"The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud promontory of dear old Howth guarding as ever the waters of the bay, the weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore and, last but not least, on the quiet church whence they streamed forth at times upon the stillness of the voice of prayer to her who is in her pure radiance a beacon ever to the stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea."
-James Joyce, Ulysses (Richmond, Surrey, 2017), p. 251.
The description of a sunset and the devotional language directed at Mary. Anderson's "Star of the Sea" imaginatively reconstructs the development of myths from warrior goddesses to the peaceful mother of God.
Ave Stella Maris!
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I thought just now of how William Prescott, in his HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO, gave us similar reflections on how, in Mexico City, the cathedral where the peaceful rites of the Catholic Church are celebrated was built on the site of the Great Temple of the Aztecs, where mass human sacrifices were once perpetrated. And of the glaring contrast between the two!
Ad astra! Sean
Joyce did like run-on sentences.
Sean:
Don't (at least) some Christians regard the crucifiction as the final blood sacrifice that makes further sacrifices unneeded? This makes the location *more* appropriate.
OTOH many non-Christians regard the executions of heretics as no better than the Aztecs human sacrifices.
Jim,
In the combox to the post, "Books, Baths And A Cross-God," I presented an incomplete list of my disagreements with Christianity. You have added another: blood sacrifice. And it is central to Christianity, particularly Paul.
The Buddha taught that the best sacrifice was an offering not of flesh to the gods but of fruit to the poor.
Paul.
Kaor, Jim and Paul!
Jim: ALL reasonably orthodox or "Nicene/Chalcedonian" Christians regard the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross as infinitely sufficient because, being God as well as man, His atoning death bridged the gap between God as nothing and no one else could do. So, there would no need for any further such sacrifices.
Horrible as the execution of heretics (or Catholics, when the heretics had the upper hand), it's false to call them sacrifices. All parties in such matter considered them legal criminal procedures, not religious rites. Protestants or Catholics considered their opponents to be seditious disturbers of the peace subverting the state.
Paul: But Buddha was only a philosopher, not the REDEEMER. And Christ also commanded his followers to practice charity. The Catholic Church, by itself, has the largest system of organized charities of all kinds worldwide. FAR more so than Buddhism.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The main point here is the barbarity of the blood sacrifice idea.
Paul.
I don't see blood sacrifice of animals as particularly barbaric; after all, they ate the animals afterwards. (In Greece, the thighbones and some fat were burned on the altar; the communicants then ate the meat.)
(From SM Stirling.)
I get that but the barbarity I meant was mainly human sacrifice and particularly the specifically Christian idea that God required the sacrifice of a perfect victim, His own Son.
Kaor, Paul!
The Christian belief is that only a perfect sacrifice by a Person who is also perfect could bridge the gap between God and fallen mankind. And since no simple could be perfect, God willed that only His Son, when incarnated as both Man and God, could offer that once and for all, infinitely sufficient sacrifice to the Father, atoning for mankind.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But I still think that the idea of God requiring a sacrifice is barbaric.
Each of us is "sinful" to use the Biblical term. Each of us has a responsibility to do something about it.
Paul.
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