"And then, in the fullness of time, God changed his hiding place."

     A lovely little "Christmas meditation" by Ronald A. Knox, in which the turning point is the Incarnation of course, but also the transition from the Wisdom of God in creation to "our Mother, come out to help in the search":  "Ostende," Pastoral and occasional sermons, ed. Evelyn Waugh (New York:  Sheed & Ward, 1960), pp. 359-361.

"We never doubted that the unorthodox opinions were honestly held: what we complain of is your continuing your ministry after you have come to hold them."

     C. S. Lewis, "Christian apologetics" (Easter 1945), God in the dock:  essays on theology and ethics (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970), 90.  Cf. Dietrich von Hildebrand.

"The real pacificus is he who promotes peace, not he who gasses about it."

     C. S. Lewis, "Delinquents in the snow," Time and tide 38 (7 December 1957):  1522 (1521-5122), as quoted in God in the dock:  essays on theology and ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), 309-310.

Forever is not, after all, a "fluid span in the face of God's sensitive response to every human tremor"

     "We could say that they have nothing to do with each other, this Jerusalem of rejecters and the other, the 'Jerusalem' that comes from far away (Gal 4:26), that descends from on high (Rev 21:2), unblemished, pure, glittering with a perfect light.  We could say that they have nothing to do with each other, except perhaps that each has known the Lord's love, one once but no longer, the other more recently and who knows for how long, since 'forever' seems to be a fluid span in the face of God's sensitive response to every human tremor.  But, having said this, we will have already given another answer, since the one love of God for Jerusalem is not a thing to be reset over and over, nor is it so easily foiled as to demand its own constant redirection.  If Jesus loved Jerusalem, this one, with its broken walls and rubbled towers, it is not so much other than the city that is built around the Twelve Apostles (Rev 21:14) as it is just these Twelve tribes (Rev 21:13), fallen and routed but now redeemed.
     "The disjunction between the Jerusalem over which Jesus weeps and the city of the Lamb is the same as the disjunction between Peter denying and Peter shepherding, between a thief on the cross and one in paradise, between sin and forgiveness.  Between the body dead and the body resurrected.  We shall say that the chasm between the two is real; we shall say, as well, that it is spanned somehow and overcome.
     "If this is so, then when Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, he weeps also over his apostles:  'They will strike the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered' (Matt 26:31; Zech 13:7).  You will, each of you, leave me abandoned (John 16:32).  Yet it is on these apostles that the Church is founded (Eph 2:20), on those who fail, who are scattered, who abandon and deny—and just for these does Jesus pray (Luke 22:3), and to them is new life given.  This is the Church because it is Jerusalem, the same Jerusalem of Zechariah 14, which is the same as Revelation 2 and 3, sifted, yes, tested and purified, yet the Church to whom a promise was given in the struggling entry of David and Joab into the stronghold of Zion.  See what love Jesus has for Jerusalem!  'I would have taken you under my wings, but you would not!'  Yet for all that, I have died for you, who 'did not know what you did' in this rejection (Luke 23:34); and I have turned shame into joy, rejection into a new calling, abandonment into redemption, a sinner consoled, loved, and given new fruit for the world's sake (Isa 54).  But who is this who is redeemed?  The one over whom Jesus wept.
     "And should we not weep over Jerusalem the Church?  And for just these same reasons?  And with just this end in view?  An ecclesiology of tears is at the heart of an ecclesiology of joy; without this order of truth and life, there is no Church at all (Ps 126). . . ."

     Ephraim Radner, A brutal unity:  the spiritual politics of the Christian Church (Waco, TX:  Baylor University Press, 2012), 167-168 ("Postscript:  Loving Jerusalem").

     As much as I love a densely packed footnote, the best parts of this wonderful (and wonderfully learned) book are the Postscripts.  Blessed indeed must be those who have had Radner for a preacher.  (But then, blessed indeed must be those who have had—but then rejected!—Jesus, Moses, and the prophets, too!)

"The whole world awaits Mary's reply"

". . . The angel awaits an answer; it is time for him to return to God who sent him.  We too are waiting, O Lady, for your word of compassion; the sentence of condemnation weights heavily upon us. . . ."
     "Answer quickly, O Virgin.  Reply in haste to the angel. . . . Answer with a word, receive the Word of God. . . .
". . . Behold, the handmaid of the Lord, she says, be it done to me according to your word."

     St. Bernard, Hom. 4, 8-9, as reproduced in the Office of readings for 20 December, Liturgy of the hours.

A mind at home in the feelings

According to Aquinas, the passions "'are not virtuous by a simple obediential subordination [(subordination obédientielle)] or by a simple habit [(accoutumance)], as Bonaventure would if pressed [(à la rigueur)] concede, but by an intimate penetration, thanks to which the mind is at home in the feelings [(l'esprit est chez lui dans les sensibilités)].'"

     M. D. Chenu, "Les passions vertueuses:  l'anthropologie de saint Thomas," Revue philosophique de Louvain 72 (1974):  16 (11-18), as quoted by Thomas Prügl, in "TRISTITIA:  zur Theologie der passiones animae bei Thomas von Aquin," in Die Einheit der Person:  Beiträge zur Anthropologie des Mittelalters, ed. Martin Thurner (Stuttgart:  Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1998), 152n43 (141-156).

"By and large, that 'what' was never the treatment of Jews"

"especially in an area with strong leadership, substantive resistance by clergy (and some laity) could be widespread; but still the issue remains over what was being resisted.  By and large, that 'what' was never the treatment of Jews but the church's own integrity to govern her life without state interference and immune from non-Christian or even anti-Christian state influences."

     Ephraim Radner, citing Kevin Spicer, Resisting the Third Reich:  the Catholic clergy in Hitler's Berlin (DeKalb:  Northern Illinois University Press, 2004).  A brutal unity: the spiritual politics of the Christian church (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012), 97n69.

"the willingness in numerous cases of clergy to oppose encroachments upon, for example, churches' right to independent teaching and decision making provoked a number of martyrdoms and what has traditionally been understood as the suffering of true 'confessors.'  Yet such risks were hardly ever borne by church leaders on behalf of the Jews.  It is not enough to attribute the churches' acquiescence before Jewish persecution to simply incompetent or desultory ecclesial leadership because examples of energy and clarity of vision were not lacking.  What was lacking was a particular focus—what focus there was generally aimed at the chuches' survival rather than at the Jews as human beings—and the theological and moral imperatives derivative of this focus.  The Christian leadership, that is, paid attention to some things and not to others, a matter that is crucial to all moral and truthful decision making.  Leaders were given formal opportunities to decide on responses to key events and largely chose the path of nonresistance" (97-98).