In the Labyrinth

Love and Do What You Will...

St. Augustine of Hippo is remembered by many young Catholics for his plea to God during his wild youth, "Give me chastity and continence, but not quite yet." (Actually, I have many non-religious friends who are familiar with this particular quote, finding it very amusing, indeed.) Recently, a friend of mine sent me this second quote which struck me as particularly powerful for our time:

"See what we are insisting upon; that the deeds of men are only discerned by the root of love. For many things may be done that have a good appearance, and yet proceed not from the root of love…Once for all, then, a short precept is given you: Love, and do what you will: whether you hold your peace, through love hold your peace; whether you cry out, through love cry out; whether you correct, through love correct; whether you spare, through love do you spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good." (7th Homily on John 1)

I find it so compelling because I am sure almost every one one of us could expand this precept to our own struggles, goals, and desires. Mine would be: "Love and do what you will, whether you create, through love create; whether you write, through love write." 

Inspiration in "La Stigmatisée" by Georges Moreau de Tours

Portuguese artist João Lemos sent me this gorgeous and entirely unexpected painting "La Stigmatisée" by French painter, Georges Moreau de Tours (1848-1901). And what a narrative it visually suggests -- rich and full of possibilities: a sensual image of a young woman, where both the dressings over the stigmata of her hands and her clothing are unraveling. She appears languorous, almost trance-like in her calm, while the onlookers are tense, agitated, a hand gripping the sleeve of another as though threatened by the spectacle of the reclining woman. There is just so much going here, all of it ambiguous: earthy and ethereal, masculine and feminine, still and agitated, acceptance and skepticism all at once.

Adrienne von Speyr on the Feast of the Assumption

"Thus, the Assumption, the distance and difference between heaven and earth are as bridged over and obliterated for the Mother. For she who who is now received by the Son into heaven is none other than she who received him on earth from heaven; and as her way expanded more and more, starting with the Son's conception and going all the way to her present reception into heaven by the Son, so this reception also expandsto its highpoint in the Son's conception by her. The two high points intensify one another and neither direction can be designated as the definitive one: from earth to heaven or from heaven to earth. It is an eternal circuit between God and man, heaven and earth, spiritual world and material world: a circulation also between Mother and Son. For, as the Mother had once said Yes to the Son and everything to do with him, so today the Son speaks his great assent to the Mother. This assent is divine and immeasurable and gives the Mother's assent its whole heavenly limitessness. As long as the Mother was in the world, she was as limited as any human being, and she had to bear those limits in mind whe she tried to work the Son's cause. From the moment of the Assumption on, she receives the power to be able to do what the Son's wills, without limits. She knows no boundaries except those we on earth set against her work. Only our No can hold back her eternal Yes. "  (Handmaid of the Lord, Adrienne Von Speyr,  translated by E. A. Nelson, Ignatius Press, 1985)

And this  lovely fragment from G. K. Chesterton's "A Little Litany": 

"…Star of his morning; that unfallen star
In that strange starry overturn of space
When earth and sky changed places for an hour
And heaven looked upwards in a human face."

 Art: The Assumption by Guido Reni in 1617.

Reading Adrienne Von Speyr on Easter Morning

It is easy to forget that Easter so focused on the Son, is also about the Mother and in 20th century mystic and author Adrienne Von Speyr's brilliant work Handmaid of the Lord, Von Speyr examines the significance and importance of Mary's life: "Her first Yes to the angel, her first joy at conception, her first jubilation in Magnificat, are like a tiny human beginning compared with this storm of the Easter assent and this fire of the new Magnificat."

It is today on Easter, that Von Speyr reflects on the mission of Mary, after the death and ressurection of her Son, and her continuing importance in this central mystery of the Catholic faith. 

"It is as if she were given a second Christmas. On Christmas she had received the Son: the long promise of Advent had found it's earthly fulfillment. But the little Child of Christmas was himself a promise, a bud of the coming redemption. Now, on Easter, this bud has blossomed and become full actuality. Today Mary is the Mother of the Redeemer. The end-point that has been reached is now the starting-point for all Christianity. Today she has become Mother in reality, and everything previous was only a preparation for this day. She sees before her the completed work of the Son, and she herself stands at its source. In the Spirit and through the Spirit she is the Mother. And at the Cross the Son made her share expressly in the birth of this work. Everything that at Christmas had been earthly, corporeal spirituality has today become a spiritual reality and is therefore open and limitless and omnipresent: it is a "Eucharist."

 "But the Mother is included in the Son's eucharistic form of existence. Her unity with the Son became so great that from now on the two can no longer be separated. Where the Son is essentially and truly present, the Mother cannot be missing. If it is really the flesh of the Lord that the Christian receives at the altar, then it is also the flesh which took form within the Mother and at whose disposal she placed everything that was hers.  Because she said Yes to his Incarnation, she also says Yes to each new advent of the Lord into the world that occurs at the Consecration of every Holy Mass. "

Wishing those of the faith a Happy and Blessed Easter. 

 

Art: PONTORMO 1525-28 Annunciazione della Vergine - (Detail) Church of Santa Felicita, Cappella Capponi Florence

Holy Days of Obligation: The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

I enjoy these days, for they have their own stories, their own prayers, and their own hymns. For a little while, we stop our noisy routines and settle into a contemplation of the mysteries.

It is the will of God that we should have nothing which has not passed through the hands of Mary.

- St Bernard of Clairvaux

Art: Baroque painting of Our Lady of Lledó, Spain.

The Voynich Manuscript: Magic, A Garden of Women, and a Secret Language

*Please note that posters in the comments provide links to pages that no longer exist -- sadly! Yale at one point removed the archive of images from public view. 

 

I am sitting at my desk transported by the digital images of the Voynich Manuscript, created sometime between the late 15th century and early 16th century. It is a most magical text, written in an unknown language or perhaps a cipher. It is illustrated with botanical drawings of unknown plants, strange designs and patterns that suggest spiral and circular gardens. And most wonderfully it is filled with the alchemical activities of women who seem to be the life force of this strange and fecund world. The women often appear nude with rounded bellies, sometimes in bathtubs, other times connecting roots, seeds, and pods through tubes and rivers.

Not much is known about its origin and what is known is as mysterious as the manuscript itself. It has been carbon tested and found to have been produced in late 1400's; it gets it's name from the Polish-American antiquarian bookseller, Wilfrid M. Voynich who purchased it in the 1920s; it was owned by the Emperor Rudolph II of Germany (1576-1612) who believed it to be the work of Roger Bacon (it wasn't --he's 13th century). There is Jesuit involvement -- the correspondence of 17th c. Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher who wrote references to it after receiving it from a Prague physician Johannes Marcus Marci. And much later in 1912, Voynich purchased the manuscript from Joseph Strickland S. J. at the Jesuit College at Frascati, near Rome. (Why does this all remind me of Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose?). And then there are about 150 years where no one knows who had it or where it was hiding.

And as far as the language goes -- no one has been able to translate it into any language. Some scholars thought it might be the work of an insane author -- but other linguists suggest there are two authors and the language appears too "organized" to be the work of a crazy person. Potential authors range from Leonardo da Vinci, Antonio Averlino, a 15th century Italian architect, English occultist John Dee, and an underground sect of Cathar heretics. Strangely, at least to me-- no one has suggested it might have been written and created by women.

Enjoy these few pages I pulled from the online collection -- and marvel at all that beautiful, mysterious work and give thanks to the internet. You can also read more about the Voynich manuscript here.

I want these to be plans for a garden -- circular, spiral, filled with female fertility connected to the moon, the stars, and the zodiac calendar.