Monday, March 18, 2024

Ora et labora: No Benedictine motto

In these pedagogical texts of the late 18th and the 19th centuries "no reference to monasticism can be detected.
     "By contrast, it says in the programmatic text Praecipua Ordinis Monastici Elementa [(1880)], by Archabbot Marurus Wolter [(1824-1890)],

Hinc vetus clarissimaque illa monachorum tessera:  Ora et labora.  Opus Dei atque opus laboris, . . . sive alae duae, quae ad altissimam attollunt perfectionem . . . ut haec illi vigoris, illa huic benedictionis semper novum afferat incrementum.

Maurus Wolter gives no source. . . .  The striking parallels make it plain that he was influenced by the [late 18th- and the 19th-century] pedagogical literature on the theme of prayer and work.
     "The ongoing treatment [(Die bis heute anhaltende Wertung)] of ora et labora as a motto of the Benedictine order shows how much of an impact Maurus Wolter had on the understanding of his time, such that this treatment [(dies)] could be so deeply rooted [still today].  But we should ask whether what lies here before us [in the ora et labora] is for Benedictine life today an appropriate leitmotif or an unhappily constrictive foreshortening [(eine unglückliche Verkürzung)]."

     Oliver J. Kaften, OSB, "Ora et labora:  (k)ein benediktinishes Motto [a, or, rather, no Benedictine motto]:  eine Spurensuche," Erbe und Auftrag 90 (2014):  421 (415-421), translation mine.  These concluding words are preceded by an unsuccessful attempt to find anything closely resembling the (supposedly reductive) motto before the late medieval (but especially the modern and even Protestant) period (though I certainly do not summarize those findings properly here).

Monday, February 26, 2024

John Henry Newman on the truth at an extreme

"I had got but a little way in my work, when my trouble returned upon me.  The ghost had come a second time.  In the Arian History I found the very same phenomenon, in a far bolder shape, which I had found in the Monophysite.  I had not observed it in 1832.  Wonderful that this should come upon me!  I had not sought it out; I was reading and writing in my own line of study, far from the controversies of the day, on what is called a 'metaphysical' subject; but I saw clearly, that in the history of Arianism, the pure Arians were the Protestants, the semi-Arians were the Anglicans, and that Rome now was what it was then.  The truth lay, not with the Via Media, but with what was called 'the extreme party.'  As I am not writing a work of controversy, I need not enlarge upon the argument; I have said something on the subject in a volume, from which I have already quoted."

     John Henry [Cardinal] Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, chap. 3, "History of my religious opinions from 1839 to 1841," ed. David J. DeLaura, Norton critical edition (1968), 114-115.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Such "men . . . you must not only not receive, but if it is possible not even meet"

Index of Medieval Art (Vat. gr. 1613, p. 258)
"he truly suffered even as he also truly raised himself [(ἀληθῶς ἀνέστησεν ἑαυτόν)], not as some unbelievers say, that his Passion was merely in semblance [(τὸ δοκεῖν αὐτὸν πεπονθέναι)]. . .
     ". . . I guard you in advance against beasts in the form of men [(
τῶν ἀνθρωπομόρφων)], whom you must not only not receive, but if it is possible not even meet, but only pray for them, if perchance they may repent, difficult though that may be. . . .  For if it is merely in semblance [(τὸ δοκεῖν | τῷ δοκειν)] that these things were done by our Lord I am also a prisoner in semblance [(τὸ δοκεῖν)].  And why have I given myself up to death, to fire, to the sword, to wild beasts?  Because near the sword is near to God, with the wild beasts is with God [(ἐγγὺς μαχαίρας ἐγγὺς θεοῦ, μεταξὺ θηρίων μεταξὺ θεοῦ)]; in the name of Jesus Christ alone am I enduring all things, that I may suffer with him, and the perfect man himself gives me strength. . . .
     ". . . I have not thought right to put into writing their unbelieving names; but would that I might not even remember them, until they repent concerning the Passion, which is our resurrection. . . .
     "They abstain from Eucharist and prayer, because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ who suffered for our sins, which the Father raised up by his goodness. . . .  It is right to refrain from such men and not even to speak about them in private or in public. . . ."

     St. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans II, IV, and V, trans. Lake, LCL (1912), 252-257.  Cf. "John and Polycarp on heretics".

Monday, February 12, 2024

Gregory of Nyssa on the imago Dei

Anim Shrest
"'Have a care to yourself, for this is the sure safeguard of <your> good things.  Know how much you have been honored by the Maker above the rest of the creation.  Heaven did not become the image of God, nor the moon, nor the sun, nor the beautiful stars—nor a single other one of the things that appear in the created order.  Only you came into existence as a copy of the Nature that transcends every intellect, a likeness of the incorruptible Beauty, an impress of the true Deity—a model of that true Light in the contemplation of which you become what it is, imitating that which shines within you by the ray that shines forth in response from your purity.  None of the things that exist is so great as to be compared to your greatness.  The whole heaven is contained in the span of God’s hand; earth and sea are encompassed by his hand.  But at the same time this One, being such as he is and so great as he is, grasping the whole creation in the palm of his hand, becomes limited for your sake and dwells in you and is not confined as he penetrates your nature.  For he is the One who says, 'I will dwell within them and will walk about among them' (2 Cor 6:16).  If you see these things, you will not set your eye on anything earthly. . . .  For how shall you marvel at the heavens, O human, when you see that you yourself are more lasting than the heavens?'"  Etc.

     St. Gregory of Nyssa, Homily 2 on the Song of songs, trans. Richard A. Norris, Jr. (Gregory of Nyssa:  homilies on the Song of songs, Writings from the Greco-Roman world 13 (Atlanta, GA:  SBL Press, 2012)), 76-77 =GNO 6.1.68.  I was put onto this by Gabrielle Thomas, "The Status of vulnerability in a theology of the Christian life:  Gregory of Nyssa on the 'wound of love’ in conversation with Sarah Coakley," Modern theology 38, no. 4 (2022): 791 (777–795).