Is this clown wise because he is reading a book? Are the illiterate necessarily stupid? Are books the best source of truth? Not at all. 

In this life, the true medium of the best message has been, is and always will be—sorrow. Carl Jung and Rollo May are emphatic on this point. Add St. John of the Cross, and Melville too: ‘The truest of men was the Man of Sorrows.’

So don’t pity this sad clown. He is learning, and Shakespeare put it well: ‘Knowledge has a bloody entrance.’

Painless learning is a delusion—especially that learning which must begin with self. ‘Lord,’ cried St. Augustine, ‘May I know myself, may I know Thee.’ A courageous prayer and a necessary one, for anyone who would really know God.

For, to look into one’s heart and search out one’s true motives; to face, as in a mirror, the real blotches, wrinkles and wastes of one’s spirit is not a discipline for a fool. And only he is truly wise who sees himself as nearly as he is, and accepts his gifts without smugness, his handicaps without regret.

Yes, indeed, wisdom is what’s left, when all your courses and readings are forgotten.

From Meditations on Some Art I Have Loved

By Fr. Hilary Sweeney, C.P.

It has always fascinated me that when the giant sunflower plant bursts out to its glorious flower head, it is not long before it droops down (heavy with seed), upon the neck of its thick trunk. So intimately, even in nature, is humility joined to exaltation. “Whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.”

Vincent made many attempts to picture the wondrous sunflower, and here he gives us the plant’s apotheosis and its declension side-by-side. This tells us that the seeds within the flower head do not reach maturity until the plant bows low.

How exalted we’ve all felt, at times, in our youth and in our burgeoning years—to have accomplished something really good. And yet it was only when the weight of that glory (Augustine’s pondus gloriae) made us bow down before God in adoration—that our work was indeed well done. 

I honor the Chinese tradition that finds in the chrysanthemum (the last of summer’s flowers) a symbol of old age. But here in the West, the sunflower serves us even more tellingly.

It is only when life seems to have ended that it really begins. Whoever loses his life keeps it. So, when we are beset with discouragement over the goods we lose or that are taken from us, it is important to remember that Jesus never did so much for this world as when He seemed to be doing nothing—on the Cross.

There is great feeling in this painting. The flowers seem to elicit the reach of your hand, the feel of your fingertips upon their surfaces—those marvelous double helix packages.

From Meditations on Some Art I Have Loved

By Fr. Hilary Sweeney, C.P.

It was a stroke of genius to have left a space between Adam’s reach and His Maker’s. For, if it is man’s innate need to reach for God, it is in God’s power alone to satisfy that need.

Man, at his best, strives. He is most truly himself when he reaches beyond himself—to God. And yet the space between man and God is never so little that it is not infinite.

Man lives upon spaces, pauses. He can breathe and speak in no other way. And no matter how earnestly he strives, he must learn that waiting is the only way to meet God. For God comes to us, not we to Him.

Before completing His work of creating Mankind, God put Adam to sleep. In a sense, then, rest is the Creator’s visible signature upon our flesh. For sleep, or rest is an interval between nothing and something. And no truer description of man’s way to God was ever made than the Psalmist’s cry—“Wait for the Lord.” Nor did anything more truly describe our Lord’s humanity than the need He felt to wait for ‘the hour’ appointed by the Father—a waiting which Jesus described as an ordeal. (Luke 12:52)

It is very human to think: ‘If only there were something to hope for, I could be patient.’ But Paul reveals how far God’s ways are from ours, when he writes, ‘We wait for hope with patience.’ (Romans 8:25) So—patience first, then hope!

Let’s not put limits on God, Whose designs are beyond our measuring, while our own were limited before they began. (Psalm 139)

Be patient, then, when your situation seems hopeless—even as, in Faith, you believe what you do not see, and in Charity, you love what is naturally unlovable. Such is the nature of any virtue worthy to be called ‘theological’, that is, a virtue whose object is God Himself.

From Meditations on Some Art I Have Loved

By Fr. Hilary Sweeney, C.P.