Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2018
God wants us to love God eternally with our whole hearts–not in such a way as to injure or weaken our earthly love, but to provide a kind of cantus firmus (firm melody) to which the other melodies of life provide the counterpoint. One of these contrapuntal themes (which have their own complete independence but are yet related to the cantus firmus) is earthly affection. Even in the Bible we have the Song of Songs; and really one can imagine no more ardent, passionate, sensual love than is portrayed there. It is a good thing that that book is in the Bible, in face of all those who believe that the restraint of passion is Christian (where is there such restraint in the Old Testament?). Where the cantus firmus is clear and plain, the counterpoint can be developed to its limits. The two are “undivided yet distinct,” in the words of the Chalcedonian Definition, like Christ in his divine and human natures…. Do you see what I am driving at? I wanted to tell you to have a good, clear cantus firmus; that is the only way to a full and perfect sound, when the counterpoint has a firm support and cannot come adrift or get out of tune, while remaining a distinct whole in its own right. Only a polyphony of this kind can give life a wholeness and at the same time assure us that nothing calamitous can happen as long as the cantus firmus is kept going.
-from Letters and Papers from Prison, pgs. 150-151
