Another Chevrot: The Woman at the Well: "The Well of Life"

Scepter Publishers, which also published/sells my book Supremacy and Survival, publishes several works by Monsignor Georges Chevrot (1879-1958). He was pastor of Saint Francis Xavier from 1930 to 1958 (priests have long tenures there!) and preached during Lent at Notre Dame de Paris in 1938, 1939, and 1940 and received the Medaille de la Resistance Francaise for his efforts during German occupation of Paris during World War II. 

I've now purchased/read three of his works: The Beatitudes: How God Saves Us, The Easter Impact: How the Resurrection Restores and Strengthens Our Faith, and The Well of Life.

I recommended The Beatitudes for the Son Rise Morning Show's Summer reading lists in June last year, and mentioned The Easter Impact earlier this month!

In The Well of Life, Monsignor Chevrot goes through the story of the woman at well of Sychar verse by verse, offering commentary on the dialogue between Our Lord and Saint Photina. As Scepter describes it:

This book leads the reader to understand in a deeper way the meaning of the unusual encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacobs’ well. It starts in a casual conversation between a thirsty traveler and a woman engaged in the ordinary work of drawing water from the town well. From her questions about the “living water” that the Lord tries to explain, her soul’s blind and ignorant condition is only penetrated by Jesus’ straightforward questioning about her married life. In her sincerity she freely admits the truth. In short order she enthusiastically reaches out to her entire village, bringing them rushing to the feet of Christ and to their conversion to his message of universal salvation.

Chevrot adds further commentary and details which show that something extraordinarily new is taking place. Sinful but repentant people, not only the faithful and justified, are now also entrusted with spreading the new kingdom of Christ. In other words, everyone is called to holiness. Salvation is not only for the just, but also for the world’s low lifes. The book’s 24 chapters tackle prejudice, of what use is religion, not being scandalized, confession of sins, Christian obedience, optimism, witnessing in ordinary circumstances to Christ, and the experience of faith and how it changes peoples and societies.

Originally translated from French and published in English by Scepter in the 1950s. This book is newly edited and released again after an absence of 60 years.

Table of Contents, including chapters, subheads, and quotations:

Introduction

1. Tired (John 4:6)

    A School of Humility

2. Providential Meetings (John 4:7)

    Freeing Ourselves from Evil

3. The First Steps (John 4:7)

    Penetrating Souls

4. Prejudice (4:9)

5. The Gift of God (4:10)

6. Who It Is (4:10):

    In Jesus Christ, the two natures form a single person in such a unity that the solder which joins them cannot be seen. Jesus is fully God and also fully man. He teaches us both the human knowledge of God, and the divine knowledge of man, in showing man as God conceives him and wishes him to be. Christ is our brother without sin, you will object. Yes, without sin, because it is not essential to sin in order to be a man. . . . As man, he can reveal to us what we are, not because he was a good and just man whom the admiration of his fellows later defined but because he is God made man. . . .

    How consoling it is to consider our humanity through him!

(cf. Pope St. Leo the Great on the Incarnation)

    The Duty of the Normal Man

    Knowing Our True Selves

7. Our Need for God (4:11-14)

8. What Good is Religion? (4:15)

    Source of Progress

    Cooperation with God's Gifts

9. The Knowledge of Sin (4:16-19)

     Advancing Toward Sanctity

10. The New Worship (4:20-22)

    Photina points to Mount Gerizim on which the temple of Manassas had been built. Even after the Jewish high priest John Hyrcanus had destroyed it, the Samaritans had continued to come to this place to offer ritual sacrifice.

11. Unity in Truth (4:22)

    No compromise

12. Adoration in Spirit and in Truth (4:23-24)

13. The Messiah's Work (4:25-26)

    Apostolate is Not Optional

14. Do Not Be Shocked (4:27)

15. God's Pardon (4:28-30)

16. Confession of Our Sins (4:29)

    Confession . . . satisfies man's nature and God's rights at the same time. . . . This is why Jesus brought the forgiveness of heaven to earth and left it there.  

    Proof of Regret

    Perfection is a drawn-out business.    
17. Our Reason for Living (4:31-34)

    Principle of Unity

18. Christian Obedience (4:34)

    A Higher Plane

19. Christian Optimism (4:35)

    Apostles in the World

20. Sowers and Reapers (4:36-38)

    God Chooses Us to Help Him

21. Witnesses to Christ (4:39)

    The unexpected conversion of the village of Sichar made an unforgettable impression on the disciples.

22. Prayer and Faith (4:40-41)

23. Experience of the Faith (4:42)

    Personal Influence of Jesus

24. The Savior of the World (4:42)

    Interior Reform

    Personal Sin

Epilogue: The Supreme Testimony

    (the martyrdom of St. Photina and her sons Joseph and Victor celebrated on March 20)

    

I finished the book on March 20! I recommend The Well of Life highly: it offers scriptural exegesis, doctrinal instruction, and spiritual counsel.

Preview: "I Thirst" and "It Is Finished" on the Son Rise Morning Show

In our last discussion on the Son Rise Morning Show, Matt Swaim quite rightly pointed out that the psalm Our Lord began on the Cross, Psalm 22, ends in hope:

31 And to him my soul shall live: and my seed shall serve him.

32 There shall be declared to the Lord a generation to come: and the heavens shall shew forth his justice to a people that shall be born, which the Lord hath made. (Psalm 21 in the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition)

Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, however, does not go there immediately; he leaves Our Lord in the midst of that chosen desolation, until He endures another humiliation, which we'll discuss on Monday, March 23: 

As Benson puts it: 

Up to the present the deepest point of Christ's Humiliation has been His cry to His Father -- that call for help by the Sacred Humanity which by His own Will was left derelict -- His confession to the world that His Soul was in darkness. Now, however, He descends a still deeper step of humiliation, and calls for help, to man.

Christ asks man to help Him!

