Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 43

Pentecost: Detonation and Fulfillment, Humility and Unity

"Pentecost" by Jean Fouquet (1420-81) [WikiArt.org]

A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for Sunday, May 24 2015, Pentecost Sunday | Carl E. Olson

Readings:
• Acts 2:1-12
• Ps 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34
• 1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13 or Gal 5:16-25
• Jn 20:19-23 or Jn 15:26-27; 16:12-15

“The Christian Church is the detonation of that explosive for which a train had been prepared through the centuries,” wrote Monsignor Ronald Knox in a collection of essays titled Stimuli (Sheed & Ward, 1951). “Everything that happened before the day of Pentecost was a kind of dress-rehearsal for the day of Pentecost.”

Many of the Church Fathers contemplated how Old Testament events foreshadowed or pointed toward the dramatic outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room and the events immediately following.

This was interpreted by some of the Fathers as a reversal of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9). Responding to man’s arrogant attempt to build a tower “with its top in the heavens”, God came down and confused the language of men so that they could not understand one another. Without the ability to communicate, mankind was scattered “abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” At Pentecost, God again descended and again caused confusion—but it was confusion caused by awe and astonishment, for men “from every nation under heaven” could understand one another.

“The church’s humility,” wrote St. Bede, “recovers the unity of languages that the pride of Babylon had shattered.” Man cannot, by his own efforts and intellect, achieve heaven; it is a grace and gift granted by the power of the Holy Spirit.

A second foreshadowing was the span of time between the first Passover and the arrival of the Israelites at Mount Sinai. The book of Exodus does not provide an exact time, stating the people arrived at Sinai on “the third new moon” (Ex. 19:1). Later, however, the feast of weeks, which was celebrated seven weeks after the first harvest was cut (cf., Dt. 16:9; Ex. 23:16; Lev. 23:9-21), was connected with the Exodus. Eventually, a span of fifty days was reckoned between the Passover and the feast of weeks, also known Pentecost (Greek for “fiftieth”).

Christ was the final and perfect Passover lamb who had, in fact, died during the feast of the Passover; by his Resurrection, he was also “the first fruits” from the dead (1 Cor 15:20). Therefore, Pentecost was the celebration of the divine harvest, brought about by the work of the Holy Spirit.

Finally, Pentecost had become associated in Judaism with the giving of the Law and the establishment of the Mosaic covenant at Sinai. The parallels here are both evident and significant: the new people of God, the Church, is formed by Christ (who is the New Moses) and filled by the Holy Spirit (who is the soul of the Church). The new and everlasting covenant is established by the law of Christ—that is, the law of Love—which in turn we are able to live because of the grace and gifts of the Holy Spirit.

The Church, St. Paul states in today’s Epistle, is the Body of Christ, having many parts but being one by virtue of one Spirit and one baptism (1 Cor 12:12-13).  The Church was not an afterthought or a Plan B, but was at the heart of the Father’s plan of salvation from the beginning; it was, the Catechism notes, “the goal of all things”, because it is the household of God, in which man enters into saving communion and is filled with the divine life (CCC 760).

Pentecost, then, is the birthday of the Church—a birthday giving new birth to mankind, regardless of race, sex, or social status. We are meant, Monsignor Knox wrote, “to find ourselves as members of a Spirit-filled, Spirit-actuated Body; if we remain in its unity, we know that the life of the Spirit, is, however imperceptibly, expressing itself in us.”

That unity, however, is often threatened by the temptation to save ourselves and to achieve wholeness apart from God. The feast of Pentecost reminds us that we have been saved from the land of sin by the Son, filled with divine life by the Holy Spirit, and called to the Promised Land by the Father.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the May 31, 2009, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Sexuality and Spirituality

Sexuality and Spirituality | Patrick F. Cioni | Homiletic & Pastoral Review 

An Attempt at Integration for Sexual and Spiritual Health

Abstract: This paper attempts to show the relationship between sexuality and spirituality, and ways to attain profound union between husbands and wives. Incorporating spirituality with sexual behavior enhances the capacity for satisfaction and unity between the man and the woman. Bringing sexuality and spirituality together promotes harmony between the sexes and can result in a closer relationship with the Creator. The theme of unity between married couples and with God is proposed throughout. The purpose of the article is to show that profound blessing and true unity in marriage are powerfully promoted by adding the spiritual dimension to the physical relationship.

