Category: Modern world

Spiritual Communion (continued)

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      In the Middle Ages, when the faithful used to take communion only at Easter time, devout people, usually women, expressed their desire to do so more frequently. 

      This is how the custom of spiritual communion appeared. “Towards the end of the twelfth century, the most popular form of spiritual communion was to express a prayer and requests during the elevation which follows the consecration. […] It is considered that the eulogy or holy bread was a quite acceptable replacement for sacramental communion […].  

According to some authors, the blessing of people and the kiss of peace could also replace communion. […] Spiritual communion was recommended to those who were too ill to receive the consecrated species. […] Theologians reinforced this practice by teaching that, through spiritual communion, we received as many graces necessary for our salvation as through sacramental communion” (G. Macy in Eucharistia. Encyclopédie de l’Echaristie , under the direction of M. Brouard, Paris, 2002, p. 182).

Even if, today, the practice of daily confession is common, the Church nevertheless invites the faithful to recite spiritual communions often throughout the day to ignite themselves in love of God, "so as to unite to the Redeemer with lively faith, a spirit respectfully humble and confident in his will, with the most ardent love” (Pius XII, encyclical Mediator Dei , November 20, 1947). Archbishop Le Tourneau

Here are two forms of spiritual communion:

“I would like, Lord, to receive you with purity, humility and devotion

with which your Most Holy Mother received you; 

with the spirit and fervor of the saints. »

“My Jesus, I believe that you are present here in the Blessed Sacrament. I love you above all things and I ardently desire to receive you.  

But since, at this moment, I cannot do it sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. 

As if you were already present there, I adore you and I unite myself entirely to you; do not allow me ever to separate from you.  

Jesus, my good, my sweet love, inflame my heart with love, so that it always burns with love for you. 

Cherubim, Seraphim who adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, night and day, pray for us and give us the holy blessing of Jesus and Mary.

Prayer of Saint Alfonso de Liguori

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My god, I believe that you are present in the Most Blessed Sacrament. I love you above all things, and my soul longs for you, since I cannot now receive you in the Blessed Sacrament. Come at least in a spiritual way into my heart. I embrace you as if you were in me and I unite myself entirely to vous. O do not let me ever have the misfortune to separate myself from you. O Jesus, my sovereign good and my sweet love, wound and inflame my heart so that it always burns with your love.

Spiritual communion according to Saint Alfonso de Liguori

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My god, I believe that you are present in the Most Blessed Sacrament. I love you above all things, and my soul longs for you.

Since I cannot now receive you in the Blessed Sacrament, come at least in a spiritual way into my heart. I embrace you as if you were inside me and I unite myself entirely to you.

Oh !

don't let me ever have the misfortune to separate myself from you. O Jesus! my sovereign good and my sweet love, wound and inflame my heart so that it always burns with your love.

François Lagarde, Ernst Jünger's photographer

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François Lagarde installing one of his photos at the European House of Photography

In the middle of a dragging Saturday morning, the telephone rang, an already well-known voice was heard speaking impeccable French with a delicious Germanic accent: "Mon lieutenant, do you think he's possible to invite a friend, François Lagarde, to the festivities? I replied that it was no problem and my interlocutor hung up the phone in a flash as he was used to. I had met Ernst Jünger for the first time three weeks before. He called me for some time to come and with a certain deference, my lieutenant. I had realized a dream when I met him in Wilflingen, he had received me with a kindness that again had almost upset me and he had assured me of his presence for the show that we were preparing at the rear base for the return of the troops from Operation Daguet in Iraq in Nîmes. But I did not know François Lagarde, of whom the German writer spoke to me, and I had felt from the sound of his voice that it was a wish that was close to his heart. He told me that he lived in Montpellier and that he would come by his own means… Shortly after, I received another call, this time from François Lagarde who came on the phone and told me he was a photographer.

Ernst Jünger in uniform

Francois Lagarde had a soft voice and I never heard him raise it. At all times, in all circumstances, he remained master of himself and it did not seem like an effort. He had that soft, questioning voice whose questioning served as much to discover as to confirm. François had a real gentleness, which was not feigned, but he was also inhabited by a certain ferocity that I attributed to the double emancipation he was convinced he had achieved: emancipation from his environment and emancipation from all forms of limits like the people who turned twenty in 1968. François was Protestant to the very core of himself. He refused this condition and therefore boasted of having gotten rid of it, of no longer carrying the weight of his two pastor parents, but he continued to struggle, and in his heart of hearts, I always thought he was aware, even if he acted like someone who had won the bet, that the fight would still be with him. So he got rid of his Protestantism by dressing it up with a Fellini side, in search of the slightest bit of pure life, of Dionysian life, of an orgy of life… It was his agony. He never shied away from it. There is something terrible in seeing a man retain only gray, dull colors from childhood… No childish joy comes to counterbalance this feeling. If everything is a question of perspective in life, joy should always be the perspective of childhood, because the joy felt fully in a pure soul will always seem stronger than the vagaries of adult life. Time often accustoms us to our own hypocrisy. And we take that habit for a win. François Lagarde exalted an unfailing complexity. It was hard not to like him. He was impulsive, always curious and adorned with a genuinely Catholic joy. He wouldn't have liked me to give him a Catholic quality, but he would have been flattered, without admitting it of course.

