I have hoped exceedingly

Lord, listen to my cry; all my trust is in your promise. | Lord, listen to my cry; all my trust is in your promise. | Dawn finds me watching, crying out for you, | all my trust is in your promise.

     Response to the reading, Morning prayer, Liturgy of the hours,

Vocem meam audi, Domine; In verba tua supersperavi.
Vocem meam audi, Domine; In verba tua supersperavi.
Praeveni diluculo et clamavi.
In verba tua supersperavi.

     Did St. Jerome coin the term supersperavi (which Lewis & Short translates, perhaps erroneously (?), as "I have hoped exceedingly" (though super doesn't ever qualify spero therein)) for the purpose of translating the ἐπήλπισα (ἐπελπίζω) of the Septuagint?  He uses expectavi whenever, in Ps 119 (vv. 43, 74, 81, and 114), he is translating יָחַל.  ἐπελπίζω ("buoy up with hope, pin one's hope on, hope in, hope besides") is present in classical Greek (Liddell & Scott), but superspero, not (I suspect) in classical Latin (though I haven't yet checked the second edition of the Oxford Latin dictionary).

Pseudo John Chrysostom? "Your resignation assumes God is dead. Do not be so certain. He who embraced death has defeated its power over us. He who went down to hell liberated every city held captive by hell's despair. Christ is risen! Open the doors of your comfortable despair, that the great storms of hope may blow life into us again."

"In the year 387, an old preacher named John Chrysostom climbed into his pulpit in Antioch on Easter Sunday.  It had been a hard year for the city.  Rome had conscripted most of the men into the army to fight distant wars in the north while women and children remained behind to scavenge for food.  The people despaired that their lives would ever get better.  Chrysostom boldly told his congregation:  'Your resignation assumes God is dead.  Do not be so certain.  He who embraced death has defeated its power over us.  He who went down to hell liberated every city held captive by hell's despair.   Christ is risen!  Open the doors of your comfortable despair, that the great storms of hope may blow life into us again.'"

     See M. Craig Barnes, Extravagant mercy:  reflections on ordinary things (Ann Arbor, MI:  Vine Books, 2003), 183, as confirmed for me in detail by my colleague Sharon Taylor.  I have not been able to find this paragraph in Google behind that point, and have searched also a number of other full-text databases, but without success.  Also, it is not present in CPG 4612, the only one of Chrysostom's paschal homilies to be dated—i.e. to 387 (21 April 387)—therein.  I have not yet tried Thesaurus Linguae Graecae more broadly, but to me the English looks suspiciously contemporary.  As of 29 August 2020, Dr. Barnes hadn't remembered where he got it.  Could it be, at best, somebody's loose paraphrase or even summary (of something else)?
     Update, 31 August 2020:  "As a provisional response," says Dr. Server J. Voicu, an important (Pseudo) John Chrysostom specialist at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome, "the passage is undoubtedly spurious.  'Christ is risen!' is a popular expression for Eastertide in the Byzantine churches, but Chrysostom never uses it" (note to me dated 31 August 2020).  (Nonetheless, Dr. Voicu allows that, pending a definitively disconfirmatory search of Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, it could be a very loose paraphrase of an ancient text.)  And by the way:  lest someone object that the famous Catechetical sermon on Easter (Sermo catecheticus in pascha), "read every year for more than a millenium during the Orthodox 'Paschal Vigil'" (Panayiotis Papageorgiou, "The Paschal Catechetical Homily of St John Chrysostom: A Rhetorical and Contextual Study," The Greek Orthodox theological review 43, no. 1–4 (Spring 1998): 93), and in many other liturgical churches today, is loaded with the acclamation, that homily falls under the "Dubia et spuria" section of Clavis patrum Graecorum (CPG 4605) and the "Spuria" section of Migne (PG 59, cols. 721-724), though Papageorgiou (above) appears to be among those who, not surprisingly, dissent.

