To Give a Defense
So I see this Seven Quick Takes fad everywhere I go in the Catholic blogosphere, and I think to myself, I hate fads. How can I get in on this one? I decided, sensibly enough, that the best way to get in was to, well, get in. So here I am. Seven Quick Takes is still, as always, hosted by the graceful Jennifer Fulwiler at the peerless Conversion Diary. I would be henceforth unmentionable by civilized man if I didn’t point out that Ms. Fulwiler’s writing factored greatly in my conversion, for she has an uncanny ability to make the Church come across as what it, in fact, is: joyful. I will never be able to do what she does, or as well.
II.
I awoke Monday morning to the jaw-dropping surprise that one of my posts, overnight, had become the most-read on the blog, and by lots. A second joined it, and has since surpassed it in page views. Over the course of the week, the total number of visitors to the blog is now triple what it had been during the first ten months. Wow. I hardly expected that kind of explosion—viral by any yardstick I possess. Possibly it will die down, I don’t know, but if you have been here and you have come back, then I want to take the opportunity to say thank you and welcome to the blog. I hope you will stick around.
III.
Here in Cincinnati, the days have discovered the autumn. We’ve had a beautiful couple of days, and I love this time of year. I particular love it that Pumpkin Spice coffee is back. If you’ve not tried it you are missing out on the best argument I know for the existence of God. Well, okay, maybe the second best. But don’t get your Pumpkin Spice from McDonald’s (vile) or, still worse, Starbucks (unmentionable). Get your Pumpkin Spice from the Carmelite monks of Wyoming. It is an excellent way to help a wonderful and faithful community of religious (and this blog), while enjoying the reward on your tongue and resting in the knowledge that God is in his Heaven and all is well with the world.
IV.
In your charity, I asks that you pray for the recovery of Thomas Peters, who blogs at American Papist. The Novena to St. Joseph is a very powerful prayer. Mr. Peters, who is 27, injured his fifth cervical vertebra in a swimming accident in July. The fifth cervical vertebra is in the neck. He continues to have a difficult recovery, and has now learned he has a life-threatening condition common to patients who have injured the spinal cord. The condition is called Autonomic Dysreflexia. You can read more here.
V.
As a reading and blogging project for 2014, I am going to work my way through the entire text of St. Augustine’s City of God. The text of my Penguin edition is 1087 pages, so at three a day or thereabouts I should complete Augustine in a year. If you follow this blog, you can join me as I read and write my way through Augustine, in what I hope will be a kind of theological reader’s journal by someone encountering the text for the first time. I’m not entirely unfamiliar with Augustine’s writing; I’ve read both the Confessions and On Christian Doctrine. City of God seems the logical next step, and possibly a good foundation for continuing where I really want to go, which is the Summa. But Aquinas will be for another year.
VI.
I sometimes wonder whether it has ever struck anyone else that Job is so well-placed in the Old Testament. Technically, it could have been placed anywhere, but in the providence of God it was placed immediately before the Psalms. In the Psalms, to be sure, there are laments and cries to a God who seems absent or slow. But ultimately they are songs of praise and thanksgiving. So immediately before the Psalms we read the ultimate narrative of spiritual darkness in Job. Job is the night; the Psalms are the day. Job is lament; the Psalms are praise. The books complement each other.
My conviction, from all that I have read, is that the Dark Night of the Soul is an incalculable gift. But we need to learn how to work through spiritual darkness without letting go of God; we need to learn how to seek His ways and not our own; we need to learn how to trust in His care more than in our own efforts and our own success. Job teaches us all these things. Read it; read it; read it. In the very near future, I shall start blogging my way through Job too—the first in what I hope will be a continued exercise of blogging my way through Sacred Scripture.
In this effort, I have a definite reason for beginning with Job. But you’ll have to read the posts to find out.
VII.
And last, a prayer. On the seventh day God rested from all His work. Thus the seventh in this my first set of quick takes is about rest, and about rest in the Lord. Psalm 3:5 is one of the most comforting of all verses: I lie down and sleep. I wake again, for the Lord sustains me. Thus may there never be fear of the night. God is the creator and the sustainer of all things. In your waking and in your sleeping, dear reader, may you be blessed and sustained.
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