An Illumined Heart, the Lost Modernist, & A World of Sacraments & Signs

1. Bible & Fathers: “That Your Heart May Be Illumined” by Abba Isaiah of Scetis

Thursday: Phil. 3:1-8. Lk. 9:49-56. Online here.

Friday - Feast of St James the Apostle, Brother of Our Lord: Gal. 1:11-19. Matt. 13:54-58. Online here.

Saturday: 2 Cor. 1:8-11. Lk. 7:1-10. Online here.

Today’s Patristic Word offers some sound advice from the fourth-century Egyptian Abbot Isaiah of Scetis:

Despise worldly words, in order that your heart may be illumined. Shun laziness, and the fear of God will dwell in you. Distribute now with a generous disposition to someone to someone who has a need, so that you may not be put to shame among the saints and their goods. Hate the desire for food, that Amalek may not hinder you (cf. Jg. 7:4). Do not hurry through your duties, lest the beasts devour you. Do not love wine to the point of drunkenness, lest you become deprived of the gladness of God. Love the faithful, that they may have mercy on you. Desire the saints, that their zeal may consume you (cf. Ps. 69.9). Remember the kingdom of heaven, in order that your desire for it may very gradually attract you.

That’s the first half of today’s Patristic Word. Read the rest here.

2. Books & Culture: “The Lost Modernist” by David Bentley Hart

Back in 2018, David Bentley Hart published a lengthy review of a 2017 biography of David Jones by Thomas Dalworth: David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poet, along with several of Jones’s works that have been recently republished by his British publisher Faber & Faber. Here’s Hart’s introduction of Jones:

I do not know if it is quite correct to say that public interest in the work of David Jones (1895–1974) is enjoying something of a revival just at the moment, since it was never very lively to begin with. In his own time, Jones was recognized by the discerning as an artist of remarkable originality and range, and by the most discerning as perhaps the finest British artist of the twentieth century. Certainly he was the greatest “modernist” Britain ever produced, and among modern British Catholic poets and painters he was unequaled. He belonged to that very rare class of visionary artists who, like Blake, produce works that seem to reach into other realms of being. He seemed to have discovered worlds of mythic, religious, and aesthetic meaning that had never before been revealed, but that nevertheless felt as ancient and familiar as this world; and, also like Blake, he explored those other realms through both literature and the visual arts. Yet somehow his name never quite carried as far as the names of many of his contemporaries. Even the very literate are far more likely to have heard of the host of luminaries who knew him and praised his work than they are to have heard of him. Yeats, Eliot, and Auden thought him a genius—as did Stravinsky, Herbert Read, Christopher Dawson, Stephen Spender, Evelyn Waugh, Basil Bunting, R. S. Thomas, Geoffrey Hill, and many others. But still, to this day, his admirers are anything but legion; they constitute at most a coterie.

Hart goes on to describe Jones’s writings:

His literary fame rests chiefly on his two majestic epic poems: In Parenthesis from 1937 and The Anathemata from 1952. Other than these, his published writings consist in two collections of essays, a slender volume of poetic fragments, and a judiciously edited collation of some of his more interesting personal letters; and much of this material appeared posthumously. Moreover, his two major works offer few rewards to the casual reader. Both are at once deep and dense in allusions and evocations, but diffuse in structure. The language is beautiful; its power to convey a sense of the sacred is often overwhelming, and its cadences and images are captivatingly mysterious; but it is also a broken—at times almost splintered—language, scattered across the page in shattered paragraphs, unfinished sentences, orphaned phrases and words, all borne along on a dreamlike flow of haunting figures and ghostly voices and distant echoes of the historical and legendary past. It is very much a modernist poetry, an attempt to gather up again the fragments of a ruined world, to recover a lost enchantment, to restore a sense of harmony amid an age of indomitable chaos. Ultimately it is irresistible. Once one has reached the wellsprings of Jones’s singular lyricism, one can never tire of it. But, even so, one must make the effort to find those wellsprings.

For a good and concise introduction to Jones’s life and writings, read the whole review here.

3. Essays et al: “Signs, Sacraments, & Anamnesis: Excerpt from 2020 Inklings Lecture” by Fr. Gabriel Rochelle

This past weekend Fr. Gabriel Rochelle offered two Inklings presentations. Here’s a small excerpt on the Welsh poet and painter David Jones from Fr. Gabriel's first lecture:

Nearing his seventieth birthday, David Jones was interviewed in his one-room flat in London by Saunders Lewis, his old friend and leader of the movement for Welsh nationalism and language. Jones’s painful shyness and difficulty with expressing himself orally is noticeable in this BBC program, but the very end is significant. Lewis says to Jones, “Here in this room you are surrounded by all the reminders of the context of your life…and with these paint pots and brushes and everything you keep your contact with the earlier painter.” Jones replies, “Yes, with the whole world of sacraments and signs” (full interview available online here). Sacraments and signs are his natural homeland as an Anglo-Welsh man and as Catholic Christian.

You can read the rest of the excerpt here.

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Thanks for considering!

In Christ,

Erin John