caelestis vitae actio

Cod. Vat. Reg. lat. 316, fol. 88r

"May this oblation dedicated to your name, purify us, O Lord, and day by day bring our conduct closer to the life of heaven.  Through. . . ."

"Oblatio nos, Domine, tuo nomini dicata purificet, et de die in diem ad caelestis vitae transferat actionem.  Per. . . ."

[This] oblation dedicated to your name, O Lord:  may it purify us and from day to day bear [us] across [in]to the action [(i.e. performance)] of heavenly life.  Through. . . .

     Prayer over the offerings, Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman missal.  Early 8th-century Gelasian sacramentary (Corpus orationum nos. 3604a-b (vol. 5, pp. 272-273; Bruylants no. 727 (vol. 2, p. 204)).  Ed. Mohlberg (1960):  no. 563:  nos + decata; no. 588:  <nos> + decanda.
     Is caelestis vitae actio supposed to allude to the heavenly eucharist (gratiarum actio)?  No. 4 in Blaise is celebration/canon of the mass; prayer; and no. 1 in Blaise is perpetuation.  Lewis & Short:  doing, performing, acting, action, performance, etc.  Contra the new translation, actionem, rather than caelestis vitae, has to be in any case the object of ad.
     Looks like the pre-Vatican II Latin-English missals (Secret, Second Sunday after Pentecost) struggled with this, too (I could add many more):

• 2009:  Baronius Press Daily missal and liturgical manual . . . 1962, p. 761:  "Lord, may this offering about to be dedicated [(dicanda)] to Thy name make us clean, and deepen in us day by day a heavenly life.  Through. . . ."
• 1958:  Missale Anglicanum:  the English missal, p. 515:  "Cleanse us, O Lord, by this oblation now to be hallowed [(dicanda)] to the honour of thy name:  and daily renew us thereby to the attainment of heavenly life.  Through."
• 1949:  Sheed & Ward Missal in Latin and English, p. 547:  May the sacrifice we are to offer [(dicanda)] in thy name, Lord, make us clean, and bring us day by day to the practice of a heavenly life:  through. . . ."
• 1942:  The new Roman missal in Latin and English, by Rev. F. X. Lasance ... and Rev. Francis Augustine Walsh, p. 643:  "Let the oblation about to be offered [(dicanda)] to Thy holy name, O Lord, purify us and day by day change us to the living of the heavenly life.  Through. . . ."
• 1865:  The Roman Missal, translated into the English language for the use of the laity. Published with the approbation of the Bishop of Philadelphia, p. 400:  "May this sacrifice offered to thy name purify us, O Lord:  and make us every day advance towards a heavenly life.  Thro'."
• 1853:  Missal for the use of the laity, trans. Husenbeth, p. 425:  "May the offering to be dedicated [(dicanda)] to thy name purify us, O Lord, and transfer us from day to day to the practice of a heavenly life.  Through. . . ."

"what help is there in Greek, what in Hebrew, what in the Latin language?"

Historic England

"Here lies tongueless a man who used many languages, and was the official reader of Hebrew [at Christ Church, Oxford].  But what help is there in Greek, what in Hebrew, what in the Latin language?  If his skill in languages ever gave succour to others, that alone gives him protection now.  You, therefore, whom the tongue of Thomas Neale used to help him, help him, voiceless as he now is, with your holy tongue.  Subscription of the author himself:  While still healthy, I placed these verses here for myself, so that an image of my death might thereby be seen by me in advance.  Even if he kills me, I shall still put my hope in him.  Job. c. 13.  A.D. 1590, my 71st year."

"Hic iacet elinguis qui linguis pluribus olim
Usus, Hebraismi publica lingua fuit.
Graeca quid hic?  quid Hebraea iuvat?  quid lingua Latina?
Si qua alios iuvit, nunc ea sola iuvat.
Vos ergo Thomae Neli quos lingua iuvabat,
Elinguem lingua (quaeso) iuvate pia.
Subscriptio ipsi authoris
Hos egomet versus posuit mihi sanus, ut esset
Hinc praevisa mihi mortis imago meae.
Etiam si occiderit me
In ipsum tamen sperabo.  Job, ca. 13.
Anno. Domini. 1590.  aetatis vero meae. 71."

     Shroud brass for the Rev. Thomas Neale, a recusant ordained under Queen Mary, and placed by him above a side-altar in St. Peter's, Cassington, Oxfordshire (where the Rev. Neale may have continued to say Mass), "At a time when prayers for the dead had been forbidden".  Gerard Kilroy, Edmund Campion:  a scholarly life (London and New York:  Routledge, 2016 [2015]), 48-50.  Translation Kilroy's.

What Eberhard Arnold would have said to Hitler

"'My dear Adolf Hitler, this can’t go on much longer; you yourself can’t possibly take any more pleasure in all this killing, that you murder evil men instead of making them better.'"

     Eberhard Arnold (1883-1935) on what he would have said to Hitler (having dreamt of the encounter) had the latter ever actually agreed to meet with him.  Emmy Barth, An embassy besieged:  the story of a Christian community in Nazi Germany (Eugene, OR:  Cascade Books/Plough Publishing, 2010), 233, as quoted by Kevin P. Spicer, CSC, in a review of the book published in Central European history 44, no. 4 (December 2011):  755 (754-756).

     Granted, I need to read the book itself.  But the quotation can be seen in context via Google Books.

