Awe

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  In the dining room, my brother and I would be told to go on with our food. My mother, a tidbit between finger and thumb, would glance under the table to see if her nervous and gruff dachshund was there. “Un jour ils vont le laisser tomber,” would come from Mlle Golay, a primly pessimistic old lady who had been my mother’s governess and still dwelt with us (on awful terms with our own governesses). From my place at table I would suddenly see through one of the west windows a marvelous case of levitation. There, for an instant, the figure of my father in his wind-rippled white summer suit would be displayed, gloriously sprawling in midair, his limbs in a curiously casual attitude, his handsome, imperturbable features turned to the sky. Thrice, to the mighty heave-ho of his invisible tossers, he would fly up in this fashion, and the second time he would go higher than the first and then there he would be, on his last and loftiest flight, reclining, as if for good, against the cobalt blue of the summer noon, like one of those paradisiac personages who comfortably soar, with such a wealth of folds in their garments, on the vaulted ceiling of a church while below, one by one, the wax tapers in mortal hands light up to make a swarm of minute flames in the mist of incense, and the priest chants of eternal repose, and funeral lilies conceal the face of whoever lies there, among the swimming lights, in the open coffin.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  It is here that Paul produces one of his greatest phrases. The Church is the body of Christ. The Church is to be hands to do Christ's work, feet to run his errands, a mouth to speak for him. So, we have two lines of thought in Ephesians. First, Christ is God's instrument of reconciliation. Second, the Church is Christ's instrument of reconciliation. The Church must bring Christ to the world; and it is within the Church that all the middle walls of separation must be broken down. It is through the Church that the unity of all the discordant elements must be achieved. As the New Testament scholar E. F. Scott has it: `The Church stands for that purpose of worldwide reconciliation for which Christ appeared, and in all their intercourse with one another Christians must seek to realize this formative idea of the Church.' Who but Paul? This is the thought of Ephesians. As we have seen, there are some who, thinking of the vocabulary and the style and the thought of this letter, cannot believe that Paul wrote it. E. J. Goodspeed, the American scholar, has put forward an interesting - but unconvincing - theory. The probability is that it was in Ephesus about the year AD go that the letters of Paul were first collected and sent out to the Church at large. It is Goodspeed's theory that the person responsible for that collection, some disciple of Paul, wrote Ephesians as a kind of introduction to the whole collection. Surely that theory breaks down on one obvious fact. Any imitation is inferior to the original. But, far from being inferior, Ephesians might well be said to be the greatest of all the Pauline letters. If Paul did not write it himself, we have to suggest as its writer someone who was possibly greater than Paul. E. F. Scott very relevantly demands: `Can we believe that in the Church of Paul's day there was an unknown teacher of this supreme excellence? The natural assumption is surely that an epistle so like the work of Paul at his best was written by no other man than by Paul himself.' No one ever had a greater vision of Christ than this. It sees in Christ the one centre in whom all the disunities of life are gathered into one. No one ever had a greater vision of the Church than this - a vision which sees in the Church God's instrument in that worldwide reconciliation. And we may well believe that no one other than Paul could rise to a vision like that. The Destination of Ephesians We must now return to the problem which earlier we left unsolved.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God, and those who had refused to worship the beast or his image, and had not accepted his mark on their forehead and on their hand; and they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. [Dan 7:9 , 22 , 27 ] 5 The rest of the dead [the non-believers] did not come to life again until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection. 6 b Blessed (happy, prosperous, to be admired) and holy is the person who takes part in the first resurrection; over these the second death [which is eternal separation from God, the lake of fire] has no power or authority, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and they will reign with Him a thousand years. [Ex 19:6 ; 1 Pet 2:5 , 9 ; Rev 1:6 ; 5:10 ] The Final Rebellion 7 And when the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison (the abyss), 8 and will come out to deceive and mislead the c nations which are in the four corners of the earth—[including] Gog and Magog—to gather them together for the war; their number is like the sand of the seashore. [Ezek 38:2 ; 39:1 , 6 ] 9 And they swarmed up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints (God’s people) and the beloved city [d Jerusalem]; but fire came down from heaven and consumed them. [2 Kin 1:10–12 ; Ezek 38:2 , 22 ] 10 And the devil who had deceived them was hurled into the lake of fire and burning brimstone (sulfur), where the beast (Antichrist) and false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever. The Final Judgment 11 And I saw a great white throne and Him who was seated upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them [for this heaven and earth are passing away]. [Is 51:6 ; Matt 24:35 ; 2 Pet 3:10–12 ] 12 And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the Book of Life; and the dead were judged according to what they had done as written in the books [that is, everything done while on earth]. [Jer 17:10 ; Rom 2:6 ] 13 And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and Hades (the realm of the dead) surrendered the dead who were in them; and they were judged and sentenced, every one according to their deeds. 14 Then death and Hades [the realm of the dead] were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire [the eternal separation from God].

