For God is n[either] destitute [nor stingy], having, for his [own] glory, made you, too, a god.

Source

οὐ γὰρ πτωκεύει θεὸς καὶ σὲ θεὸν ποιήσας εἰς δόξαν αὐτοῦ.

     St. Hippolytus (c. 170-c. 236), Refutatio omnium haeresium X.33, translation mine.  Greek from Hippolytus Werke, vol. 3 =GCS, ed. H. Achelis and G. Bonwetsch, vol. 26, ed. Paul Wendland (1916), p. 293, line 15.  Immediate context:  creation in and restoration to the imago Dei.  A few additional translations of this sentence, of "much concern to commentators" (F. Legge):

• Liturgy of the hours:  "God is not beggarly, and for the sake of his own glory he has given us a share in his divinity."  According to the Oxford Latin dictionary, mendicus can mean both "destitute," and "beggarly" or "mean" (stingy).  But that latter sense is not given prominence in the Greek lexica, just for example the Patristic Greek lexicon.
• M. David Litwa, 2015:  "God is not poor; for his glory, he makes you also a god!"
• F. Legge, 1921:  "For God asks no alms, and has made thee God for His own glory."
• J. H. MacMahon, ANF 5:  "For the Deity, (by condescension,) does not diminish aught of the divinity of His divine perfection; having made thee even God unto His glory!"

Sehnsucht

Quebec City & the St. Lawrence River, 1722

"'I wish you and I could go very far up the river in Pierre Charron’s canoe, and then off into the forests to the Huron country, and find the very places where the martyrs died.  I would rather go out there than — anywhere.'  Rather than go home to France, she was thinking.
     "But perhaps, after she grew up, she could come back to Canada again, and do all those things she longed to do.  Perhaps some day, after weeks at sea, she would find herself gliding along the shore of the Îsle d’Orléans and would see before her Kebec, just she had left it; the grey roofs and spires smothered in autumn gold, with the Récollect flèche rising slender and pure against the evening, and the crimson afterglow welling up out of the forest like a glorious memory."

     Cécile Auclair to little Jacques Gaux, in Willa Cather's Shadows on the rock (1931) V.iv =Library of America edition, p. 612, underscoring mine.  Cécile and her father, the apothecary Euclid Auclair, will not return to France after all.  But Cécile has been told that they will, and is here preparing to say goodbye to the New France of a very happy childhood, and its people.

"But please, my brothers and sisters, forget and ignore this controversial and apparently blasphemous Declaration, in its entirety, and have a peaceful Christmas. Amen."

     Bishop Martin Anwel Mtumbuka, Homily, Christmas Vigil, St. Anne’s Parish, Chilumba Deanery, Diocese of Karonga, Malawi, 24 December 2023.  Mtumbuka does get the document wrong, but in a way that actually gives it more credit than it is due.

"no sun yet, but a bright rain-grey light, silver and cut steel and pearl on the grey roofs and walls"

"Everything was glittering when they stepped out [of Notre Dame de la Victoire] into the square; no sun yet, but a bright rain-grey light, silver and cut steel and pearl on the grey roofs and walls.  Long veils of smoky fog were caught in the pine forests across the river.  And how fresh the air smelled!"

     Willa Cather, Shadows on the rock (1931) II.iii =Library of American edition, p. 508, a novel of Catholic Quebec set in 1697-1698.  This admittedly 21st-century image of Notre Dame de la Victoire captures almost perfectly the picture these lovely words painted in my mind.

"What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"

National Endowment for the Humanities

"I think [Athens and Jerusalem] are ultimately not compatible, if you rightly distinguish the two points of departure: wonder seeking its replacement by knowledge, which makes the perplexities go away, on the side of Athens, versus, on the side of Jerusalem, the fear or reverence for the Lord, which is only the beginning of wisdom but which is never superseded by a kind of full understanding or by comfort in the sufficiency of one’s own powers. The spirit of these two points of departure is very different. Moreover, the wisdom of Jerusalem makes extraordinary demands on how you are to live. What begins with the fear and reverence of the Lord soon issues in a long list of commandments about how to live your life. By contrast, the pursuit of wisdom in the manner of Plato and Aristotle, following the model of Socrates, produces no obligations to community or family, and it seems that the highest kind of life is a private life of self-fulfillment through the pursuit of wisdom and reflection. That is a very different view of the good life from the one that is held up by the bible, i.e. the life in community in pursuit of justice, holiness, and love of the neighbor. . . .  these two wisdoms are at odds with one another; the demands they make upon us are not easily harmonized. . . .
     "The statement 'The unexamined life is not worth living' (the Socratic model, if you will) is very different from 'it has been shown to you, o man, what the Lord doth require of you.' . . .  [F]rom a biblical point of view the answer to the question of what is the human good is not an object of one of the human sciences, to be found by our own lights. In fact the bible in part begins by holding up a mirror in which we see the insufficiency of our intellect and the muteness of that upon which we exercise our mind (mainly the natural world and the world of our experience) for giving the proper instruction with respect to the human good. For years and years and years, I read that passage in Aristotle and used to say, 'of course, it’s an object of inquiry,' but the way of the bible does not say that how to live your life is an object of inquiry. . . .  [T]here is something radically different between a view of life in which nothing is immune to critical examination and a view of life that makes demands in both truth and practice, which you don’t regard as the fruits of an inquiry."

     Leon Kass, "Athens, Jerusalem, and modern science:  an interview with Leon Kass, Amy Apfel Kass, and Francis Oakley," The cresset:  a review of literature, the arts, and public affairs 72, no. 1 (Michaelmas 2008):  27-33.  Headline from, of course, Tertullian, Prescription against heretics 7.

