Friday's Sung Word: "As Minas de Prata" by Synval Silva (in Portuguese)

music by Mauro Afonso and Jorge Melodia.

 

Eh Bahia, misticismo e esplendor

Preparava-se festivamente

Pra chegada do governador

Figura singular da história

Da mina de prata

Do grande José de Alencar

Luxo, riqueza e aventura

A cidade do sertão

Aquela gente humilde e pura

Foi tomada de ambição

Com a notícia inesperada

Que havia na baixada:

Um riquíssimo vilão

Havia um caboclo

No fundo da mata Só ele sabia,

O roteiro das minas de prata

 Artimanha da história,

Viagem, amor e ilusão,

O tesouro cobiçado,

Foi pra sempre sepultado

Com os segredos do sertão

Ê abarê, ê abarê, abareou,

De todas as tribos, pagé,

De todas as matas, senhor.

 You can listen "As Minas de Prata" sung by Mauro Afonso here.

Thursday's Serial: "Edward II" by Christopher Marlowe (in English) - I

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

KING EDWARD THE SECOND.

PRINCE EDWARD, his son, afterwards KING EDWARD THE THIRD.

KENT, brother to KING EDWARD THE SECOND.

GAVESTON.

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

BISHOP OF COVENTRY.

BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.

WARWICK.

LANCASTER.

PEMBROKE.

ARUNDER.

LEICESTER.

BERKELEY.

MORTIMER the elder.

MORTIMER the younger, his nephew.

SPENSER the elder.

SPENSER the younger, his son.

BALDOCK.

BAUMONT.

TRUSSEL.

GURNEY.

MATREVIS.

LIGHTBORN.

SIR JOHN OF HAINAULT.

LEVUNE.

RICE AP HOWEL.

ABBOT.

MONKS.

HERALD.

LORDS, POOR MEN, JAMES, MOWER, CHAMPION,

   MESSENGERS, SOLDIERS, and ATTENDANTS.

QUEEN ISABELLA, wife to KING EDWARD THE SECOND.

NIECE to KING EDWARD THE SECOND, _daughter to

   the DUKE OF GLOCESTER.

LADIES.

Enter GAVESTON, reading a letter.

Gaveston. My father is deceas'd. Come, Gaveston,

   And share the kingdom with thy dearest friend.

   Ah, words that make me surfeit with delight!

   What greater bliss can hap to Gaveston

   Than live and be the favourite of a king!

   Sweet prince, I come! these, thy amorous lines

   Might have enforc'd me to have swum from France,

   And, like Leander, gasp'd upon the sand,

   So thou wouldst smile, and take me in thine arms.

   The sight of London to my exil'd eyes

   Is as Elysium to a new-come soul:

   Not that I love the city or the men,

   But that it harbours him I hold so dear,—

   The king, upon whose bosom let me lie,

   And with the world be still at enmity.

   What need the arctic people love star-light,

   To whom the sun shines both by day and night?

   Farewell base stooping to the lordly peers!

   My knee shall bow to none but to the king.

   As for the multitude, that are but sparks,

   Rak'd up in embers of their poverty,—

   Tanti,—I'll fawn first on the wind,

   That glanceth at my lips, and flieth away.

Enter three Poor Men.

   But how now! what are these?

Poor Men. Such as desire your worship's service.

Gaveston. What canst thou do?

First Poor Man. I can ride.

Gaveston. But I have no horse.—What art thou?

Second Poor Man. A traveller.

Gaveston. Let me see; thou wouldst do well

   To wait at my trencher, and tell me lies at dinner-time;

   And, as I like your discoursing, I'll have you.—

   And what art thou?

Third Poor Man. A soldier, that hath serv'd against the Scot.

Gaveston. Why, there are hospitals for such as you:

   I have no war; and therefore, sir, be gone.

Third Poor Man. Farewell, and perish by a soldier's hand,

   That wouldst reward them with an hospital!

Gaveston. Ay, ay, these words of his move me as much

   As if a goose should play the porcupine,

   And dart her plumes, thinking to pierce my breast.

   But yet it is no pain to speak men fair;

   I'll flatter these, and make them live in hope.— [Aside.

   You know that I came lately out of France,

   And yet I have not view'd my lord the king:

   If I speed well, I'll entertain you all.

All. We thank your worship.

