Pseudo-Mahler (?) on tradition as the transmission of a fire or flame, not ashes

     See Gerald Krieghofer, Zitatforschung, 10 June 2017; "Irrwege einer Metapher," Weiner Zeitung, 10 June 2017.  Krieghofer attributes (the earliest version of) this to the Socialist Jean Jaurès.  I have not looked again since 2019.

More astonishing, even, than the Incarnation is the fact that God is still—and for all of eternity—incarnate

     "The Ascension is ... at once [1] the seal of the salvific work of mediation effected by Christ in virtue of the hypostatic union, and [2] the commencement of a new mission of the Word incarnate in his relation to the world.  We celebrate 'the most sacred day on which your Only Begotten Son, our Lord, placed at the right hand of your glory our weak human nature, which he had united to himself [(diem sacratissimum celebrantes, quo Dominus noster, Unigenitus Filius tuus, unitam sibi fragilitatis nostrae substantiam in gloriae tuae dextera collocavit)]' (Proper of the Ascension, Eucharistic Prayer I).  That humanity finds itself in [(une humanité se retrouve en; indeed at the right hand of)] God—[a wholly] undreamed-of fact perhaps still more extraordinary than [that of] a God who has become [(se soit fait)] man—has been and is, today and forever, [a] mystery of salvation.  By this fact, the exaltation of the incarnate Word has an incidence necessary to [(une incidence sur)] the transmission of the faith, [to] union with God, and [to] the beatific vision, all three submitted to the 'sublime materialism' of the Christian faith, whose sole and unique law, against every docetist temptation, is that of the Incarnation.  By confessing the Ascension of Christ, Christians proclaim that it is possible for flesh to enter into glory:  [a] scandal to those who hate the flesh, [sheer] folly [to] those who adore it for its own sake."

     Nathalie Requin, "L'ascension du Christ:  le Verbe fait homme pour l'éternité," Nouvelle revue théologique 139, no.2 (2017):  207 (192-208).  What follows is, of course, a concluding reference to the corresponding Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

     "The Word became flesh in a manner irrevocable and definitive, for eternity" (199).

Dear sir, | I am. | Yours, GK Chesterton

"The answer to the question, 'What is Wrong?' is, or should be, 'I am wrong.' Until a man can give that answer his idealism is only a hobby."

     G. K. Chesterton, in response to a 14 August 1905 letter from "A Heretic" entitled "What Is Wrong?," Daily news (London), 16 August 1905, as quoted by Steven Bullivant, who credits an @SosTheRope, in "Continuing the hunt for a fabled GK Chesterton quote," The Catholic herald, 17 December 2019.

The hand as well as the eye

"providence means not that by which God idly observes [(otiosus speculetur)] from heaven what takes place on earth, but that by which, as keeper of the keys, he governs all events.  Thus it pertains no less to his hands than to his eyes [(veluti clavum tenens, eventus omnes moderatur.  Ita non minus ad manus quam ad oculos pertinent)]."

     John Calvin, Institutes I.xvi.4, trans. Battles (who, unlike Beveridge below, reads clavem (claves) for clavum, rudder, helm, or (under "nail") "symbol of immovable firmness"; cf. patron de nauire (skipper/(ship)master/coxswain of [a] boat) in Calvin's French, below) =CO 2, 147.  Thus Beveridge:  "the providence we mean is not one by which the Deity, sitting idly in heaven, looks on at what is taking place in the world, but one by which he, as it were, holds the helm, and overrules all events.  Hence his providence extends not less to the hand than to the eye."  From p. 75 of the French edition published in Geneva in 1560 (note the additional line at the end):

la prouidence de Dieu . . . ne signifie pas qu’estant oisif au ciel il specule ce qui se fait en terre:  mais plustost qu’il est cóme vn patron de nauire, qui tient le gouuernail pour adresser tous euenemés. ainsi ce mot s’estend tant à sa main qu’à ses yeux:  c’est à dire que non seulement il voit, mais aussi ordonne ce qu’il veut estre fait.

God's son, Mary's son

"God begot the Son, through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him as the Savior of the world. Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s Son, nothing could be redeemed. . . .  Truly the Lord is with you, to whom the Lord granted that all nature should owe as much to you as to himself."

"Deus enim genuit illum, per quem omnia sunt facta; et Maria peperit illum, per quem omnia sunt salvata.  Deus genuit illum, sine quo penitus nihil est; et Maria peperit illum, sine quo omnino nihil bene est.  O vere Dominus tecum, cui dedit Dominus, ut omnis natura tantum tibi deberet secum."

     St. Anselm, Oratio 52 =PL 158, col. 956B.  Procure this in the truly critical edition of F. S. Schmitt, 1938/1946-1961.  Note the lacuna in the English of the Liturgy of the hours.  Also, read the whole thing.  I haven't looked into the authenticity of the seal, above.

God is still incarnate

"in . . . the glory of the Godhead, the Son of God existing before ages, as God and consubstantial with the Father, sits in His conglorified flesh; for, under one adoration the one hypostasis, together with His flesh, is adored by every creature."

"in . . . gloria deitatis, Dei filius existens ante saecula ut Deus et patri consubstantialis sedet, conglorificata ei carne eius. Adoratur enim una hypostasis una adoratione cum carne eius, ab omni creatura."

     St. John Damascene, as quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas, ST III.58.3.ad 1.

Non possum conubium sancire

"a couple cannot enter into marriage if they share a firm intention not to have children.  Priests and pastors should not officiate at weddings of couples who express this intention.  This does not mean that infertile individuals or women beyond the age of child-bearing cannot marry.  The inability to have children is not the same as taking active measures to prevent their conception.  The former is a physical condition, the latter is a moral choice."

     "The gift of children:  a statement of Evangelicals and Catholics Together," First things no. 297 (November 2019):  40 (37-42), italics mine.  Cf. 1983 CIC 1101 §1, italics mine:  "If . . . either or both of the parties by a positive act of the will exclude marriage itself, some essential element of marriage, or some essential property of marriage [(matrimonium ipsum vel matrimonii essentiale aliquod elementum, vel essentialem aliquam proprietatem)], the party contracts invalidly."  Latin from AAS 75.2 (1983), 193 (no corrigenda in the appendix).  1917 CIC 1081 §2:  "Matrimonial consent is an act of the will by which each party gives and accepts perpetual and exclusive rights to the body, for those actions that are of themselves suitable for the generation of children" (The 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of canon law in English translation with extensive scholarly apparatus, ed. Edward N. Peters (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 2001), 372, italics mine).