Please: No more liberal missionaries!

      "Miss [Dora/Cidu] Yü’s appeal to those who had any influence with Mission Boards, to do their utmost to stop the sending out of any more Modernist missionaries to her land will not easily be forgotten."

     W. H. Aldis, "The Keswick Convention," China’s millions 53 =n.s. 35 (September 1927):  142 (142-143).  This would have been Yu's address to the Keswick Convention[’s International Missionary Meeting?] on Wednesday, 20 July 1927.  I capture this here in case I never find the full-text.  For more detail on this, see Mark A. Noll & Carolyn Nystrom, Clouds of witnesses:  Christian voices from Africa and Asia (Downers Grove, IL:  IVP Books, 2011), 197-198:  Yu "particularly targeted teachings that opposed Christ's incarnation and divinity, his atoning work through death and resurrection, and his second coming."  My thanks to my colleague Esther Cen for enlisting me in this search.

"our conception of humankind is too anthropomorphic"

"our conception of humankind is too anthropomorphic, too narrowly defined--as physical, mental, or moral--as moral, either damned or saved, but not as the overwhelming power we are as creature, as species", "collective[ly], collaborative[ly]."

     Marilynne Robinson, Reading Genesis (New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), 79-80.

McGuckin on the "axiom" hopou logos agei in Origen

      Where does this (presumably something like ὅπου λόγος ἄγει), or some semblance thereof, occur in Origen?  So far as I've been able to tell, McGuckin doesn't say.  McGuckin translations (there are others, as, for example, here):

• "'Follow wherever Holy Reason leads'"
  
• "'Let us go wherever the Divine Logos takes us'"
• "the soul must follow 'wherever the Logos leads'"

So far I've come up empty, even in Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, searched fairly loosely (though my Greek isn't really up to snuff), and McGuckin has yet to reply.

Faith, baptism, AND LIFE

"No one may share the eucharist with us unless he believes that what we teach is true, unless he is washed in the regenerating waters of baptism for the remission of his sins, and unless he lives in accordance with the principles given us by Christ [(καὶ οὕτως βιοῦντι ὡς ὁ Χριστὸς παρέδωκεν, unless they live as Christ handed [it] down)]."

     St. Justin Martyr (c. 100-c. 165), First apology 66.1, as trans. Second reading, Office of readings, Third Sunday of Easter, Liturgy of the hours, vol. 2, p. 694.  Greek from the 3rd (1876) ed. of the Opera ed. Otto, tom. 1, pars 1, p. 180, which matches p. 256 of the 2009 Minns & Parvis Oxford early Christian texts edition exactly.  Minns & Parvis translation:  "And this food is called among us 'eucharist', of which it is lawful for no one to partake except one believing the things that have been taught by us are true, and who has washed in the washing which is for the forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives in just the way that Christ handed down."  I have not read around in this (for context) recently, but something very similar is said in 61:  "Those who believe what we teach is true and who give assurance of their ability to live according to that teaching. . .  We then lead to" baptism.

"What a wonder! A sun is fashioned, and no counsel precedes"

 Ὤ τοῦ θαύματος·  ἥλιος κατασκευάζεται, καὶ οὐδεμία πρηγεῖται βουλή·

     St. Gregory of Nyssa, De opificio hominis 3.2, trans. Behr (Gregory of Nyssa:  On the human image of God (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2023), 161).  "In every single case—the aether, the stars, the intermediate air, the sea, the earth, the animals, the plants—all are brought to genesis by a word; while only to the formation of the human being does the Maker of all draw near with circumspection [(περιεσκεμμένως)]".

Peterson on song and dance

"Song and dance are the result of an excess of energy.  When we are normal we talk, when we are dying we whisper, but when there is more in us than we can contain we sing.  When we are healthy we walk, when we are decrepit we shuffle, but when we are beyond ourselves with vitality we dance."

     Eugene H. Peterson, "Unself-made," Earth & altar:  the community of prayer in a self-bound society (New York:  Paulist Press, 1985), 36.  I have not read the book as a whole, but stumbled upon this when searching it for something else.

"I am who I am, and my counsel is not with the wicked, but in the law of the Lord is my will"

"Ego et sum qui sum, et consilium meum non est cum impiis, sed in lege Domini voluntas mea est, alleluja."

     Currently antiphon to Ps 1, Office of readings for the Second Sunday of Easter/Divine Mercy Sunday (only?), though all (?) of the occurrences of this in the Cantus database are associated with the Mass.  Liturgy of the hours:  "I am who I am, and wicked men do not accept my ways, for the law of the Lord is my delight"; Universalis:  "I am who I am, and wicked men do not understand my ways:  my delight is the law of the Lord."  The earliest occurrence of this antiphon in Cantus at the moment (Albi, Bibliothèque municipale Rochegude, 44 (F-Al 44), 91r.) is dated c. 890, though the image is taken from the late 10th-century Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 391 (CH-SGs 391), 32.  A quick and dirty initial stab at potential sources (though I have not run lemma searches):

• "Ego et sum qui sum":  Ex 3:14.
• "consilium meum": see also the two entries below.
  
• "cum impiis":  Ps 25:5 ("with the wicked [(cum impiis)] I will not sit") and 9 ("with the wicked [(cum impiis)"), but more importantly Ps 1:1:  "Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly [(in consilio impiorum)]".
• "sed in lege Domini voluntas mea est":  Ps 1:2:  "But his will is in the law of the Lord [(sed in lege Domini voluntas ejus)]", but also Is 46:10:  "My counsel shall stand [(Consilium meum stabit)]" and Lk 22:42:  "but yet not my will, but thine be done [(verumtamen non mea voluntas, sed tua fiat)]."

"where truth and wisdom and [reason] are, . . . this is where Jesus is"

      "Now it is likely that, on the basis of our conjectures about the end, someone will focus on the statement, 'Where I go you cannot come,' [(Jn 8:21)] and reply that it is possible not to be able now, but to be able later.  And if indeed there is a present age and another to come, these to whom he has said, 'You cannot come,' cannot go where Jesus is during the present age (and the time which remains until its completion is great), that is, where truth and wisdom and the Word are, for this is where Jesus is [(ὅπου ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ σοφία καὶ ὁ λόγος, τοῦτο γάρ ἐστιν ὅπου Ἰησοῦς)].
     "But I know that some are overcome by their own sin not only in this age, but also in the age to come, as those of whom the Word says, 'If anyone blasphemes against the Holy Spirit he has forgiveness neither in this age nor in the one to come.'  If, however, there is no forgiveness in the coming age, neither is there any in the ages which come after it as well."