"Let us not grow weary in well doing"

     'After lookout reports fire in the convoy, sir,' said a talker.
     He was on his feet again, with hardly time to think of this as retribution for his self-indulgence.  There it was; now the rockets were soaring into the night above the flames which he could see; now there was another sharp red glow lighting the upper works of one ship, silhouetting the upper works of another—a torpedo explosion as he watched; the length of the interval told him that this was not a 'spread' bursting as it reached various targets.  A U-boat had been deliberately marking down victims one after another.
     'Sonar reports contact bearing zero seven seven,' said the talker.
     He and Viktor were in touch with one U-boat; at any minute a false move by her captain might mean her destruction.  Behind him men were dying in the night, the victims of cold-blooded sharpshooting.  He had to choose; it was the most painful moment he had ever known, more painful than when he had heard about Evelyn.  He had to leave those men to die.
     'Depth charges away,' said the T.B.S.
     If he abandoned the present hunt he could not be sure of making contact with the other U-boat; in fact it was most doubtful that he would.  And she had done her damage for the present.
     'Sonar reports contact confused,' said the talker—that was Viktor's depth charges exploding.
     He might save some lives; he might.  But in the darkness and confusion of the disordered convoy even that was unlikely, and he would be seriously endangering his ship.
     'I am turning away to port,' said Viktor.
     'Very well.'
     The U-boat which had done the damage would now be harmless for a short space at least while reloading her tubes.  It was humiliating, it was infuriating that he should find comfort even for one moment in such a thought.  Fighting anger and baffled rage surged up inside him, a yearning to run amok, to hit out wildly.  He could feel the tension rising within him.  He could lose all patience and see red, but twenty-four years of discipline saved him.  He imposed self-control upon himself; Annapolis might have taught him that, or perhaps his much-loved father in his boyhood.  He forced himself to think as coldly and as scientifically as ever.
     'Sonar reports contact bearing zero six eight.'
     'Left smartly to course zero six four.  George to Eagle.  I am turning to port to intercept.'
     Men were dying behind him, men he was supposed to protect.  What he had to do was to solve little trigonometrical problems in his head quickly and accurately, and give his orders calmly, and issue his information intelligibly, and anticipate the submerged U-boat's movements as freshly and as rapidly as he had done ever since yesterday.  He had to be a machine that did not know emotion; he had to be a machine that did not know fatigue.  He had to be a machine uninfluenced by the possibility that Washington and London might think him a failure.
     'Sonar reports contact bearing zero six six, range one thousand,' said the talker.  'But it sounds like a pill, sir.'
     If it were a pill which way was the U-boat turning?  What depth would she take up?  He applied himself to those problems while the men in the convoy died.  He gave his two hundreth successive helm order.

     The darkness was not as impenetrable now.  The white wave tops could be seen overside, and even as far ahead as the bow from the wing of the bridge.  Day was creeping towards them from the east, an unutterably slow transition from black to gray; gray sky and gray horizon and a slate-gray heaving sea.  Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.  It was not true.  The heavens declare the glory of God.  These heavens?  As Krause noted the coming of the light the well-remembered verses came up into his mind—they had come up in his mind in the old days of Pacific and Caribbean sunrises.  Now he thought of them with a bitter, sardonic revulsion of mind.  The shattered convoy on the flank; the frozen corpses on the life rafts; the pitiless gray sky; the certainty that this agony was going to endure until he could bear it no longer—it was more than he could bear already.  He wanted to throw in his hand, to cast aside all thought of his duty, his duty to God.  Then he drew himself back from the temptation.
     'George to Eagle.  I am holding my course.  Keep clear.'  His voice was as flat and as precise as ever.
     The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.  He had nearly said that, too, while he could still square his shoulders and while his aching legs could still carry him to the T.B.S.
     'Contact bearing zero six seven, range eleven hundred yards.'
     'Very well.'
     One more attempt to destroy the hidden enemy.  And not one more only; dozens, hundreds if necessary.  While Keeling moved in to the attack, while the talker repeated the ranges, there was time to bow his head.  Cleanse Thou me from secret faults.
     'Stand by for the pattern, Mr. Pond.'
     'Aye, aye, sir.'
     Balked by the U-boat's turn; helm orders to get into position again; orders to Viktor to head her off.  Let us not be weary in well doing.

