Oración de la rosa de Jericó

Divina rosa de Jericó: Por la Bendición que de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo recibiste, por la virtud que tu encierras y por el poder concedido ayúdame a vencer las dificultades de la vida, dame salud, fuerzas, felicidad, tranquilidad y paz para ganar más dinero con que cubrir mis necesidades y las de mi hogar y toda mi familia.

Divina ROSA DE JERICO: Todo esto te lo pido por la virtud que tú encierras en amor a Cristo Jesús y su grandiosa misericordia. AMEN

(SE DICEN TRES PADRES NUESTROS)

INSTRUCCIONES: La rosa debe ponerse en un platillo hondo con agua a las nueve o a las tres, del día Martes o Viernes, Déjese en agua por tres días consecutivos, quitándose a la misma hora en que se puso y hagase la oracion con todo fervor religioso.

La FE es la que salva y si usted no tiene FE, nada podrá alcanzar de las muchas virtudes atribuidas a esta planta, tenga presente que una planta completamente seca, recobra la vida y su color verde natural al contacto del agua. Úsese el agua que queda después de sacar la planta para rociar las esquinas de la puerta del frente de la casa para ahuyentar las malas influencias, trayendo al hogar la Paz, Poder y Abundancia.

Chauvin Sculpture Garden

From a useful website:

Little is known about the reclusive Kenny Hill, a bricklayer by trade, born around 1950. In 1988, he settled on some property on the bayou in Chauvin (pronounced show-van), Louisiana—population 3,400. Hill pitched a tent as his home and, over time, built a small rustic home that demonstrated an interesting use of space and attention to detail. Then, in 1990, without explanation, he began transforming his lush bayou environment into a fantastic chronicle of the world as seen through his eyes.

Less than a decade later, more than 100 primarily religious concrete sculptures densely pack the narrow, bayouside property. The sculptures are a profound mixture of Biblical reference, Cajun colors, and the evident pain and struggle of the artist’s life. Most figures—black, white, male, female, child, or solider—are guided, supported, or lifted by seemingly weightless angels. The unique angels, some inviting passage, others prohibiting, vary from blue skinned, bare-footed, and sightless to regal celestial figures clad in medieval garb with the black boots of the local shrimp fishermen.

AG and I visited here this past weekend, and my first reaction was: “this is what happens when you don’t have an editor”. But it was an unexpected and pleasant surprise near the “end of the line” in southern Louisiana. I also have to give a shout out to Annie Miller’s Sons’ Swamp Tours and Bayou Delight Restaurant, both outside of Houma. The former was pleasant and reasonably priced, and the latter was just an obscenity of southern Louisiana cuisine (i.e. fried food “porn”: fried alligator, crawfish, frogs’ legs, boudin balls, shrimp, etc.) I recommend the “Cajun Platter”. See below for more pictures of the sculpture garden.

Theological mercenaries

Henry Karlson has written an essay entitled, Academic Theology for the website Inside Catholic, in which he criticizes the attitude of treating theology as one modern academic discipline among others. As a student of theology in a contemporary Catholic school, he complains that there is a great deal of pressure to write “something unique” rather than uphold and defend what has always been believed:

Theologians, because they are tied to universities, are required to write according to the dictates and expectations of academia. This can be problematic, as academia loves novelty, while theology should be about preserving the faith and avoiding empty novelty.

The academic exercise of theology must also be tied into a vibrant spiritual life, and he cites such figures as Hans Urs von Balthasar as examples still being able to “engage theology today”.

De Stijl

From De Materie, an opera by composer Louis Andriessen and Robert Wilson

More on faith and culture

The following is a slightly edited version of an essay I originally posted here.