Gratia non tollit naturam

"What is the meaning of the double proclamation of  'My father, my father'? Furthermore, why refer to Elijah as a parental figure? Elisha was implying that to him, Elijah filled the dual parental role. The Zohar comments on the concepts of Musar Avikha and Torat Imekha (Proverbs 1:8), that 'father’s instruction' represents the Written Law, while 'mother’s Torah' symbolizes the Oral Law. However, 'Written Law' (Torah she-bikhtav) is not be taken literally in the sense of the actual written text, but rather as that which can be reduced to writing. Torah she-ba’al Peh, however, must be absorbed through experience, not through a written record. Both the code of Sinai and the fire of Sinai must be transmitted. Fire serves three functions: to illuminate, to heat, and to consume. But the fire of Sinai only contained the first two characteristics: A child must understand that the fire of Sinai, like that at the burning bush, never consumes. It is the role of a father to transmit this voice of Sinai. On the other hand, according to tradition, God addressed the women first (Rashi to Exodus 19:3). While a father instructs halakhot and rebukes the wayward child, it is the motherly figure who serves to inspire. This is Torat Imekha which took precedent at Sinaiָ, corresponds to the oral Law, and cannot be written down."

     Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik, as quoted (?) here, underscoring mine.  I was put onto this by his grandson, Rabbi Meier Soloveichik, in this tribute to Robert P. George.

"by the message of an angel"

Fra Angelico, Museo Diocesano, Cortona, Italy.

"Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord, your grace into our hearts, that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son was made known by the message of an Angel, may by his Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of his Resurrection.  Who."

     Collect for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, current Roman Missal, and of course the prayer with which the Angelus concludes.  Bruylants, vol. 2, no. 575 on pp. 156-157 =Corpus orationum no. ___, and thus present (for the Feast of the Annunciation) already as no. 879 in the 8th/9th-century Gelasian sacramentary of Angoulême (Paris, B.N. ms lat. 816).  Cf. CCSL 159C, Liber sacramentorum Engolismensis, ed. Saint-Roche (1987), p. 131:

"Gratiam tuam quaesumus Domine mentibus nostris infunde, ut qui angelo nuntiante Christi filii tui incarnationem cognouimus, per passionem eius [et crucem] ad resurrectionis gloriam perducamur.  Per."

"No better time to be a Catholic"

"At various times in the John Paul II era there would be complaints from conservative Catholics, asking why, if liberals believe so intensely in moral and doctrinal transformation, if they are so committed to having (for instance) married or female clergy, intercommunion with other Christian churches, acceptance of homosexuality and contraception and even perhaps abortion, they don’t join one of the numerous Christian bodies where those transformations have taken place? Why be a dissenting and disgruntled Roman Catholic when you can just be a faithful Episcopalian or Congregationalist?

"The answer, surely, is that the religious-liberal project believes itself to be God’s project, that its tireless advocates believe themselves to be doing the Holy Spirit’s work, and it proves very little about God’s ultimate intentions if a few modestly sized bodies in the firmament of mainline Protestantism embrace the sexual revolution. You will only know and prove that God wants liberalization when liberalization comes to the church of Rome and its billion-odd Catholics. You can’t be fully vindicated, fully assured of Providence’s favor, unless you change that church.

"A similar logic applies to conservative Catholics [under Pope Francis and Fiducia supplicans] today."

     Ross Douthat, "No better time to be a Catholic:  Catholicism's problems are the problems of the world," Opinion, The New York times, 22 December 2023, underscoring mine.

Fiat of God, fiat of Mary

"In the days of the creation of the world, when God was uttering His living and mighty 'Let there be', the word of the Creator brought creatures into the world.  But on that day, unexampled in the life of the world, when Divine Miriam uttered Her brief and obedient 'So be it', I hardly dare to say what happened then—the word of the creature brought the Creator down into the world."

     Philaret (LC:  Filaret) Drozdov, Metropolitan of Moscow (1782-1867), Sermon 23 on the Annunciation (1823), as quoted by Leonid Ouspensky on p. 172 of Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The meaning of icons, trans. G. E. H. Palmer & E. Kadloubovsky (Crestwood, NY:  St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1982).  Fiat is the term in the Vulgate of Gen 1 (cf. Γενηθήτω), just as in the Vulgate of Lk 1:38 (cf. γένοιτό).  Since I don't have ready access to a modern printed edition of the Слова и речи (Slova i rechi), and haven't yet located it in the 19th-century printings that have been scanned into repositories like the Hathi Trust Digital Library, I'll have to trust for now the text of this sermon available here, and hope I've selected the right words exactly:

Во дни творения мира, когда Бог изрекал Свое живое и мощное: «да будет», слово Творца производило в мир твари: но в сей безпримерный в бытии мира день, когда Божественная Мариам изрекла свое кроткое и послушное «буди», – едва дерзаю выговорить, что тогда соделалось, – слово твари низводит в мир Творца.

     My thanks to Dr. Richard B. Steele for quoting this in English originally.

"it takes only one undeniable fact to topple the carefully constructed denial of the existence of such facts"

"Historians have on occasion been reprimanded for believing in the existence of facts. . . . [But] in the end, it takes only one undeniable fact to topple the carefully constructed denial of the existence of such facts."

     David C. Steinmetz, "Doing history as theologians," Calvin theological journal 50, no. 2 (November 2015):  175-176 (174-180).

"is the light of our own reality still faintly reaching us only from the death of our own star, far back in time?"

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs

"Liberalism seeks to sustain history beyond its 'end,' beyond the collapse of a civilization, such that all the imperial voyaging of the West has been but the voyaging of a specter, of a Flying Dutchman always uneasily aware that its mariners have shot the symbolic albatross, to mix my allegories.  The upshot of this voyaging has been the pillaging and destroying of all other histories, with the consequence that the liberal ending of history has now indeed been universalized.  Yet this liberal ending seems to be now itself threatened with extinction, even if what could come next remains wholly obscure.  Or in other terms, the reality that, back in port, Latin civilization ended several hundred years ago returns to haunt what could now be our universal voyage to literal extinction.
     "So is the light of our own reality still faintly reaching us only from the death of our own star, far back in time?  One could argue so."

     John Milbank, "Beyond progressivism:  toward a personalist metaphysics of history," The hedgehog review:  critical reflections on contemporary culture 25, no. 2 (Summer 2023):  54-55 (46-61).  Nietzsche might say, Yes, the death of God; Milbank might say, Yes, the loss of an adequate metaphysics of history.