The fifth Last Word is "I thirst". (John 19:28) 

All through His life He had offered help: He had fed hungry souls and hungry bodies He had opened blind eyes and deaf ears; and lifted up the hands that hung down, and strengthened the feeble knees. He had stood in the Temple and called to all that thirsted to come and drink. Now, in return, He asks for drink, and accepts it. So David, too, in the stress of battle had cried, "Oh that some man would give me a drink of the water out of the cistern that is in Bethlehem!"{1} For both David and David's Son were strong enough to condescend to weakness.

(ii) In the age-long Calvary of the world's history, Jesus cries on man to help Him; and the Giver of all humiliates Himself to ask.

In the context of Benson's meditation on the Friendship of Christ, he reminds that we are not equal partners in this relationship:

We have spoken of the Divine Friendship throughout as if it were a mutual relationship, as if we on one side, and Christ on the other, were united in a common bond. But, as a matter of fact, it is all on one side. We cannot even desire Christ without, except by the help of Christ within. The Christ within must cry "I thirst,"{2} before the Christ without can give us the Living Water.

This appeal, then, of Jesus must be our last and final motive, when all other impulses have failed. He is so beaten and rejected that He is come even to this. He must ask for mercy upon Himself, before He can have mercy on us. If we do not find our Heaven in Him, at least let Him find His Heaven in us. If we can no longer say, "My soul is athirst for the Living God," at least let us listen when the Living God cries, "My Soul is athirst for you." If we will not let Him minister to us, for very shame let us be content to minister to Him.

And then Benson references one of the Gospel stories we've heard this Lent: The Woman at the Well of Sychar:

He first uttered His petition, by the side of Jacob's well, and on the Cross of Calvary -- even the Samaritan woman, the alien from God's commonwealth, even the soldiers of an Empire that was at war with God's kingdom, had mercy upon Him, and gave Him to drink.

In Saint John's Gospel as soon as He has tasted the common wine on the sponge, Our Lord pronounces the Sixth Word: "It is finished." (John 19:30) Then He proclaims victory:

The evening light begins to glimmer again upon Calvary, the three crosses, and the little group that waits for the end; and as it falls upon the Face of Christ, the look of agony is gone. He has cried alike to God and man to have pity, upon tortured Soul and parched Body, and each has answered. Now in that Face, bleached by the darkness of the soul, and the Eyes, sunken with sorrow, a new look begins, that rises, as those who stand by watch Him, until the whole Face is radiant once again. The breaths come fuller and fuller, the Body nailed by its extremities begins to lift itself higher and higher till strength is regained sufficient for Him not to speak only, but to utter a cry so loud and triumphant as to startle and amaze the officer who has watched many men die, but never as This Man dies. The cry peals out, like the shout of a king in the moment of victory; and, in an instant, failure and labour and bitterness are behind Him for ever. Consummatum est. . . . "It is finished!"{1}

Benson explains the effects of this moment of victory for us:

Friendship between God and man is now made possible again, in the Body of Christ. That old irreconcilable enmity between the sin of the creature and the Justice of the Creator, between the defilement of the spirit and the Holiness of the Father of Spirits, is done away. We can be "accepted in the Beloved."

First, then: salvation is open to the sinner. No sin henceforth is unforgivable.

Even more:

Not only is mere friendship made possible by the death of Christ, but degrees of friendship to which even the angels cannot aspire. It is not only that a soul, through the Precious Blood, can pass from death to life, but that she can pass up through stages and heights and strata of that life, up to the perfection of sanctity itself. . . .

II. Christ's work, then, is "finished" on the Cross -- finished, that is, not as closed and concluded, but, as it were, liberated from the agonizing process which has brought it into being -- finished, as bread is finished from the mills and the fire, that it may be eaten; as wine is finished after the stress and trampling of the winepress -- finished, as a man's body is finished in the womb of his mother and brought forth with travail. . . .

Yet here is this vast river of grace pouring from Calvary, the river that ought to be making glad the City of God. Here is this enormous reservoir of grace, bubbling up in every sacrament, soaking the ground beneath our feet, freshening the air we breathe. And we still in our hateful false humility talk as if Perfection were a dream, and Sanctity the privilege of those who see God in glory.

In Christ's Name, let us begin. For Christ has finished.

As we enter into the Passiontide of Lent, when the glorious symbols of one aspect of that fulfillment--the sanctification of the human soul--and even the Crucifixes in our churches may be veiled, we remember both the Agony of the Passion and prepare for the celebration of its Victory. And on the Monday of Holy Week, we'll conclude this series with the Last Word 

Preview: "My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?"

As you might surmise, the next passage in Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the Seven Last Words of Christ our Friend Crucified, which we'll discuss on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday, March 16, begins dramatically, as Benson sets the scene:

The darkness of Calvary, spiritual as well as physical, draws on to its deepest. Christ has prayed for those who have outraged and repudiated His Friendship: He who was always the Friend of Sinners has added one more to the company [the Good Thief, Saint Dismas]: He who was always the Friend of Saints has united two of them yet more closely than ever by the wedding of Pain [His Mother and Saint John the Apostle].

Benson describes Jesus as drawing into Himself in this Word and choosing to experience this desolation:

Now He draws inwards from the world for which He has done so much: He directs this consciousness into His own Sacred Humanity; and in a Word at which heaven and earth tremble together, reveals to us that that Sacred Humanity, as a part of that process by which He chose to "taste death for all"{1} and to learn "obedience by the things which He suffered,"{2} has to experience the sorrow of dereliction. He who came to offer that Sacred Humanity as the bond of Friendship between God and man, wills that His own Friendship with God should be obscured. He becomes indeed the Friend of fallen man, for He chooses to identify Himself with the horror of that Fall. The Beatific Vision which was lost to man through that fall, and which Jesus Christ can never lose, is now obscured to the eyes of Him who comes to restore it through Redemption.