     C. S. Forester, The good shepherd (Boston and Toronto:  Little, Brown and Company, 1955), 181-184 (Thursday.  Morning Watch:  0400-0800).

Sing without ceasing

The Assembly of Angels (16th cent),
Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

"the reason Isaiah [in the 8th century BC] and John [in the 1st century AD] give a similar report is that the seraphim had been singing the [Sanctus or Trisagion] without interruption over the eight hundred years that intervened between the time of Isaiah and St. John."

     Robert Louis Wilken, "With angels and archangels," Pro ecclesia 10, no. 4 (Fall 2001):  462 (460-474).  "For St. John says that the heavenly chorus sang 'holy, holy, holy,' unceasingly."

"Those who touch the dead body of Christ . . . touch the Word of life and hold in their hands the flesh of God, who is substantially and personally present in the dead cadaver of Christ."

"all that befalls Jesus Christ is rightly attributed only to the person of the Word, who is the personal subject of all the human actions and sufferings [and 'all divine and human properties'] of Christ.

     . . . And "this is the case also on Holy Saturday, when the body and soul of Christ are separated by death.  The human body of Christ undergoes death in the crucifixion, and the animating principle of the body is sundered from the body.  His cadaver is then buried in the tomb.  Here, however, the person of the Word continues to subsist personally in his cadaver.  The body of Christ remains hypostatically united to the Word even after death.  Those who touch the dead body of Christ, then, do indeed touch the Word of life and hold in their hands the flesh of God, who is substantially and personally present in the dead cadaver of Christ.  Meanwhile, the Word also continues to subsist in his spiritual soul separated from his body.  This human soul is the soul of the Word.  And in this immaterial soul, the Word illumines the whole cosmos of human souls who have died prior to the time of Christ (enlightening them in various ways, as we have seen).  It follows from all this that the Word is luminous personally in and through his death, both in his cadaveric body and in his separated soul.  In both he teaches us about the personal identity of God the Son and Word who has come into the world to illumine our human condition.  In these mysteries we perceive his solidarity with the human race, since God freely adopted our human nature for our sake and in the service of our salvation.  In that sense, God the Son’s personal solidarity with us even in human death is indicative of a deeper divine will that he shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit and in which he is utterly one with [(i.e. not separated from)] them.  God the Trinity willed that the Son should take flesh and die for our salvation, advancing even into the experience of death and hell, as a means to demonstrate the power of God to make use of death in his own human life in order to undo the power of death over the human race as a collective whole.

     ". . . the divine goodness and love of God are perfect and are therefore not subject to the possibility of any form of internal theological drama.  They cannot develop or become more perfectly enriched, as if God could grow in goodness or love as an effect of his dramatic struggle with creaturely evil, suffering, death, or hell.  Nevertheless, God can reveal to us in particularly intensive ways his own goodness and intrinsically immutable love through the drama of his own human suffering, death, and descent into hell.  It is through these mysteries not that God changes, but that the unchanging love of God is made most manifest to us precisely in God’s all-powerful victory over the powers of death, moral evil, and hell.  It is the victory of Christ, his triumphant, luminous entry into hell on Holy Saturday, that manifests most to us his love for the human race.  He has the capacity as God in his goodness and love to make use even of the worst that angelic and human evil can do, to draw forth a yet greater and infinitely superior good:  the good of our participation in his divine life, in the world of the resurrection.  It is not, then, the passivity, misery, or spiritual loss of Christ alone that indicates his true solidarity with us out of love.  Rather, as the universal tradition of the ancient fathers underscores in both west and east:  Christ’s true solidarity with us on Holy Saturday is most deeply expressed by the use of his genuine divine authority in the service of his victory over evil.  This is an authority borne in love, but also one that originates from Christ’s legitimate power as God.  On Holy Saturday, Christ shows us his true solidarity with us not only as man but also as God, by conquering death, hell, and the devil with the power of love."

