Brian’s Reflection: Tuesday, November 1

[ All Saints Day ]

If in my youth I had realized that the sustaining
splendour of beauty with which I was in love
would one day flood back into my heart, there to
ignite a flame that would torture me without end,
how gladly would I have put out the light in my eyes.

Michelangelo; on this date, 1512, his paintings on the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were exhibited to the
public. [I first saw them, cleaned, the day Pope John
Paul II died.]


Michelangelo. Passionate. Dramatic. Poetic. Good artists are like that. And great human leaders.

Today we, the human race, need a “flood back” into our hearts of the “splendour of beauty” about Life, there “to ignite a flame “. But. The last thing that I want for any of us is that “the light in my eyes” of the “splendour of beauty” should be “put out”. Oh no. The opposite.

That light is vastly dimmed and flickering. And along with it our humanity.

I’m trying to think of a way I can contribute to the brightening, to the brilliance. That’s what I was thinking as I gazed up at the Sistine Chapel ceiling that afternoon, shining anew after centuries of smoke and darkening.

To live the life of the beauty of Divine Love may seem like torture to some. But it did not seem so to Jesus and it did and does not seem so to the saints.

I would like to have the courage to share in that Life. I would like to have the flame ignited! And I would desire not to have any light put out ….. but to be flooded with it, even if it engulfs me.

Brian+