"My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" is the only of the Seven Last Word reported in two Gospels, Mark (Mark 15:34) and Matthew (Matthew 27:46) and occurs at the "Ninth Hour". 

Benson admits that this Word is hard to understand and to apply to ourselves because we can and do distract ourselves from the deepest realities:

This Word is the one that, above all others, is most difficult of application to ourselves. For the state in which it was uttered is simply inconceivable to us who find our consolation in so much that is not God, and to whom sin means so little. If physical comforts are wanting to us, we find refuge in mental comfort; if mental comforts are wanting, we lean upon our friends. Or, more usually, when the higher pleasures are withdrawn, we find relief, with scarcely an effort, in lower. When religion fails us, we console ourselves with the arts; when love or ambition disappoint us, we plunge into physical pleasures; when the body refuses to respond, we take refuge in our indomitable pride; and when that in its turn crumbles to nothing, we look to suicide and hell as a more tolerable environment. There seems no depth to which we will not go, in our passionate determination to make ourselves tolerable to ourselves.

I agree that we (I) do often accept our faults pretty easily and can tolerate and excuse our weaknesses readily. Perhaps we're sometimes a little less tolerant of ourselves when we make a good examination of conscience before Confession, but: 

This Word, then, is meaningless to most of us; for to Jesus Christ, when the Beatific Vision was overlaid with sorrow, there was nothing in Heaven or upon earth. . . . "I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: for one that would comfort me, and I found none."{6} The tragedy goes on, up there in the darkness: we hear the groan; we catch glimpses of the tortured, colourless Face behind which the Soul itself hangs crucified; . . . we grope, we conjecture, we attempt to form lower images of the august reality; but that is all.

Without referring to the Dark Night of the Soul, Benson says we can and probably will experience this sorrowful loneliness:

(i) Occasionally even we ourselves rise to the point in the spiritual life where our Friendship with Christ is our chief joy, among all the other and lesser consolations that God gives. The fact that we know Him and can speak with Him is reckoned by us as sufficiently sweet as to make its apparent withdrawal the most acute of all our sorrows. (I need hardly say that this requires no particular proficiency in spiritual things. It is, in fact, impossible to be sincere and persevering in our religion, without sooner or later experiencing it.) Well, such a point is reached by us, let us say; and then, on a sudden, without our being conscious of anything more than our usual faithlessness and lethargy, this spiritual pleasure in religion is swiftly and completely withdrawn.

Then it all depends on what we do. Do we retreat into those other pleasures, as listed above? 

Suddenly care a lot about opera and ballet, maybe?

Instead, Benson advises:

How is our hold upon our Friend to be tightened unless now and again it seems as if He were slipping from our grasp? How is real faith to throw out its roots and clench its fibres into the Rock, unless the desolating wind of trouble at times threatens to uproot us altogether? For the keener the tribulation and the more bitter the dregs, the more honourable is the draught. To hold our lips to that Cup which our Saviour drained, even though its bitterness is diluted by His mercy -- the honour of this should surely be enough to make us hold our peace, for very shame.

Secondly, Benson reminds us:

Religion is not one of the departments which make up our life -- (that is Religiosity) -- but Religion is that which enters into every department, the fabric on which every device, whether of art or literature, or domestic interests, or recreation, or business, or human love, must be embroidered. Unless it is this, it is not Religion as it is intended to be. . . .

Now this, let us remind ourselves, is actually intended to be the life of every human soul; and, in proportion as we approximate to it, we are more or less fulfilling our destiny. For it is only to a soul that has reached this state that God can be All. He becomes "All" because nothing is any longer alien to Him. "Whether you eat or drink or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God." {7} The whole of life becomes illuminated with His Presence; everything is seen to subsist in Him: Nothing has any value except so far as it is in relations with Him. . . .

This, then, is the state for which a Christian soul is bound to strive and aspire. This and this only is the entirety of the Friendship of Christ; to a soul in this condition, and to her alone, can Jesus truly be said to be All. And this, further, is the only state in which real "Dereliction" is possible. . . .

As usual, there's too much here for the time we'll have on Monday morning, but with broadcast professionals and good friends like Anna and Matt, we'll do what we can!

We adore Thee, most holy Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all Thy churches that are in the whole world, and we bless Thee; because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the World. Amen.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Michelangelo: Crucifixion of Christ, 1540

Crucifix in St. Pierre des Chartres, copyright (2026) Stephanie A. Mann

Preview: Christ Our Friend's Last Word to His Mother and John the Beloved

Next in our Son Rise Morning Show Lenten Series, on Monday, March 9, Anna or Matt and I will discuss Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on the next of the Seven Last Words of Christ: “Jesus, then, seeing his Mother and the disciple he loved, said to his Mother, ‘Woman, this is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘This is your Mother.’ And from that moment the disciple took her with him.” (John: 19: 26-27)

Benson mentioned Mary and John standing at the foot of the Cross in the meditation on Jesus's Last Word to the Good Thief and he continues that reflection:

Two of the personages standing beside the Cross are, for all Christians, for all time, the supreme types of Divine and human love. There is Mary, loved into immaculate being by the Eternal Father, the Mother Herself of Immaculate Love, and John the chosen disciple, allowed to rest his head, even before he had attained heaven, upon the breast of that same Immaculate Love. Surely these two, Mary and John, are already as wholly one as Love can make them. Those who love God so perfectly cannot love one another less perfectly.

Yet Jesus, in His seven words upon the Cross, devotes one to make them closer still.

Jesus, Our Friend, wants us to be friends with others too and with this Last Word He "unite[s] these friends in divine charity to one another" to demonstrate what He desires among His followers:

"He that loveth not his brother, whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not?"{1} "As long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me."{2} The second commandment is like "unto the first": "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."{3}{4}

Benson's meditation on how we in society form these friendships to love our neighbor as ourself, forming communities of cooperation by submitting ourselves to the good of all, posits that this is usually in the pursuit of rejoicing and prosperity, alleviating poverty and sorrow. 