Rather than attempting to build Christianity upon the natural virtues of Inca religion in the Andes, the Jesuits in Juli had come to see Andean customs and beliefs as a serious hinderance to the faith of Christ. The sixteenth-century emphasis on the interior experience of Christianity, which created much higher standards for native converts than had existed in preceding centuries, meant that the Jesuit’s disillusionment with the native potential for Christian evangelization would be experienced throughout the Peruvian church. Eventually, the conviction that they native peoples were not truly “Christian” would lead to episcopal campaigns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to extirpate idolatry, as well as to modern notions that Andean peoples are “cryptopagans” even when they profess a belief in Christ.

Dr. Sabine Hyland wrote a book a few years back entitled, The Jesuit and the Incas, on one of the first mestizo clergy in Peru, Fr. Blas Valera. A son of one of the conquistadores and an Inca noblewoman, he was one of the first scholars to do a comparison of ancient Incan civilization with the European classical world, and created a world view quite favorable to the conquered empire. It was Fr. Valera’s contention that Inca religion was quite close to Christianity, down to an almost Christian idea of an incarnate God named Viracocha, and an absolute creator god named Illa Tecce. Valera wanted the Spanish clergy to begin to use these names for the Christian God and Jesus Christ, but to no avail. In the end, Fr. Valera was framed on charges of fornication and imprisoned by the Jesuit order for four years. Scholars now believe that he was really imprisoned for syncretic heresy. Only through the intervention of some influential Jesuits was he finally freed and sent to Spain, where he died in a pirate assault on Cadiz in 1597.

Two from Tukaram

Quarreling with God

You’re shameless,
and you don’t think.
You quarrel with us
like a man in the marketplace.

And then you’re delighted
whenever you meet
someone who has become
just like you.

You’re itching to take off
your loincloth.
And in the end
you’ll strip us all naked.

Tuka says, you heartless man,
you don’t give a damn about yourself
or anyone else.

*****************************************

Can water drink itself?
Can a tree taste its own fruit?
The worshiper of God must
remain distinct from
Him.
Only thus will he come to
know God’s joyful love.
But if he were to say that God
and he are one,
that joy and love would
vanish instantly.

Hino da Umbanda

The laity and the Church

Once upon a time, there was a Church that didn’t need the laity. Well, it knew that it was there, but it wasn’t like it mattered or anything. The only non-clergy who actually mattered were the ones who had the swords and the guns; as long as they were on the clergy’s side, the Church could basically do whatever it wanted. Thus, the liturgy remained in the same language for sixteen hundred years, even if the people had long stopped speaking that language. Ceremonies were basically performed in a whisper, or in a rushing series of clerical incantations to which most of the people in the church were completely oblivious. Meanwhile, the laity had to “fend for themselves”, taking what the clergy told them and trying to fit it into how they perceived and lived their daily lives. Sometimes, the clergy themselves assumed many of the popular beliefs of the people (after all, clergymen in that Church didn’t just bud out of other clergymen like hydras), and sometimes they had to go to scold the people for their “superstition” when they found certain practices objectionable. But the point was that the clergy had a captive audience, and the laity had to accept whatever it said, like it or not.

Gaelic psalmody

Saw this on Facebook somewhere. Sorry for the lack of attribution.

The Church as Machine

It has been two and a half years since I posted the following essay, but I still think it makes some good points. While I have expanded quite a bit on what I think the answer is, I think I conceive of the problem in similar terms: a mechanistic and technocratic drive in man that infiltrates even religious thinking itself.

Originally posted here

Recently, I finished reading Pierre Hadot’s newest book, The Veil of Isis, which is a thought-provoking reflection on the concept of Nature from Heraclitus to the present. More specifically, Hadot uses the fragment of Heraclitus, “nature likes to hide itself”, to trace how man has approached the world around him from ancient Greece to the present day. As a paradigm, he uses the two mythological figures of Prometheus and Orpheus to analyze how poets, philosophers, and scientists have either viewed nature as a mystery to be revered or a specimen to be dissected. The book thus centers on the dichotomy that emerges between veiling and unveiling, personified in pagan iconography of the veil of the goddess Isis/Artemis/Diana.