Elizabeth’s Reviews > By What Authority? > Status Update

“Then all day he sat in the north chapel, with the dash and loud thunder of the mountain stream entering through the opened panes of the east window, and the stained sunlight, in gorgeous colors, creeping across the red tiles at his feet, glowing and fading as the clouds moved over the sun…” (409).

Fascinating the history in this chapter Northern Religion about how Lancashire and some of the other northern counties were such a stronghold of Catholic faith. In art because they were remote but also because of the past centuries of faithful Christian presence.

Oh boy, I think I know what’s coming. 🫣

“Now it was all fragrant with flowers and herbs; a pair of tall lilies leaned their delicate heads towards the altar, as if to listen for the soundless Coming in the Name of the Lord; underfoot all about the altar lay sprigs of sweet herbs, rosemary, thyme, lavender, bay-leaves; with white blossoms scattered over them—a soft carpet for the Pierced Feet” (338).

“The tender reverence with which the Catholics loved to linger over the details of the Passion, and to set them like precious jewels in magnificent liturgical settings, and then to perform these stately heartbroken approaches to God with all the dignity and solemnity possible, appealed to him…” (328).

“The priest was addressing God, not man…it was comparatively unimportant whether man followed it word for word, for…the point of the worship for the people lay, not in an intellectual apprehension of the words, but in a voluntary assent to and participation in the supreme act to which words were indeed necessary but subordinate…” (292).

So much more in this chapter—A Station of the Cross.

“Isabel only half understood her; but it was something to know that others had tasted the cup [of suffering] too; and that what was so bitter was not necessarily poisonous” (281).