Cur Deus homo

"This is the sort of teaching we derive from the mighty revelation of God's becoming man.  By his intimate union with humanity, . . . He freed man from evil, and healed the very author of evil himself."

Gregory of Nyssa, Address on religious instruction 26, ed. and trans. Cyril C. Richardson.  Christology of the later fathers, ed. Edward Rochie Hardy in collaboration with Cyril C. Richardson, Library of Christian classics 3 (Philadelphia:  The Westminster Press, 1954), 304.  Cf. "And by so doing he benefited, not only the one who had perished, but also the very one who had brought us to ruin" (303), and "In the same way, when death, corruption, darkness, and the other offshoots of vice have attached themselves to the author of evil, contact with the divine power acts like fire and effects the disappearance of what is contrary to nature.  In this way the nature is purified and benefited, even though the process of separation is a painful one.  Hence not even the adversary himself can question that what occurred was just and salutary—if, that is, he comes to recognize its benefit" (303-304).  Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco "recommend[s] prudence while reading this text . . . , seeing in this affirmation more of a hypothesis than a firm conviction", and says that Gregory "returned to this notion in An et res (PG 46, 104) and Tunc et ipse (GNO III/2, 15)" ("Devil," The Brill dictionary of Greogry of Nyssa, ed. Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco & Giulio Maspero, and trans. Seth Cherney, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 99 (Leiden:  Brill, 2010), 225-226).

The Confession of St. Martha

Martha:
Jn 11:27:  ἐγὼ πεπίστευκα ὅτι σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἐρχόμενος.

Peter:
Mk 8:29:  σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστός.
Mt 16:16:  σὺ εἶ ὁ χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ζῶντος.

The antiphon to the Benedictus for the Feast of St. Martha in the Liturgia horarum conflates the two confessions:  Tu es Christus, Fílius Dei vivi, qui in hunc mundum venísti.

The rising generation can get it wrong

"By rights it is you, who are in the prime of all your inner powers, who ought to continue the war against the enemies of truth and not to shrink from the task.  Thus we fathers may be gladdened by the noble efforts of our children.  For this is what the law of nature presupposes.  But since you have turned your ranks and direct toward us the assaults of those darts which are hurled by the opponents of truth, and bid us old men to quench with the shield of faith their 'hot, burning coals' and their missiles sharpened by knowledge (as they falsely call it), we accept the challenge."

Gregory of Nyssa, "An answer to Ablabius:  that we should not think of saying there are three gods," ed. and trans. Cyril C. Richardson.  Christology of the later Fathers, Library of Christian classics 3, ed. Edward Rochie Hardy in collaboration with Cyril C. Richardson (Philadelphia, PA:  The Westminster Press, 1954), 256.

Stoom/Blephen, Stephen

"Was the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, the extinct and the revived, theoretical or practical?

"Theoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of accidence and syntax and practically excluding vocabulary."

James Joyce, Ulysses, Episode 17 (Ithaca).  Ulysses:  the corrected text, ed. Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior (New York, NY:  Random House, 1986), 564, ll. 741-744.

"if the proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable"

"What relation existed between their ages?

"16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen's present age Stephen was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom's present age Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54 their ages initially in the ratio of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according as arbitrary future years were added, for if the proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then 1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen would be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when Stephen would have attained the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom, being 1190 years alive having been born in the year 714, would have surpassed by 221 years the maximum antediluvian age, that of Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen would continue to live until he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloom would have been obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having been obliged to have been born in the year 81,396 B.C."

James Joyce, Ulysses, Episode 17 (Ithaca).  Ulysses:  the corrected text, ed. Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior (New York, NY:  Random House, 1986), 555-556, ll. 446-461.

