The Song of All Creation

“The world has been disenchanted.” This is a sentiment first voiced by Max Weber in 1918. Nothing since has been able to convince the world otherwise. There is, however, an increasing awareness that a disenchanted world is less than desirable. We want elves, orcs, wizards, and demons. We want magic.

This is an observation that can easily be made by looking at how we entertain ourselves. Movies, books, gaming, and more point towards a cultural appetite for fantasy. It is well-suited to a world in which much of our time is spent in front of a screen. You’re never more than few clicks away from Middle Earth.

What we fail to understand is that the life of Middle Earth (and any other well-crafted fantasy) is as far-removed from entertainment as possible. In Middle Earth, fighting dragons is not a form of entertainment – it is a matter of life or death. In the well-supplied world of modernity, we take life itself for granted, its only real problem being that it’s boring. All of our dragons are in books, movies, or games. Indeed, such distractions easily serve to help us ignore the true dragons that lurk in the heart.

It is interesting that Lewis and Tolkien, two writers who wrote brilliantly in fantastic fiction, both shared the common experience of the trench warfare of World War I. The brutality and futility of that war are beyond description. Some 20 million perished in its maw. Lewis was grievously wounded by shrapnel in the leg and abdomen. Both men lost their best friends and a large part of their generation in the struggle. At its end, there was no great sense of accomplishment – only a relief that it had ceased. Two decades later, the battles would begin again.

What is quite certain is that neither Lewis nor Tolkien saw themselves as entertainers. I suspect both would have been loath to have seen their work taken up by Hollywood. And though both clearly had children in mind as they wrote, they would have seen such story-telling as a very serious business.

G.K. Chesterton offered this observation:

Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon [G.K. Chesterton, writing the original lines, in Tremendous Trifles, Book XVII: The Red Angel (1909)].

From within Orthodoxy, it is possible to say that the world is more than enchanted. It is magical and wonderful, as well as dangerous and deadly. All of us will die at its hand.

The difficulty with a materialist account of reality is its total indifference to every form and instance of suffering as well as its emptiness of meaning (perhaps the greatest suffering of all). It is little wonder that entertainment (as a form of escape) is such a strong feature of our culture. It assuages the boredom of an empty world.

The classical Christian witness, though, is that the world is not empty. It is filled with a depth of meaning and witness, of presence and signification. As clearly as we are wired for hunger, for fear, for sight and sound, so we are wired for transcendence. Without it, our lives begin to shrink and we fail to thrive.

C.S. Lewis once said that it would be strange to find a creature with an instinctive thirst that lived on a planet without water. It seems clear from the evidence (including the Biblical evidence) that human beings were late in coming to believe in the One God. But we have no evidence of human beings without transcendence. It is only in our very latest years that so many of us have come to despair of anything beyond ourselves. And so we turn to fantasy of the most empty kind. One whose very emptiness and make-believe can only deepen our despair by its lack of substance.

I recall my first exposure to Tolkien and Lewis. The books amazed me, not because they suggested a world of fantasy that I could enjoy. Rather, it was the amazement of realizing that someone else had sensed something that I already knew was true. And I knew that they knew it as well or they could not have written in such a common language.

There has only ever been one door in all of history that truly mattered: the door of Christ’s Empty Tomb. It is that place where that which was hidden beneath and within showed forth into what is present and clear. The meaning of all things (the Logos) revealed Himself and spoke with us. If we saw Him then, or see Him now, then we are not wrong to see Him in every tree, rock, and cloud – in all created things.

St. Paul is among those who saw Him. Of Him, he said this:

All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. (Col. 1:16-17)

St. John who also saw Him, handled Him, and heard Him speak, said this:

All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (John 1:4-5)

The world is enchanted, but with a Magic deeper than our fantasies. In every individual, the drama of the Nativity, Holy Week, and Pascha are re-enacted, re-lived. We are baptized “into the death of Christ,” and “raised in the likeness of His resurrection.” Each moment of our existence is the life of Christ. St. Paul described it, “Christ within us, the hope of glory.”

Modern culture may indeed have become “disenchanted.” It represents a cultural amnesia, a forgetting of the fulness of our humanity. When we become lost in our entertainments, we become prisoners of the passions and seemingly immune to true wonder. The passions are an easy mark for a culture lost in commerce. Nonetheless, there remains within us a quiet suspicion that there is more to the world than meets the pocketbook. That suspicion, along and along, can blossom into faith when doors are opened, or we perceive the One Door that truly matters reflected in the world around us.

Within all things, there is the quiet hymn, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life…”


Father Stephen Freeman is a priest of the Orthodox Church in America, serving as Rector of St. Anne Orthodox Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is also author of Everywhere Present and the Glory to God podcast series.


Featured: Creation of the World, Stammheim Missal, ca. 1170.


Order, Disorder, and the Wisdom of God

Ordo ab chao—“order out of chaos”—is a motto used in various permutations of Freemasonry. It refers to the “new world order” that the revolutionary Masons will bring out of the chaos they create in their revolutions bent on first separating and then destroying “throne and altar.” At its heart, Freemasonry is diabolical, even if many of its adherents call themselves Christians. The devil being the simia Dei — “the ape of God” — many of the trappings of Freemasonry have been pilfered from that Christendom the Masons so hate: their degrees, their symbols, and even their name, that of the Catholic guild of the stone masons — all are stolen Catholic goods.

The concept of ordo ab chao, while it is a revolutionary motto put at the service of evil, is actually quite Catholic if we understand it correctly. How might we do that? When we Christians look at the world and see so much disorder, we can assure ourselves, by our divine and Catholic faith, that the Providence of the all-wise God is serenely seated above this madness and will bring an order out of it that will astonish us all — His friends and foes alike. We have good reason to believe this. “And we know,” Saint Paul tells us, “that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints” (Rom. 8:28). There is nothing omitted from those “all things”; Saint Augustine assures us that even our past sins are included.

Biblical Examples

Consider the revolutionary rejection of Jesus Christ by the official representatives of the true religion of the Old Testament. As wicked revolutionaries, they stirred up a mob and accomplished the mad crime of deicide. Yet, in God’s providence, that horrible crime was the very occasion of our salvation. (See this idea developed further in What Nobody Can Take from You, where I consider the patristic figure of Our Lord’s sacred humanity being a sort of “bait” or “trap” set by God for the devil.) Moreover, many members of that mob “had compunction in their heart” when they heard the preaching of Saint Peter (Acts 2:37); they did penance and were baptized. Later, as the nascent Church expanded, even “a great multitude also of the priests obeyed the faith” (Acts 6:7).

The revolutionaries became loyalists.

