Into Great Silence, or: "silent prayer can center a life more than the liturgy"

"It is also necessary to safeguard without let-up the essential contemplative function of the liturgy, which demands an appreciation for [(le sens de)] sacred silence.  Silence and song are the privileged expressions of human communion.  A liturgical celebration that culminates [(s'achever)] spontaneously in silence gives proof of its religious quality.  Monastic wisdom knows how to effect [(sait)] this, for it always mixes silent prayer into the divine office".
     "It is necessary to respect profoundly the freedom of the Holy Spirit.  If there is no Church, are no Christians without sacraments; if there is no fundamental spiritual formation without incorporation into Christ dead and risen—[an incorporation] accomplished organically via the sacraments and the grace of Pasch experienced in the liturgy—, there are, however, very different ways and degrees of leading the life of the liturgy.  In fact, practically [speaking], silent prayer can center a life more than the liturgy.  There is no spiritual formation that does not aim at the one as well as the other.  Meanwhile a grave deficiency in liturgical life [such as a lack of silence] would be a fundamental omission in spiritual formation".

     Bernard-Marie Chevignard, O.P., "Formation spirituelle," Dictionnaire de spiritualité 5 (1964), cols. 710-711 (cols. 699-716).

"there is no serious spiritual formation that is not devoted to looking life straight in the face"

"The spiritual Christian is thus a man objectively formed [('objectivement formé' or 'ordonné')] for real life.  The theological virtues center him on God himself and render him docile to him.  By them he is able to live and breathe in God [(sait respirer en Dieu)].  Under the inspiration of God, the moral virtues govern his human steps along [(dans)] the difficult paths of life.  Whatever the words employed by the spiritual [writers]—discretion, prudence, strength [(force)], etc.—there is no serious spiritual formation that is not devoted to looking life straight in the face [(regarder la vie en face)] and taking it up with the grace of God and under [(dans)] the inspiration [(souffle, also breath or blast)] of the theological virtues.  Supernatural prudence and Christian strength are its pivots; lucidity, courage, a sense of one's responsibilities, even confrontation are its conditions."

     Bernard-Marie Chevignard, O.P. on how "The grace of Christ forges in the soul the courageous virtues of life," "Formation spirituelle," Dictionaire de spiritualité 5 (1964), col. 702 (cols. 699-716).  According to Chevignard, the supernatural virtues tend to "wed" themselves to (épouser, to marry, wed, espouse; take up, assume) the natural structures of the soul.

Simone Weil on St. John Vianney

"Never in any case whatever is a genuine effort of the attention wasted.  It always has its effect on the spiritual plane and in consequence on the lower one of the intelligence, for all spiritual light lightens the mind.
     "If we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a problem of geometry, and if at the end of an hour we are no nearer to doing so than at the beginning, we have nevertheless been making progress each minute of that hour in another more mysterious dimension.  Without our knowing or feeling it, this apparently barren effort has brought more light into the soul.  The result will one day be discovered in prayer. . . . it may very likely be felt in some department of the intelligence. . . . But it is certain that this effort will bear its fruit in prayer.  There is no doubt whatever about that. . . .
". . . Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul. . . .  The useless efforts made by the Curé d'Ars, for long and painful years, in his attempt to learn Latin bore fruit in the marvelous discernment that enabled  him to see the very soul of his penitents behind their words and even their silences."

     Simone Weil, "Reflections on the right use of school studies with a view to the love of God," in Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York:  G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1951), 106-108.  Note, however, this qualification:  "If there is a real desire, if the thing desired is really light" (107).
     Cf. Hilary of Poitiers.

"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.