I eat and drink the price of my redemption

"Your only Son 'in whom are hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge' (Col. 2:3) had 'redeemed me by his blood' (Rev. 5:9). . . .  I think upon the price of my redemption, and I eat and drink it, and distribute it.  In my poverty I desire to be satisfied from it together with those who 'eat and are satisfied' (Ps. 61:5)."

ille tuus unicus, «in quo sunt omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae absconditi », redemit me sanguine suo. . . . cogito pretium meum et manduco et bibo et erogo et pauper cupio saturari ex eo inter illos, qui edunt et saturantur. . . .

     St. Augustine, Confessiones X.xliii (70), trans. Chadwick.  Latin from CCSL 27, 193 ll. 34-38 (cf. CSEL 33, 279 l. 21-280 l. 2).

"when man and woman possess their home, two minds, | two hearts that work as one"

"'may the good gods give you all your heart desires: | husband, and house, and lasting harmony too. | No finer, greater gift in the world than that . . . | when man and woman possess their home, two minds, | two hearts that work as one.  Despair to their enemies, | a joy to all their friends.  Their own best claim to glory.'"

     Odysseus to Nausicaa; Odyssey 6, c. 200, trans. Fagles (New York:  Penguin, 1996), 174. 

"That distant land"

      Andy Catlett's "remembering and his thoughts have carried him by now far outside of the matter of fact of this world's present age.  He stands now with his father [Wheeler] and his father's father [Marce], and with others dear to them, in the presence of a longed-for beautiful land that they have desired as if seen afar, that yet is the same, the very land that they have known and that they know, a love-made land, dark to them until by their own love they came to see it."

     Wendell Berry, Marce Catlett:  the force of a story (Los Angeles & San Francisco, CA:  Counterpoint, 2025), 144 (The future, 14).  Concluding lines, p. 151 (The future, 15):

     As they have carried the story, the dead and the living have been carried by it through the breakages of broken times, circling generation by generation back to that distant land, which they have never reached except by trial and in spells, never yet placing two generations securely in succession, the land where more than a century ago Marce Catlett departed with cautious hope in the dark past midnight, came home broke, and in the dark before daylight the next morning went back to work.

"'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.'"

"[Robert] Persons was still in hiding at Stonor; he sent his servant to see how Campion was looking, and the man brought back word that his gentleness and charm had already put him on easy terms with his captors.  The party dined together at the same table.  Campion chatted easily with them and with several members of the University who were allowed to approach  him.
     "[The 'professional priest-hunter' George] Eliot was ignored; neither magistrates nor soldiers troubled to hide their dislike of the man; once or twice on the road there had been hostile movements in the crowd as the informer passed, and cries of 'Judas'; his first elation was exhausted; the praise which he had received at Court sounded faint and distorted; it was almost as though this were Campion’s triumph, and he the malefactor.  At last he could bear Campion’s neglect no longer, and so broke out:  'Mr. Campion, you look cheerfully on everyone but me.  I know you are angry with me for this work.'
     "Then, perhaps for the first time since Sunday morning, when Eliot had knelt for Mass to receive the holy bread from his hands, Campion turned his eyes on him, 'God forgive thee, Eliot,' he said, 'for so judging of me; I forgive thee and in token thereof, I drink to thee.'  He raised his cup, and then added more gravely, 'Yea, and if thou repent and come to confession, I will absolve thee; but large penance must thou have.'"

     Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion (London:  Longmans, Green and Co.,1937 [1935]), 168.

Is there more to this than a leyenda negra inglesa?

"The last thing [King Philip of Spain] wanted was to go to war, particularly with the English, whose formidable spirit he knew from the days when he had been their king.
     "But the provocation had been continuous. . . . [And] Then there were the slave traders.  In accordance with his stern moral code Philip forbade his American colonists from enslaving the native Indians and from importing negroes.  They resented this, and readily bought from Hawkins, although trade of any kind was forbidden them except with their Mother Country.  Not only was [Queen]  Elizabeth cognizant of this contraband business, she was a partner in it.  She had lent a ship of her own, unsuitably called the Jesus, for this very purpose.  Bristol grew rich once more with the trade that St. Wulstan had suppressed there in the eleventh century.  English galleys, laden with human cargo, plied regularly between America and West Africa, and on their return journeys, as often as not, stopped to sack a Spanish outpost or board a treasure ship."

     Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion (London:  Longmans, Green and Co.,1937 [1935]), 105.  I merely note the claim.  It would be interesting to know what a specialist would say.

Sign of the cross as a form of public confession

St. Euplus, Dumbarton Oaks

     "It was the twelfth day of August, in the ninth consulship of Diocletian and the eighth of Maximian, when the governor Calvisianus said to Euplius under torture:  'What now do you say with regard to the things you admitted today in your confession?'
     "Euplius made the sign of the cross on his forehead with one free hand and [(libera manu signans sibi frontem)] said:  'What I said then I confess again now:  I am a Christian and I read the divine Scriptures.'"

     Acts of Euplus B. The Latin recension, The acts of the Christian martyrs, ed. & trans. Herbert Musurillo (Oxford:  The Clarendon Press, 1972), 315-316.  Eplus was executed on 29 April 304.  The reference to him making the sign of the cross is not present in A. The Greek recension.


