Thank you, as always, for a thought-provoking essay.
The older I get (I shall be 80 at the end of this year), the simpler my response becomes to the 'divine discontent' that you highlight here. The Christian response that you quote from the old penny catechism says it all: we are on earth 'To know Him, to love Him, to serve Him...'
When we come to know God in the Person of Christ, we cannot but love Him and seek to follow him. Even if the work we do is monotonous and hard, it isn't pointless if we do it with love, especially so if we have a family to support. The anomie of modern man arises from one thing only: lack of a spiritual meaning to his life. We are all created spiritual beings; if our craving for the divine is not satisfied we will never be truly happy or contented.
Poor Virginia Woolf. She lived within a cultured, intellectual circle of high-minded atheists her whole life; Mrs Dalloway's anxiety is the result.
I have four atheist friends, all men of intellectual achievement who lead honourable lives according to their lights. But there is a vital ingredient missing; so they are all at an impasse of sorts about the ultimate purpose of existence. As you sometimes point out, for all its material discomforts and privations which are quite beyond our modern imagination to envisage, life in the medieval world was more contented than our own - simply because medieval man knew what he was about. Modern man doesn't.
Wonderful thoughts, wonderfully articulated—thank you for this comment, Francis. Poor Virginia Woolf indeed; she was intelligent, admired, and a very talented writer, and she drowned herself in a river at age 59. No amount of worldly success and fame can fill the gaping hole left by a life without God.
The ars celebrandi is often deplorable. Many TLM celebrants have adopted the cringeworthy habits of their predecessors. In my experience it’s the minority but my experience is limited. I find it is usually diocesan clergy who experienced the 50s and 60s. And the N.O. concept of “doing it my way” is alive and well in the TLM world. Can’t we just say the black and do the red without the imposition of self will and personal preference? We priests are not performers. Nothing about us should stand out.
Recently Brian Holdsworth has has some fascinating commentaries about how attitude to work has changed throughout the ages. Work in the medieval Golden Age was very much finite: there was important, necessary work to do, but once it got done, there was no more. It was harder to invent more meaningless stuff to do to fill up the rest of the 'working' hours and days. Instead, people got to rest, go to Church, celebrate entire octaves; in short, they got to live out their purpose right alongside their work. It was the protestants that then invented the hustle culture by saying that the work of the religious is not that sacred, rather, that all work is sacred. Thus, profane (non-religious) work got put up on a pedestal, and became something that is was never meant to be: the main purpose of life.
It seems to me that this all fits so well with work depicted in the medieval calendars: winter's work is to keep oneself and others nourished and warm. That is such good humanising work, and it brings me much solace and relief.
I wish we could see the stars properly where we live. The abaility to see all the stars visible to the naked eye used to be a right that nearly all of our ancestors had. This is the one and only case where I feel like the world owes me something. Why do we need so much artificial light in the middle of the night? Again, it's due to the broken view of work, leasure and rest.
The books sounds fascinating, and I look forward to Tuesday's post.
I agree, it feels very unjust that we are deprived of the stars—this is something that all people everywhere had from Eden to the eighteenth century, and nowadays it's hard to even find a campground that is dark enough to give us the stars that we as human beings deserve.
I’m a little late to this discussion but I very much appreciate how you hit on many hot-button topics in the modern world, with comparisons to how men may have viewed similar challenges in the Middle Ages. And your term, quarosis is perfect. Hopefully, it will catch on. Being both an organic farmer and a computer jockey today, I sometimes wonder how to slow it down when so many people depend on me. Is either activity “serving God?” And how does one know? I look forward to reading your next installment.
Thanks for the comment, Thomas, and I'm glad that the article struck a chord in your life. My experience has been that discernment is a slow and complicated process. It took me a long time to find my truest path in life, and that journey involved continual soul-searching combined with some bold, maybe reckless, maneuvers. I don't know how right or wrong all my decisions were, but my intentions were good and it seems like the results were good as well. There's a Gospel verse, one of my favorites, that any modern father would, I think, do well to meditate upon: "Jesus said unto him, 'No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.'"
These are crucial questions: "Is either activity 'serving God'? And how does one know?" They deserve not just one article but many—and, of course, a lot of careful pondering.
