A few weeks ago, a Dappled Things subscriber sent me the following message:

I just received Dappled Things Volume 13, Issue 3 in the post. This is to say that this issue is one of my personal favorites. There seems to be something particularly inspired about its contents.

Reading it has been a soul healing experience.

So much so, that I simply needed to reach out to you to say, “thank you,” to you, your team, and all the talented contributors. May God’s mercy bring continuous provision and protection to Dappled Things and its ministry to persons through ideas, art and faith.

Sincerely,

Richard Alan Hadley

Needless to say, the message made my day, but not simply because it was so complimentary about the journal. Rather, it was the particular words that he used: “a soul healing experience.” Last year, I wrote in my annual letter that we live in an “anxious age,” but who could have predicted the anxieties that 2018 would bring for the Church and the world? The McCarrick scandal, the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, the Viganò letter, and all the evidence of corruption, worldliness, and cowardice among the hierarchy, have left Catholics shaken and the Church looking much like the world around it: fearful, confused, and increasingly divided. In such a climate, it is obvious that we need voices fighting to restore to the Church her rightful moral authority, unity, and faithfulness, but it may be easy to overlook that we also need voices reminding us what we are fighting for. And that is why Mr. Hadley’s message was so encouraging to me, because it confirmed for me that we are accomplishing what we have set out to do: to create a space where the true, the good, and the beautiful, growing out of the bosom of the Church, can flourish into works of literature, thought, and art that bring God’s healing to the world.

I hope that like Mr. Hadley, you have noticed the increasing excellence of the material we have been able to publish this year, from the gorgeous art, poetry, and fiction, to our expended nonfiction and reviews sections. Our team of volunteer editors put in countless hours to make Dappled Things possible, but we can only continue this work with your support.

We need to raise $15,000 in order to continue this ministry. Can you support us with a gift of $75, $50, $20, or even just $5? Or are you in a position to contribute $1,000, $500, or $250? Donors at this level, without whom we cannot reach our goal, will be recognized in the journal and receive an exclusive, signed art print of a work featured in Dappled Things.

Please consider at what level you can give and make your donation today.

Sincerely in Christ,

Bernardo Aparicio García
Founder & Publisher, Dappled Things

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As you may have heard, because of a 1998 revision to U.S. copyright law, January 1, 2019 marked the first time in more than 20 years that any copyrighted work entered the public domain. And while we all rush to download legal copies of works by Robert Frost and Edith Wharton, this also means those cherished works are now available to be used and abused by artists of every stripe for our own creative endeavors. So, it’s a good time to reflect a little on the creative process, what we owe our forebears, and what might or might not constitute an appropriate way to borrow (that is, steal) other people’s intellectual property.

I freely admit to being a shameless raider of the public domain. My first novel, Jennifer the Damned, is loosely based on Crime and Punishment (though I probably could have gotten away with publishing it even if the original were still under copyright.) My second novel, Cinder Allia, would certainly have owed royalties to both The Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault if their copyrights hadn’t expired. I’m currently working on my most flagrant act of plagiarism to date, converting two related short stories by George Washington Cable into a novel. It’s blatant thievery… and it’s legal, and I fully expect to be able to say of the finished product, “This is mine.”

When I recently discussed the public domain with some friends, they asked me, “Wouldn’t you be horrified if someone else took the characters from your books and wrote whatever story they pleased?” Of course, my answer is Yes. I picture poor Margaret Mitchell rolling over in her grave at the publication of Scarlett (which was commissioned by her heirs; Gone With the Wind is still under copyright), and the thought that someday, some second-rate hack might do the same to Jennifer makes my blood boil. If I think about the public domain’s potential consequences for my beloved books, I suddenly want nothing more than to remain an obscure nobody in the hopes that my work will die with me.

I am an absolute hypocrite when it comes to the sanctity of intellectual property, and yet it is a hypocrisy from which there seems to be no escape. An author (or musician, artist, etc.) must be granted the sole proprietorship of his creations, or share it only with the appropriate collaborators, not only to ensure that he is paid fairly for the work but to maintain the integrity of the work itself. Yet there does come a point when it’s just silly to continue to extend royalty payments to someone’s heirs. Can you imagine the legal nightmare if we still had to hunt down the rights-holders every time we wanted to stage one of Shakespeare’s plays? It makes sense that there comes a point when creative works belong to everyone. The artists have lived their lives, earned their pay (or not, as the case may be), and they leave us with a treasure that becomes literally priceless. Their works become a layer in our cultural consciousness, a foundation not of bedrock but of clay. Their stories become our stories, a past out of which we build our present and our future.

Of course, once a work has entered the public domain, there is no way to police who does what with it anymore. If you want to write Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, no one can stop you. If you want to turn Pachelbel’s Canon in D into an incredibly annoying Christmas song,  alas, you can make millions. If you want to reimagine Crime and Punishment as a vampire novel, I might sue you, but only because I thought of it first. The clay is universally available to every would-be sculptor, which is both a blessing and a curse. What responsibility do we, the artists who mine and mold the public domain, have to the artists who came before? At what point should their artistic integrity give way to our creativity, and at what point do we need to rein ourselves in? How do we reverence the works we build on, and how do we build rather than destroy?

There are no easy answers, and it’s unlikely that any group of artists would reach a consensus on these issues. I will offer a few of my own thoughts, but I welcome all of you to chime in in the comments.