We can see a Christianized ordo ab chao even in the Old Testament. Consider the much beloved story of Joseph of the Old Testament, the son of Jacob who prefigured both his namesake, Saint Joseph, and Our Lord Himself. As literature, the true history of this amazing figure is a “comedy” in the sense that Dante and Shakespeare used the word, because, after all sorts of horrible things take place, it ends happily. These words of Joseph to his brothers are the revelation of just how happy an ending it is: “You thought evil against me: but God turned it into good, that he might exalt me, as at present you see, and might save many people” (Gen. 50:20).

God transformed the evil of Joseph’s treacherous brothers into good. Not only that, but the evil occasioned Joseph being exalted and turned into a savior of “many people”—clearly prefigurative of Jesus, the Savior.

Harmony out of Dissonance

Dom Augustin Guillerand, the Carthusian spiritual writer, wrote thus in his wonderful volume, The Prayer of the Presence of God:

My God, You are infinite order. Now, such vestiges of Your order that we can find and perceive here below are marvelous and dazzle us — and we see so little!

You are so essentially “order” that even what we call disorder is made to serve Your designs. You possess the amazing power of making harmony out of dissonance. It is true: to recognize that supreme order, we must pass beyond the duration of time and present circumstances — in short, of what is not — and wait until the passing and superficial moment has produced what Your eternal gaze sees and Your immense love wills.

Your wisdom is this gaze, seeing far beyond time and distance. It emerges from a mind that creates order and a love that gives itself. The order is the outcome of the mind that loves, the proper name for which is Wisdom.

“You are so essentially ‘order’ that even what we call disorder is made to serve Your designs,” wrote the Carthusian. That sentence is worth savoring, reflecting upon, turning over in our minds and hearts, and discussing with Our Lord.

The sentence that follows gives us a glimpse the monk’s sensitivity to music. It is worth pondering: “You [God] possess the amazing power of making harmony out of dissonance.” Those who have elementary knowledge of music theory will know that it is the dissonances which provide much of the harmonic “motion” in music. For a trite example of this, the dissonant tritone at the word “two” in “shave and a haircut, two bits” resolves into the consonant major sixth at the word “bits.” While contemporary serious music often revels in the dissonant with no resolution to consonance — making most of it cacophonous claptrap — serious music of a bygone era, like Bach, used dissonances resolving to consonances all over the place to move the harmonic structure while supporting a beautiful melody. In the context of Dom Guillerand’s book, we can imagine that, if our life has occasional dissonances in it (troubles, crosses, contradictions), Our Lord can and will resolve them into harmonious sounding consonances. If we cooperate with His grace, we are making beautiful music with God.

Perhaps it is the idea of “life as music” that led Pére Jacques Marquette to beg of his Immaculate Mother that she, “make clean my heart and my song.”

Picturing Divine Order

Another artistic allegory that we might consider in connection with this theme of order and disorder, though not employed by our Carthusian writer, is life as a painting. Imagine, if you will, an enormous canvas upon which an exquisite work of art is painted by the skilled hand of a master. If we look through a magnifying glass at a tiny segment of the work, but are, at the same time, prevented from seeing the whole, we might only see what is dark or even ugly. Extrapolating from the tiny part we are allowed at that moment to set our gaze upon, we might reason that we are beholding something hideous, only to discover that we have been pondering a small section of the eyeball of the serpent in Peter Paul Rubens’ exquisite masterpiece, The Immaculate Conception.

We even have an expression for this in our common parlance; we call it, “seeing the big picture.” But here and now, as Dom Augustin says, “we see so little!”

God is an artist; and, more than any other artist, He loves the work of His craft. We are that craft, not only as individuals, but as a Mystical Body. If at times there are dark spots in our lives, let us strive to practice the Christian virtues, prayerfully calling upon the Divine Artist with confidence that when His full canvas is revealed — when we “pass beyond the duration of time and present circumstances,” in Dom Augustin’s words — what we thought were hopeless blots and spills were but the dark contrasts of His masterful chiaroscuro.

It behooves us to consecrate ourselves totally to Jesus through Mary, generously and penitentially accepting all the chaos that circumstances impose upon us, asking God only that this disorder be made to serve His loving designs. Then we can work with God, in our own small way, to bring order out of chaos.

As a “coda,” I present Brother Francis’ meditations on order from his wonderful book of meditations, The Challenge of Faith:

  1. The heart of wisdom is the appreciation of order: putting first things first.
  2. The mission of religious life is the restoration of order.
  3. God created the world for man, and man for salvation: all order serves this one end, the salvation of man.
  4. St. Teresa of Avila commenting on the text, “Thou hast set him over the works of thy hands: Thou has subjected all things under his feet” (Ps. 8: 7-9), says that this is true principally of the saints, because most men subject themselves to the things of this world. Only the saints are truly the lords of creation.
  5. Peace is the tranquility of order; beauty is its splendor.
  6. Order is the perfect disposition of means to the end. Only those who know the true end can work for order. He who knows not the true doctrines of salvation is like a captain of a ship who does not know the destination of his journey.
  7. The only first principle of order is the Apostles’ Creed; the best prayer for order is the “Our Father”; the best grasp of the means for order is the “Hail Mary”; the triumphant shout of order is the “Hail Holy Queen”.

Brother André Marie is Prior of St. Benedict Center, an apostolate of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Richmond New Hampshire. He does a weekly Internet Radio show, Reconquest, which airs on the Veritas Radio Network’s Crusade Channel. This article appears courtesy of Catholicism.org.


Featured: Fiant luminaria in firmamento cæli (Let there be light), mosaic, Monreale Cathedral, created ca. 12th and 13th centuries.


Saint Michael, The Angel of Religion

The new esoteric fashions that are springing up to fill the void left by the retreat of Christianity and the forgetfulness of the sacred, feature angels who supposedly connect us to invisible energies. Far removed from such figures, and far from maintaining our tendency towards egocentricity, the Archangel looks upwards, and invites us to do the same. Saint Michael teaches us to rediscover our sense of God. Abbé Paul Roy introduces us to this Archangel, whom we can only invoke more fully if we know him better.

After the centuries of Enlightenment, rationalism, scientism and faith in progress, our era marks a return to the sacred. Alas, the eclipse of the religious has not come to an end—rather than returning to the faith of the ancients, people remain radically modern, willing to do anything but acknowledge themselves as heirs, and prefer to build their own spirituality. Consciously or unconsciously, most are joining the ranks of what used to be known as the New Age, and what some today refer to as magical thinking. Esotericism is on everyone’s lips, attracting many souls clumsily in search of God.

Angels, spiritual beings halfway between man and heaven, are making a strong comeback in the contemporary imagination. A quick search on the Internet, however, leaves us wondering about the contemporary conception of angelic spirits: angels—in particular the “72 guardian angels”—seem to have become a means of connecting to energies and to an invisible world in which we are bathed without being aware of it, of developing our capacity for empathy and personal creativity.

