Sol, ecce, lentus occidens

A beautiful hymn by Anselmo Lentini, OSB, from today’s Vespers. You can find a translation here.

Sol, ecce, lentus occidens
montes et arva et æquora
mæstus relinquit, innovat
sed lucis omen crastinæ,

Mirantibus mortalibus
sic te, Creator provide,
leges vicesque temporum
umbris dedisse et lumini.

Ac dum, tenebris æthera
silentio prementibus,
vigor laborum deficit,
quies cupita quæritur,

Spe nos fideque divites
tui beamur lumine
Verbi, quod est a sæculis
splendor paternæ gloriæ.

Est ille sol qui nesciat
ortum vel umquam vesperum;
quo terra gestit contegi,
quo cæli in ævum iubilant.

Hac nos serena perpetim
da luce tandem perfrui,
cum Nato et almo Spiritu
tibi novantes cantica. Amen.

“ever-renewed listening and learning”

From John Webster’s The Domain of the Word via Alan Jacobs’s newsletter:

Theological work, including theological interpretation, requires the exercise of patience. This is because in theology things go slowly. We are temporal creatures, we do not receive revelation in a single moment; and we are sinful creatures whose idolatry and inattention are only gradually overcome. It would be a poor conception of theological interpretation which presumed to have acquired Scripture’s meaning in a final way which cut out the need for ever-renewed listening and learning. ‘My soul languishes for thy salvation’, says the psalmist, ‘I hope in thy word. My eyes fail for watching for thy salvation’ (Ps. 119.81f.) We must be patient, suffering God’s works, looking for the coming of the Spirit to instruct us in the truth of the Word. But we must also be patient with others. Augustine, again, considered the activities of biblical interpretation as an exercise of charity through mutual learning, as what he called a ‘way for love, which ties people together in the bonds of unity, to make souls overflow and as it were intermingle with each other.’

In tenui labor . . .

David French, in his Sunday newsletter,

But when we speak of our own energy and our own efforts, here’s a basic truth. We can have a large amount of influence over a small number of people and a small amount of influence over a large number of people. The question that can and should challenge so many of us—especially those most engaged in politics—is whether our efforts are calibrated to our impact.

Which reminded me of the following from G. K. Chesterton:

But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.

What’s Wrong with the World, p. 132 of the edition linked above

And this in turn reminded me of another quote, in a similar vein, by Jane Austen, in a letter to her nephew, James Edward Austen Leigh:

What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited Sketches, full of variety and Glow? – How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much Labour?

British Library, Add MS 89437

Here is a photograph of the autograph text, from the webpage linked above:

Jane Austen’s “little bit (two inches wide) of Ivory” were of course her novels.

Taken together, the sentiments of French, Chesterton, and Austen teach a salutary lesson in the importance of loving labor on a small scale. A lesson for which Virgil’s Georgics provides a fitting motto: in tenui labor, at tenuis non gloria, “my toil is on a slender theme, but slender not is its glory!”

“nobody can be taught faster than he can learn”

Samuel Johnson, from his “Life of Milton” via Alan Jacobs’s microblog:

It is told that in the art of education [Milton] performed wonders, and a formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read in Aldersgate-street by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen years of age. Those who tell or receive these stories should consider that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the horseman must be limited by the power of his horse. Every man that has ever undertaken to instruct others can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd misapprehension.

The fruits of better thinking

Dr. Ulrich Lehner, interviewed by Charlie Camosy (via The Pillar):

Good thinking means that you can understand what others are saying, can articulate it in your own words, but also that you are able to describe your own experience of the world to others. If I am not able to put my suffering and pain in words others understand, I become frustrated and withdraw.

The more we learn to think better, we recognize our own limitations, and see in others members of the same species, endowed with the same dignity and reason. We can build a “home” together, a society that is just and empathetic. That does not mean one has to “feel” what the other feels, but the ability to take somebody’s else’s standpoint. By doing so, we learn to see the world from the viewpoint of our opponents, our critics, of the underprivileged and poor, the marginalized and so on. We become better human beings by doing it, but we also develop the ability to disagree with each other more respectfully.