"On this account, since Christ was already formed in her, the bride says, 'Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal on your arm.'  Christ is the seal on the forehead, the seal in the heart—on the forehead that we may always confess Him, in the heart that we may always love Him, and a sign on the arm, that we may always do His work.  Therefore let His image shine forth in our profession of faith, let it shine forth in our love, let it shine forth in our works and deeds so that, if it is possible, all His beauty may be represented in us."

     St. Ambrose, Isaac, or the soul 8.75, Seven exegetical works, trans. Mc Hugh, FC 64 (1972), 59.


"Let Zacchaeus grasp the sycamore tree, the humble person climb the cross. That's little enough, merely to climb it; we mustn't be ashamed of the cross of Christ, we must fix it on our foreheads, where the seat of shame is; yes, there, there above all where our blushes show, that's where we must firmly fix what we should never blush for."

     St. Augustine, Sermon 174.3, trans. Hill, WSA III/5 (1992), 260.  Vogel, at "La signation dans l’église des premiers siècles," La maison-dieu no. 75 (1963), 48n52, cites also "Ennar. in Ps. XXX, 3, 7 (PL, 36, 252)", but is this, at sec. 7 in the third Exposition of Ps. 30, that?  "Do you really think, my brothers and sisters, that all those people who set up their little local heresies and sects were unaware that when the Church was prophesied in God's scriptures, it was always as a Church spread throughout the world? By no means! I tell you, beloved, we are all Christians, we and they, or at any rate we are all called Christians, and all of us are signed with Christ's sign. Yet the prophets spoke more clearly about the Church than about Christ, because, I think, they saw in spirit that it was in opposition to the Church that people would found their conventicles."

"Stagger onward rejoicing"

"Give thanks and lie down in peace, | Having seen your salvation."
"may | Hermes, master of the roads | and the four dwarf Kabiri, | Protect and serve you always; | And may the Ancient of Days | Provide for all you must do | His invisible guidance, | Lifting up, friend, upon you | The light of His countenance."

     W. H. Auden, "Atlantis," Collected shorter poems 1927-1957 (New York:  Random House, 1966 [1934]), 202-204. 

"after baptism the crossing of the desert, by a life . . . lived in hope"

"There remains, you see, after baptism the crossing of the desert, by a life that is lived in hope, until we come to the promised land, to the land of the living where God is our portion, to the eternal Jerusalem; until we get there, the whole of this life is the desert for us, the whole of it a trial and a temptation. But in the one who has overcome the world the people of God has overcome all things. Just as in baptism, after all, our past sins, like enemies pursuing us from the rear, are obliterated, in the same way after baptism, in the journey of this life, when we eat the spiritual food and drink the spiritual drink, we overcome everything that bars our way."

"restat enim post baptismum transitus per eremum, per uitam quae agitur in spe, donec ueniamus ad terram promissionis, terram uiuentium ubi nobis est portio dominus, in aeternam Ierusalem; quo donec ueniamus, tota ista uita eremus nobis est, et tota tentatio. sed in eo qui uicit saeculum, uincit omnia populus dei. nam sicut in baptismo, tanquam hostes a tergo insequentes, praeterita peccata delentur: sic post baptismum, in itinere uitae huius, cum escam spiritualem manducamus, et potum spiritualem bibimus, omnia nobis aduersantia superamus." 

     St. Augustine,  Sermon 363.3 (possibly Easter Vigil, 412/416), trans. Hill, WSA III/10, 273. Latin from PL 39, 1637, ll 29-39.

Sign of the cross

"At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign."

"Ad omnem progressum atque promotum, ad omnem aditum et exitum, ad vestitum et calciatum, ad lavacra, ad mensas, ad lumina, ad cubilia, ad sedilia, quacumque nos conversatio exercet, frontem signaculo terimus." 

     Tertullian, De corona 3 (AD 211), trans. Thelwall (ANL 11/ANF 3).  Tertullian, writing in his (final) Montanist period, here cites Christian tradition on the signaculo (sign of the cross) in support of the Christian tradition against wearing "a crown upon [the] head, except at a time of trial" (i.e. military service:  "not one of the Faithful has ever").  If the latter must be abandoned, then so should the former (and all other such "mere" traditions); if the latter abstention, then the former practice, too.  Trans. Conacher in his 2020 translation of the article on "La signation dans l’église des premiers siècles" by Cyrille Vogel (La maison-dieu no. 75 (1963):  37-51):

"Every time we go out or go anywhere, before and after all our activities, when we dress and put on our shoes, when we wash, at table, when we light the lamps, when we go to bed, when we sit down, whatever we are doing, we trace the sign of the cross on our foreheads."

According to Vogel, if we are willing to cite the gnostics (as we should be, for there is nothing uniquely gnostic--or for that matter Montanist, or even pagan--about the signatio), testimony to the custom can be pushed back fifty years behind 211 (Vogel 38n6 on Montanism; 41-42, incl. 42n19, on Gnosticism; and 44 (i.e. sec. 2) on paganism).

"Whoever has gone astray in the faith may thereafter believe whatever he wants to, everything is equally valid."

"Wer des glaubens gefeilet hat, der mag darnach glewben was er wil, gilt eben gleich."

     Martin Luther, Sermon Von dem Sacrament des leibs vnd bluts Christi, widder die Schwarmgeister (1526), in WA 19 (1897), 484 ll. 19–20, as trans. Brad Gregory in chap. 2 of The unintended Reformation:  how a religious revolution secularized society (Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2012).  =LW 36 (The sacrament of the body and blood of Christ—against the fanatics), 336, as trans. Frederick C. Ahrens:

"Anyone who has failed to grasp the faith may thenceforth believe whatever he likes, it makes no difference." 