     Origen, Commentarii in evangelium Joannis 19.87-88 as trans. Ronald E. Heine (FC 89 (1993)), 187-188.  Heine is probably right, though, in translating ὁ λόγος as "the Word."  (But then why not "where the Truth and the Wisdom and the Word are"?)  Greek from Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, which is where I stumbled upon this while searching (so far unsucessfully) for something else (the Origenistic "dictum" or "adage" hopou logos agei, "where(ever) reason leads," as quoted (?) often, but with never (?) a citation, by John Anthony McGuckin).

Ora et labora (Pray and work): that supposedly "ancient" and supposedly "Benedictine" formula "that . . . is scarcely more than a century old"

Dom Marty; I can't find
a picture of Dom Frieß

N.B.:  Though that headline remains valid, Meeuws (below) has since been updated by

• Paul G. Monson, "Ora et labora:  a Benedictine motto born in America?", in God has begun a great work in us:  embodied love in consecrated life and ecclesial movements, ed. Jason King and Shannon Schrein, OSF, Annual publication of the College Theology Society 60 (2014) =(Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 2015), pp. 66-83.

Monson provides archival evidence that the saying had actually surfaced qua Benedictine motto "four years before Wolter's work [(below)] and almost a quarter of a century before Sauter's application" of it to the Benedictine Order specifically, in a letter from first abbot of St. Meinrad Abbey Martin Marty to Frowin Conrad dated 20 November 1876; and thus evidence that it could have emerged in the late-19th-century American context before it first emerged in the late-19th-century European.  Monson's translation from the German is as follows:

. . . the family life of a true Benedictine house of worship, encompassing material as well as spiritual progress, is the model and ideal of family life, upon which rests the welfare of the individual and society.  Ora et labora is still today the only formula for curing the children of Adam, and both cannot be taught with words.

     Yet Monson himself cites the Austrian Benedictine monk, priest (Ordenspriester; Monson says only "German Catholic"), librarian, and teacher (Kaiserlich-Königliches Obergymnasium der Benediktiner zu Seitenstetten) Gottfried Edmund Frieß/Friess, 1836-1904, and says that he (Frieß) used "the phrase for the Benedictines".  Yet to follow up on that is to realize not just that Frieß was himself a Benedictine monk-and-priest, but that—on p. 8 of the first Abteilung of his Studien über das wirken der Benediktiner in Oesterreich für Kultur, Wissenschaft und Kunst, usually dated to 1868, but surely certainly not later than 1872, the actually-specified publication date of Abteilung 5 (dates as late as 1868 appear in Abteilung 1, dates as late as 1869 in Abteilungen 2 and 3)—he spoke (while, again, discussing the Rule of St. Benedict (7)) of the "motto" or "devise" [(Wahlspruch)] of the Order [of] St. Benedict:  'Ora et Labora'" (8), "Gebet und Arbeit" (7).  And that 1872 would be four, and (more likely) 1868 eight, years before 1876, but back in Europe.  In a note to me dated 22 April 2022, Monson very graciously acknowledged that, focused elsewhere, he had overlooked this, a fact that should not detract from the advance represented by his discovery of this earlier-than-Wolter American (and more or less invisibly archive-based) usage in Marty.
     Still, full-text searching has come into its own, so someone should now run patient and careful but exhaustive (and exhaustively researched) searches in full-text databases ranging from (for example) the Hathi Trust Digital Library, the Internet Archive, Google Books, Gallica, and Europeana all the way back to Early English Books Online, the (former) Library of Latin Texts, and maybe even Patrologia Latina (plus all of the specialized databases, like, for St. Augustine, the CAG).  Take just the Hathi Trust Digital Library, for example.  In the HTDL it is extraordinarily easy to take the hits (if no Benedictine hits) back well before 1876 or even 1868 (at present there are, in the HTDL, more than 800 before 1850), such that the question should now be twofold:  1) Are none of those in some sense authentically Benedictine in nature?, and, even if demonstrably not, then 2) What fascinating story might they still tell about the history of the motto long before it was appropriated by the Benedictines from c. 1868/1876, and Does that story include, nonetheless, a vague and distant Benedictine influence way back in the mists of time originally (Where, for example, do the in-some-cases-presumably-long-standing family crest-mottos come from conceptually)?  Here are just a couple of examples, grabbed out of the HTDL (and other databases) just quickly (note that, though I can't promise to have read around in context, how very divergent is the sense in so many of these!):

• 1549/60 (no occurrence of the Ora et labora):  Melanchthon, Homily on Lk 5 (not 15!):1 ff. for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity, CR 25, 140.  "Nullius est felix conatus et utilis unquam: | Consilium si non detque, iuvetque Deus."  Cf. under 1563 and 1600 or later below, where the Ora et labora is added.  For the date range, go to p. 272n8 here, where it is said that "Melanchthon uses this poem in his writings in the same way repeatedly [(gleich mehrfach)]."
  
• 1551 (non-Benedictine), pub. 1560:  Melanchthon, Explicatio sententiarum Theognidis =CR 19, col. 166:  "Vss. 1115 sq.  Χρήματ' [('With possessions of thy own thou upbraidest my penury; yet some things I have, and others with prayer to Heaven, I shall win')]]  Congruit cum dicto Salomonis [in Prov 22:2]:  Pauper et dives habitant simul, Deus fecit utrumque.  Huc pertinet et versus:  Irus et est subito, qui modo Croesus [(Ovid, Trist. III, 7, 42)].  Divitias habens non exprobres aliis paupertatem, scilicet quia lubrica et instabilis est possessio talium bonorum.  Habeo vero aliquid et aliud acquiram laborando, simul Deos invocans iuxta illud:  Ora et labora", "[This] corresponds to the dictum of Solomon, 'The rich and poor have met one another: the Lord is the maker of them both' [(Prov 22:2 Douay-Rheims)].  To this [passage] pertains also the line, '[assuredly fortune gives and takes away whatever she pleases, and] he becomes suddenly an Irus who was but now a Croesus' [(Ovid, Trist. III.7.42, as trans. Wheeler, LCL (1939 [1924]), 130-131)].  Having riches, you do not reproach others for [their] poverty, if only because [(sciliciet quia)] slippery and unstable is the possession of goods of this sort.  In truth I have acquired this and that by working [(laborando) while] simultaneously invoking the gods, according to that [saying], Ora et labora" (translation mine).
  
