Week 2 Reflections - Waiting on God: A Lenten Experiment in Attention

RE: Week 2 Reflections

David Fikstad — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 05:10:15 +0000

My wife's phone case is the Dies Irae. Not something she created, it was just commercially available. (Though it might have been from etsy. In which case, commercially available might be overstating) I wonder, have any other hymns been made into an iPhone case?

RE: Week 2 Reflections

Mary Fitzgerald — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 02:27:24 +0000

The excerpt from Simone Weil's Waiting for God; the Love of Religious Practices has, , a Latin line about God seeking man, "Quaerens me sedisti lassus". I looked up a translation, and I found this article about it in Commonweal magazine:

“Quaerens me sedisti lassus”

by Jospeh Komonchak

Thomas de Celano, friend and biographer of Francis of Assisi, is generally credited with the authorship of this great medievel sequence, the opening lines of which are taken verbatim from the Vulgate version of Zeph. 1:15. Julian, writing of the general acceptance of this hymn, declares:The hold which this sequence has had upon the minds of men of various nations and creeds has been very great. Goethe uses it, as is well known, in his Faust with great effect. It also furnishes a grand climax to Canto VI in Sir Walter Scotts Lay of the Last Minstrel. It has been translated into many languages, in some of which the renderings are very numerous, those in German numbering about ninety and those in English about one hundred and sixty. In Great Britain and America no hymn-book of any note has appeared during the past hundred years without the “Dies Irae” being directly or in directly represented therein. Daniel, writing from a German standpoint, says:“Even those to whom the hymns of the Latin Church are almost entirely unknown, certainly know this one; and if any one can be found so alien from human nature that they have no appreciation of sacred poetry, yet, as a matter of certainty, even they would give their minds to this hymn, of which every word is weighty, yes, even a thunderclap.“From another standpoint, Archbishop Trench says:“Nor is it hard to account for its popularity. The meter so grandly devised, of which I remember no other example, fitted though it has here shown itself for bringing out some of the noblest powers of the Latin language, the solemn effect of the triple rime, which has been likened to blow following blow of the hammer on the anvil, the confidence of the poet in the universal interest of his theme, a confidence which has made him set out his matter with so majestic and unadorned a plainness as at once to be intelligible to all,these merits, with many more, have given the Dies Irae a foremost place among the masterpieces of sacred song.“Sac. Lat. Poetry, 1874, p. 302.

The hymn was dropped from funeral Masses after Vatican II, and I wonder how familiar it is to most Catholics today.

Rev. Joseph A. Komonchak, professor emeritus of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, is a retired priest of the Archdiocese of New York.

RE: Week 2 Reflections

Alexander Roth — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 16:18:26 +0000

Turning my attention from evil to perfect purity has been a great ongoing exercise for me this week. (Meditation, fasting, the Jesus Prayer, and other practices suggested here are helping.) I don’t do great at it: I get very caught up in my “emotional programs” (cf. Intimacy with God, Keating). I habitually mistake in-the-moment emotion and thought – justified anger or hurt, or pride or happiness, for instance – for Perfect Purity. My hope is that turning my attention to Perfect Purity will help me be more present with the One who is perfectly present. This exercise has already been an antidote to my will to power. I am eager to keep working at this.

I will be meditating on this: “It is however that the act of looking is almost impossible. All the mediocre part of the soul, fearing death with a more violent fear than that caused by the approach of the death of the body, revolts and suggests lies to protect itself" (193, emphasis added).

St. Joseph the Just, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Guardian of the Redeemer, pray for us. (I heard in a reflection today that to be just, biblically-speaking, is to be perfectly open to the will of God.)

RE: Week 2 Reflections

Alexander Roth — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 16:15:46 +0000

Wonderful images and reflections.

RE: Week 2 Reflections

Mary Fitzgerald — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 03:38:31 +0000

Response to Questions on the Transfiguration Icon - Week 2 Forum:

I printed out a color copy of the icon, and at first experienced resistance; it seemed too complicated, but also a real curiosity because I had never imagined that Gospel scene depicted in such a way. Next I applied an “effort of the will” to analyze or proofread it; trying to understand it in words, noticing the details - the flowing water, the two cutouts in the mountain showing Jesus and the two apostles going up the mountain on the left, and descending it on the right. Finally I sat back and began just to “look”; I found my eyes drawn directly to the Christ figure.
One apostle (Peter?) is looking at the lower garment of Christ and gesturing, perhaps making his offer to build three tents. The other two are cowering, afraid to look. Moses and Elijah seem attentive, looking directly at Christ, but not afraid. Is Peter “striving after goodness with an effort of the will”?

RE: Week 2 Reflections

Mary Fitzgerald — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 15:47:46 +0000

I will just comment that I feel that my efforts were "too muscular", and produced poor results. I will go back to Simone Weil and try to let my exercises be ruled by desire rather than force. I will try to be more like the robin who stares intently at his prey, unmoved by distractions, than like the sparrows that scatter away at the smallest disturbance.

Week 2 Reflections

Emma Fitzgerald — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 04:36:31 +0000

Share any reflections on our Week 2 readings and exercises here.