"a certain beatitude of our body"

     "Thus, although sensible perception, apparently disparaged at the beginning [of the 'Adore te deuote'] (v. 5), is revealed [to be] necessary in order to understand the message and to contemplate the sacramental Christ, one notes that it persists even once glorified.  In eternity, the humanity of Christ will be also the object of our contemplation:  'There will be a certain beatitude of our body, in that it will [continue to] see God in sensible creatures, and in the body of Christ above all' (Sentences IV, d.49 q.2 a.2 [ad 6]), and Thomas specifies elsewhere:  'The blessed contemplate in the first place [(prioritairement)] the divinity of Christ and not his humanity.  But they find their joy in the contemplation of the one and of the other' (Quodlibet VIII, q. 9 a.2 [Resp.]).  This will be an integral and inalienable component of their beatitude.  Thomas, 'in his entirety' glorified, will contemplate [the] glorified Jesus 'in his entirety' [(Thomas, «tout entier» glorifié, contemplera Jésus glorifié «tout entier»)]."

     Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., "«Adore Te»:  La plus belle prière de saint Thomas," La vie spirituelle no. 726 (mars 1998):  35 (28-36).  The Sed contra of Quodlibet VIII q. 9 a.2 is more explicit than the Respondeo:  "On the contrary, one does not attain to the end [(extremum)] except through the middle [(medium)]; but the middle between God and men is the humanity of Christ:  1 Tim. 2:5:  ‘the mediator [between] God and men is the man Christ Jesus.’  Therefore the blessed do not attain to the contemplation of the divinity of Christ except by first contemplating his humanity [(Ergo sancti non perveniunt ad contemplationem divinitatis Christi, nisi prius contemplando eius humanitatem)]."  But there is also an "ad Sed contra," something I have yet to see in the Summa.  And it is from this that  Torrell gets his "Thomas specifies elsewhere":  "To that which [the Sed] contra throws up as an obstacle, [it is] to be said that this argument procedes with respect to the state of [life on] the way, in which, since [(sed (but), next clause)] we are not yet perfectly conjoined with God, . . . [(sed)] it behooves us to accede to God through Christ; but since in beatitude we will already be conjoined with God, we [will] intend the divinity of Christ before [(per prius . . . quam)] his humanity."

"although we can in a way understand God without understanding his goodness, we cannot understand God by understanding that he is not good".

"licet nos intelligamus aliqualiter Deum, non intelligendo eius bonitatem, non tamen possumus intelligere Deum intelligendo eum non esse bonum".

St. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia 7.4.ad 8, trans. Ralph McInerny (Thomas Aquinas: selected writings, ed. & trans. Ralph McInerny (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1998), 309).

Lieux d'oubli

     "What is new, at least in the modern era, is the neglect of history. Every memorial, every museum, every shorthand commemorative allusion to something from the past that should arouse in us the appropriate sentiments of respect, or regret, or sadness, or pride, is parasitic upon the presumption of historical knowledge:  not shared memory, but a shared memory of history as we learned it.  France, like other modern nations, is living off the pedagogical capital invested in its citizens in earlier decades. As Jacques and Mona Ozouf gloomily conclude in their essay on Augustine Fouillé's educational classic Le Tour de la France par deux enfants [(1877)]: 'Le Tour de la France stands as witness to that moment in French history when everything was invested in the schools....
"...to judge from the virtual disappearance of narrative history from the curriculum in school systems, including the American, the time may soon come when, for many citizens, large parts of their common past will constitute something more akin to lieux d'oubli, realms of forgetting—or, rather, realms of ignorance, since there will have been little to forget. Teaching children, as we now do, to be critical of received versions of the past serves little purpose once there no longer is a received version."

     Tony Judt, "À la recherche du temps perdu: France and its pasts" (1998), in Reappraisals: reflections on the forgotten twentieth century (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008), 215-216 (196-218).

"no myths, no glory, no peasants", or "'Will French cuisine be all that remains when everything else is forgotten?'"

