17 night prayer

3 You have tried my heart, you have visited me by night,
you have tested me, and you will find nothing;
I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress.

6 I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God;
incline your ear to me; hear my words.

8 Keep me as the apple of your eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings,

9 from the wicked who do me violence,
my deadly enemies who surround me.

13 Arise, O Lord! Confront him, subdue him!
Deliver my soul from the wicked by your sword,
14 from men by your hand, O Lord,
from men of the world whose portion is in this life.

15 As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness;
when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.

-- psalm 17

+

O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
iacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo, cuius viscera
meruerunt portare
Dominum Christum.
Alleluia.

O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
Christ the Lord.
Alleluia!

2:19

"I was kept in solitary confinement in this cell for the next two years. I had nothing to read and no writing materials; I had only my thoughts for company, and I was not a meditative man, but a soul that had rarely known quiet. I had God. But had I really lived to serve God--or was it simply my profession?
People expect pastors to be models of wisdom, purity, love, truthfulness; they cannot always be genuinely so, because they are also men: so, in smaller or greater measure, they begin to act the part. As time passes, they can hardly tell how much of their behavior is play-acting.

I remembered the deep commentary which Savonarola wrote on the fifty-first Psalm, in prison, with his bones so broken that he could sign the self-accusatory paper only with his left hand. He said there were two kinds of Christian: those who sincerely believe in God and those who, just as sincerely, believe that they believe.
You can tell them apart by their actions in decisive moments. If a man, planning to rob a rich man's home, sees a stranger who might be a police-man, he holds back. If, on second thoughts, he breaks in after all, this proves that he does not believe the man to be an agent of the law. Our beliefs are proved by what we do.

Did I believe in God? Now the test had come. I was alone. There was no salary to earn, no golden opinions to consider. God offered me only suffering--would I continue to love Him?

My mind went back to one of my favorite books, The Pateric, concerning certain fourth-century saints who formed desert monasteries when the Church was persecuted. It has 400 hundred pages, but the first time I picked it up I did not eat, drink or sleep until I had finished it. Christian books are like good wine--the older the better. It contained the following passage:

A brother asked his elder, "Father, what is silence?" The answer was, "My son, silence is to sit alone in your cell in wisdom and fear of God, shielding the heart from the burning arrows of thought. Silence like this brings to birth the good. O silence without care, ladder to heaven! O silence in which one cares only for first things, and speaks only with Jesus Christ! He who keeps silent is the one who sings, 'My heart is ready to praise Thee, O Lord!'"

I wondered how you could praise God by a life of silence. At first, I prayed greatly to be released. I asked, "You have said in scripture that it is not good that a man should be alone; why do You keep me alone?" But as the days passed into weeks my only visitor was still the guard, who brought wedges of black bread and watery soup, and never spoke a word.
His arrival reminded me daily of the saying, "The gods walk in soft shoes": in other words, the Greeks believed that we cannot be aware of the approach of a divinity. Perhaps in this silence I was coming closer to God. Perhaps, too, it would make me a better pastor; for I had noticed that the best preachers were men who possessed an inner silence, like Jesus.
When the mouth is too much open, even to speak good, the soul loses its fire just as a room loses warmth through an open door.
Slowly, I learned that on the tree of silence hangs the fruit of peace. I began to realize my real personality, and made sure that it belonged to Christ. I found that even here my thoughts and feelings turned to God and that I could pass night after night in prayer, spiritual exercise and praise. I knew now that I was not play-acting, believing that I believed.

[somewhere after 1948 arrest, published In God's Underground 1968.
--Richard Wurmbrand]

18

16 He sent from on high, he took me;
he drew me out of many waters.
17 He rescued me from my strong enemy
and from those who hated me,
for they were too mighty for me.
18 They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
but the Lord was my support.
19 He brought me out into a broad place;
he rescued me, because he delighted in me.

movie review: Zhestokiy Romans 1984

This is another Russian movie, based on a 1840's play The Dowerless Girl by Ostrovsky. I am told that this film is very close in detail to the play but completely different in spirit. I think it was a very popular film in Russia. This film is very beautiful with its stellar cast, real characters, catchy gypsy melodies, and subtle cinematography. This film is not for everyone, except perhaps if you are the type who finds depressing 19th century soap operas cathartic or just enjoy a good cry.
The story revolves around an upper-class girl with no money trying to find a suitor during a tumultuous time period seeing the end of serfdom, rising middle class, and downfall of nobility.
This story is the type of "novel without a hero" drama, with suitors who are either are suave, petty, disgusting, pitiful, or a little of each. All of the characters are human, to some degree sympathize-able, and no character is a sacrificial lamb or cardboard-cutout. Overall, the cast and screenplay are impressive, not because they convince you so well that they are from a different time, but because they convince you that there is no such thing--that it is your own.
What amazed me most was how the film transformed a sorrowful tale of political and social upheaval into a universal tale about people's inability in search for eternal, unconditional human love---particularly about woman's innate and irrational desire for eternal, unconditional, and fulfilling love, often thought to be found in men or marriage.
It is odd how so many girls think that they can prove their mothers wrong, or are even encouraged by their mothers to think that their mothers' situation is exceptional or amendable.
Their mothers' situations are not exceptional, nor amendable, because their problem is not from situation--it is from within. We are our mothers. We are Eve. And our desire shall be for our husband, and he shall rule over us.
No, fulfillment cannot come from humanity, from human love, from humanistic ideals or idealistic humanism.
Idealistic humanism is ultimately idolatrous, because it is searching for fulfillment within. I think it is sad that what Hollywood pretends and promotes is also what many Christians in America seem to buy, sell, and worship. But what you make or buy cannot eternally satisfy, for they are only dead images carved by men; they have ears but cannot hear, mouths, but cannot speak.
For some reason it seems that true idealism, or belief in the beautiful unseen, only works when there is faith in the beautiful, everlasting, all-powerful, just, self-sustaining, and unseen purpose. Somehow, finding purpose in present life or mankind is futile, yet so many have succeeded only when they did not believe and rely on the present, but on the eternal.
When man searches within, he is empty. When man searches without, he is full.

"Let nothing disturb thee; Let nothing dismay thee; All thing pass; G-d never changes.
Patience attains All that it strives for. He who has G-d finds he lacks nothing: G-d alone suffices." --st. Theresa of Avila