Between Heaven and Hell and the Joys of Daily Mass

Two things today. They may or may not be related.

First, today of course is the 50th anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy. A lesser known fact: this is also the 50th anniversary of the passing of C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley. Quite the closing of an age, the death of those three. Dr. Peter Kreeft, WHO IS THE MAN, wrote a book in 1982 about a ficticious conversation between the deceased Kennedy, Lewis and Huxley. Between Heaven and Hell is a short read (about 120 pages) and is well worth your time. Kreeft is an expert at making the difficult intelligable, much like Lewis, and does so delightfully through a dialogue among the orthodox christian, humanist christian and pantheist christian world views—Lewis, Kennedy and Huxley, respectively. It is a fast-paced conversation about the most important things—adding to "the Great Conversation." I read it a couple weeks ago, and I will be reading it again soon.


Second, today is the feast day of St. Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr of the Church. If you haven't read the story of St. Cecilia, if would be worth you time to familiarize yourself with it. Martyred for her faith, she is one of the purest example of a life consecrated to God. The beauty of her life exemplifies the life of Jesus Christ and points towards Him. This morning after Mass had ended, Father Newman invited us  behind the sanctuary to the sacristy and showed us a stainglass window of St. Cecilia, similar to the one above. Our four Dominican Sisters, who teach at the parish school and of whom St. Cecilia is the patroness of their Congregation, were there with us. After a little background of the painting and a brief description of the symbols, such as the organ, the twenty of us were blessed to be able to witness the Sisters sing a beautiful song to St. Cecilia while we gazed on the window as the sun was coming up. It was one of those moments where everything was at peace—Tolkienesque I should say. I felt as if I was in Lothlórien. Oh, the joys of daily Mass.

A couple lines from the song:

Who are you St. Cecilia? God's beloved one. Let me know you St. Cecilia, how you gave your heart to God's Son.

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