Malebranche on attention

"the attention of the mind is the natural prayer by which we obtain enlightenment from God:  for all those who apply themselves to the truth discover it in proportion to their application."

"l’attention de l’esprit est la prière naturelle par laquelle nous obtenons que Dieu nous éclaire; car tous ceux qui s’appliquent à la vérité la découvrent à proportion de leur application."

Nicholas Malebranche, Treatise on nature and grace 2.2.37, as trans. Riley (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1992), 155).  Sub-critical French from here.  This is, of course, a common claim in Malebranche.

Back to the future

"[William] James's introspective investigations, as well as those of other psychologists of his time, led him to conclude in his chapter on attention that keeping the mind focused on one thing for more than a few moments is impossible:

No one can possibly attend continuously to an object that does not change. . . . To keep the mind upon anything related to them requires such incessantly renewed effort that the most resolute Will before long gives out and let[s] its thoughts follow the more stimulating solicitations after it has withstood them for what length of time it can.

This observation would have amused late antique Christian contemplatives, who knew that keeping the mind focused on one object is a skill that can be cultivated through systematic training that might go on for years.  It is not enough just to try to stop the flow of thoughts for a few minutes, as James did.  But James and other introspective psychologists at the turn of the twentieth century, such as Edward Titchener and Wilhelm Wundt, were not familiar with techniques that allow the mind to be calmed so that its underlying phenomena can be observed.  Thus, they did not have suitable tools at their disposal with which to conduct their introspective investigations.  Such tools—which had been developed by contemplative monks in late antiquity—were lost with the secularization of psychology [in the eighteenth century]."

     Inbar Graiver, Asceticism of the mind:  forms of attention and self-transformation in late antique monasticism (Toronto:  PIMS, 2018), 193-194.

"performing the sign of the cross just once . . . is sufficient for our protection and salvation."

Orthodox Church in America

"if we are attentive [(νήφωμεν)], performing the sign of the cross just once . . . is sufficient for our protection and salvation."

        St. Barsanuphius, Ep. 436, as trans. Inbar Graiver, Asceticism of the mind:  forms of attention and self-transformation in late antique monasticism (Toronto:  PIMS, 2018), 102.  FC 114, trans. John Chryssavgis, 58:  "If we are vigilant, then performing the sign of the cross just once—whether during the night or during the day—is sufficient for our protection and salvation."  =SC 451, 514.  Context:  anxious repetition.

"In work we spin a thread tough enough for others to weave with."

Wycliffe College

      Oliver O'Donovan, Entering into rest, Theology as ethics 3 (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2017), 114, as quoted by Bernd Wannenwetsch, "Ama et labora:  a conversation with Oliver O'Donovan on the sanctification of work," Modern theology 36, no. 1 (January 2020):  182 (178-185).

"[only] when I am come thither shall I be truly a [human being]."

"so far as I am concerned, to die in Jesus Christ is better than to be monarch of earth's widest bounds.  He who died for us is all that I seek; He who rose again for us is my whole desire.  The pangs of birth are upon me; have patience with me, my brothers, and do not shut me out from life, do not wish me to be stillborn.  Here is one who only longs to be God's; do not make a present of him to the world again, pure and undefiled; for only when I am come thither shall I be truly a [human being (ἐκεῖ παραγενόμενος ἄνθρωπος ἔσομαι)].  Leave me to imitate the Passion of my God."

     St. Ignatius, Romans 6, trans. Staniforth and Louth, but with modifications taken from John Behr.

"the immaterial spirit can be purified and refined by clay"

"It is truly astounding how the incorporeal mind can be defiled and darkened by the body.  Equally astonishing is the fact that the immaterial spirit can be purified and refined by clay."

     John Climacus, Scal. 14, as quoted by Inbar Graiver, Asceticism of the mind, Studies and texts 213 (Toronto:  Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2018), 45n69, who is clearly quoting the Classics of Western spirituality translation by Luibheid & Russell, p. 169.  Greek:  PG 88, col. 869A.  (I have not yet examined any of this closely.)  Trans. Moore, St. John Climacus, The ladder of divine ascent 14.28 (New York:  Harper & Brothers, [1959]), 144:

It is amazing to see the bodiless mind defiled and darkened by the body, and likewise the immaterial spirit purified and refined through clay.

The value of the loci alieni for the elimination of "false directions within the Church"

The hermeneutic of reform "doesn’t simply have to do with failures which were absorbed from without; they can be also failures which developed from within. . . . [I]f [the Church i]s not doing well, that’s not always because it’s absorbed things from without, because it’s also failed to develop from within. . . . There certainly are sides of the Protestant Reformation and of the Enlightenment that are important for the Church, that she would not want to do without.  For example, at the [Second Vatican] Council it was the admonition from the Calvinist Lukas Fischer which warned the Catholics against a kind of Pollyannic, rose-colored-glasses look at the signs of the times.  It was because of the admonitions of the Protestant side—remember that we are very corrupt in the way we read the signs of the times and we need to examine them in the light of the Gospel—that you have that marvelous nuancing in Guadium et spes 4 to read the signs of the times [and] to scrutinize them in the light of the Gospel.  That wasn’t the initial Catholic impulse. . . . It was the Protestant reminder of the brokenness of humanity that goes into the Church and also was an admonition for scrutinizing the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel.  And that is the lesson which many, even in this alienational (so-called alienational) side—they are often less ecumenical than the integrative side."

     Fr. Richard Schenk, O.P., "Memory And Conversion - Thomistic Ressourcement And Productive Non-Contemporaneity," a lecture at the conference Thomism after Vatican II, Angelicum, Rome, 27 October 2018, from 55:02.  The loci alieni of the heading is taken from Melchior Cano via Schenk.