"the absence of any separation in Christ between his decision and its realization"

"to the Father's decision to hand over his Son must correspond the Son's decision to hand himself over.  Where should we locate this decision in the life of Jesus?  At the very beginning:  the baptism in the river Jordan already signifies Jesus' free choice to be numbered among sinners and engulfed with them in the waters of death, in order to emerge into paschal life.  We could say the same about the prayer on the mountain of the Transfiguration.  The effect of this prayer of consent to the Father's will is the anticipated gift of the glory of the Resurrrection, which shines forth on the Lord's body.

     "The Son's entire life, then, is a ratification of the Father's plan.  And yet, nothing has been accomplished until the effects of this ratification are communicable to others.  For this, it is necessary for Christ to give to those who believe in him the grace of the possibility of sharing in his decision.  This is what takes place in the Eucharist.

     "The words pronounced during the Last Supper express a decision. . . .

     ". . . It is still only a decision, since the event to which it corresponds is yet to come.  Yet this decision is already efficacious, so that the disciples present at the last meal participate, by anticipation, in the reality that it announces.  How is this possible?  Quite simply, if we can put it thus, it is thanks to the absence of any separation in Christ between his decision and its realization.  This is so in spite of the temporal interval.

     "This clashes with our everyday experience.  There is not only a temporal gap between our decisions and their execution; the gap is above all qualitative.  The promises we make, even the most solemn, are more or less hypothetical, and if we do not end up entirely denying them, we never fully fulfill them.  It is completely different for Christ:  his decision is of such a nature that he can already, before the actual event, share in its fruits.  This is so in spite of the bitter agony of Gethsemane, which shows how much it cost him to go to the very end of his kenosis, without in any way questioning the decision itself, of which the kenosis is the fruit:  'No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.  I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again' (Jn 10:17-18).

     "If Jesus has the power to give his life (no one takes it from him), it is not by virtue of some magical ability, but by virtue of his love for the Father and for his brothers, which brings his filial obedience to perfection.  And if he has the power to take it up again (that is, in the Resurrection), it is not by virtue of a Docetism that would have him appear dead when he is really not, but because the way in which he died was fatal to death.  If the Father resurrrected him, 'it is not his death that pleased the Father, but the will of the one who freely died' [(Bernard of Clairvaux, De erroribus Petri Abaelardi, 8, 21 (PL ;182, 1070)].

     "The disciple, in turn, by sharing sacramentally in Jesus' decision, can draw the necessary strength to live his own decision to the end. . . ."

     Jean-Pierre Batut, "The kenotic decision of the Son and the filial obedience of the Christian," trans. Annie Hounsokou, Communio:  international Catholic review 42, no. 3 (Fall 2015):  372-374 (363-380), underscoring mine.

"one big Wittenberg door with an ever-expanding target where a nail should be."

First things

"The religious right establishment is one big Wittenberg door with an ever-expanding target where a nail should be."

"the 2016 campaign did not provoke this crisis.  This was a pre-existing condition.  The religious right turns out to be the people the religious right warned us against."

     Russell D. Moore, "Can the religious right be saved?" (the 2016 Erasmus Lecture), First things no. 269 (January 2017):  36, 37 (33-42).  See also the video.  This lecture is loaded with zingers.

"our great pursuit, the great name we wanted"

"Our single object and ambition was virtue, and a life of hope in the blessings . . . to come [(Ἓν δ' ἀμφοτέροις ἔργον ἡ ἀρετή, καὶ τὸ ζῆν πρὸς τὰς μελλούσας ἐπίδας)]":

Different men have different names, which they owe to their parents, or to themselves, that is, to their own achievements.  But our great pursuit, the great name we wanted, was to be Christians, to be called Christians [(ἡμῖν δὲ τὸ μέγα πρᾶγμα καὶ ὄναμα χριστιανοὺς καὶ εἶναι καὶ ὀνομάζεσθαι)].

     Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 43, in laudem Basilii Magni 20 and 21, as translated in Liturgy of the hours 1, 1287.  SC 384 (1992), 168; ed. Boulenger (1908), 102; PG 36, col. 524.  FC 22, trans. Leo P. McCauley, S.J. (1968 [1953]), 45:

Different men have different names, derived from their ancestors or their own pursuits and deeds.  Our great concern, our great name, was to be Christians and be called Christians.

LNPNF 2, 402:

Different men have different names, derived from their fathers, their families, their pursuits, their exploits:  we had but one great business and name—to be and to be called Christians. . . .

"draw[ing] near to God on the same path that he opened in order to draw near to us."

