Word: mysticism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Rome. Before him knelt two cardinal-advocates, pleaders for the two saints whose visages and miracles the congregation of 40,000 beheld on great oil paintings over the high altar-Marie Euphrasia Pelletier, French foundress of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd (1796-1868), Gemma Galgani, Italian stigmatist and mystic (1878-1903). Thrice the cardinals begged the Pope to grant the canonization. Twice the Pope told all to pray for God's guidance. Third time he declared the petitions granted. Silver trumpets blew, the choir burst into a mighty Te Detim, and all the bells of Rome rang...
...tradition of the Renaissance had disintegrated into a purely secular art. The English Restoration, especially, was accompanied by an important efflorescence of secular music. One can easily appreciate the role of the Puritan Revolution in creating the new spirit. The seventeenth century Puritan, with his austere morality and his mystic absorption in God, could neither enjoy music nor understand its function. To him music was a sensual pleasure, and as such was a barrier to the contemplation of eternal truths. It had no place in the Church service. In this situation one can sense the death-rattle of religious music...
...accomplishment in classical China. Since he is the only really big Chinese to favor their cause, the Japanese prize him like some fragile T'ang Dynasty vase. Despite his record as a shifty recreant, despite the fact that Chinese honor him only in hatred, Wang is a brilliant mystic, not to be lightly dismissed. His establishment as Japan's super-puppet is therefore a major event in the China war. Japan hopes he will be able to bring about peace, but his beginnings last week augured ill for their hopes...
Rabbi Schneersohn is head of a Hasidic sect (150,000 in the U. S.) called the Habad. Hasidism is the faith which Baal Shem Tob, Polish mystic and healer of the 18th Century, offered to downtrodden Jews who had turned away from the dogmatic formalism of their rabbis. The Hasid sang, danced, took joy in his faith, felt himself close to God. At his worst a dreamy, soft-handed, mystical fellow, the Hasid became the butt of many an Eastern European joke. After the time of Baal Shem Tob there arose a Habad ("rational") Hasidism, which urged...
...first I thought he was just drunk," Ralph B. Bennett, Jr. '42 said after his cerie experience with the wild-eyed, mystic individual who claimed kinship with the deity. "But it didn't take me long to realize that it was something more than that...