"Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night": Augustine or Pseudo-Augustine?

Koninlijk Bibliotheek,
76 F5 fol. 12v sc. 2B:
The temptation of Christ:
four angels minister to Christ

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give thine angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for thy love’s sake.  Amen.

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.  Amen.

     Book of common prayer (New York:  Church Publishing Inc., 1979), 71, 124, 134.  According to Hatchett, "Saint Augustine of Hippo is the source for [this,] which is also the first of the intercessions of Compline (p. 134)" (Commentary on the American prayer book (The Seabury Press, 1980), 143).  And that is who Fox attributes it to on p. 161 of her Chain of prayer across the ages (Toronto:  Bell and Cockburn, 1913- ), behind which I have yet to find it, though the phrase "wake, or watch, or weep" does occur here in 1906.  Fox:

Watch, Thou, dear Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep to-night, and give Thine angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend Thy sick ones, O Lord Christ.  Rest Thy weary ones.  Bless Thy dying ones.  Soothe Thy suffering ones.  Pity Thine afflicted ones.  Shield Thy joyous ones.  And all, for Thy Love’s sake.  Amen.

But:  I have yet to find it in St. Augustine, having searched both the 3rd (and therefore admittedly incomplete) edition of the Works of Saint Augustine (WSA) in Past Masters on those terms least likely to vary in translation (weep, angels, sleep, sick, dying, suffering, afflicted, etc., and variants), and CAG (which should be complete), also in Past Masters, on angel* within 20 words of (dormi* (dormiunt, dormien*, etc.) OR quiesc*), and variants on that (Ps 90:11-12 Vulgate (though St. Augustine may have used the Old Latin), by the way:  "angelis suis mandabit de te ut custodiant te in omnibus viis tuis in manibus portabunt te ne forte offendat ad lapidem pes tuus"; so angelis tuis, angelos tuos, etc.).

     If memory serves, this is the first time I've ever encountered something iffy in Hatchett.

     In 1919 it appeared as an element in a Church of England (?) litany as follows:

     Watch, dear Lord, with those who watch, or wake, or weep this night, and give thine angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend the sick, rest the weary, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, bless the dying\

(The order of divine service for public worship: the administration of the sacraments and other rites and ceremonies and a selection from the daily offices compiled from ancient and modern devotions ; together with an abridged and revised Psalter and canticles pointed for chanting, ed. W. E. Orchard (London:  Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1919), 54, whose "Sources and Acknowledgements" cites Fox (above), among others).

Game of her to admit it

National Geographic

     "Gene sequencing studies have shown that people of European and Asian descent today carry a small amount of Neanderthal DNA, less than 2 percent of their total genome on average.  That may seem like an insignificant amount, but it's not the same 2 percent from one person to the next:  taken together, up to 40 percent of the Neanderthal genome lives on. . . .  Intriguingly, the modern Y chromosome, which determines maleness, appears to be completely free of Neanderthal DNA."

     Natalie Angier, "Serengeti on the Seine," a review of Europe:  a natural history, by Tim Flannery, with Luigi Boitani (Atlantic Monthly, 2019), The New York review of books 66, no. 8 (May 9, 2019):  28 (27-28).

[providence] ordered and sure, wisdom unerring [and true], love unbounded [and eternal]

"Teach us, O God, to trust your providence, ordered and sure; to accept your wisdom, unerring and true; and to rejoice in your love, unbounded and eternal; through Christ our Lord. Amen."

     Charles Simeon, supposedly (hat tip Kendall Harmon).  But though I have not yet completed an exhaustive search, I suspect that this prayer was rather constructed by someone else on the basis of these words, pronounced from his sick bed on 22 October 1836 (Simeon lived until 13 November):

What is before me I know not; whether I shall live or die.  But this I know, that all things are ordered and sure.  Everything is ordered with unerring wisdom and unbounded love.  He shall perfect everything; though at present I know not what He is about to do with me.  But about this I am not in the least degree anxious.