This essay is a good example of why even during Lent, when I will severely curtail my time online (hopefully forever thereafter), your Substack will remain something I read and take with me for the journey ahead. Unlike the rest of the internet which confuses, distracts, and disquiets, your writing clarifies, reminds, and brings peace to the battle. God bless you.
The last line which reads "You are here to look at the stars" is strikingly reminiscent of the last lines of Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso from his Divine Comedy. In the Paradiso translated by Anthony Esolen the last line reads "The love that moves the sun and the other stars." Your essay resonates also with The book of Ecclesiastes which seems consonant with the Catholic catechism you briefly quoted. In summary, to my way of thinking, it seems each of the foregoing is saying the same thing in so many words. I really enjoyed your essay.
I'm so glad you enjoyed the essay, Steve, and thanks for taking the time to write this comment. Kmita's phrase does have a Dantean quality; perhaps he had Dante in mind when he wrote it. You might also enjoy the post linked below:
Thanks. I know that my clients appreciate my help but I regularly ask myself "Why am I doing this? Why do I battle the insanities of the modern world, trying to wrestle sense and morality out of the morass?" The answer is, of course, that this is not the point. I'm gradually learning that my work is actually incidental, the real purpose is elsewhere. Thanks for the reinforcement!
This article has perfectly centered my current state of mind. I am a teacher of ancient Greek in a secondary school. I would like to read this novel translated into Italian.
Thank you for this comment, Daniele, and I'm truly glad that the article was helpful for you. Thank you also for your labors as an educator—you are doing a great service to the human race by teaching ancient Greek.
"The discouraging reality, though, is that it tends to float placidly on the surface of postmodern life, like a lily pad on a pond that is dying from the bottom up."
Thank you, as always, for a thought-provoking essay.
The older I get (I shall be 80 at the end of this year), the simpler my response becomes to the 'divine discontent' that you highlight here. The Christian response that you quote from the old penny catechism says it all: we are on earth 'To know Him, to love Him, to serve Him...'
When we come to know God in the Person of Christ, we cannot but love Him and seek to follow him. Even if the work we do is monotonous and hard, it isn't pointless if we do it with love, especially so if we have a family to support. The anomie of modern man arises from one thing only: lack of a spiritual meaning to his life. We are all created spiritual beings; if our craving for the divine is not satisfied we will never be truly happy or contented.
Poor Virginia Woolf. She lived within a cultured, intellectual circle of high-minded atheists her whole life; Mrs Dalloway's anxiety is the result.
I have four atheist friends, all men of intellectual achievement who lead honourable lives according to their lights. But there is a vital ingredient missing; so they are all at an impasse of sorts about the ultimate purpose of existence. As you sometimes point out, for all its material discomforts and privations which are quite beyond our modern imagination to envisage, life in the medieval world was more contented than our own - simply because medieval man knew what he was about. Modern man doesn't.
Wonderful thoughts, wonderfully articulated—thank you for this comment, Francis. Poor Virginia Woolf indeed; she was intelligent, admired, and a very talented writer, and she drowned herself in a river at age 59. No amount of worldly success and fame can fill the gaping hole left by a life without God.
The catechism response as to why we exist sums it up simply and perfectly. What is unfortunate is that so many reject it. Even Catholics.
And many Catholics don't even know the Catechism.
And that bad liturgy is the Novus Ordo. All of it.
The ars celebrandi is often deplorable. Many TLM celebrants have adopted the cringeworthy habits of their predecessors. In my experience it’s the minority but my experience is limited. I find it is usually diocesan clergy who experienced the 50s and 60s. And the N.O. concept of “doing it my way” is alive and well in the TLM world. Can’t we just say the black and do the red without the imposition of self will and personal preference? We priests are not performers. Nothing about us should stand out.
Love that last summary sentence: "You are here to look at the stars."
Recently Brian Holdsworth has has some fascinating commentaries about how attitude to work has changed throughout the ages. Work in the medieval Golden Age was very much finite: there was important, necessary work to do, but once it got done, there was no more. It was harder to invent more meaningless stuff to do to fill up the rest of the 'working' hours and days. Instead, people got to rest, go to Church, celebrate entire octaves; in short, they got to live out their purpose right alongside their work. It was the protestants that then invented the hustle culture by saying that the work of the religious is not that sacred, rather, that all work is sacred. Thus, profane (non-religious) work got put up on a pedestal, and became something that is was never meant to be: the main purpose of life.