Throw by all the libraries in the world

      "As was true of most Methodist leaders of the time, including Bishop Asbury, Cartwright was opposed not to higher education but, rather, to the use of theological schools for the designing of 'man-made' ministers.  Nevertheless, the Methodists were in no hurry to found colleges.  Between 1780 and 1829, forty colleges and universities were successfully founded in the United States.  Of these, 13 were Presbyterian, 1 was Catholic, 1 was German Reformed, 1 was a joint effort by the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, and 11 were public (W. W. Sweet, 1964b).  None was Methodist.  Indeed, just prior to the founding of Indiana Asbury University in 1837, a committee of the Indiana Conference gave reassurance that it would never be a 'manufactory in which preachers are to be made.'  Thus the founders kept faith with the bishop’s memory as well as with the spirit of American Methodism as expressed in the Discipline of 1784, which advised preachers never to let study interfere with soul-saving:  'If you can do but one, let your studies alone.  We would throw by all the libraries in the world rather than be guilty of the loss of one soul.'"

     Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The churching of America, 1776-2005:  winners and losers in our religious economy, 2nd ed. (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 77.  As that last contextualizing link shows, this is John Wesley at least as far back as 1766, if not further (and was very widely reprinted; follow up on this sometime).

May the true faith he taught so well be always our light and our strength

"Lord, may the prayers of Saint John Damascene help us, and may the true faith he taught so well always be our light and our strength.  We ask this through".

My translation:  Grant us [the boon] of being helped by the prayers of St. John the priest, so that the true faith, which he taught so exceptionally well, may be always our light and our strength.  Through.

"Praesta nobis, quaesumus, Domine, sancti Ioannis, presbyteri, precibus adiuvari, ut vera fides, quam ille excellenter docuit, sit semper lux et fortitudo nostra.  Per".

     Oratio for the Feast of St. John of Damascus (660-c. 750), 4 December, Liturgia horarum.  I have yet to find the one for the former feast of 27 December.  The prologue to the De fide orthodoxa included in the Liturgy of the hours is beautiful, too.

The womb of Mary encloses

Whom [dry] land, [deep] sea, [and bright] sky | cherish, adore, [and] proclaim, | he [all the while] governing th[at] tripartite machina [of the world], | the [virginal] close of Mary bears.

Quem terra, pontus, aethera
colunt, adorant, praedicant
trinam regentem machinam,
claustrum Mariae baiulat.

     Pseudo-Venantius Fortunatus, "Quem terra."  See "Carminvm spvriorvm Appendix" viii, MGH Auct. ant. 4.1 (1881), p. 385.  I have not found it in the three-volume edition of the Poèmes ed. Reydellet, Collection des Universités de France (Paris:  Les Belles Lettres, 1994-2004).

Prayer of (supposedly) St. Thomas Aquinas for the virtues

There are a number of variations on this, for example here and here.  I'll quote only the former:

O Almighty and all-knowing God, without beginning or end, who art the giver, preserver, and rewarder of all virtue: Grant me to stand firm on the solid foundation of faith, be protected by the invincible shield of hope, and be adorned by the nuptial garment of charity; Grant me by justice to obey thee, by prudence to resist the crafts of the Devil, by temperance to hold to moderation, by fortitude to bear adversity with patience; Grant that the goods that I have I may share liberally with those who have not, and the good that I do not have I may seek with humility from those who have; Grant that I may truly recognise the guilt of the evil I have done, and bear with equanimity the punishments I have deserved; that I may never lust after the goods of my neighbour, but always give thanks to thee for all thy good gifts... Plant in me, O Lord, all thy virtues, that in divine matters I might be devout, in human affairs wise, and in the proper needs of the flesh onerous to no one... And grant that I may never rush to do things hastily, nor balk to do things demanding, so that I neither yearn for things too soon, nor desert things before they are finished. Amen.

The important points to make about this are

• that this is in large part the "O Deus omnipotens, omnia sciens," and

O Deus omnipotens, omnia sciens, principio et fine carens, qui es virtutum donator et conservator, digneris me stabilire solido fidei fundamento, et tueri inexpugnabili spei clypeo, atque decorare nuptiali charitatis vestimento; da mihi per justitiam tibi subesse, per prudentiam insidias Diaboli cavere, per temperantiam medium tenere, per fortitudinem adversa patienter tolerare; da bonum quod non habeo, ab habentibus humiliter quaerere; malum culpae quod feci, veraciter accusare, malum poenae quod sustineo, aequanimiter ferre: bono proximi non invidere; de bonis tuis semper gratias agere: habitu, incessu, et motu disciplinam semper servare; linguam a vaniloquio restringere, pedes a discursu cohibere: oculos a vago visu comprimere; aures a rumoribus separare: vultum humiliter inclinare: mentem in caelestia levare: transitoria contemnere: te tantummodo desiderare; carnem domare: conscientiam expurgare; sanctos honorare: te digne laudare: in bono proficere; et bonos actus fine sancto terminare. Planta in me, domine, virtutes, ut circa divina sim devotus, circa humana officia providus, circa usum proprii corporis nulli onerosus. Da mihi, domine, ferventem contritionem, puram confessionem, perfectam satisfactionem. Ordinare me digneris interius per bonam vitam; ut faciam quod deceat, et quod mihi proficiat ad meritum, et reliquis proximis ad exemplum. Da mihi ut nunquam ea quae fiunt insipienter appetam: et quae fiunt accidiose fastidiam; ne contingat inchoanda ante tempus appetere, aut inchoata ante consummationem deserere. Amen.

• that Corpus Thomisticum (at least, considered, rightly or wrongly, as reflective of the current scholarly consensus) places it (though it has been by some more positively assessed) in the fourth of the buckets listed below:

1. [OPERA VERE ADSCRIPTA THOMAE],
2. OPERA PROBABILIA AUTHENTICITATE,
3. OPERA DUBIA AUTHENTICITATE, and
4. OPERA ALIQUA FALSE ADSCRIPTA THOMAE.

