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Events Retreats

The Search for Truth: St Edith Stein

Weekend Retreat

The Search for Truth:
St Edith Stein

14th - 16th March 2025

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Exploring the life and teaching of St Edith Stein

Led by Fr Matthew Blake, OCD

This retreat explores the life and faith of St Edith Stein (also called Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), a convert from Judaism who was executed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Born into a large Jewish family in Poland in 1891, she rejected God as a teenager, but her brilliant mind and her turn to philosophy eventually led her to recognise the truth through a reading of the life of St Teresa of Avila.

From there, she gravitated to the works of St Thomas Aquinas to further her new-found knowledge, continuing her life-long quest for meaning and truth in the light of her baptism and reception into the Church in 1922.

Edith joined the Carmelite monastery in Cologne when her teaching mission to Catholic women was blocked by the Nazis on the grounds of her Jewish heritage. She was moved for her own safety to the Carmel in Echt, Holland, but was rounded up with other Jewish converts to Catholicism by the Nazis, and taken to Auschwitz for execution in 1942.

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This retreat will offer several talks over the weekend, framed by opportunities for Mass, communal prayer in the morning and evening, and Adoration.

Free time for walks and reflection is built into each retreat.

Fr Matthew Blake is a Carmelite priest. Originally from Ireland, he has lived and worked  in the UK for more than thirty years. His ministry has mainly involved retreat direction, for which he is well-known in the UK, and he has also worked in many different parishes.

Theodore House offers a wonderful venue for any residential course. The tranquil and beautiful surroundings of the Stonyhurst estate offer a peaceful setting with endless opportunities for walks. Guests will enjoy the comfortable recreational spaces and a beautifully lanscaped garden.

For more information about Theodore House, please click here.

  • Arrivals from 3pm for a 6pm start on Friday
  • Departures from 3pm on Sunday
Cost (per retreat)

Single room: £230 p.p.*

Twin room (sharing): £175 p.p.*

Non-residential (includes lunches and dinners): £115

*Costs include full board from Friday dinner to Sunday lunch inclusive.

“Fr Matt is a brilliant teacher”

“This was an amazing experience, great speaker, comfortable venue.”

Please register below (includes £50p.p. deposit payment):

Venue & Getting to us:

If you are reliant on public transport, please consider traveling by train to Preston train station. From there, we aim to co-ordinate minicab shares or lifts amongst participants of any given event. If you require further advice or assistance, email us: [email protected]

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Media Video

St Thomas More & Religious Freedom

Friday 18th October 2024

Recordings

St Thomas More & Religious Freedom

Dr Marcus Cole

An open lecture on St Thomas More and Religious Freedom, by Dr Marcus Cole.

With a welcome by Stefan Kaminski, Director of the CHC, and an introduction by the Lord Alton of Liverpool.

Approximate running time: 47 minutes 

Categories
Events Retreats

Men’s Retreat – Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius

Men's Retreat

Spiritual Exercises
of St Ignatius

31st March - 5th April 2025

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A 5-day version of the Ignatian Exercises for men

Led by the Benedictine Monks of St Joseph’s Abbey, Flavigny (France)

This five-day retreat for men is a shortened form of the full Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. As is proper for the Spiritual Exercises, the retreat is a silent one (with the exception of one-to-one meetings with the retreat guides).

The Exercises are a synthetic and practical presentation of the central truths of the Catholic faith—God, the meaning of life, the eternal destiny of mankind, the life of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race—in the form of meditations, examination of conscience and prayers. 

The aim of the Exercises is to find peace of heart, to free oneself of worldly attachments and to discover the will of God for the salvation of the soul.

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Each day is framed by 4 or 5 talks given by one or other of the two priests who are preaching the retreat, with time for private prayer after each talk. 

The retreat is conducted in silence.

The priests will be available for one-to-one conversation and confessions on a daily basis.

There will be daily Mass celebrated in Latin, with the option of Mass to be additionally celebrated in the Tridentine Rite upon request. The Rosary will be said daily.

The retreat will be preached by the Monks of St Joseph’s Abbey, Flavigny. The monastic community was established in 1988 by Dom Augustin Marie Joly, who entrusted it with a specific apostolate of preaching spiritual retreats for men. In 2021, the community founded a new priory in Solignac, France.

The monks have been offering these retreats at both Flavigny since 1988 and at Solignac since 2021, as well as at other locations in the UK and elsewhere. 

For questions about the spiritual exercises, the monks can be contacted at [email protected]

Theodore House offers a wonderful venue for any residential retreat. The tranquil and beautiful surroundings of the Stonyhurst estate offer a peaceful setting with endless opportunities for walks. Guests will enjoy the comfortable recreational spaces and a beautifully lanscaped garden.

For more information about Theodore House, please click here.

Monday

  • Arrivals from 3pm
  • Retreat commences with Welcome & Orientation at 5pm and the first conference at 5:30pm

Saturday

  • Departures from 5pm
Cost (per retreat)

Single room (en-suite): £550 p.p.*

If you would like to attend this retreat but are unable to pay the full cost, please contact [email protected] to discuss subsidies.

*Cost includes full board from Monday dinner to Saturday lunch inclusive.

“I am deeply grateful for this experience“

“The ability of the course leaders to recognise the direction that God was taking us and the insight to go with it made this retreat stand out”

Please register below (includes £100 p.p. deposit payment):
Venue & Getting to us:

If you are reliant on public transport, please consider traveling by train to Preston train station. From there, we aim to co-ordinate minicab shares or lifts amongst participants of any given event. If you require further advice or assistance, email us: [email protected]

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Articles Media

CLF: a week of prayer, study and friendship for teens

Sunday 22nd September 2024

CLF: a week of prayer, study and friendship for teens

Stefan Kaminski

It was with both excitement and a dash of trepidation that I awaited the arrival of our second cohort of students, counting off yet again a mental list of to-dos and anxiously searching for some overlooked item of potentially life-threatening bureaucracy. At the back of my mind was the temptation to compare the incoming assembly of teenage faces to the first and original cohort, who inevitably have thus far held a special place in my memory as the personification of our Christian Leadership Formation programme.

The memories of the first group appeared to take on an even rosier tinge as I anxiously scanned the awkward interactions during the first ice-breaker. Small groups had coalesced, and appeared to be politely resisting my gentle suggestions that any one person’s correct partner (as determined by the random stickers on their forehead denoting one of a pairing of foodstuffs) was yet to be discovered elsewhere. Furthermore, beyond the natural diversity to be found amongst a random sampling of Catholic, sixth-form students from around England, additional variety was provided by having opened up this year’s programme to year 13 students too, and by the admission of two young ladies hailing from France, bringing a dash of je ne sais quoi to the mix.

A need for peer support

A reassuring sense of the consistency of both Western society and human nature rapidly returned, however, when we asked the assembled students about their expectations for the course. Southerners and northerners, Englishmen and Frenchwomen alike, all had similar preoccupations: they wanted to meet like-minded, Catholic young people, and they wanted to understand more concretely how their faith was applicable to the secular world of work that they were preparing to enter.

CLF
The 2024 CLF cohort under the statue of Our Lady at the top of the Stonyhurst avenue

Whilst neither of these should have come as a great surprise, I nonetheless found it striking to hear the students admitting to their relative loneliness as practicing Catholics, given that they were all coming from Catholic educational settings. The positive surprise, in this respect, is that the students were actively conscious of the lack of peer-support in their faith and had a yearning for it.

The importance of this ‘community’ dimension for faith formation is perhaps hard to overestimate. It takes great courage and conviction to swim against the tide, and even the most resilient and intellectually-grounded of young people will feel the pressure of mass religious incredulity. Providing something of an antidote to this – an actively faith-filled and intelligent environment for the students to immerse themselves in (or, “a properly ‘Catholic’ environment”, as one student put it) – was precisely part of the vision for our Christian Leadership Formation programme.

“I feel much more secure in my faith now, even if only from knowing that there are other young people like me in the world”

Thus, and despite my initial apprehensions, it was deeply gratifying to see the initial barriers break down and a real cohesion built on mutual respect and friendship develop over the days that followed. And the feedback the students provided bore ample testimony to this. One young lady noted how she felt “much more secure in my faith now, even if only from knowing that there are other young people like me in the world.” Boniface, a year 12 student, praised “the experience of living, praying and studying as a community”, seeing as one of its fruits the fact that “everybody… started the week as total strangers and ended as friends”.

Coordination and communication are required to build a tower, whilst tied together at the hands!

Community builds culture

This community dimension – the integration of prayer, of study and of recreation with wholesome, interpersonal relationships – is essential to any formative experience, whether the family home, the school community, a seminary or religious community, or a short programme like ours. And it is intrinsically related to the second concern the students brought with them: that of understanding the practical relevance of our Catholic faith in today’s world.

We have arguably reached a point where Christianity is now totally absent as the principal point of reference for our society’s collective imaginative vision. The intellectual framework of the modern mind is completely decoupled from its Christian foundations: from the conception of the very basic act of knowledge, through to that of the universal reality, both material and spiritual (assuming that one admits of the latter in the first place). It is thus difficult, if not impossible, for many young people (and indeed adults) to see a practical interaction between their ‘private’ faith and public life, as the two are constituted by imaginative paradigms that have very different points of reference.

The challenge for any formation project, then, is to create an environment that actively ‘speaks’ of the Christian vision and imaginative process in all its fullness. Such an environment should be able to promote a holistic engagement of heart and mind with the Catholic faith. An email from Rafael, one of this year’s cohort, straight after the first module, seemed to confirm that we had achieved something along precisely these lines: “I have relished the opportunity to consider big and challenging questions, and have done a lot of soul searching. But now, as the week ends, I find myself with greater clarity and stronger convictions.”

Rediscovering the intelligence of Christianity

Thus, the intention behind the academic content of the week’s course – led by the hugely experienced lecturer and highly-regarded philosopher, Dr Andrew Beards – was to offer the students a thorough and coherent, philosophical and theological grounding for those concepts that underpin our understanding of the common good; concepts that were fully refined in the light of Christian revelation and thought, but have since become meaningless in a de-Christianised (and dare I say de-rationalised) world. “Exploring topics like dignity, law, and human rights in a Christian light and comparing them to inconclusive secular views helped shed light on the logic of Christian thought”, said 18-year-old Maia.

At the heart of this exploration is the recognition that all people “have an innate desire to ‘seek the truth and act accordingly,’” as Qiyi, a year 12 student, put it. It is the rationality afforded by our spiritual nature, which leads us to search for knowledge and understanding, that is at the heart of what it means to be human, and is essential ground for the dignity that we claim for our species. 

One group of students works on a task, preparing speaking notes for a student union debate

Recognising this primary truth, and the objectivity that is inherent to this claim, is that which provides a foundation for building up a society where “true justice is rooted in love, truth and the common good”, in the words of another year 12 student, Santiago.

The theme of justice was central to the week, as the students explored its practical application in a number of scenarios, whether preparing for a student union debate on the abortion of unborn children with Down’s Syndrome or analysing a legal case relating to a terminally-ill patient. What the students readily saw from these exercises was that for justice to truly flourish, our understanding of human life and of that which is proper to its flourishing requires solid ground. Rafael summed this up as follows: “Human Rights are principles agreed upon by a body of people representing society, they can be said to be in the service of preserving human dignity, but this can only be guaranteed if they are rooted in Natural Law”.

Engaging with others and engaging with Christ

The heavy lifting of the week’s academic content was given welcome relief by a generously-spaced timetable, which allowed not only for the students’ own recreation, but also some organised fun in the shape of various, and slightly zany, team-building activities. Communication and the harnessing of collective skills were the general objectives, but plenty of hilarity ensued as teams competed for points over the course of the week. The timetable was rounded out by the sparkling input of Georgia Clarke, who delivered a thoroughly-engaging series workshops in media and public speaking, which culminated in a mock interview at the week’s end.

Georgia Clarke puts one of the students through his paces in a mock interview

Evenings were also an opportunity for relaxation and socials, with a dinner at one of our characterful local pubs a part of the schedule, alongside a pizza and film night. The discussion that followed the screening of “Eye in the Sky” took on an unexpected quality as the previous, U.S. Army career of the CHC’s second member of staff, Dr Joey Belleza, was revealed, and the group benefitted from some rather fascinating insights into the military realities portrayed in the film!

We were privileged to have one of the last evenings in the company of Lord Alton, who came to speak to the students, and engage with them over a dinner and discussion. His keynote speech providentially drew together many of the strands of the preceding days’ discussions as he showed the students how his Catholic faith had served as a lodestar throughout his political career and how the concepts that they were studying were so critical in enabling a truly flourishing society. For many of the students, this was a powerful, first testimony to the positive role that our faith has to play even in today’s society.

I have perhaps deliberately left till last what is the most important element of the programme, that which gives meaning to and draws all the above together into a cohesive whole: the life of prayer. Although the practical focus of the programme often, inevitably, ends up on the academic content – advertising the topics, flagging the academic benefits, noting the societal import of such weighty matters – I am always most struck by the lesser-seen impact of the liturgical rhythm of the course. This only really reveals itself after the event, once the students have sent in their written evaluations at a week or two’s distance. The experience of daily Mass, Liturgy of the Hours, and regular opportunities for Eucharistic Adoration and meditation, is one that is generally new to most students. The impact that this has, however, is clearly marked. From bringing them “a sense of order and discipline… [and] closer to God”, to seeing “productivity, enjoyment and work output improved”, the practically- and spiritually-essential nature of prayer and of the Church’s sacramental rites hit home in tangible ways, and sent the students away with a renewed sense of commitment to coming to know and love their saviour, Jesus Christ. If this was the only outcome of the programme, I would say it was all worthwhile!

To donate towards the cost of this programme, please use the link below:
Categories
Courses Events

Marriage Preparation 2025

Marriage preparation

Marriage Preparation

2025 Courses

“It is necessary to make preparatory programmes for the Sacrament of Marriage ever more effective, not only for human growth, but above all for the faith of the engaged couples. The fundamental objective of this encounter is to help engaged couples realise a progressive integration into the mystery of Christ, in the Church and with the Church.” (Pope Francis, Address to the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, 21 January 2017)

About CHC Marriage Preparation courses

Our courses meet the requirements for preparation for the Sacrament of Matrimony in the Catholic Church.

They have been specifically designed to offer couples a presentation of fundamental, underlying themes as well as of the Sacrament of Marriage itself, according to the theological vision of the Catholic Church. Intrinsic to this presentation is an emphasis on personal integrity and honest communication as a couple, founded on the primary relationship with God.

Our events take place at Theodore House, set on the stunning Stonyhurst estate in the Ribble Valley.

Our Director, Stefan Kaminski, and his wife, Eleonora, both have Licentiates from the John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and Family Life, having dedicated their studies to the themes of human love and sexual complementarity. Stefan serves as Director of The Christian Heritage Centre, where he has been creating and delivering Catholic formation content for the last five years. Ella previously worked at the John Paul II Institute in Rome, before joining Stefan in Lancashire following their marriage. She currently teaches a dogmatic theology course on the Sacrament of Marriage at Oscott Seminary, and is engaged in the Veritas Amoris project. Together, they offer marriage preparation courses and ongoing formation for catechetists.

Weekend course (residential)

Friday 3rd - Sunday 5th January 2025

Our weekend course is a fantastic opportunity to engage more deeply, individually and as a couple, with the Catholic vision of marriage. Allowing a greater space and time to reflect, it will offer each couple much to consider in the lead up to and into their marriage.

The weekend is fully-catered, with a framework of prayer, input, discussion and exercises for couples to work on, creating a rich experience and meditation on the Sacrament of Matrimony.

The weekend is divided into four sessions. Each session is themed around an element of the marriage rite and builds on a foundational Scripture text:

Session 1 – “Freely and wholeheartedly”: Genesis 1 and the Nature of God

Session 2 – “To love as long as you both shall live”: Genesis 2 and the Male-Female Communion

Session 3 – “To accept children lovingly”: Genesis 3 and Human Sexuality

Session 4 – “I do take thee”: Ephesians 5 and the Sacramental Nature of Marriage

Please note:

  • Participants are assigned a single, en-suite room each. Integral to the course is an independent and honest examination of oneself and one’s commitment before God, and the personal space that is required to enable this. By booking onto this course, participants agree to respect the condition of one person per room.
Marriage preparation
Cost

£220 per person / £440 per couple

If you are unable to pay the full cost, please contact [email protected] to discuss subsidies

Arrivals for 5pm on Friday

Departures from 4pm on Sunday

Venue & Getting to us:

If you are reliant on public transport, please consider traveling by train to Preston train station. From there, we aim to co-ordinate minicab shares or lifts amongst participants of any given event. If you require further advice or assistance, email us: [email protected]

Categories
Conferences Events

St Thomas More and Religious Freedom

St Thomas More & Religious Freedom

Evening Talk & Reception - 6:30pm, Friday 18th October 2024

An evening exploring St Thomas More's legacy and witness with Dr Marcus Cole

FREE TO BOOK

Dean Marcus Cole is one of America’s most distinguished academics. His Law School’s pioneering work on religious liberty is outstanding and inspired by St.Thomas More, the Patron Saint of lawyers and Statesmen and women.

With an introduction by The Lord Alton of Liverpool.

St Thomas More is to England what John the Baptist was to Galilee: unafraid to speak the truth and to act accordingly.

The freedom of conscience – to believe, and then to live our lives as our belief requires us to – is, according to Dr Cole, one of the most important foundations of society.

Join us for a fascinating evening at Theodore House with Prof. Marcus Cole and Lord David Alton to discuss the legacy of St Thomas More for today.

Marcus Cole is the Joseph A. Matson Dean and Professor of Law at The University of Notre Dame Law School. He is a leading scholar of the empirical law and economics of commerce and finance as well as law relating to freedom of religion and conscience. He was a faculty member at Stanford Law School from 1997 until he went to Notre Dame in 2019.

He is the founder of the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Initiative and Clinic, a project of scholarship and advocacy into all the elements relating to freedom of conscience and religion.

Prof. Marcus Cole received the 2023 Becket Canterbury Medal for Religious Liberty for his public advocacy for his Courage and Defense of Religious Liberty.

Timings
Doors open: 6pm
Talk: 6:30pm
Drinks reception: 7:15pm
Free to book

Seats are limited: please register your attendance below

Accommodation

Discounted B&B accommodation is available at Theodore House for Friday night. Please indicate requirements when booking below. Invoicing and payment for accommodation will follow separately.

Single en-suite room: £56 per night

Twin en-suite room: £75 per night

Please register below:
Venue & Getting to us:

If you require advice or assistance, email us: [email protected]

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Categories
Clergy Conferences Events

TOB clergy days

CEPHAS

Clergy conference series

Approaching a
Theology of the Body

27 November 2024 - 29 January - 26 March 2025

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Anthropology, the Sacrament of Marriage and human formation, in pastoral ministry today

“The human body includes… the capacity of expressing love, that love in which the person becomes a gift and – by means of this gift – fulfills the meaning of his being and existence.”

Pope Saint John Paul II, General audience, 16th January 1980

Our series of three, day-conferences will examine the Church’s teaching around human love, inspired by Pope St John Paul II’s ‘theology of the body’. The conferences will reflect on John Paul II’s vision of the person as created for communion, on the character of conjugal communion, and on a formation for authentic love.

The conferences are open to seminarians, deacons, religious and priests. 

Each conference stands alone and there is no requirement to attend previous conferences, although they aim to offer a progressive itinerary through related themes.

Discounted Bed and Breakfast acccomodation at Theodore House is available for those wishing to stay overnight.

The first conference will explore the prophetic response of the saintly popes, Paul VI and John Paul II, to the related issues of contraception and our understanding of human sexuality, in Humanae vitae and in the “Theology of the Body” respectively. Conference topics:

  1. The Humanae vitae controversy
  2. Humanae vitae in dialogue with the Church’s Tradition
  3. The Gift of Creation: The Human Person before God
  4. The Dynamics of Gift and the Sexual Complementarity

The second conference will examine the nature of conjugal love and the three goods of marriage in order to offer a clear response to contemporary ambiguities around love and marriage, with the preparation for marriage of today’s couples in mind. Conference topics:

  1. What is Love? Conjugality vs Cohabitation
  2. Faithfulness: The Foundation of Matrimony
  3. The Gift of Children: Building a Family
  4. The Sacrament of Marriage: The Christian Newness

The third conference will focus on the formation of the person in chastity, and will consider the two vocations at the service of the Church’s mission as a point of reference. Conference topics:

  1. Sacramental Self-Giving: The Complementarity of Priesthood and Matrimony
  2. The Role of Virtue in Building a Chaste Character
  3. Facing today’s Challenges to living Chastity
  4. Responding to Gender: Discerning between Myth and Reality
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Each conference is structured around four sessions, two in the morning and two in the afternoon, with opportunities for discussion and questions.

A tea/coffee break is offered between the morning and afternoon sessions.

Midday prayer will be said in common before lunch.

Stefan and Ella Kaminski both have Licentiates from the John Paul II Institute for Studies in Marriage and Family Life, having dedicated their studies to the themes of human love and sexual complementarity. Stefan serves as Director of The Christian Heritage Centre, where he has been creating and delivering Catholic formation content for the last five years. Ella previously worked at the John Paul II Institute in Rome, before joining Stefan in Lancashire following their marriage. She currently teaches a dogmatic theology course on the Sacrament of Marriage at Oscott Seminary, and is engaged in the Veritas Amoris project. Together, they offer marriage preparation courses and ongoing formation for catechetists.

Theodore House offers a wonderful space for conferences. The tranquil and beautiful surroundings of the Stonyhurst estate offer a peaceful setting away from the rush of daily life in which to engage intellectually and spiritually. A clean, airy and modern facility in a Grade II listed building.

For more information about Theodore House, please click here.

  • Arrivals for a 10:00am start (welcome and introductions)
  • Departures from approx. 4:45pm
  • Clergy are welcome to celebrate Mass in the Theodore House Oratory before or after each conference
Cost

Single conference cost: £45 (includes two-course lunch)

Discounted cost for conference series: £115 (includes all three conferences with two-course lunch)

B&B accommodation, single en-suite room: £56 per night (booked separately)

If you require assistance with meeting costs, please contact us on [email protected]

“I feel like I have learnt so much and opened my heart and mind to the Church.”

Please register below (deposit payment required):
Venue & Getting to us:

If you are reliant on public transport, please consider traveling by train to Preston train station. From there, we aim to co-ordinate minicab shares or lifts amongst participants of any given event. If you require further advice or assistance, email us: [email protected]

Categories
Articles

Hopkins’ Stonyhurst poem to Our Lady

13th August 2024

This article was originally published at LifeSite News and is reproduced with kind permission of the Editor

Hopkins' Stonyhurst poem to Our Lady:
Mary's importance for our spiritual lives

Walker Larson

Gerard Manley Hopkins — convert, Jesuit priest, and one of the greatest Victorian poets — nurtured a deep love for the Blessed Virgin Mary, and that love found beautiful expression in his poem “The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe.” It was written in Stonyhurst in 1883 as part of a collection of poems in different languages that were to be hung near a statue of Our Lady in celebration of May Day.

The central conceit (a literary term meaning “extended metaphor”) of the poem is that Our Lady is to us in our spiritual lives what air is in our physical lives: critical, life-giving, all-encompassing, and gently filtering the light of God’s grace as it falls upon the soul like golden dew.

In this poem, Hopkins writes in iambic trimeter, which is a poetic meter that alternates unaccented and accented syllables, with three accents per line. Thus, the line “With mercy round and round” includes three accented syllables (“mer,” “round,” “round,”) that alternate with unaccented syllables. Hopkins frequently breaks the pattern in order to give it more life, better reflect everyday speech, and to avoid a monotonous tone.

Hopkins likes to jam-pack his lines with explosive and vibrant sounds, intense energy, and lyrical buoyancy, such as with the lines “goes home betwixt / The fleeciest, frailest-flixed / Snowflake; that’s fairly mixed.” These alliterative sounds spin out from the tongue like sparks above a campfire. They crackle with energy. Hopkins is a poet who loves the glowing richness and astonishing variety of reality, and his sometimes-surprising choice of words and sounds reflects that. He even developed his own poetic rhythm, used in much of his poetry, called “sprung rhythm,” as a more flexible pattern that allowed him to incorporate more sounds and beats into his lines.

Our Lady of the Girdle, in the church of Our Lady of the Angels, La Verna, Italy. By Andrea della Robbia, 1486.

In addition to these formal aspects, Hopkins makes use of imagery throughout the poem that reinforces its theme. He has interwoven symbolism of Our Lady, such as the frequent mention of the color blue, which is Mary’s color. “The glass-blue days”; “Blue be it: this blue heaven”; “This bath of blue and slake”; “How air is azured”; “Yet such sapphire-shot;” etc. The word “mother” also shows up frequently. Mary is ever-present in the language of these beautiful poetic lines, just as she is ever-present in our lives, playing “in grace her part / About man’s beating heart.”

One place that motherhood appears is in the opening of the poem. Hopkins begins by addressing something inanimate, the air itself (called an “apostrophe.”)

Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that’s fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing’s life

The poet focuses our attention on this ever-present yet invisible force that keeps us alive and enwraps us, “nestles” us at all times. He awakens us to the enigma of this remarkable reality that surrounds us — literally and figuratively — evoking the mystery of it with a word like “riddles,” and its universality by reminding us that even the “least thing’s life” depends upon this air. The smallest furry animal, with quickly vibrating, quivering chest, lives in and through the air, as do you and I.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889)

Having opened our eyes to the wonder of this substance that is our “more than meat and drink,” he then initiates the comparison with Our Lady, saying that the air reminds him

Of her who not only
Gave God’s infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our race—
Mary Immaculate.

How, precisely, is Our Lady like the air? Hopkins points out that her magnificent vocation is to “Let all God’s glory through, / God’s glory which would go / Through her and from her flow.” The implied comparison is clear: God is like the sun, which lights up all the world, and just as the sun’s rays comes to the earth and are diffused through the air, so is God’s love, mercy, and grace diffused to us through Mary. “I say that we are wound / With mercy round and round / As if with air.” And what is the channel of God’s mercy? The prayers of the Blessed Mother: “She, wild web, wondrous robe, / Mantles the guilty globe, / Since God has let dispense / Her prayer his providence.”

And just as we live by and through the invisible air, we live by and through the invisible grace mediated by Our Lady. Hopkins writes that we are “meant to share / her life as life does air.” And then he invokes the theological concept of Mary as Mediatrix of all graces:

If I have understood,
She holds high motherhood
Towards all our ghostly good
And plays in grace her part
About man’s beating heart,
Laying, like air’s fine flood,
The deathdance in his blood;
Yet no part but what will
Be Christ our Saviour still.

In other words, Our Lady, as some theologians have taught, constantly dispenses God’s graces to us, playing an intimate role in our spiritual life from moment to moment, her attentive love as close and constant to us as our own breathing.

As Bernadette Waterman War writes in “Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Blessed Virgin Mary,” “The poet reminds us of how we need grace as we need air, in order that we should not die. It is through Mary that God’s grace gives us life. He uses the figure of light for God’s grace, pointing out that without the air to filter it, sunlight would be too powerful for the human frame to bear.”

This last point — about the air’s tempering of the sun’s power to suit our strength — bears further reflection. Hopkins allows his imagination to run wild with what would happen without the air, how the sun’s full-bore intensity would blind the earth. The excess of light would turn our vision black, and we’d be steeped in dark:

Whereas did air not make
This bath of blue and slake
His fire, the sun would shake,
A blear and blinding ball
With blackness bound, and all
The thick stars round him roll
Flashing like flecks of coal,
Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt,
In grimy vasty vault.

Students under the statue of Our Lady at the top of the Stonyhurst avenue

The rich metaphorical imagery used in this passage also exemplifies Hopkins’ close and attentive study of “things,” how they look, feel, smell. All great poets are firstly great observers of the world, using their fine-tuned senses to penetrate into the nature of objects. Hopkins recreates the glowing of coals or the scattering of salt in our minds. It is Hopkins’s ability to render realistically the simple things of everyday life (coals, salt) and then tie them to the most sublime reaches of reality (God’s glory and grace) that forms a core part of his poetic genius. Through familiar images, Hopkins paints a picture of what unfiltered sunlight would be like (and by extension, what God’s glory would be to unredeemed man).

But Our Lady came “to mould / Those limbs like ours,” that is, to give God human form, a mild face to look upon that, in His hidden mortal life, would not blind us like the unfiltered blaze of the sun. God accommodated Himself to our condition, tempering the heat of His majesty through the Maid of Nazareth. “Her hand leaves his light / Sifted to suit our sight.”

We can follow Hopkins’ train of thought even further. It is through the Incarnation and Redemption, which were achieved through Mary’s cooperation, that we can hope to one day see God face to face, to stare into that brilliant, searing point of light like Dante at the end of the Divine Comedy, the lack of which makes one truly blind.

In light, dancing poetry, Hopkins has crafted a profound meditation on Mary and her role in our lives. He has carefully elaborated the various commonalities between Mary and the air, how both are ever with us, sustaining our life, and diffusing light all around us.

Categories
Articles

Contemplating Corpus Christi with Raphael

Before his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ grants salvation to souls by the Harrowing of Hell. Fresco, by Fra Angelico, c. 1430s

30th May 2024

This article was originally published at the Catholic Herald

Contemplating Corpus Christi with Raphael

Dr Joey Belleza
Raphael's Disputation of the Holy Sacrament in the Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican City. Photo by Ricardo André Frantz, CC-BY-4.0

The Solemnity of Corpus Christi – and moreover the 760th anniversary of its institution, celebrated today in many countries and in the UK this Sunday – is, as ever, an occasion to take up with joy that interior pilgrimage from human reason to divine faith, in the contemplation of the Eucharistic Lord.

The centrality of this tremendous and beautiful mystery to our Catholic Faith, as the Second Vatican Council was at pains to underscore, is no less true now than it was when Pope Urban IV instituted the solemnity in 1264.

Indeed, today’s world is in particular need of concrete and visible reminders of the sacred. The expression we give to our Eucharistic faith in our liturgies, in our processions, in our artistic endeavours is a witness to Christ himself.

The solemnity of Corpus Christi is an opportunity to express our inexhaustible desire to do everything we can to honour the Incarnate Word in, as Saint Thomas wrote, corda, voces, et opera: [in] our hearts, voices and deeds.

Set against this background, Raphael Sanzio’s Stanza della Signatura in the Vatican, with its two frescoes of The School of Athens and The Disputation on the Sacrament, offers a rich context for philosophical and theological reflection.

In the School, a host of ancient philosophers surround the central figures of Plato and Aristotle, who walk along the central path. Plato’s upward index finger contrasts with Aristotle’s outstretched and downward facing hand, the former gesturing to the truth of eternal Forms, the latter appealing to the reality of the sensible world.

Raphael places them centrally and side-by-side, neither overtaking the other, both sharing a joint if incomplete priority in the philosophic pantheon. The central vanishing point of the fresco – where their gazes meet – is not simply the midpoint between the two, but looks toward an ever-present “beyond” lying ahead.

This central confrontation between Platonic idealism and Aristotelian realism, however, leads not to an unresolved tension, but to an implicit yet powerful conclusion, for directly across the stanza, on the corresponding point in the Disputation – opposite the point between the faces of Plato and Aristotle – Raphael places the Blessed Sacrament.

Raphael's School of Athens in the Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican City. Photo by Ricardo André Frantz, CC-BY-4.0

The host containing the presence of the Incarnate Word is found within the dialectical exchange between the two great philosophers, such that Christ himself – specifically the Eucharistic Christ – is the vanishing point on which philosophical knowledge must converge.

On the one hand, the philosophical enterprise shown in the School and epitomised in the joint pilgrimage of Plato and Aristotle, has its own beauty and purpose. The other philosophers surrounding them, likewise striving toward the truth, are not mere ambassadors of error but important signposts on the way to the fulness of wisdom.

Even Thomas Aquinas, one of whose best-known contributions is a series of “proofs” for God’s existence, understood that philosophy indeed grasps something of the highest truth – the existence of a God above all being – through its own methods, without the explicit aid of grace. But, he admits, of this God we can know very little. Whether he saves us or acts in history or takes flesh is beyond the purview of mere reason.

For this reason, Raphael depicts the School indoors – some say in a building resembling the unfinished “new” Basilica of Saint Peter – as if to emphasise that philosophy has a ceiling, or that its highest aspiration can only be that of a church under construction. And the God of this church remains as impersonal and un-concrete as the space between Plato and Aristotle.

And yet, significantly, their gaze is also half-turned to the opposite wall where the Blessed Sacrament stands on an altar, surrounded not by pagan philosophers but by bishops and Doctors of the Church.

Above the monstrance, the risen Christ is seated in glory and is flanked by the great figures of Scripture. The hand gestures of the several Saints and Doctors mirror both the upward gesture of Plato (this time pointing to Christ in heaven) as well as the downward palm of Aristotle (here pointing to Christ in the sacramental species).

In a sense, the dialectic between idealism and realism is not abandoned in the theological vision of the Disputation; rather the operations of philosophy are taken up and elevated into the realm of faith and theology, such that what appears to be a confrontation in philosophy is brought to a synthesis in theology.

And this unity of the two disciplines – of natural reason and supernatural faith – is joined together in the little host which contains the Incarnate Word himself. The School and Disputation, taken together, convey how the Eucharistic liturgy is “the summit to which all the Church’s work is directed” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 10). It is a summit which has no ceiling but reaches upward toward the enthroned Christ in heaven.

The Eucharist is also the “font from which all the Church’s power flows” (Sacrosanctum Concilium 10). The outpouring of this power, celebrated in a truly Eucharistic way of life, generates a vibrant Christian culture, expressed in art, architecture, and music that can stir hearts to devotion and love of the Creator, and which can assist others in making the interior pilgrimage from reason alone to reason-with-faith.

As Raphael shows us, the treasury of sacred art is one concrete example of the ways in which people offer back to God the gifts of his own creation, just as the Eucharist itself is offered, as the Roman Canon says, “from the gifts which [God] has given us”. Raphael’s own work, imbued with a deep sacramental sensibility, is but one example of the splendour of sacred art rooted in devotion to the Eucharist.

This splendour is also seen in the many little processions happening in parishes and communities all over the world to mark the Solemnity of Corpus Christi.

People make carpets out of sand and flowers to mark Corpus Christi in the town of La Orotava on the Spanish Canary Island of Tenerife, 27 June 2019. (Photo credit DESIREE MARTIN/AFP via Getty Images.)

The colourful floral displays covering the streets in Spain, Italy and Portugal; the wealth of sacred music composed for this feast; the Eucharistic verses of Aquinas himself, monuments of medieval Latin poetry; and of course, the processions which mark this great Solemnity – all these are manifestations of that same interior pilgrimage toward an ever-increasing faith in the Lord who, as the Collect of the feast says, “left us under this Sacrament a memorial of the passion”.

Of course, one need not be a Renaissance master to express one’s faith in the Eucharistic Christ; one only need to heed Saint Thomas’s admonition in Lauda Sion, the sequence prescribed for the Mass to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi: quantum potes, tamtum aude – “dare to do as much as you can”.

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Clergy Events Retreats

St Teresa and St Therese

Diaconal retreat

St Teresa & St Therese:
A Comparison in Prayer

Friday 4th - Sunday 6th October [2024]

BOOK BY 31 JULY

A retreat for permanent deacons, to include spouses, examining the teachings of St Teresa and St Therese on the life of prayer

Preached by Fr Michael Miners, OCDS of the Diocese of Birmingham

As the Year of Prayer progresses, this retreat will be an opportunity to re-engage with two, towering figures of the interior life: St Teresa of Avila and St Therese of Lisieux. At a time when the faithful are continually and increasingly called to prayer for peace in the world and for the conversion of hearts, the retreat will aim to offer nourishment for both the deacon’s own life of prayer and for his ministry of preaching.

The retreat will make particular use of the “Interior Castle” to examine St Teresa of Avila’s understanding of prayer, comparing this with the influence of St John of the Cross in St Therese’s writings.

The option is also available to arrive the day before, on Thursday evening, and to extend the retreat with a further 24 hours of private recollection or time out.

BOOK NOW
  • The retreat is offered specifically for permanent deacons, married or unmarried
  • Deacons’ wives are welcome to attend and participate
  • Single and twin rooms are available on a first come, first served basis
  • The retreat will be preached, with opportunities for confession.
  • The retreat timetable will include daily Mass, a Holy Hour and Compline.
  • Option to arrive on Thursday for an extra 24 hours of private recollection

Father Michael Miners o.c.d.s was born in Blackburn in 1953. He read theology at St Johns College, Durham, becoming a Catholic there in 1974. He undertook postgraduate research in Durham and then at Keble College, Oxford, before joining Ushaw College Seminary. He was ordained as a priest of the Order of Discaled Carmelites in 1984. Fr Michael has worked in both parish ministry and in formation as a novice master and master of students. He edited the Spiritual Journal “Mount Carmel” for eight years, and has a long experience of preaching retreats and offering Spiritual Direction. After five years as Catholic Chaplain at Keele University (1993-1998) he became a priest of the Archdiocese of Birmingham. Fr Michael lectures in Ecumenism at Oscott College and was Chair of the Diocesan Ecumenism Commission.

Theodore House offers a wonderful venue for any retreat. The tranquil and beautiful surroundings of the Stonyhurst estate offer a peaceful setting and endless opportunities for walks.

All accommodation is en-suite, with comfortable facilities and a beautifully lanscaped garden.

For more information about Theodore House, please click here.

For those arriving on Thursday, check in is available from 3pm onwards.

Arrivals are welcome on the Friday from 3pm for a 6pm start.

Departures on Sunday are from 3pm.

Cost:

Retreat only

Single room: £230 per person*

Twin room: £330 per couple*

*includes full board from Friday dinner to Sunday lunch

Thursday + Retreat

Single room: £325 per person*

Twin room: £460 per couple*

*includes full board from Thursday dinner to Sunday lunch

Please register below (£50 deposit payment per person required):
Venue & Getting to us:

If you are reliant on public transport, please consider traveling by train to Preston train station. From there, we aim to co-ordinate minicab shares or lifts amongst participants of any given event. If you require further advice or assistance, email us: [email protected]