This is reminiscent of the emanatist doctrine of the Platonists, who saw man as a quasi-divine being fallen to earth and enclosed in matter, separated from the original One by a ladder of intermediate beings, to be traversed in an upward direction, by illumination, to return to fundamental harmony. Thus conceived, angels are no longer ministers or auxiliaries of God, but obstacles in man’s relationship with the true God. Like the esoteric doctrines that flourish everywhere today, they lead our contemporaries down blind allies, distracting them from the profound religious quest for the true light that leads to a profound change of life.

A Powerful Defender

We have come a long way from the true nature of angels, and the figure of their prince, Michael. Far from keeping us in the egocentric attitude that characterizes modern religiosity, the archangel looks upwards, and invites us to do the same. Mi-ka-El, in Hebrew: “who is like God.” His name is a program. Saint Michael is an effective intermediary, a powerful defender of the human race, but a messenger who steps aside, so that man can once again be directed towards his Creator. The archangel thus appears on mountain tops—theophanic places par excellence in the Old Testament—to remind us that his role is none other than that of a hyphen, a signpost.

From Mont Gargan to Mont Tombe, now Mont-Saint-Michel, the sanctuaries where the Prince of Angels is venerated are invitations to contemplation of celestial things. The Prince of Angels is named in the Old Testament as the one who fights for the people of Israel (Dan 10:13), the “one of the chief princes.” In the Epistle of Jude (Jude 9), he is mysteriously designated as the one who disputed with the Devil over the body of Moses, who expired on Mount Nebo, in sight of the Promised Land, without anyone ever finding his remains. In the Book of Revelation (Rev 12:7), he leads the angels to fight the dragon—despite the latter’s counterattack, he has the upper hand, and from heaven, hurls Satan down to earth.

Saint Michael’s role in the history of the Church does not end there—soon the object of popular veneration in the East (the Copts dedicated up to seven liturgical feasts to him), then in the West (with a few excesses that the authorities were obliged to curb, as witnessed by certain letters of Saint Augustine), he appeared at Mont Gargan in the 5th century; then at the beginning of the 8th to Bishop Aubert of Avranches, to whom he gave an indication, by means of a strong pressure of his finger on his skull (the relic preserved in the church of Saint-Gervais d’Avances still bears witness to this), to build a sanctuary at the summit of Mont Tombe, an isolated rock in the middle of the large sandy bay bordering his diocese.

Centuries later, Christian peoples’ veneration for the Prince of Angels has not waned, and God allowed him to continue to intervene visibly on their behalf. When France found itself in distress, he was the messenger sent to Jehanne, the Pucelle of Domrémy, soon to be the liberator of Orléans. To prepare the children of Fatima for the apparitions of Our Lady, the angel appeared to them three times, taught them to pray and mysteriously gave them Holy Communion. St. Michael’s close relationship with the Eucharist is still visible in the rites of the Mass, where the angel is invoked on numerous occasions—in the Confiteor, in the blessing of incense at the offertory in the traditional Mass, and even in the Roman Canon (implicitly in the Supplication prayer), where the holy offering is even asked to be carried by him to the heavenly altar. On the Last Day, Saint Michael will again be our intercessor, as well as taking part in the judgment (1 Thess 4:16), as he is often depicted holding the scales that weigh our souls by the weight of their charity.

Saint Michael thus has a dual function, which is an important teaching for our spiritual life: tradition identifies him among the seven angels who stand continually before the face of the Lord (To 12, 15), and his very name is a praise of God’s infinite glory; but the archangel also presents to Him the prayers of pious men (as Raphael presented the prayers and religious acts of old Tobias, cf. To 12, 12), and he willingly serves as a messenger and intercessor.

As a divine sign, Saint Michael shows us that there is no creature too high or distant to condescend to support our misery, since God Himself became man in Jesus. An angelic model, he teaches us to keep our eyes raised to heaven, full of gratitude and admiration for the Divine Majesty, proclaiming with him: “Who is like God?” In a world so far removed from religion and yet so versed in spiritualities, could St. Michael, duly presented and venerated, serve as a bridge to bring our contemporaries back to the unity of truth and faith?


Father Paul Roy is a priest of the Fraternity of Saint-Pierre, and moderator of the site and training application Claves. This interview comes through the kind courtesy of La Nef.


Featured: Saint Michael, by Guariento di Arpo; painted ca. 1350.


Orison

An ascent of the soul in search of God, a dialogue, a true encounter, “an intimate friendship in which we often speak alone with the God we know we love,” a test of solitude, diligence, interiority and faith… what exactly is an “orison?”

The word “orison,” unlike many others in the religious vocabulary, has retained its Christian specificity; yet its quasi-synonym “meditation” is used in other religious systems, and even in a context that may be areligious, such as “mindfulness meditation.” There is a kind of irreducibility to the word’s passage outside Christianity. To help us understand this, three traditional definitions of prayer are presented.

An Ascent of the Soul

Following Evagrius, the Fathers teach us that prayer is an ascent of the spirit, or soul, towards God. It is thus an activity that enables us to seek out a transcendent Being beyond the human sphere; but contemporary mentality, which refuses with Kant that God can present Himself to us as an object of knowledge, rejects this claim, stigmatized as a dream of selfishly sought union with a transcendent divine, and opposes it to prophetic prayer, where ultimately it is “man who expresses himself.” However, far from being a contamination of Christian thought by Neoplatonism, this conception of prayer is rooted in the Word of God: man must seek God, but his thoughts are not those of man (Is 55:8).

A Conversation

Prayer is also defined as a conversation with God, a dialogue. It is a relationship between two people: the one who prays and the living God, both transcendent and accessible. The Latins wanted to explain the word orison, derived from the verb orare, from the word, “mouth,” “bone;” even if the etymology is not confirmed by specialists, we can retain the idea: the one who prays speaks, opens his mouth to address God. This is only possible if God has spoken first, revealed Himself. Prayer, then, is a response to God’s first word, the beginning of a conversation. Prayer is thus a face-to-face encounter, so to speak, as Deuteronomy says of Moses (5:4). The mystery of prayer is that, although we cannot see God’s face, we can nevertheless enter into a relationship with Him. Is this not also where He gives us His Spirit, His breath of life? It is a kind of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for those of us who are drowning—we need his vital breath. In the desert of Egypt, Saint Anthony the Great already understood this, pointing out in his last exhortation that prayer is a kind of supernatural breathing (Life of St. Anthony by Saint Athanasius, no. 91). Pope Francis takes up the image himself: Christians “find an exclusive concern with this world to be narrow and stifling, and, amid their own concerns and commitments, they long for God, losing themselves in praise and contemplation of the Lord” (Gaudete et exsultate, n. 147).

