Friday Links
December 30, 2022, Feast of the Holy Family
“But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation…”
James Tissot: The Magi Journeying (c. 1890), Brooklyn Museum, New York City
+Anthony Esolen & Fr. Michael Rennier on Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi”
+Orphans of the Storm in Genealogies of Modernity
+On the Incarnation, an interview with The Pillar
+Nate Tanner-Williams speaks with Kirk Whalum in Black Catholic Messenger
+The Drama of being a Self in Church Life Journal
Tony Esolen and Fr. Michael Rennier on Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi”
“How can we invite him to our parties now?” When T.S. Eliot converted to Anglicanism, Virginia Woolf and others in Eliot’s circle were scandalized. Woolf didn’t think Eliot’s faith would last very long. She was wrong, of course, as Eliot, the great Modernist poet of dissolution and despair, remained a devout Christian for the rest of his life. In his Word & Song Substack newsletter earlier this week, Tony Esolen discusses Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi." In the poem, Eliot refuses to offer false hope or some prettified version of the Incarnation, for he knew, as Esolen writes, that “if Christ came to redeem the world, it meant that the world had to die, too.” In Aleteia, Fr. Rennier looks at how “those images Eliot uses that seem so contradictory actually unfold into a unity, the unifying love of God for his children.” I should also mention that Eliot’s The Waste Land was published 100 years ago. There is no denying that The Waste Land changed poetry and, since its publication, just how it changed poetry has been discussed and debated. Many poets felt, and feel, that Eliot dug a tunnel, freeing poets and poetry from the prison of prosody. Others claim that The Waste Land eviserated poetry of everything that makes it poetry, thus killing a once great art. There’s no denying that an awful lot of bad poetry has been written since 1922. Of course, an awful lot of bad poetry was written before 1922. That’s because writing a good poem is hard, and while the emotions, thoughts, and beliefs that spur us to write poetry are universal, the skill and dedication necessary for the creation of truly good poetry are, alas, not so evenly distributed. James Matthew Wilson’s recent essay on The Waste Land offers an assessment of Eliot and his monumental poem. Eliot “saw the age correctly and he spoke—tersely and cannily—of the possibility of its redemption. If poets came to speak less clearly in consequence of Eliot’s great reputation, Eliot also reestablished poetry as a way of coming to know reality and to perceive the order of being even amid the wreckage of history.” Please do read all the essays. You can listen to Sir Alec Guinness (and who doesn’t want to listen to him?) recite The Waste Land here and The Journey of the Magi here.
Orphans of the Storm in Genealogies of Modernity
In his essay in Genealogies of Modernity, Michael Eamonn McCarthy writes about Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited. McCarthy points out that Waugh’s story of the Flyte family “demonstrates how the challenges of living the Gospel in modernity are not as new as we like to believe.” The novel’s exploration of the broken and fractured Flyte family leads us to mourn for the brokenness in the modern family and in our own families, but as McCarthy notes, we weep also for the brokenness of the Church, our home, “crumbling beneath us.” Or, so it seems. McCarthy reminds us that the novel does not end in despair because “the ultimate victory has been won.” Of course, in order to partake of that ultimate victory, we must not, as Julia Flyte says, “set up a rival good to God’s.” This essay made me think of another novel that tells the story of another broken family — Joshua Hren’s Infinite Regress. In both Waugh’s and Hren’s novels, grace works slowly, against great odds, and against the magnitude of the world’s brokenness and human sin. Each novel, though, offers hope, for standing athwart those “rival goods to God’s” are an eternal flame and an empty tomb.
On the Incarnation, an interview in The Pillar
In The Pillar, Nick Coppen shares an interview with Bishop Erik Varden — Trappist Monk, musician, spiritual writer, and Territorial Prelature of Trondheim. In this wonderful interview, Coppen and Bishop Varden discuss the “impossible paradox” of the Incarnation. Bishop Varden points out that “being a human being in the wake of the Incarnation isn’t the same as being a human being before the Incarnation, whether or not one believes in Christ and whether one even knows that Christ ever walked on this Earth.” I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did. It’s given me much to ponder over this season of that “impossible paradox.”
Nate Tanner-Williams speaks with Kirk Whalum in Black Catholic Messenger
In Black Catholic Messenger, Nate Tanner-Williams talks with Kirk Whalum about his conversion to Catholicism, gospel jazz, and finding his identity in God. In this fascinating and fun interview, the two men discuss Whitney Houston and her nickname for Whalum; winning a Grammy; combining gospel and jazz; the manifestation of Christ in jazz; Whalum’s cousin, Servant of God Thea Bowman; the Catholic Worker Movement, and so much more. Whalum is a joyful man of God who is using his gifts to bring beauty and goodness into the world. Please do read this interview — it is so good. And listen to the music. You won’t regret!
The drama of being a self in Church Life Journal
Anne Carpenter explores that lonely and mysterious question, “Who am I?” in her Church Life Journal essay-in-three-acts. Carpenter notes that at the Incarnation “God commits himself to the stage in a way new to the stage—through Mary’s action.” This, of course, changes everything. As 2022 ends and a new year begins, many of us will make resolutions, set goals, and promise ourselves and others that we’ll change this or that about ourselves. Carpenter’s essay offers a way to consider what drives us to make these resolutions and promises: “the willingness to be a self that does not yet know itself fully, that braves the dark of always being in the middle of being more.”