Introduction

The paper introduces two battlefields in the journey toward oneness in marriage: 1) the struggle against the inner evil of lust in the human heart, and 2) the struggle against extrinsic evil, a counterfeit spirit; corresponding remedies are presented. The deceiver, the evil one, is also a divider—he seeks to divide and conquer. Victory involves overcoming spiritual attacks by spiritual methods. Shame and fear also isolate and divide, hindering intimacy, which requires an absence of defensiveness and a willingness to be open with one’s spouse.

Marriage is being assaulted from several directions at once. Nevertheless, God made man and woman to enjoy a peaceful, edifying union of body, mind, and spirit capable of approaching, to a degree, the joyful unity of intellect, will, and desire experienced in the Godhead. To a certain extent, men and women can aspire to the holy, deeply satisfying union that the first man and woman enjoyed before the fall. Mystical union is presented as God’s inestimable gift when a couple invites him into their marriage.

One Flesh

“The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.”1 “Original innocence”2refers to “the common beginning of man and woman” that involved “immunity from shame. …”3 This condition is further described as “… the original innocence of knowing,” a knowing without shame and “… a fullness of interpersonal communication…”4 promoting unity between the man and the woman. There were no hindrances to the man and woman knowing each other fully and unashamedly, no blocks to communication, no fear of judgment. Such knowledge in the state of original innocence was full and complete, existing on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels.

This unity, growing out of intimate knowledge between the man and the woman, reflected the unity in the Godhead. “The whole Old Testament is mainly concerned with revealing the truth about the oneness and unity of God … unity in communion,”5 a communion between and among the persons of the Trinity, most fully revealed in the New Testament. And God said, “Let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves … so God created man in the image of Himself, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. …”6 Together, the male and female in communion are a physical sign representing the unity in the Triune God. “Man becomes the image of God, not so much in the moment of solitude, as in the moment of communion … sex is a surpassing of the limit of man’s solitude …” given to man as one result of God’s conclusion: “It is not good that the man should be alone.”7

So God intervenes, and the man is relieved, for he says, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore a man … clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.”8 In the “integration of what is masculine and what is feminine,”9 one can catch a glimpse of divine unity.

The Fall and Shame

God intervened on behalf of the man, yet his creations, the man and the woman, failing to communicate with their Maker, chose to seek knowledge in an illicit way. 

Continue reading at HPRweb.com.

From Lambeth to the Land of Nod

"Cain flying before Jehovah's Curse" by Fernand-Anne Piestre Cormon, c. 1880, Musée d'Orsay, Paris (Wikipedia)

From Lambeth to the Land of Nod | John S. Hamlon | CWR

Catholic teaching on contraception will always be a "sign of contradiction" and it will always point to an inconvenient, counter-cultural truth: more contraception means more divorce and more abortion.

In his preface to A Man for All Seasons, playwright Robert Bolt describes protagonist Thomas More as

a man with an adamantine sense of his own self. He knew where he began and left off… but at length he was asked to retreat from that final area where he located his self. And there this supple, humorous, unassuming and sophisticated person… was overtaken by an absolutely primitive rigor, and could no more be budged than a cliff.

“Adamantine”—unyielding, impervious, diamond-like—befits the real Thomas More who, as councilor to King Henry VIII, was convicted of treason and beheaded in 1535. He would not sign the First Succession Act, which was anti-papal authority, anti-Catherine of Aragon (including daughter Mary—fathered by Henry VIII), and pro-Princess Elizabeth (still in Anne Boleyn’s womb).

At the formal Catholic level, More is the patron of statesmen and politicians; in the pews, he is a defender of marriage and family.

