"no longer is death terrifying"

     "That death has been dissolved, and the cross has become victory over it, and it is no longer strong but is itself truly dead, no mean proof but an evident surety is that it is despised by all Christ's disciples, and everyone tramples on it, and no longer fears it, but with the sign of the cross and faith in Christ tread it under foot as something dead.  Of old, before the divine sojourn of the Savior, all used to weep for those dying as if they were perishing.  But since the Savior's raising of the body, no longer is death fearsome [(οὐκέτι . . . φοβερός)], but all believers in Christ tread on it as nothing, and would rather choose to die than deny their faith in Christ."

 St. Athanasius, De incarnatione 27, trans. Behr (St. Athanasius the Great On the incarnation:  Greek original and English translation, Popular patristics series 44a (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011), 108-109).

Textus receptus

 "Textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum:  in quo nihil immutatum aut corruptum damus."

     Η ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ.  [Hē Kainē Diathēkē.]  Novum Testamentum. Ex regiis aliisque optimis editionibus, hac nova expressum:  cui quid accesserit, praefatio docebit.  Lvgd. Batavorum:  Ex Officina Elzeviriana, [1633], p. *2 verso ("TYPOGRAPHI LECTORIBUS de hac editione", "The printers to the readers of this edition").  My thanks to Suzanne Smith for the diversion, and to Armin Siedlecki for the proper "page" terminology.

St. Athanasius on Gen 2:17

"This 'you shall die by death,' what else might it be except not merely to die, but to remain in the corruption of death?"

     St. Athanasius, De incarnatione 3, trans. Behr (St. Athanasius the Great On the incarnation:  Greek original and English translation, Popular patristics series 44a (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011), 57).

BHS:  כִּ֗י בְּי֛וֹם אֲכָלְךָ֥ מִמֶּ֖נּוּ מ֥וֹת תָּמֽוּת׃

LXX:  ᾗ δ᾽ ἂν ἡμέρᾳ φάγητε ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ, θανάτῳ ἀποθανεῖσθε.

Vulgate:  in quocumque enim die comederis ex eo, morte morieris.

     "Indeed, with the common Savior of all dying for us, we, the faithful in Christ, no longer die by death as before [(οὐκέτι νῦν ὥσπερ πάλαι . . . θανάτῳ ἀποθνῄσκομεν)] according to the threat of the law, for such condemnation has ceased.  But with corruption ceasing and being destroyed by the grace of the resurrection, henceforth according to the mortality of the body we are dissolved only for the time which God has set for each, that we may be able 'to attain to a better resurrection' (Heb 11:35).  For as seeds sown in the ground, we do not perish when we are dissolved [(οὐκ ἀπολλύμεθα διαλυόμενοι)], but as sown we shall arise again, death having been destroyed by the grace of the Savior" (Ibid. 21 (p. 95)).

"we were the purpose of his embodiment"

Τῆς γὰρ ἐκείνου ἐνσωματώσεως ἡμεῖς γεγόναμεν ὑπόθεσις

     St. Athanasius, De incarnatione 4, trans. Behr (St. Athanasius the Great On the incarnation:  Greek original and English translation, Popular patristics series 44a (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011), 59).

"God, . . . rich in means, employs all things for his hidden ends"

"Dieu, . . . fécond en moyens, emploie toutes choses à ses fins cachées".

     Fr. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, "Oraison funébre de Henriette-Marie de France, reine de la Grande-Bretagne" (Chaillot, 16 November 1669), in Bossuet: oraisons funèbres, panégyriques, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 33, ed. the Abbé Bernard Velat (Paris: Librairie Galllimard, 1951): 73.

Beyond him

     "He lost his life—fifteen years that he had thought would be, and ought to have been, the best and most abundant; those are gone from the earth, lost in disappointment and grief and darkness and work without hope, and now he is only where he was when he began. But that is enough, and more. He is returning home—not only to the place but to the possibility and promise that he once saw in it, and now, as not before, to the understanding that that is enough. After such grevious spending, enough, more than enough, remains. There is more. He lost his life, and now he has found it again.
     "Words come to him: 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . . Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil'—the words of the old psalm that [his older sister] Nancy had made him repeat when he was a boy until he would remember it all his life. He had always been able to see through those words to what they were about. He could see the green pastures and the still waters and the shepherd bringing the sheep down out of the hills in the evening to drink. It comes to him that he never understood them before, but that he does now. The man who first spoke the psalm had been driven to the limit, he had seen his ruin, he had felt in the weight of his own flesh the substantiality of his death and the measure of his despair. He knew that his origin was in nothing that he or any man had done, and that he could do nothing sufficient to his needs. And he looked finally beyond those limits and saw the world still there, potent and abounding, as it would be whether he lived or died, worthy of his life and work and faith. He saw that he would be distinguished not by what he was or anything he might become but by what he served. Beyond him was the peace and rest and joy that he desired. Beyond the limits of a man’s strength or intelligence or desire or hope or faith, there is more. The cup runs over. While a man lies asleep in exhaustion and despair, helpless as a child, the soft rain falls, the trees leaf, the seed sprouts in the planted field. And when he knows that he lives by a bounty not his own, though his ruin lies behind him and again ahead of him, he will be at peace, for he has seen what is worthy."

     Wendell Berry of Jack Beechum, in The memory of Old Jack, chap. 7 ("Through the valley") (Port William novels & stories:  the postwar years, ed. Jack Shoemaker, Library of America (New York:  Library of America, 2024), 251-252).
 

"his Word . . . tells us of him who surpasses all telling"

"The Father is beyond our sight and comprehension; but he is known by his Word, who tells us of him who surpasses all telling."

"Patrem quidem invisíbilem et indeterminabilem, quantum ad nos est, cognoscit suum ipsius Verbum, et cum sit inenarrabilis, ipse enarrat eum nobis:"

     St. Irenaeus, Adv. haer. IV.vi.3 (the numbering systems vary), as trans. Liturgy of the hours, Office of readings, Wednesday of Week 1 in Ordinary time.