"forget not thou thy earth"

"O Brother of ours, O natural son of the Father, whose sons thou makest us by adoption, O Head of our Body, we see that thou art king of Heaven:  forget not thou thy earth, whereinto thine inestimable love to us did bring thee down."

     Luis de Vives (Ludovicus Vives, or Jean Luis Vives), as quoted (presumably in the 16th (?) century Bradford translation) by Eamon Duffy at The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1992), 236-237, citing A booke of Christian prayers in William Keatinge Clay, ed., Private prayers: put forth by authority during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (Cambridge: Printed [for the Parker Society] at the University Press, 1851), 514.

"I'm a deeply flippant person"

"I'm a deeply flippant person, Anna.  Whereas you, you are deep.  You know, you have depth.  And when you've fallen in love with someone, I've got no advice for that."

     Kingsley Faraday (Daniel Henshall) to his sister Anna Ivin (Sarah Snook) in Episode 1.3 of The beautiful lie. Kingsley's fling meant nothing to him, but Anna is conducting hers with real passion.

O BONE JESU

"O good Jesu, o sweet Jesu, o Jesu, son of the Virgin Mary, full of mercy and truth . . . who for us sinners deigned to pour out your blood on the altar of the cross:  I invoke your holy name.  This name of Jesu is a sweet name . . . for what is Jesu but Saviour . . . O good Jesu, call to mind what is yours in me, wipe away all that I have made alien."

"O BONE JESU.  O dulcis Jesu.  O Jesu, Fili Marie virginis, plenus misericordia et veritate.  O dulcis Jesu, miserere mei secundum magnam misericoridiam tuam.  O benigne Jesu, te deprecor per illum sanguinem preciosum, quem pro nobis peccatoribus effundere dignatus es in ara crucis, vt abijcias omnes iniquitates meas:  et ne despicias [me] humiliter te petentem:  et hoc nomen tuum sanctissimum Jesum inuocantem.  Hos nomen Jesus nomen dulce est:  hoc nomen Jesus nomen salutare est.  Quid enim Jesus, nisi Saluator?  O bone Jesu, qui me creasti et redemisti tuo precioso sanguine ne permittas me damnari, quem tu ex nichilo creasti.  O bone Jesu Christe, ne perdat me iniquitas mea, quem fecit et creauit omnipotens bonitas tua.  O bone Jesu, recognosce quod tuum est in me:  et absterge quod alienum est a me.  O bone Jesu, miserere mei, dum tempus est miserendi:  ne perdas me in tempore tui tremendi iudicij.  O bone Jesu, si merui ego miser peccator de vera tua iustitia penam eternam pro peccatis meis grauissimis:  adhuc appello confisus de tua iustitia vera ad tuam misericordiam ineffabilem vtique misereberis mei, vt pius Pater et misericors Dominus.  O bone Jesu, que enim vtilitas in sanguine meo:  dum descendero in corruptionem eternam.  Non enim mortui laudabunt te:  neque omnes qui descendunt in infernum.  O misericordissime Jesu, miserere mei.  O dulcissime Jesu, libera me.  O pijssime Jesu, propicius esto michi peccatori.  O Jesu, admitte me miserum peccatorem inter numerum electorum tuorum.  O Jesu, salus in te sperantium.  O Jesu, salus in te credentium, misere mei.  O Jesu, dulcis remissio omnium peccatorum meorum.  O Jesu, Fili virginis Marie, infunde in me gratiam tuam, sapientiam, charitatem, castitatem ac humilitatem, ac etiam in omnibus aduersitatibus meis patientiam sanctam, vt possim te perfecte diligere, et in te gloriari ac delectari in secula seculorum.  Amen."

      "The fervent and affectionate prayer 'O Bone Jesu', invariably found in the printed Sarum Horae, and directly derived from St. Anselm's Meditations," as translated by Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd edition (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1992), 236 =Christopher Wordsworth, ed., Horae Eboracenses:  the Prymer or Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary according to the use of the illustrious church of York; with other devotions as they were used by the lay-folk in the Northern Province in the XVth and XVIth centuries (Durham:  Pub. for the [Surtees] Society by Andrews & Co., 1920), 83-84.

"Each of them, [the] man and [the] woman, should acknowledge and accept his[/her] sexual identity"

"By creating the human being man and woman, God gives personal dignity equally to the one and the other. Each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity."

"Deus, creaturam humanam virum creans et mulierem, utrumque pari donavit personali dignitate. Ad unumquemque pertinet, ad virum et mulierem, suam sexualem agnoscere et acceptare identitatem."

     Catechism of the Catholic Church no. 2393 (under the Sixth Commandment; English, Latin).  Identitas is post-classical, apparently 4th century and following.  Blaise doesn't carry the modern sense, but the DMLBS (the other dictionary of medieval Latin to which I have immediate access from here at home) offers the following, no. 3a of 9:  "identity, condition or fact that person or thing is itself and not something else" (the OED gives the 8th century for that sense, and 1756 for 'individuality, personality' as a sense of the French identité).