Memoirs of the life of the Rev. Charles Simeon, M.A., . . . with a selection from his writings and correspondence, ed. William Carus (London:  Hatchard and Son; Cambridge:  Deightons, and Macmillan & Co., 1847), 808, underscoring mine.  Please let me know if I've overlooked the prayer in Simeon himself, as I think it lovely.  But I see that Lesser feasts and fasts 2000 (and probably also, therefore, Holy women, holy men: celebrating the saints (2010)), hews more closely to the text I've discovered (more evidence of its fame, unknown to me before undertaking this research):

O loving God, we know that all things are ordered by your unerring wisdom and unbounded love:  Grant us in all things to see your hand, that, following the example of your servant Charles Simeon, we may walk with Christ in all simplicity, and serve you with a quiet and contented mind; through. . . .

By contrast, the Church of England's Common worship (under Lesser festivals) makes no use of it:

Eternal God, who raised up Charles Simeon to preach the good news of Jesus Christ and inspire your people in service and mission:  grant that we with all your Church may worship the Saviour, turn in sorrow from our sins and walk in the way of holiness; through. . . .

     Here, by the way, is an unrelated mid-19th-century occurrence of "wisdom unerring and true" (apparently missing in Simeon himself):  "Mysteries," The Ladies' magazine and album 11 (November 1848):  113 (112-113).

"How can it be said without impiety that the truth of those things which are the work of an excellent God Is sad?"

     THE KING.  Lord-Chancellor, whose hair is white while mine is but beginning to grizzle,

     Is it not said that youth is the season of illusion,

     Whereas old age, little by little,

     Enters into the reality of things as they are?

     A very sad reality, a little faded world that goes on shrinking [(Une réalité fort triste, un petit monde décoloré qui va se rétrécissant)].

     THE CHANCELLOR.  That is what the ancients have always taught me to repeat.

     THE KING.  They say the world is sad for him who sees clear?

     THE CHANCELLOR.  I cannot deny it against everyone.

     THE KING.  It is old age that has the clear [(clair)] eye?

     THE CHANCELLOR.  It has the practiced [(exercé)] eye. . . .

     THE KING. . . .

     Sad, is it?  How can it be said without impiety that the truth of those things which are the work of a transcendent God

     Is sad [(Comment dire sans impiété que la vérité de ces choses qui sont l'œuvre d'un Dieu excellent Est triste)]?  And how without absurdity say that the world, which is His likeness [(resemblance)] and His rival [(emulation)],

     Is littler than ourselves and leaves the greater part of our imagination in the void [(sans support)]?

     Now I maintain that youth is the season of illusion, but that is because it pictures things as infinitely less beautiful and manifold and desirable than they are, and of this delusion we are healed by age.

     Paul Claudel, The satin slipper, or The worst is not the surest, trans., with the collaboration of the author, by John O’Connor (New York:  Sheed and Ward, 1945), First day, Scene 6, pp. 24-25.  I have not yet read The satin slipper, but was put onto this passage by Rémi Brague.  French from Paul Claudel, Théâtre II, ed. Didier Alexandre and Michel Autrand, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris:  Gallimard, 2011), 279-280.

La Soujeole on church discipline

"God alone probes minds [(les reins, the kidneys)] and hearts, so [(et)] no one should [ever] permit himself to pronounce upon the salvation of a person whom church discipline has excluded from sacramental communion.  But this sacramental discipline is justified by the mystery of the Church.  Those who are in outwardly observable, obvious, and persistent contradiction with the morals preached by its pastors [(John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia 37)] are objectively distant from the visible communion of the Church.  This visible communion is not separable from the invisible communion of the Church, the Church being profoundly one in the unity of these two aspects.  The security of this given of the faith is no longer assured if one comprehends spiritual communion in isolation from sacramental communion."

     Fr.Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, O.P., "Communion sacramentelle et communionspirituelle," Nova et vetera:  revue trimestrielle 86, no. 2(Avil-Mai-Juin 2011):  153 (147-153).

