Illuminations
Light of Light
by Anthony Esolen
In these essays I have been like someone who wanders about a great mansion that has fallen into disrepair because for a long time no one has taken care of it, though many a wise and blessed squatter has come to visit once in a while and has saved from rain and rust, from moth and mouse and worm, some precious vessel or silken robe, some work of piety and beauty that past generations of Christians have bequeathed to our ungrateful, inattentive, and insipid age.
Often enough I myself do not know what I am looking at. A few weeks ago, I lectured on the imagination to a large group of Catholic schoolteachers, and we began with a streamlined version of Morning Prayer. The teachers didn't know what that was, so they had to be instructed by my host, as we all followed along from some printed pages. I couldn't blame them, because although I have been a Catholic all my life, it has been only very recently that I have learned to pray the hours, from the Roman Breviary. Mine is published by Baronius Press, and the only reason I have it at all is that I was asked to translate for it some hundred of the psalms.
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Anthony Esolen is the author of over thirty books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House). He and his wife Debra publish a web magazine, Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com), on poetry, hymnody, language, classic films, and music. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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