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A Fulcrum and a Lever: Chiefly on Eucharistic Adoration: 7QT IV Seriatim

A Fulcrum and a Lever: Chiefly on Eucharistic Adoration: 7QT IV Seriatim

Last updated on: March 9, 2017 at 4:59 pm by Scott Eric Alt

A Fulcrum and a Lever: Chiefly on Eucharistic Adoration: 7QT IV Seriatim 2017-03-09T16:59:43-04:00 Scott Eric Alt

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Guido Reni, “Mater Dolorosa,” 17th century

I can tell that it has been some time since I’ve been to Adoration. The reason I know this is because I am tired. I have lacked patience, which normally is one of my rare—exceedingly rare—virtues. I am out of temperament, and morose. As water seeks its own level, so my less frequent visits to the adoration chapel can be gauged by my more frequent visits to the confessional. I can tell that I have not been to Adoration because even the word “water” sounds dry.

But I cannot handle myself, or my life, as in my maleness I do oft imagine I can. I need Christ; I need to be with Christ. The best description, in the Bible, of what it should mean to be with Christ is of John’s actions at the Last Supper (John 13:23): He laid his head on Christ’s breast. We think we are men, but before God we are children, and we need the comforter. That’s why we go to Eucharistic Adoration.

II.

The Greek mathematician Archimedes, in a famous quotation, said: “Give me a fulcrum and a lever and I can move the world.” Ayn Rand misunderstood this; or misused it, which is the same thing. The shoulders of Atlas were the fulcrum. His shrug—the universal gesture of “who cares?”—was the lever. He moved the world, but in so doing cast it from his shoulders and abandoned it to itself. Charity must not be forced, else it is not charity; but neither may we abandon the law of charity, or our brother, or God. When John Galt said, “I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine,” he was going further than abandoning socialism. He was abandoning Christ, and leaving Him at the altar.

(Incidentally, Flannery O’Connor had it right: “I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get. … I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.”

The sex scenes in Atlas Shrugged alone are enough to make me embrace chastity.)

III.

There is a still point. T.S. Eliot knew it:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is

But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity

Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards

Neither ascent nor decline.

St. Paul knew it too: “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God” (Heb. 4:9).

But where is it? Where is this still point, and where this rest, this fulcrum? The world is all too busy.

IV.

I used to wonder what there was to do at Eucharistic Adoration. I used to think the point was to be praying the whole time, and to fill up the hour with words. As if Christ existed to be talked to and supplicated, and had nothing to say to us.

Then I saw others reading, and oddly thought that to read at adoration was to ignore Christ. I had not yet considered that spiritual reading—lectio—might in fact be a way of listening to Christ.

Or simply a way to rest in His presence. When I was married, one of my favorite ways to spend time with my wife was to sit on the couch next to her and read; I would rest my feet in her lap. She watched TV; I read; occasionally I looked at her. It made me feel close to her.

V.

When Christ died, the world moved. The ground shook at an earthquake. The veil of the temple was rent. This was not Atlas, a pagan god, shrugging his shoulders and casting off the world. This was Christ, God indeed, redeeming the world by his sacrificial self-offering to the Father.

You could say that when God dies He no longer holds the world together and everything collapses and there is chaos—earthquakes and rent veils.

Or you could say that, by His death, Christ shook us, who needed shaking, and thus repaired us. When we are concrete, His death sends us an earthquake. When we hide ourselves from Him behind veils, His death rends us in twain.

That’s also why we go to Eucharistic Adoration.

VI.

I swear by my life, and by my love of it, that because Christ lived for me, so I will live for Him.

At times, we are the world that needs to be moved. We are the ground that needs to be shook, the veil that needs to be torn.

How do you interpret the expression on Mary’s face in Guido Reni’s painting?

Is it sorrow so deep it cannot be spoken?

Is it the sublimity of wonder and awe at the majesty of God?

Or was Mary the first to teach us what Eucharistic Adoration looks like, and how we should come to Christ?

VII.

I look at Him and He looks at me.

You can read more of this week’s quick takes at Conversion Diary here.

***

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