Saturday, February 18, 2023

"Courage in war and courage of thought are two different courages"

"I touch upon this subject carefully and rarely.  They are still paralyzed not only by Stalin’s hypnosis and fear, but also by their former faith.  They cannot stop loving what they used to love.  Courage in war and courage of thought are two different courages.  I used to think they were the same."

     Svetlana Alexievich, The unwomanly face of war [У вайны не жаночы твар]:  an oral history of women in World War II, trans. Richard Pevear and Laurissa Volokhonsky (New York:  Random House, 2018 [1988]), xxvii.  "their former faith" was in | "what they used to love" was Communism and Stalin and the nobility of The Great Patriotic War, in which they displayed great martial courage.  The "courage of thought" to question all or parts of that was what, I gather (for I haven’t yet read more than this paragraph and the pages preceding it), they were still struggling to muster.


Sunday, February 12, 2023

Grant that we may become the kinds of people in whom you deign to dwell

"O God, who teach us that you abide in hearts that are just and true, grant that we may be so fashioned by your grace as to become a dwelling place pleasing to you.  Through."

"Deus, qui te in rectis et sinceris manere pectoribus asseris, da nobis tua gratia tales exsistere, in quibus habitare digneris.  Per."

"Deus, qui te rectis et sinceris manere pectoribus asseris, da nobis tua gratia tales exsistere, in quibus habitare digneris.  Per."

O God, who declare that you abide in hearts [that are] upright and pure, grant that we may become by grace the kinds [of people] in whom you deign to dwell.

     8th-century-or-earlier collect for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman Missal.  =Corpus orationum 2128a (vol. 3, p. 189).