Gaveston. I have some business: leave me to myself.

All. We will wait here about the court.

Gaveston. Do. [Exeunt Poor Men.

              These are not men for me;

   I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits,

   Musicians, that with touching of a string

   May draw the pliant king which way I please:

   Music and poetry is his delight;

   Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night,

   Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows;

   And in the day, when he shall walk abroad,

   Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad;

   My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,

   Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay;

   Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape,

   With hair that gilds the water as it glides

   Crownets of pearl about his naked arms,

   And in his sportful hands an olive-tree,

   To hide those parts which men delight to see,

   Shall bathe him in a spring; and there, hard by,

   One like Actæon, peeping through the grove,

   Shall by the angry goddess be transform'd,

   And running in the likeness of an hart,

   By yelping hounds pull'd down, shall semm to die:

   Such things as these best please his majesty.—

   Here comes my lord the king, and the nobles,

   From the parliament. I'll stand aside. [Retires.

"General Audience on Saint Catherine " by Pope Paul VI (translated into English)

GENERAL AUDIENCE ON SAINT CATHERINE

Pope Paul VI

"The Church is identified with Christ…"

During the General Audience on Wednesday April 30th, 1969, the Pope

delivered the following address to many thousands of faithful:

Beloved Sons and Daughters!

Today, April 30th, is a feast for us. The feast of St. Catherine of Siena. Pius II, also from Siena, proclaimed her a Saint (1461: remember the magnificent fresco by Pinturricchio, which illustrates the event in the Piccolomini Library in Siena). Pius IX declared her the second Patron Saint of Rome (1866). In 1939, Pius XII made her also the Patron Saint of Italy, with St. Francis of Assisi. Nor can a Pope forget how much the Roman Pontificate and the whole Church owe this extraordinary woman, who can never be studied and celebrated enough. It is a fine thing that a monument was erected to her, a few years ago, here near St. Peter's, between Castel S. Angelo and the beginning of Via della Conciliazione, as if running towards this fateful Vatican. It is a fine thing that so many religious families and Catholic women's associations should have her as protectress and teacher. You, too, perhaps, know something of her marvellous life, enough at least to set the name of St. Catherine of Siena among the sweetest, the most original, the greatest that history records. As you know, she died very young, here in Rome. But her thirty-three years of earthly life (1347-1380) were so rich in inner intensity, so dramatic in exterior activity, so fruitful in literary expressions, so important in the series of political and ecclesiastical events of the XIV century, that they oblige the theologian, the historian, the student of literature, the artist to consider Catherine a unique phenomenon, and to study in her the teacher of divine things, the inspired mystic of the stigmata, the woman, bold, simple and skilful at the same time, who ventured upon diplomatic initiatives as artless as they were wise, the illiterate writer, who dictated books and carried on a lively and apostolic correspondence with hosts of people, the virgin ecstatic in prayer and dedicated to helping the suffering, the fascinating conversationalist who transformed interlocutors into disciples, into faithful friends. We must always remember that it was she, Catherine, who convinced the young French Pope (he was forty) Gregory XI, weak in health and faint-hearted, to leave Avignon, whither the Apostolic See had moved with Pope Clement V, after the sudden death of Benedict XI, and to return in 1376 to Italy, still rent by bitter divisions, to Rome, though it was turbulent and in very bad conditions. And it was Catherine who, immediately after the death of Gregory XI, supported his successor Urban VI in the first critical events of the famous "Western schism", which began with the election of the anti-pope Clement VII.

The history of her life is extremely complex and there is no lack of documentation. It is much too long to narrate it in full. Then, too, the historical background in which her life was set is so characteristic and dramatic that anyone attempting to describe it, when dealing with this humble and splendid protagonist, is obliged to select or to summarize.

The institutional aspect - One aspect especially of this exceptional life interests us, the one we think is most characteristic: her love for the Church. And this aspect affects the whole of Catherine's personality, inside and outside. Biographers and hagiographers cannot help noting it: Catherine is the Saint whose dominant characteristic lies in her love for the Church, and for the Papacy particularly. It would be possible to fill a book with quotations like the following: "Oh, eternal God, receive the sacrifice of my life in this mystical Body of the holy Church. I have nothing to give but what You gave me. Pluck out my heart, therefore, and press it to the face of this Spouse..." (Letter 371). "The Church is then," Joergensen writes, "from the intellectual and moral point of view, the centre of existence; it is the solution to the enigma of life and it is its absolute value, its essential value. In this world of relativity, it alone is positive..." (p. 511). "The Church is Catherine's greatest love. No Saint, perhaps, has loved the Church as much as she... In St. Catherine's soul, the Church is identified with Christ" (Tincani, p. 39).