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Now is not the time for governments to last

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The future Pius IX, still a cardinal, responding to the Emperor Napoleon III, said this: "Sire, when great politicians like your Majesty object to me that the time has not come, I have only to bow because I am not a big politician. But I am a bishop, and as a bishop I answer them: hasn't the time come for Jesus Christ to reign? Well ! So now is not the time for governments to last. »

Antigone, rebellious and intimate (7/7. Love)

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7th and last part: Love

Antigone's desire is family, she does not want to leave her brother unburied; Creon, he wants to assert himself as king and show his power. Antigone favors family ties that embody love and reveal a being. Creon establishes his power by signing an act of law which must establish his authority. The same word characterizes their action: desire. But desire does not recognize desire in the other, one might believe, especially if one is tempted to worship desire for itself, that desire dubs any desire it encounters. Between Creon and Antigone, it is the measure of the desires that counts. Face to face, Antigone and Creon will increase the measure of their desires to the adversity they encounter. But is the source of Antigone's desire still understandable today? Indeed, Antigone's desire, this desire which is based on justice, justice done and returned to the remains of her brother and to the gods, this desire takes on its full meaning, because it is communal, it is part of a city ​​and in a family, reduced vision of the city, and in a belief, Antigone leans against the gods to challenge Creon. Antigone does not express a personal desire, she defends an eternal law, she defends her duty to say it, to claim it before any power that thinks itself above her. Since when do we no longer hear anyone standing up in the public space to claim their duty at the cost of their life? The worst ? We have become accustomed to this silence, this resignation, the transcendental laws no longer tell us much, so nothing comes to overhang and therefore correct the laws which pass in front of us and encircle us like rubbish in a stream of water. The communities that fortified the individual within a space that protected him and allowed him to grow were shattered. The individual now looks like a crazy electron who can only build himself up from gusts of wind that constantly exhaust him and confuse him and erase even the taste for the meaning to be given to his life. Social life is based on law and law alone, but in a place without geography made up of people above ground, all rights are equal and crushed in an odious shambles. Creon has the power. Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus. At a time when it is no longer a question of having, of possessing, of acquiring, Antigone weighs—since it is necessary to evaluate—very little. The methodical destruction of all metaphysics is akin to a crime against humanity. Perhaps the greatest the world has ever known. Since with one click, I can acquire everything, I only need to know my desire to satisfy it. We also understand that this individual desire that nothing protects from his appetite accepts no limits and especially not those set by others; then comes into play envy, debased, debased desire.

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Identify

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Identity is divided on the one hand into a base which is in us without our being able to derive any particular merit from it, our nature and the education we have received, and a movement constitutive of life which discovers elements which are not listed by our nature or upbringing, but must be read up to our nature and upbringing. Much of this process happens without our even having to think about it. It is however essential, essential and obliges us to the permanent revision of this nature and this education, just like with the permanent revision of these new elements through the prism of our nature and our culture. Balance, here again, is essential. There is no question of forgetting or worse of not being aware of our nature, of forgetting or worse of losing the benefits of our education, to approach the shores of novelty, or else we will be nothing but one threadbare flag in the wind, we will have no criteria for judging novelty and we would risk seeing in this novelty only novelty, and only liking it for that.

The enantiodromos, the fork of life

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Creon transforms into a tyrant. He becomes what he imagines he should be. It is the enantiodromos , this moment and this place among the Greeks, which tells the true nature of a man when, at the crossroads, he must confront the choice of the road to follow. The enantiodromos is the fork where the one who becomes is born… Like an upstart taking possession of the thunderbolt of Zeus, Creon lacks the education and understanding of his power that can only be given to him by the 'authority. Creon thinks in terms of right when he should first think in terms of duty. Being oneself is never a habit, identity is a search and an affirmation, a enantiodromos , like a state of siege, who am I? Where am I going ? You have to constantly question yourself and explore the mystery of life, but caparisoned with what you know about yourself and with the world's self-agreement, that is to say that there are some certainties, there cannot be nothing, otherwise there is no Antigone...

Take on yourself, a transfiguration

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It is difficult to understand in our time where individualism reigns that the action of taking on the fault that one does not think of oneself, that one thinks of the other, but which necessarily is also of oneself, necessarily, because I have already committed this kind of fault by action or omission, this fault is not unknown to me, the action of endorsing the fault which, even if it is not of oneself, could have to be, therefore to endorse the possibility of the exposure of my weakness, a moment of intense and prodigious humility, transgresses my self and obliges it to come out of its comfort; this gesture provokes, without my even having to call for it or to seek it, the crossing of the membrane which separates me from another in me that I still do not know, another that surpasses my nature, can -to be another lending-natural, the transfiguration that allows me to become more than myself.