"do not suppose that because the righteous were in the midst of men it was among men that they had achieved their righteousness"

"ever since the transgression came to pass [(facta prævaricatióne præcepti)], the soul cannot know [(non posse . . . cognoscere)] God unless it withdraws itself from men and from every distraction. . . ."
     "This is why the holy fathers also withdrew into the desert alone, men such as Elijah the Tishbite and John the Baptist. For do not suppose that because the righteous were in the midst of men it was among men that they had achieved their righteousness. Rather, having first practised much quiet [(magno . . . silentio)], they then received the power of God dwelling in them, and then God sent them into the midst of men, having acquired every virtue, so that they might act as God’s provisioners and cure men of their infirmities."

     St. Ammonius, Epistle 12.1-2, Office of readings, Feast of St. Charbel Makhlouf, 24 July, trans. Universalis, where there is more of value.  For the Syriac, see Patrologia Orientalis 10.6 (1973 [1913]), Ammonii Eremitae epistulae Syriace, ed. Kmoskó, 603-604.  More from secs. 4-5 (606-607):

     See, beloved, I have made known to you the power of quiet, and how it heals on all sides, and how God wills it. That is why I have written to you, that you may be strengthened in what you are doing, and know that it is in quiet that all the saints grew, and for this reason the divine power came to dwell in them, and made known to them heavenly mysteries; thus they drove away all the oldness of this world [(totam vetustatem mundi huius)]. And he who is writing this to you has by means of it attained to this measure.

     Many monks at the present time have been unable to persevere in quiet because they could not overcome their self-will. For this reason they live among men all the time, since they are unable to despise themselves and flee from the company of men, or to engage in battle. Thus they abandon quiet, and remain in the company of their neighbours, receiving their comfort thereby, all their lives. Therefore they have not been held worthy of the divine sweetness, or to have the power dwelling within them. For when that power looks down upon them, it finds that they receive their comfort in this present world and in the passions that belong to the soul and body. As a result it cannot overshadow them any more, for love of money, human vainglory, and all the soul’s sicknesses and distractions, prevent that divine power from overshadowing them.

A "risk of indistinction" that must nevertheless be run, and a crucial "ecclesial or sacramental symbolization" that must nevertheless take only abstract forms

Jesuits of Canada

      "This profusion [(pluralization)] of relations"

—i.e. "The profusion [(pluralization)] of lifestyles and partnerships, the rise in life-expectancy [(l'allongement de l'existence)], the demand of some homosexuals for recognition, the presence of remarried divorcées in their difference [with]in the bosom of the Christian community, etc., . . . hospitality (cf. Heb 13:2) having become the principal mark of an eschatological credibility" (403)—,

"it should be recognized, entails clearly the risk of indistinction[.  For] ahead of every other reflection on relations [and every commitment to the sort of "relational" as distinguished from "ontological" "logic" (401) that I am arguing for, and that seems closer to "that symbolization of the distinction between the sexes via the [profusion of] states of life" that we encounter in "the letters to the Corinthians" (403)], Paul brought his authority violently into action against a case of incest in the bosom of the Corinthian community (1 Cor 5).  The ecclesial or sacramental symbolization of [(des)] differences [with]in [the context of (dans)] baptismal equality remains therefore decisive, even if it must find, in the framework of our cultural context, new forms of expression.  For however that may be [(quoi qu'il en soit)], the «eschatological concentration» of the time and the manifestation of the unicity of an existence envisaged as a whole implies an act of faith that consents to them [(y consent)] joyously and decisions of [an] irrevocable type that ratify the Christic bond, [a] bond that once [and] for all precedes our differences, as incommensurable as they may be.  Indissoluble marriage, but also other types of bonds or radical fidelities, founded on a [(la)] faith in the humanizing power of irrevocable decisions, are, though never capable of exempting us from the [(sans jamais pouvoir s'exempter des)] apprenticeships and new developments [(rebondissements)] of life, the «charismatic» expression of that eschatological bond that is Christ."

     Christoph Theobald, "Pour une anthropologie théologique de la difference," Recherches de science religieuse 102, no. 3 (2014):  404 (385-407), except where otherwise noted, translation, all underscoring, and every misunderstanding, mine.
     405:  "That inversion, scarcely probable in our societies, but possible, implies for theology that it allow itself to be dislodged from the tranquil possession of a «common law», in order to come face-to-face with human complexity, as perceived in the Book of the generations [that lies behind Gen 5:1-32 and 11:10-26], [all the while] accepting that one does not know from the get-go what is normal and what is abnormal, what is human and what is not. . . ."
    401:  "Let us recall that the more or less concrete description of «the alternative space» put in place by the first Christian communities makes the isolation of the distinction of the sexes, which is to say the idea of the couple as a pre-social, originating, or natural entity, impossible.  Instead we are faced with a «plurality of relational forms mediated by the distinction of the sexes» in the bosom of an ensemble of social markers that largely transcend that differentiation, the comprehensively important thing being to give an eschatological form or style to all of the meaningful relations, founded on the «ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ».  An anthropology of the Maussian tradition that precisely refuses to start with an identitary classification of beings and substitutes for it an [(l')] entry via a relational logic [that] has no trouble describing that multi-form space and comparing it with others.  The question of personal identity under its current form, whether of «gender identity» or of «sexual identity», is not or not yet posed in [this multiform space]; [what is posed is] really only [(bien que)] the singularization by divine filiation in the bosom of the communitarian i.e. determinative bond."
     402:  "Without absolving St. Thomas [Aquinas] of his patriarchal conception of man/woman relations, one can adhere to the biblical desacralization of bisexuality that he inherited, i.e. the secularization of it that he promotes.  The necessary displacement [would] consist, however, in extricating the «male and female he created them» from its ontological status and in noting with biblical exegesis (and already K. Barth) that the «one flesh» of Gen 2:24 is not speaking of the conjugal union (and even less of the child), but, as the Song of Songs, of the bond between the man and the woman, [a] bond that, following the book of generations (Tolédôt), implicates other types of differences, those between generations, the story of which does not cease to follow complex twists and turns.  It emphasizes thus the opening up [(désenclavement)] of relations, the plurality of their forms [(figures)], and, above all, the mutation that they undergo over the course of life-spans."  Etc.