The Secret

In Chapter 6 of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Christ gives us a valuable catechesis on prayer: “When you pray…” You must withdraw, close your door, pray to the Father in secret. You will not see Him, but He, your Father, sees in secret: He will hear you. Your Father knows what is best for you even before you tell Him. Could we not object that, in that case, there is no point in talking to Him? That would be a bit short-sighted, since our very relationship with God, regardless of what He may grant us, is already a great good for man. Dom Guéranger writes in the preface to his Liturgical Year: “Prayer is the first good for man, since it puts him in relationship with God, for there man is in his place before his Creator and Savior.” This is true of all prayer, of petition and thanksgiving, but more particularly of prayer itself.

Time

Saint Teresa of Avila formulated the classic definition: “it is an intimate friendship, in which we often converse alone with the God we know we love” (Autobiography, 8.5; Gaudete et exsultate, n. 149). Solitude, assiduity, interiority, faith—these are the characteristics of interior prayer. We have already seen the dimension of dialogue. Saint Theresa specifies that it should take place in solitude, a faithful translation of the Gospel text mentioned above. Above all, she insists on the frequency of prayer: we must “converse often with God.” Repetition itself shapes our soul, refines its orientation. For it takes time to become accustomed to God, to detach ourselves from the things of the world. And at the same time, we need to give God time to work in us. “The Word of God dwelt in man and became son of man to accustom man to grasp God, and accustom God to dwell in man, according to the mind of the Father,” writes Saint Irenaeus (Adv. haer., III.20.2).. Aristotle had already pointed out that friendship can only be established “when the measure of salt has been exhausted,” i.e., when we have eaten so many meals together that we have emptied the salt shaker. If we want to grow in charity, that divine friendship with God, we need to devote time to it.

Finally, faith. We “converse with the God we know we love” through faith, without feeling or experiencing the charity of God that envelops us and calls us to His intimacy. God is Spirit, and it is spiritually that we go to Him, even if sometimes our very sensibility can be touched. The Spirit prays within us with unutterable groanings, St. Paul tells us (Rom 8:26), and this prayer is not perceptible to the one praying either. St. Anthony the Great said: “Prayer is not perfect when the monk is conscious of himself and of the fact that he is actually praying” (John Cassian, Conference 9:31).

The practice of prayer is intimately linked to God’s self-revelation in Christ. Faced with an absolutely transcendent God, man is called to submission, not to a trade in friendship; in a religious climate dominated by law, he may be content to observe commandments; but if God reveals himself as Father in Christ, then it is a need to seek Him in secret, to take time for Him, to wait for Him.


This meditation is offered by a monk of Fontgombault Abbey. This article comes through the kind courtesy of La Nef.


Featured: Repentance, by Oleg Vishnyakov; painted in 1995.


About Dasha on “Tradition”: The Tears of our Resurrection

Dear friends! Dear participants of the Tradition Festival! Dear founders of the Daria Dugina Prize!

Unfortunately, due to circumstances, I was unable to attend the Tradition Festival this time, although I tried not to miss it before. Tradition is the main word in my life. It became the main and the last word in the life of my daughter, Dasha Dugina.

Only that for which people are ready to sacrifice their lives becomes valuable. Tradition is the highest value. It is what makes the Motherland the Motherland, the people the people, the Church the Church, and culture the culture.

I would like to say a few words about the Creative Award. This is a wonderful initiative. There is hardly a better way to honor her memory. After all, Dasha was the embodiment of creativity. She was a leap into the future. She lived in faith and hope. She was always looking forward and upward. Perhaps, she took it too steeply, as far as “up” is concerned… But her message lives on among us and is only becoming more and more distinct, focused and clear. Her message is an invitation to the Russian future. A future that has yet to come true.

Dasha always thought of herself as a project, as a burst of creative will. She was enflamed by philosophy, religion, politics, culture, and art. She lived so richly, so fully, precisely because she cared about everything. Hence such a range of her interests, her texts, her speeches, her creativity, her endeavors. She wanted very much during her lifetime that Russians would move, that our country and our culture would move from a standstill and take off.

She considered it her mission to live for Russia, and if she had to, to die for Russia. This is what she wrote in her Diaries, Topi i vysi moyego serdtsa (Drown and Rise, my Heart), which we have recently published. Dasha’s second philosophical book, Eskhatologicheskiy Optimizm (Eschatological Optimism) will be published soon—in several languages at once, because Dasha is remembered and loved in the world.

Living for Russia is her message, which should be passed on and on. Dasha’s award is more than a formal encouragement; it is a living vibrating impulse.

We have many wonderful true heroes, warriors, defenders, people of deep soul and pure heart. Some of them gave their lives for the Motherland. Some live with us now. The memory of every hero is sacred. And the memory of Dasha.

The fact is that Dasha is not just a model patriot and citizen, she is also the bearer of an incredible, though not yet fully revealed, only intended (but how intended!) spiritual potential. She sought to embody the grace of imperial Russia, the style of the Silver Age, and the deep interest in Neoplatonist philosophy with which she burned. Sincere and heartfelt Russian Orthodoxy and geopolitics. Modern avant-garde art—in music, theater, painting, film—and a tragic comprehension of the ontology of war. Sober and aristocratically restrained understanding of the fatal crisis of modernity and the fiery will to overcome it. This is eschatological optimism. To look into the eyes of misfortune and horror of modernity and to keep a luminous faith in God, His Mercy, His justice.

I wish that the memory of Dasha would not so much focus attention on the images of her lively, charming, filled-with-pure-energy girl’s life, but becomes a continuation of her ardor, the fulfillment of her plans, her far-reaching, pure imperial dreams.

Today it is clear to many that Dasha has objectively become our national hero. Poems and paintings, cantatas and songs, plays and theater productions are dedicated to her. Streets in towns and cities of Russia are named after her. A monument is being prepared for installation in Moscow, and possibly in other cities.

A young girl who had never taken part in hostilities, who had never called for violence or aggression, who was deep and smiling, naive and well-educated, was brutally murdered in front of her father’s eyes by a heartless, ruthless enemy—a Ukrainian terrorist who did it here, at the festival “Tradition,” not hesitating to involve her young daughter in the murder. She was sent to do this by the authorities in Kiev and the secret services of the Anglo-Saxon world—the staunch enemies of Tradition. A year ago, I gave a lecture here on “the Role of the Devil in History.” Dasha listened. So did the murderer. The Devil was listening to what I was saying about the Devil, preparing to do his diabolical work.

And sure enough, Dasha became immortal. Our people could not remain indifferent to this. And my tragedy, the tragedy of our family, Dasha’s friends, all those who communicated and cooperated with her, became the tragedy of all our people. And tears began to choke people—both those who knew this girl and those who heard about her for the first time.

And these are not simple tears. These are tears of our resurrection, of our purification, of our coming victory.

Dasha is becoming a symbol. She already is. But now it is important that the content of this symbol does not disappear, does not dissolve, does not fade away. It is important not only to preserve the memory of Dasha, but to continue her work. Because she had this Cause. Her Cause.