• 1563 (non-Benedictine):  Thomas Krüger, Portrait of Melanchthon after Lucas Cranach the Elder (British Museum 1867,0713.115):  inscription similar to the one below, dated 1600 or later.
  
• 
  1600 or later (non-Benedictine):  Portrait of Melanchthon, after Lucas Cranach the Elder:  NVLIVS EST FOELIX CONATVS ET VTILIS | VNQVAM.CONSILIVM SI NON DETQ[VE] | IVVETQ[VE] DEVS ORA ET LABORA ="Nullius est foelix conatus et utilis unquam, | Consilium si non detque iuvetque Deus" (CR 10, col. 652), plus the "Ora et labora" taken from 1551, above (there being no other occurrences in the Melanchthonis Opera Database; on the other hand, I haven't checked, say, the correspondence):  "No effort/undertaking is ever successful and profitable if God does not both give counsel and assist.  Ora et labora" (translation mine).
  
• 1710 (non-Benedictine):  Leibniz, Theodicy, trans. Huggard, ed. Farrer (1952), p. 382:  "In voluntary actions, on the contrary, and in what depends upon them, precepts, armed with power to punish and to reward, very often serve, and are included in the order of causes that make action exist. Thus it comes about that not only pains and effort but also prayers are effective, God having had even these prayers in mind before he ordered things, and having made due allowance for them. That is why the precept Ora et labora (Pray and work) remains intact."
• 1764- (non-Benedictine):  Motto, George Lord Ramsey, Eighth Earl of Dalhousie.
• 1850 (non-Benedictine (Protestant)):   Ottmar F. H. (Friedrich Heinrich) Schönhut(h), Chronik der Klosters Schönthal aus urkundlichen Quellen (Mergentheim: Thomm'schen Buchhandlung, 1850), 181:  "und da, wo einst Männer wandelten, die der Welt entsagt haben, bilden sich unter der Leitung treuer Lehrer Jünglinge heran, auf welche die Eltern freudig hinblicken, und die Kirche des Vaterlandes ihre Hoffnung setzt.  Eine neue, nicht minder edle Pflanzschule für den Glauben, ist aus der alten hervorgegangen—moge sie so lange blühen, wie die ältere, moge Gottes Segen auf ihr ruhen, und ihre Jünglinge das Wort nie vergessen, das der heilige Benedikt, wie seinen früheren Schülern, auch ihnen zurust:  ora et labora!":  "and there, where at one time men who had renounced the world walked, young people are educated under the guidance of faithful teachers, upon which [their] parents look with joy, and the Church of the Fatherland sets its hope.  A new, not-less-noble seminary of [(Pflanzschule für den)] faith has come forth out of the old—may it blossom as long as the old one; may God’s blessing rest upon it, and [may] its young people never forget the exhortation [(Wort, saying)] that St. Benedict addresses, as to his earlier students, also to them:  ora et labora!" (translation mine).  According to Wikipedia, the Abbey was founded in 1153 but had been "secularized" by the time of this writing back in 1802, and "From 1810 to 1975, . . . was one of the buildings used for the Evangelical [(i.e. Protestant)] Theological Seminary (Evangelisch-theologisches Seminar[y] or Seminar[y] Maulbronn), now the Evangelical [(i.e. Protestant)] Seminaries of Maulbronn and Blaubeuren."  On Schönhut(h), a Protestant pastor, see (despite the "S.") this article in Deutsche Biographie.
  
• 1854 (non-Benedictine):  Wilhelm Friedrich Gustav Carus, Ueber Neubelebung des evangelischen Cultus (Halle: Verlag von Richard Mühlmann, 1854), 89:  "as [it says] in the Summa:  Ora et labora, pray and work!  Let us pray as if no [amount of] work will help [(kein Arbeiten hülfe)], and work as if no [amount of] prayer will help [(kein Beten mehr hülfe)]" (translation mine).

Marie-Benoît Meeuws, OSB, "«Ora et labora»: devise bénédictine?," Collectanea Cisterciensia 54 (1992/93): 193-219 (Oliver J. Kaften, OSB, "Ora et labora: (k)ein benediktinishes Motto: eine Spurensuche," Erbe und Auftrag 90 (2014): 415-421 is mostly just a re-presentation in German of the findings of Meeuws):

All the while acknowledging that the question of the "the relation between prayer and work [(travail, usually manual labor)] arose for the [(s’est posée aux)] monks from the first generation" (194; cf., for the High Middle Ages, 201 and 205), and has persisted throughout the history of monasticism; and that her investigations could not possibly be exhaustive; and, so, allowing for the possibility of further discoveries (193, 194, 209, 215, etc., but especially 203 and 216), Meeuws attempts to answer two questions:

• the question of the origin of the motto (and, yes, she does mean specifically the device, tessura, jumelage, banalité, apophtegme, stique, sentence, proverbe, couple verbale, junction, expression, rapprochement, cliché, maxime, marque de fabrique, racourci, formule, plaquette, etiquette, mot, jeu de mots, adage, somme, etc.) alone; and
• the question of the origin of its association with [St. Benedict and] the Benedictine Order specifically.

Her findings she summarizes on p. 216 as follows (though I’ve drawn on the rest of the article as well):