The Beauty of Marriage and Family—Anglican Style

The Anglican bishops at the Lambeth Conference of 1920 were also diamond-like. Compared to the grimy, banal, all-purpose language used today, they spoke of marriage with an eloquence and directness that is, in a word, lustrous:

The fellowship between man and woman in marriage was the earliest which God gave to the human race…. What our Lord adds about marriage is not given as new legislation, but as a declaration of God's original purpose. The man and his wife are no longer twain, but one flesh: and those whom God has joined together, man is not to put asunder…. [God] will work, as those who wait for Him well know, the miracle by which the two lives become one, yet so that each life becomes greater and better than it could have been alone. (Lambeth Conferences—1867-1930; [SPCK, 1948], 29)

By contrast, the Catholic world—up until the watershed-year 1968—saw few lines about the unifying woof in the warp and woof of marriage. In Pius XI’s Casti Connubii (1930), for example, love’s primary purpose is to help husband and wife form and perfect their interior life so “they may advance ever more and more in virtue, and above all that they may grow in true love toward God and their neighbor” (23). In order of emphasis, Pius XI puts procreation first, conjugal honor (based on mutual fidelity) second, and spousal love third.

But the Anglican bishops, having set the stage with the “oneness” of marriage, continue with the importance of procreation:

Continue reading on the CWR site. 

Bishop Thomas A. Daly Installed as the Seventh Bishop of Spokane, Washington

Bishop Thomas A. Daly receives his cathedra at his Installation Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral, Spokane, Washington

Bishop Thomas A. Daly Installed as the Seventh Bishop of Spokane, Washington

In homily, emphasizes the importance of vocations to the priesthood, the necessity of silence and contemplation, and recommends Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament

By Anthony E. Clark

“Humility, trust and surrender, all qualities of the Mother of Our Lord and so many saints before us, will lead us to hope, healing, and joy." 
— Bishop Thomas A. Daly, Bishop of Spokane, Washington

After Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, had read Pope Francis’ Apostolic Mandate appointing Bishop Thomas A. Daly to be the seventh Bishop of Spokane, Daly received his new crozier and cathedra, and the cathedral, filled to capacity, erupted in spontaneous applause. Both the crozier and cathedra were used by the first bishop of Spokane, Augustine Schinner, whose episcopal motto was Pro Deo, “For God,” which is inscribed on the cathedra, the bishop’s chair of office.

In his first homily as Bishop of Spokane, Bishop Daly recounted St. Paul’s exhortation to the priests at Ephesus to “Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock which the Holy Spirit appointed you overseers” (Acts 20:28-38). He then discussed the role of priests, the importance of vocations to the priesthood, and alluded to Bishop Charles White, the second bishop of Spokane, who ended his last sermon before dying with a plea for prayer and penance. Prayer and penance. Reminding his new flock of the challenges of remaining faithful to the Church and its teachings in our era of secular materialism, Bishop Daly advised prayer and fasting as a remedy to the distractions of this age.

Daly identified the contemporary distraction with technology as one of the principal disruptions in our connection to Christ, and he spoke of the need for silence to facilitate a genuinely fruitful relationship with God.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

One Weird Trick to Appreciate Art

One Weird Trick to Appreciate Art | John Herreid | IPNovels.com

“Oh, is that an allusion to the Fall?”

“The what?”

“The Fall of Adam and Eve.”

“Uh, no.”

“Is it Persephone in the underworld?”

“Who?”

It was around ten years ago. I was at an open studio event held in a huge old warehouse in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco. Several painters and sculptors were exhibiting their work, ranging from intentionally incomprehensible prints of layered graphics to a city made from candy to a number of rather good paintings. I was looking at one depicting a darkened landscape with a figure of a woman accepting a red fruit from a shadowy man in a robe. The artist was standing nearby, so I asked him about it. After a number of back and forth comments he shrugged and told me he had seen something similar in a painting somewhere and decided to riff on it. It wasn’t intended to be Eve’s encounter with Satan or Persephone being tricked by Hades, it was just an image that resonated with him.

Since then I’ve noticed this happening in other mediums: film or literature or music. As more and more people drift from a firm education in the classics, the images live on after their original context is lost. 

Continue reading at IPNovels.com.

