"When one believes something to be true [simply] because God is Truth itself[,] . . . one begins to know in a way similar to the way God knows."

"When one believes something to be true because God is Truth itself, one begins to know all the rest in virtue of one’s knowing God.  Thereby one begins to know in a way similar to the way God knows.  For God characteristically knows all that is true by knowing—or rather by being—his own Truth.  His knowing of all truth is not, and cannot be, a second act of knowledge resulting from the act by which he knows himself.  It is rather because the act by which he knows himself is immediately his knowing of all that is, and of all that can be, that God’s knowledge is Life itself.  When it is unrestricted, Life itself is indeed sovereign being, whose nature is intellection and is not determinable by anything else.
     "There is a second, significant aspect to this fourth and last reference to divine faith, which, according to its place in the order of the poem, lies just beyond the threshold that separates bare Truth from Truth that is Life.  As stated, something in divine faith is already eternal life in us.  Faith, however is only its beginning, not its perfection.  God’s eternal life becomes definitively and integrally ours only when vision replaces faith, and only when the resurrection allows us to share corporally in blessedness.  Only then do we re-join Christ, who, as the incarnate and sacramental God, first joined with us, especially by means of the fullness of sacramental grace that is the Eucharist."

     Robert Wielockx, "Poetry and theology in the Adore te deuote: Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist and Christ's uniqueness," in Christ among the medieval Dominicans: representations of Christ in the texts and images of the Order of Preachers, Notre Dame conferences in medieval studies 7, ed. Kent Emery, Jr. and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 166-167 (157-174), underscoring mine.

"we do not merit it by our own works"

"Through the Passion of your Only Begotten Son, O Lord, may our reconciliation with you be near at hand, so that, though we do not merit it by our own deeds, yet by this sacrifice made once for all, we may feel already the effects of your mercy.  Through Christ our Lord."

"Per Unigeniti tui passionem placatio tua nobis, Domine, sit propinqua, quam, etsi nostris operibus non meremur, interveniente sacrificio singulari, tua percipiamus miseratione praeventi.  Per Christum Dominum nostrum."

     Prayer over the Offerings, Palm Sunday, Roman missal.  All except for the incipit "Per Unigeniti tui passionem" comes word for word from the 7th-century Leonine (i.e. Veronese) sacramentary (no. 628 in the critical edition of 1956 ed. Mohlberg), which drew upon 5th and 6th century Roman material.

Creation straining

"the reality infinitely outstrips the figure:  the lengthy germination of wheat and vine [(including, I would add, the fermentation and 'work of human hands' so indispensable to the transformation of grape and kernel into wine and (at least leavened) bread)] comes, through transubstantiation, to a head 'in the mystery of all this bread and all this wine that, across the immensity of space and time, comes to subsist only [(ne subsistent plus qu')] in the existence of the holy humanity of Jesus' (H.-M. Feret, "La messe rassembleent de la communauté," in La messe et sa catéchese, p. 275)....
     "The bread and the wine, utilized as figures of the Christian economy, signify the integration of the [whole] cosmos into the work of restoration.  The universe, solidary with [(solidaire de)] man, had lost its quality of sign; the sin of man had rendered it opaque, caught up as it was in the Fall.  The consecration of the bread and wine signifies the consecration of all things [in and] through the humanity of Christ; this consecration [(elle)] extends to the [entire] universe and founds the sacramental economy:  the progressive integration of all things into the unity of Christ....
"The death of Christ is a victory that catches up not only humanity, but the universal resurrection.  The dogma of the resurrection of the body gives expression to this integral recapture of matter and the universe up into a glorious life".

     Dictionnaire de spiritualité, sv "Eucharistie. I. Mystère eucharistique" (1961), cols. 1579-1581 (1553-1586), by Adalbert Hamman, italics mine.

"Whither, also, all we mortals wend our way, making of our funeral dirge the song: Alleluia."

"Thou only art immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and unto earth shall we return.  For so thou didst ordain when thou createdst me, saying, 'Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.'  All we go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song:  Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."

     The Oikos or Ikos (Ὁ Οἶκος) to the Kontakion for the Orthodox funeral service in the church (Νεκρώσιμος, ἤτοι εἰς Κεκοιμημένους . . . ἐν τῳ ναῳ), as translated on p. 482 (Burial I) of the 1979 Book of common prayer.  For the Greek, see p. 411 of this 1869 printing of the Euchologion to mega (Ευχολόγιον το μέγα):

Αὐτὸς μόνος ὑπάρχεις ἀθάνατος, ὁ ποιήσας καὶ πλάσας τὸν ἄνθρωπον·  οἱ βροτοὶ οὖν ἐκ γῆς διεπλάσθημεν, καὶ εἰς γῆν τὴν αὐτὴν πορευσόμεθα, καθὼς ἐκέλευσας ὁ πλάσας με, καὶ εἰπών μοι·  Ὅτι γῆ εἶ, καὶ εἰς γῆν ἀπελεύσῃ·  ὅπου πάντες βροτοὶ πορευσόμεθα, ἐπιτάφιον θρῆνον ποιοῦντες ᾠδὴν τὸ, Ἀλληλούϊα.

Other translations exist, e.g.

You only are immortal, the creator and maker of mankind; and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and to earth shall we return.  For so did you ordain when you created me, saying, 'You are dust, and to dust you shall return.'  All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song:  Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia [(p. 499 (Burial II) of the 1979 Book of common prayer)].