• "the brief formula Ora et Labora" "has not been found in all of its simplicity before the Praecipua ordinis monastici elementa of Dom Maur Wolter [OSB], [published] in 1880" (216), in which "the capital text" ("vetus clarrissimaque illa monachorum tessera: Ora et Labora! Opus Dei atque opus laboris") appears "finally for the first time" (213), but among whose "imposing list of references . . . ([to] Fathers of the Church, mystics, conciliar and episcopal documents, ancient monastic statutes, [and] authors of every sort) . . . one finds no testimony to this [supposedly] 'ancient' text, save that of the [11th-century] Carthusians" (214), below, according to ODCC4 (2022) "the only monastic order in the W[est] which does not follow the rule of St Benedict" (italics mine)! (For Meeuws' own typology of Western monasticism, see pp. 202-203.)
• "Dom Wolter concocted [(a créée)] it in one of those vigorous abridgements [(raccourcis)] for which he had sometimes the genius, by synthesizing an apophthegm known in the 11th century among the Carthusians," as quoted (claimed Wolter) in their in some sense non-Benedictine (203) Statutes for Novices, but actually "in the text that follows the Statutes," the Quidam tractatus statutorum ordinis Carthusiensis pro novitii (203n11): "Nunc lege, nunc ora, nunc cum fervore labora." "The latter is still not exactly the text but" one is "finally" (203) getting "for the first time" "very close" (209). Yet that in some sense non-Benedictine (203) Carthusian text had an "explicitly different import" (216, the import or sense (or conception?) of a given formulation being crucial for Meeuws (193 and passim)). The Vitae patrum in which the Carthusians mistakenly claimed to have found it are discussed by Meeuws on pp. 194-197, and St. Benedict of Nursia himself, in three points on pp. 201-202. In the sections on the Late Middle Ages (201, 206-209) and Modernity (209-212) some additional quotations of interest are considered, but ultimately dismissed. Indeed, by the earlier 19th century the Ora et labora "had still not seen the light of day under that brief and imperative form in which the emphasis [(ictus)] can be placed, in accordance with the [various] conceptions [so crucial to the judgment of equivalence or the lack of it?], on each of the three words or . . . [(en toccata)] on [all] three [at once [(sur les trois)]" (212).
• Meant by Dom Wolter to be descriptive of monasticism more generally (Meeuws closes with the observation that it is actually more "simply Christian" than uniquely Benedictine (219; Dom Jean Leclercq, OSB, had said back in 1961 that though "the motto [(devise)] composed of the play-on-words Ora et labora is of recent vintage [(est d'époque récente)]," "it has, in the texts of the Middle Ages, antecedents that give us [(font voir)] the sense that it must take on [(doit révêtir)] in the light of the tradition" (Études sur le vocabulaire monastique du moyen âge, Studia Anselmiana 48 (Rome:  Pontificium Institutum S. Anselmi; Orbis Catholicus, Herder, 1961), 142), e.g. "the work [(labeur)] of ascesis" (144, italics mine))), it was first said to be characteristic of the Benedictine Order specifically by Dom Sauter in 1899 (214), such that "From that time [(which is to say 1899)] its fortune was secured and the Benedictine Order appropriated to itself [(entra en droit de possession)] a [supposedly] 'ancient' formula that, unless I’ve missed something [(sauf erreur)], [was in 1992/93] scarcely more than a century old" (215). And by the time Dom Herwegen claimed—to the retrospective and prospective chagrin of many Benedictines both early and late, for whom so many "other elements could [also] be called just as 'fundamental'" to the description of "a son of St. Benedict"; and for whom the Ora et labora is therefore "a label [(etiquette)] all] too abbreviated" (219, but more importantly passim, the actual complexity of proposed characteristics being one of the major themes of the article)—that it "summed up the whole of [(totalisait)] Benedictine monasticism," it was "no longer an approximation [(? moyen)], an enumeration of [all of the relevant] activities"; it was considered to be "a definition, a 'trademark [(marque de fabrique)]'," to encapsulate "the whole [(l’integralité)] of Benedictine monasticism" (216).

"If you neglect Martha, who will serve Jesus? And if you neglect Mary, of what use to you will Jesus' visit be?"

"Do not neglect Mary for Martha, nor Martha for Mary.  If you neglect Martha, who will serve Jesus?  And if you neglect Mary, of what use to you will Jesus' visit be? . . .  [I]n this life it is never necessary to separate these two women."

     St. Aelred of Rievaulx, Sermon on the Feast of the Assumption, as translated by me from the French of Marie-Benoît Meeuws, OSB, "«Ora et labora»:  devise bénédictine?," Collectanea Cisterciensia 54 (1992/3):  205 (193-219).

"Worship him who was hung on the cross because of you, even if you are hanging there yourself"

Source

"If you are crucified beside him like one of the thieves, now, like the good thief, acknowledge your God. For your sake, and because of your sin, Christ himself was regarded as a sinner; for his sake, therefore, you must cease to sin. Worship him who was hung on the cross because of you, even if you are hanging there yourself [(Προσκύνησον τὸν διὰ σὲ κρεμασθέντα, καὶ κρεμάμενος)]. Derive some benefit from the very shame; purchase salvation with your death. Enter paradise with Jesus, and discover how far you have fallen. Contemplate the glories there, and leave the other scoffing thief to die outside in his blasphemy."

     St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 45.24, as trans. Universalis.  Greek, for now, from PG 36, col. 656C.

Ora et labora: No Benedictine motto

In these pedagogical texts of the late 18th and the 19th centuries "no reference to monasticism can be detected.
     "By contrast, it says in the programmatic text Praecipua Ordinis Monastici Elementa [(1880)], by Archabbot Maurus Wolter [(1824-1890)],

Hinc vetus clarissimaque illa monachorum tessera:  Ora et labora.  Opus Dei atque opus laboris, . . . sive alae duae, quae ad altissimam attollunt perfectionem . . . ut haec illi vigoris, illa huic benedictionis semper novum afferat incrementum.

Maurus Wolter gives no source. . . .  The striking parallels make it plain that he was influenced by the [late 18th- and the 19th-century] pedagogical literature on the theme of prayer and work.
     "The ongoing treatment [(Die bis heute anhaltende Wertung)] of ora et labora as a motto of the Benedictine order shows how much of an impact Maurus Wolter had on the understanding of his time, such that this treatment [(dies)] could be so deeply rooted [still today].  But we should ask whether what lies here before us [in the ora et labora] is for Benedictine life today an appropriate leitmotif or an unhappily constrictive foreshortening [(eine unglückliche Verkürzung)]."

     Oliver J. Kaften, OSB, "Ora et labora:  (k)ein benediktinishes Motto [a, or, rather, no Benedictine motto]:  eine Spurensuche," Erbe und Auftrag 90 (2014):  421 (415-421), translation mine.  These concluding words are preceded by an unsuccessful attempt to find anything closely resembling the (supposedly reductive) motto before the late medieval (but especially the modern and even Protestant) period (though I certainly do not summarize those findings properly here).

"The truth is the first of the mercies that Jesus offers to the sinner."

Wikimedia Commons

 "La verità è la prima delle misericordie che Gesù offre al peccatore."

