May, a Very Special Month: EGO FLOS CAMPI ET LILIUM CONVALLIUM

IESUS - MARIA - IOSEPH

Jesus, Lily of the Valleys

Mary, Queen of May

Joseph, Patron of Laborers

Orate pro nobis!

***

Chalice - Lily. The chalice is the lily, stylized and adapted to our use, and which, born from water, is proper for us to take to our lips.

The lily, and especially the water-lily, also called lotus or nenuphar, has always had a peculiar place in the symbolism of all religions. It projects its roots to substantial and deep regions, separated from our sight by these fluid, contemplative, mirror-like layers which are the domain of that which is contingent, unstable, of illusion and of this "time", of this reflection which relates to several circumstances.

Paul Claudel at Le Figaro (1955): Mass facing the people means there's no longer an Altar (full translation)

By one of the greatest writers of the 20th Century, Paul Claudel, writing for the most important French daily, as the proponents of the "Liturgical Upheaval" that would lead up to the post-Vatican II disasters, especially the New Mass, started to abuse the Traditional Mass with the illicit posture "facing the people".

Paul Claudel

Le Figaro

January 23, 1955

I wish to protest with all my strength against the growing practise in France of saying Mass facing the people.

The most basic principle of religion is that God holds first place and that the good of man is merely a consequence of the recognition and the practical application of this essential dogma.

The Mass is the homage par excellence which we render to God by the Sacrifice which the priest offers to Him in our name on the altar of His Son. It is us led by the priest and as one with him, going to God to offer Him hostias et preces [Victims and prayers]. It is not God presenting Himself to us for our convenience to make us indifferent witnesses of the mystery about to be accomplished.

The novel liturgy deprives the Christian people of their dignity and their rights. It is no longer they who say the Mass with the priest, by “following” it, as the saying very rightly goes, and to whom the priest turns from time to time to assure them of his presence, participation and cooperation, in the work which he undertakes in their name. All that remains is a curious audience watching him do his job. Small wonder that the impious compare him to a magician performing his act before a politely admiring crowd.

THE CHALICE - Simili modo, postquam coenatum est...

Hic calix novum testamentum est in meo sanguine. (From the Epistle for the Mass in Cena Domini, I Corinthians xi, 25: "This chalice is the new testament in My Blood.")

Chalice - Lily. The chalice is the lily, stylized and adapted to our use, and which, born from water, is proper for us to take to our lips.

The lily, and especially the water-lily, also called lotus or nenuphar, has always had a peculiar place in the symbolism of all religions. It projects its roots to substantial and deep regions, separated from our sight by these fluid, contemplative, mirror-like layers which are the domain of that which is contingent, unstable, of illusion and of this "time", of this reflection which relates to several circumstances.

Consummatum est: "The chalice which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?"

Dixit ergo Iesus Petro: "Mitte gladium tuum in vaginam. Calicem, quem didit mihi Pater, non bibam illum?" ... "Sitio." Vas ergo erat positum aceto plenum. Illi autem spongiam plenam aceto, hyssopo circumponentes, obtulerunt ori eius. Cum ergo accepisset Iesus acetum, dixit: "Consummatum est." Et inclinato capite, tradidit spiritum. (From the Gospel for Good Friday, the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint John: "Jesus therefore said to Peter: 'Put up thy sword in the scabbard. The chalice which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?'...'I thirst.' Now there was a vessel set there, full of vinegar. And they, putting a sponge full of vinegar about hyssop, put it to His mouth. Jesus therefore, when He had taken the vinegar, said: 'It is consummated.'And bowing His head, He gave up the spirit.")

Chalice - Lily. The chalice is the lily, stylized and adapted to our use, and which, born from water, is proper for us to take to our lips.

Martin Mosebach on the Liturgy and the Moral Life

Giuseppe Crespi, Communion

In many dioceses in Germany it is customary for the bishop to invite artists to a meeting on Ash Wednesday, an Aschermittwoch der Künstler, an idea taken from Paul Claudel, who had organized something similar in Paris. On Ash Wednesday 2013, the novelist Martin Mosebach was invited to speak to assembled artists in Frankfurt (diocese of Limburg), on the theme of the traditional liturgy of the Roman rite. It need scarcely be said that is highly unusual for a traditionalist thinker to be invited to a regular diocesan setting to speak on that subject.

Toward the end of his speech Mosebach made the following point:

One difficulty that arose from the Church's abandonment of her traditional liturgy was surely quite unexpected. Many who observe the Church from a distance, and this includes many nominal Catholics, now see the Church as embodied principally in the moral teachings that she requires her faithful to follow. These teachings include many prescriptions and proscriptions that contradict the customs of the secular world. In the days when the Church was above all oriented toward the immediate encounter with God in the Liturgy however, these commandments were not seen merely in relation to the living of daily life, but were concrete means of preparation for complete participation in the liturgy.