That is why this prize is so important, why it is important to work on the Daria Dugina Foundation, as suggested by my close and good friends Konstantin Malofeev, Eduard Boyakov and many others. Young philosophers, theologians, priests, musicians, politicians, scientists, poets, artists, journalists, military officers—all those who today are building the spiritual basis of the Russian World, reviving the depths and heights of our Empire. Dasha supports them, inspires them, helps them, protects them above all.

There are saints who help in certain circumstances—those in poverty, those in illness, those in wanderings, those in captivity. Even individual icons are distributed in God’s mercy in such a way that they care for people in different difficult, sometimes desperate situations. “Assuage my Sorrows” is the name of one of the images of the Mother of God. And there is one canon that is recited when it becomes impossible to live at all and everything collapses…..

Mother of God Assuage My Sorrows (a wonderworking icon, Church of St. Nikolaev Odrin Monastery, Karachev, Orlov province, ca. 1640).

And so are the protagonists. They are different, too. Some embody military valor. Others, sacrificial tenderness. Others, strength of mind. Others still, the pinnacle of political will. They are all beautiful.

Dasha embodies the Soul. The Russian Soul.

Both the prize named after her and the Foundation we are going to establish should be dedicated to the Russian Soul. This is the most important thing. If there is no Soul, there will be no Russia; there will be nothing.

Many good people have volunteered to carry the memory of Dasha. There is the People’s Institute of Daria Dugina. There are Daria Dugina’s Lessons of Courage. There is a new series in the wonderful publishing house, Vladimir Dal: “Dasha’s Books.” There are various awards and other initiatives. And let people do what their heart tells them to do. The main thing is to do it all with a soul.

Thanks be to Christ!


Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitica.


Apotheosis of the Warrior Yevgeny

Dasha, back at the very beginning of the Special Military Operation, once told me: “Prigozhin is so strong and confident, bold, sharp, that probably no one prays for him. It doesn’t even cross anyone’s mind. Let’s at least start praying for him.”

Today we commemorate (not according to the calendar, but according to the meaning) Moses of Murin, Barbara of Loukan, the seven martyrs of Kerkyra: Iakiskholos, Faustianus, Ianuarius, Marsalius, Euphrasius and Mammius, St. Anthony of Karea. And of course the one who was the first to be in paradise.

We did not notice how we moved from a giggling society to a people deeply immersed in the element of tragedy. Some had already, piercingly realized it in themselves. Some are on the way. Pain, sorrow, grief, anguish, suffering, deafening rage—this is the register of states of a normal person who has entered the structures of war. But also strong faith, quiet hope, a maturing will, a growing mind, a hardened spirit.

The very fact of the death of the heroes of “Wagner” is much more fundamental than the reasons, manipulations and speculations around it. There is no need to get bogged down in details and versions. We are at war, and war means death. And Prigozhin entered the war wholeheartedly, gave himself to it. No one can escape war. Prigozhin realized it before anyone else and did not resist. He acted like a man. And died like a man.

In general, the Wagner group had a special attitude towards death—just face it.

At some point, everyone’s death will come to them. And there is no use squealing about what I am in for. There is always a reason. Prigozhin knew exactly why. God rest the soul of your slain servant, the warrior Eugene.

You know best what to do with him. We only pray that Thy will be done. But still, if it is possible, forgive him. For the sake of Russia, Your country, Your people, forgive him. And forgive us.

If the diabolical enemy is targeting our heroes, it means that we have heroes.

Life, like death, can only be random in random people. There, perhaps, it is mechanical millstones and the sporadic intrusion of randomness. Real people have a destiny, which means a higher meaning, a deeper significance and a great logic—both in life and death. Meaninglessness is far worse than death. Prigozhin, Utkin and the other “Wagner” people were anything but random people.

The power of the people is that thousands take the place of one fallen hero. This is how the people testify that they are alive. Yesterday was the end of the age of technology. The era of ontologies—Russian existence and its laws—is beginning. From now on, it is necessary to speak responsibly and seriously about everything. As if in the presence of people, the tribunal, conscience, death.

The relation of Russians to each other goes not from person to person, but somehow otherwise. Maybe through the land. And, so, through the Russian land we understand, pity and feel each other. Both the living and the dead.

In our hell they were, indeed, the best.


Alexander Dugin is a widely-known and influential Russian philosopher. His most famous work is The Fourth Political Theory (a book banned by major book retailers), in which he proposes a new polity, one that transcends liberal democracy, Marxism and fascism. He has also introduced and developed the idea of Eurasianism, rooted in traditionalism. This article appears through the kind courtesy of Geopolitica.


Featured: Apotheosis of a Warrior, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, ca. 1696–1770.


Open Up to Wonder

Blanche Streb is a mother, essayist and columnist, who holds a doctorate in pharmacy. She has just written a remarkable book, Grâce à l’émerveillement (Because of Wonder) which invites us to rediscover our sense of wonder that can allow us to embrace life with enthusiasm, as we marvel at the mystery of being. Through the kind courtesy of La Nef, we are happy to bring you an excerpt.

The times we live in are fascinating and worrying. More and more technology, more and more speed, more and more so-called rights, more and more material goods. And yet… ever less time, ever less meaning, ever less hope. So much so that all around us, and within us, temptations to flee the present are multiplying—by becoming dizzy in the hustle and bustle or in front of our screens, by taking pride in our illusions of mastery and possession, by hardening ourselves in jadedness, by dozing off in the drone of what’s the point.

And then, one day, we come to realize that the misdeeds we deplore are first and foremost causes to be combated, rather than effects to be lamented. And we feel an inner act of resistance emerging. No! cries out our whole being. I don’t want to sink into indifference. I don’t want to miss out on my life. I don’t want to give in to swan-songs or those of sirens, I don’t want this ordeal to take everything with it. I’m here, alive. And I want to live fully, here and now.

In this world thirsting for meaning and hope, there is an eternal science of life to be (re)discovered today, a sovereign antidote to the disenchantment and cynicism that plague our times—Grace and the power of wonder. This intuition that precedes us, we all have already perceived its presence and active force in the corners of our lives. For this is a science reserved neither for the wise nor the learned, neither for children, nor for the spoiled-of-life. On the contrary, it is the inspiration of inspirations that wishes to pass through each and every one of us, whatever our gifts or what we do, in the brightness as well as in the discretion, in the small things and small nothings of everyday love.

Wonder is an innate disposition of the human heart. Some are richly endowed. Others are meagerly endowed. Some people, because they have lived through a profoundly “transforming” experience or even come close to the end, rediscover this science of life. It’s as if the nearness of death gives rise to an urgency to live. As if consenting to the end were in fact consenting to everything that needs to be lived.

