Sexagesima: An examination of conscience.

n her duo of poems for Sex­a­ges­i­ma Sun­day, Christi­na Ros­set­ti invites us to con­trast the par­adise of Eden with the par­adise to come in Christ:

 

Yet earth was very good in days of old,

And earth is love­ly still:

Still for the sacred flock she spreads the fold,

For Sion rears the hill.

Moth­er she is, and cra­dle of our race,

A depth where trea­sures lie,

The broad foun­da­tion of a holy place,

Man’s step to scale the sky.

She spreads the har­vest-field which Angels reap,

And lo! the crop is white;

She spreads God’s Acre where the hap­py sleep

All night that is not night.

Earth may not pass till heav­en shall pass away,

Nor heav­en may be renewed

Except with earth: and once more in that day

Earth shall be very good.

•••

That Eden of earth­’s sun­rise can­not vie

With Par­adise beyond her sun­set sky

Four rivers watered Eden in her bliss,

But Par­adise hath One which per­fect is

In sweet­ness.

Eden had gold, but Par­adise hath gold

Like unto glass of splen­dours man­i­fold

Tongue hath not told.

Eden had sun and moon to make her bright;

But Par­adise hath God and Lamb for light,

And hath no night.

Unspot­ted inno­cence was Eden’s best;

Great Par­adise shows God’s ful­filled behest,

Tri­umph and rest.

Hail, Eve and Adam, source of death and shame!

New life has sprung from death, and Jesu’s Name

Clothes you with fame.

Hail Adam, and hail Eve! your chil­dren rise

And call you blessed, in their glad sur­mise

Of Par­adise.

•••

Ros­set­ti under­stands attach­ments. And chief among them is our attach­ment to earth and the things of earth. Earth was “very good,” she says; earth is “love­ly still.” Earth is our “moth­er,” our “cra­dle,” and indeed “A depth where trea­sures lie.”

But for all that, I am struck with how often Ros­set­ti’s praise of earth is tem­pered by her under­stand­ing that it is not our real home. Here we have no con­tin­u­ing city. She calls it “The broad foun­da­tion of a holy place,” but it is not the “holy place” itself. It is, she explains, “Man’s step to scale the sky.” So earth is to be praised, not for what it is in itself, but for the fact that it is our path to some­thing holi­er and bet­ter.

It is only in that con­text that we can under­stand what Ros­set­ti means when she refers to earth as “love­ly.” I am remind­ed of Robert Frost’s “Stop­ping By Woods On a Snowy Evening.” The woods were not his des­ti­na­tion, but that did not pre­vent him from stop­ping a while to linger over how “love­ly, dark, and deep” every­thing was. Christi­na Ros­set­ti would under­stand. And yet she points out that, at the end of days, when heav­en is renewed with earth, “once more in that day / Earth shall be very good.” It is okay to linger over attach­ments to love­ly things; but we must real­ize that it is only in renew­al that any of them shall mer­it the superla­tive “very.” We must be renewed first.

In the sec­ond of the two poems, Ros­set­ti turns to a more spe­cif­ic con­trast between the love­ly things of Eden and the love­ly things of Par­adise. Eden had “four rivers,” but par­adise “One which per­fect is.” Eden’s “gold” is less­er than Par­adis­e’s “gold / Like unto glass” which “Tongue hath not told.” Eden could offer only “unspot­ted inno­cence,” but Par­adise “God’s ful­filled behest.”

Eye hath not seen nor hath ear heard: I admire Ros­set­ti’s method of call­ing us to detach­ment from the things of this world—however love­ly they are—by remind­ing us that love­li­er things await. She goes gen­tly about the busi­ness of telling us to for­go the world and the things of the world. Some­thing in the nurs­ery-book style of her rhyme and meter only adds to how deeply her poems call us to a long­ing for a love­li­ness we can some­how remem­ber despite nev­er hav­ing expe­ri­enced it for one day. Per­haps, in the end, it is our long­ings more than our fears that will prompt us to for­go our attach­ments and our sins and seek the city that is to come.

•••

In his homi­ly for the Vig­il Mass, Fr. said that St. Paul’s words in the epis­tle read­ing were the most per­fect exam­i­na­tion of con­science he could think of. Fr. is an expert in moral the­ol­o­gy, so his analy­sis of Paul here has weight.

Fr. put vers­es 4–7 in the form of an exam­i­na­tion of con­science. Have I been patient and kind? Or have I been jeal­ous? Boast­ful? Arro­gant? Rude? Have I insist­ed on my own way? Have I been irri­ta­ble or resent­ful? Have I rejoiced at wrong, or have I rejoiced in the right? Have I borne all things, hoped all things, endured all things?

There is no bet­ter exam­i­na­tion of con­science, Fr. said, than those ques­tions. After hear­ing that homi­ly, I am near resolved to read 1 Corinthi­ans 13:4–7 every night while I make my own exam­i­na­tion, and again while I pre­pare for con­fes­sion.

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

Paul’s words in the rest of the pas­sage are a good com­ple­ment to Ros­set­ti: a con­trast of the things of earth, which are tem­po­rary, with the things of heav­en, which are eter­nal. Prophe­cies will pass away. Tongues will pass away. Knowl­edge will pass away. So will all things; what­ev­er we are most attached to, it all will pass away.

Annie Dil­lard asks the ques­tion this way: “Do you think you will keep your life, or any­thing else you love? But no. Your needs are all met, but not as the world giveth.” In the end, that is why we must make a real exam­i­na­tion of con­science: We can­not keep a thing. It is not about what we can cling to here; it is about what we are promised there. And when all of our pos­ses­sions and attach­ments have been tak­en from us, what shall we have left but what we have found when we looked into our con­science?

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

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