Logos & Muse

N HER DUO OF POEMS for Sex­a­ges­ima Sun­day, Christina Ros­setti invites us to con­trast the par­adise of Eden with the par­adise to come in Christ:

Yet earth was very good in days of old,
And earth is lovely still:
Still for the sacred flock she spreads the fold,
For Sion rears the hill.

Mother she is, and cra­dle of our race,
A depth where trea­sures lie,
The broad foun­da­tion of a holy place,
Man’s step to scale the sky.

She spreads the harvest-field which Angels reap,
And lo! the crop is white;
She spreads God’s Acre where the happy sleep
All night that is not night.

Earth may not pass till heaven shall pass away,
Nor heaven may be renewed
Except with earth: and once more in that day
Earth shall be very good.

That Eden of earth’s sun­rise can­not vie
With Par­adise beyond her sun­set sky
Hid­den on high.

Four rivers watered Eden in her bliss,
But Par­adise hath One which per­fect is
In sweetness.

Eden had gold, but Par­adise hath gold
Like unto glass of splen­dours man­i­fold
Tongue hath not told.

Eden had sun and moon to make her bright;
But Par­adise hath God and Lamb for light,
And hath no night.

Unspot­ted inno­cence was Eden’s best;
Great Par­adise shows God’s ful­filled behest,
Tri­umph and rest.

Hail, Eve and Adam, source of death and shame!
New life has sprung from death, and Jesu’s Name
Clothes you with fame.

Hail Adam, and hail Eve! your chil­dren rise
And call you blessed, in their glad sur­mise
Of Paradise.

Ros­setti under­stands attach­ments. And fore­most among them here is the attach­ment to earth and the things of earth. Earth was “very good,” she says; earth is “lovely still.” Earth is our “mother,” our “cra­dle,” and indeed “A depth where trea­sures lie.” But for all that, I am struck with how often Rossetti’s praise of earth is informed by her under­stand­ing that it is not our real home. She calls it “The broad foun­da­tion of a holy place,” but it is not the “holy place” itself. It is, she explains, “Man’s step to scale the sky.” So earth is to be praised, not so much for what it is in itself, but for the fact that it is our path to some­thing holier and bet­ter. It is only in that con­text that we can under­stand what Ros­setti means when she refers to the earth as “lovely.” I am reminded of Robert Frost’s stop­ping by woods on a snowy evening. The woods weren’t his des­ti­na­tion, but that didn’t pre­vent him from stop­ping a while to linger over how “lovely, dark, and deep” every­thing was. Christina Ros­setti would under­stand. And yet she points out that, at the end of days, when heaven is renewed with earth, “once more in that day / Earth shall be very good.” It is okay to linger over attach­ments to lovely things; but we must real­ize that it is only by renewal that any of them shall merit the superla­tive “very.” We must seek to be renewed first.

In the sec­ond of the two poems, Ros­setti turns her focus to a more spe­cific con­trast between the lovely things of Eden and the lovely things of Par­adise. Eden had “four rivers,” but par­adise “One which per­fect is.” Eden’s “gold” is lesser than Paradise’s “gold / Like unto glass” which “Tongue hath not told.” Eden could only offer “unspot­ted inno­cence,” but Par­adise “God’s ful­filled behest.” Eye hath not seen nor hath ear heard: I admire Rossetti’s method of call­ing us to detach­ment from the things of this world–however lovely they are–by remind­ing us that love­lier things await. She goes gen­tly about the busi­ness of telling us to forgo the world and the things of the world. Some­thing in the nursery-book style of her rhyme and meter only adds to how deeply her poems call us to a long­ing for a love­li­ness we can some­how remem­ber despite know­ing that we never expe­ri­enced it for one day. Per­haps, in the end, it is our long­ings more than our fears that will prompt us to forgo our attach­ments and our sins and seek the city that is to come.

N HIS HOMILY FOR THE VIGIL MASS, Fr. pointed out that St. Paul’s words in the epis­tle read­ing were the most per­fect exam­i­na­tion of con­science he could think of. Fr. is an expert in moral the­ol­ogy, so his analy­sis of Paul here would seem to carry some weight. The pas­sage in ques­tion is, of course, the great “love chap­ter” 1 Corinthi­ans 13:

But earnestly seek the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excel­lent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clang­ing sym­bol. And if I have prophetic pow­ers, and under­stand all mys­ter­ies, and all knowl­edge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove moun­tains, but have not love, I am noth­ing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain noth­ing. Love is patient and kind; love is not jeal­ous or boast­ful; it is not arro­gant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irri­ta­ble or resent­ful; it does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophe­cies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowl­edge, it will pass away. For our knowl­edge is imper­fect and our prophecy is imper­fect; but when the per­fect comes, the imper­fect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I rea­soned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up child­ish ways. For now we see in a mir­ror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall under­stand fully, even as I have been fully under­stood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the great­est of these is love. (1 Corinthi­ans 12:31 — 13:13)

Fr. took us through verses 4–7 and rephrased them in the form of an exam­i­na­tion of con­science: Have I been patient and kind? Or have I been jeal­ous? Boast­ful? Arro­gant? Rude? Have I insisted on my own way? Have I been irri­ta­ble or resent­ful? Have I rejoiced at wrong, or have I rejoiced in the right? Have I borne all things, hoped all things, endured all things? As Fr. explained it, there is no bet­ter exam­i­na­tion of con­science than to make a seri­ous exam­i­na­tion of the state of your soul with respect to those ques­tions. After hear­ing that homily, I’m near resolved to read 1 Corinthi­ans 13:4–7 every night while I make my exam­i­na­tion of con­science, and while I’m prepar­ing myself for confession.

If I may make this chal­lenge to my read­ers: Dur­ing the next two weeks, before you go to Con­fes­sion on Ash Wednes­day (you are going to Con­fes­sion on Ash Wednes­day, right?), why not spend some time mak­ing an exam­i­na­tion of your con­science accord­ing to the stan­dards of 1 Corinthi­ans 13:4–7? Lent is right around the cor­ner; exam­ine your­self and see how you might renew your­self for the sake of the city that is to come.

Paul’s words in the rest of the pas­sage are a good com­ple­ment to the Ros­setti poems: a con­trast of the things of earth, which are tem­po­rary, with the things of heaven, which are eter­nal. Prophe­cies will pass away. Tongues will pass away. Knowl­edge will pass away. So will all things; what­ever we are most attached to. Annie Dil­lard asks the ques­tion this way: “Do you think you will keep your life, or any­thing else you love?” In the end, that is why we must make a real exam­i­na­tion of con­science: Because we can­not keep a thing. It is not about what we can cling to here; it is about what we are promised there. And when all of our pos­ses­sions and attach­ments have been taken from us, what shall we have left but what we have dis­cov­ered when we looked into our conscience?

I make this con­fes­sion of pride: My great­est attach­ment is to my intel­lect, my knowl­edge, my under­stand­ing, my rea­son. That may explain why one of my great­est fears is demen­tia. And what that tells me is that I most need to study humil­ity; Paul says, “as for knowl­edge, it will pass away. For our knowl­edge is imper­fect.” St. Thomas Aquinas, who was the great­est intel­lect to ever live, looked upon every­thing he had written–the Summa, the Tan­tum Ergo; all of it–and said: “It reminds me of straw.”

He wasn’t attached. Except to Christ. Before Lent begins, exam­ine your con­science; take note of your attach­ments; then refo­cus your desire on him and his promises for the city that is to come.

Photo Credit: Por­trait of Christina Ros­setti, by her brother Dante Gabriel Ros­setti. Por­trait with chalk, 1866. Pub­lic domain.