      Robert Cardinal Sarah, "Messaggio di Natale," Roma, 6 gennaio 2024, festa dell’Epifania del Signore, as reproduced on Diakonos.be:  regards sur l'Eglise catholique by Sandro Magister.  In English.

John Henry Newman on the truth at an extreme

"I had got but a little way in my work, when my trouble returned upon me.  The ghost had come a second time.  In the Arian History I found the very same phenomenon, in a far bolder shape, which I had found in the Monophysite.  I had not observed it in 1832.  Wonderful that this should come upon me!  I had not sought it out; I was reading and writing in my own line of study, far from the controversies of the day, on what is called a 'metaphysical' subject; but I saw clearly, that in the history of Arianism, the pure Arians were the Protestants, the semi-Arians were the Anglicans, and that Rome now was what it was then.  The truth lay, not with the Via Media, but with what was called 'the extreme party.'  As I am not writing a work of controversy, I need not enlarge upon the argument; I have said something on the subject in a volume, from which I have already quoted."

     John Henry [Cardinal] Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, chap. 3, "History of my religious opinions from 1839 to 1841," ed. David J. DeLaura, Norton critical edition (1968), 114-115.

"I have sinned—I sin continually—but Christ has died, and for ever lives, as my Redeemer, Priest, Advocate, and King."

     John Newton, letter to Mr. Robert Jones dated 17 March 1757, as reproduced on p. 20 (17-22) of Twenty-five letters, hitherto unpublished, of the Rev. John Newton, rector of Olney and St Mary, Woolnoth, London.  From the years 1757 to 1759 (Edinburgh:  J. Johnstone, 1840).  Crossway, the publisher of the series _____ on the Christian life, attributed it ("I sin continually.  But Christ has died, and forever lives, as my redeemer, priest, advocate, and king") to Luther as quoted by Carl Trueman, though it actually appears in a different book in that same series, the one on Newton by Tony Reinke.

"be willing that Self shall suffer for the Truth, and not the Truth for Self . . . and so own the Cross, and despise the Shame"

      James Parnell, "A few words to all my dear Friends in and about the county of Essex," in A collection of the several writings given forth from the Spirit of the Lord through that meek, patient, and suffering servant of God, James Parnel, who, though a young man, bore a faithful testimony for God and dyed a prisoner under the hands of a persecuting generation in Colchester Castle in the year 1656 (1675), 293 (291-294).

Such "men . . . you must not only not receive, but if it is possible not even meet"

Index of Medieval Art (Vat. gr. 1613, p. 258)

"he truly suffered even as he also truly raised himself [(ἀληθῶς ἀνέστησεν ἑαυτόν)], not as some unbelievers say, that his Passion was merely in semblance [(τὸ δοκεῖν αὐτὸν πεπονθέναι)]. . .
     ". . . I guard you in advance against beasts in the form of men [(τῶν ἀνθρωπομόρφων)], whom you must not only not receive, but if it is possible not even meet, but only pray for them, if perchance they may repent, difficult though that may be. . . .  For if it is merely in semblance [(τὸ δοκεῖν | τῷ δοκειν)] that these things were done by our Lord I am also a prisoner in semblance [(τὸ δοκεῖν)].  And why have I given myself up to death, to fire, to the sword, to wild beasts?  Because near the sword is near to God, with the wild beasts is with God [(ἐγγὺς μαχαίρας ἐγγὺς θεοῦ, μεταξὺ θηρίων μεταξὺ θεοῦ)]; in the name of Jesus Christ alone am I enduring all things, that I may suffer with him, and the perfect man himself gives me strength. . . .
     ". . . I have not thought right to put into writing their unbelieving names; but would that I might not even remember them, until they repent concerning the Passion, which is our resurrection. . . .
     "They abstain from Eucharist and prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ who suffered for our sins, which the Father raised up by his goodness. . . .  It is right to refrain from such men and not even to speak about them in private or in public. . . ."

     St. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans II, IV, and V, trans. Lake, LCL (1912), 252-257.  Cf. "John and Polycarp on heretics".

Gregory of Nyssa on the imago Dei

Anim Shrest

"'Have a care to yourself, for this is the sure safeguard of <your> good things.  Know how much you have been honored by the Maker above the rest of the creation.  Heaven did not become the image of God, nor the moon, nor the sun, nor the beautiful stars—nor a single other one of the things that appear in the created order.  Only you came into existence as a copy of the Nature that transcends every intellect, a likeness of the incorruptible Beauty, an impress of the true Deity—a model of that true Light in the contemplation of which you become what it is, imitating that which shines within you by the ray that shines forth in response from your purity.  None of the things that exist is so great as to be compared to your greatness.  The whole heaven is contained in the span of God’s hand; earth and sea are encompassed by his hand.  But at the same time this One, being such as he is and so great as he is, grasping the whole creation in the palm of his hand, becomes limited for your sake and dwells in you and is not confined as he penetrates your nature.  For he is the One who says, 'I will dwell within them and will walk about among them' (2 Cor 6:16).  If you see these things, you will not set your eye on anything earthly. . . .  For how shall you marvel at the heavens, O human, when you see that you yourself are more lasting than the heavens?'"  Etc.

     St. Gregory of Nyssa, Homily 2 on the Song of songs, trans. Richard A. Norris, Jr. (Gregory of Nyssa:  homilies on the Song of songs, Writings from the Greco-Roman world 13 (Atlanta, GA:  SBL Press, 2012)), 76-77 =GNO 6.1.68.  I was put onto this by Gabrielle Thomas, "The Status of vulnerability in a theology of the Christian life:  Gregory of Nyssa on the 'wound of love’ in conversation with Sarah Coakley," Modern theology 38, no. 4 (2022): 791 (777–795).

"lost | In wonder, love, and praise"

      Joseph Addison, "When all thy mercies, O my God," stanza 1, the poem with which he concludes an essay on gratitude; The spectator 6, no. 453 (Saturday, August 9, 1712):  223.  See the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology under "When all thy mercies, O my God" ("The hymn [by Addison] was very popular in the 18th century, and has remained so. John Wesley* used it in his first hymnbook, the Collection of Psalms and Hymns published at Charlestown in 1737, though unhappily altering the two lines printed above to 'Why my cold heart, art thou not lost / In wonder, love and praise?'") and Charles Wesley's "Love divine, all loves excelling".