Ingest the following, among (of course) many others:

• Paul Murray, Aquinas at prayer:  the Bible, mysticism and poetry (Bloomsbury, 2013), 53-62, and esp. 56, 57, and 62.  Possibly authentic.
• Martin Grabmann, Die Werke des hl. Thomas von Aquin, 3rd ed. BGPh[Th]MA 22.1/2 (1949), 371 and esp. 371n188.  Inauthentic.

"theological refinement is the kind of progress that results in organizational bankruptcy."

      Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The churching of America, 1776-2005:  winners and losers in our religious economy, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick:  Rutgers University Press, 2005), 8.  Note well, however, that by "intellectual 'progress'" or "theological refinement" Finke and Stark mean theological liberalization.  For

the standards against which refinement is usually judged are entirely secular—parsimony, clarity, logical unity, graceful expression, and the like.  One seldom encounters standards of theological progress or refinement based on how effectively a doctrine could stir the faithful or satisfy the heart.  As a result, the history of American religious ideas [(as distinguished from human actions and organizations)] always turns into an historical account of the march toward liberalism.  That is, religious ideas always become more refined (i.e., better) when they are shorn of mystery, miracle, and mysticism—when an active supernatural realm is replaced by abstractions concerning virtue [(7)].

     The use of economic tools in no way suggests that the content of religion is unimportant, that it is all a matter of clever marketing and energetic selling.  To the contrary, we will argue that the primary market weakness that has caused the failure of many denomination, and the impending failure of many more, is precisely a matter of doctrinal content, or the lack of it.  That is, we will repeatedly suggest that as denominations have modernized their doctrines and embraced temporal values, they have gone into decline [(9)].

"the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable"

"Christian respect for the Jewish people is not primarily a consequence of liberal toleration, but an implication of the Christian faith itself. Christianity requires belief in many paradoxical things, and one of the richest of these paradoxes is that two covenants, old and new, must coexist if what Christians believe about the God who keeps His promises is true."

     Benjamin & Jennifer Silber Storey, "Blaise Pascal on Christian and Jew," The Dispatch, 26 November 2023.

.

"the instrumental value of faith for society is dependent upon faith's conviction that it has more than instrumental value."

     H. Richard Niebuhr, The kingdom of God in America (Middletown, CT:  Wesleyan University Press, 1988 [1937]), 12.

Printing is "God's highest and extremest act of grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is driven forward; it is the last flame before the extinction of the world."

Martin Luther, WA-Tisch 1, no. 1038, p. 523:

"Omnes artes et disciplinae nunc sunt in summo fastigio, quanquam simul etiam sint despectissimae, nec mirum, cum Christus ipse, summum videlicet donum, in mundo summe contemptus sit.  Typographia postremum est donum et idem maximum, per eam enim Deus toti terrarum orbi voluit negotium verae religionis in fine mundi innotescere ac in omnes linguas transfundi.  Ultima sane flamma mundi inextinguibilis."

My (the Perisho) translation:

"All [of the] arts and sciences are now at [(in)] the[ir] highest peak, though they be held also, and at the same time, in the highest contempt, and not surprisingly, since Christ himself, obviously the highest gift [(summum . . . donum)], is in the world [(mundo)] despised in the highest degree.  The [art of] printing [(Typographia)] is the last/latest/lowest/worst gift and at the same time the greatest [(postremum . . . donum et . . . maximum)], for by it God has willed that at [(in)] the end of the world [(mundi)] the business/matter/cause (in the sense of lawsuit) of (the) true religion become known throughout [(in)] the whole earth [(toti terrarum orbi, the whole circle of the world)] and be poured out in all tongues/languages.  Indeed [(sane)], th[is] last (devouring) flame/torch/destruction of the world [is] inextinguishable | Th[is] last healthy/wholesome [(sane)] (devouring) flame/torch/destruction of the world [is] inextinguishable."

Other translations:

Werner H. Kelber, "The history of the closure of biblical texts," Oral tradition 25, no. 1 (2010):  132-133 (115-140):  "Typography is the final and at the same time the greatest gift, for through it God wanted to make known to the whole earth the mandate of the true religion at the end of the world and to pour it out in all languages. It surely is the last, inextinguishable flame of the world."

J. F. Gilmont, The Reformation and the Book (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 1:  "Printing is God’s ultimate and greatest gift.  Indeed through printing God wants the whole world, to the ends of the earth, to know the roots of true religion and wants to transmit it in every language.  Printing is the last flicker of the flame that glows before the end of this world."

What Luther says:  an anthology, ed. Ewald M. Plass (Saint Louis:  Concordia Publishing House, 1959), no. 332 (vol. 1, p. 109):  "Printing is the last and also the greatest gift of God.  By it He wanted to have the cause of the true religion become known and spread in all languages at the end of the world in all the countries of the earth."

Most-closely-related Tischreden:

Martin Luther, WA-Tisch 2, no. 2772a, p. 649 = Cord. 983-984:

     Mirum est nunc partier omnes artes rediisse in lucem et simul omnes egregie contemni, velut chalcographia summum et postremem donum Dei, per quod er die sache treibt; at quam est illa despecta etiam his, qui ei praesunt!

     Es ist die letzte flamme fur dem auſʒleschen [(auslöschen in Grimm)] in der welt.  Sie ist am ende, wie Jerusalem geschahe; quando optimum Christum cum sanctissima sua praedicatione contemnebant, peribat.  Doch ligt nicht daran, quia omnes sancti, qui dormiunt, (ut est in Apocalipsi (14:12 f.)) hunc diem expectant.

My (the Perisho) translation:

     [It] is extraordinary [that] now at the same time all [of the] arts have come back/returned to light [(come to light?)] and simultaneously that [they] are all uncommonly despised, just as/for example printing [(chalcographia)] [is] the highest and latest/worst gift of God, through which [gift] he stirs thing[s] up; yet how [(quam)] it is looked down upon by even those who are taking the lead in it! 

