Constantius (September 23rd)
According to St. Gregory the Great, St. Constantius, a layman, was sacristan of the famous Cathedral of St. Stephen * at Ancona, Italy. In monastic garb, he attended to his duties with a great spirit of perfection which belied his slight stature. He was known as a wonderworker, and one of his deeds consisted in keeping the lamps of the church lighted even with water or oil in them. Word of his holiness and extraordinary powers spread far and wide, prompting many to ask spiritual favors of him.
The character of the saint is best illustrated by a story told about him. One day a rude fellow happened into the church and at the sight of the saint on a ladder attending to the lamps refused to believe in his sanctity. Instead, he began to insult and ridicule the man of God, calling him a liar and a man full of pride; St. Constantius, hearing this tirade, ran to the man and embraced and kissed him in gratitude for having seen him as he was and telling him so. As St. Gregory remarked, he thus gave conclusive proof that he was as great in humility as in miracles.
—From _Lives of the Saints_, © 1993, Catholic Book Publishing Company
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* Stephen, 26 December (please, without fail, DO note that date), was the first Christian martyr and is Patron of Stonemasons.
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Bio note — A long time ago, when the book quoted above happened to be new to me, I had my first personal encounter with Constantius:
One day I had felt oddly compelled to devote a couple of hours —probably even more, I no longer recall precisely— to the creation of a music mix just for myself. [ In fact, I never did copy it for anybody which, for me, is highly unusual after going to so much trouble. I don't make mixes very often, even less often in the past decade or so (as I encounter a broadening detachment, in general, Within). —Not to mention that an enormous majority of all OTHER mixes I've ever made were intended at conception as gifts for specific individuals. ]
When finished, for years I used that mix as a quasi-meditative “soundtrack” (i.e., when I did not want to empty my brain of all thoughts —and thought-engendering sound, obviously— which is more properly referred to as “contemplation”, but wished instead to fill my mind WITH thought consciously focused in a specific direction, short of the “mantric” focus of serious “meditation” —which focus was the theme of that mix's contents). I played it probably most frequently in my car, right up into 2001 when I stopped driving. (I still have it and listened in curiosity last year.)
After I'd made and played the mix (same day) I found myself in a somber and delightfully peaceful frame of mind and felt drawn to my infrequently-used and still-new book, where I opened to that day's date. It was the 23rd of September, [ The Feast of ] Constantius (from which I typed the top section of this entry).
Today, AS SOON AS the contents of this entry were determined in my mind (but not yet written), immediately after which I'd typed the last letter in this entry's title —just then conceived— Janus/Constantius/The Invisible Man gave imprimatur by way of an extremely loud and percussive disruption in the Om, just outside my apartment. —Which caused me to envision this note as addition.
(Hope I did it right?)
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Bio note 2 — It may be worth noting as well that the [
Constantius ]-date-discovery made TODAY immediately followed a major revelation (what, in the past, I have called “a download” in description of the manner through which, in those cases, so very much is conveyed so immediately) that dealt with information that, til now, has been missing from my head and, because of that failure-to-convey, had HUGELY complicated my own ability to configure myself in an appropriate (which, in this case, means “mutually productive”) alignment to all the rest of my Entanglement.
(To ALL the rest of my Entanglement.)
I now understand WHY that failure-to-convey existed at all (given all the other —and more complicated— stuff you DID convey) and, although I have not yet had time to do the self-actualizing required to determine if its rationale was correct AS A PROTECTION OF ME (i.e., “necessary”) —maybe it wasn't, although I can clearly see how it also very well might have been— I want that friend to know, TO HEAR:
That I was so moved by your selflessness in that choice —which, by far, was the more personally difficult of the only two possible postures you could have taken, once you had made the firm decision to intervene— so moved that tears ran down my face. Especially when I then realized you had never —NEVER— wanted me to know from you, including indirectly, that you had even considered that possibility (i.e., that any other posture on your part [besides “failure-to-convey”] COULD HAVE placed me into a brand new danger I would have been helpless to avoid and that I, perhaps, was already depleted too much by then to have overcome).
And especially because bundled with all that input was my acute awareness of your then-FORESIGHT of what my LIKELY internal response to THAT VERY KNOWLEDGE would have been !
(Prithee, how know you me so well? Listen most attentively: Yes, as do I, you.)
—Just goes to show how superior your secret intuition can be to what your mechanistic advisors insist that only they, by statistical deduction, can know correctly. (But nobody believes they have enough years to devote, a fact that I am advised was carefully considered in the engineering of the timing of this mess. [ It took one expert something like seven years, I was told, to prove that the Impossible can sit across the room from you. ] Kind of like using the one hourglass guaranteed to force the student to guess on the final.)
The degree of your humility stunned me over and above what had activated my glands. And I metaphorically crawl up marble steps on my knees begging forgiveness for formerly having even ENTERTAINED-AS-POSSIBILITY that you might not have realized how even-harder it would become. For me. In the face of failure-to-convey. At that point. (And it did.) Especially given your ongoing project.
There was a whole lot more, but I'm exhausted translating even this much into English. I think the rest is going to have to remain in zip-format. For now.
We can thank the Goat, because he not only just conveyed all THAT to me, but also explained that his recent [ denoted ] silence * had been in response to multiply-sourced and heartfelt requests, as well as in demonstration of honor to the sobriety IN those intentions. (I had overheard some of that in real-time, myself, and had since been focused on That-The-Goat-Not-Suffer from the shock of it all. Today his intervention has hugely relieved me on his behalf, beyond what that terribly awkward verbiage above represents.)
And only THEN did I learn (once again) that 23 September is “The Feast of Constantius”.
(Some day, somewhere, I will listen to that mix, anew.)
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* (Which Goat-choice taught me an indirect lesson I sorely needed, I now realize: That NO individual's mouth and NO individual's ears can be matters of REAL importance. “Can” be.)
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There can be no doubt.
[ The above notes have been recorded for my own future reference and, in this sketchy [ “public” ] form, may not appear relevant to TCB at all, or be of much interest to anybody else. I figure that them that has whichever Ears-He-Has-In-Mind will hear, just as I heard the outdoors-sound that inspired the first note which, in turn, inspired the rest you see above. ]
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