Gold

The farmers around here have been bringing in the grain and hay lately.  The weather's been hot and dry and it looks like they've had a good harvest so far this year.  The stubble of the harvested grain looks golden, especially when the sunlight hits it at a certain angle.  I can see where the idea of Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold came from. 

I took some photos from the fields next to our village, though my camera doesn't really capture the gold color so well.



 

 

 

 The gold color of the straw also makes me think of Eastern Orthodox icons, which I love very much.  I've read that the Orthodox monks who paint these icons use egg yolk to get that golden color used as background.  The Russian film The Island depicts a monk iconographer keeping a hen in his studio in order to have a supply of egg yolks.

 

The gold background in icons represents paradise, which is interesting considering some passages of scripture.  Per Revelations 21:27, nothing impure will enter heaven, while 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 speaks of each person's spiritual work being tried by fire. Whatever is like gold or silver will be refined, but the wood and straw will be burned up.  We have here indications of Purgatory.

 



 

The Sweetness of Mercy

Anthony Esolen wrote a wonderful essay printed in the August Magnificat.  It's called "The Sweetness of Mercy" and deals with how our Lady, the Virgin Mary, intercedes for us in heaven.  I want to reprint just a small part of it here.

He cites the Memorare prayer: Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, and sought thy intercession, was left unaided.  Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful; O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions; but in thy clemency hear and answer me.

He follows that with a section titled, 'One Little Tear'.

'The prayer reminds me of a powerful moment in Dante's Purgatory (Canto 5), when the poet meets a young man named Bonconte, a player in the violent politics of his time, who died on the battlefield, and whose own kin do not trouble to pray for him, because they assume that his many heavy sins have weighed him down to hell.  But he is among the saved!  How can this be?  Bonconte says that he fled the field with an arrow in his throat, spattering the plains with his blood.  But in the moment before he died, he uttered a prayer - or rather a single name, "Maria," and folded his arms cross-wise upon his chest.

'Mary - and that sufficed.  Bonconte seizes the poet's attention.  "It's the truth!" he cries.  "Tell it to all alive!"  At the moment of his death, a devil came to drag him to perdition, but an angel took him instead, per una lagrimetta, the devil protests, cheated of his prey, "for one little tear!"  One little tear; one heartfelt appeal to the Mother of us all.

'Surely God has provided us with a Mother; recall what Jesus said to the Beloved Disciple just before his death upon the cross.  In that hour before the agonizing cry, and the final submission, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit," he commended Mary to the earthly care of John, and commended John and all Christians everywhere to the heavenly care of Mary.'

Anthony Esolen is a professor of English at Providence College and has translated Dante's Divine Comedy into English.

Ariel Castro, the man who kidnapped, raped, beat and imprisoned those 3 women for a decade in Cleveland; the man who caused the death of an unborn baby by savagely beating the woman he impregnated, was sentenced to life without parole plus a thousand years last week.  One of his victims, Michelle Knight, told him in court on the day of his sentencing, "You will face hell for an eternity."

Her anger is completely understandable.  Castro treated her as a beast, keeping her as a sex slave for 11 years.  She lost those precious years of her life and I imagine the experience will haunt her to the end of her days.

But let us remember that she is not God and not one of us deserves to enter heaven.  Nothing impure will ever enter heaven (Revelations 21:27).  My ugly "little" sins bar me from heaven as much as Ariel Castro's.  Yes, God wills that all be saved.  Jesus died on the cross, spent 3 days in the underworld and rose from the grave so that we could be free of death (sin).  Mary and all the saints in heaven intercede on our behalf.  Many monks and nuns in monasteries and convents around the world pray for the salvation of souls.  What's required from us and Ariel Castro is genuine sorrow and repentance; even one little tear.

Virgin Mary, by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato