The Burning Babe, a Beloved (By Me) Christmas Tradition on This Blog

So I'm signing off for Christmas, and for 2025, with my now-traditional post of "The Burning Babe" by St. Robert Southwell.

(Mind you, I feel a little like a guy working alone in a basement who puts up Christmas decorations for himself, because I've never had the faintest indication that anyone else gives a hoot about this tradition of mine, now a decade old. Oh well.)

Here are my previous posts on the poem, including commentary on it:

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2015/12/more-seasonal-poetry.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-smoking-hot-babe-for-christmas.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2017/12/a-christmas-repeat.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-smoking-hot-babe-for-christmas-again.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2019/12/happy-christmas.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-smoking-hot-babe-for-christmas-again.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2021/12/burn-baby-burn.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2022/12/theres-baby-on-fire.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-burning-babe-with-sting-in-tale.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2024/12/a-hoary-christmas-tide-tradition.html

And here is the poem itself:

The Burning Babe by St. Robert Southwell

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,

Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed

As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.

“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,

For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,

So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”

With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,

And straight I calléd unto mind that it was Christmas Day.

So happy Christmas to everybody and thank you for reading, and especially for commenting-- comments are always hugely encouraging and welcome, much more than you might think. Otherwise I have no idea if anyone is reading or is interested.

(I will probably have very limited internet access over the holidays, so please forgive any tardiness in responding to emails, etc.)

A Smoking Hot Babe for Christmas, Again

Well, it's time for another of my little blog traditions, posting "The Burning Babe" by Robert Southwell, the Elizabethan Jesuit and martyr. 

 

I've loved this poem for many, many years. What I appreciate most in poetry is depth and power combined with polish and elegance. This poem, I feel, achieves that combination masterfully.

Prolonged metaphors (or conceits) are usually tiresome and laborious, but here the conceit seems natural, lively and in no way incongruous. I love fire imagery in poetry (the Burning of the Leaves by Laurence Binyon is one of my favourite poems), and it works especially well in this seasonal poem. I'm not sure whether the "cosy" aesthetic of Christmas was established in Southwell's time, but in our time, the poem is a pleasant departure from this. (Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas cosiness as much as anybody, and probably more than most. But surely the meaning of Christmas, or of any season that touches upon sacred mysteries, cannot be confined to one aesthetic, and can even be stifled by the monopoly of one aesthetic.)

As I've said in previous years, I think the sixth line ("as though his floods...") is very clumsy. In days before the cult of the author had become exaggerated beyond all measure, anthologists had no hesitation in "improving" the works of authors, even revered and deceased authors. I feel sorely tempted to hack at that awful sixth line. But I'll forebear.

The second last line contains a deft piece of stuffing-- Christmas stuffing, I suppose. "With this he vanished from sight and swiftly sunk away". Were they two separate actions? Surely the one is the same as the other. But the ear is not offended, and so the mind is happy.

The line "so will I melt into a bath to bathe them in my blood" is very satisfying to me. The sudden change from fire imagery to blood imagery is startling, and yet similarly dramatic, even lurid. This is a very elemental poem.

For the last two years or so, as I've mentioned before, I've been memorizing lots of poetry. I have about ninety poems memorized now. "The Burning Babe" was a fairly early addition to that list, so I've been reciting it mentally for a long time now. (I don't remember poems I've put to memory unless I regularly "refresh" them.) Reciting a poem over and over is a real "stress test" of its power as a poem, and this one stands up admirably.

Nollaig shona daoibh go léir!

The Burning Babe by Robert Southwell

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow, 

Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, 

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, 

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns, 

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals, 

The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good, 

So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

A Christmas Repeat

It's become a Christmas tradition for me to blog about "The Burning Babe" by St. Robert Southwell S.J.

I'm going to reproduce my post from last year, and then add some extra thoughts.

So last year I said this:

I do so much rhapsodising about tradition on this blog, how can I fail to observe the blog's own traditions? One of which is posting 'The Burning Babe' by St. Robert Southwell at Christmas. (OK, maybe I've only done it once before, but twice makes it a tradition.)

St. Robert Southwell was a Jesuit priest in the reign of Queen Elizabeth who came to England (having been trained on the continent) fully expecting to be martyred-- as indeed he was. He was also a poet, and wrote this classic poem.

I love sentimentality, and I love Christmas sentimentality. But there's something even better than sentimentality, and that's awe. Fire imagery has always appealed to me, and this poem is full of it, as the title indicates.

It's also (in my view) a rare non-tedious example of a conceit. A conceit, as the reader may well know already, is an extended metaphor. Conceits are the reason I find John Donne and the Metaphysical poets nigh-on unreadable. However, the conceit works here, perhaps because the poem is a short one.

The theological density of the poem is also very impressive. I wonder if anyone has ever compiled an anthology of poetry by saints?

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I calléd unto mind that it was Christmas day.

Well, welcome back to 2017. I'll just add a few comments about fire imagery. I really do love it! Right now, I'm listening to "Burning Love" by Elvis Presley, whose lyrics are full of such imagery.

The stories that move me most in the Bible often involve images of fire or intense light; the burning bush, Pentecost, or the Transfiguration.

I've often written about the poem "The Burning of the Leaves" by Laurence Binyon on this blog. My favourite line of that poem, and quite possibly my favourite line of poetry of all time, is the line: "The fingers of fire are making corruption clean." That line sets my imagination alight!

Another reason I love this poem is because nothing jars in it. This may be a "negative" reason to love a poem, but it's good enough for me. None of the similes are incongruous or ridiculous, and the metre is smooth throughout. I like "smooth" poetry-- Tennyson, Yeats, Swinburne, Larkin and Christina Rossetti are outstanding proponents of smooth, polished verses. It's rare to find such smoothness in an Elizabethan-- whether that's due to changes in pronunciation over the centuries, or whether it was as true than as it is now, I don't know.

Edit, later in the day: I've been memorizing this poem, or rather re-memorizing, in order to recite it. Memorizing a poem may be the best way to savour it! I'm struck even more by how well-constructed it is.

It has one line that, in my view, is very awkwardly phrased:

As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.

This doesn't trip off the tongue-- rather, it trips the tongue up, so to speak. And that's a fault in poetry, in my view.

But the rest of the poem does trip off the tongue. The lines all fit neatly in the verse structure-- enjambment is sometimes a worthwhile technique, but I think it should be used rarely. There's something very satisfying in parallelism such as this:

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns; 
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals, 
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,

"The Burning Babe" wouldn't be in the front rank of my favourite poems-- it couldn't rival "Ulysses" or "Locksley Hall" by Tennyson, or "To Helen" by Edgar Allen Poe, or "The Burning of the Leaves" by Laurence Binyon. But it's pretty good!

A Hoary Christmas-Tide Tradition

Traditions! I never shut up about them, do I?

Indeed, I briefly had a blog called Traditions Traditions Traditions!, which lasted only four posts, but which I sometimes think of reviving.

Well, this blog has its own tradition of posting "The Burning Babe" by Robert Southwell at Christmas. I've just checked and I've done this every year since 2015!

I did a quick search for critical literature on the poem, and discovered that it's inspired a whole book, written by Anne Sweeney and published in 2006. It's titled Robert Southwell: Snow in Arcadia: Redrawing the English Landscape 1586-1595.

Here's how it begins:

‘The Burning Babe’ is probably the only poem most readers will know of Robert Southwell’s. I recall reading it as a child; it seemed pleasantly atmospheric to a childish imagination, the holy Babe appearing like a bright bauble against the dark of a snowy English Christmas evening. It is homely, yet cryptic in the Elizabethan style, and blessedly short, a silly sentimental thing that manages, apparently on these merits, to make its way into most anthologies of the English poetic canon. It came as something of a shock to me as an undergraduate to learn that Ben Jonson, with his reputation as a hard man of letters, had singled out this bagatelle for admiration – indeed, he wished he himself had written it; there can be no greater possible encomium from a great ego. What did he admire in it? There have been some fine commentaries on Robert Southwell’s life and work, but none of them has explained to my satisfaction why a man like Jonson would have admired this poem so. This book is an attempt to answer that question.

A "bagatelle", really? Presumably Sweeney is provocative in her choice of words, and she doubtless revised her estimation of "The Burning Babe" if she wrote an entire book on the subject. (I guess I'll find out, since I've put the book next on my reading list.)

Anyway, decide for yourself. Here it is:

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

And here is a fine spoken rendition of the poem, by a chap who modestly refrains from giving his name.

Laughing at God

Yesterday evening I watched an episode of The Journey Home, which is a show on the Catholic channel EWTN. I really like the show (apart from the presenter's irritating chuckle.) The drama of religious conversion is always compelling, as it unites the most cosmic and far-reaching of themes with the most personal details. (Here is my own story, for anyone who is interested. It has afforded some amusement to internet atheists.)

But it's not just the subject matter of The Journey Home that I like. It's the whole format. Just one person talking for almost an hour, with no props or graphics or cutaways. There is nothing more electrifying than the spectacle of someone telling a story that matters to them, one of which they have first-hand experience, with minimal interruptions. The studio is also handsome, with a picture of St. Peter's in the background, and comfortable-looking furnishings all around. (I don't understand why so many television studios seem to aspire towards garishness, or to project an atmosphere of discomfort and austerity.)

I do wish there were more converts from atheism or agnosticism on the show, since these are the ones I find most interesting and relevant. However, they are usually converts from various brands of Protestantism, and yesterday evening they had a former Calvinist.

He had a lot of interesting things to say, but the one that struck me the most, possibly, was his comment that the first thing that impressed him about the Christians in his school (he came from a nominal Christian background, so I guess he was a convert from agnosticism in a way) was their refusal to laugh at his jokes about Christianity. This made him realize how serious they took it.

Sometimes I think Christians are too quick to treat the Faith as a joke. I do understand the reasons. We want to show non-believers that we are not fanatics, that we are not weird, that we are secure in our beliefs, that being a Christian doesn't turn you into a wet blanket. We're also embarrassed about seeming holier-than-thou.

But do we let it go too far? I worry that I do,for one. It seems to me that most of the exchanges I have, on the subject of my faith, are rather tongue-in-cheek. How seriously will you seem to take something if you are always laughing about it? Is the ultimate destiny of our immortal souls really something to kid about, all the time? And the fact that it is often someone else striking the jokey note doesn't really matter.

I try to remind myself that anyone professing the Christian faith really is an ambassador for Christ, and that this constrains us in ways we don't always like.

I was mulling over a dilemma along this line today. I am going to a dinner party on Saturday, and those present know that I usually recite a poem as a party piece. (Well, I can't sing, juggle or do magic tricks...)

Trying to fit the poem to the company, and knowing that it would be quite a jovial gathering, I was thinking of reciting Flanders and Swann's "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear". It's a wonderful display of wit and linguistic virtuosity.

However, it's also mildly bawdy-- the story of an old roué seeking to seduce a rather innocent young lady, and (as we learn only in the final line) succeeding.

I turned it about in my mind for a while. I dithered. But, in the end, I found myself thinking: if an Archbishop was reported to have recited such a lyric to a dinner party, would I be upset? Yes, I would. I would feel he should hold himself to a higher standard. And what if the other guests, knowing my beliefs, felt the same about me? What if they thought it mean I took my faith less seriously than they imagined, and made them, in turn, take it less seriously? It was at least a possibility.

In the end, I decided-- since it is so close to Christmas-- I would instead recite "The Burning Babe", the celebrated poem by the Jesuit priest and martyr, Robert Southwell. Ben Johnson said he would willingly have burnt many of his own works if he could have written this poem, and I see his point. Unlike the Flanders and Swann piece, it won't get any laughs. But sometimes laughs come at too high a price.

The Burning Babe, Robert Southwell (1595)

As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear
Who, scorchéd with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed;
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.

Alas, quoth he, but newly born in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel justice layeth on, and mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiléd souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.
With this he vanished out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I calléd unto mind that it was Christmas day.

The Burning Babe, with a Sting in the Tale

Anyone who reads this blog (and I'm grateful to them all) knows that I'm a sucker for traditions, and that the Christmas tradition on Irish Papist is to post St. Robert Southwell's great Christmas poem "The Burning Babe".

But tradition and innovation don't have to be mortal enemies!

This year, rather than simply posting the text, I am inviting my good friend Sting to give his rendition. Afterwards we are having mince pies and a sing-along. Dirk Benedict might show up as well. You can never tell with Dirk.

You can listen to it here.

A Smoking Hot Babe for Christmas

I do so much rhapsodising about tradition on this blog, how can I fail to observe the blog's own traditions? One of which is posting 'The Burning Babe' by St. Robert Southwell at Christmas. (OK, maybe I've only done it once before, but twice makes it a tradition.)

St. Robert Southwell was a Jesuit priest in the reign of Queen Elizabeth who came to England (having been trained on the continent) fully expecting to be martyred-- as indeed he was. He was also a poet, and wrote this classic poem.

I love sentimentality, and I love Christmas sentimentality. But there's something even better than sentimentality, and that's awe. Fire imagery has always appealed to me, and this poem is full of it, as the title indicates.

It's also (in my view) a rare non-tedious example of a conceit. A conceit, as the reader may well know already, is an extended metaphor. Conceits are the reason I find John Donne and the Metaphysical poets nigh-on unreadable. However, it works here, perhaps because the poem is a short one.

The theological density of the poem is also very impressive. I wonder if anyone has ever compiled an anthology of poetry by saints?

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, 
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, 
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns, 
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals, 
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I calléd unto mind that it was Christmas day.

A Smoking Hot Babe for Christmas (Again)

A repeat of a blog post from two years ago. I don't really have anything to add, except that I must admit that the sixth line of this poem makes me wince, on account of its clumsiness. The rest of it is brilliant, though.

I do so much rhapsodising about tradition on this blog, how can I fail to observe the blog's own traditions? One of which is posting 'The Burning Babe' by St. Robert Southwell at Christmas. (OK, maybe I've only done it once before, but twice makes it a tradition.)

St. Robert Southwell was a Jesuit priest in the reign of Queen Elizabeth who came to England (having been trained on the continent) fully expecting to be martyred-- as indeed he was. He was also a poet, and wrote this classic poem.

I love sentimentality, and I love Christmas sentimentality. But there's something even better than sentimentality, and that's awe. Fire imagery has always appealed to me, and this poem is full of it, as the title indicates.

It's also (in my view) a rare non-tedious example of a conceit. A conceit, as the reader may well know already, is an extended metaphor. Conceits are the reason I find John Donne and the Metaphysical poets nigh-on unreadable. However, it works here, perhaps because the poem is a short one.

The theological density of the poem is also very impressive. I wonder if anyone has ever compiled an anthology of poetry by saints?

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, 
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, 
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns, 
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals, 
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I calléd unto mind that it was Christmas day.

More Seasonal Poetry

 

But not by me. I imagine that many of my readers will already know Robert Southwell's 'Burning Babe' poem, but for those who haven't (and even for those who have), here it is. Robert Southwell was an English Jesuit who died a martyr in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

This is probably my favourite Christmas poem. I don't have anything at all against all the cosy imagery that has gathered around Christmas in the last couple of centuries, but I do like the fact that this poem has a completely different atmosphere. I love the fiery imagery, too. I always love the evocation of fire in Christian symbolism and spirituality, because it's such a corrective to the insipidness which our culture tends to associate with the very word 'spiritual' or 'religious'.
 