The liturgy  gave morality its goal. The question was: What must I do in order to attain to perfect Communion with the Eucharistic Christ? What actions will result in my only being able to look on Him from afar? Moral evil then appeared not merely as the that which is bad in the abstract, but as that which is to be avoided in order to attain to a concrete goal. And when someone broke a commandment, and thus excluded himself from Holy Communion, Confession was ready as the means to repair the damage and prepare him to receive Communion again. A surprising result of the reform is that while the Church of the past, which was really oriented toward the liturgy, appeared to many outside observers as being scandalously lax in moral matters, the current Church appears to contemporaries (and not only to those outside) as unbearably moralistic, unmerciful, and meanly puritanical. (From: "Das Paradies auf Erden: Liturgie als Fester zum Jenseits," Una Voce Korrespondenz 43 (2013), pp. 213-214; translation by Sacerdos Romanus).

Simili modo, postquam coenatum est...

Hic calix novum testamentum est in meo sanguine. (From the Epistle for the Mass in Cena Domini, I Corinthians xi, 25: "This chalice is the new testament in My Blood.")

Chalice - Lily. The chalice is the lily, stylized and adapted to our use, and which, born from water, is proper for us to take to our lips.

The lily, and especially the water-lily, also called lotus or nenuphar, has always had a peculiar place in the symbolism of all religions. It projects its roots to substantial and deep regions, separated from our sight by these fluid, contemplative, mirror-like layers which are the domain of that which is contingent, unstable, of illusion and of this "time", of this reflection which relates to several circumstances.

It is there, from below, that it feeds from this mysterious mud where the hand of the Creator searched and modeled the matter of man. Infixus sum, Psalm LXVIII tells us, in limo profundi and it is from there that Israel "will spring like a lily" (Os. xiv, 6). Whether in Egypt, in Assyria, in Persia, in India, or in China, it is the lily which stands as a support for all gods or which, between its fingers, recreates their souls by opening their nostrils. It is the lily which also has its place in the capitals of columns and in the arms of the candelabra, such a prominent place in the decoration of Ark and Temple.

On the elongated stem which it uses to reach the deep, to search for life through moment and accident, it blossoms, in a circle of geometrically composed petals: the flower, the essential and synthetic cup, the central point which bestows perfect meaning and is the supreme center of the calculated dispositions of a concentric universe.

Ego flos campis, say the Canticles (ii, 1) et lilium convallium.

Paul Claudel
Un poète regarde la croix

[Reposted.]

Benedict XVI: Beauty, Claudel, and the traditional Mass

Cardinal Suhard celebrates a Pontifical Midnight Mass at his 
Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris (Notre-Dame de Paris), Christmas 1948

[First televised Mass - Source: Institut national de l'audiovisuel, France]

The work of art is the fruit of human creativity, which questions the visible reality, trying to discover its deep meaning and to communicate it through the language of shapes, colours, sounds. ...

"L'Enfer est partout où n'est pas Jésus-Christ."

The great book which was opened before me, and in which I learned my lessons, was the Church. May this great and majestic Mother be praised forever on my knees for all I have learned! I spent all my Sundays in Notre-Dame [de Paris] and went there as often as I could on weekdays. I was as ignorant of my religion as one can be of Buddhism, and, behold, the sacred drama was played before me with a magnificence that surpassed all my imagination.

Ah, this was no more the poor language of devotional books! This was the most profound and grandiose poetry, the most august gestures ever entrusted to human beings. I could not have enough of the spectacle of the Mass, and each movement of the priest was deeply inscribed in my spirit and in my heart. The reading of the Office of the Dead, that of Christmas, the spectacle of the days of Holy Week, the sublime chant of the Exsultet ... all that filled me with respect and joy, with acknowledgment, penance, and adoration!

Paul Claudel
Ma Conversion

Ego lilium convallium

Hic calix novum testamentum est in meo sanguine. (From the Epistle for the Mass in Cena Domini, I Corinthians xi, 25: "This chalice is the new testament in My Blood.")

Chalice - Lily. The chalice is the lily, stylized and adapted to our use, and which, born from water, is proper for us to take to our lips.

The lily, and especially the water-lily, also called lotus or nenuphar, has always had a peculiar place in the symbolism of all religions. It projects its roots to substantial and deep regions, separated from our sight by these fluid, contemplative, mirror-like layers which are the domain of that which is contingent, unstable, of illusion and of this "time", of this reflection which relates to several circumstances.

It is there, from below, that it feeds from this mysterious mud where the hand of the Creator searched and modeled the matter of man. Infixus sum, Psalm LXVIII tells us, in limo profundi and it is from there that Israel "will spring like a lily" (Os. xiv, 6). Whether in Egypt, in Assyria, in Persia, in India, or in China, it is the lily which stands as a support for all gods or which, between its fingers, recreates their souls by opening their nostrils. It is the lily which also has its place in the capitals of columns and in the arms of the candelabra, such a prominent place in the decoration of Ark and Temple.

On the elongated stem which it uses to reach the deep, to search for life through moment and accident, it blossoms, in a circle of geometrically composed petals: the flower, the essential and synthetic cup, the central point which bestows perfect meaning and is the supreme center of the calculated dispositions of a concentric universe.

Ego flos campis, say the Canticles (ii, 1) et lilium convallium.

Paul Claudel
Un poète regarde la croix