BUT:

. . . Jesus Christ does something that has never been done before. He uses suffering as the supreme bond of love. "Love one another," He cries from the Cross, "because you are strong enough to suffer together." "Mother," cries the dying Friend of us all, "behold thy son. Son, behold thy Mother!"

This word, then, is no less significant of an immense spiritual principle than are the rest. Mary and John have loved one another perfectly -- as perfectly, that is to say, as a common joy has made possible. Together they have watched His triumph: Mary has seen Him, the Child of Joy, upon her breast: John upon His breast has seen Him rejoice in spirit. But, from to-day onwards, their common love rises to yet greater heights: they love one another now, not merely in the Sacred Heart, but in the pierced and broken Sacred Heart. Hitherto they have been perfect friends; henceforth they are Blood-relations -- relations in a blood more intimate to them than their own -- a Blood shed for the remission of sins. It is not, "Friend, behold thy friend"; but, "Mother, behold thy son. Son, behold thy Mother!"

Benson meditates further on our friendship with the Mother of God, noting that it is through her Sorrows as much as it is through her Joys; that the Sorrows are really the stronger bonds:

First, then, this is the bond which unites Mary to ourselves -- not that she sang the Magnificat, but that the sword pierced her own heart also. Sorrow, wrongly received, is a mightier force than all ordinary human affections: sorrow, borne with resentment and bitterness, isolates the soul not only from God but from her own fellows. The wounded stag creeps away to die in loneliness. But, on the other hand, if sorrow is welcomed and taken in, if it is made, by the very effort which welcomes it, a bond of union with others that suffer, a link is forged which all the powers of hell cannot break. If Mary had been given us as our Mother in Bethlehem, if she had wrapped herself in her unique joy, if she had been to us but a figure of incarnate bliss; then when the horror of darkness fell upon us, we too should have crept away from even Her, to suffer in loneliness. A religion that presented to us Mary with her living child in her arms, and had no Mary with her dead Son across her knees, could not have been the religion to which we should turn in utter confidence when all else had failed. . . .

Indeed she is the Mother of the redeemed, because she was the Mother of Redemption: she stood by the Cross of Jesus, as she had knelt by His cradle; and she is our Mother, then, by that very blood by which both she and we are alike redeemed. The "Mother of Sorrows" must always be nearer to the human race than even the "Cause of our Joy."

Benson's spiritual advice is first, to make sure that our religious duties do not separate us from our friends:

It is an appalling fact that again and again those who claim to be enjoying the most intimate friendship with God are distinguished by selfishness and a lack of charity towards their neighbours -- that it is those, again and again, above all others who live what are called "misunderstood" lives, who actually advance their "Rule of Life" or the calls of their devotion as arguments against their having time or energy to be kind to their servants or acquaintances. "She is at her prayers, therefore she must not be disturbed. He is getting ready for the sacraments; therefore it is natural that he should be a little peevish and preoccupied.". . .

Then, he gives some practical direction:

Go home, then, and make up that foolish quarrel once and for all: go home and apologize simply and sincerely for your share in that trouble in which perhaps the other was even more to blame than yourself. It is intolerable that the friends of the Crucified -- that those even who aspire to be friends of the Crucified -- should think it conceivable to be at peace with God, who are not at peace with wife or husband or parents.

"Behold your Mother . . . your son!" That soul with whom you are at variance has a bond with you far greater than that of a common creation. The fact that the Eternal Word died for you both upon the Cross is an infinitely stronger link of union than the fact that the Eternal Word willed you both into being. For while the Fall broke the harmony of creation, the Redemption restored it; and this restoration is a far greater marvel than even Creation itself.

No man can be a Friend of Jesus Christ who is not a friend to his neighbour.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!

Saint John the Beloved Apostle, pray for us! 

Postscript: My best friend and I read an Easter book last year (The Easter Impact: How the Resurrection Restores and Strengthens Our Faith by Georges Chevrot) in which the author comments on Saint John's faith in the Resurrection at the empty tomb as an immediate result of this close relationship between Mary and John: "The crucified Lord had also asked Mary to look on John as her son and had entrusted his holy mother to him. Did Mary and John merely weep and pray together from Friday evening until Sunday morning, without exchanging any conversation?"

Chevrot doesn't think so and suggests that Mary had "been guiding the apostle's faith toward the reality what was to come . . ." reminding John "of the assurance of resurrection that her Son had given them . . . ("Peter and John at the Tomb" p. 30).

 

It is certainly the hope of the Resurrection of the Dead we share as we grieve for friends and family: I'll be attending the Funeral Mass for a good friend Monday morning, and heard this week of the death of a high school and classmate's mother. May Constance and Kay rest in the peace of Christ in hope of the Resurrection!

Image credit (both public domain): "What Jesus Saw from the Cross" by James Tissot and Crucifixion Brazil, 19th century

Another Book on Catholic Converts in the Twentieth Century!

Stopping into Eighth Day Books to buy our next Chesterton group book (The Ball and the Cross) yesterday, I happened to see another book, and another, and another, since it is a bookstore. The particular book I saw and picked up and scanned, was Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century by Melanie McDonagh from Yale University Press:

Why did Catholicism attract so many unlikely converts in Britain during the twentieth century?

The twentieth century is understood as an era of growing, inexorable secularism, yet in Britain between the 1890s and the 1960s there was a marked turn to Rome. In the first half of the century, Catholicism became an intellectual and spiritual fashion attracting more than half a million converts, including fascinating artists, writers, and thinkers. What drew these men and women to join the church, and what difference did conversion make to them?

Melanie McDonagh examines the lives of these notable converts from the perspective of their faith. For the Decadent circle of Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde—who converted on his deathbed—artists such as Gwen John and David Jones, the philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, and novelists including G. K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Muriel Spark, Catholicism offered stability in increasingly febrile times. McDonagh explores their lives and influences, the reaction to their conversions, and the priests who initiated them into their faith.

