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| Fr. Richard Cipolla, SMOCSG |
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them… And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria has set his people free!
Those lines are from the near end of the poem called Lepanto, written by G.K. Chesterton for the 340th anniversary of the battle of Lepanto, the sea battle in 1571 that stopped the Ottoman Empire from conquering Europe, the fight for Europe finally completed over a century later by the great Polish hero, John Sobieski at the gates of Vienna. Chesterton published Lepanto on October 7, 1911, at which point he had not yet become a Catholic. The poem is not read much today. It has too much going against it in the present age. It has meter, it has rhyme, it uses alliteration for effect, and above all what offends this present age characterized as post-modern is that it is a celebration of chivalry, of courage, a celebration of Christian civilization embodied in Europe, a celebration of the hero in war, with echoes of Aeneas who endured so much to found Rome and the civilization that was the precursor of the Christian civilization that defined the culture of the West for two millennia. One need not spell out how all of this is deeply offensive to our post-Christian age in which the self and the desires of the self are at the center of a distorted view of reality. Continue reading
