"Oh my friend, my friend indeed, who at my need his life did spend."

"Nor could he have commanded anything more lovable, for this sacrament produces love and union.  It is characteristic of the greatest love to give itself as food [(Amoris enim maximi indicium est, seipsum dare in cibum)].  Had not the men of my tent exclaimed:  Who will feed us with his flesh to satisfy our hunger?"

     Albert the Great, Commentary on Luke 22:19, as trans. Liturgy of the hours, Second reading, Office of readings for the Feast of St. Albert the Great, 14 November.  Versions:

Albert the Great, Super Lucam 22:19, Opera omnia, ed. Jammy, vol. 10 (Lyon, 1651), p. 320, col. 1, second full paragraph; ed. Borgnet, vol. 19 (1894-1895), p. 673, col. 2.

Job 31:31 Douay-Rheims:  "If the men of my tabernacle have not said: Who will give us of his flesh that we may be filled?"

Job 31:31 Vulgate:  "si non dixerunt viri tabernaculi mei quis det de carnibus eius ut saturemur[?]"

Job 31:31 NETS:   "And if too my female attendants often said, 'Who might grant us to be filled with his flesh?'"

Job 31:31 LXX:  εἰ δὲ καὶ πολλάκις εἶπον αἱ θεράπαιναί μου Τίς ἂν δῴη ἡμῖν τῶν σαρκῶν αὐτοῦ πλησθῆναι;

Job 31:31 NRSV ("meaning of the Hebrew uncertain"):  "if those of my tent ever said, ‘O that we might be sated with his flesh!’"

Job 31:31 BHS:  אִם־לֹ֣א אָ֭מְרוּ מְתֵ֣י אָהֳלִ֑י מִֽי־יִתֵּ֥ן מִ֝בְּשָׂרֹ֗ו לֹ֣א נִשְׂבָּֽע

"a hope longer than time and stronger than misfortune"

"I find no solution for the future except in Christianity and in Catholic Christianity in particular. . . .  If there is to be a future, a mighty and free future, that future is still far off, far beyond the visible horizon; we will be able to reach it only with the help of that Christian hope whose wings grow in proportion as everything seems to betray it, a hope longer than time and stronger than misfortune."

     François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d'outre-tombe 14.7 [=partie 4, livre x], as quoted by Jean-Luc Marion and translated by Stephen E. Lewis in A brief apology for a Catholic moment (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 2021), 85.  French from pp. 468 and 472 of tome 6 of the new Garnier edition of 1898-1899 edited by Edmund Biré:

. . . je ne trouve de solution à l’avenir que dans le christianisme et dans le christianisme catholique. . . .
. . . si un avenir doit être, un avenir puissant et libre, cet avenir est loin encore, loin au delà de l’horizon visible; on n’y pourra parvenir qu’à l’aide de cette espérance chrétienne dont les ailes croissant à mesure que tout semble la trahir, espérance plus longue que le temps et plus forte que le malheur.

The line with which that second paragraph begins is "Si le ciel n’a pas prononcé son dernier arrêt;" "If heaven has not pronounced its last 'Halt!'" or, better, "sentence".

"as if [heretics] could be kept in the city of God indifferently without any correction"

     "But the devil, seeing the temples of the demons deserted, and the human race running to the name of the liberating Mediator, has moved the heretics under the Christian name to resist the Christian doctrine, as if they could be kept indifferently in the city of God without any correction, just as the city of confusion indifferently held the philosophers who were of diverse and adverse opinions.  Those, therefore, in the Church of Christ who savour anything morbid and depraved, and, on being corrected that they may savour what is wholesome and right, contumaciously resist, and will not amend their pestiferous and deadly dogmas, but persist in defending them, become heretics, and, going without, are to be reckoned as enemies who serve for her discipline.  For even thus they profit by their wickedness those true catholic members of Christ, since God makes a good use even of the wicked, and all things work together for good to them that love Him.  For all the enemies of the Church, whatever error blinds or malice depraves them, exercise her patience if they receive the power to afflict her corporally; and if they only oppose her by wicked thought, they exercise her wisdom:  but at the same time, if these enemies are loved, they exercise her benevolence, or even her benificence, whether she deals with them by persuasive doctrine or by terrible discipline."

     St. Augustine, City of God 18.51, trans. Dods.  =CSEL 40.2, 351-352.

"We . . . who are called and are Christians"

"Nos ergo qui sumus uocamurque Christiani. . . ."

     St. Augustine, City of God 18.54, trans. Dods. =CSEL 40.2, 362 l. 1.  Note that it is actually the reverse:  "We . . . who are are and are called Christians. . . ."  Search CAG for more examples of this, as something similar is present in some of the collects.

"he alone gives them a place in us"

"the Spirit of God, while he operates in our hearts, operates so that we feel [(sentiamus)] the virtue of Christ (Rom. 5:5).  For when we receive [(concipiamus)] the benefits of Christ with the mind, this happens by the illumination [(illuminatione)] of the Holy Spirit; it is by his persuasion [(persuasione)] that they are sealed [(obsignentur)] in our hearts [(French:  car il nous illumine pour nous faire congnoistre ses graces:  il les seelle et imprime en noz ames)].  In short, he alone gives them a place in us [(dat illis in nobis locum)] (Eph. 1:13).  He regenerates us and makes us new creatures (Tit. 3:5).  Hence whatever gifts are ours are offered [(offerentur)] us in Christ, [but] we receive [(recipimus)] them by virtue of the Spirit."

    John Calvin, Catechism of 1545, q. 91 (in c. 14), as trans. I. John Hesselink on p. 305 of The Calvin handbook ed. Selderhuis (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2009) =COS 2, 88.

The problem with the language of "values"

      "Nietzsche explained it:  'what does nihilism mean?  T[hat t]he highest values become devalued' [(Nachgelassene Fragmente 1887, 9[35])].  But don't be fooled:  the highest values become devalued not because they lose their value as if by black magic, but because, suddenly, we notice that they consist only of that—their value" (59), and no longer of any things or realities in themselves.  For values are assigned by the evaluation of an evaluator exercising the sheer will to power, "a pure and simple will of [nothing but] will" (62), and to reduce something to a value is to annihilate the thing (61).  "the thing's reality in itself" is precisely what "the thing loses by becoming a value," such that "Nothing is more nihilist at the roots, or more in conformity with nihilism, than proclaiming values, because the value already and precisely is not, not in itself, not at all" (60).  Nietzsche himself:  "'That there is absolutely no truth; that there is no absolute composition of things, no "thing in itself"—that itself is a nihilism, and to be precise the most extreme sort.  It poses the value [(Werth)] of things precisely in the fact that no reality corresponds to this value, but only a symptom of strength among those who instituted values'" (60n3, italics harmonized with the emphases in Nietzsche Source; Nachgelassene Fragmente 1887, 9[35]).

     Jean-Luc Marion, A brief apology for a Catholic moment, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 2021), 59 ff.