"Before 428, theotokos is not in fact encountered in the literary œuvre of Cyril, though it is found in at least one homily of Nestorius".

Hagia Sophia

"The appellation θεοτόκος was not at all universal.  After the Council of Ephesus, it still had to be explained to the occidentals. . . . Before 428, it is not in fact encountered [(ne se rencontre pratiquement pas)] in the literary œuvre of Cyril, though it is found in at least one homily of Nestorius; . . . the Alexandrian archbishop will continue, at the height of the controversy, to call [(conservera, en pleine controverse, l’usage d’appeler)] Mary 'the Holy Virgin'."

     Joseph Famerée, "Éphèse et Nestorius:  un malentendu christologique:  l’apport du P. A. de Halleux," Revue théologique de Louvain 39, no. 1 (2008):  16-17 (3-25).

“It is necessary to pass through the Church, not necessarily to enter it.”

"Il faut passer par l’Église, pas nécessairement y entrer."

     Yves Labbé, "Théologie ecclésiale, théologie universitaire," Revue théologique de Louvain 40, no.1 (2009):  19 (14-40), on baptism considered as "une réponse institutionelle apportée à une demande de ritualité, c’est-à-dire d’identité."  But "'one cannot exclude from the religious phenomenon [(du fait religieux)] the discourse that founds the religious [(le religieux)] from the interior, which accepts the hypothesis of revelation or that of the presence of God in history, in short discourse [properly] theological, Christian as it happens'" (29-30, quoting F. X. Cuche, the President of what was then called l'Université Strasbourg II, in "Quelle place pour une faculté de théologie dans une université de service public française?," Revue des sciences religieuses 78(2004):  78 (67-79).

N. P. Williams in 1937 or 1938

"If, on the other hand, it is permissible for the Church of England to disregard the authority of St Paul and the universal custom of the Church Catholic—and if there is nothing in the grounds which we have suggested as underlying the teaching of Scripture and the practice of the Church—then there can be no particular reason why women ministers should be restricted to the functions specified in Resolution 7.  Indeed, the question must arise:  Why should there be a diaconissate, as a fourth Order definitely distinguished from the three traditional Orders, at all?  Why should not women be frankly admitted to the ordinary diaconate?  If the sex of ordinands is as irrelevant to the question of their fitness for the ministry as the colour of their eyes or hair, why should women not be admitted to the priesthood and to the episcopate?  We have above stated our reason for believing that it is profoundly relevant; but, if this be dismissed as mere morbidity, there seems no reason why the Church should not use the gifts and powers of women in any hierarchical rank whatsoever. . . .  if female sex be not inherently a bar to Holy Order, there would seem to be no reason why a matriarch or 'mother in Israel' should not one day arise, endowed with character or abilities so commanding as to render her capable of occupying the Chair of St Augustine himself."

     N. P. Williams, "Deaconesses and Holy Orders" (1937 or 1938), N. P. Williams, ed. Eric Waldram Kemp (London:  S.P.C.K., 1954), 200 (185-201).  Cf. "these considerations, if valid at all, would permit, and even necessitate far more sweeping changes than those proposed by the Resolutions under discussion; for they would equally justify the admission of women to the priesthood and the episcopate" (193-194).  Cf. also Williams on the sense of call (194):

no argument for the repudiation, in regard to this matter, of the authorities just quoted has been produced, apart from the fact that some educated and high-minded women believe themselves to have a 'vocation', not merely to the service of Christ and his Church in ways open to a laic or to a cleric in minor Orders, but to the specific status of 'Holy Orders'.  But to use this supposed consciousness of 'vocation' as an argument for the change is surely to beg the question; for, if it is the case, as the Church has hitherto believed, that it is not the will of God that women should be admitted to Holy Orders, any such feelings of 'vocation' must be illusory.

"the grounds which we have suggested as underlying the teaching of Scripture and the practice of the Church" are not those given today, e.g. by Gerhard Ludwig Müller, in Priesthood and diaconate (2002 [2000]).  But then Müller is explicit about the fact that, unlike the teaching and practice itself, they have changed over time, and says that we needn't be threatened by the fact that the "underlying" "grounds" floated in earlier periods aren't as convincing in a given present.

Repletion with the everlasting enjoyment of Christ's Divinity, as foreshadowed for the time being by the sacramental reception of his glorified Humanity

Sassetta, Thomas Aquinas in Prayer (1423/5),
Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest.

"Grant, O Lord, we pray,

that we may delight for all
     eternity

in that share in your divine life,

which is foreshadowed in the
     present age

by our reception of your
     precious Body and Blood.

Who live and reign
     for ever and ever."

"Fac nos, quaesumus, Domine,

Divinitatis tuae sempiterna fruitione repleri,

Quam pretiosi Corporis et Sanguinis tui

Temporalis perceptio praefigurat.

Qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum."

Cause us, we pray, O Lord, to be replete with the eternal enjoyment of your Divinity, which [eternal enjoyment] the temporal reception of your precious Body and Blood prefigures, [You] who live and reign for all eternity.

     Post Communion for the Feast of Corpus Christi, Roman missal.  =the 12th-century Corpus orationum no. 2597 =Bruylants no. 552.  Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas.  A subsequent (?) prayer for the Feast of St. Laurence on 7 July (Bruylants no. 483) begins with the second line:  "Divinitatis tuae, Domine, sempiterna fruitione satiemur: . . ."