Ladydale Diary
Easter Friday 2021 (Feast of Saint Casilda)

First a few words on today’s little-known saint. She was the daughter of a 10th century Muslim leader in Toledo, in Spain, but converted to Christianity following a miraculous cure at the shrine of San Vincenzo in northern Spain. Thereafter she lived a life of solitude, holiness and thanksgiving, not far from the shrine at which she was healed.

Much has happened since the last diary entry, not least of which was the Holy Triduum. Our friend Lorraine Murray came to visit on Good Friday, staying until Easter Monday. Lorraine is the author of Confessions of a Catholic Feminist, which tells of her own conversion from atheism and militant feminism. She’s also the author of an excellent book on Flannery O’Connor and of three delightful and humorous mystery novels, my favourite of which is Death of a Liturgist. Her late husband, Jef, was a well-known Tolkien artist who served for many years as artist-in-residence of the St. Austin Review. His work will be featured prominently in the next issue of the magazine, which is on a Tolkien theme. Lorraine and Jef visited us every Easter for several years, prior to Jef’s tragic and sudden death at the age of only fifty-five in 2015. Since then, Lorraine has continued the tradition of the Easter visit.

Lorraine arrived on Good Friday morning, in good time to join us for the afternoon’s liturgy. On Holy Saturday, we went to the Maronite liturgy of the Awaited Light, which has also become something of a tradition for our family. A cute and quaint thing happened during the service, which I’m minded to see as miraculous or, at any rate, as a sign of Our Lord’s providential Presence in a tangible but mystical sense. During the homily, the priest asked those in the audience who were without sin to raise their hands. This, of course, was meant in jest and received the laughter of the congregation. To my astonishment, however, our son Leo raised his hand at the exact moment that the priest asked the question. As one who is gifted with autism and Down syndrome, he has not reached the age of reason and has never sinned! I doubt that he’d heard the priest’s question and wouldn’t have understood it if he had. Who knows what prompted him to raise his hand at that very moment? God knows, of course, and I can’t help but thinking that it was God Himself or possibly Leo’s guardian angel, who lifted his hand. Whatever the reason, it certainly lifted my heart!

After the liturgy, the priest blessed our Easter basket which contained some of the good things on which we were going to feast on the following day.

The Easter Sunday liturgy at our parish was beautiful beyond words, in spite of these covidious times. The schola sang the Mass setting by Mozart and also motets by Byrd and Palestrina. In the presence of such beauty, it is easy to rise with the Risen Christ, being lifted on the wings of the grace-full music towards the source of all grace and all creativity.

My Easter-inspired essay, “Long Defeat and Final Victory”, was published by the Imaginative Conservative on Holy Saturday, and another essay of mine, “Chains, Change and Chesterton”, was published by TIC two days ago. The latest in my series of essays on the classics, “Antigone in a Nutshell” is scheduled to be published by Crisis Magazine tomorrow (Easter Saturday).

I’ve been assembling a selection of longer essays on great works of literature and hope to have this ready to submit to a publisher soon. I’ve tentatively entitled the manuscript “Great Books: Getting to Know the Classics”.

On Tuesday morning I was interviewed on Archangel Catholic Radio on my recent essay in Crisis Magazine on the Iliad and on Tuesday afternoon I recorded a talk for a forthcoming online homeschooling conference on the topic of “How the Great Books Can Save Us from Slavery”.

Yesterday (Thursday), I recorded an online conversation for Kolbe Academy. I will post the link to this on this website as soon as I receive it.

In a little under an hour (I’m writing this very early on Friday morning), I’ll be doing my weekly interview for Sacred Heart Radio. Our topic this week will be the aforementioned essay entitled “Long Defeat and Final Victory”. And then, later this morning, I’ll be giving the weekly online lecture for Red Cultural in Chile. We’re going through the literary classics of western civilization and this morning I’ll be lecturing on the plays of Sophocles.

On the recreational front, I managed to get to the gym on Monday and Tuesday and I hope to get there again this afternoon (God willing). On Wednesday, I took time out to meet up with a couple of friends at the local bar to watch Chelsea FC, the English EPL team which I’ve followed since I was seven years old, play FC Porto, the Portuguese champions. To my pleasant surprise, Chelsea won by two goals to nil. I celebrated with a couple of pints of craft-brewed ale, the first I’d imbibed since breaking my Lenten abstinence from fermented and distilled beverages.

As for the presence of God’s grandeur in his Creation, we have cardinals nesting in the tree outside our dining room window and Carolina wrens nesting in the hanging flower basket on the porch. The apple tree’s in blossom and the dogwood in bloom. Spring is indeed in the air!

As if this week hasn’t been filled with enough blessings already, tomorrow we are going to a friend’s wedding. Another joyous occasion to savour.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!