     "When we said that prayer is a path, we wanted to draw attention to the fact that it makes us draw near to God on the same path that he opened in order to draw near to us.  The Father approached us by sending his Son and his Spirit.  It is, then, in the Holy Spirit and through the mediation of the Son that we can make our way toward him.  In this regard, it would contradict the very logic of communion with God if our prayer ended in the Spirit or the Son:  its final goal is always the Father.
     "Nevertheless, this fact was obscured in the history of the Church by the shock waves resulting from the struggle with Arianism.  The Arians, who denied the divinity of the Son and the Spirit, first obliged the Church to formulate dogmatically the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father in the first Council of Nicea (325), and the divinity of the Spirit in the first Council of Constantinople (381).  But these necessary dogmatic formulations could not but affect Christian practices that had been peaceably observed until then, and that suddenly became suspect in the eyes of the defenders of Nicene orthodoxy as a result of the use to which the Arians had put them.  A good example of this evolution is the progressive disappearance of the ancient doxology of the Psalms, 'Glory to the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit,' which ended up being substituted by the formula, 'Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.'  [(Footnote:  'For more ample developments, see J. A. Jungmann, Tradition liturgique et problèmes actuels de pastorale (Le Puy, 1962), 51-57 ("Fides Trinitas").'  This came from the original German (Liturgisches Erbe und pastorale Gegenwart) into English as Pastoral liturgy.)]  It is clear that the first formula is no less orthodox than the second, but ever since the Arians used it to corroborate their claim of a difference in nature between the Father and the two other Persons, the second became doctrinally preferable.  Unfortunately, this allowed us to lose sight of the dynamism proper to the glorification of the Father that passes through the Son and is realized in the Spirit, just as we risk losing sight of the dynamism of petition that, always through the mediation of the Son in the Spirit, re-ascends to the Father.
     "It is a sign of this loss that many people have a hard time knowing and articulating to whom they are supposed to pray.  A large number of the faithful admit that they are incapable of clearly distinguishing the worship of God from the cult of Mary or the saints.  But even prayer to God himself (which is the only prayer in the strict sense) is often just as confused in praxis.  Separated from the Son and the Spirit, prayer to the Father becomes absolutely inconceivable, and in spite of appearances, it is often abandoned; [(Footnote:  'The fact that people continue to say the "Our Father" is not enough to prove the contrary:  many of the baptized are convinced that the "Our Father" is addressed to God, but not specifically to the [P]erson of the Father.')] separated from the Father and the Spirit, prayer to Christ risks becoming denatured and sentimental; separated from the Father and the Son, prayer to the Holy Spirit is detached from invocation (the 'come!' that introduces practically all prayers to the Spirit) and degenerates into a potentially Joachimite illuminism.  These serious distortions of Christian prayer have, moreover, been in the history of the Church the epiphenomenon of the degeneration of faith in the Trinity, which is often reduced to an abstract deism in which trinitarian theology, or what remains of it, is viewed as nothing but a technical appendix accessible only to specialists.  [(Footnote:  an appendix 'more scholastic than mystical.')]  The logical result of this had to be the celebrated affirmation of Kant:  'From the doctrine of the Trinity, taken literally, we can draw absolutely nothing for praxis.'  For praxis, and thus for prayer.  Who will be surprised, after this, if the impersonal religiosity of the many contemporary versions of Gnosticism, or of Islam, is seducing the whole world?"

     Jean-Pierre Batut, "Praying to the Father through the Son in the Spirit: reflections on the specificity of Christian prayer," trans. Michelle K. Borras, Communio: the international Catholic review 36, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 637-639 (623-642).

"Christian prayer is . . . much more than the imitation of a model: it is the fruit of a configuration."

     "In both these texts [(Gal 4:6 and Rom 8:14-17)], the invocation Abba, which has up till now been a prerogative of Jesus, appears from now on as our own property.  What made this transformation possible is not a method of prayer that Jesus revealed to us in secret, but the gift of the Holy Spirit who prays to the Father in us just as he prays in Jesus.  Christian prayer is thus much more than the imitation of a model:  it is the fruit of a configuration.  We do not only pray 'as Jesus'; it is Jesus who prays in us.  He prays in us in the Holy Spirit, who is the soul of our prayer.  And this action of the Holy Spirit does not dispossess us of any part of ourselves or our freedom, since the Spirit of God 'bears witness to our spirit' that we are his children:  he does not take the place of the created spirit, but gives it the capacity at last to realize that for which it was made."

     Jean-Pierre Batut, "Praying to the Father through the Son in the Spirit: reflections on the specificity of Christian prayer," trans. Michelle K. Borras, Communio: the international Catholic review 36, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 634-635 (623-642).

"look not on our sins, but on the fidelity of your Church"

Ecclesia. From an
Ecclesia et Synagoga.

"Lord Jesus Christ, who said to your Apostles:  Peace I leave you, my peace I give you; look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and graciously grant her peace and unity in accordance with your will.  Who live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen."

"Domine Iesu Christe, qui dixisti Apostolis tuis:  Pacem relinquo vobis, pacem meam do vobis:  ne respicias peccata nostra, sed fidem ecclesiae tuae; eamque secundum voluntatem tuam pacificare et coadunare digneris.  Qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum.  Amen."