      First, it is possible to find a work that speaks to you, but which really could stand to be improved. This happens frequently in music when the cover version of a song far exceeds the artistry of the original. In the case of “Say Something” by A Great Big World, their lackluster single caught the attention of Christina Aguilera, who then collaborated with them on a new version that is about four million times improved, if we use the sales figures as a measurement. She added the dynamic, harmonic, and tonal contrast that the song sorely lacked, and the results speak for themselves. This is obviously not a case of mining the public domain, but the same principle can apply. In my current project, Cable’s stories speak to me, but he made deliberate narrative choices that required him to skim the surface of character development and conflict. Where he skimmed, I want to dive. Discovering a work like this is like finding a glorious but half-polished diamond. The desire is not only to finish the job, but to create a whole new necklace in which to set the newly-polished original. It cannot be done without reverence for the original work; why would anyone waste his time adapting something he thought was terrible? The point is to showcase the original in a new, more glorious light. Yet the process may very well require chipping away at pieces the original author would have been loath to part with, and any artist will bring his or her own unique perspective to the tale. In this life, I will never know what George Cable thinks of my story, and that’s probably for the best. But I can thank him profusely for providing me with the diamond, and hold myself to the highest possible artistic standards in the hope that I can play Christina to his Great Big World.

More often, however, it would be pure arrogance to think we could improve the works we’ve borrowed. Dostoevsky certainly doesn’t need my help; Cinderella has been adapted a thousand different ways, and her story still transcends all our meddling. So why do we bother? What is the appeal? There is an argument to be made for adaptations as the lazy man’s version of creativity, and an even more compelling argument that the appeal is easy-to-sell brand recognition. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies… Cool, I’d like to see Elizabeth fighting the undead. Hey, that Christmas song sounds like something I heard at a wedding… It must be good, even if those kids are pretty shrill. It is certainly possible to use the public domain as a shortcut to success, even when the new work is decidedly less artistic than the old.

But for those of us who profess motives other than gimmickry or brand recognition, there are more layers to uncover. Adaptations can be true art. Scarlett might be an abomination, but the 1939 film adaptation of Gone with the Wind remains one of the greatest movies ever made. Romeo and Juliet is one of those works we now think of as prime fodder for ridiculous adaptations, but it is itself an adaptation of Pyramus and Thisbe. Jonathan Larson’s Rent was based on Puccini’s La Bohème, which was based on the collection of stories called  Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger. The world of storytelling, in whatever medium, would be very impoverished without adaptations.

It’s been said that there are only seven plots in all of literature, so it is to be expected that different writers will tell different versions of the same tale. The human experience is vast and unique to each individual, but also universal. We all experience the same emotions, if not always in the same proportions, and we all grapple with issues like survival, love, and justice, even if we come to different conclusions about how they should be achieved. Every now and then, a story encapsulates some aspect of our human experience so well that it becomes difficult even to imagine that part of our experience through any lens other than the story. If you think about falling in love with the “wrong” person, does your mind not inevitably draw you back to Romeo and Juliet? It doesn’t matter if the “wrong” person is from a different race, social class, religion, etc., or if the real people involved live someplace far removed from fair Verona. Two Indians of different castes have fallen in love and face resistance from their families; can you write that story without being influenced by Shakespeare? Even if an author who had never read Shakespeare made the attempt, readers and critics would draw the parallel. Some stories are so deeply embedded in our consciousness that we cannot possibly escape them.

So, too, some stories become so deeply embedded in an individual author that it would be ridiculous to deny their influence. It is simpler, cleaner, and wiser just to acknowledge our debt. I could not have written a story about a terrible sinner who is dragged by grace toward redemption that did not use Crime and Punishment as a mold; Dostoevsky’s seeds had already taken far too deep a root in my imagination. This type of adaptation is not about slavish adherence to an original, and less still about enhancing the original, but only about making use of the raw materials that beloved stories have left within our minds and souls in order to give shape to our own creations.

That, to me, is the gift we receive from mining the public domain. Every story, every piece of music, every work of art we encounter has the potential to plant a seed in our minds, to become clay for our souls, to help shape our understanding of the world and what lies beyond. The public domain gives us permission to allow those seeds to blossom, that clay to take shape. The law is designed only to affect the works of artists who are long dead. Just as the artists’ bodies decay but then give shape to flowers, grass, insects—or even rats and plagues—their works are left to fertilize new generations of artists in new and unexpected ways, both beautiful and terrible. The real miracle of the process is that, unlike a body, a work of art does not have to die to be reborn.

TS Eliot’s Journey of the Magi is perhaps the first (or second) poem that comes to mind for Epiphany. It’s a beautiful, thoughtful poem. The opening line, though, was first written in a homily by the Anglican theologian Lancelot Andrewes, who preached, “A cold coming they had of it, at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year, to take a journey, and specially a long journey in.”

The theft reveals Eliot’s burgeoning anglo-catholic faith, and the poem itself is a meditation not on the historical events of Epiphany but on the journey, the discovery, and the reflection on the meaning of what the magi found. In writing the way he did, Eliot is not merely rehearsing history but is re-living the events as a mystagogical experience. This is precisely how the Church participates in these holy mysteries as she processes through the liturgical calendar, not so much as a re-enactment or remembrance of a long ago event, but as a living story, our story.

