"within me, around me, mounts up like a clamor the universal vegetation"

"What I then perceive is like a pure activity, a consistency, but superior to the whole order of the imaginable, a vivid tenacity, at once precarious (it is nothing for me to crush a gnat) and fierce (within me, around me, mounts up like a clamor the universal vegetation) by which things surge up against me and triumph over a possible disaster, stand there, and not merely there, but in themselves, and by which they shelter in their thickness, in the humble measure meted out to what is perishable, a kind of glory demanding to be recognized."

     Jacques Maritain, The peasant of the Garonne:  an old layman questions himself about the present time, trans. Michael Cuddihy and Elizabeth Hughes (New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968 [1966]), 111, on "the intuition of the actus essendi."

No one could buy or sell unless he had the mark

"Public annexation of the marketplace under nondiscrimination and other public norms not qualified by religious accommodation" "brings to mind features of the ancient struggle between Christians and pagan authorities.  As we saw in chapter 6, 'as a prerequisite to engaging in any commercial transaction [Christians] had to give specific divine honours to the Caesars.  Without doing so they would not have been able to secure provisions for their daily needs, as all goods could only be bought or sold through the authorized markets in a first-century city.'  Subjects had to be certified for economic activity:  'then, and only then, could they sell or purchase essential commodities.'  A similar logic is being applied, it seems, to pharmacists, doctors, marriage counselors, wedding photographers, florists, bakers, and others who are told:  accept requirements that put you in violation of your religion or else get out of your business or profession."

     Steven D. Smith, Pagans and Christians in the city:  culture wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2018), 341-343, italics mine.

Sliding by

     "One recent conciliating book seeks to shed light on the religious situation in late antiquity by drawing parallels between Christians of that time and the LGBT movement of today. . . .  The gist of the argument, it seems, is that although people then and now have often been mistrustful of perceived differences, once they got to know the supposedly different folks ('The New Neighbors Who Moved in Next Door,' as one chapter title puts it), they come to realize that the differences are not of great importance and need not impede a cordial human fellowship.  Thus, by quietly getting to know their neighbors, and getting to be known by them, Christians 'made a place [for themselves] in Caesar's Empire.'
     "For this story line to work, the author has to emphasize and elevate those mostly inconspicuous Christians—'The Quieter Ones'—who were content to mingle unobtrusively, to join the Roman religious festivities, and (in disregard of the minimal essential prohibitions declared by the Christian council of Jerusalem) congenially to eat the meat sacrificed to pagan deities.  In other words, the author elevates the Christians who, then and now, would be regarded by more rigorous Christians as lax or lapsed or 'lukewarm.'  Conversely, the author disapproves of and attempts to marginalize, as unreasonable or 'antisocial,' those more fervent Christians—including nontrivial figures like Saint Paul, Saint John, Tertullian, Cyprian, Perpetua, Athanasius, Ambrose, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine, and John Chrysostom—who stood out as leaders and exemplars of the Christian movement, who wrote and expounded its sacred texts, who defined its doctrines, and who sometimes persisted in professing it even though this meant going to the cross or the pyre or the lions."

     Steven D. Smith, Pagans and Christians in the city:  culture wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2018), 105-106.  The book in question is Douglas Boin, Coming out Christian in the Roman world:  how the followers of Jesus made a place for themselves in Caesar's empire (New York:  Bloomsbury, 2015).

Saying goodbye

"He had assembled, with a long patience and real ability, an impressively complete library on the New Testament.  These books, they had been his entire life.  Yet the moment came when [unable to hold a pen or even, later, read] he had to part with them.  While they were being removed, he, already paralyzed and immobile in his wheelchair, put up a brave front.  But when [his] whole world had gone and the door had been shut [behind it], the tears came unbidden."

"Il s’était compose avec une longue patience et une réelle habileté une bibliothèque très complete sur le Nouveau Testament.  Ces livres, c’était sa vie tout entière.  Le moment vint cependant où il fallut s’en séparer.  Tandis qu’on les enlevait, lui, déjà perclus et immobile dans son fauteuil, faisait bonne contenance.  Mais quand tout le monde fut parti et la porte fermée, malgré lui les larmes vinrent."

     Emmanuel Podechard on the New Testament scholar Eugène-Jacques Jacquier (15 April 1847-7 February 1932), Bulletin des facultés catholiques de Lyon 54, [no. 2] (mars-juillet 1932):  19 (14-19).

"when love comes forth in judgment"

     Stanza 4 of some paraphrases of the fourth stanza of the anonymous 5th-century (?) Advent hymn "Vox clara ecce intonat" (Analecta hymnica medii aevi 2 (1888), no. 20 on p. 35; Analecta hymnica medii aevi 51 (1908), no. 49 on p. 48-49; Walpole, Early Latin hymns (1922), no. 86 on p. 304; Millful, Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon church (2006), pp. 186-187), rendered by Edward Caswall as "Hark! An awful voice is sounding," but by others as "Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding," "Hark! A herald voice is calling," etc. (it has undergone many modifications in English since Lyra Catholica (1849)).  According to the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, the Caswall translation was made from the modified Breviary text of 1632.

"there is no 'nature' in things that are not manufactured and artificial."

"If one were to compare the thought of Sartre and St. Thomas and reduce both to syllogistic form, one would realize that both start with the same 'major premise,' namely from this principle:  things have an essential nature only in so far as they are fashioned by thought.  Since man exists and has a constructive intellect, which can invent and has in fact invented, for instance, a letter opener, therefore, and for no other reason, we can speak of the 'nature' of a letter opener.  Then, Sartre continues, because there exists no creative intelligence which could have designed man and all natural things—and could have put an inner significance into them—therefore there is no 'nature' in things that are not manufactured and artificial. . . . St. Thomas, on the contrary, declares:  Because and in so far as God has creatively thought things, just so and to that extent have they a nature."

     Josef Pieper, Silence of St. Thomas, 53-53, as quoted by Michele M. Schumacher, "Gender ideology and the 'artistic' fabrication of human sex:  nature as norm or the remaking of the human?," The Thomist:  a speculative quarterly review 80, no. 3 (July 2016):  403-404 (363-423), underscoring mine.

"a one-horse town on the way to Birmingham"

Former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan "came up with the following nugget during his speech at a college feast:  'We in Balliol should never take a narrow and provincial view of the universe.  We should imitate the genial tolerance of the sun which rises over Wadham and sets over Worcester'.  Ironic words, certainly.  But were they either spoken or heard ironically enough?  Kenny may be as surprised as Macmillan would have been to learn that for every person who imagines Oxford to be the centre of the world there are others who see it as a one-horse town on the way to Birmingham."

     Rupert Shortt, reviewing Anthony Kenny's Brief encounters:  notes from a philosopher's diary, in "Matter matters:  a prominent thinker recalls the great and the good," The times literary supplement no. 6031 (2 November 2018):  14 (14-15).