"Let each man take care how he builds upon it."

"in the history of the mind as in that of towns, the ruins [of a civilization] expose the bedrock [(les fondations)] that, in the case of man, is a matter not of what he constructed, but of what is innate."

"dans l'histoire de l'esprit comme dans celle des villes, les ruines mettent toujours à nu les fondations qui, dans le cas de l'homme, relèvent non du construit mais de l'inné."

     Gustave Martelet, S.J., "Information du monde et résurrection du Christ," in Penser la foi:  recherches en théologie aujourd'hui:  mélanges offerts à Joseph Moingt, ed. Joseph Doré and Christoph Theobald (Paris:  Éditions du Cerf/Assas Éditions, 1993), 1056 (1053-1061). relèver (but without de) can also mean to raise, even erect.  Unfortunately, relèvent du/de is, in any case, in the present.

Play the man (aner), act manfully (viriliter)

Ps 26:14:

LXX:  ὑπόμεινον τὸν κύριον· ἀνδρίζου, καὶ κραταιούσθω ἡ καρδία σου, καὶ ὑπόμεινον τὸν κύριον.  NETS:  Wait for the Lord; take courage, and let your heart be strong, and wait for the Lord!
Vulgate iuxta LXX:  exspecta Dominum viriliter age et confortetur cor tuum et sustine Dominum.  Douay-Rheims:  Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord.

BH:  קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְה֫וָ֥ה חֲ֭זַק וְיַאֲמֵ֣ץ לִבֶּ֑ךָ וְ֝קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְהוָֽה׃
Vulgate iuxta Hebr.:  expecta Dominum confortare et roboretur cor tuum et sustine Dominum.

     ἀνδρίζομαι:  conduct oneself in a resolute manner; be a man; act in a manner typical of men (Muraoka, A Greek-English lexicon of the Septuagint (2009)).  חזק doesn't seem to have the sense that is clearly there in Greek and the Vulgate according to the Septuagint.

Mirror images

"the dismissal of 'God' by modern evolutionary naturalists, and the rejection of evolution by creationists and 'intelligent design' devotees, is often a result of their shared observation that the Darwinian world fails to conform to simplistic notions of design and order.  There is no need here to enter into a thorough discussion of creationism and intelligent design.  It is well known that their antipathy to evolution is rooted in the assumption that a world filled with accidents or contingencies is too noisy to be rendered compatible with their idea of a designing deity.  But it is also worth noting that the atheistic ideas of the renowned evolutionist Richard Dawkins and many other evolutionists are also based on the same assumption:  namely, that any God deserving of the name would also have to be a designer in the same sense as 'intelligent design' proponents understand the ultimate cause of living complexity.  In his obsession with the deadhorse of design, Dawkins insists that any reasonable affirmation of God’s existence would require that living organisms exhibit perfect engineering.  So Dawkins' implicit theological assumptions are essentially identical to those of his 'intelligent design' opponents."

     John F. Haught, "Information, theology, and the universe," in Information and the nature of reality:  from physics to metaphysics, ed. Paul Davies and Niels Henrik Gregerson (Cambridge, England:  Cambridge University Press, 2010), 308 (301-318).  Haught goes on to cite Newman on Paley (his "lecture in the School of Medicine" on "Christianity and physical science" in The idea of a university) against his fellow Christians, though I would have to re-read that more closely to be convinced that he does so in all fairness to the current representatives of "intelligent design."

Hanby on the disastrous de-Hellenization of Christianity

"Christianity cannot be de-Hellenized . . . without being de-Christianized at the same time, and Christianity cannot be de-Christianized without an eclipse of the sense of God and man casting its dark shadow over the whole of our thought and life."

     Michael Hanby, "A false paradigm," First things no. 287 (November 2018):  24 (19-24).  And further on down that same page,

     At the head of the Cross of Christ, the Gospels tell us, was an inscription which read 'Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.'  According to St. John, it was written in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.  What could this detail even mean to our de-Hellenized minds, except perhaps to indicate an early example of sociological 'inculturation'?  But for the traditional Christian, on whom the ends of the ages had come, and for whom the universe itself is a symbol crying out to us to recognize its Creator, it would have meant much more.  It would signify that the whole world was united in judgement under the Cross of Christ in the fullness of time, and that it was precisely in this Kairos—which unites the language of true worship, the language of power, and the language of the wise—that God chose to reveal himself.  The wisdom of the Greeks could not therefore be adventitious to the meaning of the gospel and to the articulation of Christian faith, as indeed they have never been up till now.

"a gauzy mercy without justice or truth"

"the idea of a gauzy mercy without justice or truth appears suspiciously self-serving for a Church that has so much to confess."