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,

Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed

As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.

“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,

For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,

So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”

With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,

And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

Burn, Baby, Burn!

This blog is all about tradition, and it's time for another of this blog's own beloved traditions-- beloved by me, if nobody else!

I give you that timeless Chrismas classic, St. Robert Southwell's Burning Babe! 

Ben Johnson is reputed to have said that he would have gladly destroyed many of his own poems if only he could have written this one. I think it's a little marvel.

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

Happy Christmas

I don't expect I'll be posting again until the New Year, so let me wish a very happy Christmas to everyone who reads this blog.

I'm hugely thankful to everybody who reads, comments, contacts me privately, prays for me, and so on.

People keep saying to me this year: "It's going to be very hard without your father at Christmas". It certainly adds a tinge of melancholy to all the Christmas rituals. But it's not as bitter as I feared. In fact, it gives me some comfort to include him. We said a prayer for him as we decorated the tree this year, so that he remained a part of it.

The prose-poem "Death is Nothing At All" by Henry Scott Holland (actually a passage from a sermon), which is often read at funerals, includes these lines which always bring a tear to my eye, and which I enthusiastically affirm with my own heart: Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

My father loved Christmas traditions, and this blog has its own; my favourite Christmas poem, "The Burning Babe" by the Jesuit poet and martyr Robert Southwell, who was executed in 1595.
 
As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I calléd unto mind that it was Christmas day.

I wrote at length about the poem here. (I must admit the metrically awkward sixth line still makes me wince.)

There is an excellent reading of the poem in this YouTube video.

 Nollaigh shona daoibh go léir!

There's a Baby on Fire!

Well, I'm all about tradition, and once again it's time for this blog's Christmas tradition: "The Burning Babe" by St. Robert Southwell SJ, the Elizabethan martyr.

Here it is:

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
Alas, quoth he, but newly born in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel justice layeth on, and mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.
With this he vanished out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

I've said a lot about this poem in previous years. Check out here and here for some commentary on it.

Reading it just now, the line "So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood" appeals to me particularly. It's so vivid, so visual, almost lurid. The juxtaposition of fire and blood is particularly powerful. It's a suitably potent image of what Christmas is all about, the drama of the Incarnation and indeed the Crucixion.

I'm increasingly preoccupied with poetry, and my view of its importance grows and grows. Conservatives find fault with so many aspects of modern society, but they rarely comment on its indifference to poetry. Indeed, conservatives are complicit in this. Shamefully so, since they should know better. I'm somewhat worn out making this argument to my fellow conservatives (mostly on social media). They agree with me, but don't show any inclination to take poetry as seriously as they take music, cinema, fiction, liturgy, architecture, and all the other activities they actually value. They'll applaud my general points about poetry, but whenever I try to get a discussion going about a particular poem or poet....the big silence falls.

If I sound bitter, it's because I am. And this isn't just the bitterness of a frustrated poet. Yes, I do write poetry myself, and yes, I am frustrated at my inability to get it published and read. But my frustration goes far beyond the personal.

I now have this quotation from Arthur Griffith, one of the founders of the Irish state, as my "pinned post" on Facebook: " In every properly governed and sensible community the people would spend half their time in making, reading and comprehending poetry". How different, how very different, from the home life of our own dear Irish nation...

But enough of that. I'm writing this beside a Christmas tree, enjoying its lights, and also enjoying the Christmas chocolates that are floating around. Whenever I deplore or lament this or that aspect of modern society, I feel I should contrast it with the ever-increasing Chestertonian wonder I feel in life itself. Just to sit in a room, to breathe the air, to see light and colour, to explore memory and imagination, is a blessed state. Even more so if you are sitting beside a Christmas tree and eating chocolate.

My Fifty Favourite Poems of All Time

I spent a sleepless hour or two after midnight, this weekend, coming up with this list. 

Why fifty? Well, it seems a manageable sort of number.

Despite the title of the post, I can't really claim this is my definitive fifty favourite poems. In another mood, at another time, it might have looked somewhat different. But these are all poems which have a huge personal significance to me, lines from which regularly come unbidden into my memory, and (most importantly) which move me immensely. Most of them are poems that I've loved for decades now. I can't even imagine my life without some of them.

I tried to put them in vague order of preference, but for the most part, this is very fuzzy. It's really the top ten or so where the order matters the most. I can pretty confidently assert that "Ulysses" by Tennyson is my single favourite poem of all time, and that "To Helen" by Edgar Allen Poe comes second. I'm not particularly confident of the placing after that-- is "The Burning of the Leaves" really more important to me than "Locksley Hall?"-- but I'm fairly sure that there's nothing in the top twenty that doesn't deserve to be there.

Beyond that, the placing of a poem is less important than its presence on the list.