Holy Kinship

Hans Thoman, Heilige Sippe (c. 1515),
Andreas Preifcke, photographer

The cult of St. Anne "was a popular one in the late Middle Ages in England as elsewhere, and she and her daughters provided a symbolic affirmation of the rootedness of the Incarnate Christ within a real human family. At a time when much in the cult of the saints militated against a positive valuation of human sexuality and the realities of marriage and childbearing, the cult of Anne provided an image of female fruitfulness which was maternal rather than virginal, and her thrice-married state, rivalling the career of the Wife of Bath, was an unequivocal assertion of the compatibility of sanctity and married life. She represented both the notion of the family and the principle of fertility, whose three holy daughters gave birth in their turn to six Apostles and the Saviour of the world".
St. Margaret, "whose spectacular torments and miraculous preservation spoke of holiness and otherness, was a symbol of transcendent power, the sacred beyond the limits of the experience of ordinary people. Her power to help sprang from her divinely protected and heroic virginal integrity. The figures in the other paintings are even more sacred beings - Christ and his six cousins, all of them Apostles, and Anne's three holy daughters. But here they are mothers and children of flesh and blood: one of the toddlers blows bubbles from a pipe, another clutches a toy windmill. The screen spoke to the women of Ranworth simultaneously of the divine indwelling in the concrete reality of the family, of the sanctity of marriage and procreation and God's blessing on ordinary things, and at the same time of the transcendent power of God to help those in extremity, symbolized by Margaret's virginal intercession. As in the case of Henry Walter and St Erasmus, the specialist saint is given a richly human symbolic context which prevents her being seen as a mere mechanical dispenser of power and favour."

     Eamon Duffy, The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580, 2nd ed. (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2005), 181-182.

A prayer cobbled together out of Jn 17 RSV

Holy Father, keep me in thy name, which thy Son, Jesus Christ, hast given me, that I may know the glory of being perfectly one with thy saints in thee, even as ye are one.  Guard me, and lose me not.  Keep me from the evil one.  Sanctify and consecrate me in the truth, thy word, that I might have his joy fulfilled in myself.  May I be with him where he is, to behold his glory which thou hast given him in thy love for him before the foundation of the world.  And may this love with which thou hast loved him be in me, and he in me.

Holy Father, keep me in thy name, which thy Son, Jesus Christ, hast given me, that I may be perfectly one with thy saints in thee, even as thou, Father, art in him, and he in thee.  Guard me, and lose me not.  Keep me from the evil one.  Sanctify and consecrate me in the truth, thy word, that I might have his joy fulfilled in myself.  May I be with him where he is, to behold his glory which thou hast given him in thy love for him before the foundation of the world.  And may this love with which thou hast loved him be in me, and he in me.

Or us/we/ourselves.

     Inspired by this late 5th-century tablet, found in a grave at Hács-Béndekpuszta, east of Budapest, in "A world winking with messages" (Peter Brown).

Pseudonymity

"Bacon warned that many magical texts had attained their notable ability to survive and cross borders by adopting false papers—the names of apparently famous and reliable authors:  'Whatever they say, that Solomon composed this or that, or other wise men, is to be denied.  For the authority of the church and of the wise does not accept books like this, but seducers, who fool the world.  For they compose new books, and multiply new inventions, as we know from experience.  And then, so that they may attract men even more strongly, they give their books celebrated titles, and impudently ascribe them to great authors.'"

     Roger Bacon, "Epistola de secretis operibus artis et naturae, et de nullitate magiae," in Opera quaedam hactenus inedita, ed. J. S. Brewer (London:  Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1859), 526, as translated at Anthony Grafton, Magus:  the art of magic from Faustus to Agrippa (Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2023), 26.  (Yet Bacon was himself more enamoured of astrology than, say, Nicholas of Cusa.)

Neue Quäckerey in der Quietisterey

"The theologia mystica has been still more fruitful in the present century and spread [abroad] a pile of Schwärmer [(ein Hauffen Schwärmereyen)].  From this platonic egg were hatched [(hervorgefrochen) untranslated:] the Weigelianer, Rosenkreutzer, neueren Propheten, Stifelianer, Methisten, Hoburgianer, Böhmisten, Widertauffer, Quäcker, Bourignisten, Quietisten, [and] Septenisten. . . . [T]he Quaker Barclay cited the experience of Bernard, Bonaventure, Tauler, Thomas à Kempis, and other mystical teachers."

     Ehregott Daniel Colberg, Platonistich-hermenetisches Christenthum, begreiffend die historische Erzehlung vom Ursprung und vielerley Secten der heutigen Fanatischen Theologie, unterm Namen der Paracelsisten, Weigelianer, Rosencreutzer, Quäcker, Böhmisten, Widertäuffer, Bourignisten, Labadisten and Quietisten (Frankfuhrt:  1690) 1.16 (vol. 1, pp. 75-76).  The reference seems to be to Apology 11.5.  I was put onto this by Bern Roling, “Mittelalterliche Mystik im Kreutzfeuer des Pietismusstreites:  der Wittenberger Theologe Martin Chladni (1669-1725) und seine Auseinandersetzung mit der Frauenmystik des Hochmittelalters, Pietismus und Neuzeit 46/47 (2020/2021):  40 (38-84):

War es Zufall, so hatte Colberg gefragt, das ein Quäker wie Robert Barclay (1648-1690) sich auf Bernhard von Clairvaux (1090-1153) and Bonaventura (1221-1274) hatte befufen können?

