A review of "2012"

Please follow this link to an excellent Catholic perspective on this film: http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2009/11/fr-robert-barron-reviews-2012.html

(Thank you, Carl Olson.)

The beauty of holiness

Please follow this link to an excellent post: http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2009/11/invisible-is-made-visible.html

(Thank you, Rorate Caeli.)

Happy Ending

In one of his essays, J. R. R. Tolkien distinguishes between different kinds of climaxes. The tragic tale, with its sorrowful ending, he calls a "dyscatastrophe"; for "the Consolation of the Happy Ending" he coins the word "eucatastrophe": the blessed cataclysm by which lovers are reunited after many tests and trials, or the true king is separated from all pretenders and finally ascends the throne. "In such stories," Tolkien says, "when the sudden turn' comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart's desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of the story, and lets a gleam come through."

--Patrick J. Wilson

This simple

"Life is this simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that He is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. It's simply impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it.”

--Thomas Merton

A joyous end

eucatastrophe-a seeming disaster with a joyous end.

This word was coined by J.R.R. Tolkien; it will go before halcyon and serendipity on my list of favorite words.

(It is the perfect word, I think, to describe Our Lord's passion and death. "And I, if I be raised up, will draw all things to Me." Because of His seeming disaster, it is now possible for us all to live happily ever after. Really.)

Joy beyond

"The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous "turn" (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially "escapist," nor "fugitive." In its fairy-tale - or otherworld - setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief."

--J.R.R. Tolkien

Mon secret

"Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."

("Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.")

--Le Petit Prince de Antoine de Saint-Exupery