Epiphany is in the journey. It is for us. We follow the magi, seek the star, and with great sacrifice knock on the door of the house of the Christ child. In him, birth and death are inextricably linked. He is born to die, and his death brings about re-birth. Perhaps the paradox made Eliot’s head hurt, because he says of the poem, “I had been thinking about it in church and when I got home I opened a half-bottle of Booth’s gin, poured myself a drink and began to write. By lunchtime the poem, and the half-bottle of gin, were both finished.”

Here’s Eliot reading the poem

 

And here’s Alec Guinness

Guinness wears it a bit better and follows the rhythm of the words more gently. His gift for oratory makes Eliot’s genius shine.

While many know that December 24 is the feast day of Sts. Adam and Eve, many other memorials get lost amongst the greatness of the Nativity itself. Doubtless the saints so celebrated are joyful in being outshone by the Birth of Christ, but it behooves us now and again to remind one another of their lives and examples. The old martyrologies have been unfortunately truncated and skeptically edited over the centuries, so much so that we who read modern versions often wonder why Catholics in the Age of Faith loved these saints so much.

The Golden Legend treats the death of Adam as a foretaste of Christ’s Passion:

And in the end of his life when he should die, it is said, but of none authority, that he sent Seth his son into Paradise for to fetch the oil of mercy, where he received certain grains of the fruit of the tree of mercy by an angel. And when he came again he found his father Adam yet alive and told him what he had done. And then Adam laughed first and then died. And then he laid the grains or kernels under his father’s tongue and buried him in the vale of Hebron; and out of his mouth grew three trees of the three grains, of which trees the Cross that our Lord suffered his passion on was made, by virtue of which he got every mercy, and was brought out of darkness into very light of heaven.

On the 25th of December was St. Eugenia martyred. The post-Tridentine martyrology will concede nothing to her story except her virginity, her “enlisting bands of sacred virgins for Christ,” and her execution under Roman persecution; but the old hagiographies told much more interesting stories. In these, she snuck her way into a monastery disguised as a man, rose to the level of abbot, had a heartfelt reunion with her father after an unjust legal accusation, and survived many attempts at execution before she was finally beheaded.

But more dramatic than the holy virgin Eugenia was the story of the thousands martyred by Diocletian on Christmas Day. Even the divine office is not short on their praises, and deeply moving in its summary:

At Nicomedia, many thousand holy martyrs. Upon the feast of Christ’s birth they had come together unto the Lord’s house, and the Emperor Diocletian ordered the doors of the church to be shut, and all things made ready for fire round about it. Then he set a tripod and incense in front of the door, and sent an herald to proclaim in a loud voice that whosoever would escape burning should come forth and offer incense unto Jupiter. Whereunto they all replied with one voice, that they would far rather die for Christ’s sake, whereupon he kindled the fire and they were consumed, and were born in heaven upon that same day whereupon it had pleased Christ to be born into this world to save it.

This holocaust of martyrs composes the special cloud of witnesses on this night of nights when Our Lord Jesus Christ was born according to the flesh, born to suffer for our salvation. He said himself that “I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it be kindled?” The Christmas Martyrs are like a perpetual flame and glory of the Church, burning eternally before the heavenly altar with the most ardent love.

“And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it…. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”

Alfonso Cuaron has just created one of the best films I’ve viewed in a long time. Roma, named after the upper-class neighborhood in which Cuaron grew up in Mexico City, was released to Netflix in mid-December and I watched it almost immediately. I’m a huge fan of Children of Men and so, in spite of the fact that the early information on the film was that it was light on plot, I had high expectations.

Roma doesn’t need a plot and it doesn’t need to meet my expectations, because it is transcendent. From the jazz-like meditative pacing of the photography, to the quiet introspection of the characters, to the oddly affecting and terrifying scenes of mass violence, Cuaron is revealed to be a master.

From the very start, the camera sets a languid tone to the film as it lingers while water stained with dirty soap washes over a clay tile. Life is a constant battle against the dirtiness and grime of our lower impulses, but even here the camera manages to catch a reflection of the sky in the shining clay as a sign of contradiction. The film proceeds to examine the ways in which human beings have shattered the basis of our happiness by rejecting the very communities that allow us to discover ourselves in the self-sacrifice of love, the disastrous mistake we make when we reorient our hope on petty, short-sighted, selfish goals and so define ourselves by the very worst impulses of our fallen nature. In particular, the adult men in the film are present only by the wake of destruction they trail behind them. The few times they’re actually on camera they’re indulging in phallic displays [graphic male nudity alert, although there is nothing sexual about it at all], giant, expensive cars, obsessing over the more ridiculous aspects of pseudo-martial arts, and making unwanted advances on grieving women. For the most part, though, it’s the women and children who take center stage, and it’s the women who are left behind to pick up the pieces. The results are broken families and miscarried lives. Easily the most damaging scene emotionally is the family maid Cleo’s labor amid the alienating atmosphere of a massive hospital and the subsequent stillbirth of her child. It’s odd that every other review I’ve read ignores this scene and insists that the emotional highlight of the film is the murdered student in the arms of a screaming woman – I’ll get back to this in a moment – The intimacy of the family breakdown is mirrored in the car crash of wider culture grinding to a halt, as Cleo simply wants to buy a crib for her child but finds herself involuntarily in the midst of the Corpus Christi Massacre.