     Thomas Joseph White, O.P., contra Hans Urs von Balthasar and others, The incarnate Lord:  a Thomistic study in Christology (Washington, DC:  The Catholic University of America Press, 2015), 419-420 (“Did Christ descend into hell?”), small caps mine.  Cf. this one.

"The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup"

יְֽהוָ֗ה מְנָת־חֶלְקִ֥י וְכֹוסִ֑י

     Ps 16:5a RSV.  So far as I can tell, מְנָת, at least, is (with the exception of Jer 13:25) overwhelmingly edible in context.

The Bolshevik bourgeoisie

     "In between their epic labors at the great construction site of socialism, residents of the House of Government 'were settling into their new apartments and setting up house in familiar ways,' unable to transcend the 'hen-and-rooster problems' of marriage and domestic life.  Many of them expressed unease at sinking into the traditional bonds of kinship and procreation.  'I am afraid I might turn into a bourgeois,' worried the writer Alexsandr Serafimovich (Apt. 82) to a friend.  'In order to resist such a transformation, I have been spitting into all the corners and onto the floor, blowing my nose, and lying in bed with my shoes on and hair uncombed.  It seems to be helping.'
     "But it wasn't.  No one really knew what a communist family should be, or how to transform relations between parents and children, or how to harness erotic attachments to the requirements of revolution.  Bolsheviks were known to give their children names such as 'Vladlen' (Vladimir Lenin), 'Mezhenda' (International Women's Day), and 'Vsemir' (worldwide revolution).  But naming was easy compared to living.  The Soviet state went to great lengths to inculcate revolutionary values in schools and workplaces, but not at home.  It never devised resonant rituals to mark birth, marriage, and death.  The party ideologist Aron Solts (Apt. 393) claimed that 'the family of a Communist must be a prototype of a small Communist cell . . . , a collectivity of comrades in which one lives in the family the same way as outside the family.'
     "In that case, why bother with familes at all?  Neither Solts nor anyone else had a convincing answer.  Sects, Slezkine notes, 'are about brotherhood (and, as an afterthought, sisterhood), not about parents and children.  This is why most end-of-the-world scenarios promise "all these things" within one generation. . . , and all millenarian sects, in their militant phase, attempt to reform marriage or abolish it altogether (by decreeing celibacy or promiscuity).'
     "Unable or unwilling to abolish the family, Bolsheviks proved incapable of reproducing themselves [qua Bolsheviks].  For Slezkine, this is cause for celebrating the resilience of family ties under the onslaught of Stalin's social engineering.  It's worth asking, though, why the same Bolsheviks who willingly deported or exterminated millions of class enemies as remnants of capitalism balked at similarly radical measures against the bourgeois institution of the family.  Could it be that they, especially the men among them, realized that by doing so they stood to lose much more than their chains?
     "Whatever the case, the children they raised in the House of Government became loyal Soviet citizens but not millenarians.  Their deepest ties were to their parents (many of whom, as Slezkine shows with novelistic detail, were seized from their apartments and shot during the Great Terror) and to Pushkin and Tolstoy—not to Marx and Lenin.  Instead of devouring its children, he concludes, the Russian Revolution was devoured by the children of the revolutionaries.  As Tolstoy's friend Nikolai Strakhov wrote about the character Bazarov, the proto-Bolshevik at the heart of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons (another work about the family), 'The love affair takes place against his iron will; life, which he had thought he would rule, catches him in its huge wave.'"

     Benjamin Nathans, "Bolshevism's new believers," a review of The house of government:  a saga of the Russian Revolution, by Yuri Slezkine, The New York review of books 64, no. 18 (November 23, 2017):  21 (18-21).