Cf. the title cited in n6:  Conrad Tiburtius Rango, Neue Quäckerey in der Quietisterey (Frankfurt:  1688).  For what very little it may be worth, neither Colberg nor Rango are listed in Smith's 1873 Bibliotheca anti-Quakeriana.

Ordo naturae

Universität Wien

"For this reason one may not confuse the phrase order of nature with [the phrase] biological order, much less . . . [(gleichsetzen)] the realities they signify.  Biological order is [only] the order of nature to the degree that [the latter] is amenable to the empirical and descriptive methods of the natural sciences.  But to the extent that the order of nature is a specific order of existence that stands in [an] obvious relation to the causa prima (to God, the Creator), it is no longer a [merely] biological order."

     Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, "Die Bibel queer lesen?  Zu einem umstritten Heft des katholischen Bibelwerks," Communio blog, 29 May 2026.

"the gate is narrow and the way is hard [(einfaltig)], that leads to life [(Fülle)]"

Universität Wien

"The religious symbol-system of Israel was, with reference to the multiplicity [(Vielfalt)] of Ancient [Near] Eastern [polytheism]—indeed ancient polytheism [more generally]—comparatively simple:  YHWH is one and . . . unique (Dt 6:4), exclusive, shuts out all other gods. . . .  The God of the Bible is no fan of [riotous] diversity [(Vielfalt)]."

"Against the background of the genesis and phenomenology of the religious symbol system attested to in the Bible, [our contemporary] praise of [sexual] diversity looks to me like a surreptitious praise of polytheism.  It is [well-]suited to the self-understanding of the postmodern, [and] stands for all of that in opposition to the biblical tradition.  The God of Israel is one; he is constant [(true)], does not dissemble, wears no masks, has nothing evil up his sleeve.  The fulfillment [(Fülle)] that the biblical faith promises is not to be confused with the profusions [(Vielfalt)] of ancient cosmotheism.  [It is] only through the needle's-eye of simplicity [(Einfalt)] that man acquires access to the plenitude [(Fülle)] of the God attested to in the Bible:  so confess both Judaism and Christianity together (cf. Mk 12:28-34, 1 Thess 1:9, Rom 6:21)."

     Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, "Die Bibel queer lesen?  Zu einem umstritten Heft des katholischen Bibelwerks," Communio blog, 29 May 2026.

The Differentiation

"Blessed are You, L‑rd our G‑d, King of the universe, who makes a distinction between sacred and mundane, between light and darkness, between Israel and the nations, between the Seventh Day and the six workdays. Blessed are You, L‑rd, who makes a distinction between sacred and mundane."

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם הַמַּבְדִּיל בֵּין קֹדֶשׁ לְחוֹל בֵּין אוֹר לְחֹשֶׁךְ בֵּין יִשְׂרָאֵל לָעַמִּים בֵּין יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי לְשֵׁשֶׁת יְמֵי הַמַּעֲשֶׂה בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי הַמַּבְדִּיל בֵּין קֹדֶשׁ לְחוֹל

     The Havdalah.

queer, quer

Universität Wien

"The queer [(queere)] reading of the Bible appears to be in fact a form of reading that stands in opposition [(quer)] to Holy Scripture."

     Ludger Schwienhorst-Schönberger, "Die Bibel queer lesen?  Zu einem umstritten Heft des katholischen Bibelwerks," Communio blog, 29 May 2026.  As I don't have an etymological dictionary of German ready-to-hand, here is the etymology the OED gives for the adjective "queer":  "perhaps < (or perhaps even cognate with) German quer transverse, oblique, crosswise, at right angles, obstructive, (of things) going wrong (now rare), (of a person) peculiar (now obsolete in this sense), (of a glance) directed sideways, especially in a surreptitious or hostile manner (now rare), (of opinion and behaviour) at odds with others (see thwart adv.), but the semantic correspondence is not exact, and the figurative senses in German are apparently much later developments than the English word."

Frequent Communion

© Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 2.5

 "Qui tribus dominicis non communicaverint, excommunicantur."

"Those who have not partaken of Holy Communion for three Sundays [running] are excommunicated." 

     The c. 8th-century Bigotian Penitential (so-called), as quoted by Fr. Edmond Dublanchy, S.M., citing Die Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche, ed. Wasserschleben (Halle:  1851), 448, in "Communion eucharistique. II. Communion fréquente,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 3 (1908), col. 522 (cols. 515-552).  For the context, see The Irish penitentials, ed. Bieler, Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 5 (Dublin:  Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1963), 219:

9. CONCERNING THE LORD'S DAY
     1. If anyone by negligence fasts on the Lord's Day, he must fast for the entire week; if (he does so) a second time, forty days; if, after that, sixty days.  2. Those who have not communicated for three Sundays, are excommunicated.

     communicaverit is PAS3P.  Cf. Penitential of Theodore I.xii.1, as quoted in the DMLBS, sv communicare:  "qui iij Dominicis non [communic]averint, excommunicentur" (excommunicentur being pPS3P).
     Presumably that "Qui" would have to be "Worthies who".  I.e. presumably in context it would not be directed against those who, say, haven't been able to get to confession.

Frequent communion

"In the current language of the theologians, above all since the time of St. Alphonso Liguori, there has been a consensus around reserving [(on est convenu de, one has agreed to reserve)] the phrase [(nom)] 'frequent communion' for that which is received [(faite)] at least many times per week."