Arthur Quiller-Couch, the first editor of The Oxford Book of English Verse, famously wrote that "the best is the best, though a hundred judges have declared it so". Well, this list makes no claim about what's best (these are my personal favourites, nothing more) but I share his general sentiment. Pretty much all of the poems here are standards of poetry anthologies, although many of the Irish choices would only be encountered in Irish poetry anthologies. Popular taste, over time, is a sure sign of greatness in poetry-- although my guess is that this requires a poetry-reading public, which today (for the first time ever?) doesn't exist. Hopefully this is just a hiatus.

Having said that, I've omitted a few of the most popular poems of all time. (You can compare my selection with the BBC's "favourite poems" poll of 1995.) There's no "Daffodils", no "Road Not Taken", no "Elegy in a Country Churchyard". It's not because I don't love those poems. I do, especially the first. I just couldn't put them above other poems on my list. Similarly, there's no John Betjeman on my list, even though I'm a huge admirer of Betjeman. There's just no stand-out poems among his works that appeal to me so much they would get in the top fifty.

On looking at this list, somebody said to me: "You like Yeats, don't you?". Yes, I like Yeats. In fact, I could easily have filled half of the places on this list with Yeats poems.

I think "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album" by Philip Larkin might be the template for half the poems I've written. But don't hold that against it!

"Fanfare for the Makers" by Louis MacNeice is a poem (or excerpt from a poem) that had a massive influence on my as a teen, and indeed ever afterwards. But I don't like the last line. Life can't be confirmed by suicide. Suicide only confirms despair.

Anyway, I hope the list affords you some diversion, and perhaps introduces you to some new favourites of your own.

Ulysses by Tennyson

To Helen by Edgar Allen Poe

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer by John Keats

“Our revels now are ended” by William Shakespeare

The Burning of the Leaves by Laurence Binyon (only the first part)

Locksley Hall by Tennyson

Snow by Louis MacNeice

Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album by Philip Larkin

Easter 1916 by W.B.Yeats

Morte d’Arthur by Tennyson

“Fanfare for the Makers”, an excerpt from Canto VII of Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice

The Fisherman by W.B. Yeats

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" by William Shakespeare

Advent by Patrick Kavanagh

Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats

Death of an Irishwoman by Michael Hartnett

The Fool by Patrick Pearse

Psalm 23 of the King James Bible

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth

She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

The Kraken by Lord Alfred Tennyson

MCMXIV by Philip Larkin

A Prayer for my Daughter by W.B. Yeats

And Then No More by James Clarence Mangan

A Birthday by Christina Rossetti

Aedh Sings of the Rose in His Heart by W.B. Yeats

If-- by Rudyard Kipling

Loveliest of Trees by A.E. Housman

Sad Steps by Philip Larkin

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

The Wayfarer by Patrick Pearse

Church Going by Philip Larkin

“Sirs, I am but a nameless man...” from The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

Ozymandias by Percy Shelley

When I Was One and Twenty by A.E. Housman

The Song of Wandering Aengus by W.B. Yeats

The Toys by Coventry Patmore

Piano by D.H. Lawrence

Plurality by Louis MaNeice

To a Friend by Matthew Arnold

Dying Speech of the Old Philosopher by Walter Savage Landor

To Edmund Clerihew Bentley by G.K. Chesterton

The Oxen by Thomas Hardy

The Burning Babe by Robert Southwell

The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland by W.B. Yeats

To Althea from Prison by Richard Lovelace

Mine Own John Poinz by Sir Thomas Wyatt

Requiem by Robert Louis Stevenson

Unto Everything There is a Season from the Book of Eccleasiastes

A Coffee Table Book on Traditions

I have lots of ideas for books that I know I'm never going to write.

One is a coffee table book on traditions, which would probably just be called Traditions, or maybe Encyclopedia of Traditions.

It would be pretty much a book version of my short-lived blog Traditions Traditions Traditions!

It would be a lavishly-illustrated volume with sections on:

• National Traditions
• Local Traditions
• University Traditions (both within universities in general, and in particular third-level institutions)
• Professional Traditions (like the "stork pin" a 9/11 dispatcher gets when he or she helps with the delivery of a child over the phone)
• Sports traditions
• Religious traditions
• Cinema traditions
• Internet traditions

And so on.

It would probably kick off with some kind of essay about tradition, psychological theories and so forth. But nothing too intense.

I'm surprised that no such book as this seems to exist already. Books on tradition are usually about either the concept of tradition or particular sorts of tradition.

When tradition is discussed, what's surprising (to me) is that nobody seems to want to discuss the subject on its simplest level. There are brilliant essays like "Tradition and the Individual Talent" by T.S. Eliot, that analyse the concept in a profound way. But what about the simple meaning of tradition-- the one that we all tend to mean when we use the word "tradition"?

Like putting up Christmas trees, barber's shops having white and red poles outside, people hanging fuzzy dice in their cars, actors calling Macbeth "the Scottish play", fortune cookies, Valentine's cards, soccer crowds performing Mexican waves, bingo announcers saying "two fat ladies", cinemas having red seats, the audience standing up for the Hallelujah chorus of The Messiah...that kind of thing.

