Beauty Beckoned

So, I really WAS dusting. But I was also thinking about Richard Crashaw. One thing led to another and somehow I was sitting at the computer I was supposed to be dusting and reading all about him. I am glad I did.

He overlapped the life of George Herbert but had a very different way to follow. He was born to one William Crashaw who was a famous Puritan Divine in the time of Charles I. His mother died when he was quite young and not much is known of her. William was always arguing against the Catholic Church - railing up one side and the other about its doctrines, its politics, its Papist ways - in lively caustic language like "besotted Jesuitries" and "Romish falsifications"! But he had one weakness, did the elder Crashaw. He was attracted by Catholic devotion as exhibited by his translation of verse by Catholic poets. Hmmmm. He just couldn't stay away from the beauty.

His library was filled with Catholic mystic writings: Bernard of Clairvaux, Catherine of Sienna, St. Bridget, and Richard Rolle. Richard had full access to this library and read to his heart's content. That is where Richard met Teresa of Avila. And I think Teresa took a shine to him and prayed for him as a special project. They became fast friends. I think she led him home.

William died when Richard was a teen. William's friends took his son under their wing and he was sent to the Charterhouse School (an old Carthusian Monastery which was still probably filled with the grace of their being there long ago). After the Charterhouse, Richard attended Cambridge, eventually becoming a professor. It was at Cambridge where he was introduced to the the "beauty of holiness" brought back to the Anglican Church by a group called the Laudinists, named for a Bishop who was trying to introduce the Catholic customs thrown away long ago, into the Anglican liturgy. Vestments, candlelight, incense, beautiful chant, and ceremonies. Richard was mesmerized by it.

Richard was to become an Anglican priest and to be given charge of a Church called Little St. Marys. Here at this Church he began to hold late night prayer vigils, adorning the chapel with relics, crucifixes, and images of the Madonna. He also introduced beautiful singing. And lo and behold, his Church began to attract Christians from all over England. His sermons were said to "ravish more like Poems....scattering not so much Sentences as Extasies". It was beauty that was calling these people to prayer. Beauty matters.

After George Herbert died, Crashaw was given a copy of Herbert's poetry: The Temple. He was overwhelmed by the beauty and intimacy of it. He was inspired to write only for God as Herbert had done. This is when his own poetry began.

Cromwell was to put an end to all this, alas. Crashaw's Papisty Church was found out and he had to escape to Oxford to avoid being killed by the Protestant scourge under Cromwell's rule. He ended up in France for a time - penniless and poor. Through friends he ended up in Rome and put under the kind care of a Cardinal there. He was surrounded once again by beauty. And he succombed. He became a Catholic.

Crashaw's journey was astounding to me. He was surely intelligent. Knew Greek, Latin, Philosophy and Theology. But it was not through these that he was to gravitate to the Church. It was through the small weakness of his otherwise anti Catholic father for the beauty of Catholic customs and ceremony that made him keep the books in his library that inspired Crashaw. It was an emotional draw - not an ill informed emotional draw. But one of intelligence. Then he met Herbert's poetry and understood why he was drawn - as Herbert had been drawn. Von Balthasar would be so pleased! The way of Beauty REALLY is a thing.

That is why liturgies MUST be beautiful, MUST be reverent and filled with ceremony and metaphor and why the actors in this Theo Drama MUST be dressed to the part. It isn't just extra pomp at the whim of one or two. It is the way poets and artists are drawn to God. It is the Church's responsibility to always leave that pathway open for them to the Father. It is the old and the new Evangelization, this beauty. This is the way of beauty Crashaw followed, first as he heard it in the ancient echoes reverberating within the Anglican church, and later when he entered into its fullness within the Catholic faith.

So I say, let there be vestments, candles burning, chant, incense rising! It is for the poets and the artists! Let them see it and they will come.

May beauty always beckon.