Thou only art immortal, who has created and fashioned man.  For out of the earth were we mortals made, and unto the earth shall we return again, as thou didst command when thou madest me, saying unto me:  For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.  Wither, also, all we mortals wend our way, making of our funeral dirge the song:  Alleluia [(The service book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church (Boston:  Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1906), as reproduced on p. 215 (pp. 185-234) of Alexander Schmemann, The liturgy of death:  four previously unpublished texts (Yonkers, NY:  St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2016))].

You alone are immortal, who made and fashioned mankind; we mortals then were formed from earth and to that same earth we shall go, as You who formed me commanded saying: You are earth, and you will go back to earth; to which all we mortals will go making our funeral lament a song: Alleluia [(Fr. Ephrem Lash)].

Thou alone art immortal, who hast created and fashioned man. For out of the earth were we mortals made, and unto the same earth shall we return again, as Thou didst command when Thou didst fashion me, saying unto me: Earth thou art, and unto the earth shalt thou return. Whither, also, all we mortals wend our way, making of our funeral dirge the song: Alleluia [(http://www.kiilehua.com/services/The_Funeral_Service.pdf)].

Cf. the post Cantemus Alleluia.

perfectae vitae tolerantia

By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God, may we walk eagerly in that same charity with which, out of love for the world, your Son handed himself over to death.

Quaesumus, Domine Deus noster, ut in illa caritate, qua Filius tuus diligens mundum morti se tradidit, inveniamur ipsi, te opitulante, alacriter ambulantes.

     Collect, Fifth Sunday of Lent, Missale Romanum (2002).  According to Corpus orationum, this is derived from CO 591, present as no. 324 in the critical edition of Toledo, Biblioteca Capit. 35.4 (J. Janini, Liber Misticus, in Liber Missarum de Toledo 2 (Toledo:  1983), pp. 7-147)), which dates to the 9th/10th century (and from other sacramentaries of the 10th-12th centuries):

Christe deus, qui inter iniquos suspendi passus es, crucis sustinendo iniuriam, dato nobis perfectae vitae tolerantiam, ut caritate illa, qua ipse, mundum diligens, pro eodem mortem subisti, inveniamur ipsi, te opitulante, perfecti sicque passionis tuae exemplo illata toleremus scandala, ut, sanguine crucis tuae omnia pacificante, capitis nostri mereamur effici membra.

Christ [our] God, who have permitted [yourself] to be hung up between enemies [while] sustaining the outrage [(iniuriam)] of the cross, give to us the endurance of a finished life, so that, by that charity in which [you] yourself [(ipse)], loving the world, submitted to [(pro)] the said death, we may thus, you aiding [us], [1] effect [(inveniamur, meet with)] that finished imitation [(exemplo, pattern)] of your passion, [and] [2] endure [the] injuries [(scandala)] inflicted, so that, the blood of your cross pacifying all things [(Col 1:20)], we may merit to be made members of our head.

Previous ICEL "translation":

Father, help us to be like Christ your Son, who loved the world and died for our salvation.  Inspire us by his love, guide us by his example, who lives. . . .

By the period covered by Blaise, unfortunately, tolerantia had come to be (contemptuously) of sodomy.

Putnam on the challenge posed by diversity

robertdputnam.com

"It would be unfortunate if a politically correct progressivism were to deny the reality of the challenge to social solidarity posed by diversity.  It would be equally unfortunate if an ahistorical and ethnocentric conservatism were to deny that addressing that challenge is both feasible and desirable."

     Robert D. Putnam, "E pluribus unum:  diversity and community in the twenty-first century:  The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture," Scandanavian political studies 30, no. 2 (2007):  165 (137-174).  And how should it be addressed?

the central challenge for modern, diversifying societies is to create a new, broader sense of ‘we’ [(139)]. 

a society will more easily reap the benefits of immigration, and overcome the challenges, if immigration policy focuses on the reconstruction of ethnic identities, reducing their social salience without eliminating their personal importance.  In particular, it seems important to encourage permeable, syncretic, 'hyphenated' identities; identities that enable previously separate ethnic groups to see themselves, in part, as members of a shared group with a shared identity [(161)]. 

at the end we shall see that the challenge is best met not by making 'them' like 'us', but rather by creating a new, more capacious sense of 'we', a reconstruction of diversity that does not bleach out ethnic specificities, but creates overarching identities that ensure that those specificities do not trigger the allergic, 'hunker down' reaction [I've shown is the invariable aggregate response to a rise in or stress upon diversity (163)].

An honest liberal

Al-Jazeera

"over the past 200 years we liberals have, ironically, played a major role in ushering in an age of immuration."

     Clive Stafford Smith, "Prisoners of conscience," Times literary supplement no. 5940 (February 3 2017):  5 (3-5).
     Smith gives two examples:  an early 18th-century one, and a late 20th-century one in which he himself "played a relatively significant role":  Thus, "The quantum of misery that we achieved, albeit inadvertently, was almost unfathomable."  "my plan, back in 1984, can reasonably be said to have helped 100,000 additional people to find themselves condemned, perhaps for thirty-four years in prison—a grand total of 1.24 billion days of misery."
     "So here we are:  conservatives and liberals alike view the mass incarceration experiment as an expensive failure, and the legal system is simply not up to the task of sorting out who did what.  The result is increasing levels of desolation for millions.  We have some work ahead of us."