Might as well have opposed it

"it is not enough merely to be enlightened and in tune with history.  During the Reign of Terror, after having given good service to the Revolution, eight 'constitutional bishops' perished on the guillotine."

James Hitchcock, "The French connection:  the many parallels between France's Revolution and today's anti-Christian secularism," Touchstone 24, no 5 (September/October 2011), 35.

From sacrament to Sacrament, forever

"it is true that the invisible grace that these structures communicate to us, or for which they are the occasion of our reception, will perdure even after they cease.  However, in a sense, just the inverse is true as well:  invisible grace moves us toward the sacraments not as mere historically contingent means, but also as precursors to a more profound eschatological form of dependence upon mediation:  the mediation of the sacred humanity of Christ, which will perdure eternally.  The sacraments are imperfect instrumental applications 'already' of what we will experience more perfectly for eternity:  dependence upon the mediating grace of Jesus Christ as man. . . .
"in contrast to Rahner's view, sacramental grace for Aquinas is not simply the visible manifestation of what is always, already happening invisibly outside the Church.  Nor does extra-sacramental grace drive us towards the sacraments simply because of a general human need for categorical mediation.  Rather, such grace 'outside the Church' is only a diminished form and anticipation of what comes to full reality uniquely in the sacraments of the Church.  Quite in opposition, then, to Rahner's view, sacraments cannot appear as visual aids to what we already possess, but they are instruments that incorporate us into a higher form of life with God than that which we previously possessed when we were not yet incorporated into the fullness of sacramental life.
". . . Like Congar, St. Thomas certainly holds that the sacraments are the means of grace that produce an inward spiritual communion and that they give way eventually to the eschatological life of the kingdom of God.  He also makes it clear, however, that these same sacraments are part of the inherent common good of social communion into which the invisible workings of grace invite us, and by which those same workings are inwardly maintained.  Nor does this corporate body cease to be eschatologically.  When these sacramental means cease to exist, they do so in order to give way not to a non-sacramental, invisible reality, but to a superior communal life that is itself also visible and invisible.  This is the life of the Resurrection, in which we will live in everlasting dependency upon the 'sacramental' mediation of Christ himself:  the human mediation of the Savior as High Priest.  His humanity will remain the everlasting instrument and sign of the communication of divine life, such that we will be dependent upon Jesus as both God and human for eternity.  Already in the life of the Church in this world, then, sacramental communion is part of the very form of the saving life of grace, since we are saved in an ecclesial body that is inseparably visible and invisible."

     Thomas Joseph White, O.P., "The priesthood makes the Church:  ecclesial communion and the power of the keys," Nova et vetera:  the English edition of the international theological journal 9, no. 1 (Winter 2011):  221, 227-228 (209-236).

Steck on the existence of man after Auschwitz

"There are those who say, After Auschwitz one can no longer speak of God.  [Yet] Israel did so [after another such event] in the Old Testament long ago.  I [by contrast] find [that] after Auschwitz one can no longer speak in such a ridiculously 'Enlightened' fashion and with such unspeakable naïveté [(so lächerlich aufgeklärt und so unsäglich naiv)] of the self-realized and superior man [(dem selbstverwirklichten und besseren Menschen)], as so commonly today."

     Odil Hannes Steck, "Ist Gott grausam? Über Isaaks Opferung aus der Sicht des alten Testaments," Ist Gott grausam? Eine Stellungnahme zu Tilmann Mosers 'Gottesvergiftung', hrsg. Wolfgang Böhme (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1977), 92 (75-95).  Others have said this, too, of course.

"The existence of these specific men is the existence of Jesus Christ for us and for all men."

Karl Barth, CD I/2, 486 =KD I/2, 539 (§19.2.3), as quoted by Bruce L. McCormack in his "The being of Holy Scripture is in becoming:  Karl Barth in conversation with American evangelical criticism," Evangelicals and Scripture:  tradition, authority and hermeneutics, ed. Vincent Bacote, Laura C. Miguéz, and Dennis L. Okholm (Downers Grove, IL:  InterVarsity Press, 2004), 68 (55-75).  "these specific men" are the "first witnesses":  "His disciples, His followers, His apostles, those who are called by Him, the witnesses of his resurrection, those to whom He Himself has directly promised and given His Holy Spirit".  So they are unique:  "It is in this function that they are distinguished from us and from all other men, whom they resemble in everything else."  Yet there is something about this that rings true for the saints as well.

For better

     "Your first wife married you for better or for worse.  Your second wife, particularly if you were sixty and she was a twenty-eight-year-old number like Serena—why kid yourself?—she married you for better."

     Tom Wolfe, A man in full (New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), 135.

Morning prayer the morning after seeing Werner Herzog's "Cave of forgotten dreams"



Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, End chamber, West wall, c. 30,000 BCE.



When I look at the heavens, the work of thy fingers,

the moon and the stars which thou has established;

what is man that thou art mindful of him,

and the son of man that thou dost care for him?

Yet thou hast made him little less than God,

and dost crown him with glory and honor.

Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, Hillaire

chamber, North wall, c. 30,000 BCE.

Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands;

thou hast put all things under his feet,

all sheep and oxen,

and also the beasts of the field,

the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,

whatever passes along the paths of the sea.

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is thy name in all the earth!

Ps 8:3-9, RSV.

(Actually, I slipped up and read the wrong office, but how providential!)

"although he takes back his word, although he breaks his promise, although he takes back what he gave, although he envelops his goodness in the hidden, in contradiction"

"Abraham is not [just] anyone who must give [up] his child; [it is] not something, albeit the most beloved [of things], [that] Abraham must give [up], no, [it is] God—[it is] God [that] he must give back to God, the trusted, gracious, tried-and-true God [who] discloses everything to him, [it is] th[is God that] he must give back to God! This is the whole harshness of the story, as Israel perceived it: God against God; God himself here takes his promise back, himself slams shut everything that he had once opened, places in question with all sharpness the hope and expectation that he himself had aroused in Abraham. [It is n]ot the loss of an only child [that] stands here in play, no, of Abraham is here expected the renunciation of the graciously-inclined God, the salvation-creating God of Israel. Of Abraham is expected—and indeed by God himself!—the renunciation of the God on whose word Abraham had staked his life. This is the depth and the unfathomability of this story, that God contradicts himself on the field of the experience of Israel! That he takes back [the already] given, [fully] realized nearness of meaning and salvation, that he takes from Israel everything, that he takes from th[is] man everything that he had given him, and no one is able to prevent this—and yet in this, too, remains his God!—[this is an] awareness of God in a depth of experience to which we moderns in blasphemous over-self-valuation do not again, not even from afar, attain. 'Sadistic,' 'cruel,' 'hostile to life,' 'one who strikes out at the defenseless'—these, I believe, are all, however, completely inappropriate, completely anthropomorphic, reductionistic, completely inapplicable concepts for what happens in Genesis 22: the mysterious, dark, night-saturated unreasonable demand of God that [Abraham] remain with him, go on [hand] in his hand, although he takes back his word, although he breaks his promise, although he takes [back] what he gave, although he envelops his goodness in the hidden, in contradiction."

Odil Hannes Steck, "Ist Gott grausam? Über Isaaks Opferung aus der Sicht des alten Testaments," Ist Gott grausam? Eine Stellungnahme zu Tilmann Mosers 'Gottesvergiftung', hrsg. Wolfgang Böhme (Stuttgart: Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1977), 87 (75-95).