     It [(Es)] is the last flame in the world before [(fur)] the extinguishment.  It [(Sie)] is, in the end, as happened [in] Jerusalem; when they had contemned/despised the most worthy Christ [along] with his most holy preaching, he lost his life.  And yet [it] did not last/[matter?], because all of the saints who sleep (as in Revelation [14:12 f.?]) await that day.

Martin Luther, WA-Tisch 2, no. 2772b, p. 650:

Omnes artes iam perfectissime et lucidissime prodierunt et sunt etiam proh dolor despectissimae.  Ita mundus ipsi Christi fecit, quem despectissimum habuit.  Chalcographia est summum et postremum donum, durch welche Gott die sache treibet.  Es ist die letzte flamme vor dem ausleschen [(auslöschen in Grimm)] der welt; sie ist Gott lob am ende.  Sancti patres dormientes (ut Apocalypsis dicit) desiderant hunc diem.

My (the Perisho) translation:

All of the arts have now come forth/advanced most perfectly and brilliantly and are also—O the sorrow[!]—held in the highest contempt.  So the world did to Christ himself, whom it held in the highest contempt.  Printing [(Chalcographia)] is the highest and latest gift, by which God stirs thing[s] up.  It [(Es)] is the last flame before [(vor)] the extinguishment of the world; these are [(sie ist)], praise God, the end times.  The holy fathers, asleep [in the Lord] (as Apocalypse [11:12 f.?] says), desire this day.

"I cast my anchor"

"In the midst of this storm I cast my anchor towards the throne of God, the anchor that is the lively hope in my heart."

     St. Bʼao Tịnh Paul Lê (1793-1857), letter to the students (alumni) of the seminary in Ke-Vinh, Vietnam, dated 1843, as trans. in the Liturgy of the hours (i.e. Universalis) for 24 November, from Missions étrangères de Paris, Le clergé Tonkinois et ses prêtres martyrs (Paris: Missions-étrangères, 1925), 80-83 (try again later for a digitization).

"'You do not hasten faster than the Most High, for your haste is for yourself, but the Highest hastens on behalf of many.'"

Uriel leading John the Baptist,
Index of Medieval Art

"Non festina spiritu super Altissimum; tu enim festinas propter temet ipsum spiritum, nam Excelsus pro multis."

     The [arch]angel Uriel at 2 Esdras 4:34 RSV, Charlesworth (i.e. Metzger), & Stone (in Hermeneia).  The former, or RSV, draws, for "yourself," upon the Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Armenian versions, not the Latin (i.e. IV Esr 4:34 Vulgate).  For the editions relied upon by Metzger, see The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. Charlesworth, vol. 1 (1983), pp. 518-519.  And for a helpful "Table of titles given to books associated with Ezra (and Nehemiah) in selected versions," see p. 516.  Outside the Bible, ed. Feldman, Kugel, & Schiffman, vol. 2 (2013), p. 1615 (Hogan):

'Do not be in a greater hurry than the Most High.  You, indeed, are in a hurry for yourself, but the Highest is in a hurry on behalf of many.'

 

"If we are to understand American Christianity we need to take our stand within the movement so that its objects may come into view"

      "Every movement, like every person, needs to be understood before it can be criticized.  And no movement can be understood until its presuppositions, the fundamental faith upon which it rests, have been at least provisionally adopted.  The presuppositions may not be our own; we may find good reason for rejecting them in favor of others; but we cannot understand without occupying a standpoint, and there is no greater barrier to understanding than the assumption that the standpoint which we happen to occupy is a universal one, while that of the object of our criticism is relative."

     H. Richard Niebuhr, The kingdom of God in America (Middletown, CT:  Wesleyan University Press, 1988 [1937]), 12-13.  Yet if "we cannot understand without occupying a standpoint," there is no true standpoint that isn't a standpoint, and in that sense a conviction about the truth of a matter.  I.e. sheer perspectivalism won't do, and, indeed, would issue, in the end, to the very reductionism that Niebuhr is assailing here.  For, as he himself says, "the instrumental value of faith for society is dependent upon faith's conviction that it has more than instrumental value" (12).

"the shadow of lost knowledge"

"A certain amount of knowledge you can indeed with average faculties acquire so as to retain; nor need you regret the hours you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions.
     "But you go to a great school, not for knowledge so much as for arts and habits; for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of assuming at a moment’s notice a new intellectual posture, for the art of entering quickly into another person’s thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for the art of working out what is possible in a given time, for taste, for discrimination, for mental courage and mental soberness."

     William Johnson Cory, Eton reform II (London:  Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861), 6-7.  I was put onto this by Joseph Epstein, "How to re-read," The lamp:  a Catholic journal of literature, science, the fine arts, etc. no. 19 (Christ the King 2023):  41 (where the author, but not the source, is given, and which I have corrected against the original).

"Throughout, Moody portrayed Christ himself as a sinner"

"did you ever know a man to keep the law except the Son of God himself?"

"Christ kept the law.  He was the Lamb, pure and spotless.  He never broke the law, therefore He can die for the sins of man."

     Dwight L. Moody, "Man’s great failure," in Glad tidings (New York:  E. B. Treat, 1876)), 411, 416.  I mount this in support of Alan Jacobs on James Walvin, Amazing grace:  a cultural history of the beloved hymn (University of California Press, 2023), "Beyond belief," The homebound symphony:  stagger on rejoicing, November 2, 2023.

"I must die for my sins or find some substitute to die in my stead.  I cannot get this man or that man to die for me, because they have sinned themselves, and would have to die for their own sins.  But Christ was without sin, and therefore He could be my substitute."

     Dwight L. Moody at Calvary's cross:  a symposium on the atonement (1900), 26, as quoted by James F. Findlay, Jr. at Dwight L. Moody:  American evangelist, 1837-1899 (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 1969), 231-232 (where p. 31 in Calvary's cross is given as well).

"You may find a good many flaws in your character, but you can not find a flaw in the Lamb of God."

"And here we find the first glimpse of the doctrine of substitution—the substitution of the just for the unjust—the great doctrine of atonement and substitution foreshadowed in Genesis."

"'So loved the world;' that includes them; if they inhabited some other land they might tremble, but they are in this earth, for all the sons and daughters of which Christ died, the just for the unjust."