There are 24 chapters, and the author recounts Saint John Henry Newman's story and influence in chapter eight. Here's an interview with the author.  

As I browsed through the book I noticed this name: Gwen John (Chapter 6), an artist who, like Camille Claudel, had a relationship with Auguste Rodin. Here's an article from The Catholic Herald by Melanie McDonagh, who also writes for The Spectator and other papers in England, about an exhibit of John's works in Cardiff:

Gwen John converted to Catholicism around 1913 and it had a profound effect on her art. The new exhibition on the artist, which opens in Cardiff, is striking in that it places the religious aspect of her work where it belongs, at the centre of her art and her vision of the world. In one way that isn’t surprising, for among her best known works is the series of Dominican nuns from the convent of Meudon, culminating in the wonderful images of their founder, Mère Poussepin, taken from a prayer card. But it can’t always be taken for granted that contemporary curators will be unabashed by religion (I remember a collection of David Jones paintings presented without reference to their religious aspect), so it is rather wonderful that the curators of this excellent show, Lucy Wood and Fiona McLees, give Gwen John’s faith the significance she gave it. . . .

More about the exhibition here. 

Did I buy the book? No. Do I want to read the book? Yes. 

Two copies are still available at Eighth Day Books! It would interesting to compare and contrast McDonagh's take with Patrick Allitt's!

I did buy another book, however: What I Saw in America by G.K. Chesterton (one of McDonagh's converts!), brand new from the American Chesterton Society!

Image credit (Public Domain): Gwen John - Self-Portrait

Preview: Christ's Second "Last Word", to Saint Dismas, the Good Thief

In case you are not reading Benson's The Friendship of Christ this Lent, here is some background on this chapter on "Christ Our Friend on the Cross" as we discuss the Second Last Word, "This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise."{4} on the Son Rise Morning Show, Monday, March 2:

When Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson writes these meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ, he does not separate them into sections or chapters. He writes a harmony of the Four Gospel accounts of these Words; his point of view is always Jesus Christ Our Friend on the Cross. He weaves his meditations of the Seven Ways into a tapestry depicting aspects of the spiritual life in the Friendship of Christ. He constructs a chronology and even narrates the passage of time: he imagines the dialogue of the two thieves and Jesus as occurring about an hour after the three crosses have been raised on Golgotha.

The first thief, the Bad thief, after an hour of agony, is "still absorbed in his own pain, regarding it, contrasting it, turning it this way and that, seeking to adjust it" so he can deal with it; the second thief, the Good Thief, traditionally called Saint Dismas, has become "aware that there is something in this universe besides his own pain."

The first demands, out of that obsession with his own pain, "If thou be Christ, save thyself, and us." Saint Dismas has, with "the mind of a savage child--has been painfully at work" trying to figure out Who is in the center of their agony. He heard that First Word, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" and is thinking about what it meant.

Benson explores the mystery of Grace at work in the Good Thief, "its mysterious operation" and notes that "we know almost nothing, after all our theology, of that divine process; we know a little of its conditions, a fraction of his effects; we have labelled a few by-laws of its working; but no more." Somehow, "there was still in him enough receptivity for Grace to enter."

Somehow, in the midst of his pain, Saint Dismas begins to think that Jesus is not a criminal at all--that His execution is unjust, unlike his own--that Jesus is King--that the "crown of thorns were not wholly a mockery, that the title above the cross was something besides a sneer", so he reprimands the first thief and asks Jesus for something more than relief from their present agony: "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 

Because of the simple humility of that request he receives a greater promised than expected: "This day thou wilt be with me in Paradise."

Benson's application of this drama to our spiritual life is that humility is the key. He warns against "self-assertion" in the spiritual life, trying to make individual progress there as we want to in our "worldly affairs", on our own terms, according to our own standards; to "force our friendship on Christ." So, Benson advises, the way to succeed in the spiritual life is to emulate Saint Dismas. 

He warns that the "soul", when thinking about any progress in the spiritual life, should remind herself that "not one of her good actions in the past that has been wholly good, for each that has not been done out of a merely natural generosity, has been done largely out of this very love of self; she learns that her "progress," for the most part, has been in the wrong direction altogether, that she has been accumulating merits that have scarcely a touch of meritoriousness, that she has been serving self throughout in those very actions which she had told herself were pleasing to God." 

[This unmeritorious merit seems like a corollary to the "unknowing knowing sin" of the First Word of Forgiveness.]

Therefore, we should ask Our Friend Jesus to "Remember me" and when You do "in that day be to me not a judge but a saviour!" 

Then Benson starts to turn our direction to the trio of those standing near Jesus on the Cross, His Mother, Saint John the Apostle, and notes that in a way the thief has joined that group. . .

Image Credit (Public Domain): Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, medieval illustration from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg, 12th century

Image Credit (Public Domain): An icon showing Christ (center) bringing Dismas (left) into Paradise: At the right are the Gates of Paradise, guarded by a seraph (Solovetsky Monastery, 17th century).

Mozart's Church Music Via "Another Route"

Sometimes you think you've lived before 

All that you live today 

Things you do come back to you 

As though they knew the way 

Oh, the tricks your mind can play!

--Lorenz Hart, "Where or When", from Babes in Arms

I could revise this verse slightly: "Sometimes you think you've read before/All that you read today"' especially when I read a chapter from Charles Scribner III's new book Artists & Authors: A Life in Good Company. 

The book as a whole is divided into three parts: Authors ("Books and Company": Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Woolf at Scribner's); Artists ("Old Masters": Bernini, Rubens, Caravaggio, Michelangelo); Singers ("The Vocal Arts": Sacred Music, Schwarzkopf, von Stade, and Costa).

 

[Please note that von Stade is singing "Where or When" in the link above.]