     Michael Hanby, "A false paradigm," First things no. 287 (November 2018):  19 (19-24).  Does Hanby consider this "gauzy mercy" distinctively Francis-can, by chance?  Well, yes:

It would perhaps be unfair to burden [the] progressive proponents [of this false paradigm] with the full weight of its Kuhnian meaning, just as it would be unfair to charge the pope with full responsibility for bringing this change about [(21, italics mine)].

SALVE, FESTA DIES

A moonset at sunrise by Tracie Hall

"'Does not a good man consider every day a festival?'  And a very splendid one, to be sure, if we are virtuous.  For the world is the most sacred and divine of temples, and the one most fitting for the gods.  Man is introduced into it by birth to be a spectator:  not of artificial, immobile statues, but of the perceptible images of intelligible essences [that the divine mind, says Plato, has revealed, images which have innate within themselves the beginnings of life and motion:  images] such as the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers whose water always flows afresh, and the earth, which sends forth food for plants and animals alike.  A life which is a perfect revelation, and an initiation into these mysteries, should be filled with tranquility and joy."

     Plutarch, On tranquility of mind 20, 477C, in response to Diogenes, as translated in Pierre Hadot in Philosophy as a way of life, ed. Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Michael Chase (Malden, MA:  Blackwell Publishing, 1995), 98.  The ellipsis in Hadot I have filled in with the old Loeb translation by W. C. Helmbold.

'Does not a good man consider every day a festival?'  And a very splendid one, to be sure, if we are virtuous.  For the world is the most sacred and divine of temples, and the one most fitting for the gods [(ἱερὸν μὲν γὰρ ἁγιώτατον ὁ κόσμος ἐστὶ καὶ θεοπρεπέστατον)].  Man is introduced into it by birth to be a spectator [(θεατής)]:  not of artificial, immobile statues, but of the perceptible images of intelligible essences [that the divine mind, says Plato, has revealed, images which have innate within themselves the beginnings of life and motion [(οὐ χειροκμήτων οὐδ' ἀκινήτων ἀγαλμάτων . . . , ἀλλ' οἷα νοῦς θεῖος αἰσθητὰ μιμήματα νοητῶν, . . . ἔμφυτον ἀρχὴν ζωῆς ἔχοντα καὶ κινήσεως ἔγηνεν)]:  images] such as the sun, the moon, the stars, the rivers whose water always flows afresh, and the earth, which sends forth food for plants and animals alike.  A life which is a perfect revelation, and an initiation into these mysteries, should be filled with tranquility and joy [(ὧν τὸν βίον μύησιν ὄντα καὶ τελετὴν τελειοτάτην εὐθυμίας δεῖ μεστὸν εἶναι καὶ γήθους)].

The study of spirituality as spiritual discipline

Catholic Theological Union

"the [academic] study of spirituality is necessarily a self-implicating discipline.

     "In short, . . . the actual 'object' that spirituality studies [(namely, 'expressions of human meaning' 'constructed' by 'the human spirit fully in act', by 'human persons being, living, acting according to their fullest intrinsic potential', and 'thus, ultimately, in the fullness of interpersonal, communal, and mystical relationship')] cannot be approached except with the attitude like that of one who takes up a spiritual discipline. . . .  If the academic discipline of spirituality is to have any specificity, it must claim and clarify its character as [itself] a form of spiritual discipline.  Spirituality can be an academic discipline only insofar as it coheres with its deeper character as spiritual discipline.  Unless it is understood in clear relation to its real core, the academic study of spirituality will fragment across all other disciplines and lose any specificity."

     Mary Frohlich, “Spiritual discipline, discipline of spirituality:  revisiting questions of definition and method,” Spiritus:  a journal of Christian spirituality 1, no. 1 (Spring 2001):  75, 71 (65-78).  That focus on personal experience as mediated via human construction is suspect, but she does make an attempt to transcend this with those claims about other-directed relationship, including 'mystical relationship'.  Suspect, too, is that penultimate paragraph.  The study of spirituality as spiritual discipline sounds good, but this is unfortunately all too familiar (italics mine):

     Such a discipline of spirituality will, to be sure, be of a different character than the spiritual disciplines of former eras.  Rather than an obedient immersion in an institutional culture, it will require a high tolerance for aloneness, permanent quest, vulnerability, and 'things falling apart.'  It will presume a willingness to probe, experiment, and accept challenges to every element of one’s lived spirituality.  It will call for the repeated risk of dialogue with the sometimes unnerving range of interpretations applied to the phenomena of one’s own and others’ spiritual experiences.