notes that the Lodges in Vienna were "not extremely anti-clerical" (p. 46) and that "Mozart was always a practicing Catholic." (p. 47) Among the ideals of Freemasonry Nussbaum cites are equality, brotherhood, the practice of certain rituals, and a calm acceptance of death. 

In the section on Idomeneo, Nussbaum offers an interpretation of the opera that made sense to me, noting the opera seria format with its deus ex machina intervention to resolve the ethical dilemma of the story. In this case the vow King Idomeneo of Crete has made to Neptune if he survives a storm and shipwreck: he will offer as sacrifice the first person he sees on shore. The first person he sees is his son, Idamante. He tries to evade that horrible offering by sending his son away to no avail. Only the intervention of an unidentified "Voice" from the gods to remove him from the throne and bring both Idamante and Ilia, the Trojan princess, to rule Crete brings about the triumph of love at the end.

I mentioned that Nussbaum prefers the casting of a mezzo-soprano Idamante; she believes it highlights both the "close harmonies in the Ilia-Idamante duet [beginning with "S’io non moro a questi accenti,"] and "Idamante's gender-atypical gentleness" because "Idamante [like Cherubino] is a tender, loving type of male who eschews the common male competition for honor and domination." (p. 51). Even his monster-slaying heroics offstage only prepare him for offering himself as the sacrifice required for his country's sake.

Nussbaum dedicates most of the chapter on this opera seria to "tracing two threads that run through [Idomeneo], the ethical growth of Ilia, and the emotional and ethical character of Idamante." (p. 55) Ilia's growth is traced through her three arias as she responds to "Idamante's capacity for love" (p. 57). They are contrasted to Elettra's (aka Electra) desire for revenge and lack of development, and the "well-intentioned but ineffectual" Idomeneo . She concludes with the idea that at the end of the opera, Idamante and Ilia's Crete represents an "enlightened autocracy with a larger space for human choice than was previously available" rather like HRE Joseph II's regime of reform (p. 62). 

Unless, of course, one was called to be a monk or a cloistered nun.

As for Die Zauberflote/The Magic Flute, upon which Mozart collaborated with Emanuel Schikaneder, Nussbaum's main point is that the opera depicts high ideals and tests of those high ideals which reveal both the successes and the failures of the characters to maintain them. She contends that those high "core ideals (reason, steadfastness, wisdom, brotherhood, and love) are those of the Masons (shared, of course, by many Enlightenment non-Masons)" (p. 63)

I think many non-Enlightenment, non-Masons have shared those ideals: they aren't exclusively Enlightenment-era core ideals or virtues.

Parallel to the section on Idomeneo, she emphasizes the ethical growth in Pamina, who leads Tamino through the completion of his initiation and shares the priestly robes in the Temple (like Ilia sharing the throne with Idamante). The two paragraphs on Papageno and Papagena and the three Genii (little boys) offer some rather ordinary insights--she notes how the Genii prevent two suicides (Pamina's and Papageno's) and, of course, that Papageno and Papagena provide most of the humor and the fun of the opera--and the bird catcher is not caught up in the Masonic initiation rites. If, as Nussbaum opines, "In general the opera's message is that one must follow one's own path and question claims to authority." (p. 69), Papageno has rejected those Masonic claims.

The musicologist David Joseph Buch has also rejected an overly Masonic interpretation. For example: 

"Die Zauberflöte, Masonic Opera, and Other Fairy Tales" in Acta Musicologica, [Vol.] 76, [Fasc.] 2 (2004), pp. 193-219 Published by: International Musicological Society. 

Image credit (Public Domain): The Arrival of the Queen of the Night

Image credit (Public Domain): Front page of a bilingual vocal score

Preview: John Keble on the Lilies of the Field

Here comes August! On Monday, August 3 on the Son Rise Morning Show, we'll discuss this poem by Dr. John Keble, one of Newman's mentor and best friends, reflecting on the one of the most familiar images from the Gospel of Saint Matthew when Our Lord tells the disciples early in His teaching ministry, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin. But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these." Matthew 6:28-29)

Keble choses one line from that chapter as his title and inspiration, "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow." St. Matthew, 6:28. And he begins springtime, while in Kansas (and elsewhere in the USA) we're in hot, hot summer:

Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies,
   Bathed in soft airs, and fed with dew,
What more than magic in you lies,
   To fill the heart’s fond view?
In childhood’s sports, companions gay,
In sorrow, on Life’s downward way,
How soothing! in our last decay
   Memorials prompt and true.

Relics ye are of Eden’s bowers,
   As pure, as fragrant, and as fair,
As when ye crowned the sunshine hours
   Of happy wanderers there.
Fall’n all beside—the world of life,
How is it stained with fear and strife!
In Reason’s world what storms are rife,
   What passions range and glare!

But cheerful and unchanged the while
   Your first and perfect form ye show,
The same that won Eve’s matron smile
   In the world’s opening glow.
The stars of heaven a course are taught
Too high above our human thought:
Ye may be found if ye are sought,
   And as we gaze, we know.

Ye dwell beside our paths and homes,
   Our paths of sin, our homes of sorrow,
And guilty man where’er he roams,
   Your innocent mirth may borrow.
The birds of air before us fleet,
They cannot brook our shame to meet—
But we may taste your solace sweet
   And come again to-morrow.

Ye fearless in your nests abide—
   Nor may we scorn, too proudly wise,
Your silent lessons, undescried
   By all but lowly eyes:
For ye could draw th’ admiring gaze
Of Him who worlds and hearts surveys:
Your order wild, your fragrant maze,
   He taught us how to prize.

Ye felt your Maker’s smile that hour,
   As when He paused and owned you good;
His blessing on earth’s primal bower,
   Ye felt it all renewed.
What care ye now, if winter’s storm
Sweep ruthless o’er each silken form?
Christ’s blessing at your heart is warm,
   Ye fear no vexing mood.

Alas! of thousand bosoms kind,
   That daily court you and caress,
How few the happy secret find
   Of your calm loveliness!
“Live for to-day! to-morrow’s light
To-morrow’s cares shall bring to sight,
Go sleep like closing flowers at night,
   And Heaven thy morn will bless.”

We have ascribed many images and meanings to lilies because of their beauty. This website lists the many occasions on which to give lilies as gifts: 

• Weddings and anniversaries, to represent eternal love and loyalty
• Funerals and memorials, to honor the departed and provide comfort
• Graduations, to celebrate new beginnings and personal growth
• Mother’s Day, to honor a mother’s nurturing spirit
• Get-well wishes, to express hope and encouragement during illness
• Housewarming celebrations, to welcome new beginnings
• Religious holidays, to symbolize purity, devotion, and divine grace

The white lily flower has been associated with purity, and therefore with the Blessed Virgin Mary and other virgin saints like Saint Joseph and Saint Clare of Assisi whose feast is August 11, for example. 

Keble notes that Eve enjoyed the lily's beauty before the Fall in the Garden of Eden and that the flower is everywhere, reminding us of the transitions and the transitory nature of life. But because Jesus noted the beauty of the lilies*, surpassing the glory of King Solomon, Keble wants the reader to learn the lesson of this passage, to face life with balance and calmness, without worry or despair, faintly echoing Psalm 29/30, verse 6: "In the evening weeping shall have place, and in the morning gladness."

*("In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea with a beauty in his bosom that transfigures you and me." from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", Julia Ward Howe)

Image Credit (Public Domain): Garden of Lilies

Image Credit (Public Domain): Fresco by Giotto depicting St. Clare of Assisi holding a lily.