Why Catholics Pray Before Statues

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Happy Happy Joy Joy

Grinning Mary

My parish priest said something shocking in his sermon today: “If you do not have joy, you do not have Jesus in you.”

There is of course cause for joy in the Christian life. Things turn out well in the end. But this statement is directly against the gospel. Jesus says, instead, “blessed are those who mourn.”

The priest cited Mary as our model here: how she greeted joyfully the news of her pregnancy.

There is no trace of this in the actual gospel; only submission: “behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

The obvious likelihood is that the news was shocking and terrifying. Being pregnant without a husband was punishable by being stoned to death. This is important for understanding Mary as a moral model. Being moral is not supposed to be the easy, carefree option.

Yeats captured the enormity of it:

The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.

Mary is revered as Mater Dolorosa—Our Lady of Sorrows.

Then the priest cited St. Paul as his authority. But Saint Paul was not so big on joy either. He said we must all, like him, “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.”

It was striking to me, on a trip to Bulgaria and Greece, to walk through museums and compare the pagan Greek art to the early Christian icons. The pagan figures generally grinned with vacant eyes; familiar to art historians as “the archaic smile.” the Christian saints always looked deeply sorrowful.

The archaic smile, shown on a sphinx

The archaic smile, shown on a dying soldier.

The core message is the need for repentance.

I fear this priest has been infected by the same “I’m OK, you’re OK” theology as the Christmas song “At This Table.”

It Was 50 Years Ago Today

In honour of the album’s 50th anniversary (I grow old; I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers belled) Rolling Stone or somebody recently did a modern “update” to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album cover. If they were to do it again today, whom would they add?

Their choices seem dull and predictable. J.K. Rowling. Rosa Parks. Boring and pious and politically correct. The original point, I think, for the Beatles, was to be quirky.

Here is the original list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_images_on_the_cover_of_Sgt._Pepper%27s_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band

But it makes a fun parlour game. Or Facebook game.

Rules: 50 figures. They must be your own most important personal influences. Ideally, you also want faces that are distinctive when seen small on an album cover. They must be fairly recently alive: say, recent enough that there are existing photographs.

Here are mine.

Leonard Cohen
William Kurelek
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Stephen Leacock
Ian Tyson
Buffy Ste. Marie
Thomas D’Arcy McGee
Joni Mitchell
Pierre Trudeau
Stephen Harper
Richard Halliburton
Salvador Dali
Anton Gaudi
Andy Warhol
Buster Keaton
Stanley Kubrick
Alfred Hitchcock
Walt Disney
George Orwell
W.B. Yeats
Samuel Beckett
T.S. Eliot
Lewis Carroll
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
J.D. Salinger
Stan Lee
Pope John Paul II
Pope Benedict XVI
Pope John XXIII
Pope Paul VI
Saint John Bosco
Saint Bernadette Soubouris
Lauren Bacall
Grace Kelly
Sharon Robinson
Raymond Collishaw
Billy Bishop
Billy Barker
Red Kelly
Eddie Shack
Maurice Richard
Jean Beliveau
Jacques Plante
Johnny Bower
Ezra Levant
Mark Steyn
Kate McMillan
Kathy Shaidle
The Thing
Iron Man

Weeping Image of the Virgin Reported in Windsor

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2010/11/12/%E2%80%98weeping%E2%80%99-virgin-transferred-to-canadian-church/

I note that, although the couple who own the statue are Orthodox, the statue is being housed in a Catholic church. It sounds like a happy report of interdenominational cooperation.

Note neither the relevant Orthodox nor Catholic authorities are endorsing the claims. Decide for yourself.