"law . . . is the ally of everyone. . . . [W]e don't allow [our children] to be free until we establish a constitution in them, just as in a city, and—by fostering their best part [(the rational part)] with our own—equip them with a guardian and ruler similar to our own to take our place. Then, and only then, we set them free."
"those who have no experience of reason or virtue, but are always occupied with feasts and the like, are brought down and then back up to the middle, as it seems, and wander in this way throughout their lives, never reaching beyond this to what is truly higher up, never looking up at it or being brought up to it, and so they aren't filled with that which really is and never taste any stable or pure pleasure. Instead, they always look down at the ground like cattle, and, with their heads bent over the dinner table, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. To outdo others in these things, they kick and butt them with iron horns and hooves, killing each other, because their desires are insatiable. For the part that they're trying to fill is like a vessel full of holes, and neither it nor the things they are trying to fill it with are among the things that are [(ἅτε οὐχὶ τοῖς οὖσιν οὐδὲ τὸ ὂν οὐδὲ τὸ στέγον ἑαυτῶν πιμπλάντες; an initial stab: as if filling with things that don't exist neither the existing nor the leak-proof [part] of themselves]."
"there are three things an intelligent preacher should never speak about, and which an up-to-date Christian should think about as seldom as possible, although one has to recite the Creed each Sunday (but there are so many myths therein; and besides, one can always repeat a formula—even in the vernacular—without stopping to think about it).
"What I then perceive is like a pure activity, a consistency, but superior to the whole order of the imaginable, a vivid tenacity, at once precarious (it is nothing for me to crush a gnat) and fierce (within me, around me, mounts up like a clamor the universal vegetation) by which things surge up against me and triumph over a possible disaster, stand there, and not merely there, but in themselves, and by which they shelter in their thickness, in the humble measure meted out to what is perishable, a kind of glory demanding to be recognized."
"Public annexation of the marketplace under nondiscrimination and other public norms not qualified by religious accommodation" "brings to mind features of the ancient struggle between Christians and pagan authorities. As we saw in chapter 6, 'as a prerequisite to engaging in any commercial transaction [Christians] had to give specific divine honours to the Caesars. Without doing so they would not have been able to secure provisions for their daily needs, as all goods could only be bought or sold through the authorized markets in a first-century city.' Subjects had to be certified for economic activity: 'then, and only then, could they sell or purchase essential commodities.' A similar logic is being applied, it seems, to pharmacists, doctors, marriage counselors, wedding photographers, florists, bakers, and others who are told: accept requirements that put you in violation of your religion or else get out of your business or profession."
"One recent conciliating book seeks to shed light on the religious situation in late antiquity by drawing parallels between Christians of that time and the LGBT movement of today. . . . The gist of the argument, it seems, is that although people then and now have often been mistrustful of perceived differences, once they got to know the supposedly different folks ('The New Neighbors Who Moved in Next Door,' as one chapter title puts it), they come to realize that the differences are not of great importance and need not impede a cordial human fellowship. Thus, by quietly getting to know their neighbors, and getting to be known by them, Christians 'made a place [for themselves] in Caesar's Empire.'
"He had assembled, with a long patience and real ability, an
impressively complete library on the New Testament. These books, they had been his entire life. Yet the moment came when [unable to hold a
pen or even, later, read] he had to part with them. While they were being removed, he, already
paralyzed and immobile in his wheelchair, put up a brave front. But when [his] whole world had gone and the
door had been shut [behind it], the tears came unbidden."
"The mid-century Oxford philosopher J. L. Austin was sometimes considered too arch for his own good. My favourite anecdote about him comes from a lecture he once gave in New York. 'There are many languages in which a double negative can be used to mean a positive,' the visitor told his audience, 'but none in which a double positive can produce a negative.' A well-timed heckle is usually attributed to Sidney Morgenbesser. 'Yeah, yeah.'"
"Solovyov perceived an inner link between dogma and models of political and social order. For him, it was no surprise that the rash of Byzantine emperors who championed in turn Arian, Nestorian, Monophysite, Monothelite, and Iconoclast heresies, also raised themselves to quasi-divine status and considered the Church and matters of theology to be under their political jurisdiction. Each Christological or Trinitarian heresy contains the seeds of a Church-State relationship inimical to Christian thought and practice:Heresy attacked the perfect unity of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ precisely in order to undermine the living bond between Church and State, and to confer upon the latter an absolute independence. Hence it is clear why the emperors of the Second Rome, intent on maintaining within Christendom the absolutism of the pagan Sate, were so partial to all the heresies, which were but manifold variations on a single theme."Andrew Kuiper, "Solovyov's Russia and the Catholic Church," Church life journal, 26 November 2018. The quotation is said to come from p. 14 of Solovyov's Russia and the universal church.
