Infinite God - Mary's Babe

Lights are some much fun to play with and can create such interesting effects:

Our Lady in the front hall

The school hallway - Christmas cards are still arriving; we may need to add a fourth row. On of the high school boys designed the lights around the picture frame.

The school creche - made from salt dough (more than ten years ago) by the students and modeled after a Mexican Nativity set. The Three Kings haven't arrived yet.

The Infant Jesus seeks a welcome in your heart!

Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year to all our readers!

We are having a lovely Christmas season that started with the three Christmas Masses. The weather has been strange: rain and wind, but now it is snowing and now it looks properly festive outside .

All the manger scenes include the Holy Family and the shepherds, but the Three Kings still have another week to travel. So in these pictures, if you look for the Magi, you’ll have to look at a distance from the stable.

You are all in our prayers that your hearts will have made room for the Divine Infant - that He may receive a Royal Welcome. Click on “continue reading” for more pictures of our Christmas decorations.

Here are some outdoor pictures to start with:

The shepherds worship at the manger in a snow-storm.

The Kings travel in the same storm.

Here is the sanctuary of our chapel. It is little, but full of love.

A dear friend gave me some tips the other day on how to take good panoramas. Here I tried to put them into effect. These two pictures were taken today. (If you click on the picture, you will get a larger image.)

A wider view of the chapel - can you find the Three Kings?

The Holy One of Mary

by Father Leonard Feeney, M.I.C.M.

Tonight it is raining - so no new pictures. This is our outdoor Nativity Scene from a past year.

And this is He Whom Heaven hymns,
All trembling in His white young limbs,
Whom choirs adore and seraphs bless-
Unspeakable His helplessness.
A Baby’s cheek the wind would kindle.
Ah, holy weaver and blessed spindle,
That spun the little swaddling clothes
To sheathe so sweet, so fair a rose!
Dull stable-lamp, my love you are-
Shine bright and be His morning star.
Full many a moon would give her light
To hang upon your beam to-night,
And flood the wondrous sanctuary
And shine on Him and His Mother Mary.

O Sacred Love and Life and Law
Whose mercy-mingled power I draw
To live, to breathe, and be aware
Of sunlight and the brimming air!
Great Bosom whence my spirit sprang;
For Whom my soul in hunger sang;
O white with Age that overflows
The showering of a million snows;
Sinew and Strength and Might unriven
Upholder of the stars and Heaven,
How camest Thou to choose a stall?
Ah, Little Brother, how small, how small!
What need to know the bitter cold
Eternal One-an hour old!
And yet did not the Eternal Three
Foreknow how bitter the cold would be!

The dark comes over this little town,
A woman is pulling her shutter down;
A woman is making her window bright,
To welcome her Saviour on Christmas night.
The clouds are draping the starless hill,
The moon is quenched at the Father’s will,
The Angels are crowding the snowy moor,
A lantern hangs on the chapel door,
The sounds of the singers arise and  pass;
A beggar is crawling to Midnight Mass.
The shadowy winds are still awhile
The children turn in their sleep and smile.
May God have mercy and shield us well
Who hear the stroke of the midnight bell!

“Good-night, sweet Jesu, and take Thy rest,
Be happy now in Thy narrow nest,
Thou must not notice Thy mother weep-
Hear her lullaby and go to sleep!”

One of our own roses

Maria Walks Amid the Thorn reminds me of another poem from I Sing of a Maiden, this time a medieval Mary-song (author: Anonymous).

Rosa Mystica

There is no rose of such virtue
As is the rose that bare [bore] Jesu:
Alleluia!

For in that rose containèd was
Heaven and earth in little space:
Res Miranda!

By that rose we well may see
There be One God in Persons Three:
Pares Forma!

The angels sang, the shepherd too;
Gloria in excelsis Deo!
Gaudeamus!

Leave we all this worldly mirth
And follow we this joyful birth:
Transeamus!