"unlike God, man is of two minds in the face of evil"

Aletheia

"unlike God, man is of two minds in the face of evil [(contrairement à Dieu, l’homme est partagé face au mal)]. . . .  There is this difference between God and man, that God never blesses evil but blesses always in order to deliver from evil. . . .  Whereas the tendency of sinful man is certainly to refuse to bless evil, but only up to a certain point, that is to say, up to the point at which his [own] compromise with evil carries him away.  When this point is reached, he prefers to 'compromis[e] and falsif[y] the standard of good and evil in order to adapt it to particular circumstances.' . . .  [H]e 'makes his own weakness the criterion of the truth about the good, so that he can feel [himself] self-justified' [Pope John Paul II, Veritas splendor 104]."

     Fr. Emmanuel Perrier, O.P., "Fiducia supplicans face au sense de la foi," Revue thomiste website, January 2024. 

Fr. Thomas Michelet on one of Pope Francis' favorite metaphors

Angelicum

"what to say of a field hospital in which those who are sick sit with those who are well to the point that [it] no longer offers any resistance to the pandemic?  What to make of a barque [of Peter] that has [(aurait, a conditional)] neither compass nor helm, [is] open to all but subject to every wind, [and] shows no longer either the way or any intention of following it?"

"que dire d’un hôpital de campagne où les malades siègent avec les bien-portants au point de ne plus offrir aucune résistance à la pandémie ? Que faire d’une barque de l’Église qui n’aurait ni boussole ni gouvernail, ouverte à tous mais soumise à tous vents, ne montrant plus le chemin ni son intention de le suivre?"

     Fr. Thomas Michelet, O.P., "Peut-on bénir Fiducia supplicans?," Revue thomiste website, January 2024.  Fr. Michelet bends over backwards to read the Declaration and the press release of 4 January 2024 charitably (often with the help of subsequent comments by Pope Francis), and yet says enough throughout to make it pretty obvious that he wishes the thing had been much more carefully composed.  Just quickly from the English translation, for example:

"At the very least, it is regrettable that we have to carry out this work of clarification for him [(À tout le moins peut-on regretter de devoir accomplir à sa place ce travail de clarification)], in order to defuse the bomb that the text potentially contains, without being able to affirm that it's author intended to put it there" (sec. 1).

"The Declaration regrettably did not deem it necessary to make such a distinction from the outset, preferring instead to insist that even in a situation of sin, God preserves for the sinner his unconditional love, his gifts and his blessing, without ever specifying whether he blesses the sin at the same time.  The Communiqué [of 4 January 2024] does not shed any light on this point" (sec. 2).

"Not only can we never bless evil, but we must never let anyone believe that we are doing so in any way whatsoever" (sec. 2).

"The problem lies first and foremost in the use of the word 'couple' for the two categories, 'couples in an irregular situation' and 'same-sex couples', as if they could be put on the same level, regardless of their differences in nature and not just in law, which is a major first in a document from the Holy See.  The previous doctrine from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith refrained from doing this, speaking of union and 'partnership' for people of the same sex, but never of 'couple'.  This helps to trivialize homosexual relationships:  whether you are of either sex or the same sex, you live 'as a couple' in [supposedly] the same way. . . . ."  "The term 'couple' is inappropriate and surprising in a document from a Dicastery that until now had accustomed us to more formal language" (sec. 6).  Etc.

"The key is to know what you are talking about and to whom.  It is best to be specific" (sec. 6).

"Under cover of a supposedly irreproachable orthodoxy, a deviant pastoral approach is gradually taking hold, preparing the ground for the next move, which would be to change the doctrine, and rewrite the Catechism accordingly.  The apparently benign gesture of an informal blessing turns out to be a formidable instrument for scotomising people's minds.  If this was the strategy, it marks what we hope will be a definitive halt.  If it wasn't, it would be a good idea to make this clear in ways other than imprecise press releases that only serve to increase doubt" (sec. 7).

"Should we promote and consecrate a contextual theology and a contextual pastoral ministry that will inevitably lead to contextual dogmatics at the expense of the unity of the faith?" (sec. 8)

"Can Fiducia supplicans be blessed?  neither yes nor no, quite the contrary" (sec. 8).

Etc. (I thought I saw more comments like these in the original French.)

"a funny sort of justice whose limits are marked by a river; true on this side of the Pyrenees, false on the other."

"Plaisante justice qu’une rivière borne ! Vérité au‑deçà des Pyrénées, erreur au‑delà."

     Blaise Pascal, Pensées Brunschvicg 294 =Faugère II, 126, IV / Havet III.8 / Michaut 193 / Tourneur p. 182-1 / Le Guern 56 / Maeda III p. 4 / Lafuma 60 / Sellier 94.  English from the Krailsheimer translation, in which this appears as no. 60.  I was reminded of this by Fr. Thomas Michelet, O.P., who directs it against "une théologie contextuelle et une pastorale contextuelle qui conduira fatalement à une dogmatique contextuelle au détriment de l’unité de la foi [(a contextual theology and a contextual pastoral [practice] that will lead inevitably to a contextual dogmatics to the detriment of the unity of the faith)]".  "Peut-on bénir Fiducia supplicans?," Revue thomiste, January 2024.

The regulation of the flesh as proof of the resurrection of the flesh

Theophanes the Cretan

"if our physician Christ, God, having rescued us from our desires [(ἐπιθυμιῶν)], regulates our flesh [(σάρκα)] with His own wise and temperate rule, it is evident that He guards it from sins [(ἁμαρτημιάτων)] because it possesses a hope of salvation [(ἐλπίδα σωτηρίας)]."

     Pseudo-Justin Martyr, De resurrectione 10, trans. Dods (ANF 1, p. 299).  =Heimgartner, .  Cf. p. 248 of vol. 2 of the 3rd (1876-1881) ed. of the edition of the Opera . . . omnia ed. Otto.

