Blinded by the light

"with respect to things that are most knowable, our mind is as the eye of a nightbird towards the light of the sun [(ut oculus noctuae ad solem)]. . . ."

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, lib. 1 cap. 11 n. 1 (Thomas Aquinas: selected writings, ed. & trans. Ralph McInerny (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 1998), 246).  A noctua is a night-owl, but Thomas cites here Metaphysics 2.1 (993b, ll. 8-11):  "Perhaps, too, as difficulties are of two kinds, the cause of the present difficulty is not in the facts but in us.  For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all" (trans. W. D. Ross).

Batut on the one Son/son of God at prayer

     "While the Jewish tradition affirms that Israel is the son of God, the divine filiation of Jesus does not contradict this first filiation.  Jesus is not the Son of God without being, at the same time, the 'son of David, son of Abraham' (Mt 1:1).  In him, the two filiations are as indissociable as his two natures.  Or, better:  the second is taken up into the first without confusion or separation, just as his humanity is not abolished but brought to fulfillment when the Person of the Word appropriates it forever.
     "Consequently, when Jesus prays, it is the prayer of Israel throughout the centuries that is brought to fulfillment.  He takes up again the prayer of his people, through the cycle of feasts and the rhythm of goings-up to Jerusalem.  He prays the psalms, and his last prayer in the gospel of Luke is a citation of a psalm, with the addition of the word, 'Father':  'Father, into your hands I commend my spirit' (Lk 23:26; cf. Ps 31:6).  Thus we can say truly that it is precisely as the Son of the Father that Jesus is capable of bringing to fulfillment the entire prayer of Israel, in some sense revealing it to itself as the expression of the filial destiny of the people of God."

     Jean-Pierre Batut, "Praying to the Father through the Son in the Spirit: reflections on the specificity of Christian prayer," trans. Michelle K. Borras, Communio: the international Catholic review 36, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 629 (623-642).

Batut on theology as prayer

"all discourse about [God] that places him in the third person is, properly speaking, contradictory: to speak of him as a 'that'--which I am doing at present--, is always in some way to speak of something that is not he. . . . what attention is required of man, not only not to take the divine name in vain (cf. Ex 20:7; Dt 5:11), but never to forget that it is a contradiction to speak of God without invoking God."

     Jean-Pierre Batut, "Praying to the Father through the Son in the Spirit: reflections on the specificity of Christian prayer," trans. Michelle K. Borras, Communio: the international Catholic review 36, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 625 (623-642).