I suppose, in my view, the simplest definition of tradition is: something we do because it's been done before, for the sake of a tradition. Something we do more or less unthinkingly because it's a tradition (like shaking hands or sitting on chairs) isn't what I mean.

It's fascinating to me. Not just fascinating, but delightful.

I always want to know about peoples' family and personal traditions. I've worked in University College Dublin for almost twenty-five years and I regularly feel ashamed that I've never seriously tried to create a new tradition there. (Sometimes I've thought of randomly opening and closing an umbrella by the lake every day. Yeah, that's stupid.)

This blog has its own traditions, of course. Chiefly: changing its background colours with the liturgical season, posting "The Burning Babe" by Robert Southwell every Christmas, and including random pictures of Dirk Benedict. (Maybe I should go back to using pictures all the time, for the sake of that tradition...) I can't think of any others.

When I was in my early teens, I had an ultra-specific tradition: I would buy a packet of barbecue beef flavoured Hula Hoops on my walk home from school, put the first one in my mouth, and keep it that way all the way from the shop to a traffic light a block away.

I've always had the idea that you can measure the vibrancy of any institution by the number and strength of its traditions. 

A friend once bought me the book Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake as a birthday present because she knew of my love for traditions. But I didn't like the treatment of tradition in that book at all; it's shown to be oppressive and stultifying. I'm no longer friends with that person as she became increasingly woke and angry. Perhaps the book choice was an early indication?

If you have any interesting personal, family, work, or other traditions, please tell me!

Happy Feast Day of St. Robert Southwell!

Another opportunity to draw your attention to "The Burning Babe", one of my favourite poems.

May we emulate the courage and witness of this great Jesuit saint!

The Whole Beauty Business

Since I will readily admit to being a contrarian (which I am), people sometimes accuse me of contrarianism when I'm entirely innocent of the charge. Or perhaps I should say: sometimes I'm accused of contrarianism when I'm entirely unconscious of any contrarianism on my part. If it's there at all, it's at a subconscious or pre-conscious level.

For instance, I dislike silence, and I become rather impatient at all the "puffing" of silence so prevalent in our society. I'm perfectly willing to admit that I'm in the wrong here, and that everybody else is in the right. I'm sure silence is a good thing. I'm sure the modern world, more than ever, needs silence.

But I just don't like it. To say "plenty of silence in a graveyard" is a glib reduction ab absurdum, and yet this represents my instinctive response.

Give me life! My favourite noise in the whole world is the hum of voices on the air. I would choose that over silence any old day (to use an expression I love).

Perhaps this comes from growing up in a cramped apartment which was always full of people. Of course, I could just as well have reacted against that environment, so I'm not sure if that really does explain it.

Another explanation I might give is that I'm intensely contemplative by nature. I might be flattering myself, of course, but I'm inclined to think this is true. I don't really understand what people mean when they talk about needing silence or "alone time" to "think". They nearly always mean "think" in a specific sense; reflect, contemplate, meditate, etc. This seems to be the "setting" I'm on permanently, though. At least, deliberate contemplation never seems to help me "think" in this way. I've often referred to my purple notebook of memories and thoughts, which are of enduring significance to me. The "inspirations" in this purple notebook always come out of the blue-- indeed, I usually only "pick up on them" in retrospect. For instance, I realize that a particular memory or image keeps coming into my mind, and that it carries a strong emotional charge with it.

So much for silence. Another thing I don't really "get" is all the beauty that is associated with the Catholic tradition. It doesn't really mean anything to me.

This does nothing for me.

Whenever I tell people I don't like cathedrals, they seem to think I am being a contrarian. But I'm really not. Cathedrals leave me cold, for the most part. In fact, they seem so overwrought and fussy and heavy that even looking at them makes me feel tired. (When it comes to architecture, my ideal of beauty is a simple garden shed.)

There are some exceptions to this. I have fond memories of Westminster Cathedral in London, the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Richmond, Virginia, and the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin. But in every case, this is due to happy memories associated with them.

The same is true of the liturgy. Beautiful liturgies don't really move me very much. I like the liturgy to be simple and dignified. I would always rather have no choir than the best choir in the world.

The most moving Mass I ever attended was during my pre-marriage course, and took place in a hotel conference room at seven a.m. I loved the simplicity and austerity of the thing. My wife-to-be sang at it, so there was music, but the most simple music there could have been.

My favourite churches are the sort of simple, box-like, brick structures one is likely to come across in Dublin suburbs.

This does it for me!

Saying that beauty leaves me cold in matters of worship is actually understating the case. For me-- and I'm only talking about my own response here-- beauty can actually get in the way of worship. I realize that, for many other people, beauty leads them to God. Perhaps their disposition is healthier than mine.

All I can say is that part of the pleasure I take in a humble little suburban church is that it is humble, that nobody would ever linger in it for purely aesthetic reasons.