βδέλυγμα (bdelugma)

From last Saturday’s (November 6) Gospel reading (from the Parable of the Dishonest Steward):

The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they scoffed at him. But he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts; for what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

Luke 16: 14–15

“Abomination” is a strong word. Coming into English via French from Latin, it means first “a feeling or state of mind of disgust and hatred; detestation, loathing, abhorrence” (OED)—formerly referring even to “physical revulsion” or “nausea”—but can also describe “abhorrent behavior”: “a loathsome or wicked act or practice.” It can thus refer to either the feeling of disgust by the person who abominates a loathsome, disgusting, or wicked thing; or to the abominable object itself.

“Abomination”—or the Latin version, abominatio, in the Vulgate Bible—produces a forceful rendering of the original Greek. But even “abomination” falls short of the vividness of the Greek word bdelugma.

Ἤκουον δὲ ταῦτα πάντα οἱ Φαρισαῖοι φιλάργυροι ὑπάρχοντες, καὶ ἐξεμυκτήριζον αὐτόν. καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· Ὑμεῖς ἐστε οἱ δικαιοῦντες ἑαυτοὺς ἐνώπιον τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ὁ δὲ θεὸς γινώσκει τὰς καρδίας ὑμῶν· ὅτι τὸ ἐν ἀνθρώποις ὑψηλὸν βδέλυγμα ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ.

The phrase “what is of human esteem” translates τὸ ἐν ἀνθρώποις ὑψηλὸν (to en anthrōpois hypsēlon). The last word of that phrase literally means “high” or “lofty” or even “sublime”—i.e., that which is held in “high esteem.” It calls to mind supreme achievements—those exploits for which a person is most highly regarded according to the world’s standards of success. It is just such achievements, Jesus teaches, that are in fact an abomination in the eyes of God—or a bdelugma: “something disgusting that arouses wrath, loathsome thing” or “something that is totally defiling, abomination, pollutant” (BDAG).

Bdelugma is an example of what is called a nomen acti—a noun, formed from a verb, that indicates a particular occurrence of, or the result of, that verb. The verb, in this case, is bdelussomai—which originally meant to “be sick” of the food one is eating, but later developed the sense of causing such sickness.

The jarring awkwardness of the word—which seems to mimic the very sound of retching—indicates the vile and revolting character of the things to which it was applied, and gives us a clearer sense of the shocking forcefulness of Jesus’s teaching. Even so, we can follow the etymology back one step further. For bdelussomai itself is formed from another verb: bdeō—which has an even more vivid, and vividly disgusting, sense, namely: “to break wind“—or to use the more vivid English, “to fart.” Such are the high achievements of man in the eyes of God. So many bdelugmata.

On Restoration

My good friends and colleagues Matthew Tsakanikas and Kevin Tracy on the Pauline phrase “to restore all things in Christ” (instaurare omnia in Christo):

Instaurare does not mean restoring the cultural make-up of church and state at the time of Trent (or earlier). It means gathering up again structures and fragments of goodness, gathering up new discoveries of authenticated knowledge, gathering and summing up all that makes humanity better, and producing day by day a stronger synthesis founded in the mystery of Christ and love of neighbor. “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Mt 13:52).

The Battle to Avoid Power

Plato, Republic 347d:

It is likely that if a city of good men were to exist, there would be just as much battling over not ruling as there is now over ruling . . .

κινδυνεύει πόλις ἀνδρῶν ἀγαθῶν εἰ γένοιτο, περιμάχητον ἂν εἶναι τὸ μὴ ἄρχειν ὥσπερ νυνὶ τὸ ἄρχειν . . .

This is because, Socrates explains, ruling is all about conferring a benefit upon those who are ruled. And so, every person of understanding would choose rather to be benefitted by another than to have the trouble of conferring that benefit.

In Plato’s day, of course, as in many days, a great battle raged over gaining the power to rule. But in a city where all people are good—so Socrates claims—the battle would be just as intense, but in the opposite direction: a fierce competition to avoid holding political power. Imagine that.