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  I immediately became a voracious student of integrative health. The more I learned about the regenerative power of an anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle, the more I shared my findings with anyone who would listen. My mind was blown . I was awestruck by how our bodies work and their enormous capacity for resilience. (We’ll nerd out on this more in Chapter 11 .) To my amazement, my passion for wellness eventually led me to make an award-winning film about my journey, which featured stories of other young women who were also living with cancer. After the film I wound up writing a series of New York Times best-selling books and launching a global online wellness community that has provided education and support to thousands of people around the world. I was also featured on Oprah several times and became a member of her Super Soul 100, “a group of 100 trailblazers whose vision and life’s work are bringing a higher level of consciousness to the world.” In so many ways, the rupture of my diagnosis led me to build a more meaningful life. (And bonus: this is where I first connected with my husband, Brian, who was the editor of my film. So in the end, the love story that was meant for me was born of my darkest moment.) Now, close to two decades later, I still live with stage IV cancer. Knock on wood, it continues to be slow growing, which has allowed me to continue figuring out how to best take care of myself and help others do the same. Change is a constant, though. Just because we have one rupture in life doesn’t mean that life will never get turned upside down again. A few years before my dad’s diagnosis, I started to realize that as amazing as my accomplishments were, and as strong as my physical health had become, deep down I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. I’d gone from the frying pan of a cancer diagnosis to the fire of nonstop achievement. For me, prolonged “busy” looked like very long hours at work, while attempting to also manage my health and try to squeeze in time with my family and close friends. This go-go pace had become like breathing to me, autonomic—reflexive, involuntary—which isn’t such a surprise. In times of rupture, staying busy can be useful—even therapeutic—because it helps us keep up or return to some sense of “normal life.” Sounds about right to me—unless “busy” becomes a knee-jerk way to avoid our own feelings or allows us to find agoraphobia just this side of glamorous. No matter how necessary, noble, or lifesaving it may seem, when busyness becomes a permanent state of being, it undoubtedly leads to burnout, health issues, and even worse—loss of joy.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I said “Good-bye!” at the hotel and went on board the steamer by myself: my eyes set on the Golden Gate into the great Pacific and the hopes and hazards of the new life. At length I was to see the world: what would I find in it? I had no idea then that I should find little or much in exact measure to what I brought and it is now the saddest part of these Confessions that on this first trip round the world, I was so untutored, so thoughtless that I got practically nothing out of my long journeying. Like Odysseus I saw many cities of men; but scenes seldom enrich the spirit: yet one or two places made a distinct impression on me, young and hard though I was: Sidney Bay and Heights, Hong Kong, too; but above all, the old Chinese gate leading into the Chinese City of Shanghai so close to the European town and so astonishingly different. Kioto, too, imprinted itself on my memory and the Japanese men and girls that ran naked out of their hot baths in order to see whether I was really white all over. But I learned nothing worth recalling till I came to Table Bay and saw the long line of Table Mountain four thousand feet above me, a cliff cutting the sky with an incomparable effect of dignity and grandeur. I stayed in Cape Town a month or so, and by good luck I got to know Jan Hofmeyr there who taught me what good fellows the Boers really were and how highly the English Premier Gladstone was esteemed for giving freedom to them after Majuba: “we look on him with reverence” said my friend, Hofmeyr, “as the embodied conscience of England”; but alas! England could not stomach Majuba and had to spend blood and treasure later to demonstrate the manhood of the Boers to the world. But thank God, England then gave freedom and self-government again to South Africa and so atoned for her shameful “Concentration Camps.” Thanks to Jan Hofmeyr I got to know and esteem the South African Boer even on this first short acquaintance. When I went round the world for the second time twenty years later, I tried to find the Hofmeyrs of every country and so learned all manner of things worthful and strange that I shall tell of, I hope, at the end of my next volume. For the only short cut to knowledge is through intercourse with wise and gifted men. Now I must confess something of my first six months of madness and pleasure in Paris and then speak of England again and Thomas Carlyle and his incomparable influence upon me and so lead you, gentle render, to my later prentice years in Germany and Greece.