On Graduations, Universities, and What Is “Practically Useless”

(Photo: us.fotolia.com | papa)

On Graduations, Universities, and What Is “Practically Useless” | Fr. James V. Schall, SJ | CWR

We need trade, technology, and engineering schools. But universities are for something beyond trade, technology, and engineering.

“I think almost all serious people understand that about 90% of what goes on in schools is ‘practically useless.’” — Neil Postman, “My Graduation Speech”

“The scanty conceptions to which we can attain of celestial things give us, from their excellence, more pleasure than all our knowledge of the world in which we live; just as a half glimpse of a person that we love is more delightful than a leisurely view of other things, whatever their number and dimensions.” — Aristotle, Parts of Animals, 644b32-45a1.

I.

The late Neil Postman (1931-2003) was a distinguished professor of communications at New York University. Over the years, like many other faculty members, he attended numerous graduations and heard varied commencement addresses—most of which, he thought, were not particularly good. He understood the reasons for this “un-outstanding-ness” of typical graduation addresses. The most a speaker could expect of an audience’s attentive listening was perhaps fifteen minutes. The graduating students were anxious to move on to what Postman called the “revelries” to follow.

Often, graduation speakers were not chosen for their ability to reason or speak, but for their accomplishments in other areas of expertise. The ceremonies were long. So Postman could sympathize with the typical graduation speaker. But in the end, he did not think that the students heard much that was important in such addresses. In fact, like E. F. Schumacher, in his A Guide for the Perplexed, he did not find much worthwhile in college in general, ten percent at best. The really important things were seldom even broached.

In this light, Postman proposed a model “graduation speech” as it should be, even if it is never actually delivered. He wanted students, in the fading moments of their academic careers, to know finally what the university was for. In this context, as in the passage that I cited in the beginning, he referred to a common opinion that about ninety percent of what went on in colleges was “practically useless.” Now, the reason why I am writing this essay is because of that phrase “practically useless.”

The phrase “practically useless” strikes an Aristotelian cord in my mind. It also goes back to Josef Pieper’s notion of “leisure.” Could Postman really have meant that the university was supposed to be “useful”? That it was to orient itself to what was primarily “practical”? Aristotle had distinguished the theoretical and the practical intellect. The theoretical intellect was ordered to know what is. The practical intellect was ordained to make or do things. The latter was ordered to the former; both had their place.

Contrary to waves of opinion emphasizing the practical, we do not enter college in principle to learn about “useful” things. If we do, we are entering something closer to a trade school, a place where knowing “how” is more important than knowing “what”. We need trade, technology, and engineering schools. But this is not what universities are for. Nor are they primarily for “research,” though knowing what the universe is constitutes a proper function of the human mind.

In fact, in the university, we should be looking for what is, in fact, “practically useless”, or perhaps, better put, what is beyond use.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Beauty That Beckons Us: An Introduction to the Theology of Fr. John Navone, SJ

The Parable of the Sower, by James Tissot (1886-94). 

The Beauty That Beckons Us: An Introduction to the Theology of Fr. John Navone, SJ | Dr. Eric Cunningham | HPR

(As HPR’s way of honoring the lifelong work of our brother Jesuit, Fr. John Navone, SJ, we shall run Gonzaga University’s Dr. Cunningham’s essay in two parts over the next two months.)

Part One
Introduction

This work was written to provide an introduction to some of the essential themes contained in the spirituality of Fr. John Navone, an Italian-American Jesuit theologian. Fr. Navone’s long career, as a priest, scholar, educator, and author, has yielded a rich and multifaceted body of work that offers its readers a means of negotiating creatively with the debilitating complexities of the modern world. Navone’s work encourages us to regard the contexts of our everyday lives as opportunities for grace, beauty, and self-transcendence in the love of God—the God in whom, St. Paul proclaims—“we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Fr. Navone’s work speaks with particular power to Christians of the 21st century, cast adrift, as we are, upon a dark sea of moral relativity, historical uncertainty, cultural aimlessness, and widespread indifference to humanity’s true relationship to a good and loving God.