It was in that "Sacred Music" chapter that Scribner wrote about Mozart's sacred (Church) music as Dietrich von Hildebrand had done in his comments in MOZART BEETHOVEN SCHUBERT and in the "Sacred Music" excerpt from Aesthetics, Volume 2. I think that von Hildebrand and Scribner agree on "the quintessentially Catholic character" of Mozart's Church music.

Scribner advises: 

The common wisdom used to be that Mozart's religious music was merely "for hire", something he knocked off to earn a living so that he could write the music--operas, symphonies, chamber pieces--he really loved. What a surprise, then, to read that his widow, Constanze, said that his favorite genre of all was church music. A close study of Mozart's sacred music confirms Constanze's claim. (p. 139)

He goes on to comment on Mozart's Vesperae solennes de confessore, K339 that it "was as carefully composed as anything Mozart ever wrote" with due attention to the "texts of psalms and canticles". He also highlights the "Dona nobis pacem" of the Coronation Mass in C-major that its peace "is not a passive one--not the absence of pain or conflict, but rather the consummation of joy." (p. 140)

[Please note that I purchased Artists & Authors and enjoyed reading Scribner's chapters on the authors, artists, and singers he highlights. For one thing, I learned how to describe the Crucifix at my home parish, Blessed Sacrament: as a "Christo Vivo"; His eyes are open and His side has not been pierced!]

After reading those comments, I pulled out my copy of a "Double Decca" set of some of Mozart's sacred music, including Vesperae Solennes De Confessore, K339; Vesperae De Dominica, K321; Litaniae, K243; Litaniae Lauretanae, K195, and the "Spaur-Messe", K258. In Kenneth Chalmers' notes he quotes a letter Mozart sent to Padre Martini in September 1776, in which the twenty-year-old writes about his "current activities in Salzburg" that "My father is in charge of music in the cathedral, and this gives me an opportunity to write as much church music as I like . . ." Mozart further comments on the challenge of the Prince Archbishop's time restrictions (a Mass was not to last more than 45 minutes): "Special care is needed with this sort of composition." Archbishop Colloredo was responding to Pope Benedict XIV's 1749 encyclical "Annus qui" (which was a Jubilee Year) to, according to Chalmers, "focus on clarity, and on an identifiably 'sacred' idiom". (p. 5)

Chalmers states that Mozart and the Prince Archbishop Colloredo did not get along ("possibly exacerbated by the very limitations imposed on sacred music" p. 6) and Mozart did want to write more operas but concludes on page 7 that he wanted to present copies of both the confessore and Dominica Vespers to Baron van Sweeten in March of 1783, indicating that he valued them.

Nevertheless, one would have to twist Mozart's words to imply that he didn't want to compose that much Church music!

Preview: Christ our Friend on the Cross: "Father, Forgive Them"

On Monday, February 23, we'll continue our discussion of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ on the Son Rise Morning Show with a Lenten series on his meditations on the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross: "XII. Christ Our Friend Crucified [The Seven Words]." 

After acknowledging various aspects of Christ Crucified, ("Priesthood is there, Royalty, the Prophetic Office, Sacrifice, Martyrdom")Benson states the focus of this chapter:

But, for the most part, we shall pass these by: we shall consider Him from that same standpoint as that from which we have considered Him throughout -- as our own familiar Friend who trusted us, and who was rewarded by us with the Crown of Thorns; who yet is content to bear all this and a thousand Passions more, if at the end He can but persuade us that He loves us. He spoke Seven Words as He hung there on Calvary, and each tells us of His Friendship.

The First Word:

"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34)

Benson describes how this First Word might have been spoken:

Our Friend has climbed the Hill; He has been stripped of His clothes and laid upon the Cross that He has carried from the steps of the Praetorium. The executioners prepare and choose the nails. . . . Those whose love He is seeking stand round looking down upon His upturned face. He, lying there, sees them, and sees behind them all those whom they represent -- all those countless souls each one of whom He desires to win. And, as the hammer is lifted and falls, He utters His first Word.

His first comments on this statement highlight the wondrous charity of Jesus: in one sense, the injustice of this punishment was obvious: remember that in "Christ in the Average Man" Benson judged Pilate harshly not because Pilate did not recognize the Incarnate Son of God standing before him but because Pilate knew Jesus was innocent of the crimes He was accused of committing, and yet gave in to the mob. 

Many in the mob knew that He had healed the sick, gave the blind sight, and fed the multitudes. The only thing that He was guilty of was that "he was no friend of Caesar"--and Pilate did not want to be implicated in that crime! (If thou release this man, thou art not Caesar's friend. For whosoever maketh himself a king, speaketh against Caesar." John 19:12) 

In various ways, however, they really did not know what they were doing:

• They thought that they were taking His Life from Him; they did not understand that He was laying it down of Himself. They thought that they were ending for ever a career of mercy which displeased them; they did not know that they were co-operating in a supreme climax of mercy. They knew not what they did.
• They knew, then, that they were outraging a human friend, but not that they were slaying a Divine Friend. They knew that they were betraying a fellow-creature, that they were sinning against every code of human decency and gratitude and justice; they knew, like Pilate, that they were killing a just man, that they were taking upon their own heads the blood of an innocent person. 
• But they did not know that they were crucifying the Lord of Glory, that they were attempting to silence the Eternal Word.
• This, then, can at least be said in their favour -- "They know the horror, but not the full horror, of what they do. Therefore, Father, forgive them."

Next, Benson reflects on how Catholics in his day needed to forgive those states and organizations in Europe which had oppressed the Church in various ways:

They know that she has been the mother of ideals, of the noblest art and the purest beauty. They use to-day, in every country of Europe, for secular or semi-sacred purposes, buildings which she raised for her own worship of her God. They know that the morals of men find their only ultimate sanction in her teaching -- that where dogma goes down, crime goes up. And here, again, the only charge against her is that she is no friend to Caesar -- no friend, that is, to any system that seeks to organize society apart from God.