Wonder seizes us, in the banality as in the extraordinary of our lives, and plants a seed of enthusiasm that delicately deflects our trajectory, breathing new life into us, giving a different consistency, substance and depth to what surrounds us, lives within us and around us. Wonder is not a simple, silly or childish emotion. It’s not an escape from the real world, but a doorway to the essential. It is lived in a sharpened awareness, capable of seeing beauty where it is, but also the goodness of acts and people, courage, fortitude. It doesn’t erase hardship or make the ordinary wonderful, but allows us to see the marvelous in the ordinary, the new in the familiar, the possible in the existing. It keeps our eyes from losing the grace to open up to the world each time as if for the first time. This gift of wonder enables us to see beyond what we see, beyond nature and its laws, to glimpse that the world is not limited to the visible, and that reality is vaster than we think. Through it, we gain access to another kind of Knowledge, far higher than the one lurking in our wherewithal—and to an encounter with the Other. This gift of wonder can be summed up in four words—do not be indifferent. And more than anything else, it’s up to us to open the door to it, to choose to live it, to cultivate it.

At the end of this month, the Church celebrates Pentecost. The coming of the One promised to us from all eternity. The One who strengthens and comforts us. He nurtures in us the spiritual flair that clears our path and helps us discern between what to seek and what to flee, what to love and what to hate. Where we must think big—for nothing is impossible for God—and where we must remain small—for we are neither perfect nor all-powerful. I deeply believe that many of the evils of our time would vanish if only our disposition served His gifts. In them lies what can heal so many wounds and think of ways to guard against them. These are not easy times. The moral and spiritual crisis we are going through is real and profound. It leads to so many lies, illusions, irresponsibility and absurdities. “This era demands of us a spiritual conflagration,” wrote Solzhenitsyn in 1978 in his famous Harvard speech.

Nothing counts more than human faculties and virtues, to steer our soul. Wonder is one of them. A powerful faculty. It gets us off the couch, out of our egos. We don’t marvel at ourselves, or only through a Grace we feel has passed through us, but for which we know we were neither the source nor the completion. Yes, let us dare to say to Grace—Come, enter my home! It’s at work, it’s (working) on us. These small steps of God in our lives can only make us more confident and “hopeful,”

There are so many aspirations that seek their way into the depths of our clogged souls—the desire for the good, the beautiful, the worthy; to be more, better, happier; to serve, to progress. Let’s set them aglow. Let’s turn them over to God. It’s going to be contagious.


Featured: Morgen im Riesengebirge (Morning in the Riesengebirge), by Caspar David Friedrich; painted ca. 1810-1811.


Hermits: The Christian Yogis

In his empty cave, the hermit faced the mother of all battles: sitting in solitude and fighting against himself.

After a long and expensive journey, a Western man arrived at a Zen temple in a remote Japanese village. Exhausted, he parked his huge backpack, passed through the entrance of the temple and, in broken English, asked the monk guardian for an audience with the master.

After a while, the guardian led him to an immense and almost empty meditation hall. On the waxed wooden floor, there was only an altar with a statue of Buddha, and, in one corner, a rustic wooden throne, where a skeletal old man with a shaven skull and black robe sat in the lotus posture. Following the guardian’s instructions, the Westerner gave the gassho—ritual salute with joined hands—in front of the altar, walked around the entire room and prostrated while n his knees—buttocks on his heels and insteps on the floor—before the master’s throne.

The conversation, which took place in English and Japanese, and thanks to the translation work of the guardian, went like this:

“Speak,” whispered the master, piercing the Westerner with his vacant gaze.

“You see, I come from far away and I would like to practice Zen with you,” muttered the Westerner, overwhelmed by the luminous energy of the master and pained by the uncomfortable posture.

“I see, soul of a fool. Have you really traveled so many miles to come here? Don’t you have any temples in your own country?” The master asked in a firm voice, still smiling.

“Well, I’m not one to go to Mass, sit with grandmothers, listen to the priest’s sermons while mumbling, “Amen.” I’ve tried that, but it doesn’t work. I’m looking for something else. A body-mind practice, asceticism, superhumanism, enlightenment. There is none of that in Christianity.”

“Yes, there is. Go to the desert.”

The Call of the Desert

In The Way of a Pilgrim, an anonymous Orthodox Christian text, it says that “those who truly practice interior prayer flee from human contact and take refuge in unknown places.” But the strange force that between the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th century pushed thousands of men to leave their towns and cities to devote themselves to solitary contemplation in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, Arabia and Persia, remains a mystery.

The most plausible hypothesis holds that these men intended to flee from the mediocrity of the Christian communities of their time. At that time, the Roman Empire had decreed freedom of worship; and, being free from persecution, Christians rested on their laurels. There seemed to be more of the faithful than ever, but most were lazy and conformist.

The hermit went to the desert in search of that pure and ascetic spirituality associated with hot climates. And he would settle in solitude, in a sort of anarchic monasticism, to get away from the herd of the flock and the disturbances of the senses. His maxim was fuge, tace, quiesce: flee, be quiet and remain calm.

Thus, since after the Constantinian peace, blood martyrdom, the highest expression of faith in Christ, was no longer possible, the hermit opted for another type of martyrdom: bloodless martyrdom. An ascetic path that, with its privations, mortifications and body-mind disciplines, is linked to the practices of the yogis or Zen monks. In his empty cave, the hermit faces the mother of all battles: to sit in solitude and fight against himself. Overcoming his ego, the solitary walks towards an ambitious evolutionary horizon—to transcend the human condition and transmute into a new species: the saint.

“Sell What You Have. Give it to the Poor. Come and Follow Me”

This imperative Gospel sentence (Mark 10:21) triggered a real metanoia in Anthony, a 20-year-old man who, after the death of his parents, had inherited a large fortune. It was the third century when Anthony donated all his possessions and went to live in an abandoned tomb, where he ate only one meal a day and devoted the rest of the day to contemplation. In his retreat he suffered attacks of lust, gluttony, anger, boredom and that kind of spiritual anguish called “acedia.” After a time, he began to receive visits from people asking him for miracles, and was forced to flee to the Egyptian desert, where he occupied a ruined fortress, around which he built a high wall to keep out the curious. Hermits like him abhorred fame because they knew that it was accompanied by an ego boost, with the consequent spiritual setback. Therefore, they fled at the slightest gesture of veneration, and some even arranged for the concealment of their graves to avoid posthumous honors.

Immersed in desert solitude, Anthony had to survive extreme temperatures, wild beasts, vermin and hurricanes, as well as continuing to battle delusions and temptations; but eventually he experienced a sovereign peace. His face shone in the night and his solitude was like that described by Dionysius the Areopagite: “Superlatively abstracted from every habit, movement, life, imagination, opinion, name, word, thought, intelligence, substance, state, foundation, union, end, immensity; finally, from everything that exists.” Anthony’s brilliance attracted other men who also wanted to be saints. Thus, Christian monasticism was born.