When comparing Navone’s theology to that of other prominent religious thinkers of our age, it seems to occupy a unique place, both in terms of its literary qualities and range of concerns. While thoroughly grounded in a mainstream and “magisterial” Roman Catholic worldview, Navone’s work exhibits neither the structured dialectical logic of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), nor the circular rhetorical mysticism of Karol Wojtyla (Pope St. John Paul II). Navone’s spirituality is, to employ a generally overused and often misused term, holistic, treating with equal consideration the component parts of human concerns, the overarching scheme of spiritual reality, and the discursive connective tissue that holds the parts of human life to the superstructures of the divine order.

Navone’s body of work does not provide us with a systematic presentation of any one central idea, such as we might find in the philosophy of his fellow Jesuit, Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, nor is it a cornucopia of incisive commentary on nearly everything under the sun, as we find in the works of Navone’s lifelong friend and Jesuit colleague Fr. James Schall. It is rather, a set of core themes that rotate like satellites around the “solar” idea that God’s Love is the “ultimate context,” i.e., the origin, end, operative process, and aesthetic glory of all existence. It is a spirituality that delights in the love of God and seeks to share that delight through questions, conversations, and journeys of the mind.

Given the holistic and humanistic quality of his spirituality, Navone does not tell us what we should do, or how we should think, or even what we should be; rather, he describes for us the way things are in God’s creation, and illuminates the workings of a multivalent ecology of spiritual and material relationships. His spirituality avoids critical theory and formal apologetics, and largely sidesteps the political partisanship that has unfortunately tainted the theological discussions of the postwar American Church. I suppose we owe a debt of gratitude to the fact that Fr. Navone spent 45 years in Rome, detached from, although never unfamiliar with, the debilitating and intellectually shallow disputes that have taken prominence in the theological life of the Catholic academy in America. His thought and writing exhibit a kind of leisurely elegance; something we more readily associate with a patient and cultured mind secure in its traditions, than the agitated spirit of an ideologue struggling to overturn the world.

We can also thank Rome for another persistent feature of Fr. Navone’s spirituality. By this, I mean an undeniable worldliness, a term I use in the most complimentary fashion, even if, when used in a religious context, can often connote a lack of sincerity with regard to spiritual commitments.

Continue reading at www.HPRweb.com.

Hundreds Stand with Cordileone at Archbishop Family Support Day

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco is greeted by supporters at the “Archbishop Family Support Picnic” (Photo: Lisa Hamrick)

Hundreds Stand with Cordileone at Archbishop Family Support Day | Gibbons J. Cooney | CWR blog

The picnic event was unusual for San Francisco: normal, multi-generational families, gathered together to honor God, the Church, and the leader who is promoting those truths in the face of virulent opposition 

On Saturday, May 16th, approximately 500 joyful Catholics of every age and ethnic group came together in San Francisco’s Sue Bierman Park to show support for the City’s fighting Archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone. The faithful were there to back the Archbishop’s ongoing efforts to ensure that the high schools under his jurisdiction affirm and proclaim the truth of the Catholic Church.

The day began at 9:30am with High Mass in the Extraordinary Form celebrated by Canon Olivier Menes of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest at the Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi. At least 100 of the faithful were in the Church as Mass began, and one attendee later told us that by the time Mass ended practically every seat in the church was filled.

At Sue Bierman Park, the faithful began to arrive even before the 11:30am scheduled start time. The event was called the “Archbishop Family Support Picnic” and that is exactly what it turned out to be: a big joyful family picnic. The grass of Sue Bierman Park was a checkerboard of blankets and picnic hampers, through which scores of children happily chased one another, holding helium filled blue balloons emblazoned with the motto “Thank You ABC!” 

Blue was the color of the day. Organizers had encouraged those attending to wear blue as a sign of solidarity, and even got special blue M & M’s printed with the Archbishop’s motto “In Verbo Tuo” (“At Your Word”). The faithful were of all ages: from infants in arms to grandmas and grandpas. The picnic was unusual for San Francisco: normal, multi-generational families, gathered together to honor God, the Church, and the leader who is promoting those truths in the face of virulent opposition. A number of the children were even seen running up to and hugging some of the police officers on duty. In a telling juxtaposition, the Archbishop Family Support Picnic was followed today by the City’s annual “Bay to Breakers”--ostensibly a race, but in reality an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of people to engage in drunkenness, drug use, and debauchery.

