Spiritual Quote of the Day (Michael Novak, on How God Used Love ‘To Show What He Is Made Of’)

“[L]ove is no simple thing. It is not what we might at first think it is. We spend a lifetime being instructed in its secrets. Love is shallow enough for ants to walk safely across, deep enough for elephants to drown in. Saints of great soul endure many torments being inflamed by it.

“In this vast cosmos, such as science knows it, we humans (even as an entire race, from beginning to end) are barely a speck in silent space, unimportant, less enduring than galaxies and stars—less so even than many plants, insects, and viruses—here today like the grass of the field, tomorrow gone. Yet for us in our unimportance, God wished to show what he is made of, to let us look behind the veil at the love that moves the sun and all the stars, and to draw us into acts of caritas.”—American Catholic theologian, philosopher, novelist and diplomat Michael Novak (1933-2017), “The Love That Moves the Sun,” originally published in Crisis, December 1995, reprinted in The Myth of Romantic Love and Other Essays (2017)

The image accompanying this post is “The Creation of Eve” portion of the Sistine Chapel, by the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564).

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Book of Isaiah, on God As ‘My Strength and My Song’)

“ ‘Behold, God is my salvation;
    I will trust, and will not be afraid;
for the Lord God is my strength and my song,
    and he has become my salvation.’
With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” —Isaiah 12:2-3 (Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition)

(The image accompanying this post is the detail of the prophet Isaiah from Michelangelo’s ceiling for the Sistine Chapel.)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Book of Isaiah, on a Soul That ‘Rejoices in My God’)

“I delight greatly in the Lord;
    my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
    and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the soil makes the sprout come up
    and a garden causes seeds to grow,
so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness
    and praise spring up before all nations.”— Isaiah 61:10-11 (New International Version)

(The image accompanying this post is Michelangelo’s depiction of the prophet in the Sistine Chapel.)

Quote of the Day (Book of Isaiah, With the Prophet’s Temple Experience of Live Coal and God)

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:

‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;

    the whole earth is full of his glory.’

At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

‘Woe to me!’ I cried. 'I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’

Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.’

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’

And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’”—Isaiah 6: 1-8 (New International Version)

This, the first reading at this morning’s Mass, was so extraordinary in the scene it depicted that I knew I had to use it right away for this blog post.

(This detail of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel shows the prophet Isaiah.)

Quote of the Day (Book of Isaiah, on God’s Servant, Bringing ‘Justice to the Nations’)

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,

    my chosen one in whom I delight;

I will put my Spirit on him,

    and he will bring justice to the nations.

 He will not shout or cry out,

    or raise his voice in the streets.

 A bruised reed he will not break,

    and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.

In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;

     he will not falter or be discouraged

till he establishes justice on earth.

    In his teaching the islands will put their hope.”—Isaiah 42: 1-4 ((New International Version)

(This detail of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel shows the prophet Isaiah.)

Quote of the Day (Book of Jeremiah, on the Prophet’s Ordeal in the Cistern)

“Then the princes said to the king, ‘This man ought to be put to death. He is weakening the resolve of the soldiers left in this city and of all the people, by saying such things to them; he is not seeking the welfare of our people, but their ruin.’ King Zedekiah answered: ‘He is in your hands,’ for the king could do nothing with them. And so they took Jeremiah and threw him into the cistern of Prince Malchiah, in the court of the guard, letting him down by rope. There was no water in the cistern, only mud, and Jeremiah sank down into the mud.

“Now Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian, a court official in the king’s house, heard that they had put Jeremiah in the cistern. The king happened to be sitting at the Gate of Benjamin, and Ebed-melech went there from the house of the king and said to him, ‘My lord king, these men have done wrong in all their treatment of Jeremiah the prophet, throwing him into the cistern. He will starve to death on the spot, for there is no more bread in the city.’ Then the king ordered Ebed-melech the Ethiopian: ‘Take three men with you, and get Jeremiah the prophet out of the cistern before he dies.’” —Jeremiah 38-4:10

The prophet Jeremiah had some of the most harrowing experiences of anyone asked by God to carry out a mission. (No wonder he looks so depressed, in the attached image—the famous close-up painting of him in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo.) But this episode strikes me as particularly horrifying. The image of him mired in mud is a powerful symbol of the hatred of those who reject the call to stick to the path of truth. 

Salvation comes by way of an alien--an immigrant--someone who could not benefit from helping Jeremiah (and, indeed, could be at extreme risk for doing so). But, in his way, he has absorbed the life lesson of the prophet: At all costs, say and do the wrong thing.

Quote of the Day (Book of Joel, on Being ‘Converted to Me With All Your Heart’)

“Now therefore saith the Lord: Be converted to me with all your heart, in fasting, and in weeping, and in mourning. And rend your hearts, and not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, patient and rich in mercy, and ready to repent of the evil.  Who knoweth but he will return, and forgive, and leave a blessing behind him, sacrifice and libation to the Lord your God? Blow the trumpet in Sion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather together the people, sanctify the church, assemble the ancients, gather together the little ones, and them that suck at the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth from his bed, and the bride out of her bride chamber. Between the porch and the altar the priests the Lord's ministers shall weep, and shall say: Spare, O Lord, spare thy people: and give not thy inheritance to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them. Why should they say among the nations: Where is their God? The Lord hath been zealous for his land, and hath spared his people.”—Joel 2: 12-18 (Douay-Rheims Bible)

Ash Wednesday should be not so much a renunciation but, as the Old Testament prophet Joel indicates, a “turn to” God.

(The graphic accompanying this post shows the prophet Joel as imagined by Michelangelo, in a fresco on the Sistine Chapel  Ceiling, 1508-1512)