From the Friars: De Profundis

In today’s Mass we pray Psalm 130 which is known as the “De Profundis”, the Latin translation of the first line: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” It can be seen as the cry of the human race, cut off from God by sin and doomed to death. Jesus wept over the death of His friend Lazarus and raised him from the tomb. He weeps over the death of all His children and longs to share His life with us.

A powerful example of this is the life of the famous author, Oscar Wilde. He is known in the popular culture as a hero of the homosexual liberation movement, who was persecuted unjustly during the puritanical Victorian age. This is very misleading. A closer look at his life reveals a colossal struggle between good and evil in the soul of a man who was an extraordinarily gifted artist.

He always had an attraction to Jesus and to the Catholic Church. He became very famous as a writer but also fell into a promiscuous lifestyle. He was sentenced to two years in jail for gross indecency when his affair with Lord Alfred Douglas became known publicly.

Wilde suffered greatly in prison. But there he read St. Augustine’s Confessions, works by St. John Henry Newman and the New Testament in Greek. He wrote a long letter to Douglas. Here we can see the grace of God working powerfully in his soul. He refers to his same-sex attraction as his pathology or sickness. In 1900 Oscar Wilde received Baptism and the final Sacraments on his deathbed. Fr. Cuthbert Dunne visited him several times during his last days and had this to say: “He turned to God for pardon and the healing grace of the Sacraments in the end, and died a child of the Catholic Church.”

Wilde’s friend, Robert Ross, published his prison letter in 1905 under the title of “De Profundis”. How appropriate for the man who cried out from the depths of darkness and sin for the mercy of God and was received with open arms.

And Jesus wept.

–Fr. Peter