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Thus, when the newly disclosed, fresh and trim formula of my own age, four, was confronted with the parental formulas, thirty-three and twenty-seven, something happened to me. I was given a tremendously invigorating shock. As if subjected to a second baptism, on more divine lines than the Greek Catholic ducking undergone fifty months earlier by a howling, half-drowned half-Victor (my mother, through the half-closed door, behind which an old custom bade parents retreat, managed to correct the bungling archpresbyter, Father Konstantin Vetvenitski), I felt myself plunged abruptly into a radiant and mobile medium that was none other than the pure element of time. One shared it—just as excited bathers share shining seawater—with creatures that were not oneself but that were joined to one by time’s common flow, an environment quite different from the spatial world, which not only man but apes and butterflies can perceive. At that instant, I became acutely aware that the twenty-seven-year-old being, in soft white and pink, holding my left hand, was my mother, and that the thirty-three-year-old being, in hard white and gold, holding my right hand, was my father. Between them, as they evenly progressed, I strutted, and trotted, and strutted again, from sun fleck to sun fleck, along the middle of a path, which I easily identify today with an alley of ornamental oaklings in the park of our country estate, Vyra, in the former Province of St. Petersburg, Russia. Indeed, from my present ridge of remote, isolated, almost uninhabited time, I see my diminutive self as celebrating, on that August day 1903, the birth of sentient life. If my left-hand-holder and my right-hand-holder had both been present before in my vague infant world, they had been so under the mask of a tender incognito; but now my father’s attire, the resplendent uniform of the Horse Guards, with that smooth golden swell of cuirass burning upon his chest and back, came out like the sun, and for several years afterward I remained keenly interested in the age of my parents and kept myself informed about it, like a nervous passenger asking the time in order to check a new watch. My father, let it be noted, had served his term of military training long before I was born, so I suppose he had that day put on the trappings of his old regiment as a festive joke. To a joke, then, I owe my first gleam of complete consciousness—which again has recapitulatory implications, since the first creatures on earth to become aware of time were also the first creatures to smile.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  101THE Wild West fiction of Captain Mayne Reid (1818–1883), translated and simplified, was tremendously popular with Russian children at the beginning of this century, long after his American fame had faded. Knowing English, I could savor his Headless Horseman in the unabridged original. Two friends swap clothes, hats, mounts, and the wrong man gets murdered—this is the main whorl of its intricate plot. The edition I had (possibly a British one) remains in the stacks of my memory as a puffy book bound in red cloth, with a watery-gray frontispiece, the gloss of which had been gauzed over when the book was new by a leaf of tissue paper. I see this leaf as it disintegrated—at first folded improperly, then torn off—but the frontispiece itself, which no doubt depicted Louise Pointdexter’s unfortunate brother (and perhaps a coyote or two, unless I am thinking of The Death Shot, another Mayne Reid tale), has been so long exposed to the blaze of my imagination that it is now completely bleached (but miraculously replaced by the real thing, as I noted when translating this chapter into Russian in the spring of 1953, and namely, by the view from a ranch you and I rented that year: a cactus-and-yucca waste whence came that morning the plaintive call of a quail—Gambel’s Quail, I believe—overwhelming me with a sense of undeserved attainments and rewards).