In these brief references we will note three points. First: St. Catherine loved the Church in its reality, which, as we know, has a double aspect. One is mystical, spiritual, invisible, the essential one, fused with Christ the glorious Redeemer, who does not cease to pour his blood (who has spoken of Christ's Blood as much as Catherine?) upon the world through his Church. The other is human, historical, institutional, concrete, but never separated from the divine aspect. One may wonder if our modern critics of the institutional aspect of the Church are ever capable of grasping this simultaneity, or if their grave dissertations, or vivisections of the mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church (not only heavenly, but earthly, the Church in time, a body corporate, personified in men composed of Adam's clay, even if animated by the gifts of the Holy Spirit), would ever give rise to an expression like the one, so often quoted, that describes the Pope: "Oh. Papa, Sweet Christ on earth..." (Letter 185). Catherine loves the Church as it is. (cfr. Taurisano, "Dialogo", quoting Cordovani, p.IL).

Second point. Catherine does not love the Church for the human merits of those who belong to it, or represent it. If we think of the conditions in which the Church was at that time, we can easily understand that her love had very different motives. And this can be gathered from the free and frank language in which Catherine denounces the evils of ecclesiastical organization at that time, and calls for its reform. St. Catherine does not hide the failings of ecclesiastics, but as she inveighs against such decadence, she considers it a motive and a need to love all the more.

Priestly dignity and sacramental function - And so the real motive, and this is the third point, is the mission of the Church, its priestly dignity, its sacramental function; it is "the first and fundamental truth that the Church preserves and communicates to souls... the reality of God's love for his creatures" (Tincani, 37). "This greatness—Catherine writes in the marvellous 110th chapter of her Dialogue—is given in general to every rational creature (she is alluding perhaps to the "priesthood of the faithful"); but among the latter (it is God speaking) I have chosen my ministers for your salvation, in order that the Blood of the humble and immaculate Lamb, my Only-begotten Son, may be administered to you through them. They have the privilege of administering the Sun, giving them the light of science, the warmth of divine charity". The Council does not speak differently (cfr. Lumen Gentium, n. 24).

This is Catherine's love: the hierarchical Church is the indispensable ministry for the salvation of the world. And for this reason her life will become a drama, mystical and physical, of suffering, prayer, activity. "The cross on my back and the olive-branch in my hand" (Letter 219) became her spiritual and social mission. Catherine's definition of herself is famous. "In Thy nature, eternal Deity, I will know my nature", she says in one of her prayers (24); "and what is my nature? it is fire!" (cfr. Joergensen, 495).

The storm-tossed boat - The last mystical episode of her life is worth remembering. Weak, exhausted by fasting and illness, she came every day to St. Peter's, the former basilica. In the porch there was a garden, on the facade a famous mosaic, painted by Giotto for the 1300 jubilee, and called the barque (now it appears inside the porch of the new basilica). It reproduced the scene of Peter's boat, tossed by the night storm, and it represented the apostle daring to move towards Christ who has appeared walking on the waves; a symbol of life that is always in danger and always miraculously saved by the divine mysterious Master. One day, it was 29th January 1380, about Vesper time, Sexagesima Sunday, and it was Catherine's last visit to St. Peter's; it seemed to Catherine, caught up in ecstasy, that Jesus stepped out of the mosaic and came up to her, placing the barque on her weak shoulders; the heavy, storm-tossed barque of the Church; and Catherine, collapsing under the weight, fell to the ground unconscious. Historically, Catherine's sacrifice seemed to fail. But who can say that burning love of hers disappeared in vain if myriads of virgin souls and hosts of priestly spirits and of faithful and industrious laymen, made it their own; and it still blazes in Catherine's words: "Sweet Jesus, darling Jesus"?

And may that fire be ours, too, may it give us the strength to repeat Catherine's words and gift. "I have given my life for Holy Church" (Raimondo da Capua, Vita, III, 4). With Our Apostolic Blessing.