The film is a tribute to the maid who raised Cuaron and the story is semi-autobiographical. The plot, such as it is, revolves around Cleo, a maid for the family that Cuaron grew up in. Cleo is patronized by her employers at times and occasionally is victimized as the object of transferred emotional negativity, but at other times it becomes clear that this family deeply loves and considers her one of them.

As Cuaron often does, the subplots are subtle and hinted at obliquely, but slowly reveal themselves to be connected to the main plot. The device works perfectly as he depicts much of the film from the perspective of Cleo, who is a silent, strong rock reluctant to be broken open. Her concerns are the day to day of serving the family and loving the children in her care. From this vantage point, significant details begin to seep in, an overheard phone call or a hushed conversation of which we only catch the end. There are two overlapping worlds competing for our attention. The world of wealthy doctors, political happenings, violence, and sex, or the world of a family in its domestic intimacy. Cuaron makes clear which one he thinks is more important.

Hollywood is obsessed with getting us to eat, pray, and love our way around the world, to define our own existences by our passions. We are treated to a steady diet of biographic pics that lionize horribly flawed individuals who abandoned their families but checked an arbitrary box of greatness and are thus deemed worthy of admiration, tragic heroes who abandoned everything to follow their hearts, and etc. In the frenzy to leave behind those we have supposedly outgrown and move on the instant we no longer sense emotional advantages in any particular relationship, Roma is the antidote we need. It is a quietly devastating critique of a world gone mad. It is not the brave protesters who clash with police who are the heroes of this film, not at all, in a sense, they are part of the problem. Thus, to my mind, the lack of plot is intentional. The real story, the real meaning of life, the real heroes are the ones who stay. It is the family that is central, and the tragedies and joys of domestic life are the stuff of human dignity. While they may seem small when compared to plot-heavy, moralizing tales of significant world events and gutsy personal rebellions, it is actually this stuff, in Roma the “other” stuff that is supposedly on the order of world-changing geopolitical events, that are the background noise. Those events are important in their own way, but they are contingent on and subservient to the family drama. This is a brave film of opposition. A film that celebrates the beauty of a quiet, faithful life with family and shows absolutely no sympathy for the intellectuals, the politicians, the egotistical madmen of our era. The family is the story, and all who depart from it have chosen an easier, more boring and inhuman path, one that, ultimately, isn’t worth the bother of filming.

When Cleo finally breaks down and lets out her grief and guilt after the death of her baby, the moment is well-earned and we see the toll that a world that sneers at innocent life takes on the family. There is inner strength hidden within this unassuming woman, but even she has been broken at the hands of an uncaring, anti-human, pro-death world. It is only in the family that she is able to find healing.

The film ends not with a grand climax but by gently receding into domestic bliss. Cleo climbs the stairs to the rooftop to do laundry. An airplane slowly plows through a clear sky. Nothing happens in a vacuum. The family is a symbol of the world, holding within it by extension the whole of creation. The camera, which began the film focusing on clay tile, the earthy stuff from which we human beings are made, gently pans upward to take in a view of the wide open sky.

 

[Update: I’m posting this again, as I plan to do yearly, so it can be handy for anyone who wants to do the novena this year.]

Catholics who wish to celebrate Advent as a time to prepare spiritually for Christmas often find themselves at a loss about how to do it. After setting up an Advent wreath and singing a couple of stanzas from “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” what is one supposed to do? In order to help fill that void, during the past couple of years I’ve been making available to our readers the Advent novena that I grew up with as a child in Colombia, and which is practically ubiquitous there. If you’d like to know more about what the novena is all about, I invite you to read the post in which I originally introduced it and then come back. On the other hand, if you’re already convinced that you want to adopt this tradition, you’ll find everything you need on this page.

To begin, let me give you a brief outline of the order of the prayers:

Timeline: the novena runs from December 16th to December 24th. It is usually said in the evening by family, friends, and neighbors who gather nightly during this period.

Prayers: The host usually does the first reading/prayer, but the text gets passed along among the people gathered so that as many people as possible get to lead one of the prayers.

1. Begin with the Sign of the Cross.
2. Read the daily Opening Prayer
3. Read the Prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary
4. Read the Prayer to Saint Joseph
5. Read the Day’s Meditation
6. Jubilations: the text gets passed along so that a different person reads each stanza. Snippets of “O come, O come, Emmanuel” are sung between each stanza.
7. Read the Prayer to the Christ Child

Caroling

Now that the prayers are over, enjoy some time singing your favorite Advent and Christmas carols. Don’t be a wimp. Sing at least three before moving on the next stage.

Food & Fellowship

As explained in the introductory post, the novena is all about family and friendship. You should really spread the word to your family and friends, and get together with them to celebrate and pray it together. The hosts for each night can provide some of their favorite treats for this time of year (or it can be a potluck), but make sure there is food! Chat, sing some more, dance if the mood strikes, and just enjoy the evening with your loved ones until it’s time to go to bed.

And now, without further ado, here is the main text of the Advent Novena.

---

Advent Novena to the Child Jesus

Opening Prayer

Most gracious God of infinite charity, You gave your only begotten Son as an unparalleled sign of your love for man. By this love He was made flesh within a Virgin Mother’s womb, and was born in a manger for our salvation. Let our prayer come before you as a song of thanksgiving, uttered on behalf of every mortal man, for this wonder of your grace.

