Tea at Trianon: Holy! Holy! Holy!

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Holy! Holy! Holy!

From Vultus Christi:

The experience of the Holy either leaves one wordless or causes one to sing, «Holy! Holy! Holy!» Revealing one’s uncleanness in the presence of the Infinite Purity of God, it provokes a crisis of abjection, a crisis designed by God to throw us, not into utter despair, but into the most reckless and daring of hopes.

God himself descends into the crisis. To Isaiah he sent one of the seraphim, «having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar» (Isaiah 6:6). The seraph touched the prophet’s mouth, saying, «Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin is forgiven» (Isaiah 6:7).

So powerfully evocative is this text, with its Eucharistic resonances, that the Churches of both East and West have enshrined it in their liturgies. In the traditional Roman Missal the priest prays before the gospel:

Cleanse the heart and lips of me, God almighty, as once thou didst cleanse the lips of the prophet Isaias with a burning coal. So clean a thing let thy loving mercy make of me, that I bring no shame on thy holy gospel by preaching it.
In the Byzantine liturgy, the priest, after giving the deacon to drink of the Holy Chalice, addresses him saying, «Behold, this has touched thy lips and shall remove thy wickedness, and purge thy sin».

The experience of the Holy is given not to annihilate, nor to cast down, nor to condemn, nor to destroy, but to call to life, to purify, and to raise up. Isaiah bears witness to this today. Purified by the burning coal taken from the altar, he responds to the voice of the Lord. «And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‹Whom shall I send and who will go for us?› Then I said, ‹Here am I! Send me›» (Isaiah 6:8). (Read more.)