Tomorrow.

I will be done. (Deo gratias.) Feeling very grumpy about Pascal, Descartes, and the whole stinkin' lot. And very glad that I have all the resources of the Church to shore up the glooms.

"You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being." -- Evelyn Waugh

Amen.

Capybaras, beavers, and other fish

Apparently, some time ago, the Vatican gave permission for the poor of Venezuela to eat capybara on Fridays in Lent. The large rodent being, I assume, sufficiently non-meaty to count as a penitential meal. Wikipedia has confirmed such reports, but I'm still looking for proof that water-dwelling mammals in general are acceptable! Beavers seem quite capybara-ish.

Before you get yer dander up, the whole "fish Fridays" thing is not some ploy to subsidize the fishing industry. It's an opportunity to forgo celebratory foods in memory of the Passion and in solidarity with the poor. Meat has traditionally been an expensive food, and to give it up is a sign of this remembrance. I cannot think of a better way to express poverty than a good rodent chili.

Last Things

Since Pascal is imprinting so well on my mind, I thought a little blogging would be allowed.

This passage from Father Alexander Men (photo at left), a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, calls for an attentiveness during Lent. Lent, while a Christian tradition, is really quite a philosophical time. It is an opportunity to put first things first and to meditate on the true order of things as well as the shortness of our lives. Pascal decried philosophies that ignore the question of death and immortality, "for that is the most important question for knowing how we should live." Our culture's allergy to death (that is, to thinking about our own personal deaths) can make this uncomfortable, but contemplating death is not morbid if it changes how we live.

Here is Father Men's homily from a funeral:

"As a traveler, approaching a river after a long journey, senses how cool the water will be, so you and I are getting nearer to the great time of purification. We should greet every Lent as if it were the last in our lives, so that we stop and think--if only for a short while, tearing ourselves away from the perpetual bustle and rush that constitutes our lives. Look how we live nowadays: how bitter and exhausted we are, what an endless hurry we are in--we're making such an effort, trying to make progress. But all of it comes to an end earlier than we realize. Here among us we already have someone who has left his abode--his body--and perhaps before we reach [the end of] Lent, one of us might be lying here, like him, in the middle of the church.

"Let us think for a while about how we can open up our souls to the Lord, how we can start to live a real life. So what kind of life is a 'real life'? It is a life of love--for God and men--a life in which what is most important comes first and is not pushed aside by trivialities. When we stand before God, it is as though we are standing before a bright light, which shows up our unworthiness, our meanness, and our weakness. before the face of God we are revealed as destitute. For the Lord is love, which he pours out on us. How can we thank him, other than by returning that love? But, we ourselves do not possess it: we only see, in the light of the Divine Glory, how unworthy of it we are."

Thanks to MAGNIFICAT for the passage.

Sweet Jesus

Couldn't resist...

So, I'm supposed to be studying Pascal. But this was too funny. Nathaniel Peters over at the First Things blog posted new lyrics for “These Are a Few of My Favorite Things.”

(It's even funnier for those of us who just had to sit through yet another Ash Wednesday round of "We rise again from ashes!/From the good we've failed to do!/We rise again from ashes!/to create ourselves anew!" Pelagianism lives.)

But here are the lyrics:

Sackcloth and ashes and days without eating,
Mortification and wailing and weeping,
A hair shirt that scratches, a nettle that stings –
These are a few of my favorite things!

Penitence, flagellants, memento mori,
Spending nights sleeping on rocks in a quarry,
The sound of a cloaked solemn cantor who sings –
These are still more of my favorite things!

Tossing and turning and yearning, I’m spurning!
Passions aflame like an ember-day burning,
Corpus and carnis and wild drunken flings –
Forsaken are they for my favorite things!

When it’s Christmas,
When the tree’s lit,
When the cards are sent…
I simply remember my favorite things –
And then I can’t waaaaaaaaait ’til Lent!

hiatus

The Philosopher Mom will be on blogging hiatus until February 22nd. I have to study for my MA thesis defense! Then... freedom! Until Baby2 arrives.

Have a blessed Lent until then.

Ah.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried. ~G.K. Chesterton