I have considerable sympathy with the following passage from C.S. Lewis, which appears in an essay entitled "Christianity and Culture". Lewis has just been discussing some Christian literary critics who seemed to consider bad literary taste as a spiritual fault:

…I felt that some readers might easily get the notion that ‘sensitivity’ or good taste were among the notes of the true Church, or that coarse, unimaginative people were less likely to be saved than refined and poetic people. In the heat of the moment I rushed to the opposite extreme. I felt, with some spiritual pride, that I had been saved in the nick of time from being ‘sensitive’. The ‘sentimentality and cheapness’ of much Christian hymnody had been a strong point in my own resistance to conversion. Now I felt almost thankful for the bad hymns. It was good that we should have to lay down our precious refinement at the very doorstep of the church; good that we should be cured at the outset of our inveterate confusion between psyche and pneuma, nature and supernature.

"He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him." (Isaiah 53:2).

I suppose it could be the case that I simply have very poor architectural, artistic, musical, and liturgical taste. After all, when it comes to poetry, I find that a poem such as Robert Southwell's "Burning Babe", which I consider to be an excellent poem in its own right, kindles my feelings of devotion and my awe towards the sacred.

And yet, I'm just as capable of enjoying "humble" hymns. The Taizé hymn "Jesus Remember Me", which is simply the words: "Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom" repeated over and over again,  is utterly haunting in my opinion. Or there is the folksy hymn "Walk in the Light of God", which was sung in my parish this Easter: 

Let's all join together in Communion sweet,
Walk, walk, in the light.
And love one another 'til the Saviour we meet,
Walk, walk, in the light.

Walk in the light, walk in the light,
Walk in the light, walk in the light of the Lord. 

Not great poetry by any means. But I find its simplicity and even clumsiness very endearing.

In this blog post, I've been talking about Beauty with a capital "b", the sort of beauty appreciated by connoisseurs (or self-proclaimed connoisseurs). But in a more fundamental sense, I suppose we all inevitably seek out beauty in one form or other. When I talk about my love of garden sheds or Taizé hymns or simple liturgy, that too is an aesthetic response. However, it's a very subjective response, whereas the beauty of a cathedral or Mozart's Requiem is obviously more objective.

There is a sense in which beauty is extremely important to my faith-- that is, on the plane of ideas, of doctrine, of Christianity's "atmosphere". For instance, the first sentence of the gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God". Those words fill me with a sort of ecstasy.

Another example is this famous passage from Chesterton's The Everlasting Man, which I'll use to finish the post. (This might be my favourite passage of prose, bar none.) However, I would argue that the beauty of this passage is not so much in Chesterton's lyricism itself, as it is in the fact that he is making explicit the inchoate poetry of every Christmas crib ("the pathos of small objects and the blind pieties of the poor"):

The truth is that there is a quite peculiar and individual character about the hold of this story on human nature; it is not in its psychological substance at all like a mere legend or the life of a great man.... It does not exactly in the ordinary sense turn our minds to greatness; to those extensions and exaggerations of humanity which are turned into gods and heroes, even by the healthiest sort of hero worship. It does not exactly work outwards, adventurously to the wonders to be found at the ends of the earth. It is rather something that surprises us from behind, from the hidden and personal part of our being; like that which can sometimes take us off our guard in the pathos of small objects or the blind pieties of the poor. It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from within. It is if he found something at the back of his own heart that betrayed him into good. It is not made of what the world would call strong materials; or rather it is made of materials whose strength is in that winged levity with which they brush and pass. It is all that is in us but a brief tenderness that there made eternal; all that means no more than a momentary softening that is in some strange fashion become strengthening and a repose; it is the broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended unbroken; as the strange kings fade into a far country and the mountains resound no more with the feet of the shepherds; and only the night and the cavern lie in fold upon fold over some-thing more human than humanity.

Prayers for All Saints Day

I'm just back from All Saints Day Vigil Mass. It's my favourite Mass of the liturgical year-- I prefer it even to the Easter Vigil. I'm sick at the moment, but despite that I had to drag myself to the Mass-- and there is no vigil in my local parish this year, so it was a neighbouring parish.

The reading from the Apocalypse is one of my favourite readings of the liturgical year, too:
  
After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice: "Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb."

All the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They prostrated themselves before the throne,  worshipped God, and exclaimed:  "Amen. Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honor, power, and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen."

The Book of Apocalypse is a book that moves me, fascinates me, and inspires me more and more. The funny thing is  that, although it may well be the book of the New Testament that unbelievers find the craziest, it's somehow the most convincing to me. It drags all the themes of Scripture together in a mighty, resounding crescendo.

I am also more and more fascinated by the saints. Perhaps more than anything else, the saints convince me of the truth of Catholicism.

Our Lord spoke of 'the narrow gate'. Narrowness might seem uninspiring, but increasingly I find the 'narrowness' of sanctity enormously inspiring.

Humans have a spectacular knack for going wrong. When I look back on my life and thoughts, I can say with no false humility that I was wrong about everything. Even when I was right, I was wrong. 

This human capacity for going wrong strikes me especially when it comes to political, social, literary and cultural debates-- debates which interest me less and less. Critics of Catholicism find its dogmas restricting, but Catholics themselves know how much error and waywardness and confusion we manage to create even within those confines. Outside the Faith, it seems to me, there is utter anarchy. "Conservatism", "liberalism", "freedom", "humanity", "progress", "love", "nature"-- such words are essentially meaningless in the babble of fallen humanity. Two interpreters of some human philosopher or writer, both of whom think themselves utter rigourists, can disagree completely.