(For those who are confused by the Latin, I here append a translation of each phrase. For reciting out-loud, remember that in Latin each vowel is pronounced — there are no silent “e”s — so “pares” is “par - ez”. Each of these final lines has four syllables. “Rose Mystica” = Mystical Rose [one of Our Lady's titles in the Litany of Loreto]; “Res Miranda” = Wonderful Thing; “Pares Forma” = Equal Natures; “Gloria in excelsis Deo” = Glory to God in the highest; “Gaudeamus” = Let us rejoice; “Transeamus” = Let us pass by.)

The Just One - Dew from Heaven to soften our hard hearts (Christmas Pageant '06)

While I’m on the subject of Advent hymns, here is one written by Michael Denis in 1774 (the music that goes with is was probably written by Michael Haydn). The text is drawn from Holy Scripture, Old and New Testaments: Isaias 45,8; St. Paul to the Hebrews 10,9; St. Luke 1; and St. Paul to the Romans 13, 11-14.

Drop Your Dew, Ye Clouds of Heaven

Drop your dew, ye clouds of heaven,
Rain the Just One now to save!
With that cry the night was riven
From the world, a yawning grave.
On the earth by God forsaken
Sin and death their toll had taken.
Tightly shut was heaven’s gate,
For salvation all must wait.

To redeem our sad condition
Was the Father’s loving Will,
And the Son took the glad mission
His decision to fulfill.
Gabriel to earth descended,
Brought the answer long attended:
“See the Handmaid of the Lord,
Do according to thy word.”

Let us walk with right intention,
Not in drunkenness and greed,
Quarrels, envies and contention
Banished far from us indeed.
Fully now to imitate Him
As with longing we await Him
Is the duty of these days,
As the great Apostle says.

Wild roses - lots of thorns and lots of blossoms - with a very sweet scent

Here is one of our favorite Advent hymns. It is sung in two parts, one of which is a haunting counterpoint. The carol comes from sixteenth century Germany (although it is probably much older) and commemorates the barrenness of the the Old Testament, the longing and waiting, and the flowering of sanctity and joy with the coming of the Messias. (”Kyrie eleison” is Greek for “Lord, have mercy!”)

Maria Walks Amid the Thorn

Maria walks amid the thorn,
Kyrie eleison,
Which seven years no leaf has borne,
She walks amid the wood of thorn.
Jesus and Maria.

What ‘neath her heart does Mary bear?
Kyrie eleison.
A little Child does Mary bear,
Beneath her heart He nestles there.
Jesus and Maria.

And as the two are passing near,
Kyrie eleison,
Lo! roses on the thorns appear,
Lo! roses on the thorns appear.
Jesus and Maria.

]]> http://ihm.catholicism.org/2008/12/an-advent-carol-maria-walks-amid-the-thorn/feed/ http://ihm.catholicism.org/2008/12/mathematics-and-christian-education-part-two/ http://ihm.catholicism.org/2008/12/mathematics-and-christian-education-part-two/#comments Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:00:40 +0000 Sister Maria Philomena, M.I.C.M. http://ihm.catholicism.org/?p=37 MATHEMATICS AND CHRISTIAN EDUCATION (part two of two)

by Brother Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.

The "Little Boys'" Tug of War - Field Day 2008

Now in an attempt to determine the influence of mathematics on the mind of a Christian, it would be folly to ignore the fact that after twenty centuries of Christian living, it is impossible to name one single patron saint for mathematics. There are Catholics indeed who occupied themselves considerably with mathematics and as far as we know kept the faith; but I know of no mathematician whose faith burned so brilliantly as to earn him a place among the stars of sanctity. Nor is this a mere coincidence, for any one of us can look into his own mind to find that there is no other kind of human knowledge or human experience which offers less in terms of value for the Christian message than mathematics. Almost all that one needs in the way of mathematics in order to learn all of Holy Scripture and all the Doctors of the Church, does not exceed the ability to count up to a thousand and to distinguish between a vertical and a horizontal line. Whatever it is you talk about in mathematics, it is never anything you can carry over to your meditations, or employ in your prayers; it gives you no courage in your moments of despair, and no consolation in your loneliness.