     Fr. Edmond Dublanchy, S.M., "Communion eucharistique. II. Communion fréquente,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 3 (1908), col. 515 (cols. 515-552).

From "once in the yeare at the least" (1549 Book of common prayer) to "at the least three tymes in the yeare, of whiche Easter to bee one" (1552 Book of common prayer and following)

     This (unless I've missed something) in correction of the usually reliable Oxford dictionary of the Christian church, which since the 1st edition of 1957 right on up through the 4th edition of 2022 has claimed that "the BCP in 1549 and later editions fixed the minimum at three times a year" (1957).

"Firmly I believe and truly"

Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
     De profundis oro te,
Miserere, Judex meus,
     Parce mihi, Domine.
Firmly I believe and truly
     God is Three, and God is One;
And I next acknowledge duly
     Manhood taken by the Son.
And I trust and hope most fully
     In that Manhood crucified;
And each thought and deed unruly
     Do to death, as He has died.
Simply to His grace and wholly
     Light and life and strength belong,
And I love, supremely, solely,
     Him the holy, Him the strong.
Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
     De profundis oro te,
Miserere, Judex meus,
     Parce mihi, Domine.
And I hold in veneration,
     For the love of Him alone,
Holy Church, as His creation,
     And her teachings, as His own.
And I take with joy whatever
     Now besets me, pain or fear,
And with a strong will I sever
     All the ties which bind me here.
Adoration aye be given,
     With and through the angelic host,
To the God of earth and heaven,
     Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
     De profundis oro te,
Miserere, Judex meus,
     mortis in discrimine.

     John Henry Newman, The dream of Gerontius (January 1865) 1.

re-cord-atio as an act of the heart (cor, cordis)

"Grant, almighty God, that we may celebrate with heartfelt devotion these days of joy, which we keep in honour of the risen Lord, and that what we relive in remembrance we may always hold to in what we do. Through".

"Fac nos, omnipotens Deus, hos laetitiae dies, quos in honorem Domini resurgentis exsequimur, affectu sedulo celebrare, ut quod recordatione percurrimus semper in opere teneamus.  Per".

     Collect for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Roman missal.  =Corpus orationum .  This incipit does not occur in Bruylants, though there is an occurrence of recordatio (recordationibus) at 998 in vol. 2.  But on p. 81 in the mid-8th-century Gelasian as ed. Mohlberg in 1960, we get no. 504, which is even better (translation from pp. 179-180 of Peter John Cramer, Baptism and Change in the Early Middle Ages, c. 200-c. 1150 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), which covers "this remembering" on pp. 89-98):

Vat.Reg.Lat.316 fol. 82r

Deus, per cuius prouidentiam nec praeteritorum momenta deficiunt nec ulla superest expectacio futurorum, tribue permanentem peractae quae recolimus solemnitatis effectum, ut quod recordatione percurrimus, semper in opere teneamus.

God, in whose foresight are present all times gone by, and who does not wait for what will be, give lasting effect of solemnity to the action we once did and now remember, that what we pass through in our memory we may hold to in the things we do.

My translation (given that this falls under "Orationes et praeces de pascha annotina," "Orations and prayers for the anniversary of a baptism"):

O God, by whose providence no moments of [times] gone by are lost and no expectation of [times yet] to come remains [unfulfilled], give to/bestow upon the-completed/traversed-[baptism]-that-we-[now]-recall [(recolimus)] the perduring effect of the rite/solemnity, that what we run back through in re-cord-ation [(recordatione, recollection)] we may preserve always a fidelity to [(teneamus, incl. recollect)] in deed.

And my paraphrase:

O God, by whose providence no moments of times-past are lost, and no expectations of times-future remain unfulfilled, bestow upon the-accomplished-[baptism]-that-we-[now]-recall the perduring effect of the rite, that what we run back through in heartfelt recollection we may preserve always a fidelity-to in all we do.

A. Ernout & A. Meillet, for the Centre National de la recherche scientifique, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue Latine:  histoire des mots, 4th ed. (Paris:  Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1959), sv cor, cordis, on p. 142 of vol. 1:  "recordor, recordaris : se remettre dans l’esprit, M. L. 7129", to put/place oneself again in mind of (go back and figure out what "M. L." is).  The OED under the etymology for recordation:  "recordātiō act of calling to mind, recollection, faculty of recollection".

William Barclay (it would appear), as prefaced by Lancelot Andrewes

"Take away, O Lord, the veil of our hearts while we read the scriptures. Help us to study your word, not only to know about our blessed Lord, but also to know him; not only to learn about him, but also to encounter him; not only to grow in knowledge, but also to increase in love; not only to love him with our hearts, but also to obey him with our lives.  So that in knowing him, and loving him, and obeying him, we too may say with the Apostle Paul: For me to live is Christ. This we ask for your love’s sake. Amen."

Here’s a link to the presence of all but the incipit from Lancelot Andrewes in William Barclay’s Introducing the Bible (London:  Bible Reading Fellowship; Nashville:  Abingdon, 1972), p. [7] (I've checked both, the Nashville printing on paper, and the original London printing via Google Books).

As I said back in early December of 2023, "the incipit [(at least)] is clearly Andrewes (riffing, of course, on 2 Cor 3:15), as translated by F. E. Brightman from the 1675 Oxford edition of the Preces privatae, as also edited by him (i.e. Brightman)." 