Abba Sisoes on "whether there is a punishment for men"

"Three old men came to see Abba Sisoes, having heard about him.  The first said to him, 'Father, how shall I save myself from the river of fire [(τοῦ πυρίνου ποταμοῦ; cf. Dn 7:10 on the ποταμὸς πυρός)]?'  He did not answer him.  The second said to him, 'Father, how can I be saved from the gnashing of teeth [(Mt 8:12; 13:42, 50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Lk 13:28)] and the worm which dieth not [(Mk 9:48)]?'  The third said, 'Father, what shall I do, for the remembrance of the outer darkness [(Mt 8:12; 22:13; 25:30)] is killing me?'  By way of reply the old man said to them, 'For my part, I do not keep in mind the remembrance of any of these things, for God is compassionate and I hope [(ἐλπίζω)] that he will show me his mercy.'  Hearing this, the old men went back offended.  But the old man, not wishing to let them go away hurt, said to them, 'Blessed are you, my brothers; truly I envy you.  The first speaks of the river of fire, the second of hell [(τοῦ Ταρτάρου; cf. Jb 40:20, 41:24, and Pr 30:16 LXX; 2 Pt 3:4)] and the third of darkness.  Now if your spirit is filled with such remembrances, it is impossible for you to sin.  What shall I do, then?  I who am hard of heart and to whom it has not been granted so much as to know whether there is a punishment for men [(ὅτι κἀν ἐστι κόλασις τοῖς ἁνθρώποις; cf. Mt 25:46 on κόλασιν αἰώνιον)]; no doubt it is because of this that I am sinning all the time.'  They prostrated themselves before him and said, 'Now we have seen exactly that of which we have heard tell.'"

Abba Sisoes 19 (PG 65, col. 397).  This one doesn't appear in the Collection systématique (SC 387, 474, and 498), or, at least, not in the Concordance (SC 498, pp. 217 ff.) under Sisoès.  The desert Christian:  sayings of the Desert Fathers:  the alphabetical collection, trans. Benedicta Ward (New York, NY:  Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1975), 216-217.  Given the clear quotations of and allusions to Scripture, Sisoes' two responses can't represent as straightforward an agnosticism as they seem to at first glance.  Note that in Daniel the context is a sitting of the divine court in judgment and an opening of the books.  I have not looked beyond Daniel for this "river of fire" imagery, though the references to a "lake of fire" in the Apocalypse (among the uses of fire for judgment generally) cannot be irrelevant.

For searchability:

"Three old men came to see Abba Sisoes, having heard about him. The first said to him, 'Father, how shall I save myself from the river of fire?' He did not answer him. The second said to him, 'Father, how can I be saved from the gnashing of teeth and the worm which dieth not?' The third said, 'Father, what shall I do, for the remembrance of the outer darkness is killing me?' By way of reply the old man said to them, 'For my part, I do not keep in mind the remembrance of any of these things, for God is compassionate and I hope that he will show me his mercy.' Hearing this, the old men went back offended. But the old man, not wishing to let them go away hurt, said to them, 'Blessed are you, my brothers; truly I envy you. The first speaks of the river of fire, the second of hell and the third of darkness. Now if your spirit is filled with such remembrances, it is impossible for you to sin. What shall I do, then? I who am hard of heart and to whom it has not been granted so much as to know whether there is a punishment for men; no doubt it is because of this that I am sinning all the time.' They prostrated themselves before him and said, 'Now we have seen exactly that of which we have heard tell.'"

It's the office, stupid

"in Lumen gentium, the church’s self-definition in the Second Vatican Council, introduced in a council document the charismatic church along with the church of office, saying that charisms are carried by religious orders, by charismatic figures like St. Francis of Assisi, prophetic figures. They’re given a moment when they’re necessary for the reform of the church and for the renewal of the mission, but they’re not permanent.

"What’s permanent is the office, but it doesn’t lend itself very easily to charismatic figures. A bishop, a priest, isn’t a guru. He should disappear behind the office because he comes and goes, and someone else comes and goes. The office is what counts. And so from that perspective I am less concerned about personal memoirs than I am about the preservation of the office, as given to us from the Apostles…the faith and the office, because the office is part of the faith. This is a so called institutional church that somehow rides apart from the church as the body of the faithful. So, from that perspective, what I personally may have experienced in the midst of trying to fulfill the office is not all that important.

"John Paul II was very conscious of the office, but he fulfilled it in a very personal way that didn’t detract from the office. The danger is that if you become a guru, you’ll fulfill it in a way that does detract from the office, in which case you’ve failed."

Francis Cardinal George, OMI, in part two of David Gibson's "Setting boundaries:  a conversation with Cardinal George," a Commonweal web exclusive dated 22 July 2011.