Benson names names that don't mean as much to us today. Nevertheless, any Catholic is hurt or even outraged today when she hears about a Catholic Church being desecrated, statues broken and toppled, or worst of all, the Tabernacle being broken into and the Blessed Sacrament scattered and stolen. 

Then he moves on to the deeper meditation for us, because "we too, in our our measure, have sinned in frantic ignorance":

We confess to a little sloth and lethargy, a little avarice, a little lack of generosity. We "know what we do," in part: we know we are not faithful to our highest inspirations, that we have not done all that we might, that we have shown a little self-will, a little malice, a little pardonable temper. And we confess these things, and give an easy absolution. And yet we know not what we do. We do not know how urgent is the need of God, how tremendous are the issues He has committed to our care, how enormous is the value of every soul -- of every act and word and thought that help to shape the destinies of such a soul.

Echoing the image of Christ lying on the ground, Benson warns of greater consequences of this unknowing knowing sin:

He lies here, and we gossip and stare, and go our ways where the tragedy is done, when He hangs between heaven and earth, descended from the one and rejected by the other -- our God whom we thought our slave, who desires to be our Friend.

Father, then, by this prayer of Thy crucified Son, forgive us also; for we know not what we do. . . .

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.
Because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.

Preview: "Christ in the Sufferer" on the Son Rise Morning Show

On Monday, February 16, so close to the Ash Wednesday of 2026, we'll conclude our discussion of Part II, "Christ in the Exterior" in Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ. The last chapter in this section is "Christ in the Sufferer".

Benson posts an excerpt from Colossians 1:24 at the beginning of the chapter: "I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ." The complete verse, from the Douay-Rheims translation, is "[I, Paul] Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church".

And the issue in this chapter, in a preview of C.S. Lewis' 1940 book title, as Benson says, is whether or not Friendship with Christ offers a key to understanding "the Problem of Pain" because

It is this problem that stands in the heart of every attempt to solve the riddle of the Universe -- the question as to why pain is, or seems to be, the inseparable accompaniment of life. A thousand attempts have been made to answer it. One answer is that of Monism -- that there is in existence no actual God at all of infinite Love and Power, and that pain is merely another name for the upward effort of the inchoate Divinity to realize Itself. Another answer is that of the Buddhist -- that pain is the inevitable consequence of personal sin, and that the sufferings of each individual are the punishment of his guilt in a previous life. It has been reserved for a sect of our own days to maintain that there is no problem, because there is no pain! -- that the whole thing is an illusion; that "thinking makes it so." But no attempt is made in this system to explain why thinking should take this unhappy form, nor why we should think so at all.

Here then the problem stands.

Monsignor Benson does not think this a solvable problem; it's not math or science, that you can add things up and prove something. That's because pain "is one of those vast fundamental facts that must be scrutinized by the whole of man -- his heart and his will and his experience -- as well as by his head; or not at all." We can't identify the effects of pain and suffering in every life the way we know that 2+2=4 every time we do the sum.

As a Christian would expect, Benson looks to the Cross:

And when we turn to Christ crucified, knowing who and what He is, we see the problem set before us in its most acute form. It is not a man who hangs there, however innocent; it is Man without his guilt. And it is not merely unfallen Man who hangs there, it is Incarnate God. Certainly this does not answer the problem as to how it can be just that one can suffer for the sins of another; but it does unmistakably shew to us that one can so suffer, conscious of the fact, and can acquiesce in it; and, further, that this Law of Atonement is of so vast and fundamental a sweep and effect that the Lawgiver Himself can submit to it. It gives us then, as Christians, exactly the reassurance that we need; since it is demonstrated to us that pain is not an unhappy accident of life, not a piece of heartless carelessness, not a labouring struggle upwards on the part of an embryo God; but a part of life so august and so far-reaching that, since the Creator Himself can submit to it, it must fall under that Divine standard of Justice into which our own ideas of justice must some day be expanded.

That gives Benson the key to seeing Christ in the Sufferer:

Accepting this, then, so far as a working hypothesis -- so far as to believe that the Atonement that Christ wrought is according to this incomprehensible law -- we turn again to those other innocent sufferers -- to the crippled child, the agonized mother, the darkened melancholiac soul.

Now if we isolate these sufferers from the rest of the human race, if we take them out of their context and regard them one by one, again we are baffled. But if, on the other hand, we do that which we have been doing throughout these considerations -- meditate, that is, upon how it may be possible to see Christ in them -- light begins to glimmer at once. . . .

Because we can see how the suffering can echo Saint Paul's words to the Colossians:

"I work out, that is," the sufferer may say, "under terms of my own humanity, that atonement which He offered in His own. I am the minister of Christ, as His priest in one manner, His Saint in another, and his whole Church in a third." 

Benson concludes with counsel on how we should respond to the sufferer:

And we, too, looking upon them and seeing in them not merely separate human souls that twist in agony, but souls in whom Christ is set forth evidently crucified, learn one more lesson of the Friendship of Christ -- the last, perhaps, to be learned of all -- that He who in His glorious and mystical Body demands our obedience . . . asks too, in those who are conformed to Him outwardly as well as inwardly -- who bear their pain solely because He bears it for them -- for that which is the most sweet of all the emotions that go to make up friendship, -- our tenderness and our compassion.

Even though Benson does apply this lesson of seeing Christ in the Sufferer in ourselves as he has in the chapters on Christ in the Sinner and Christ in the Average Man, it's clear that we should apply the lesson to ourselves as it helps us bear that pains that come throughout our lives. This seems like a perfect meditation on the Monday before Ash Wednesday as we consider how we should give the alms of Lent to those who suffer.

