On the Strange Symmetry of Beauty and Death

By contemplating the beauty and use of each thing, [a man] is filled with love for the Creator. He surveys all visible things: the sky, the sun, moon, stars and clouds, rain, snow and hail … the four-legged animals, the wild beasts and animals and reptiles, all the birds, the springs and rivers, the many varieties of plants and herbs, both wild and cultivated. He sees in all things the order, the equilibrium, the proportion, the beauty, the rhythm, the union, the harmony, the usefulness, the variety, the motion, the colors, the shapes, the reversion of things to their source, permanence in the midst of corruption. Contemplating thus all created realities, he is filled with wonder.

Byzantine monk Peter of Damascus 

Peter Mommsen begins his lovely piece, Dogs, Deer, Herons, and the Promise of Beauty, with Wordsworth:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light.

—William Wordsworth

Wordsworth’s poem, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, was assigned in my undergraduate English class. Its majesty, power, and hope gushed into my psyche; Over and over, I pondered words that seemed to contain the answer to everything:

A single field which I have looked upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone;

                      The Pansy at my feet

                      Doth the same tale repeat:

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

                      Hath had elsewhere its setting,

                         And cometh from afar:

                      Not in entire forgetfulness,

                      And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

                      From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close

                      Upon the growing Boy….

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!

                      And let the young Lambs bound

                      As to the tabor’s sound!

We in thought will join your throng,

                      Ye that pipe and ye that play,

                      Ye that through your hearts to-day

                      Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now for ever taken from my sight,

                Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

                      We will grieve not, rather find

                      Strength in what remains behind;

                      In the primal sympathy

                      Which having been must ever be;

                      In the soothing thoughts that spring

                      Out of human suffering;

                      In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,

Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

                      Is lovely yet;

The Clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

What is it about beauty?

Years ago, while living in the first house I’d ever bought, I had a Ziggy calendar. And this was one of the cartoons for the month. Only in that version, Ziggy was shouting,

“YEAH GOD!”

I loved that cartoon.

On many a morning while driving into the glory of a new sunrise to my job at Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center, I’d shout, “Yeah God!!” And pretend not to see the horrified stares of other drivers undoubtedly wondering if there was a crazy person beside them.

I was thrilled to find it again for this article. And found the close to sixty-minute aggravation of finding it, then getting permission to use it and finally converting it from PDF to JPG worthwhile.

Why?

Because all those mornings, I was praising, joyfully proclaiming a God I claimed I didn’t believe in. Right, I was a card-carrying atheist.

Sound wholly, completely nuts?

Think about it for a moment or five. Maybe back to a time when you weren’t so sure of God…or the priest or minister did or said something that made you decide to walk away from the numerous justifications supporting the walls of our unbelief.

Or maybe you’re where I was, confident that zealous Christians like me are—off. But when looking at that cartoon, it’s super hard to wipe off the smile. Tamp down the surge of joy. Beauty—magnificence—slices through our defensive rhetoric, reducing our arguments to empty patter.

What is happening today, Jesus’ baptism?

Just nineteen days ago, we celebrated the miracle of Christ’s incarnation, last week, the Epiphany, and today, His Baptism. Initially, our minds object, thirty-three years of a life covered in less than three weeks? How is that reasonable?

Looking through the secular lens, of course, it isn’t.

But through His Bride, the liturgy of the Church, we see through the lens of our faith.

This perfect infant became a slave to invade our corrupted humanity and restore the Father’s original plan of no harm or ruin for creation and creatures. Jesus’ entire life was a preparation for the crucifixion:

.This is my beloved Son. Though hungry himself, he feeds thousands; though weary, he refreshes those who labour. He has no place to lay his head yet he holds all creation in his hand. By his suffering he heals all sufferings; by receiving a blow on the cheek he gives the world its liberty; by being pierced in the side he heals the wound in Adam’s side.

  And now, please pay close attention, for I want to return to that fountain of life and contemplate its healing waters as they gush out.

  The Father of immortality sent his immortal Son and Word into the world, to come to us men and cleanse us with water and the Spirit. To give us a new birth that would make our bodies and souls immortal, he breathed into us the spirit of life and armed us with incorruptibility. Now if we become immortal, we shall also be divine; and if we become divine after rebirth in baptism through water and the Holy Spirit, we shall also be heirs along with Christ, after the resurrection of the dead.

  So I cry out, like a herald: Let peoples of every nation come and receive the immortality that flows from baptism. This is the water that is linked to the Spirit, the water that irrigates Paradise, makes the earth fertile, gives growth to plants, and brings forth living creatures. In short, this is the water by which a man receives new birth and life, the water in which even Christ was baptized, the water into which the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove.

  Whoever goes down into these waters of rebirth with faith renounces the devil and pledges himself to Christ. He repudiates the enemy and confesses that Christ is God, throws off his servitude and becomes an adopted son. He comes up from baptism resplendent as the sun and radiating purity and, above all, he comes as a son of God and a co-heir with Christ.

  To him be glory and power, to him and his most holy, good and life-giving Spirit, both now and for ever. Amen.

A discourse on the Theophany

…Jews and Greeks alike … are all under the domination of sin, (Romans 3:9) …all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
What we celebrate today is a fact which is nothing short of mind-blowing as this sin solidarity has been embraced by Christ Jesus himself!….
For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)….

our own Baptism must never be considered merely a date of a Sacrament we received, most likely, a very long time ago. Baptism places us in a different type of solidarity to be renewed every single day of our life on earth. We should picture most merciful Jesus drawing close to us in our sins, daily, to draw us, slowly yet surely, into the solidarity of divine Life in him. Ultimately, we should live our Baptism, daily, as a joyful journey with Jesus at our side. It must be real joy also here on earth, despite anything ugly or scary that could happen along the way, so that it can, eventually, turn into eternal, heavenly joy.And, there is even a “shortcut to joy” which Jesus keeps showing us from the moment that he, our God, was conceived in the womb of Mary; was confined in there for nine months; grew like any other child; lived in obscurity for some 30 years in the insignificant hamlet of Nazareth and died naked, covered with spittle, blood and indignities on a cross.
 
This shortcut to joy is humility. Humility starts us out from the solid, undeniable ground of our sins and flaws. It frees us from the need to cover up, to deny, to hide, to pretend. It frees us from all those empty efforts we devise to protect and preserve an attractive image of ourselves. Finally, humility frees us to love in a truly Christ-like way, by adopting his attitude of considering others as more important than ourselves and of placing their well-being ahead of our own….

Genuine Lasting Joy-Fr. Dino Vanin

Used by permission copyright 2020 Jeff Haynie