In the field of philosophy, mathematics has always been fertile grounds for sophistry. There is hardly any other intellectual interest which has contributed more to confuse men about fundamental truths regarding God, man, and the universe, than mathematics. Just to mention the names of Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Whitehead and Russell, would suffice to convince one even slightly acquainted with the history of thought about the great number of minds that were deceived by the mirage of mathematics, and misled to accept fraudulent substitutes for the saving truth. I believe that an unprejudiced consideration of the nature of mathematics and of the nature of its objects would reveal clearly that all these charges leveled against the mathematical mind are rooted in the very nature and essence of things.

The other side of the "Little Boys'" Tug of War - Field Day 2008

But what kind of a science is mathematics? Is it a practical science which envisages the achievement of a good, or a speculative science which envisages the attainment of truth? A practical science, like medicine or ethics, would be eliminated by the elimination of the corresponding good. For example, if men were indifferent to health and its opposite there would be no criterion for distinguishing between a right prescription and a wrong one, and consequently, medicine would cease to be a science. In a similar way, if men per absurdum were suddenly to become neutral to the attainment of happiness or its opposite, that would be the end of ethics. But what good, if ceasing, would determine the end of mathematics? None whatever, for the simple reason that mathematics prescinds from all good and all value. Mathematics talks the language of a speculative science. It utters propositions which must be either true or false. Now a proposition is true or false depending on whether it is or is not in conformity with reality. Just as a practical science envisages a good to be achieved, which good functions as the criterion for right and wrong precepts in that science, so a speculative science considers some part or aspect of reality, which stands as the measure of truth and falsehood in that science. If there were no stars there would be no astronomy;’ and theology would be sheer nonsense if God did not exist. But what part of reality would destroy mathematics by being eliminated? What does the mathematician talk about? Is the object of mathematics a creature or a creator? Is it a substance or an accident? Is it something actual or merely potential? Is it changing or changeless? Temporal or eternal? Material or spiritual? Tangible or intangible? If one were to compose an inventory of all the subsisting realities of the whole universe, including God, the angels, men, animals, plants and minerals, would the objects of mathematics be on this list?

A proposition is true or false depending on whether it is or is not in conformity with reality.

Am I asking too many questions? Well, here are a few answers whose reasons will either be supplied later, or be left to the reader to discover for himself. Mathematics is a speculative science whose value can only be in the practical order. It has no speculative value, because it does not convey any essential knowledge about any subsisting reality. It is not contemplative knowledge and therefore not essentially good for man, because it occupies the intellect with objects which the will cannot love. It is knowledge which does not proceed from understanding nor does it resolve in wisdom. It does not proceed from understanding, because the mathematical expression of any reality, never conveys any understanding of it. It may however convey the means for the control of that reality. You are not one inch closer to the penetration of the mystery of light and color when you know the number of Angstroms in each of the colors of the spectrum; nor about  the nature, cause, or purpose of gravity when you resolve its laws into mathematical formulas. And it does not resolve in wisdom, because neither is mathematics concerned with the First Cause, nor does it lead to the First Cause. The manner by which mathematics deals with its objects abstracts completely from any dependence upon God, and as a matter of fact, attributes to these objects a species of eternity and turns them into quasi divinities completely independent in themselves. This explains the autonomous nature of mathematics, according to which, left to itself, it never leads to anything non-mathematical. A mathematician might be led to think about God by an accidental non-mathematical reason, but never from the very needs of mathematics.

. . . Mathematics [is not] concerned with the First Cause, nor does it lead to the First Cause. The manner by which mathematics deals with its objects abstracts completely from any dependence upon God, and as a matter of fact, attributes to these objects a species of eternity and turns them into quasi divinities completely independent in themselves.

Two members of the Class of 2003 - both are now married and they each have a boy and a girl.

