Weil on the banality of evil

     "Nothing is so beautiful and wonderful, nothing is so continuously fresh and surprising, so full of sweet and perpetual ecstasy, as the good.  No desert is so dreary, monotonous, and boring as evil.  This is the truth about authentic good and evil.  With fictional good and evil it is the other way round.  Fictional good is boring and flat, while fictional evil is varied and intriguing, attractive, profound, and full of charm."

     "Rien n’est beau, merveilleux, perpétuellement nouveau, perpétuellement surprenant, chargé d’une douce et continuelle ivresse, comme le bien.  Rien n’est désertique, morne, monotone, ennuyeux comme le mal.  Il en est ainsi du bien et du mal authentiques.  Le bien et le mal fictifs ont le rapport contraire.  Le bien fictive est ennuyeux et plat.  Le mal fictive est varié, intéressant, attachant, profound, plein de séductions."

     Simone Weil (writing under the pseudonym Emile Novis), "Morale et littérature" ("Morality and literature"), Cahiers du sud:  revue mensuelle de littérature 31, no. 1 (janvier 1944):  40 (40-45), as translated in A. Rebecca Rozelle-Stone, "Touching the void:  Simone Weil’s ethical life class," Times literary supplement  no. 6392 (November 14, 2025):  20 (19-20).  "Morality and literature" is also present in several anthologies.

"Oh, [by] grace how great a debtor | Daily [God's] constrained to be"

"God is faithful and has put himself in our debt not because we have given him anything but because he has promised us so much. Yet even promising was not enough for him. He wanted to be bound in writing as well [(fidelis deus qui se nostrum debitorem fecit, non aliquid a nobis accipiendo, sed tanta nobis promittendo. parum erat promissio, etiam scripto se teneri uoluit)]. . . .  [Indeed, h]e was . . . not content to provide us with a written guarantee of his promises to help us believe in him. He even appointed a mediator to establish his good faith: not some nobleman, nor an angel, nor an archangel, but his only Son."  Etc.

     St. Augustine, Ennar. in Ps. 109.1-2, WSA III/19, trans. Boulding & Ramsey (2003), 261.  =CCL 40, p. 1601, ll. 11 ff.

Where no pleas of merit suffice

"Be pleased, O Lord, with our humble prayers and offerings, and, since we have no merits to plead our cause, come, we pray, to our rescue with the protection of your mercy. Through Christ our Lord".

"Placare, Domine, quæsumus, nostræ precibus humilitatis et hostiis, et, ubi nulla suppetunt suffragia meritorum, tuæ nobis indulgentiæ succurre præsidiis. Per Christum Dominum nostrum".

Be reconciled/appeased, O Lord, we pray, by the prayers and sacrifices of our humility, and, where no pleas/judgments/aids/supports of merits are at hand/in store/suffice, hasten to help us with the garrison/troops [(præsidiis, defenses/protections)] of your indulgence. Through Christ our Lord.

     Prayer over the offerings, Second Sunday of Advent.  That "since" may be too good to be true.  I see no indication that ubi functions in that way in even the medieval Latin covered by the Dictionary of mediaeval Latin from British sources, let alone the classical.  That phrase might therefore run not "since no votes or backings of merits—i.e. no judgments of merit—suffice," but rather "where no votes or backings of merits—i.e. no judgments as to merit—suffice."  Corpus orationum, in which this appears as no. 4246, citing the Gregorian, the Old Gelasian, and so forth, gives the original word order as follows:

"Placare, Domine, quæsumus, humilitatis nostræ precibus et hostiis, et, ubi nulla suppetunt suffragia meritorum, tuæ nobis indulgentiæ succurre præsidiis."

1973 (very loose):
Lord, we are nothing without you. As you sustain us with your mercy, receive our prayers and offerings.

Neiman and Rieff on the land acknowledgment

Deutschlandfunk Kultur

"there are many things short of giving back the continent that could be done to improve the lives of Native Americans.  Solemnly reciting a land acknowledgement is not one of them. . . .  'The performative guilt of today's professional managerial class bears the same relationship to real shame and real guilt as Astro Turf does to grass.'"

     The philosopher Susan Neiman quoting David Rieff's Desire and fate (2024), in her review of that book entitled "Where wokeness went wrong," The New York review of books 72, no. 19 (December 4, 2025), 26 (26-28), an article eminently quotable throughout.  Neiman is, of course, the author of Left is not woke (Polity Press, 2023).

"What happens in a culture is partly dependent on what the collective consciousness of the culture allows"

Carlos "Eire’s [weird and wonderful] book [They Flew: A History of the Impossible] raises the question of a culture’s epistemic reality and whether that affects the kinds of events that can occur. . . . What happens in a culture is partly dependent on what the collective consciousness of the culture allows. This has nothing to do with the truth of the events; it involves the specific form the miracles took. St. Joseph [of Cupertino] levitated because this was an act expected of the holiest friars and nuns—the physical expression of metaphysical experience, the raptured body suspended between gravity and grace."

     Christian Wiman, "The tune of things:  Is consciousness God?," Harper's magazine (December 2025).

"being deified does not make anything depart from what it is by nature"

μηδαμῶς τῷ θεωθῆναι, τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν ἐκστᾷν.

     St. Maximus the Confessor, Opusculum 7, trans. DelCogliano in Christ:  Chalcedon and beyond, Cambridge edition of early Christian writings 4 (Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 2022), 513.  Greek:  PG 91, col. 81D (42).

Chrysostom on merit and the sola gratia

      "The Lord, however, does want them to contribute something, lest everything seem to be a work of grace, and they seem to win their reward without deserving it [(Εἶτα, ἵνα τι καὶ παρ' ἑαυτῶν εἰσφέρωσι, καὶ μὴ πάντα τῆς χάριτος εἶναι δοκῇ, μηδὲ εἰκῆ καὶ μάτην στεφανοῦσθαι νομίζωνται)].  Therefore he adds:  You must be clever as snakes and innocent as doves."

     St. John Chrysostom, Homily 33.1-2 on Matthew, as trans. Office of readings, Thursday, Thirty-fourth week in ordinary time, Liturgy of the hours.  Ed. F. Field (1839), 461; PG 57, col. 389-390 (in Field misprinted as 379 (379-380)).  NPNF 10, trans. Prevost as rev. Riddle:

'After this, that they may contribute something on their own part also, and that all might not seem to be of His grace, nor they supposed to be crowned at random, and vainly, He saith, 'Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.'