Nudus nudum Christum sequi

The case of Anthony the Great is similar to that of many other solitaries who filled the deserts at the same time. In Scete alone there was a stable population of 40,000 hermits. It was, then, a multitude who, after distributing their goods among the needy, followed Christ into the desert, assuming the sequela Christi in the tradition of the nudus nudum Christum sequi, that is, to follow naked the One who goes naked. The hermit lived with the bare necessities: at most, a tunic, a staff, a crucifix and a skull. As Euprepius said, “belongings are nothing but obstacles.”

At first, the hermits were entirely independent, but in time they began to form small group, far enough away from each other so as not to disturb each other and close enough to help each other or celebrate Eucharist. There were no hierarchies in the desert either, until a few elders whose wisdom was based on their long experience began to stand out, and, much to their regret, they were set up as teachers. Most of the eremitic colonies were so discreet that there are not even traces of their existence. The most famous ones were established in the north, not far from Alexandria, in Nitria, Scete and Celsus, and in them lived anchorites like Ammon, the two Macarius, Arsenius, Sisoes or Paul the Simple.

Among the hermits there were also women. They tended to be of aristocratic origin and their number is difficult to determine, as many of them pretended to be men to avoid trouble. With time, female colonies arose, and steely old women who, like Sarra, gave hard advice to their disciples: “Be as if you were dead, without having any concern for the things of the world, practice hesychasm in the cell and remember only God and death.”

How to Practice Hesychasm

Christianity succeeds where paganism failed—in making man immortal. In the words of St. Augustine, “God became man so that man might become God.” Just as God took on a human body, man can verify God in his own flesh. The practices of the Desert Fathers go in this direction.

As in yoga or Zen, the basis of hesychasm—spiritual practice of the hermits—lies in breathing: what Nicephorus calls “breathing God.” Rather than mantras or sutras, the hermit pronounces prayers—short and deep, holding his breath as long as possible until he pronounces them—or exaltations of the divine name such as “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” The Pilgrim repeated this prayer 3,000 times a day, then 6,000, and later 12,000—until he no longer needed to repeat it, for he prayed with the beating of his heart. Ephrem the Syrian said that “a good word is silver, but silence is pure gold.” And thus, in silence, Hesychasm reached its apotheosis.

The posture of Hesychasm does not need to envy the asanas of the yogis or the full lotus of Zen. It is as simple—and as difficult—as sitting motionless on the floor with your legs crossed, your back slightly bent and your chin on your chest. This posture allows you to keep your attention on your heartbeat; your gaze on the center of your belly, your breath flowing in circles. If he persists in this practice, man achieves a state of perfect inaction.

This is How the Elders Spoke

The first men who left the city to go to the desert were true pioneers. They had no precedents or models to imitate, except for the remote example—through Scripture—of prophets, such as St. John the Baptist, Elijah, Elisha, or the primordial example of Christ, who was led into the desert by the Spirit of God to fast, meditate and fight the Evil One. Christ spent 40 days and 40 nights in the desert; then he returned to civilization. The hermits never returned.

When there were elders, the Apothegms of the Holy Desert Fathers were born, ranging from brief advice from teachers to disciples, to long collective exhortations. For a long time, the apothegms were transmitted by word of mouth, but some solitary scribes began to compile them, giving rise to a unique sub-genre of monastic literature.

Since “for God there are only individuals”—Gómez Dávila dixit—the apothegms bring together very diverse individual doctrines, sometimes even contradictory, and rarely set collective norms that turn spiritual practice into a template. What they have in common is that, in them, the Desert Fathers distilled charity—correcting one’s own defects and ignoring those of others—humility—escaping all vainglory and hiding one’s good deeds—and vigilance—of one’s own mind, so as not to fall into dispersion.

The apothegms have reached our day after a long journey through codices, parchments and manuscripts, to be finally arranged in large collections by various Church historians. Since they are accessible to the general public, they are part of the perennial wisdom that, beyond creeds, helps the human species to live.

Let us see, as a sample, a handful of selected apothegms:

“In his blindness, the human being has tried to replace the vision of the spirit by the vision of thought, by abstract constructions of the mind, by ideologies, without these having led him to any result, as all the metaphysical theories of the philosophers prove” (Theophanes the Recluse).

“Being in prayer, he went into ecstasy, and had a vision. He saw the whole world as if it were an immense ball of tangled threads. Then he said: ‘Who will be able to untangle this?’ Suddenly, he heard a voice answering his question: ‘Humility’” (Antonio of the Desert).

“We learned in connection with a spiritual brother, that a viper bit him on the foot while he was praying. But he did not give up. He did not lower his arms before he finished nor did he move. And yet he was delivered from the poison because he had loved God more than himself” (Evagrius Ponticus).

“It seemed to me that every herb, every flower, every ear of grain whispered to me mysterious words about a divine essence very close to every man, to every animal, to each thing: herbs, flowers, trees, earth, sun, stars, to the whole universe” (Spiridon).

“They said to the old man: ‘What do you do so that you never show discouragement?’ ‘I wait for death every day,’” he answered (Anonymous).

Blood and Sand

One could call it a “miracle” that more than two millennia later, the echo of the Desert Fathers still resounds. Undoubtedly, hesychasm and apothegms can be very useful for the men of today who, by sheer definition and however “traditionalist” they believe themselves to be, are—we are—absolutely modern. But in the same way that the wine that is too much of a wine is diluted with mountain water, our absolute modernity—our absolute stupidity—is diluted, thanks to the practice of hesychasm and the reading of apothegms.

In addition to the teachers of the Church—Catholic and, above all, Orthodox—who transmit these practices, there are countless books that explain them. Among them, it is worth mentioning Eremitas (Palmyra, 2007) by Isidro-Juan Palacios, a powerful manual on the history of Hesychasm, its implementation and its connection with Eastern doctrines, which also includes a remarkable selection of apothegms. But the true hesicasta bible is Apotegmas de los Padres del Desierto (Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 2017), with introduction, translation and notes by David González Gude, who—although lacking the heroic and Mishimian verb of Palacios—did an excellent job of selecting apothegms, as well as the most complete eremitic history ever written in Spanish.

But we must remember that many hermits were illiterate. A spiritual path is not a matter of enlightenment, but of disposition. And all those who wish, here and now, to take action and abandon the “political city”—source of superficial conflicts—to devote themselves to the purest contemplation, have deserts everywhere: in Castile there have always been drylands suitable for these pursuits, and there are the testaments of Teresa of Avila or John of the Cross to prove it. Today, in that area they call “Empty Spain,” the population is scarce and abandoned buildings abound, in whose ruins the modern hermit can find the solitude necessary to embark on the only revolution that, in times of dissolution, makes sense—the inner revolution.


Luis Landeira Caro writes from Spain. This articles appears through the kind courtesy of La Gaceta de la Iberosfera.