With the saints, it is different. The deeper you read into their lives, the more you recognise the same journey of holiness, the same supernatural instincts at work. It is uncanny.

G.K. Chesterton

Once again, G.K. Chesterton said it best:

If you really want to know what we mean when we say that Christianity has a special power of virtue, I will tell you. The Church is the only thing on earth that can perpetuate a type of virtue and make it something more than a fashion. The thing is so plain and historical that I hardly think you will ever deny it. You cannot deny that it is perfectly possible that tomorrow morning, in Ireland or in Italy, there might appear a man not only as good but good in exactly the same way as St. Francis of Assisi. Very well, now take the other types of human virtue; many of them splendid. The English gentleman of Elizabeth was chivalrous and idealistic. But can you stand still here in this meadow and be an English gentleman of Elizabeth? The austere republican of the eighteenth century, with his stern patriotism and his simple life, was a fine fellow. But have you ever seen him? Have you ever seen an austere republican? Only a hundred years have passed and that volcano of revolutionary truth and valour is as cold as the mountains of the moon. And so it is and so it will be with the ethics which are buzzing down Fleet Street at this instant as I speak. What phrase would inspire the London clerk or workman just now? Perhaps that he is a son of the British Empire on which the sun never sets; perhaps that he is a prop of his Trades Union, or a class-conscious proletarian something or other; perhaps merely that he is a gentleman when he obviously is not. Those names and notions are all honourable; but how long will they last? Empires break; industrial conditions change; the suburbs will not last for ever. What will remain? I will tell you. The Catholic Saint will remain.

So here are my All Saints Day prayers.

First of all, I pray for my beloved Michelle, and the five immortal souls who never saw the light of day, whio I mentioned in a recent post.

Next, I pray that we will succeed in bringing life into this world. Reader, if you are ever praying for me, this is the prayer I would always ask. Because it is something so personal and private, I haven't really mentioned it, and it's not something I like to discuss. But nothing weighs on me more.

Next, I give a prayer of thanksgiving that my father is still in this world, at the grand old age of seventy-seven. I never dared hope he would be spared so long, and I am very thankful. May he see many more birthdays!

My father, Peadar Kelly

I pray for my father-in-law Nick, who passed away this year.

I give a very heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving for all my blog readers, and for all their prayers. I can't tell you how much they've meant to me. I pray we all meet in Heaven, amongst the saints.

I pray that all our families, where they are not in communion with Holy Mother Church, will come into communion with her. Lord, give us the grace to light their way.

I pray for the Church itself, that the Holy Spirit guards it from heresy, cowardice and accommodation with the world.

I pray for all priests, and for vocations to the priesthood and religious life.

I pray to the saints that inspire me the most, amongst the great heavenly host:

My name-saint St. Sechnaill, about whom I wish I knew a lot more. My confirmation saint Finbarr, lover of learning.

St. Bernadette

 
St. Bernadette Soubirous, whose simplicity and humility inspires me more and more, and whose photograph seems to me like an image of the beauty of holiness. Give me a deeper love of our Blessed Mother, St. Bernadette!

St. Gemma Galgani, who I've read a great deal about recently, and whose humility and ardour fills me with awe. ("Live, Jesus!" was her simple ejaculatory prayer.)

St. Gemma

Blessed John Henry Newman, whose deep seriousness and manliness seems such a wonderful tonic for our trivial times.

St. Robert Southwell, whose love of Mary's Dowry (England) I find inspiring as a lifelong anglophile, and whose poem 'The Burning Babe' expresses the fieriness of our Faith better, perhaps, than any text outside Scripture.

St. Robert Southwell

St. Josemaria Escriva, who enjoined us to make heroic verse out of the prose of our lives, and also showed us how to do so with his own life.

St. Patrick, whose utter dedication to the gospel and whose flame-like simplicity can be seen in his Confession, which I encourage everybody to read.

St. Maximillian Kolbe, whose apostolic daring seems to show that we can never ask enough of God.

Venerable Edel Quinn, who brought the faith of St. Patrick all over Africa, despite being almost at death's door.

Edel Quinn

 
St. John Paul II, St. Pius X, and Blessed Pius IX; lions of orthodoxy, to whom untold millions must be indebted for so much as hearing the pure Gospel.

St. Stephen, the first martyr, whose example of fearless truth-telling we might cherish in this era of 'inter-religious dialogue'. (I originally added, rather impishly: "Whatever that might be." Then I thought better of it. St. John Paul II was committed to inter-religious dialogue, as was Pope Benedict XVI, so it's good enough for me. All the same, I can't help suspecting it has been taken too far, and has given out the wrong message to a world already infatuated with relativism.)
 
The greatest of all the saints, Our Blessed Lady. I've written on this blog about my 'mommy issues' when it comes to Mary. (St. Gemma used to address her simply as 'Mom'.) Well, I am very grateful that I have begun to develop a more Catholic relationship with our Mom. This, too, I can lay at the feet of the saints. The saints lead us to Mary, and Mary leads us to her Son.

And all the heavenly host, all our friends in Heaven, intercede for us, Amen! God bless us all on this All Saints Day!