The indispensibility of the insight articulated by the proofs to "truly creative science"

"the history of the classic proofs of the existence of God viewed in relation to the development of science. . . . shows that all attacks on those proofs when unfolded in their full implication became attacks on the epistemology and world view which proved themselves to be essential ingredients in truly creative science."

     Stanley L. Jaki, citing his Gifford Lectures The road of science and the ways to God, in "Theological aspects of creative science," in Creation, Christ, and culture:  studies in honour of T. F. Torrance, ed. Richard W. A. McKinney (Edinburgh:  T. & T. Clark Ltd., 1976), 165 (149-166).

Our hearts have been rendered (inviscerated) restless until they rest in thee

     "One will rightly object that such [an] absolutization of the means [of inducing euphoria] is not new in history, and that hedonism is not unique to our epoque:  from Epicurus to Ronsard one has always noted hedonistic tendencies and whiffs [(relents)] of [the] absolutization of pleasure.  The fact is undeniable.  But what is new is the amplitude of a [(du)] movement well on its way to becoming a cultural characteristic [(fait)].

     "This is because, between [the period of] Greek thought and our own, Christianity hollowed out new desires, and because, when its cultural influence subsides, it leaves the [human] heart more empty than ever.  'This world, such as it is, is not tolerable.  Therefore I need the moon, or happiness, or immortality, I need something which is perhaps demented, but which is not of this world,' Albert Camus' Caligula [(as trans. Justin O'Brien)] tragically exclaims.  Christianity has, in effect, inviscerated the human heart [with] an unimaginable [or unprecedented] desire for [(impulsion au)] bliss, to the point that it inverted the Greek and naturalistic ideal.  For Aristotle, man is in fact the artisan of his [own] destiny:  he will find his happiness in an activity that he engages in by himself and for himself:  only the life of contemplation [(étude)] accomplishes it, [a] life reserved, moreover, for an elite.  The [Christian] theologians will correct [him]:  the beatitude of the other life, made for us, is a gift of God:  only there, where there will be no more tears or misery, will man find his true happiness and his perfect liberty.  Here man will never be able to avoid the invasion of misery; here happiness, though a participation in beatitude [(fût-il une participation à la béatitude)], is imperfect.  Christianity 'breaks the aristocratism in which the Greeks had taken pride; . . . the good old Christian woman knows more about God than all [of] the philosophers put together.'  'Thus are found [to be] reconciled the Aristotelian affirmation of a happiness in this life and the Christian affirmation of the misery of this earthly life:  the happiness of this life, as treated by Aristotle, is not a vain dream.  This happiness exists, but it is an imperfect happiness which does not do away with misery and which leaves the heart of man unsatisfied' [(René-Antoine Gauthier, “Trois commentaires ‘averroïstes’ sur l’Ethique à Nicomaque,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 22/23 (1947/1948):  187-336, here 253, 268).

     "Christianity has promised an unheard-of happiness, though [(un bonheur si inouï, que)] our cultural tradition has come to take it for granted.  But, disappearing, Christianity has opened up a breach which has been transformed into a yawing chasm [(béance)].  And] this is why the [euphoric] compensations must be [(se feront) so much] more 'intense [(vives)]'.  In giving it this impetus towards beatitude, Christianity has dug [(labouré, plowed)] the human heart out so profoundly that, when the social influence of Christianity subsides, we seek in particular goods something that can satisfy the [(un)] desire for infinity that it has elicited.  Th[is] inflammation [(irritation)] of the heart has (thanks also to our immense progress in techno-scientific mastery) left contemporary man more dissatisfied than ever:  a new and [much] more powerful impetus has been imparted to it, but the answer has, in the end, eluded it [(la réponse a fini par lui échapper)].  The desire for happiness, because it is the desire for the vision of God seen face-to-face, has hollowed the human heart out to an infinite degree, and caused it to hope [for something] beyond all human expectation."

     François-Xavier Putallaz, "La tentation de l’euphorie:  peut-on vivre heureux aujourd’hui?," Nova etvetera:  revue trimestrielle 83, no. 4(2008):  407-408 (399-411), translation mine.