George De La Tour, St. Joseph the CarpenterMy local
fraternity group says the following prayer everyday as part of our rule:
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
preserve in me the heart of a child,
pure and clean like spring water;
a simple heart
that does not remain absorbed
in its own sadness;
a loving heart
that freely gives with compassion;
a faithful and generous heart
that neither forgets good
nor feels bitterness for any evil.
Give me a sweet and humble heart
that loves without asking
to be loved in return,
happy to lose itself
in the heart of others,
sacrificing itself in front
of your Divine Son;
a great and unconquerable heart
which no ingratitude can close
and no indifference can tire;
a heart tormented by the glory of Christ,
pierced by His love
with a wound that will not heal
until heaven.
- Fr. Leonce de Grandmaison
The prayer also appears in the sidebar of this blog. The
San Carlo priests pray this every day.
George De La Tour, The Education of the Virgin
Dumbstruck by the Mystery
...our temptation is always to impose our prejudices or our measure on reality -- except when we are faced with a fact that leaves us dumbstruck, and instead of dominating the fact ourselves, we are dominated, overcome by it. If there were no moments of this kind, the Mystery could do anything, but in the end, we would reduce everything to the usual explanation. But not even a Nobel Prize winner can stop himself from being dumbstruck before an absolutely gratuitous gesture. If there were not these moments, we would find answers, explanations, and interpretations to avoid being struck by anything. It is good that some things happen that we cannot dominate, then we have to take them seriously, and this is the great question of philosophy. If the conditions for the possibility of knowledge (see Kant) impose themselves on reality or if there is something that is so powerfully disproportionate that it does not let itself be "grasped" by the conditions of possibility, then the horizon opens. If this were not the case, then we could dominate everything and be in peace, or at least without drama. Instead, not even the intelligence of a Nobel Prize winner could prevent him from coming face-to-face with a fact that made him dumbstruck -- instead of dominating, it was he who was dominated. Here begins the drama, because I am called to answer. It is the drama that unfolds between us and the Mystery, through certain facts, certain moments, in which the Mystery imposes itself with this evidence. These are facts that we cannot put in our pocket, which we cannot reduce to antecedent factors.
-- Julian Carron in "Friends, that is, Witnesses."
George De La Tour, St. Joseph the Carpenter
George De La Tour, The Education of the Virgin
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