Although the event had the intimacy of a parish picnic--at one point a small group started singing Happy Birthday to one of their fellow-parishioners and all the surrounding Catholics joined in--it was a parish picnic with many parishes. 

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Ascension: A Source of Lasting Joy

"The Ascension" (1775) by John Singleton Copley [WikiArt.org]

The Ascension: A Source of Lasting Joy | Carl E. Olson 

 

On the Readings for the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, May 17, 2015

Readings:

• Acts 1:1-11
• Psa 47:2-3, 6-7, 8-9
• Eph 1:17-23 or Eph 4:1-13
• Mk 16:15-20

“Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?”

That question, uttered by the two angels to the disciples, is easily read over quickly or even misunderstood. The natural reaction, I think, is to conclude the angels were simply saying, “Look: Jesus is gone. There’s nothing more here to see. Go your way.” The impression is that Jesus, in ascending into heaven, had not only departed but created some sort of distance between himself and his disciples. We might even conclude that the disciples were sorrowful or confused, wondering, “What next?” 

But such conclusions are incorrect; in fact, they are quite contrary to the real nature of the Ascension.

Benedict XVI, in Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week (Ignatius Press, 2011), offered several insights into the nature and meaning of the Ascension. Referring to St. Luke’s account of the Ascension (Lk 24:50-53), he noted that after Christ “was taken up to heaven”, the disciples did not weep or act confused but “returned to Jerusalem with great joy…” He stated, “The joy of the disciples after the ‘Ascension’ corrects our image of this image. ‘Ascension’ does not mean departure into a remote region of the cosmos but, rather, the continuing closeness that the disciples experience so strongly that it becomes a source of lasting joy.”

Then, a bit later, Benedict remarked upon the meaning of the “cloud” that took Christ up and out of the sight of the disciples. The cloud is meant to invoke several important events, including the Transfiguration, in which a cloud surrounded Jesus, Moses, and Elijah (see Lk 9:28-36); the “overshadowing” of Mary by the Most High (Lk 1:35); and the cloud signifying the presence of God during the exodus (Ex 13:21-22; 40:34-35). The cloud, in short, evokes a profound mystery—the very reality of God. “It presents Jesus’ departure”, wrote Benedict, “not as a journey to the stars, but as his entry into the mystery of God. It invokes an entirely different order of magnitude, a different dimension of being.”

The dimension is referred to in today’s readings from Ephesians 1 and Mark 16 as God’s “right hand”, the place of power, majesty, and glory. This position, St. Paul wrote, is “far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion”— it is not part of this temporal world, for it is the inner life of the Triune God. And God, of course, is not limited by time and space, so we can say that Jesus did not “go away” in any temporal sense, but, as Benedict insisted, “now and forever by God’s own power he is present with us and for us.” And, paradoxically, this means Christ is with us in a new and continuing way, which is a cause for great joy among his disciples.

This is heady and mysterious stuff, without a doubt. But what does it mean for us in the here and now? The answer was beautifully expressed in the fifth century by Pope St. Leo I, who wrote, “Since then Christ’s Ascension is our uplifting, and the hope of the body is raised, wither the glory of the Head has gone before, let us exult, dearly beloved, with worthy joy and delight in the loyal paying of thanks. For today not only are we confirmed as possessors of paradise, but have also in Christ penetrated the heights of heaven.” 

The Son of God, having united himself forever to humanity by becoming man, has now opened the way for man to be united with him eternally in glory, in the beatific vision. This is the “hope” and the “riches of glory” and the “inheritance” referred to by St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians.

The Lord, Benedict explained, is with us now; he comes to us: through his word and the sacraments, “especially in the most Holy Eucharist…” He fills all things in every way for those who have accepted his gift of divine and everlasting joy.

(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the May 20, 2012 edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)

Read the first chapter of "The Last Crusader" by Louis de Wohl

Read the first chapter of the novel  The Last Crusader  by Louis de Wohl. If you like what you’re reading, visit the novel’s page to learn more or order!