Gratia non tollit naturam

Thorens-Glieres (1567-1622),
Monastère de la Visitation, Paris

"devotion must be practiced in different ways by the nobleman and by the working man, by the servant and by the prince, by the widow, by the unmarried girl and by the married woman. But even this distinction is not sufficient; for the practice of devotion must be adapted to the strength, to the occupation and to the duties [(aux forces, aux affairs et aux devoirs)] of each one in particular.
     "Tell me, please, my Philothea, whether it is proper for a bishop to want to lead a solitary life like a Carthusian; or for married people to be no more concerned than a Capuchin about increasing their income [(Et si les mariés ne vouloient rien amasser non plus que les Capucins)]; or for a working man to spend his whole day in church like a religious; or on the other hand for a religious to be constantly exposed like a bishop to all the events and circumstances that bear on the needs of our neighbor. Is not this sort of devotion ridiculous, unorganized and intolerable [(ridicule, desreglee et insupportable)]? Yet this absurd error occurs very frequently, but in no way does true devotion, my Philothea, destroy anything at all. On the contrary, it perfects and fulfills all things. In fact if it ever works against, or is inimical to, anyone’s legitimate station and calling, then it is very definitely false devotion [(la devotion ne gaste rien quand elle est vraye, ains elle perfectionne tout, et lhors qu’elle se rend contraire a la legitime vacation de quelqu’un, elle est sans doute fausse)]. . . .
     "It is therefore an error and even a heresy [(un erreur, ains une heresie)] to wish to exclude the exercise of devotion from military divisions, from the artisans’ shops, from the courts of princes, from family households. . . .  [T]he type of devotion which is purely contemplative, monastic and religious can certainly not be exercised in these sorts of stations and occupations, but besides this threefold type of devotion, there are many others fit for perfecting those who live in a secular state.
     "Therefore, in whatever situations we happen to be, we can and we must aspire to the life of perfection."

     St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the devout life I.iii, trans. Liturgy of the hours.  French from pp. 19-21 of tom. 3 of the Œuvres complètes published by the Visitandines of Annecy (1892-1932).  vacation is, according to the dictionaries of early French that I have here at home, correct.  "'Lot,' St. Gregory says, 'who was so chaste in the city defiled himself in the wilderness' [(Loth, dit saint Gregoire, qui fut si chaste en la ville, se souïlla en la solitude)]" (trans. Ryan; the reference is to Pope St. Gregory the Great, Hom. Ezek., book 1, no. 9, sec. 22.1 (SC 327, ed. & trans. Morel, p. 362 ll. 21-22 | 24-26:  "Lot de quo loquimur, in Sodomis sanctus exstitit, in monte peccauit," "Lot, dont nous venons de parler, se montra un saint à Sodome, et pécha sur la montagne".   Trans. Theodosia Tomkinson (Etna, CA:  Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2008), pp. 172-173:

when it is said to the Prophet:  'Thou art among unbelievers and destroyers, and thou dwellest with scorpions' a physic of consolation is offered to us who are often tired of living since we are unwilling to dwell with evils.  Therefore we lament that all who live with us are not good.  We are reluctant to bear the sins of our neighbors, we already perceive that all ought to be Saints, while we are unwilling to be that which we bear from our neighbors.  But in this matter it is clearer than light, when we refuse to tolerate bad men how much less we still have of good.  For a person is not wholly good unless he is good even among evil men.  Hence Blessed Job asserts of himself saying:  'I was the brother of dragons, and companion of ostriches.'  Hence Paul the Apostle says to his disciples:  'In the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world.'  Hence Peter, shepherd of the Lord's flock, says:  'And delivered just Lot, oppressed by the injustice and lewd conversation of the wicked; for in sight and hearing he was just, dwelling among them who from day to day vexed the just soul with unjust works.'  Often indeed when we complain about the lives of our neighbors we seek to change our place, to choose the solitude of a more remote life, ignorant evidently that if the spirit is lacking the place does not help.  For that same Lot of whom we speak stood as holy in Sodom but sinned upon the mountain.  For that places do not protect the mind the very first ancestor of the human race bears witness, he who fell even in Paradise.  But all the words we speak from earth are less.  For if the place had power to save, Satan would not have fallen from Heaven. . . .

     But indeed there is one reason why the company of the wicked should be avoided, lest if perchance they cannot be restrained they attract to imitation, and when they themselves are not changed from their malice, the pervert those who are associated with them. . . . 

 

 

 

"And now the matchless deed's atchiev'd, | DETERMINED, DARED, AND DONE."

National Portrait Gallery 3780

     Christopher Smart (1722-1771), "A song to David" (1763), stanza 86, and also the concluding stanza to "We sing of God, the mighty source".  On p. 147 of vol. 2 of the Clarendon Poetical works.

Extra patristicum

"God the Word did not move out of himself when he dwelt among us.  Nor did he undergo a change when the Word became flesh.  Heaven was not deprived of what it contained, and earth received the heavenly one within its own embraces.  Do not suppose that the divinity fell.  For it did not move from one place to another as bodies do.  Do not imagine that the divinity was altered when it was transferred into flesh.  For the immortal is immutable."

Saint Basil the Great, Homily no. 2 on the Theophany (or Epiphany, otherwise known as the homily In sanctam Christi generationem, On the holy birth of Christ) 2, as trans. Holman and DelCogliano, St. Basil the Great On fasting and feasts, Popular patristics series 50 (Yonkers, NY:  St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2013), 29.  Greek at p. 850 col. 2E-A of the 1839 De Sinner ("apud Gaume") reprint of the Garnier (or Maurist) edition of the Opera omnia of 1721-1730, though there is also the the edition of Luigi Gambero (L'omelia sulla generazione di Cristo di Basilo di Cesarea:  Il posto della vergine Maria, Marian studies library 13-14 (Dayton, OH:  University of Dayton, 1981-1982), 177-200).

"I can never see God except in that in which God sees Himself"

"I can never see God except in that [itself] in which God sees Himself [inwardly]."

"Niemermê enmac ich got gesehen wan in dem selben, dâ got sich selben inne sihet."

      Meister Eckhart, Sermon 69 (or 42) on Jn 16:16 in German, as trans. Maurice O’C. Walshe (Complete mystical works of Meister Eckhart (New York:  A Herder & Herder Book, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009), 236, inexpert interpolations mine.  German from p. 175 l. 5 of Meister Eckharts Predigten, ed. Quint, Bd. 3, Die deutschen Werke 3 (1976) =l. 12 of Predigt 69.  For an earlier edition, see p. 144 of the 1857 edition by Pfeiffer.
     Eckhart refers next to the "inaccessible light" in which, according to St. Paul, "God dwells," but would it be twisting him (with whose thought I am extremely unfamiliar) to see the eternal Word in this (and therefore ultimately the Incarnation), too?  In context, probably.

