Even though we are a few days into Advent, we are still very much at the start of not only a new liturgical season, but a new liturgical year. As Bishop Robert Barron said in his weekly sermon reflection for the First Sunday of Advent, Happy New Year!
He spoke about waiting—clearly something he struggles with, as he admitted, through the detailed description of his recent visit to the eye doctor. He also spoke about letting go of the need to feel in control, which is at the crux of why waiting is so difficult for us – because we are waiting on someone or something outside of our direct influence.
The words that kept coming to me while I listened were “active receptivity.” Words that I cannot claim as my own. Words that I received from one of my professors with the master’s degree in Faith and Culture I am studying through the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Fr. Donald Nesti, CSSp, founded the Center for Faith and Culture and was teaching classes into his late 80s. I was blessed to study with him, and he brought this idea of being actively receptive to God’s action and grace into many classes.
Active receptivity is a concept that has informed my study and engagement with poetry as well. For me, influenced by diocesan native Sr. Madeleva Wolff, CSC, of whom I have written before, poetry is much less about the words on the page and much more about how imagination and form (patterns, metaphor, rhythm, rhyme) inform our reason, physical and spiritual senses.
As we begin a new year in the church and the always anticipated season of Advent preparing for Christmas, I invite you to take on a resolution to engage with Catholic poetry within the context of the spirituality of waiting on which Bishop Barron reflected. I like to call it a spirituality of pilgrimage because we know that this world is not our true home and we know where are striving to reach.
“Lumine Verbi, By the Light of the Word” is an initiative I am offering via email newsletter to pray with poetry through Advent and Christmas, all the way through the Baptism of the Lord. There will be a weekly video intro with daily emails containing a poem selected to correspond with the daily Mass readings. I include an audio recording of the poem so that it can be heard and read at the same time, then offer some brief thoughts to guide reflection on the poem.
Sr. Madeleva is the most repeated poet in the series but poems are included from a wide variety of writers—from our newest Doctor of the Church St. John Henry Cardinal Newman to Shakespeare, from poems inspired by and translated from Greek and Latin of early church fathers to Emily Bronte and Victor Hugo. Most poets are Catholic; many are priests, though some hymns are included from Protestant figures like Charles Wesley.
The series was featured by popular Catholic website Aleteia alongside two other very worthy Advent offerings that engage with beauty, as the article’s author Kathleen N. Hattrup noted, “Many complain that in our day, music, art, architecture, etc., is nothing like the glory days, even if many signs of renaissance can be found.”
Kattrup quotes Fydor Dostoevsky’s line, “beauty will save the world,” and this has been echoed by popes. Not many might remember that Pope St. John Paul II wrote plays and poetry; Pope Benedict XVI daily played the piano and appreciated church music for its ability to “demonstrate the truth of Christianity.”
Pope Francis wrote a letter “On the Role of Literature in Formation,” released on Aug. 4, 2024, by the Vatican. He comments that his initial intended audience was seminarians, but expanded it to include “all those engaged in pastoral work, indeed of all Christians,” as he believed dedicating time to read literature and poetry was not only a healthy pastime but a worthy endeavor that forms our minds and hearts, enriches them and invites us to activate our own creativity. He said that literature and poetry help to hone a reader’s ability to experience wonder and awe.
Please visit catholicimaginations.substack.com or click on the QR code for more information and to subscribe to daily emails. The newsletter is free for this season, although it has taken considerable time and effort to put together. There is an option to pledge future support.
As Sr. Madeleva so aptly said, “Poetry is the heaven of the working reason … beauty still retaining the fragrance of the virtues and prayer.” Believing the “immortality is our proper dimension,” she also said poetry “is to art what grace is to the moral life.”