     Dwight L. Moody, New sermons, addresses, and prayers (Chicago:  J.W. Goodspeed, 1877), 151 and 147 ("Tracing the scarlet thread"), 382 ("Best methods with inquirers").  See also p. 276 for a direct quotation of 1 Pet 3:18.

Etc.!

"We awaken in Christ's body": almost as much Stephen Mitchell as St. Symeon the New Theologian

We awaken in Christ's body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in His Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? -- Then
open your heart to Him

and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ's body

where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly, real,

and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
and radiant in His light
he awakens as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.

     Stephen Mitchell, apparently very loosely and with great poetic license paraphrasing St. Symeon the New Theologian, Hymn 15, presumably ll. 141 ff., though it is often challenging to determine at a glance which lines in particular these are supposed to be translations of, and where any ellipses may lie.  The enlightened heart:  an anthology of sacred poetry (New York:  Harper & Row, Publishers, 1989), 38-39.  "All translations and adaptations in this book are mine, unless otherwise indicated" (167, underscoring mine), and nothing is otherwise indicated for this one.  A far more straightforward key to the original Greek of Sources Chrétiennes 156 (1969), 276 ff. is Divine eros:  hymns of Saint Symeon the New theologian, trans. Daniel K. Griggs, Popular patristics series 40 (Crestwood, NY:  St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2010), 81 ff.

"a living and tender love for Sacred Scripture"

"O God, who gave the Priest Saint Jerome a living and tender love for Sacred Scripture, grant that your people may be ever more fruitfully nourished by your Word and find in it the fount of life. Through".

     Oratio for the Feast of St. Jerome, 30 September, current Liturgy of the hours and Missal:

"Deus, qui beato Hieronymo, presbytero, suavem et vivum Scripturæ sacræ affectum tribuisti, da, ut populus tuus verbo tuo uberius alatur et in eo fontem vitæ inveniat.  Per". 

The phrase ("ille suavis et vivus sacrae scripturae affectus," that sweet and lively affection for Holy Scripture) comes from Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy/Sacrosanctum Concilium 24:

Sacred scripture is of the greatest importance in the celebration of the liturgy. For it is from scripture that lessons are read and explained in the homily, and psalms are sung; the prayers, collects, and liturgical songs are scriptural in their inspiration and their force, and it is from the scriptures that actions and signs derive their meaning. Thus to achieve the restoration, progress, and adaptation of the sacred liturgy, it is essential to promote that warm and living love for [sacred] scripture to which the venerable tradition of both eastern and western rites gives testimony.

"Don't spare the rod"

Source

     "[B. F.] Skinner misread both historical experience and then-existing research.  Punishment cannot be dismissed by science.  Carrots and sticks have their advangages and disadvantages, but both are effective in appropriate contexts. . . .
     ". . . forms of remediation [other than corporal punishment]. . . . are demonstrably less effective and more costly.  Something like isolating the child (detention) or even expulsion are costly for the child and, as history shows, relatively ineffective in changing serious bad behavior.  They deprive the kid of education, send the wrong message to his classmates, and . . . don't work very well.
     "Occasional corporal punishment for young males is cheap, damaging them less than exclusion from school, and it strengthens the role of teachers as legitimate authority figures.  It needs to be reconsidered."

     John E. R. Staddon, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, First things no. 336 (October 2023):  6 (5-6).  Staddon was "writ[ing] to endorse Daniel Buck's 'Don't spare the rod' (July/July 2023)."

"'scholars always manage to dig out something belittling'"

Source

     "'But how could it have come here? It is Spanish, I suppose?''
     "'Yes, the inscription is in Spanish, to St. Joseph, and the date is 1356. It must have been brought up from Mexico City in an ox-cart. A heroic undertaking, certainly. Nobody knows where it was cast. But they do tell a story about it: that it was pledged to St. Joseph in the wars with the Moors, and that the people of some besieged city brought all their plate and silver and gold ornaments and threw them in with the baser metals. There is certainly a good deal of silver in the bell, nothing else would account for its tone.'
     "Father Latour reflected. 'And the silver of the Spaniards was really Moorish, was it not? If not actually of Moorish make, copied from their design. The Spaniards knew nothing about working silver except as they learned it from the Moors.'
     "'What are you doing, Jean? Trying to make my bell out as infidel?' Father Joseph asked impatiently.
     "The Bishop smiled. 'I am trying to account for the fact that when I heard it this morning it struck me at once as something oriental. A learned Scotch Jesuit in Montreal told me that our first bells, and the introduction of the bell in the service all over Europe, originally came from the East. He said the Templars brought the Angelus back from the Crusades, and it is really an adaptation of a Moslem custom.'
     "Father Vaillant sniffed. 'I notice that scholars always manage to dig out something belittling,' he complained.
     '"Belittling? I should say the reverse. I am glad to think there is Moorish silver in your bell. When we first came here, the one good workman we found in Santa Fe was a silversmith. The Spaniards handed on their skill to the Mexicans, and the Mexicans have taught the Navajos to work silver; but it all came from the Moors.'"

     Willa Cather, Death comes for the Archbishop I.4, "A bell and a miracle" (Willa Cather:  Later novels, (New York:  Library of America, 1990), 303).  On this supposedly Moorish origin of the Angelus, the DTC (1.1 (1903), cols. 1278-1281) is (apart from a late reference to the crusade against the "Turcs" near the top of col. 1280) utterly silent.  The same is true for the DS (sv Ave Maria.ii, vol. 1, cols. 1164-1165).  There, too, the only potential allusion to "Moors" is to the Angelus as a prayer for peace in the face of, in part, "the menace of a Turkish invasion."  But check out also the other sources cited at the Angelus in ODCC4 (2022).

Grant that we may serve you wholeheartedly, in order that we may feel the effect of your propitiation

Calvin University

"Look upon us, O God, Creator and ruler of all things, and, that we may feel the working of your mercy, grant that we may serve you with all our heart.  Through".

