Homes of Kosovar Christian families are destroyed by the muslim authority.

As many have heard or read this past week, the province of Kosovo has unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. Much of the West is declaring this to be a victory of Democracy. Andrew Cusack presents the other side of the story.

It’s that time of year, again: Time to vote for the best (and your favorite) Catholic blogs. Please take a quick moment to nominate miserere.org!

Past winners:

• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004

The New York Baroque Players will be performing Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s beautiful Stabat Mater Dolorosa at the Church of St. Agnes (143 East 43rd St., between Lexington and Third Aves. in Manhattan) on Wednesday, March 5, 2008, from 6-7pm.

Stabat Mater dolorosa (the Sorrowful Mother was standing) are the opening words of the hymn by the same name, likely composed by Pope Innocent III or the friar Blessèd Jacopo da Todi in the early 13th century.

This medieval hymn meditates on the suffering of Mary, our Lady of Sorrows, as she stood beside Christ during His Crucifixion.

See the Catholic Encyclopedia article for more about the Stabat Mater.

It has been set to music by numerous composers over the ages, including Dvorák, Hayden, Part, Pergolesi, Rossini, Scarlatti, Verdi and Vivaldi. The link provided below is a sampling of Pergolesi’s powerful representation.

Stabat Mater Dolorosa

The following translation preserves the meaning, meter (trochaic quadrameter), rhyme scheme, but is not a word-for-word translation. Try listening to Pergolesi’s arrangement as you pray this wonderful prayer:

ust in time for St. Valentine’s Day, a good friend of mine informed me of this article from Inkling Magazine, entitled, “The Calculus of Saying ‘I Love You.’” This humorous piece describes an episode in the life of a young woman (”Judy”) and her engineer boyfriend. After a passionate start to their relationship, the young lady lets slip those famous words, “I love you,” which the young man fails to return in kind. She quickly repeals the statement as being to premature… but pondering the situation for a few days, and curiosity getting the better hold of her, she later inquires why he didn’t say “I love you” back. To this, the young man replies that he wanted to wait until it was the proper time:

The Engineer, delightful and rational fellow that he is, made it clear that he would not be saying “I love you” until he was sure. Otherwise, he might waste this very important statement by saying it too early in the relationship, when his love was still growing rapidly, thereby taking away the significance in later weeks/months when his love was much, much greater.

Judy, obviously disappointed by this response, pressed and asked when exactly that would be. His response: when dLove/dt = zero.

For those of you who are a bit rusty with your calculus, the first-order derivative (dx/dy, or in this case, dLove/dt) is a way of expressing the slope of a curve at a particular point. For example, if one plots the change in position (s) over time (t), the rate of change (ds/dt) can be calculated. This corresponds to velocity, or speed. In essence then, what the engineering boyfriend was positing was that he would wait to say “I love you” until the upward ‘velocity’ of his love for her seemed to plateau.

Unfortunately for Judy, she knew her calculus. And she realized that if the slope of a function plateaued (dLove/dt = 0), it could mean that it was either a relative minimum (a pause before another spur of growth and a more ‘mature’ form of love, as in graph B, above)… but it could also mean that it was a relative maximum (a peak before the decline, as in graph A).

This humorous article continues to explore the meaning of the engineer’s cryptic statement, delving into the second-order derivative (d²Love/dt²), which is akin to the ‘acceleration’ of his love.

fter a few laughs, I returned to my senses and realized that the article was completely wrong. In fact, the mathematical proof was based on a framework that was considerably flawed.

You see, the article acts as if love “just happens” and you sit back and watch it. Truly, love is a matter of the will. That is, one decides whom to love. At the heart of this societal misunderstanding is confusion over the different types of love: eros (έρως; infatuation and sexual love), philia (φιλια; liking, or friendship love), storge (στοργη; affection or fondness) and agape (αγαπη; divine love).

Thus, perhaps the ‘love’ variable is better renamed ‘fondness’ or ‘affection’ or ‘liking’ (or perhaps even ‘infatuation’). One doesn’t choose whom to like… it just happens. But one chooses to love — and it is even possible to love those whom one dislikes.