"Take away, o Lord, the veil of my heart while I read the Scriptures" (in your prayer this is changed only from the first person singular into the first person plural).

And here is Andrewes' original Latin:

"Tolle, Domine, velamen cordis mei, dum lego Scripturas"  (2 Cor 3:15 Vulgate:  "velamen est positum super cor eorum").

If, on the other hand, you compare the Preces privatae as they appear on p. 354 of vol. 10 of the standard 1841-1854 edition of Andrewes' Works, you’ll see stuff in Brightman’s English that doesn’t appear at that very point in the Latin:  not at this point in particular, but on that same page in Brightman’s English.  And in Brightman’s Preface there are some comments about moving things around a bit.

But because Andrewes had to modify the Latin of the Vulgate to turn it into a private prayer, that part, translated faithfully by Brightman, does indeed seem to come from Andrewes rather than the Vulgate directly (unless somebody else so modified it independently exactly as did Andrewes).

     My thanks to Dr. David Nienhuis for the diversion.

"actions belong to supposits and wholes and, properly speaking, not to parts and forms or powers"

 "Actiones . . . sunt suppositorum et totorum, non autem, proprie loquendo, partium et formarum, seu potentiarum".

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II.58.2.Resp., as trans. Aquinas Institute.

"A monastic pedagogy of self-knowledge differs from manoeuvering within the number-coded web of the Enneagram."

Source

     Bishop Eric Varden, OCSO, "The Monastery as Schola Dei," 26 October 2024, Aquinas Institute, Princeton, 23:15.

Sating one's hatred under cover of correction

"Third, he should strive in all charity to correct the sins of others, and this is indicated by the words judging without dissimulation, lest he should purpose to sate his hatred under cover of correction."

"Tertio requiritur ut caritative emendare peccata satagat, et hoc est quod dicit, iudicans sine simulatione, ne scilicet, correctionem praetendens, odium intendat explere."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II.45.6.ad 3.

"It belongs to charity to be at peace, but it belongs to wisdom to make peace by setting things in order"

 "caritatis est habere pacem, sed facere pacem est sapientiae ordinantis."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II.45.6.ad 1, "Whether the seventh beatitude corresponds to the gift of wisdom."

'Orthodox' means orthodox in life as well as faith

"Orthodoxy isn’t up for negotiation, and it isn’t subject to member surveys. Nor is it cleanly detachable from moral and social questions. The one clear case of excommunication we have from Paul’s letters involves a man who was sleeping with his stepmother. Sexual ethics, like other moral matters, is part of the Church’s witness and has been from the beginning."

     Brad East, "Mainlining nostalgia," a review of The vanishing church, by Ryan P. Burge, First things no. 362 (April 2026):  51.

for His own sake, for my sake

"one may adhere to a thing in two ways: first, for its own sake; second, because something else is attained thereby. Accordingly charity makes us adhere to God for His own sake, uniting our minds [(mentem hominis, the mind of a man)] to God by the emotion of love [(affectum amoris)]. On the other hand, hope and faith make man adhere to God as to a principle wherefrom certain things accrue to us. Now we derive from God both knowledge of truth and the attainment of perfect goodness. Accordingly faith makes us adhere to God, as the source whence we derive the knowledge of truth, since we believe that what God tells us is true: while hope makes us adhere to God, as the source whence we derive perfect goodness, i.e., insofar as, by hope, we trust to the Divine assistance for obtaining [eternal] happiness" or "eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of God Himself", plus the "other things . . . for which we pray God, . . . secondarily and as referred to eternal happiness."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II.17.6.Resp., as supplemented at the end by 17.2.Resp. & ad 1, trans. FEDP as modified (?) by the Aquinas Institute, italics mine.

"It is impossible to trust too much in the Divine assistance" properly understood (below)

"Thus faith can have no mean or extremes in the point of trusting to the First Truth [(in hoc quod innitatur primae veritati, in this, that it leans upon the First Truth)], in which it is impossible to trust too much; whereas on the part of the things believed [(ex parte eorum quae credit)], it may have a mean and extremes; for instance one truth is a mean between two falsehoods. So too, hope has no mean or extremes, as regards its principal object [(ex parte principalis obiecti)], since it is impossible to trust too much in the Divine assistance; yet it may have a mean and extremes, as regards those things a man trusts to obtain [(quantum ad ea quae confidit aliquis se adepturum, with respect to the things that a man trusts himself to obtain)], insofar as he either presumes above his [(suam)] capability, or despairs of things of which he [(sibi)] is capable."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II.17.5.Resp., trans. FEDP (i.e. Shapcote).  "It is impossible to trust too much in" God's ability to "lead [us] to an infinite good", i.e. "eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of God himself" (17.2.Resp.:  "we should hope from Him for nothing less than Himself"), as well as the "other things . . . for which we pray to God, . . . secondarily and as referred to eternal happiness" (ad 2).

Liberal Christian nationalism

       "There is a name for [Ryan P.] Burge's preferred cocktail of religion and civics, Church and state.  It's Christendom.  Burge's book [The vanishing church] is one long lament for the passing of mainline Christendom in America.  You might even say it is both a paean and a dirge for a certain style of Christian nationalism—liberal Christian nationalism.  Make the mainline great again!"

     Brad East, "Mainlining nostalgia," a review, First things no. 362 (April 2026):  52. 

