"of whom the world was not worthy"

"MAY THERE BE REMEMBERED, LORD, on your holy altar at the fearful moment when your Body and Blood are sacrificed for the salvation of the world, all the fathers and brethren who are on mountains, in caves, in ravines, cliffs, rugged and desolate places, who are hidden from the world and it is only known to you where they are - those who have died and those still living and ministering before you in body and soul, you the Holy One who dwell in the holy ones in whom your divinity finds rest; those who have abandoned the temporal world and have already become dead to its life in that they have gone out in search of you, seeking you with yearning amidst the afflictions of their weary state.  O king of all worlds and of all the orthodox fathers who, for the sake of the truth of the faith, have endured exile and afflictions at the hands of persecutors, who in monasteries, convents, deserts and habitations of the world, everywhere and in every place, have made it their care to please you with labours for the sake of virtue:  accompany them with your assistance, Lord, and be a helmet for them always, send them continual comfort in secret, and bind their minds close to you in all their struggles; may the power of your Trinity dwell in them, and may they minister to you right up to the end of their lives with a good conscience and with a good manner of life.  Hold them worthy while they are still in the body of the harbour of rest.  And to those who are encountering hard battles with the demons, whether openly or in secret, send succour, Lord, and overshadow them with the cloud of your grace; place on their mind's head the helmet of salvation, bring low the power of the enemy before them, and may the might of your right hand support them at all times lest they grow weak in their thoughts, failing to gaze continually towards you; clothe them in the armour of humility, that a sweet scent may waft from them at all times, giving pleasure to your will."

     "The prayers of St Isaac the Syrian" (=chap. 5 of the long lost Second Part of the Writings) no. 26, trans. Sebastian Brock, Sobornost 16, no. 1 (1994): 28-29 (20-31).

Rogers on analogy and the queen of the sciences

"In modern parlance, we hear the quotation marks if we say that objects under gravity 'know' where to go, and think of the verb as metaphorical.  For Aquinas, too, such a use of 'know' would be unusual.  But the extension of meaning would go beyond metaphor.   The world itself, for Aquinas, exhibits an ordered series of harmonious structures, repeating on different levels and in different aspects:  he calls their relation analogy.  If you insisted that to recapitulate in language an analogy between crystals and minds was to equivocate, Aquinas would reply with a distinction:  some equivocations mislead; this equivocation is strictly appropriate.  Refuse to admit it, and you are blocking the light, the light by which things are enlightening the mind.  That is the light of reason, of ratio, of appropriate proportion or structure in the world and in us.
     "For Aquinas, all kinds of knowledge—especially Aristotelian scientia—depend on sources of light, on smaller revelations.  First principles are manifestations of forms in the world, joining in one that which idiom divides, namely the form that inheres indifferently in minds and things.  Each Aristotelian science is thus originated and individuated by its formal rationale or light.  If you understand frogs, then you get light from frogs that gives rise to frog science in human minds.  If you understand frogs, that also shows that frogs manifest frog-light, the first principles of frog, that give rise also to followable frog-structure in frogs themselves.  That is also science, the science in frogs.  The science in frogs gives light, and the science of frogs appears in the light.  The more you attend to the first principles of frogs, the better science you have.  The more you attend to frog-light, the more scientific your discipline is.  The more something is revealed, therefore, the more scientific it is.  Theology is no exception to that rule.  Theology exemplifies that rule.  Theology is for that reason not science by disciplinary extension; theology is science par excellence."

     Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., "Thomas Aquinas on knowing and coming to know:  the beatific vision and learning from contingency," in Creation and the God of Abraham, ed. David B. Burrell, Carlo Cogliati, Janet M. Soskice, and William R. Stoeger (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 248-249 (238-258).  For Rogers' comments on the true "distinction between the science that is sacred doctrine [(which, 'at least in this life, . . . is a science without scientists' (255))] and the sciences that are natural," see pp. 254 ff.  (1) "Knowing," or Aristotelian epagoge (insight), is characteristic of "only God and the blessed in heaven" (238 ff., 256; "Aquinas recognizes that there is something so teleological about epagoge that it is not quite human" (241), and "troubles and disrupts Aristotle's commitments to teleology at several turns" (240)).  Here below we have only (2) "coming to know," or the gradual but systematic exploitation of the contingency unattended to by Aristotle.  "Retroduction, or contriving experiment, is [Thomistic] ethics applied to matter:  it tests the character of things" (244).  Etc.  Aquinas as a thoroughly modern scientist.  Brilliant.  A tour de force.  Worthy of a third or fourth read.