Featured: Saint Anthony shunning Gold, by Fra Angelico; painted ca. 1435-1440.


A Happy Roman Holiday

Why are we Roman Catholics? Because Peter and Paul bore witness to the greatest love, in Rome. Because the Pope is Peter’s successor, charged with strengthening his brothers in the faith. Of course. The heart of the Church is not in Lausanne, where everything is regulated like a precision clock, where no pedestrians obeys crossing signals, or throws a piece of paper into Lake Geneva for fear of being denounced by a citizen mindful of his collective responsibility. It’s not in Berlin, where work is rigorous and the mind is not inclined to the unexpected or to whimsical mentalities. It’s not in the City of London, where frantic, ultra-connected men chase money like Speedy Gonzales, their eyes glued to screens, on which they monitor the course of the world.
No Fuss

Our Church is in Rome, where everything is never so dramatic, where the Tiber flows lazily through the creamy color of the old stones, like a hazelnut coffee. It’s Rome where Audrey Hepburn toured on a Vespa, where lovers throw coins into the Trevi Fountain, where we drink chilled limoncello on a summer’s evening. In Rome, it’s unthinkable to imagine waking a cardinal between noon and 4pm, or expecting an answer before time has largely resolved the issue. Only the Eternal City can manage temporal affairs without giving in to the spirit of haste. The Church has eternity, the world is running behind time. The tragedy is to lose the Roman spirit, i.e., fidelity to faith and the courage of witness, but also the dolce vita that makes life so beautiful. The risk is in forgetting that the Church leads to the port of the Eternal, just as a ship sails through the shores of the temporal, between the contradictions of the world and the consolations of God.

How many are busy “doing nothing” (2 Thess. 3:11). They imagine a Church that suits them, according to their all-too-human reforms, their worldly perspectives and their short-sighted orientations. They reduce it to a little traffic between friends, by dint of political calculations, vain slogans and power struggles. They no longer let God be God. We are in the world, but we are not of the world. We need to live ad orientem, without getting too agitated along the way, not placing our whole heart in the affairs of the world, “keeping our soul in peace and silence” (Ps 130).

Entering God’s Rest

“How many people work in the Vatican?”

“No more than half,” replied good Pope John. “You’re very lucky, I’m just Christ’s vicar,” he replied to La Madre, who introduced herself as the “Superior of the Holy Spirit.” He had that sense of humor that never takes itself too seriously, and teaches us the true measure of our days. Deep down, he knew that not everything rested on him, that it was necessary to know how to enter into God’s rest without pretending to govern, foresee and plan everything. “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, but your heavenly Father feeds them” (Mt 6:26).

The darkest cloud always has its golden lining. He was no idler, however, and his reassuring build concealed a sharp conscience, attentive to the extreme in the care of his soul. He minded God’s business and God minded his own. He combined Augustine’s “cor inquietus,” the noble concern for salvation and the quest for a holy life, with the words of the great Thérèse: “Nada te turbe.. Let nothing trouble you, O Lord! Let nothing trouble you, O my soul. Let nothing frighten you. God alone is enough.” He worked tirelessly, but quietly took his siesta.

You have to be able to sleep a little, which means accepting God’s hand. Accepting that life is slipping away. Consenting to die in the end. Death is a habit to get used to. Learning to rest prepares our soul for the Requiem. There are many calls to watch in the Gospel, but there are two calls to rest: “Stand aside and rest a while” (Mk 6:31). And in the great violence of the Passion, this paradoxical word: “From now on, you can sleep and rest” (Mk 14:41). No doubt this vacation is a time to learn how to sleep. “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28).

To sleep is to let go, in the humility of knowing that not everything depends on our actions, and that God Himself rested on the seventh day from the work He had accomplished. “He who does not sleep is unfaithful to hope,” writes Péguy in the Porche du Mystère de la deuxième vertu (Porch of the Mystery of the Second Virtue). Hope begins when man, that “well of anxiety,” can do nothing more than what he has already done. He then lets the Lord correct, sanctify and complete his work. He falls asleep “like a little child against his mother” (Ps 130), having played the beautiful game of his life all day long. Then “the seed grows,” day and night, “we do not know how” (Mk 4:26). So it is with the Kingdom, the Lord tells us. We collaborate in it, but it is not our work. The essential escapes us. Life always runs away from our tightly-knit hands.

Learning to Sleep

Let Péguy eulogize the night, “the dark and sparkling daughter”:

O Night, O my daughter night, the most religious of my daughters,
The most pious
Of my creatures the most in my hands, the most abandoned…
You glorify me in sleep even more than your brother the Day glorifies me in work.
For man in his work glorifies me only through his work.
And in sleep it is I who glorify myself in man's abandonment.

God watches in silence, in His eternal quietude. “He neither sleeps nor slumbers, the guardian of Israel” (Ps 121). Here’s the prayer for this summer: “Give me, Lord, to do what I must to the best of my ability. The rest is in your hands.”

“The glory of God is the living man,” said Saint Irenaeus. The glory of God is also the sleeping man. So, happy Roman vacation!


Father Luc de Bellescize is the Curate of Saint Vincent-de-Paul in Paris. This article comes through the kind courtesy of La Nef.


Featured: A view of the Vatican from the Medici Gardens, by Antonietta Brandeis; painted in 2018.

A Meditation on Memory

Brother Francis, in his profound little volume, The Challenge of Faith, offers the following meditations on the subject of “Memory.” These thoughts of a truly contemplative mind are worthy of being savored.

LII—Memory

  1. Memory is the greater part of personality, the index of love, the depository of wisdom, the determinant of virtuous action, the effective and abiding part of education.
  2. All the original and creative works of mind and imagination, presuppose the cooperation of memory, and are enriched by its available treasures.
  3. For a sound educational policy, the discriminate employ of the memory is of paramount importance. There ought to be an objective, common, ordered body of knowledge to be universally conveyed; but it ought to be kept to the essential minimum, to be completed by personal choice. Excessive and burdensome use of the memory may eventually crush personality, discourage the weak, eliminate the functions of all the other faculties, and make learning loathsome.
  4. It is of the essence of memory to be selective: it would be monstrous to remember everything.
  5. It is the great mystery why we remember some very small matters.
  6. Memory is the heart’s treasure house.
  7. There is a law of the divine economy (amply confirmed in my personal experience): We do not quickly forget matters bearing on our own salvation.
  8. The abundance of a man’s heart—that is memory.

Brother Francis Maluf was born in Lebanon in 1913 and held a PhD in philosophy. Along with Father Leonard Feeney, he was a founding, in 1949, of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a religious Order. Brother Francis went to his heavenly reward in 2009. This article appears courtesy of Catholicism.org.


Featured: “Cosmos, Body and Soul,” from the Liber divinorum operum, I.4, by St. Hildegard of Bingen, ca. 1163—1173.