"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.