"Respice nos, rerum omnium deus creator et rector, et, ut tuae propitiationis sentiamus effectum, toto nos tribue tibi corde servire.  Per".

     Collect, Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman missal.  According to Corpus orationum no. 5110, this was no. 1045 in the early 7th-century "Leonine" or Veronese sacramentary (according to Mohlberg (1956) dated by Rule in 1909 (supposedly p. 79, but in any case no. 1045 falls at the head of XXVIIII.xiiii) to 440-461 (Leo I), Chavasse in 1950 to 537/555 (Virgilius), and Bourque in 1948 to 557/560 or after), but completely abandoned after that until selected for the current (post-Vatican II) Missal.  Universalis completely misses the crucial purpose clause:

"Almighty God, our creator and guide, may we serve you with all our heart and know your forgiveness in our lives. . . . through".

Word and Sacrament

A Lutheran logo of unknown origin

"Grant that your faithful, O Lord, whom you nourish and endow with life through the food of your Word and heavenly Sacrament, may so benefit from your beloved Son's great gifts that we may merit an eternal share in his life.  Who."

"Da fidelibus tuis, Domine, quos et verbi tui et caelestis sacramenti pabulo nutris et vivificas, ita dilecti Filii tui tantis muneribus proficere, ut eius vitae semper consortes effici mereamur."

Give to your faithful, O Lord, whom you nourish with and vivify by means of the food of your both Word and heavenly Sacrament, so to profit from these great gifts of your beloved Son that we may merit to be made always participants [(consortes)] in his life.

     Post-communion, Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary time, current Missale Romanum, following the incipit+ of the Post-communion for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany in the Missale Parisiense of 1738 (Corpus orationum 14, p. 178 (no. 171/6) < Corpus orationum 13, p. 9 (no. 425 =no. 423; Mt 13:40, 49 + Bénédiction 855:  "b. Zizaniorum superseminatorem a vobis procul repellat, et sui verbi pabulo vos indesinenter reficiat.  c. Quo, cum dies iudicii advenerit, a reprobis separati, ad dexteram iudicis sistamini et in beatissimo ipsius regno collocemini.  Amen.  Quod ipse praestare dignetur")), and, so, post-dating the Reformation.  Cf. Postcommunion, Fifth week after Epiphany, 1826 Prayerbook [(Paroissien)] of Soissons & Postcommunion, Fifth week after Epiphany, 1820 Heures nouvelles à l'usage du diocèse de Séez:

"Da fidelibus tuis, Domine, quos et verbi tui, et caelestis Sacramenti pabulo nutris ac vivificas, tantis muneribus sic proficere, ut in consummatione seculi separati a reprobis, inter electos tuos numerari mereamur.  Per."

Nothing is less probable

"nothing is less likely than that our flesh, in which we bear about the death of Christ himself, should be deprived of Christ's resurrection."

"nihil minus probabile quam ut privetur Christi resurrectione caro nostra, in qua circunferimus mortificationem ipsius Christi."

     John Calvin, Institutes III.xxv.7, trans. Battles (LCC 21, 1000)  =COS 4, 447.

"because He hath deigned to praise Himself, therefore hath man found how to praise Him"

"We must take care that the praise we offer him proceeds in good order, with no kind of excess creeping in which could offend the one whom we praise. We therefore think it best to follow the path of praise marked out in God’s scriptures, not declining from the way either to the right hand or to the left. I would go so far as to say to you, beloved, that God has praised himself in order to give human beings a pattern by which they can praise him in a seemly fashion. Because God has kindly praised himself, men and women know how to praise him [(ut bene ab homine laudetur deus, laudauit se ipse deus; et quia dignatus est laudare se, ideo inuenit homo quemadmodum laudet eum)]."

     St. Augustine, Exposition of Ps 144 (145).1, trans. Maria Boulding, WSA III/20, 379.  Latin from CCSL 40, 2088 ll. 1-8 via CAG via Past Masters.  St. Augustine continues as follows:  "It cannot, of course, be said to God, as it is to humans, Let not your own mouth praise you (Prv 27:2). If a human being praises himself, it is arrogance, but if God praises himself, he does so out of his mercy. It is to our advantage to love him whom we praise because, by loving the good, we become better. Knowing that it is good for us to love him, God has made himself lovable by praising himself, and in making himself lovable he has our good at heart. He therefore stirs up our hearts to praise him, and he has filled his servants with his own Spirit, to enable them to offer him praise. And if it is his own Spirit, present in his servants, who is praising him, what else can we conclude but that God is praising himself?"  Trans. H. Walford, Expositions on the book of Psalms, Library of the Fathers, vol. 6 (1857), p. 314:

in order that the praise which we give Him may be in due order, that it may not by any excess offend Him Whom it praiseth, it is better for us to seek the path of praise in the Scripture of God, that we turn not aside from the way, either to the right hand or to the left.  For I venture to say to you, beloved, God hath praised Himself, that He might be properly praised by man:  and because He hath deigned to praise Himself, therefore hath man found how to praise Him.

"she was squeamish, and she was [still] alive"

     'I have heard that white men eat turtles,' said Long Bear’s wife.  'I do not believe it.'
     'They do eat turtles,' said High Backbone, 'and they eat frogs.  A white man told me.  I asked him.'
     'Ey!  And such unclean things; I could not eat them,' cried Bird Woman [(Sacagawea)].

     . . .

     "How do we know this happened?  Buffalo Bird Woman was there, she told [Gilbert] Wilson, and Wilson told us.  It’s even possible that Wilson confirmed it with Wounded Face.  This simple story, published by a man careful with facts, might tell us two things about Bird Woman in the 1860s:  she was squeamish, and she was alive."

     Thomas Powers, "Getting Sacagawea right," reviewing Our story of Eagle Woman:  Sacagawea:  they got it wrong, by the Sacagawea Project Board of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation (Paragon Agency, ), The New York review of books 70, no. 10 (June 8, 2023):  41, 42 (39-42), on Sacagawea "in the mid-1860s", not long before (supposedly) her actual death in 1869, not 20 December 1812 as long thought.  Nineteen or twenty in August of 1806 (39), she would thus have been born c. 1786 or 1787.