"Lieux de mémoire, as Nora puts it in his introductory essay, 'exist because there are no longer any milieux de mémoire, settings in which memory is a real part of everyday experience.'  And what are lieux de mémoire?  '[They] are fundamentally vestiges . . . the rituals of a ritual-less society; fleeting incursions of the sacred into a disenchanted world:  vestiges of parochial loyalties in a society that is busily effacing all parochialisms.'"

     Tony Judt, quoting Pierre Nora's "Between memory and history," Realms of memory:  rethinking the French past 3 (Symbols), ed. Lawrence D.Kritzman, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (New York:  Columbia University Press, 1998 (1996-1998)), pp. 6-7, in his (i.e. Judt's) "À la recherche du temps perdu:  France and its pasts" (1998), Reappraisals:  reflections on the forgotten twentieth century (New York:  The Penguin Press, 2008), 204 (196-218).  Cf. Judt himself:  "In erecting formal reminders or replicas of something we ought to remember, we risk further forgetfulness:  By making symbols or remnants stand for the whole, we ease ourselves into an illusion" (197-198).  I would supplement that last sentence as follows:  "By making symbols or remnants stand for the whole" we have ourselves abandoned or been passively complicit in the demolition of (à la Wendell Berry?), whether that be the reality itself or at least the full-orbed history of it,...

     "Moreover, these ['information'] panels ['set off to the right at frequent intervals' along 'the magnificently engineered, impeccably landscaped autoroutes of France'] are intentionally and unapologetically didactic:  They tell you about the French past—or about present-day activities (wine-making, for example) that provide continuity with the past—in ways that reinforce a certain understanding of the country.  Ah, we say, yes:  The battlefield of Verdun; the amphitheater at Nîmes; the cornfields of the Beauce.  And as we reflect upon the variety and the wealth of the country, the ancient roots and modern traumas of the nation, we share with others a certain memory of France.  We are being led at seventy miles an hour through the Museum of France that is France itself" (197).

"the LORD is God; there is no other".

“The Christian-Jewish God is the incomparable Wholly Other and One [(der unvergleichbare völlig Andere und Eine)]; but a god in Greco-Roman antiquity is only one among innumerable others, the number of which is constantly on the make [(sich ständig vermehrt)].  The men of Greco-Roman antiquity for whom Josephus writes see themselves at one end of a continuum at the other end of which are to be found the gods.  The way from one end to the other is [both] traversable and [in fact] traversed.  Differences between [the] gods and men are sometimes so slight that one does not in a [given] encounter know whether it is with a god or a man that one has to do.”

     Ulrich Victor, "Das Testimonium Flavianum:  ein authentischer Text des Josephus," Novum testamentum 52 (2010):  73 (72-82).

"Very ignorant, very innocent and very civilized."

Primo Levi, "Of 'Cesare' (Lello Perugia, his Italian companion on the journey home [from Auschwitz])," as quoted by Tony Judt, in his "The elementary truths of Primo Levi," Reappraisals: reflections on the forgotten twentieth century (New York:  The Penguin Press, 2008), 51 (citing The reawakening, p. 204) (44-62).

"The burning bush is the Cross. The highest claim of revelation, the 'I am he,' and the Cross of Jesus are inseparably one."

"'When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am [(τότε γνώσεσθε ὅτι ἐγω εἰμι)]. . . .'"

Jn 8:28, RSV, but with the concluding pronoun, i.e. "he" ("then you will know that I am he"), removed.  Cf. the LXX of Is 43:10:  "I too am a witness, says the Lord God, and the servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe and understand that I am [(ἵνα γνῶτε...ὅτι ἐγώ εἱμι)]" (NETS).  The pronoun is there in the Hebrew of v. 10 ("that I [am] He [(כִּֽי־אֲנִי הוּא)]"), but that is followed by v. 11:  "I, I am the Lord [(אָנֹכִי אָנֹכִי יְהוָה, ἐγὼ ὁ Θεός)]".  All of this is brought out on pp. 347-349 (pp. 345 ff.) of Joseph Ratzinger's Jesus of Nazareth: from the baptism in the Jordan to the transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York, NY:  Doubleday, 2007), whence the heading, which occurs on p. 349.