"God of angels, of powers, of all creation, of all the race of saints who live in your sight"

"Lord, almighty God, Father of your beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, through whom we have come to knowledge of yourself, God of angels, of powers, of all creation, of all the race of saints who live in your sight, I bless you. . . ."

Κύριε, ὁ Θεὸς ὁ παντοκράτωρ, ὁ τοῦ ἀγαπητοῦ καὶ εὐλογητοῦ παιδός σου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ πατήρ, δἰ οὗ τὴν περὶ σοῦ ἐπίγνωσιν εἰλήφαμεν, ὁ θεὸς ἀγγέλων καὶ δυνάμεων καὶ πάσης τῆς κτίσεως παντός τε τοῦ γένους τῶν δικαίων, οἳ ζῶσιν ἐνώπιόν σου·  εὐλογῶ σε. . . .

     Martyrdom of St. Polycarp xiv.1, as trans. Universalis.  ". . . for judging me worthy of this day, this hour, so that in the company of the martyrs I may share the cup of Christ, your anointed one, and so rise again, in soul and body, immortal through the power of the Holy Spirit. . . ."

"no evidence for" "an ongoing opposition between a repressive, orthodox Christianity and a suppressed, often feminist and sex-positive 'paganism'"

"the idea of an ongoing opposition between a repressive, orthodox Christianity and a suppressed, often feminist and sex-positive 'paganism' (defined here as the umbrella term for 'the ancient pre-Christian religions of Europe') endured for much of the twentieth century.  Margaret Murray's influential witch-cult hypothesis, which held that the witch trials of early modern Europe were an attempt to stamp out a more joyful, female-led 'Old Religion', was rapidly accepted by many historians less familiar with the trials.  In 1929, she was invited to write the Encyclop[a]edia Britannica entry for witchcraft, further cementing her authority with the public.  Her ideas filtered through into the work of writers such as John Buchan and Rosemary Sutcliff, and she provided an approving foreward for Wicca founder Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft Today in 1954.
     "However, as Hutton suggests in his opening chapter, the idea that 'in some form and to some extent, the ancient pagan religion or religions of Britain had persisted actively long after the introduction of Christianity as the official faith' was largely a late Victorian creation, stoked by the waning dominance of the Church of England and the rapid urbanization of British society.  It was further propagated by James Frazer's highly influential book The Golden Bough (1890) and the newly formed Folk-Lore Society. . . .  Together with Murray's witch-cult hypothesis, these affected popular historical accounts until the 1960s and 70s, when a more systematic study of historical records revealed no evidence for such theories."

    Elizabeth Dearnley, "Blessed ladies:  the rise of the fairy queen in Christian Europe," a review of Ronald Hutton, Queens of the wild:  pagan goddesses in Christian Europe:  an investigation (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2022) in Times literary supplement no. 6254 (February 3, 2023):  26.  The point seems to be that these figures first arose in the late medieval and early modern but especially late Victorian periods, not pagan antiquity.  Take the Green Man, for example.  "The Green Man was linked in the twentieth century with an ancient vegetation deity, largely on the strength of a single article from 1939.  Hutton (italics mine):

'it is perfectly legitimate to pick foliate or woodland figures . . . and group them together now as expressions of the human relationship with green and fertile nature[.] . . .  The trouble only starts if those who embrace such beliefs back-project them onto the past and declare that they are revealing an ancient mystery'.

"Courage in war and courage of thought are two different courages"

"I touch upon this subject carefully and rarely.  They are still paralyzed not only by Stalin’s hypnosis and fear, but also by their former faith.  They cannot stop loving what they used to love.  Courage in war and courage of thought are two different courages.  I used to think they were the same."

     Svetlana Alexievich, The unwomanly face of war [У вайны не жаночы твар]:  an oral history of women in World War II, trans. Richard Pevear and Laurissa Volokhonsky (New York:  Random House, 2018 [1988]), xxvii.  "their former faith" was in | "what they used to love" was Communism and Stalin and the nobility of The Great Patriotic War, in which they displayed great martial courage.  The "courage of thought" to question all or parts of that was what, I gather (for I haven’t yet read more than this paragraph and the pages preceding it), they were still struggling to muster.  Cf. Solzhenitsyn.

Grant that we may become the kinds of people in whom you deign to dwell

Vat. Reg. lat. 316 I.lxv (p. 90). DigVatLib

"O God, who teach us that you abide in hearts that are just and true, grant that we may be so fashioned by your grace as to become a dwelling place pleasing to you.  Through."

"Deus, qui te in rectis et sinceris manere pectoribus asseris, da nobis tua gratia tales exsistere, in quibus habitare digneris.  Per."

"Deus, qui te rectis et sinceris manere pectoribus asseris, da nobis tua gratia tales exsistere, in quibus habitare digneris.  Per."

O God, who declare that you abide in hearts [that are] upright and pure, grant that we may become by grace the kinds [of people] in whom you deign to dwell.

     8th-century-or-earlier collect for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman Missal.  =Corpus orationum 2128a (vol. 3, p. 189).

"And sometimes their soul is in a state just like everyone else's."

Ἄλλοτε ὥσπερ εῖς τῶν ἀνθρώπων γίγνεται.

Interdum ut quivis hominum fit.

     Pseudo-Makarios/Macarius (late 4th/early 5th cent.), spiritual homily 18.9, as trans. for the Office of Readings, Friday of Week 4 in Ordinary Time, by Universalis.  Greek from PG 34, col. 640D, not the critical edition.  A. J. Mason's Fifty spiritual homilie of 1921 appears to leave this sentence out, though I have requested the critical edition.  But it is there in the Maloney translation of 1992, albeit as follows (Pseudo-Macarius:  the fifty spiritual homilies and the Great letter, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York:  Paulist Press, 1992), 145):

At another time one becomes one with all human beings.

"But behold again a Virgin, a tree, and a death"

"The Cross is the Father’s will, the glory of the Only-begotten, the Spirit’s exultation, the beauty [(κόσμος)] of the angels, the guardian of the Church. Paul glories in the Cross; it is the rampart of the saints, it is the light of the whole world."

     St. John Chrysostom, Homily De coemetrio et de cruce 2, trans. for the Office of Readings, Saturday Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by Universalis.  Greek from PG 49, cols. 396-397.

in your concord and harmonious love Jesus Christ is sung

"by your concord and harmonious love Jesus Christ is being sung."

ἐν ὁμονοίᾳ ὑμῶν καὶ συμφώνῳ ἀγάπῃ Ἰσοῦς Χριστὸς ᾄδεται.

     St. Ignatius of Antioch, Ephesians 4, trans. Kirsop Lake.  Context:  "it is fitting that you should live in harmony with the will of the bishop" and his presbytery.