CHAPTER 1

There was no road to Leganés, just a narrow, muddy path marked by occasional imprints of naked feet and strewn with stones—irregular, ragged, and discolored like the teeth in an old man’s mouth. The village itself, perched on a cluster of hillocks, was brooding wearily in the early afternoon sun.

When Charles Prévost saw it through the window of his carriage, he shook his large, gray head. They might have chosen a better place, he thought. But then that man Massy had been a viol player, a musician, and there was no way of understanding such people. He could have settled down in Valladolid or even in Madrid itself, though of course life there would have cost more; moreover, in the cities there was a far greater danger of meeting people who might ask questions, or worse still, get a glimpse of the—the secret. And that. . . .

A sharp knock interrupted his chain of thought—something had hit the carriage.

Charles Prévost heaved his large, fleshy body nearer the window and peered out. And then he gasped. There was an arrow sticking in the leather curtain. An arrow!

Glancing about he saw at some distance a turbaned head—and another and a third. Moors. . . .

For one wild moment Charles Prévost felt himself whirled back in time to the siege of Tunis, trumpets blaring, banners streaming in the wind and the Emperor himself roaring commands as only he could.

But then he saw that the faces under the turbans were boys’ faces and very frightened ones at that. Boys playing Moors and shooting at his carriage! His face flushed and he pulled at the silk cord the other end of which was tied to the coachman’s little finger. The carriage came to a stop.

“Just you wait”, said Charles Prévost grimly. He began to fumble at the door.

“Don’t do that”, a young, clear voice said sharply. “Please!”

The heavy man turned around. A boy was looking into the carriage from the other side, a boy perhaps seven or eight years old, fair-haired, with a pale, eager face. He was dressed in rags.

“What do you mean?” Prévost stared at him, goggle-eyed.

“You were going to interfere, weren’t you?” The boy sounded impatient. “They didn’t shoot at you—your carriage just ran into their line of fire.”

“Vaya. . .”, Prévost began to splutter. “Go away! I never. . .”

“It was bad shooting”, admitted the boy hastily. “But if you’ll stay in your carriage, I’ll avenge you.”

Prévost’s eyes narrowed. Blue eyes. Blue eyes and blond hair.

“Who are you?” he asked hoarsely.

“I am the ‘Christian’ leader”, the boy said gravely. “And this is my chance to win the battle. Stay in your carriage, please! You’ll see, I’ll win it.” He turned away and let the flap drop behind him.

Prévost blew up his cheeks. Mechanically he drew out a large silk handkerchief and dabbed his forehead. Then he lifted the flap. The “Moors” were still there—in fact there were more of them now, six, seven, a whole dozen, boys between seven and twelve, beturbaned and armed with wooden swords, slingshots, and bows and arrows.

Still more were coming up and all of them were gaping at the carriage. Maybe it was the first they had ever seen. The countryside was poor here. A man was considered well-off if he had a donkey, and rich if he owned a mule. A carriage with two outriders, a liveried coachman, and groom was doubtless a sensation and of far greater interest to them than their game.

Prévost began to tell them what he thought of a flock of snotty-nosed urchins trying to impede his progress by shooting at his carriage, and they listened, wide-eyed and respectfully.

From somewhere a clear, sharp voice yelled: “Santiago!” and they looked up, startled, and tried to get into some kind of formation.

It was too late. A compact little troop of boys attacked them from the rear and almost as soon as they had come to grips with them a second batch came straight at them from behind the coach, led by the fair-haired boy. The “Moors” broke and ran, hotly pursued by the “Christians”.

Charles Prévost began to chuckle. Then he pulled twice at the silk cord and the carriage rumbled on toward Leganés. After a few minutes the first houses stared at it with the eyes of all their inmates. Doors began to fill. Dogs barked madly at the horses.

When Prévost saw an old priest passing, he leaned out of the window and took off his hat. “Good morning, Reverend Father”, he said courteously. “Will you tell me where I can find the house of Señor and Señora Massy?”

The priest was at least eighty years old, and his cassock not very much younger. He looked like a scarecrow, but he bowed like a grandee.

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