Loving Father, there is nothing with which we can repay you, other than the poverty, humility, and other virtues of your Incarnate Son; I pray that for the sake of his divine merits, of every hardship that surrounded his birth, and of every tear that He shed at the manger, You may bring our hearts to such deep humility, such zealous love, and such perfect disregard for every worldly thing, that the newborn Christ may find in them his cradle and abide there forever. Amen.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, As it was in the beginning, is now, ever shall be, world without end. Amen. (Said three times.)

Prayer to the Blessed Virgin

O Blessed Virgin Mary, spotless mirror of virtue and humility whom the God of Heaven and Earth elected for a mother, I pray that you may prepare my soul, and that of everyone who at this time might pray this novena, for the spiritual birth of your beloved Son. O Dearest of Mothers! Let me know something of that profound contemplation and devout tenderness with which you awaited Him, that I may be made less unworthy to see, love, and adore Him for all eternity. Amen.

(Pray the Hail Mary nine times—three is acceptable when appropriate–meditating on the birth of Jesus.)

Prayer to Saint Joseph

Dearest Saint Joseph, husband of Mary and adoptive father of Jesus Christ, I praise God for electing you to such an exalted task and adorning you with every grace befitting so high a ministry. I pray that through the love with which you cared for the Infant Christ, you may embrace my heart with a fervent desire to behold and receive Him in the Blessed Sacrament, until in His Divine Essence I may one day gaze upon Him and rejoice with Him in Heaven. Amen.

(Pray once the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.)

Meditation for the Day

(Meditations for each day will be posted individually on Deep Down Things. We will post the first day’s meditation below, and then provide links from this post to other days as each meditation is posted.)

Day 1 (December 16th):
In the beginning, the Word rested within the bosom of the Father in the highest Heaven, being at once the cause and the model of all Creation. Within the depths of that unfathomable eternity, the Child of Bethlehem existed before time itself, awaiting the moment in which he was to descend and take visible possession of his earthy palace—a cattle shed on the outskirts of David’s City. It is within that infinity that we must look for his origins that had no beginning, that we must commence the genealogy of the Eternal, which has no ancestors, and contemplate the life of infinite bliss that he possessed within the Godhead.

The life of the Word in the bosom of his Father was perfection itself, and yet—O sublime mystery!—He sought a new abode, a created dwelling place. Nothing that could have added to his infinite bliss was lacking within his eternal mansion, but in his boundless mercy He nevertheless desired the redemption of the human race, which without Him could never come to fruition. In the sin of Adam mankind had rejected God’s friendship, and the guilt of that infinite offense could not be remitted save by the infinite merits of God Himself. In disobeying, Adam’s race had turned away from Goodness itself, meriting an eternal punishment. For man to be saved, it was therefore necessary that God, without leaving Heaven, should take on human flesh on Earth, so that through the Word’s obedience to the will of the Father, He should atone for our former disobedience, ingratitude, and rebellion. It was necessary, in consequence of his love, that He should take on the form, the weaknesses, and the limitations of man; that He should subject himself to physical growth in order to give man growth in the Spirit; that He should suffer in order to teach man how to die to his passions and pride. Hence, the Eternal Word, alight with a desire for man’s salvation, willed to make Himself also a man, and thus redeem the guilty.

Click for Day 2 (December 17th)
Click for Day 3 (December 18th)
Click for Day 4 (December 19th)
Click for Day 5 (December 20th)
Click for Day 6 (December 21st)
Click for Day 7 (December 22nd)
Click for Day 8 (December 23rd)
Click for Day 9 (Christmas Eve)

 

Jubilations

(Everyone sings the refrains to the tune of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Take turns reading the intermediate stanzas.)

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

O infinite wisdom
of the Sacred Godhead,
to an infant’s limits
You humble your powers!
O Child Uncreated,
come to teach the blinded
the prudence that fashions
wise men from the humble!

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O Adonai, strong one,
Once on Sinai’s mountain
You spoke unto Moses
giving your Commandments!
Come in haste to save us
from our sinful darkness
as a child whose meekness
topples every power.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

O blest root of Jesse,
from the fields eternal
you shower Creation
with the nard’s aroma.
O Sweetest of Children,
Long-awaited blossom,
Lily of the valley,
Flower of the meadow!

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O great Key of David,
to mankind in exile
you open the gateway
of your royal palace!
With a hand most gentle
do, good Child, release us,
from the dismal dungeon
that our crimes erected.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

O lamp of the Orient!
O Sun everlasting!
Let us see your splendor
in the midst of darkness!
Most precious of children,
joy of all the faithful,
the light of your laughter
banishes all shadows.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Mirror without blemish,
You alone are holy—
O perfect reflection
of the Father’s mercy!
Wash away our evil,
save the exiled sinner,
and shelter the homeless
in your lowly manger.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

O King of the nations,
O radiant Emmanuel,
Israel’s deep yearning,
seeker of the lost ones!
Child who soothes the restless
with kind staff—Good Shepherd!
Wild rams, at your calling,
Come as lambs to praise you.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Let the heavens open!
Rain down from on highest!
Beneficent shower,
like a holy downpour!
Come, beautiful Child!
Come, O God Incarnate!
Shine, O brilliant lodestar!
Bloom, O sacred flower!

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

Come! that Mother Mary,
joyfully awaiting,
longingly devices
in her arms a cradle.
Come! that good Saint Joseph,
for your love to safeguard,
has his heart refashioned
as a Tabernacle.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Comfort of the mournful!
Champion of the humble!
Refuge of the outcast!
Light of the benighted!
You, the life within me,
my beloved master;
Friend forever faithful—
Brother in the highest!