As for the object of mathematics, it is not a physical entity but a mental entity; it is not real but ideal. There is nowhere in the world, outside of the mind of a mathematician, a point without dimensions, a line without width or thickness, or a square root of minus one. But these fictions of the mind are founded on reality, and their foundation consists of the accident of quantity and its properties and relations. Arithmetic is founded on discontinuous quantities or multitudes; geometry on continuous quantities or magnitudes; while algebra is founded on abstract quantity considered generically, prescinding from whether it is number or magnitude and therefore potentially capable both of an arithmetical as well as of a geometrical interpretation. Other mathematical objects, more distantly removed from this real foundation of mathematics, are rooted in these simpler elements and in the relations which hold among them. Having experienced the three dimensions of bodies in space and having represented these three dimensions by the three variables of an algebraical equation, nothing prevents the mind from creating the fiction of a space corresponding to an algebraical equation of four variables - hence four-dimensional space.

But what do we know about this accident of quantity, on which is founded, proximately or remotely every object of mathematics? We learn from philosophy that quantity is an accident of material sub-. stances, and that in contrast with the accident of quality, quantity manifests the material and not the formal aspect of these substances. Therefore the real foundation of mathematics is found in the material aspect of material things. Further, an accident when conceived as an accident always brings you back to its substance; but in mathematics the accident of quantity is conceived as if it were a substance. Further, a material substance concretely considered, has a nature through which this substance moves to the attainment of an end, but the mathematician considers quantity as a substantialized material accident devoid of any principle of change and abstracted from any movement to attain an end. The concrete material substance manifests itself through its sensible qualities by means of which it is known, but the object of mathematics, without being a spiritual substance like an angel, prescinds from all sensible qualities and can be known only by the intellect and not by the senses. Hence we have the apparent paradox that while the only foundation for the mathematical object is the material aspect of material things, still mathematics represents its object such as matter could neither be nor be known. For matter is nothing but a principle of change, while mathematics prescinds from change; and matter can only be known through the senses while mathematics prescinds from sensibility.

The object of mathematics is therefore an accident parading as a substance, a material reality pretending to be immaterial, an ideal entity which poses for something real. At the basis of all these antinomies is the fact that mathematics arises only when an intellectual mind, directs the light of its spiritual intelligence, not for the purpose of contemplating being, but for the purpose of controlling potency. The mathematical object is the shadow that matter cast on spirit. For when spirit knows spirit, there is not even the foundation for mathematics; when material cognition (sensation) knows material things, the objects of mathematics cannot arise; even when a spiritual being knows matter contemplatively it understands a material substance through its form and its qualities. It is only when a spiritual being concerns itself with matter and for the purpose of sheer control that mathematics finally finds its grounds.

But how about the truth in mathematics? If the objects of mathematics are mental entities (entia rationis) what is it that determines the truth or falsehood of a mathematical proposition? What reality stands as the measure to the judgment of the mind? In the classical branches, arithmetic and geometry, the foundation in reality was close enough to preclude any statements that are not justified by the real properties of multitudes and magnitudes. But as mathematics branches out and develops into newer mathematics, and higher mathematics, and purer mathematics, that control becomes less and less until finally the mind remains its own measure. Consistency and not conformity becomes the touchstone of validity.

In the classical branches, arithmetic and geometry, the foundation in reality was close enough to preclude any statements that are not justified by the real properties of multitudes and magnitudes. But as mathematics branches out and develops into newer mathematics, and higher mathematics, and purer mathematics, that control becomes less and less until finally the mind remains its own measure. Consistency and not conformity becomes the touchstone of validity.

Apart from mathematics, there used to be three other distinct types of knowledge: physical, logical, and ethical. All three led ultimately to God, the physical sciences under the aspect of Ultimate Cause; the logical sciences by way of the Prime Truth; and the ethical sciences by way of the Supreme Good. But in mathematics, the mind reigns supreme, lord of all it surveys. The mind finds in itself a sufficient cause for the kind of being the mathematical entity enjoys. It is the only ultimate measure for the truth of its judgments. It prescinds completely from the aspect of goodness. Of all the intellectual pursuits, mathematics alone does not lead to God.