     Prayer for peace articulated by the priest on behalf of the entire congregation in the plural, Missale Romanum.  This derives from the prayer articulated by the celebrant on his own behalf in the singular at the head of an intraclerical and strictly hierarchical exchange of the peace in the Tridentine missal of Pius V (1570):

"Domine Iesu Christe, qui dixisti Apostolis tuis:  Pacem relinquo vobis, pacem meam do vobis:  ne respicias peccata mea, sed fidem ecclesiae tuae; eamque secundum voluntatem tuam pacificare et coadunare digneris.  Qui vivis et regnas Deus per omnia saecula saeculorum.  Amen."

     According to Robert Cabié, "Donnez-vous la paix," Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 103 (2002):  275-276 (269-280), this prayer appeared first in early 11th-century Germany, and was only later incorporated into the Tridentine Missale Romanum.  See also Robert Cabié, “Le rite de la paix,” in Les combats de la paix:  Mélanges offerts à René Coste (Toulouse:  Institut Catholique de Toulouse-Bayard éditions/Centurion,1996), 67 (47-71).
     But according to Eligius Dekkers, an early 11th century priest would not have been offering the faith (fides) of the Church (whether objective or even subjective) in place of his own infidelities, but rather its fidelity (fides).  Contrary to the universal ("sans aucune exception") tendency of the various nations to render fides as "faith" ("foi, faith, fede fe, fé, Glaube, geloof, feiz, Wiara", etc.) since at least 1751, fides here would have meant, in the context of early 11th-century German feudalism, not "faith" but "faithfulness" or "fidelity" ("Une erreur de traduction dans l'ordinaire de la messe?", Memoriam sanctorum venerantes:  Miscelleanea in onore di Monsignor Victor Saxer, Studi di Antichità cristiana 48 (Città del Vaticano:  Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1992), 245-250).   Though I have not yet looked for a counter-argument published in the wake of this article by Dekkers, and though I have always loved (unsuspectingly) the standard translation (as opposed to, say, the lack of "faith" (or "faith"-lessness) that lies at the root of personal sin (as distinguished from the Holiness of the Church)), this makes a lot of sense to me.
     See also Marie-Thérèse Nadeau, Foi de l'église: évolution et sens d'une formule (Paris:  Beauchesne, 1988), which I have not yet read, and esp. pp. 103 ff.  For section X.8 of the Ritus servandus, see this English translation for 1962, that same section in a Latin missal of 1920, and so on.

Hate the sin but love the sinner

Give us, [O] Lord our God, by preserving the peace, to guard what you give and entrust to us, and thus to conform ourselves in all things to that peace which you ordain and grant in charity, to the end that we may learn to hate in others their faults and not their souls and to hope that they will turn away from sin and not from salvation.  [And] that to all concord in love may thus be [given], in order that discord may not proceed from anyone nor affect anyone.  Through [our] Lord.

Dona nobis, Domine Deus noster, in custodienda pace tuum donum, tuumque depositum custodire, et sic in hominibus sequi quam ipse jubes et tribuis caritatem, ut in aliquibus culpas noverimus odisse, non animas; finem optare crimini, non saluti:  si cunctis concordia, sit amori; ut discordiam nec inferred ulli liceat, nec referre.  Per Domininum.

     Collect "ad pacem" from the 6th- or even 5th- (?) century Libellus Missae (the so-called Missale Richenovense) discovered by the German scholar Franz Joseph Mone on a palimpset in the Abbey of Reichenau (Mohlberg, below; PL 138, cols. 863-882; and, originally, Lateinische und Griechische Messen aus dem zweiten bis sechsten Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main:  Lizius, 1850), 23).  This collect is no. 326 (60) on pp. 61-94 of the critical 1958 edition of the Missale Gallicanum vetus (Vat. Pal. lat.493) ed. Mohlberg, but is taken here from The ancient liturgies of the Gallican Church:  now first collected, with an introductory dissertation, notes, and various readings, together with parallel passages from the Roman, Ambrosian, and Mozarabic rites, by J. M. Neale and G. H. Forbes (Burntisland:  Pitsligo Press, 1855-[67]), vol. 1, p. 10 (cf. PL 138, col. 870).  My English follows the French translation supplied in Robert Cabié in "Donnez-vousla paix," Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 103 (2002):  279 (269-280) rather than the Latin (above) directly:

Donne-nous, Seigneur notre Dieu, en gardant la paix, de garder ce que tu nous donnes et nous confies et ainsi de nous conformer en toutes choses à cette paix que tu ordonnes et accordes dans la charité, afin que nous apprenions à haïr chez les autres leurs fautes et non leurs âmes et à souhaiter qu’ils se détournent du péché et non du salut.  Qu’à tous ainsi soit [donnée] la concorde dans l’amour, pour que la discorde ne provienne de personne ni n’atteigne personne.  Par [notre] Seigneur.