McMullin on the laws of nature

"Laws are the explananda; they are the questions, not the answers."

     Ernan McMullin, The inference that makes science, The Aquinas Lecture, 1992 (Milwaukee, WI:  Marquette University Press, 1992), 90.

Bourgeois on the Great Vigil

"The paschal vigil is not the fulfillment of the triduum in the sense of a 'final' celebration:  it is a commencement. . . .
"—The liturgy of the paschal fire:  relatively late in its current form ([of a] fire kindled [out] in front of the church), it was in [its] origins a rite of the lucernarium, [an] ancient gesture inherited from that moment in domestic life when one lit the lamps in the house before nightfall.  In keeping with the Jewish manner of reckoning the day from evening to evening, this rite of the candlestick marked the entry into the new day.  Hence the importance of this entry in the paschal celebration:  Lent began with ashes, this liturgy of the fire opens the heart of the assembly to the newness of the Resurrection.  The communication of fire to each of the faithful, the procession, and the acclamation of the Exsultet come and stamp their seal on this irruption of the paschal newness into the heart of the night."

Daniel Bourgeois "«Les images liturgiques sont des images folles»:  essai sur la structure du triduum paschal," Communio: revue catholique internationale 35, nos. 1-2 (janvier-avril 2010):  117 (103-118).

Turl Street

"Oxford's Turl Street" was "famously (if ironically) said to emulate the Church of England's movement from the 'High' (Street) to the 'Broad' (Street) while bypassing 'Jesus' (College)."

     Markus Bockmuehl, "Bible versus theology:  is 'theological interpretation' the answer?", Nova et vetera:  the English edition of the international theological journal 9, no. 1 (Winter 2011):  44n32 (27-47).

"I can just as well pray in the forest, in the freedom of nature."

"But against that could then rightly be voiced the objection that is always to be heard:  I can just as well pray in the forest, in the freedom of nature.  Certainly, anyone can.  But if it were only a matter of that, then the initiative in prayer would lie entirely with us; then God would be a mental hypothesis—whether he answers, whether he can answer or wants to, would remain open.  The Eucharist means, God has answered:  The Eucharist is God as an answer, as an answering presence.  Now the initiative no longer lies with us, in the God-man relationship, but with him, and it now becomes really serious.  That is why, in the sphere of eucharistic adoration, prayer attains a new level; now it is two-way, and so now it really is a serious business.  Indeed, it is now not just two-way, but all-inclusive:  whenever we pray in the eucharistic presence, we are never alone.  Then the whole of the Church, which celebrates the Eucharist, is praying with us.  Then we are praying within the sphere of God's gracious hearing, because we are praying within the sphere of death and resurrection, that is, where the real petition in all our petitions has been heard:  the petition for the victory over death; the petition for the love that is stronger than death."

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "The presence of the Lord in the sacrament" (1978), in God is near us:  the Eucharist, the heart of life, ed. Stephan Otto Horn and Vinzenz Pfnür, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco, CA:  Ignatius Press, 2003), 90-91 (74-93).  This goes to the heart of all authentically Christian prayer.  All prayer, insofar as it is Christian, is built on the confidence that "God has answered," and the Real Presence is the most concretely sacramental form of "God as answer" that we have in this life.

Koskela on the importance of proclamation to apostolicity

"Only by proclaiming the gospel it has faithfully maintained can the church be truly apostolic."

Douglas M. Koskela, "'But who laid hands on him?'  Apostolicity and Methodist ecclesiology," Pro ecclesia 20, no. 1 (Winter 2011):  41 (28-42), italics mine.  This sentence stresses two of the "three primary ideas" the concept of apostolicity "has been employed to convey":  "continuity with the historical and visible church, the integrity of the church's life and witness, and the calling of the church to proclaim the gospel in word and deed" (29, italics original).