"Now it is no longer, 'Dust you are and to dust you shall return,' but 'You are joined to heaven and into heaven you shall be taken up.'"

Οὐκέτι, Γῆ εἶ καὶ γῆν ἀπελεύσῃ, ἀλλὰ τῷ οὐρανίῳ συναφθεὶς πρὸς οὐρανὸν ἀναληφθήσῃ.

     Saint Basil the Great, Homily no. 2 on the Theophany (or Epiphany, otherwise known as the homily In sanctam Christi generationem, On the holy birth of Christ) 6, as translated (for now) here.  Greek from p. 857 col. 1B of the 1839 De Sinner ("apud Gaume") reprint of the Garnier (or Maurist) edition of the Opera omnia of 1721-1730.  For a comment on the "technical" superiority of this edition, see p. 31 n. 5 of Mark DelCogliano, "Tradition and Polemic in Basil of Caesarea’s Homily on the Theophany," Vigiliae Christianae 66, no. 1 (2012) (where the CPG's revised position on its authenticity is also noted), and of course the latest (2022) edition of the ODCC.  Holman and DelCogliano, by contrast (St. Basil the Great On fasting and feasts, Popular patristics series 50 (Yonkers, NY:  St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2013)), translate the edition of Luigi Gambero (L'omelia sulla generazione di Cristo di Basilo di Cesarea:  Il posto della vergine Maria, Marian studies library 13-14 (Dayton, OH:  University of Dayton, 1981-1982), 177-200).  Their translation of this sentence, on p. 39, runs as follows:

No longer are you dust and to dust you shall return; rather, joined now to heaven, you shall be taken up into heaven.

My thanks to Dr. Matthew Milliner for the Facebook post that introduced me to this passage.

"a lot of what the West is ever going to be"

AEI

"'Do you think there are a lot of new ideas in politics?'

"'No, I, I certainly don’t.  I’m a conservative.  I think very little has been learned since St. Thomas finished compiling the connection between Aristotle and Judaism and Christianity.  At that point we basically knew a lot of what we’re ever going to know.  You know.  You add to Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics the insight that God created the heavens and the earth, and you got a lot of what the West is ever going to be.  I do think there have been new ideas in politics since then.  I think liberalism properly understood is a new idea that is a very good idea.  Not that new anymore, but it’s newer than classical politics.  It was an innovation that was genuinely, that opened genuinely new vistas in the human experience and was fantastically worthwhile.  I also think that there have been bad innovations since that time.  There, you know, totalitarianism was not, the possibility of it was not evident to classical philosophy.  But. . . .'"

     Yuval Levin, as interviewed by Jonah Golberg on The Remnant podcast, "Theory, properly misunderstood," 4 July 2024, at 41:36.

Everlasting Father

Is 9:6:

אֲבִיעַ֖ד.  NRSVue:  "Everlasting Father".  Alter:  "eternal father"

Septuagint:  nothing comparable

Pater futuri saeculi.  Douay-Rheims:  "Father of the world to come"

"begotten before all ages, he has begun to exist in time"

Honthorst, "Adoration" (1620)

"on the feast of this awe-filled mystery, though invisible in his own divine nature, he has appeared visibly in ours; and begotten before all ages, he has begun to exist in time; so that, raising up in himself all that was cast down, he might restore unity to all creation and call straying humanity back to the heavenly Kingdom."

"Qui, in huius venerandi festivitate mysterii, invisibilis in suis, visibilis in nostris apparuit, et ante tempora genitus esse coepit in tempore; ut, in se erigens cuncta deiecta, in integrum restitueret universa, et hominem perditum ad caelestia regna revocaret."

     Preface II for the Nativity of the Lord, newly composed for the Missal of Paul VI on the basis of Sermon 22.2 of St. Leo the Great (trans. Freeland & Conway, FC 93, pp. 81 ff. (80-87); CCSL 138, ed. Chevasse (1973), pp. ; PL 54, cols. 195-196), "of the phrasing" of which there were "already reminiscences . . . in a variety of liturgical texts" reproduced at Anthony Ward and Cuthbert Johnson, The prefaces of the Roman missal:  a source compendium with concordance and indices (Rome:  C.L.V. - Editioni Liturgische, 1989), 76-82.  Previous ICEL "translation," as reproduced on p. 81:

Today you fill our hearts with joy as we recognize in Christ the revelation of your love.  No eye can see his glory as our God, yet now he is seen as one like us.  Christ is your Son before all ages, yet now he is born in time.  He has come to lift up all things to himself, to restore unity to creation, and to lead mankind from exile into your heavenly kingdom.

For God is not destitute, having, for his glory, made you, too, a god.

Source

οὐ γὰρ πτωχεύει θεὸς καὶ σὲ θεὸν ποιήσας εἰς δόξαν αὐτοῦ.

     St. Hippolytus (c. 170-c. 236), Refutatio omnium haeresium X.33, translation mine.  Greek from Hippolytus Werke, vol. 3 =GCS, ed. H. Achelis and G. Bonwetsch, vol. 26, ed. Paul Wendland (1916), p. 293, line 15.  Immediate context:  creation in and restoration to the imago Dei.  As attractive as "stingy" continues to be for me, the lexica, at least (LSJ; Lampe), do not allow for it.  "lacking" in something (Lampe), "badly off for" specifically πραγμάτων (LSJ), deficient in.  πτωχός + gen. can mean "beggared of, poor in" (LSJ).  A few additional translations of this sentence, of "much concern to commentators" (F. Legge):

• Liturgy of the hours:  "God is not beggarly, and for the sake of his own glory he has given us a share in his divinity."  According to the Oxford Latin dictionary, mendicus can mean both "destitute," and "beggarly" or "mean" (stingy?).  But "mean" is not present in the Greek lexica, just for example the Patristic Greek lexicon.
• M. David Litwa, 2015:  "God is not poor; for his glory, he makes you also a god!"
• F. Legge, 1921:  "For God asks no alms, and has made thee God for His own glory."
• J. H. MacMahon, ANF 5:  "For the Deity, (by condescension,) does not diminish aught of the divinity of His divine perfection; having made thee even God unto His glory!"

The whole of this, as quoted in the Liturgy of the hours (above) is beautiful.

Sehnsucht

Quebec City & the St. Lawrence River, 1722

"'I wish you and I could go very far up the river in Pierre Charron’s canoe, and then off into the forests to the Huron country, and find the very places where the martyrs died.  I would rather go out there than — anywhere.'  Rather than go home to France, she was thinking.
     "But perhaps, after she grew up, she could come back to Canada again, and do all those things she longed to do.  Perhaps some day, after weeks at sea, she would find herself gliding along the shore of the Îsle d’Orléans and would see before her Kebec, just she had left it; the grey roofs and spires smothered in autumn gold, with the Récollect flèche rising slender and pure against the evening, and the crimson afterglow welling up out of the forest like a glorious memory."

     Cécile Auclair to little Jacques Gaux, in Willa Cather's Shadows on the rock (1931) V.iv =Library of America edition, p. 612, underscoring mine.  Cécile and her father, the apothecary Euclid Auclair, will not return to France after all.  But Cécile has been told that they will, and is here preparing to say goodbye to the New France of a very happy childhood, and its people.

"But please, my brothers and sisters, forget and ignore this controversial and apparently blasphemous Declaration, in its entirety, and have a peaceful Christmas. Amen."

     Bishop Martin Anwel Mtumbuka, Homily, Christmas Vigil, St. Anne’s Parish, Chilumba Deanery, Diocese of Karonga, Malawi, 24 December 2023.  Mtumbuka does get the document wrong, but in a way that actually gives it more credit than it is due.