If we rename the variable ‘love’ to ‘like,’ then it is totally permissible for dLike/dt (the velocity of liking) to plateau and d²Like/dt² (the acceleration of liking) to reach zero. After all, there may be a limit to how much we are able to like someone… and perhaps as we get to know others more, we learn about faults or character flaws that actually make us like them less.

Notwithstanding this change in liking, love, as a matter of the will, continues to grow indefinitely.

Thus, in the Christian sense, love is either on (we will to love someone) or off (we will not to love someone). The engineer, then, should be able to tell her that he loves her (or not) at any point in time, regardless of the level of their passion. Many couples may be passionate and yet not love one another. Others who grow in love may experience decline in passion. Love is or isn’t.

The moral of the story? This Valentine’s Day, be truthful to your sweetheart and to yourself.

And know your calculus.

“Dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return” (Genesis 3:19). These words, spoken for the first time by God to Adam after he had committed sin, are repeated today by the Church to every Christian, in order to remind him of two fundamental truths — his nothingness and the reality of death.

Ash Wednesday (Dies Cinerum) is perhaps the most popular religious day of the year, albeit confused with Mardi Gras. The faithful have observed Ash Wednesday since the mid-900s a.d. and have borne the ashen cross (made from palm branches from the previous Palm Sunday) upon their foreheads since the 12th century. Ash Wednesday is a holy day of fasting and abstinence. While thousands come to the Catholic churches for ashes, many are without full knowledge of what the ritual really is — but at least palpably aware that we are dust.

The 1962 Missal from Angelus Press describes the history and significance of Ash Wednesday:

Ash Wednesday is, from a liturgical point of view, one of the most important days of the year. In the first place, this day opens the liturgical season of Lent, which formerly began with the First Sunday and comprised only thirty-six days. The addition of Wednesday and three following days brought the number to forty, which is that of our Lord’s fast in the desert.

In the Old Law, ashes were generally a symbolic expression of grief, morning or repentance. In the Early Church, the use of ashes had a like signification and with sackcloth formed part of the public penances. The blessing of the ashes … was originally instituted for public penitents, but is now intended for all Christians, as Lent should be a time of penance for all.

The February 2004 issue of Catholic Update explores the original and evolving meaning of Ash Wednesday and Lent:

Those who work with liturgy in parishes know that some of the largest crowds in the year will show up to receive ashes on Ash Wednesday. Though this is not a holy day of obligation in our tradition, many people would not think of letting Ash Wednesday go by without a trip to church to be marked with an ashen cross on their foreheads. Even people who seldom come to Church for the rest of the year may make a concerted effort to come for ashes.

How did this practice become such an important part of the lives of so many believers? Who came up with the idea for this rather odd ritual? How do we explain the popularity of smudging our foreheads with ashes and then walking around all day with dirty faces? Those who do not share our customs often make a point of telling us that we have something on our foreheads, assuming we would want to wash it off, but many Catholics wear that smudge faithfully all day.

Cor Contritum, Quasi Cinis (My Heart, Contrite as Ashes)

The faithful are reminded that receiving ashes is a custom and not a necessary part of the Ash Wednesday observance. It is unseemly to request ashes without some form of prayerful preparation — That is, the pious custom accompanies those essential acts which consist in prayer and almsgiving.

As St. Augustine was wont to say, we are an Easter people, and Alleluia is our song. But as Fr. Rutler reminds us, “without confession of our many morbid betrayals of the living God, the song becomes a ditty, and we forget the scarred bishops calling the people to repentance, as at Nicæa.”

Therefore, we pray:

Almighty and everlasting God, spare those who are penitent… Bless and hallow these ashes, that they may be a wholesome remedy to all who humbly implore Thy holy name, and who accuse themselves, conscious of their sins, deploring their crimes before Thy divine mercy, or humbly and earnestly beseeching Thy soverign goodness: and grant through the invocation of Thy most holy name that whosoever shall be sprinkled with them for the remission of their sins may receive both health of body and safety of soul. Through Christ our Lord.