Have mercie, Lord have mercie: for I know | How much I nede thy mercie in this case. | The horror of my gilt doth dayly growe, | And growing weares my feble hope of grace. | I fele and suffer in my thralled breast | Secret remorse and gnawing of my heart. | I fele my sinne, my sinne that hath opprest | My soule with sorrow and surmounting smart. | Drawe me to mercie: for so oft as I | Presume to mercy to direct my sight, | My Chaos and my heape of sinne doth lie, | Between me and thy mercies shining light. | What ever way I gaze about for grace, | My filth and fault are ever in my face.
"When contemplation makes us drop the book from our hands, there is nothing more for us to do than to let it fall without worry."
"In a sense, I guess I did read my way into the Church. But I didn’t reason my way. I was drawn in large measure by envy of Joyce, who had been raised in a Catholic Church that had spiritual and imaginative power, and that went on haunting him after he had left. I couldn’t imagine writing an autobiographical novel to compare with Joyce’s Portrait, about a young woman who grew up singing 'On Eagle’s Wings.'"
"There’s a lot of talk about how Catholics have something called the 'sacramental imagination.' Often this is said sentimentally, as if Catholics were romantic savages who view everything as suffused with wonderment and beauty, enchanted people who climb up and down the rungs of the analogy of being. This is a way of talking around the actual content of the faith. What the sacramental imagination should mean, first of all, is actual belief in the sacraments: Marriage is indissoluble and ordained by God. Christ is present in the Eucharist and must be revered. My grandparents in their concern for my baptism were much better examples of the sacramental imagination than all the faith-in-fiction litterateurs combined. The sacrament of baptism was real to them, and so long as I went without it, they feared my damnation. They had the sacramental imagination in that cold, narrow sense. My parents did not."
"It is also necessary to safeguard without let-up the essential contemplative function of the liturgy, which demands an appreciation for [(le sens de)] sacred silence. Silence and song are the privileged expressions of human communion. A liturgical celebration that culminates [(s'achever)] spontaneously in silence gives proof of its religious quality. Monastic wisdom knows how to effect [(sait)] this, for it always mixes silent prayer into the divine office".
"Never in any case whatever is a genuine effort of the attention wasted. It always has its effect on the spiritual plane and in consequence on the lower one of the intelligence, for all spiritual light lightens the mind.
"in the history of the mind as in that of towns, the ruins [of a civilization] expose the bedrock [(les fondations)] that, in the case of man, is a matter not of what he constructed, but of what is innate."
"Christianity cannot be de-Hellenized . . . without being de-Christianized at the same time, and Christianity cannot be de-Christianized without an eclipse of the sense of God and man casting its dark shadow over the whole of our thought and life."At the head of the Cross of Christ, the Gospels tell us, was an inscription which read 'Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.' According to St. John, it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. What could this detail even mean to our de-Hellenized minds, except perhaps to indicate an early example of sociological 'inculturation'? But for the traditional Christian, on whom the ends of the ages had come, and for whom the universe itself is a symbol crying out to us to recognize its Creator, it would have meant much more. It would signify that the whole world was united in judgement under the Cross of Christ in the fullness of time, and that it was precisely in this Kairos—which unites the language of true worship, the language of power, and the language of the wise—that God chose to reveal himself. The wisdom of the Greeks could not therefore be adventitious to the meaning of the gospel and to the articulation of Christian faith, as indeed they have never been up till now.
"the idea of a gauzy mercy without justice or truth appears suspiciously self-serving for a Church that has so much to confess."It would perhaps be unfair to burden [the] progressive proponents [of this false paradigm] with the full weight of its Kuhnian meaning, just as it would be unfair to charge the pope with full responsibility for bringing this change about [(21, italics mine)].
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| A moonset at sunrise by Tracie Hall |
'Does not a good man consider every day a festival?' And a very splendid one, to be sure, if we are virtuous. For the world is the most sacred and divine of temples, and the one most fitting for the gods [(ἱερὸν μὲν γὰρ ἁγιώτατον ὁ κόσμος ἐστὶ καὶ θεοπρεπέστατον)]. Man is introduced into it by birth to be a spectator [(θεατής)]: not of artificial, immobile statues, but of the perceptible images of intelligible essences [that the divine mind, says Plato, has revealed, images which have innate within themselves the beginnings of life and motion [(οὐ χειροκμήτων οὐδ' ἀκινήτων ἀγαλμάτων . . . , ἀλλ' οἷα νοῦς θεῖος αἰσθητὰ μιμήματα νοητῶν, . . . ἔμφυτον ἀρχὴν ζωῆς ἔχοντα καὶ κινήσεως ἔγηνεν)]: images] such as the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers whose water always flows afresh, and the earth, which sends forth food for plants and animals alike. A life which is a perfect revelation, and an initiation into these mysteries, should be filled with tranquility and joy [(ὧν τὸν βίον μύησιν ὄντα καὶ τελετὴν τελειοτάτην εὐθυμίας δεῖ μεστὸν εἶναι καὶ γήθους)].
