"Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterwards."

 "Le vérité, elle délivre d’abord, elle console après."

The truth, it delivers first, it consoles afterwards.

      Le Curé de Torcy, in Georges Bernanos, The diary of a country priest 2, trans. Pamela Morris (New York:  Macmillan, 1937), 54.  French from p. 66 of the 1936 original.

"the festive day on which he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time"

"Let us . . . joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption.  Let us celebrate the festive day on which he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time."

"Celebremus laeti nostrae salutis et redemptionis adventum.  Celebremus festum diem, quo magnus et aeternus dies ex magno et aeterno die venit in hunc nostrum tam brevem temporalem diem."

     St. Augustine, Sermon 185.2 on the Nativity (25 December 412/416), as translated in the Office of readings for 24 December, Liturgy of the hours.  Latin from PL 38, col. 998 (997-999).  Clearly no difference in the Latin between "eternal" and "endless."  "festal" vs. "great and "eternal" vs. ever "so brief [and] temporal."

"a gift so great, so unheard of"

James Doyle Penrose

"The Lord has exalted me by a gift so great, so unheard of, that language is useless to describe it, and the depths of love in my heart can scarcely grasp it. I offer then all the powers of my soul in praise and thanksgiving. As I contemplate his greatness, which knows no limits, I joyfully surrender my whole life, my senses, my judgment, for my spirit rejoices in the eternal Godhead of that Jesus, that Savior, whom I have conceived in this world of time."

"Tanto (inquit) me Dominus tamque inaudito munere sublimavit, quod non ullo linguae officio explicari, sed ipso vix intimi pectoris affectu valeat comprehendi, et ideo totas animae vires in agendis gratiarum laudibus offero, totum in contemplanda magnitudine ejus cui non est finis quicquid vivo, sentio, discerno, gratulanter impendo, quia et ejusdem Jesu, id est salutaris, spiritus meus aeterna divinitate laetatur, cujus mea caro temporali conceptione foetatur."

     St. Bede, paraphrasing the opening lines of Mary's Magnificat (Lk 1:46-47), as translated in the Office of readings for 22 December, Liturgy of the hours.  CCSL 120 (1960), .  Latin from the Latin edition of the Complete works ed. J. A. Giles, vol. 10 (1844), 295, which should be checked against CCSL 120 (1960), .

The Lowly Most High

Geertgen tot Sint Jans, c. 1490

The Most High is coming in lowliness | to save what had been amounting to nothing.

"excelsus venit humilis | salvare quod perierat."

     Verbum salutis omnium (11th cent.?), Hymn at Vespers, 17-24 December, Liturgia horarum, stanza 5.

"le Cœur des cœurs, le centre brûlant de tout amour"

      "Even the elect do not learn to love all by themselves.  To get beyond the absurdities, the failings, and above all the stupidity of people, one must possess a secret of love which the world has forgotten.  So long as this secret is not rediscovered, you will change human conditions [(les conditions humaines)] in vain.
     "I thought that it was selfishness which made me aloof from everything that concerns the economic and the social; and it is true that I was a monster of seclusion and indifference; but there was also in me a feeling, an obscure certitude, that all this serves for nothing to revolutionise the face of the world.  The world must be touched at its heart.  I seek Him Who alone can achieve that victory; and He must Himself be the Heart of hearts, the burning centre of all love."

     Louis, in François Mauriac, Vipers' tangle, trans. Warre B. Wells, II.xviii (Garden City, NY:  Image Books, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1957 [1932]), 177) =Le nœud de vipères:  roman (Paris:  Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1932), 274-275.

Nurture

       "Those who have the habit of being loved instinctively do all the things, and say all of the words, that attract people.  And I—I am so used to being hated and making people afraid that my pupils, my eyebrows, my voice, my laugh make themselves the obedient accomplices of this awful gift of mine and act in advance of my will."

     "Ceux qui ont l'habitude d'être aimés accomplissent, d'instinct, tous les gestes et disent toutes le paroles qui attirent les cœurs.  Et moi, je suis tellement coutumé à être haï et à faire peur, que mes prunelles, mes sourcils, ma voix, mon rire se font docilement les complices de ce don redoutable et préviennent ma volonté."

     Louis, in François Mauriac, Vipers' tangle, trans. Warre B. Wells, II.xvi (Garden City, NY:  Image Books, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1957 [1932]), 147) =Le nœud de vipères:  roman (Paris:  Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1932), 227.

No nature-lover

"[Luc] never troubled himself to go and see the moonlight on the terrace.  He had no 'feeling' for Nature because he was Nature itself, merged in it, one of its forces, one of its living springs among other springs."

"Il ne se dèrangeait jamais pour voir le clair du lune sur la terrasse.  Il n'avait pas le sentiment de la nature parce qu'il était la nature même, confoundu en elle, une de ses forces, une source vive entre les sources."

     Louis, in François Mauriac, Vipers' tangle, trans. Warre B. Wells, I.x (Garden City, NY:  Image Books, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1957 [1932]), 97) =Le nœud de vipères:  roman (Paris:  Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1932), 152.