"the entire Church, from the Pope down, exists to make lives of that kind possible"

Divinity Library, Yale University

"'You are completely right.  If you had seen that saint in his lifetime you would not have looked at him twice.  He was exactly like one of the lay brothers who waited on us at dinner.  Yet the entire Church, from the Pope down, exists to make lives of that kind possible.'"

      A Maryknoll priest to Kenneth Scott Latourette just after the canonization of "a humble Bavarian lay monk" at the Vatican in the mid-1940s.  Beyond the ranges:  an autobiography (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 1967), 113.

"but I know Who is there"

Divinity Library, Yale University

"For weeks in that autumn of 1925 I realized that I was at least an agnostic and perhaps an atheist.  If that attitude persisted I would, in all honesty, have had to resign from the faculty of the Divinity School [at Yale] and the ministry.  I can still remember almost the precise spot in a street in Portland when, like an illumination, the beginning of the answer flashed on me.  'Here,' I said, or a voice seemed to say to me, 'is my father.  He has never let me down and has always been dependable.  Unless there is Some One in the universe who is at least as dependable and as intelligent as he, by whatever means he has been brought into being, the universe does not make sense.'"

     Kenneth Scott Latourette, Beyond the ranges:  an autobiography (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 1967), 72.  And from p. 155, the last, itself an expansion upon what he says about his ever-thereafter growing confidence in "the Evangelical faith in which [he] had been reared", a confidence clearly rooted in life-long practice, way back on pp. 73-74:

     The emeritus years passed quickly.  They were the richest and happiest of my life.  That was . . . chiefly because of growing friendship with God.  Wondering and grateful appreciation of the Good News grew. . . .  What lies beyond this present life I cannot know in detail, but I know Who is there and am convinced that through God's grace, that love which I do not and cannot deserve, eternal life has begun here and now, and eternal life is to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. 

Latourette on Linfield

Divinity Library, Yale University

"Yet I have often said that the best teaching [at McMinnville—later Linfield—College from 1901] was certainly as good, and perhaps better, than the best I later had at Yale, and the worst teaching was not as bad as the worst that I had at Yale."

     Kenneth Scott Latourette, Beyond the ranges:  an autobiography (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 1967), 19-20.

PSEUDO-E. A. Milne, or No, it ain't in Winnie the Pooh

Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.

     The only form of grat* that occurs anywhere in the Winnie the Pooh deluxe gift box =The world of Winnie-the-Pooh five-book collection (Dutton Children's Books, an imprint of Penguin Group [USA] Inc., 2009), which includes Winnie the Pooh, The house at Pooh corner, When we were very young, Now we are six, and Return to the hundred acre wood, and which I searched via the OverDrive eBook version available thanks to my public library, is gratifying, and that but once, in chap. 10 ("In which Christopher Robin and Pooh come to an enchanted place, and we leave them there") of The house at Pooh corner.

Bossuet on St. Peter

Friedsam Collection,
Metropolitan Museum

Peter’s "love, put to the greatest test that man can undergo, triumphed over agonies and death itself.  Neither attachment to life, nor the shame of an ignominious execution [(supplice)], nor the agony of a long and cruel martyrdom can temper his ardour.  What am I saying?  [That] they serve only to animate him more and more, by the desire by which his heart is possessed, to sacrifice himself for him who loved him so much.  And far from finding anything too painful in the bitterness of his sufferings, he yet wishes to add to them on his own initiative a circumstance no less severe, in order to express more vividly his profound sense of abasement before his Master, in order to make to him, as it were, a final public apology [(une dernière amende honorable)] for his past infidelities, and to adore him in the most perfect prostration [(anéantissement)] of himself.  So true is it that the love of St. Peter is at present as strong as death that his zeal is as obdurate [(inflexible)] as hell, that his eyes [(lampes)] are eyes of fire, that that [(sa)] flame is wholly divine; and that, if he failed formerly the weakest test, henceforth the great waters will not be able to extinguish him, and the large rivers of all temptations combined will have no power to smother him.
     "What [a] contrast, my brethren, between us and this great apostle!  Were Jesus Christ to ask us, as him, 'Do you love me?' ('Amas me?'), who will respond, 'Lord, I love you?'  All will say it, but take care.  Hypocrisy says it, but it is a feint.  Presumption says it, but it is an illusion.  The love of the world says it, but it is an interest that loves Jesus Christ only in order to be happy on earth.  Who are those who will say so truly?  Those who love him to the point of crucifixion [(jusque sur la croix)], those who are ready to lose everything in order to remain faithful to him, to suffer everything in order to be consumed in his love."

     Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, "Panégyrique de l'apotre saint Pierre" (c. 29 June 1661), Bossuet:  oraisons funèbres panégyriques, ed. L’Abbé Bernard Velat, Biblioteque de la Pleiade 33 (Paris:  Librairie Gallimard, 1950), 569-570 (561-572), translation mine.