"many who are in a state of grace suffer from dullness of mind"

"multi habentes gratiam adhuc patiuntur mentis hebetudinem."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II.8.4.Praet 1, trans. FEDP (Shapcote).  Ad 1:  "Some who have sanctifying grace may suffer from dullness of mind with regard to things that are  not necessary for salvation; but with regard to those that are necessary for salvation, they are sufficiently instructed by the Holy Ghost, according to 1 John 2:27, His unction teacheth you of all things."

Faith is enigmatic knowledge

FEDP (i.e. Shapcote): "faith is knowledge in a dark manner."

"est . . . fides cognitio aenigmatica."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II.67.5.Praet. 1.  Cf. the Resp.:  "faith is of the same genus, namely knowledge, as the beatific vision [(fides . . . cum visione patriae convenit in genere, quod est cognitio, faith comes together with the visio patriae in the genus cognition)]."
     But note the "But"!  For this is an impressively difficult Resp.  And most especially, "when you remove a specific difference, the substance of the genus does not remain identically the same".

 

 

Richard Rohr, Andreas Ebert, and the Enneagram

For what it's worth:

• Huggins, Ronald V. "The Enneagram’s False History and Occult Roots." Bibliotheca sacra 179, no. 714 (2022): 146–162.
• Cusack, Carole M. "Ṣūfism and the Gurdjieff 'Work': A Contested Relationship." In Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements, edited by Carole M. Cusack and Muhammad Afzal Upal. Brill, 2021.
• etc. (I stopped here, though there is more to be found).

The Blessed, "who have the glory of the soul[,] are not, properly speaking, said to hope for the glory of the body, but only to desire it."

Source

"illi qui habent gloriam animae, non proprie dicuntur sperare gloriam corporis; sed solum desiderare."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II.67.4.ad 3.  For "a good whose unerring cause [(inevitabilem causam)] we already possess is not related to us as something difficult."

"without thee we are not able to please thee"

Vat. Reg. lat. 316, fol. 178v

"May the working of your mercy, O Lord, we pray, direct our hearts aright, for without your grace we cannot find favor in your sight.  Through".

"Dirigat corda nostra, quaesumus, Domine, tuae miserationis operatio, quia tibi sine te placere non possumus."

My translation: 

May the work of your compassion, O Lord we pray, set our hearts in order, because without you we cannot please you.

     Prayer for Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent, Liturgia horarum.  =Corpus orationum no. 2234, going back to the mid-8th-century Gelasian Sacramentary (Vat. Reg. lat. 316, fol. 178v, representing mid-7th-century practice) at least. 

BCP 1549:

"O GOD, for asmuche as without thee, we are not able to please thee; Graunte that the workyng of thy mercie maye in all thynges directe and rule our heartes; Through".

BCP 1662:

"O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee; Mercifully grant, that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through".

BCP 1979:

"O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee, mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through".

"O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through".

"the [twentieth-century] narrative concerning the medieval [Christian] reaction to [Hindu-Arabic numerals] and the number zero" constitutes "a bizarre funhouse mirror image of the Middle Ages"

Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 3 (1905), 155–195

"the way the introduction of the number zero as well as the whole system of Hindu-Arabic numerals into medieval Europe has been represented in modern scholarship and popular media" constitutes "a bizarre funhouse mirror image of the Middle Ages", "a rather depressing case study of the way careless scholarship and failure to check one’s sources can allow false narratives and made-up ‘facts’ to proliferate in the modern world."

     From a pre-pub version of C. Philipp Nothaft, "Medieval Europe’s satanic ciphers: on the genesis of a modern myth," British journal for the history of mathematics 35, no. 2 (2020): 107–136.

Friendship with God is unavailable to those who find the idea incredible and/or despair of it

"just as friendship with a person would be impossible if one disbelieved in, or despaired of, the possibility of his fellowship or familiar intercourse, so too, friendship with God, which is charity, is impossible without faith, so as to believe in this fellowship and intercourse with God, and to hope to attain to this fellowship."

"sicut aliquis non posset cum aliquo amicitiam habere, si discrederet vel desperaret se posse habere aliquam societatem vel familiarem conversationem cum ipso; ita aliquis non potest habere amicitiam ad Deum, quae est caritas, nisi fidem habeat, per quam credat huiusmodi societatem et conversationem hominis cum Deo, et speret se ad hanc societatem pertinere."

     St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II.65.5.Resp., in the FEDP (or Shapcote) translation.  On the other hand, the requisite faith and hope must be infused!

Faith and works

"Deus, innocentiae restitutor et amator, dirige ad te tuorum corda servorum:  ut, spiritus tui fervore concepto, et in fide inveniantur stabiles et in opere efficaces."

God, restorer and lover of innocence, direct the hearts of [your] servants to you, in order that, seized by the fervor of your Spirit, they may be found steadfast in faith and effectual in deed.

     Prayer for Thursday of the Second Week in Lent, Liturgy of the hours.  Corpus orationum =Bruylants, no. 235 on p. 72 of vol. 2.  From the 9th century, but the incipit ("Deus, innocentiae restitutor et amator, dirige ad te tuorum corda") from the earlier Gelasian.  On the other hand, shouldn't concepto, if modifying servorum (genitive masculine plural) or corda (accusative neuter plural), be plural?   For what else could concepto be modifying?  Innocentia?  But innocentia would require concepta.
     Universalis:

God of love, bring us back to you.  Send your Spirit to make us strong in faith and active in good works.