A local wolf spider

It is like the web of a spider, it proceeds from the very substance of the spider and ends up being its own jail. It gets more involved and more intricate the more it is extended, and finally, when the web is intricate enough, the new threads do not have to measure up to any real independent distances of walls or furniture, for when the new-thrown thread fails to meet a point of support, it sticks on another thread of the same fabric.

From the spider of mathematics, may God deliver us.

Sister Maria Philomena, M.I.C.M.

Today is the feast of Our Lady of the Expectation. This feast has an interesting history that Brother Andre reviewed for us this morning (one aspect being the deferred feast of the Incarnation — Annunciation — from the days when no feasts were kept in Lent). In Spain, this feast day is Nuestra Senora de la O: Our Lady of the O, the “O” coming from the expression of longing said in the office of the Mozarabique Liturgy. In the Latin Rite, today’s feast comes in the middle of the “O” Antiphons (where we get the words for the hymn Veni, Veni, Emmanuel — in English O Come, O Come Emmanuel).

All this reminded me of a poem combining these ideas that I discovered some years ago when I was doing research for an English Literature class. I found it in the book, I Sing of a Maiden - The Mary Book of Verse, edited by Sister M. Therese of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Divine Savior, Macmillan, 1947. Since the book is out of print, I feel justified in sharing the following with you.

Lady of O
by James J. Galvin

A Lily Among Thorns (a type of Our Lady - detail of a pillar in Norte Dame de Montreal)

By the seven stars of her halo
By her seven swords of woe
Oh Holy Spirit anneal my pen
To utter sweet words for the ears of men
In praise of Our Lady of O.

With seven O’s we salute Thee
Each evening as Christmas comes;
We hail thee adazzle with sunset gold
Repeating prophecies new and old
Like salvoes of guns and drums.

O Woman, the Word in Thy keeping
Thy secret from God most High,
Shall soon be whispered over the earth
And men shall listen and leap for mirth
Like stars in the Christmas sky.

O Lady, lone tent in the battle
Where our Leader awaits His time;
Though the day grow darker and Satan scorn
The tide of battle shall veer at morn
When He sallies forth to the cheer of horn
And trumpet and timbrel-chime.

Waterlily

O Stalk on the brink of blossom,
Shooting green through the frosty mire;
The peoples pray for thy Spring to come
And the mighty ones of the earth go dumb
For the Flower of the World’s Desire.

O Tower of Grace untrespassed
Since Eden by God’s decree;
At thine ivory spire and jasper gate
The pining kindred of Adam wait
For the turning of Christ the Key.

Morning (taken on the Auriesville Pilgrimage by Agnes Burki)

O Damsel more welcome than morning
To a world gone blind since the fall;
The stars go pale at Thy sandals’ sound
And skylines glimmer, and men peer round
For a virgin in simplest homespun gowned
With the Sunrise under her shawl.

O milk-and-honey-run Mountain
Whence the crystal Cornerstone
Shall issue unsullied by tool or hand
The Stone that shall fasten each race and land
Together like flesh and bone.

O City ashine on the hill-tops
The nations uplift their eyes
From rainy island and sunken sea
And the ends of the earth they throng to Thee
To dwell in thy Christ-lit skies.

By the seven stars of Thy halo
By Thy seven swords of woe
Forgive us, O Lady, these phrases worn
In praise of Thy season with God unborn
O ineffable Lady of O.