Book Review: Belloc on Oliver Cromwell

The picture posted above "Cromwell and dead Charles I", painted by Paul Delaroche in 1831, is in some way the opposite of Hilaire Belloc's study of Cromwell, published last year in a handsome hardcover edition by Mysterium Press in their series. Unlike Belloc, who wants to eschew myth and depict reality, Delaroche based this painting on François-René de Chateaubriand's fictional account of Cromwell opening Charles I's coffin. (It doesn't seem like Charles has been decollated at all from the angle Delaroche chose! Is there some blood pooled under the king's beard or is that just a shadow? Lack of a model, I suppose.) Belloc does reference this painting at the end of Chapter 12, "Killing the King":

There is a story the witness to which may be believed or unbelieved; it is of so dramatic a sort that many doubt it; but there is nothing impossible in it. It runs thus:

In the room where the King's body was lying at evening a figure entered which the watcher recognized as Cromwell's. He who so came in lifted the veil and looked upon the face, which was quiet even after such a death, and was heard to mutter, "Cruel necessity." (p, 216)

I commented on Belloc's style in my review of Belloc's Charles I. Here are a few examples of how that style creates confidence in the reader, from the first chapter of Cromwell, "Myth and Reality":

This book is not another life of Oliver Cromwell; there are dozens too many, the earlier batch a mass of slander, the later a mass of panegyric--all of them myth. My object here is to seek reality; to discover what Cromwell was within the nature of the man's motives, the quality of his actions as witnesses to the moral truth about himself. (p. 1)

[Ignoring the two myths, one condemning, the other praising] Belloc states: ". . . it is the business of historical judgment to establish truth on this character. No other object has been pursued in these pages." (p. 7)

And addressing the reader, Belloc emphasizes that we need to know Cromwell's background, his social standing, his great wealth, his attraction to the "intense new religion" [Puritan Calvinism]:

To discover his circumstances, you must, again, envisage those things in the world around him which made him act in a manner natural to him, strange to us: for instance, the presence of what I have called "The Catholic Menace" to him in 1620-50 most vividly apparent, to us in 1930-40 incomprehensible." (p. 8)

With that kind of address to the reader, and that kind of clarity of purpose, Belloc makes a case for trusting his portrait of Cromwell. He would have to be an utter cad if he was/is lying to his reader. He also makes it clear that he is more interested in Cromwell's political actions in bringing about Charles I's death than he is in Cromwell's military and strategic prowess, which he readily acknowledges. Not that he's going to ignore it, but it's not his main interest. He acknowledges it; he offers details in chapter 10, and narrates actions in other chapters.

The Table of Contents:

1. The Myth and Reality
2. The Problem
3. The New Millionaires
4. The New Religion
5. Growth of Character
6. The Catholic Menace
7. The Soldier Out of Place
8. The Nature of the Civil War

9. Forming and Informing

10. The Typical Actions
I. Winceby
II. Marston Moor
III. The Second Battle of Newbury
IV. Naseby
11. The Siege Train and Basing House
12. The Killing of the King
13. Ireland
I. The Approach
II. Drogheda 

III. Wexford
IV. Waterford
V. Kilkenny
VI. Clonmel
14. The Scotch Campaigns
I. Preston
II. Dunbar
III. Worcester
15. Reluctant Power
16. Cromwell in the Presence of Death

The first nine chapters are Belloc's setting of the scene of Cromwell's actions before, during, and after the English Civil War and through his reign as Protector. He describes Cromwell's family background, how the Williams-Cromwell family came to wealth through their connection with Thomas Cromwell and acquisition of land through the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Chapters 4 and 6 analyze the religious/social background of Calvinism and Catholicism, framing Belloc's scrupulously fair and balanced analysis of Cromwell's character. 

It's in Chapter 13 on Cromwell's actions in the sieges of the five Irish cities that Belloc concludes that Cromwell acted cruelly, unjustly, and horribly against especially the civilian population but also the military in those cities when they had been granted quarter. He charges Cromwell with "the profound wounding, mutilation and attempted murder of a nation." (p. 217)

Regarding these sieges, Belloc notes that in "the excesses of cruelty" displayed Cromwell was able to give "free rein to his religion" in a "crusading action" against Catholicism and Catholics. Cromwell accepted and even rejoiced in his responsibility in this action because he saw it as God's will. Belloc judges, however, that he was violating agreed-upon truces, surrender, quarter, and amnesties because of his hatred for Catholics. (pp. 224-225) For example, when the people of Wexford required the continued practice of their Catholic faith and the protection of Catholic churches and monasteries as part of their surrender, these terms "moved Cromwell to violence." 

In the last two chapters, Belloc describes Cromwell's reluctant personal rule and death. Cromwell finds himself facing the same difficulties Charles I had--how to finance the government when the people were tired of years of taxation (the taxation Parliament had fought Charles I about), especially when England was fighting a trade and naval war against the Dutch. Cromwell didn't want this absolute authority but was never able to share it with a reasonable Parliament. The responsibility for the debt England was incurring was all his. It was a "grinding menace" and "the burden grew heavier with every week that passed." (p. 315)

Belloc sympathizes with Cromwell's aches and pains at the end of his life after so much wear and tear on his body in the campaigns of the Civil War. Cromwell suffered from insomnia and was exhausted. Then his "beloved daughter, Elizabeth Claypool must die" and Cromwell "would not leave her" bedside as she was suffering, only adding to his exhaustion. (p. 319) As Belloc had suffered the devastating losses of his wife Elohe in 1914 and his son Louis in 1918 when serving the Royal Flying Corps in France.

I appreciate Belloc's fairness and his standards of judging Cromwell's character, as he has done in other books about Wolsey, Cranmer, and Charles I. I look forward to the books about Charles II and James II. He is careful, discreet, and as fair as possible, acknowledging the possibility of bias.

Please note that the publisher sent me a review copy in exchange for my opinion about the book. Mysterium Press books are available for sale in the USA at Os Justi Press in their "Belloc Books" collection.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Charles I, with Cromwell standing over his dead body.

Delaroche is famous for these genre historical paintings, like this one of Lady Jane Grey or of Saint Joan of Arc questioned by the Cardinal of Winchester.