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel.

Let my eyes enraptured
by your love behold You!
Let me press my lips, Lord,
to the wounds that saved me.
Prostrate now before you,
I reach out in worship—
and my tears you treasure
like a loving prayer.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel,
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Come, beloved Savior,
every heart’s deep longing!
Recreate our spirit
and do not delay, Lord!

Prayer to the Christ Child

Remember, O beloved Infant Jesus, the words you spoke unto Venerable Margaret of the Blessed Sacrament as a promise of comfort to all the suffering and afflicted: “Everything that you would ask, ask it through the merits of my infancy, and nothing shall be denied you.” We thus come full of trust in you, O Christ—you who are Truth Incarnate—to offer up our every sadness.

Help us to lead a holy life, that we may receive the gift of a blessed eternity. Grant us, through the merits of your incarnation and infancy, the grace that we now request of You. (Pause for a brief moment to silently make your prayer to God.)

We give ourselves to You, O Omnipotent Child, certain that our hope shall not be frustrated, and that by virtue of your divine promise, You will hear and answer our supplication. Amen.

St. John of the Cross, whose feast day is Dec 14, is a saint for Advent. A saint of darkness and uncertainty, a saint of prison cells and flickering candlelight, a saint of secret ladders and lacerated muscle, a man whose tenuous existence was barefoot and moonless, St. John spent his days being pulled to pieces. From the shambles of his old life arose the phoenix of hope, undeterred and unbowed.

I’ve been climbing Mount Carmel with St. John. Or, let’s say, I’m attempting to drop a few of my sensible attachments with his encouragement. We’ll see. At the least, we can glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel together.

I’ve only read his poetry in translation, but it seems to me that it is very profound and very beautiful, arriving from somewhere deep within his personal suffering. When he speaks of leaving the house in the dead of night and slipping away while the inhabitants are asleep, he is speaking of the mystical ascent of the soul from sensible attachment towards union with the divine, yes, but he is also speaking of his literal escape from the angry, abusive monks of his own religious order. Even his torture and betrayal assist his mystical ascent.

This is our time, Advent, to plunge headlong into the abyss with him, to confront our demons and make straight our roads, to beat a path in a trackless desert. Down that road comes Love, and the suffering and agony of our attempts top make ready for him or, if it’s been a bad year, simply to confront the despairing sadness of the fecklessness of our own hearts, this is all part of the poetry. We work it out with fear and trembling, for how else can God enter under our roof?

Here is St. John’s marvelous poem about Advent. I’ve found it worth contemplation.

UPDATE: There are some serious questions about the translation of this poem (by Daniel Ladinsky) and to what extent it is properly attributed to St. John. See the discussion in the comments for more.

 

If you want, the Virgin will come walking down the road

pregnant with the Holy and say,

“I need shelter for the night.

Please take me inside your heart, my time is so close.”

Then, under the roof of your soul,

you will witness the sublime intimacy,

the divine, the Christ, taking birth forever,

as she grasps your hand for help,

for each of us is the midwife of God, each of us.

Yes, there, under the dome of your being,

does creation come into existence eternally,

through your womb, dear pilgrim,

the sacred womb of your soul,

as God grasps our arms for help:

for each of us is His beloved servant never far.

If you want, the virgin will come walking down the street,

pregnant with Light, and sing!

‎”Dost thou understand? I love thee!” he cried again. “What love!” said the unhappy girl with a shudder. He resumed,–“The love of a damned soul.” —Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

I have gone on record many times (most recently here) to promote the particular genius of the horror genre as a tool through which Christians can confront the realities of evil and (when the genre is at its best) defy them through Christ’s love, either explicitly or implicitly. So, when I read the article “Now is a Perfect Time for Catholic Horror” by Stephen Wingate, in which he calls for a revival of the Catholic horror novel as a means of confronting the recent abuse scandals, I naturally agreed that he was on to something. But until such time as modern writers are able to produce work that engages the “difficult literary interrogation between Catholicism and evil… [and] provides a necessary look into how the church has become the horror for some,” we would do well to remember that Victor Hugo already gave us such a novel. More and more, it seems to me that The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a book for our times.

It may seem spiritually dangerous to turn to a novel that was once listed on the Church’s Index of Forbidden Books to help make sense of the current scandal,* but if we’re going to speak honestly about written works that pose spiritual dangers for Catholics, the Philadelphia grand jury report would be near the top of the list. In a world where the faithful have already been scandalized by villain-priests, there is no way to protect our souls from characters like Archdeacon Claude Frollo. We have already met such men in the flesh. We have seen the horrific effects of secrecy and denial; and if we owe it to the real victims to bring priestly crimes to light, we also owe it ourselves to revisit the prophetic novel that sought to do the same nearly 200 years ago.

When Victor Hugo wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame, he was not “anti-Catholic,” as so many critics like to call him. What Hugo believed shifted radically and often during the course of his life, but at the time he published Notre Dame, he had not yet begun dabbling in spiritualism, nor embraced the kind of secular rationalism that characterized his later years. The Hugo of 1831 still identified with the faith of his baptism, even if he had become critical of the ways in which he often saw the faith abused among the clergy. It’s a spiritual space that many Catholics today will find achingly familiar.