Queen of Heaven and Earth (picture taken in the crypt chapel of Saint Anne de Beaupre)

The IHM School Bell

In the early morning of December 12, 2008, southwestern New Hampshire and a large section of Massachusetts lost power due to a devastating ice storm. The tops of trees snapped off, branches broke, entire trees were uprooted (one narrowly missing two of the Brothers). We (the religious at Saint Benedict Center) are still without power, although we have regained most of our appliance use due to the generous loan of a large generator. IHM School was in session Monday morning, but there were too many surrounding pressures (and no lights!), so school is closed until further notice. Today we are in the middle of a snow storm that has turned to sleet.

I thought that you would like to see some pictures I took this weekend. In spite of the devastation, the ice is so very beautiful! (I wasn’t allowed to get pictures of the worst damage because it was too dangerous to go under the trees.)

Sister Maria Perpetua and Sister Marie Therese admire the sun shining through the ice (note the trees over the fire pond in the background).

Those white tips aren't pine cones! They are the bare wood where the tops snapped off.

Branches are stripped off by the weight of the ice

A huge pine bough lands in our driveway

Our Lady's shrine

Even the grass is iced!

War Zone! That pine on the ground was completely uprooted.

A crystal fountain

Sunrise on Gaudete Sunday (this picture was taken by Sister Maria Perpetua)

By moonlight

[Editor's note: This article was originally published in From The Housetops back in the 1940's. Brother Francis has been teaching mathematics longer than any subject (for more than eighty years); he certainly knows its uses. However, in this article, Brother points out what happens when mathematics becomes a monism.]

Nothing could be more distinctive of the age in which we live than the overpowering prominence of mathematics. All through the Catholic centuries, arithmetic and geometry constituted all the mathematics that an educated Christian was asked to learn. Even these two subjects were treated from a more contemplative point of view, which made them far more harmonious with other liberal studies. Arithmetic consisted in the study of the properties of numbers; geometry in the study of shapes and figures. When not overdone, and when counterbalanced by the proper correctives from the other types of knowledge, geometry and arithmetic, as they used to be taught, cultivated a few desirable virtues of the mind like clarity and precision, and sharpened the mind for the perception of harmony, rhythm, and pattern in the study of nature and of Holy Scripture. But even then, many saints and sages warned against the excessive preoccupation with such studies, and especially against the seductive clarity of mathematics; for it is not enough for the mind to be accurate and clear; we are bound to ask “accurate and clear about what?” Since in mathematics accuracy and clarity are achieved at the price of the reality and the goodness of the object, it is a danger of the mathematical mind to continue to sacrifice reality and goodness for the sake of clarity in every other field in which man must seek and find the truth.

This problem is getting too long!

But in our time, education is overwhelmed by mathematics and on more than one score. For, while a contemplative interest in the properties of shapes and numbers is almost completely extinct, an illiberal and utterly inhuman form of mathematics dominates the years of learning of our boys and girls, almost completely from the very first year of the primary school to the very last year of college. In place of arithmetic and geometry, whose relation to reality is definite and understandable, there is now an indefinite confusion of branches which go by the name of mathematics, the nature of whose objects nobody understands! Such topics as topology, non-Eudidean geometry, Boolean algebra, transfinite numbers, projective geometry; not to speak of other more recognizable subjects like algebra, trigonometry, integral calculus, vector analysis and the theory of equations. These new subjects are not only more confusing but much more difficult to acquire, and therefore much less likely to leave the mind at leisure for other liberal studies. But the predominance of mathematics today is not restricted to those courses which go by its name, because mathematics, in some form or other, in matter or in method, has crept into every other corner of the curriculum. According to the modern positivistic conception, mathematics and not wisdom is considered as the prototype of science. In subjects ranging from physics to education, covering every field of human learning, there is an evident tendency to assimilate all knowledge to mathematical knowledge and to resolve all realities into mathematical formulas. This trend reaches its apex in the development of symbolic logic, in which guise mathematics invades even the field of philosophy, to distort all the basic conceptions of the mind, and to deflect all the activities of thought from attaining their fulfillment in true wisdom which consists in knowledge about God, by keeping them whirling endlessly around the nihilistic circle of sheer mathematical emptiness.

To be continued . . .