"Since God loves the soul so mightily, the soul must be a very important thing."

      "Know then that God loves the soul so mightily, it is a wonder.  If anyone were to rob God of loving the soul, he would rob Him of His life and [his] being, or he would kill God, if one may say so; for the self-same love with which God loves the soul is His life, and in that same love the Holy Ghost blossoms forth, and that same love is the Holy Ghost.  Since God loves the soul so mightily, the soul must be a very important thing."

     "Nû wizzet, daz got die sêle als krefticlîche minnet, daz ez wunder ist.  Der daz gote benæme, daz er die sêle niht enminnete, der benæme im sîn leben unde sîn wesen, oder er tôte got, ob man daz sprechen sölte; wan diu selbe minne, dâ mite got die sêle minnet, daz ist sîn leben, und in der selben minne blüejet ûz der heilige geist, und diu selbe minne ist der heilige geist.  Sît got die sêle alsô krefticlîche minnet, sô muoz diu sêle ein alsô grôz dinc sîn."

     Meister Eckhart, Sermon 69 (or 42) on Jn 16:16 in German, as trans. Maurice O’C. Walshe (Complete mystical works of Meister Eckhart (New York:  A Herder & Herder Book, The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009), 234.  German from p. 163 l. 6-p. 164 l. 2 of Meister Eckharts Predigten, ed. Quint, Bd. 3, Die deutschen Werke 3 (1976), =ll. 34-39 of Predigt 69.  For an earlier edition, see p. 141 of the 1857 edition by Pfeiffer.
     My thanks to Dr. Matthew Milliner for the Facebook post that first flagged this passage for me.
     I'm not sure, though, that the whole of this is entirely orthodox (the Holy Spirit being the Love of the Father for the Son, not (?) the human being), but that last line is nice.

"Now it is no longer, 'Dust you are and to dust you shall return,' but 'You are joined to heaven and into heaven you shall be taken up.'"

Οὐκέτι, Γῆ εἶ καὶ γῆν ἀπελεύσῃ, ἀλλὰ τῷ οὐρανίῳ συναφθεὶς πρὸς οὐρανὸν ἀναληφθήσῃ.

     Saint Basil the Great, Homily no. 2 on the Theophany (or Epiphany, otherwise known as the homily In sanctam Christi generationem, On the holy birth of Christ) 6, as translated (for now) here.  Greek from p. 857 col. 1B of the 1839 De Sinner ("apud Gaume") reprint of the Garnier (or Maurist) edition of the Opera omnia of 1721-1730.  For a comment on the "technical" superiority of this edition, see p. 31 n. 5 of Mark DelCogliano, "Tradition and Polemic in Basil of Caesarea’s Homily on the Theophany," Vigiliae Christianae 66, no. 1 (2012) (where the CPG's revised position on its authenticity is also noted), and of course the latest (2022) edition of the ODCC.  Holman and DelCogliano, by contrast (St. Basil the Great On fasting and feasts, Popular patristics series 50 (Yonkers, NY:  St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2013)), translate the edition of Luigi Gambero (L'omelia sulla generazione di Cristo di Basilo di Cesarea:  Il posto della vergine Maria, Marian studies library 13-14 (Dayton, OH:  University of Dayton, 1981-1982), 177-200).  Their translation of this sentence, on p. 39, runs as follows:

No longer are you dust and to dust you shall return; rather, joined now to heaven, you shall be taken up into heaven.

My thanks to Dr. Matthew Milliner for the Facebook post that introduced me to this passage.

"a lot of what the West is ever going to be"

AEI

"'Do you think there are a lot of new ideas in politics?'

"'No, I, I certainly don’t.  I’m a conservative.  I think very little has been learned since St. Thomas finished compiling the connection between Aristotle and Judaism and Christianity.  At that point we basically knew a lot of what we’re ever going to know.  You know.  You add to Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics the insight that God created the heavens and the earth, and you got a lot of what the West is ever going to be.  I do think there have been new ideas in politics since then.  I think liberalism properly understood is a new idea that is a very good idea.  Not that new anymore, but it’s newer than classical politics.  It was an innovation that was genuinely, that opened genuinely new vistas in the human experience and was fantastically worthwhile.  I also think that there have been bad innovations since that time.  There, you know, totalitarianism was not, the possibility of it was not evident to classical philosophy.  But. . . .'"

     Yuval Levin, as interviewed by Jonah Golberg on The Remnant podcast, "Theory, properly misunderstood," 4 July 2024, at 41:36.

Everlasting Father

Is 9:6:

אֲבִיעַ֖ד.  NRSVue:  "Everlasting Father".  Alter:  "eternal father"

Septuagint:  nothing comparable

Pater futuri saeculi.  Douay-Rheims:  "Father of the world to come"

"begotten before all ages, he has begun to exist in time"

Honthorst, "Adoration" (1620)

"on the feast of this awe-filled mystery, though invisible in his own divine nature, he has appeared visibly in ours; and begotten before all ages, he has begun to exist in time; so that, raising up in himself all that was cast down, he might restore unity to all creation and call straying humanity back to the heavenly Kingdom."

"Qui, in huius venerandi festivitate mysterii, invisibilis in suis, visibilis in nostris apparuit, et ante tempora genitus esse coepit in tempore; ut, in se erigens cuncta deiecta, in integrum restitueret universa, et hominem perditum ad caelestia regna revocaret."

     Preface II for the Nativity of the Lord, newly composed for the Missal of Paul VI on the basis of Sermon 22.2 of St. Leo the Great (trans. Freeland & Conway, FC 93, pp. 81 ff. (80-87); CCSL 138, ed. Chevasse (1973), pp. ; PL 54, cols. 195-196), "of the phrasing" of which there were "already reminiscences . . . in a variety of liturgical texts" reproduced at Anthony Ward and Cuthbert Johnson, The prefaces of the Roman missal:  a source compendium with concordance and indices (Rome:  C.L.V. - Editioni Liturgische, 1989), 76-82.  Previous ICEL "translation," as reproduced on p. 81:

Today you fill our hearts with joy as we recognize in Christ the revelation of your love.  No eye can see his glory as our God, yet now he is seen as one like us.  Christ is your Son before all ages, yet now he is born in time.  He has come to lift up all things to himself, to restore unity to creation, and to lead mankind from exile into your heavenly kingdom.