However, the state of Victor Hugo’s soul when he composed Notre Dame is not only unknowable, but also irrelevant to a discussion of the work itself. The story is so powerful that it has endured across centuries and been translated into nearly every language of the globe. And what is that story but the interplay of light and darkness, faith and doubt, love and betrayal, within and through the Church?

The original French title of the book is Notre-Dame de Paris; the cathedral is the title character and, arguably, the protagonist of the novel. The chapter titled “Notre-Dame” is devoted to the cathedral’s architecture, a song of praise to the building and a lament for the stupidities of man that, over the centuries, ruined certain aspects of its design. The cathedral is “a sort of human Creation, mighty and fertile as the Divine Creation, from which it seems to have borrowed the twofold character of variety and eternity.” This architectural depiction serves as a literalization of the church’s role in the novel; and not merely of the small-c church, Notre Dame, but also the capital-C Church, Catholicism. For Hugo, both are capable of bridging the gap between the temporal and the eternal, but man’s caprice has “brutally swept away” so much of what made them beautiful.

In the fifteenth century world of the story, the church still has most—but not all—of its grandeur intact. On the morning when the deformed child who will become known as Quasimodo is discovered in the porch of the church, Hugo is careful to tell us that this porch used to house statues of St. Christopher and Antoine des Essarts, a saint and a sinner, which had both been thrown down some fifty years before. Both saints and sinners have already become targets in the slow degradation of the Holy.

Yet the church is still intact enough to provide refuge for outcasts. The monstrous child exposed on the bed for foundling children is reviled by all the “good” Christians, but the young priest, Claude Frollo, chooses to adopt him. It is an act of true charity performed by a young man who has already taken on the guardianship of his baby brother after the death of their parents. This young Frollo is a rising star of the Church and a brilliant scholar. He names the foundling Quasimodo, which means half-made, “either to commemorate the day on which he found him [Quasimodo Sunday], or to express the incomplete and scarcely finished state of the poor little creature.”

Quasimodo Sunday is another name for the Second Sunday of Easter. It is taken from the opening words of the Introit, or Entrance Chant: Quasi modo géniti infántes, rationábile, sine dolo lac concupíscite, ut in eo crescátis in salútem, allelúia. This is a paraphrase of 1 Peter 2:2, and in the current English translation of the Missal, it reads, Like newborn infants, you must long for the pure, spiritual milk, that in him you may grow to salvation, alleluia. This translation has lost the sense of “half-made,” that we are not merely infants but incomplete beings, who can only be made whole by receiving the “milk” of Christ. But Hugo understands the Latin well; for him, it is only the half-made “apology for a human being” who is able to accept the Church’s invitation.

[Quasimodo’s] cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with marble figures of kings, saints and bishops who at least did not laugh in his face and looked at him with only tranquility and benevolence. The other statues, those of monsters and demons, had no hatred for him–he resembled them too closely for that. It was rather the rest of mankind that they jeered at. The saints were his friends and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and kept watch over him. He would sometimes spend whole hours crouched before one of the statues in solitary conversation with it. If anyone came upon him then he would run away like a lover surprised during a serenade.

As long as he remains within the church, Quasimodo is happy. Yet the part of the church that makes him happiest—the bells which he is assigned to ring—also make him deaf. “Thus the only gate which nature had left wide open between him and the world was suddenly closed, and for ever. In closing, it shut out the only ray of light and joy that still reached his soul, which was now wrapped in profound darkness.”

It seems to me that Hugo isn’t quite consistent here. By making him deaf and closing the gate to the world, the cathedral has prevented Quasimodo from ever again being subject to the world’s scorn, or at least from hearing it voiced. He becomes even further encased in the church that has been “his egg, his nest, his home, his country, the universe.” Hugo wants to have it both ways: Quasimodo’s joy is both in the church and in the world to which the gate is now closed. But he is not clear about what light Quasimodo ever received from the world; the hunchback experiences nothing but abuse every time he leaves the church.

For Quasimodo, the cathedral fulfills Christ’s promise: Come to me, all you labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Father Frollo—who baptizes him, teaches him to speak, and gives him a purpose in life as the cathedral’s chief bell-ringer—serves the genuine role of a father. If the story had ended before either of these men ever laid eyes on Esmeralda, it might have been a happy tale.

In the years since he adopted Quasimodo, Claude Frollo has turned his scholarly pursuits away from theology first toward true science, then toward alchemy and sorcery. Rather than pursuing the Truth of God, he has idolized human knowledge, twisting the virtue of his keen intellect into a vice. The Claude Frollo who meets Esmeralda is a very different man from the one who first met the helpless child Quasimodo.

Esmeralda is a young gypsy dancer, physically as unlike Quasimodo as it is possible to be: lithe, beautiful, entrancing. Yet, like the hunchback, she is a lost child in need of a parent, a lost soul in need of succor. Esmeralda was stolen from her cradle to be raised among heathen strangers. But this time, Father Frollo cannot love the outcast enough to bring her into the church’s grace. Esmeralda stirs in him the same impulse toward love that Quasimodo did, but Frollo is no longer capable of anything but “the love of a damned soul.” He seeks not to shelter, but to possess; not to give, but to take. The Father has become an inversion of himself: no longer one who gives life, but one who takes it. Frollo is even able to acknowledge these changes:

And when, while thus diving into his soul, he saw how large a space nature had there prepared for the passions… he perceived, with the cold indifference of a physician examining a patient, that this hatred and this malignity were but vitiated love; that love, the source of every virtue in man, was transformed into horrid things in the heart of a priest, and that one so constituted as he in making himself a priest made himself a demon.