It seems to me that this all fits so well with work depicted in the medieval calendars: winter's work is to keep oneself and others nourished and warm. That is such good humanising work, and it brings me much solace and relief.
I wish we could see the stars properly where we live. The abaility to see all the stars visible to the naked eye used to be a right that nearly all of our ancestors had. This is the one and only case where I feel like the world owes me something. Why do we need so much artificial light in the middle of the night? Again, it's due to the broken view of work, leasure and rest.
The books sounds fascinating, and I look forward to Tuesday's post.
Very well said, Barbora!
I agree, it feels very unjust that we are deprived of the stars—this is something that all people everywhere had from Eden to the eighteenth century, and nowadays it's hard to even find a campground that is dark enough to give us the stars that we as human beings deserve.
Just beautiful.
I’m a little late to this discussion but I very much appreciate how you hit on many hot-button topics in the modern world, with comparisons to how men may have viewed similar challenges in the Middle Ages. And your term, quarosis is perfect. Hopefully, it will catch on. Being both an organic farmer and a computer jockey today, I sometimes wonder how to slow it down when so many people depend on me. Is either activity “serving God?” And how does one know? I look forward to reading your next installment.
Thanks for the comment, Thomas, and I'm glad that the article struck a chord in your life. My experience has been that discernment is a slow and complicated process. It took me a long time to find my truest path in life, and that journey involved continual soul-searching combined with some bold, maybe reckless, maneuvers. I don't know how right or wrong all my decisions were, but my intentions were good and it seems like the results were good as well. There's a Gospel verse, one of my favorites, that any modern father would, I think, do well to meditate upon: "Jesus said unto him, 'No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.'"
Sometimes I think that nowadays nothing is more difficult than being a father (especially one with a large family).
There are moments when it certainly does feel like that.
These are crucial questions: "Is either activity 'serving God'? And how does one know?" They deserve not just one article but many—and, of course, a lot of careful pondering.
This essay is a good example of why even during Lent, when I will severely curtail my time online (hopefully forever thereafter), your Substack will remain something I read and take with me for the journey ahead. Unlike the rest of the internet which confuses, distracts, and disquiets, your writing clarifies, reminds, and brings peace to the battle. God bless you.
Thank you, Sherry, for this encouraging and extremely meaningful comment. I thank God that my writing has found a beneficial place in your life.
The last line which reads "You are here to look at the stars" is strikingly reminiscent of the last lines of Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso from his Divine Comedy. In the Paradiso translated by Anthony Esolen the last line reads "The love that moves the sun and the other stars." Your essay resonates also with The book of Ecclesiastes which seems consonant with the Catholic catechism you briefly quoted. In summary, to my way of thinking, it seems each of the foregoing is saying the same thing in so many words. I really enjoyed your essay.
I'm so glad you enjoyed the essay, Steve, and thanks for taking the time to write this comment. Kmita's phrase does have a Dantean quality; perhaps he had Dante in mind when he wrote it. You might also enjoy the post linked below:
https://viamediaevalis.substack.com/p/dante-and-his-inquiring-mind
Thanks. I know that my clients appreciate my help but I regularly ask myself "Why am I doing this? Why do I battle the insanities of the modern world, trying to wrestle sense and morality out of the morass?" The answer is, of course, that this is not the point. I'm gradually learning that my work is actually incidental, the real purpose is elsewhere. Thanks for the reinforcement!
Yes, that's well said, our work is necessary but the fundamental purpose is elsewhere. We'll have more to say about this on Tuesday!
This article has perfectly centered my current state of mind. I am a teacher of ancient Greek in a secondary school. I would like to read this novel translated into Italian.
Thank you for this comment, Daniele, and I'm truly glad that the article was helpful for you. Thank you also for your labors as an educator—you are doing a great service to the human race by teaching ancient Greek.
I am trying to find an Italian publishing house and a good translator - but it is not an easy task.
Thank you Robert 👍
"The discouraging reality, though, is that it tends to float placidly on the surface of postmodern life, like a lily pad on a pond that is dying from the bottom up."
Exquisite!!
"Does anyone care if time-consuming is hyphenated or not?" -- hahahha.
I care.