Salt and light

"First salt, then light, so that you may learn how profitable sharp words [(τῶν κατεστυμμένων ῥημάτων)] may be and how useful serious doctrine [(τῆς σεμνῆς διδασκαλίας)]."

     St. John Chrysostom, Homily 15 on Matthew, as trans. Liturgy of the hours (Universalis).  =Homiliae in Matthaevm, ed. Field (1839), vol. 1, p. 201 at 195A =PG 57, col. 232.  NPNF:

"And before they are salt, and now light; to teach thee how great [(ἡλίκον)] is the gain of these strict precepts, and the profit of that grave discipline: . . ."

No easy struggles or unimportant tasks

"Do not think, he says, that you are destined for easy struggles or unimportant tasks.  You are the salt of the earth."

Μὴ τοίνυν νομίσητε, φησὶν, ἐπὶ τοὺς τυχόντας ἀγῶνας ἕλκεσθαι, μηδὲ ὑπὲρ μικρῶν τινων εἶναι τὸν λόγον ὑμῖν·  "ὑμεῖς ἐστε τὸ ἄλας τῆς γῆς."

     St. John Chrysostom, Homily 15 on Matthew, as trans. Liturgy of the hours (Universalis).  =Homiliae in Matthaevm, ed. Field (1839), vol. 1, p. 199 at 193E =PG 57, col. 231.  NPNF:

"'Think not then,' He saith, 'that ye are drawn on to ordinary conflicts, or that for some small matters you are to give account.' 'Ye are the salt of the earth.'"

May he reward with blessed gifts all who sing in these quiet hours the Psalms of David

Köln, Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und
Dombibliothek, 215 (12th cent.), fol. 212v

May he reward with blessed gifts all who—at the most hallowed of times on this, the first of all days, at which the world stood forth created, and the resurgent Creator, having conquered death, set us free—sing, in these quiet hours, the Psalms [of David].

     An amalgam of stanzas one and four of the anonymous 6th- or 7th-century hymn Primo dierum omnium, sometimes attributed to St. Gregory the Great, and assigned traditionally to Sunday Matins during the winter season.  I have taken but two further slight liberties:  "times" ("sacratissimo . . . tempore") is singular, and "having conquered death" ("morte victa") should read, literally, "death having been conquered".  Though I have not taken this from a properly critical edition, the whole runs as follows:

Primo dierum omnium,
quo mundus exstat conditus
vel quo resurgens conditor
nos, morte victa, liberat,

Pulsis procul torporibus,
surgamus omnes ocius,
et nocte quaeramus pium,
sicut Prophetam novimus,

Nostras preces ut audiat
suamque dextram porrigat,
et hic piatos sordibus
reddat polorum sedibus,

Ut, quique sacratissimo
huius diei tempore
horis quietis psallimus,
donis beatis muneret.

Deo Patri sit gloria
eiusque soli Filio
cum Spiritu Paraclito,
in sempiterna saecula.  Amen.

As translated at Universalis:

On this the first of all days,
When the world came forth created
And when, with death conquered,
The risen Creator frees us,

Having cast aside all sloth
Let us all arise with alacrity
And by night seek the merciful One
Whom we recognize as a prophet,

That he may attend to our prayers
And stretch out [to us] his right hand,
And, once cleansed of our sins,
Grant [us] a place in heaven,

That he may reward with blessed gifts
All who at the most hallowed
Time of this day,
Sing his praises in these quiet hours.

Glory be to God the Father
And to his only Son
With the Spirit Paraclete
For ever and ever.  Amen.

As translated by Walsh and Husch (One hundred Latin hymns:  Ambrose to Aquinas, Dumbarton Oaks medieval library (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2012), no. 38, pp. 147, 438-439, where Walpole, Early Latin hymns (1922), 262-263; Wieland, The Canterbury hymnal (1982), 24-25; and Milfull, The hymns of the Anglo-Saxon church (1982), 115-119 are also cited):

On this, the first day of all days
on which the world, being made, emerged,
on which the maker rose again
and freed us, having conquered death,

Let us, sloth driven far away,
rise all together urgently,
in darkness beg the holy one,
as we know the prophet did,

That he might hearken to our prayers
and offer unto us his hand,
and render us, here cleansed of filth,
unto the heavenly demesnes;

And that whoever on this day,
which is the holiest of all,
do hymn him in these hours of rest
be endowed by him with blessed gifts.

Trundling along at my own leisurely pace

Source

     "A sister wanted to know just how this martyrdom [of love] worked out in practice.
     "'Give God your unconditional consent,' she said, 'and then you will find out. What happens is that love seeks out the most intimate and secret place of your soul, as with a sharp sword, and cuts you off even from your own self. I know of a soul cut off in this way so that she felt it more keenly than if a tyrant had cleaved her body from her soul.'
     "We knew, of course, that she was speaking about herself. A sister wanted to know how long this martyrdom was likely to last.
     "'From the moment we give ourselves up wholeheartedly to God until the moment we die,' she answered. 'But this goes for generous hearts and people who keep faith with love and don’t take back their offering; our Lord doesn’t take the trouble [(ne s'appliquer pas)] to make martyrs of feeble hearts and people who have little love and not much constancy; he just lets them jog along in their own little way [(il se contente de les laisser rouler leur petit train, he is content to allow them to trundle [along at] their [own] leisurely pace)] in case [(de crainte que, for fear that)] they [will] give up and slip from his hands altogether; he never forces our free will.'"

     Françoise-Madeleine de Chaugy of St. Jeanne-Françoise de Chantal, Memoires de la Mère de Chaugy:  sur la vie et les vertus de Sainte Jeanne-Françoise de Chantal III.3, as translated in the Liturgy of the hours as reproduced by Universalis.  French:  2nd ed. (Le Mans:  Fleuriot; Paris:  Sagnier et Bray, 1845), 347.  "for fear that" ("de crainte que") is far less ambiguous than "in case".  The translation in Universalis allows for the possibility that God hopes we'll "give up and slip from his hands altogether".