Frollo believes what we in the 21^st century will recognize as a common argument: that the Church’s insistence on clerical celibacy, the denial of natural passions, is the root cause, or at least one of the root causes, of clerical sexual abuse. Frollo believes this argument, but his story does not illustrate its truth.** Lust is hardly Frollo’s only, or even his primary, vice. He does not chase after every skirt he sees, nor are his sins primarily driven by the desire for physical gratification. Rather, Frollo punishes his body, often working without food or sleep toward his goal of transmuting matter into gold. Frollo’s sin is the same as Adam and Eve’s: he covets knowledge that will make him godlike. His desire for Esmeralda has less to do with sex than with possession, because she—like transmuted gold, or Eden’s apple—is beautiful, forbidden, and unattainable.

When Esmeralda rejects his advances, Frollo destroys what he cannot possess. He turns her over to be hanged for a crime she did not commit. But Quasimodo has learned well from his father, and he follows the example of the younger, better Frollo; he adopts the orphaned child. In the novel’s most iconic scene, he snatches Esmeralda from the gallows and gives her sanctuary in the cathedral.

[He clasped] her closely in his arms, against his angular bosom, as his treasure, his all, as the mother of that girl would herself have done… at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful. Yes, he was beautiful—he, that orphan, that foundling, that outcast; he felt himself august and strong; he looked in the face of that society from which he was banished… the human justice from which he had snatched its victim; those judges, those executioners, all that force of the King’s, which he, the meanest of the mean, had foiled with the force of God!

But the image of the triumphant outcasts wrapped in the consoling mantle of the church is not to last. The church is still Claude Frollo’s domain. He is the first to assault Esmeralda’s sanctuary, and Quasimodo cannot bring himself to kill his father in her defense; Esmeralda must wave a blade at Frollo herself. Her gypsy friends come next in an attempt to save her, which Quasimodo mistakenly foils because he cannot hear them speak their intentions. Then the King orders the sanctuary violated for the sake of ridding his kingdom of the supposed “sorceress.” The church’s ability to protect the powerless proves to be fleeting. As the king’s army closes in, Frollo alone has the power to save the girl, and he offers her a choice: life as his lover, or the gallows. Esmeralda replies, “I feel less horror of that than of you.” She goes to her death rather than submit to his lust.

I can only imagine how many real victims might see themselves reflected in Esmeralda. How many came to the Church looking for refuge, only to have their pastors, bishops, or archbishops issue fresh attacks by ignoring or disbelieving their accusations? How many faithful Catholics have felt like Quasimodo, carrying our wounded brothers and sisters into the bosom of the church for protection, only to be scolded and threatened by the very men we looked upon as fathers? How many predatory priests have used their power to issue ultimatums as appalling as the one given by Frollo to Esmeralda?

Frollo is true to his threat. Esmeralda dies on the gallows. An enraged Quasimodo pushes Frollo out of the tower of the cathedral where the two of them have watched the execution, and though Frollo catches himself on a pipe, the hunchback refuses to save him. As for Quasimodo:

About a year and a half or two years after the events with which this story concludes, when search was made in the vault of Montfoucon… they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrezarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a difficult book for Catholics. It calls into clear relief the potential horrors of trusting a Church that is led by a man or men as corrupt as Claude Frollo. It is a lesson that we cannot afford to ignore, yet the book leaves us with very little hope. I choose to read the ending as an intimation that perhaps Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and Esmeralda’s mother (represented by the empty bag) have found union as a family after death, but it is also legitimate to read the ending as one of pure despair. According to the novel, a hopeless grave is the sentence the Church has imposed upon those who trusted her, whom she betrayed. I have no doubt there are many who believe it, and we ignore this conclusion at our peril.

Yet there is one element missing from the portrayal of the Church in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and it is the most important one of all. Jesus Christ is hardly mentioned, and certainly never active. If the cathedral itself is the protagonist, it is a very humanized cathedral. It has “borrowed the twofold character of variety and eternity,” but it remains “a human Creation.” It is endowed with characteristics of the divine, but not the Divine Presence Himself. Quasimodo communes with statues and bells, but he never receives the “pure spiritual milk” his feast day calls for. The true warning we ought to take from the book is not merely that sexually corrupt priests pose a significant danger to the faithful. We hardly need a novel to tell us that. The real tragedy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is that Quasimodo places his faith in the Church as an institution, not in Christ, her head. No human institution—not even one established by God—can ever be worthy of such faith. Those stone saints whom Quasimodo befriended failed to do what all true saints do; they did not lead him to know and love the living Jesus. Quasimodo is, unwittingly, an idolater; the church is his god. If there is anything we Catholics must be clear about in the context of our current scandals, it is that we do not worship idols. We worship the One who suffers with and for us. It is Christ, not the clergy or the Church, who will save the Esmeraldas and the Quasimodos from their graves—and, in His mercy, He will reach out a hand to the Claude Frollos while they plummet, too.

 

* The Church removed The Hunchback of Notre Dame from the Index of Forbidden Books in 1959.

** I’m not convinced that Hugo believed Frollo’s argument that celibacy must, by its nature, corrupt the priest—or, if he believed it in 1831, he had certainly changed his mind by the time he wrote the unforgettable portrayal of Bishop Myriel in Les Misérables.