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| Catholic Theological Union |
Such a discipline of spirituality will, to be sure, be of a different character than the spiritual disciplines of former eras. Rather than an obedient immersion in an institutional culture, it will require a high tolerance for aloneness, permanent quest, vulnerability, and 'things falling apart.' It will presume a willingness to probe, experiment, and accept challenges to every element of one’s lived spirituality. It will call for the repeated risk of dialogue with the sometimes unnerving range of interpretations applied to the phenomena of one’s own and others’ spiritual experiences.
"there is one Jesus Christ our Lord, who came by means of the whole economy and who has recapitulated all things in himself."
"Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant N. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen."Into thy hands, O merciful Saviour, we commend the soul of thy servant, now departed from the body. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, a sheep of thine own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of thine own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.1883: The book annexed to the report of the Joint Committee on the Book of Common Prayer as modified by the action of the General Convention of MDCCCLXXXIII (New York: E. & J. B. Younge Co., 1885), 307:
Into thy merciful hands, O heavenly Father, we commend the soul of thy servant, now departing from the body. Acknowledge, we meekly beseech thee, a sheep of thine own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of thine own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, into the glorious estate of thy chosen saints in heaven. O most merciful Jesus, that thing cannot perish which is committed to thy charge; Receive, we beseech thee, his spirit in peace. Amen.1627: John Cosin, A collection of priuate deuotions, as reproduced in 1867:
Into Thy merciful hands, O Lord, we commend the soul of this Thy servant, now departing from the body: acknowledge, we meekly beseech Thee, a work of Thine own hands, a sheep of Thine own fold, a lamb of Thine own flock, a sinner of Thine own redeeming. Receive him into the blessed arms of Thy unspeakable mercy, into the sacred rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious estate of Thy chosen saints in heaven.
A Christian who wishes to have both his or her doctrine of creatio ex nihilo and a faith that the world possesses in its nature some kind of means for eternal survival is bound to be logically inconsistent.On the other "person[s] in creation", i.e. the angels, see p. 277, but especially 286, where only "man, unlike the angels . . . , forms an organic part of the material world, being the highest point in its evolution."
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"Though the charge of temporal affairs seems to be and is distracting, I have no doubt that by your good and upright intention you turn everything you do to something spiritual for God's glory, and are thus very pleasing to his Divine Goodness. The distractions which you accept for His greater service, in conformity with His divine will interpreted to you by obedience cannot only equal the union and recollection of uninterrupted contemplation, but even be more acceptable to Him, proceeding as they do from a more active and vigorous charity. May God our Creator and Lord deign to preserve and increase this charity in your soul and in the souls of all. We correctly hold that any activity in which charity is exercised unto God's glory, is very holy and suitable for us. . . ."
COme Bacchus, God of Poetry, by
right; | Lend me thine influence, whilst now I write. | Thy Sackbut can into my breast inspire | More active heat, than can Apollo's Lire. | He's an
Vsurper;
and his pow'r a crack, | If we his Helicon compare with Sack. | Lock up that Nectar but a year or two, | And see what all his Hippocrene can do. | That Trough of Pegasus! a
pretious
grace | To vaunt thus of an
Hackney's wat'ring-place! |
| Ghirlandaio (15th cent.) |
Contra ducem superbiæ | Sequamur hunc nos principem
Against the duke of pride | May we follow this princeTrans. Hurst (Gregory the Great: forty gospel homilies, Cistercian studies series 123 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1990), 287):
As often as something requiring wonderful courage is to be done, Michael is said to be sent. We are to understand from the very action and name [('Who is like God')] that no one can do what is possible to God. The ancient enemy, who in his pride desired to be like God, said, I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of heaven I will set my throne on high; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High. At the end of the world, when he is left to his own strength, he is to be destroyed by a most dreadful punishment when he does battle with the archangel Michael. So John tells us that war broke out with Michael the archangel, so that the one who proudly elevated himself to likeness to God may learn, after he has been destroyed by Michael, that no one can rise to likeness to God by pride.
"by constant reading and long-continued meditation he had made his breast a library of Christ."Laudato si, mi signore, per quelli ke perdonano per lo tuo amore, et sostengo infirmitate et tribulatione. Beati quelli ke ‘l sosterrano in pace, ka da te, altissimo, sirano incoronati.Brian Maloney, Francis of Assisi and his 'Canticle of Brother Sun' reassessed, The new Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), xxi-xxii:
Laudato si', mi' Signore, per quelli ke perdonano per lo Tuo amore | e sostengo infirmitate et tribulazione. | Beati quelli ke 'l sosterrano in pace, | ka da Te, Altissimo, sirano incoronati.
Therefore thou has heard the voice of my prayer (Douay-Rheims)....
Therefore you listened to the voice of my petition (NETS)....
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