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The second unsuspected experience was also a direct result, I believe, of my sex-awakening with Lucille and the intense sex-excitement. At all events it came just after the love-passages with her that I have described and post hoc is often propter hoc. I had never yet noticed the beauties of nature; indeed whenever I came across descriptions of scenery in my reading, I always skipped them as wearisome. Now of a sudden, in a moment, my eyes were unsealed to natural beauties. I remember the scene and my rapt wonder as if it were yesterday. It was a bridge across the Dee near Overton in full sunshine; on my right the river made a long curve, swirling deep under a wooded height, leaving a little tawny sandbank half bare just opposite to me: on my left both banks, thickly wooded, drew together and passed round a curve out of sight. I was entranced and speechless—enchanted by the sheer color-beauty of the scene—sunlit water there and shadowed here, reflecting the gorgeous vesture of the wooded height. And when I left the place and came out again and looked at the adjoining cornfields, golden against the green of the hedgerows and scattered trees, the colors took on a charm I had never noticed before: I could not understand what had happened to me. It was the awakening of sex-life in me, I believe, that first revealed to me the beauty of inanimate nature. A night or two later I was ravished by a moon nearly at the full that flooded our playing field with ivory radiance, making the haystack in the corner a thing of supernal beauty. Why had I never before seen the wonder of the world? the sheer loveliness of nature all about me? From this time on I began to enjoy descriptions of scenery in the books I read and began, too, to love landscapes in painting. Thank goodness! the miracle was accomplished, at long last, and my life enriched, ennobled, transfigured as by the bounty of a God! From that day on I began to live an enchanted life; for at once I tried to see beauty everywhere, and at all times, of day and night caught glimpses that ravished me with delight and turned my being into a hymn of praise and joy. Faith had left me and with faith, hope in Heaven or indeed in any future existence: saddened and fearful, I was as one in prison with an undetermined sentence; but now in a moment the prison had become a paradise, the walls of the actual had fallen away into frames of entrancing pictures. Dimly I became conscious that if this life were sordid and mean, petty and unpleasant, the fault was in myself and in my blindness. I began then for the first time to understand that I myself was a magician and could create my own fairyland, ay and my own heaven, transforming this world into the throne-room of a god!

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  3. The third likeness is taken from natural change. We see that eggs placed under a hen are changed into flesh, yea, into a living chicken. In this change also those four things just spoken of may be found. For there is the container, that is, the shell, as it were the outward species of the egg; the contained, that is, the yolk, as it were the inward substance of the egg; the worker, that is, nature; and the work, that is, the flesh of the chicken. The first, namely, the shell, the outward species, remains; the second, namely, the inside, or inward substance, passes on and is changed into the fourth, or the body of the living bird; and this is done by the third, namely, nature, the worker. This is indeed a wonderful likeness, for during some days the egg looks outwardly the same, when it is not really an egg, but the whole body of a living bird, veiled by the shell. As therefore in this case the hen works by nature, so in the Sacrament of the Altar the Holy Ghost works by His own almighty power. If therefore you put under a hen one egg or two eggs or more, and those are changed by nature into flesh, the outside remaining the same, how much more can the Holy Ghost by His own power, while the species of bread remain outwardly the same, change one Host on the Altar, or most Hosts, into the Body of our Lord! N. Note the verse about the Body of Christ: ‘Body born of bread, Body born of the Virgin.’ Speaking of the substance of bread, it does not say that bread is the matter for the Body of Christ, but that bread is changed into the Body of Christ. The first is conversion; the second is material. R. Look at this from a moral point of view. When an inanimate creature, like bread, is changed into that which is better, by the word of God and His Spirit, can we describe the hardness of the hearts of sinners, who are not drawn to conversion even by many words and many works of the Holy Ghost? They are harder than rock, as Jeremias says, and will not return. This hardness is final impenitence, of which the course is threefold; a, a long habit of sinning; b, unbelief in the justice of God; c, the temptations of the enemy.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  We should turn now to the other side of the speculation, relating not to the origin and the fall, but to the present world and the completion of the ages. The practice of virginity appears at first to be a return, beyond the fall, to the paradisiacal state when man left the hands of God and still bore his likeness; thus Gregory of Nyssa speaks of “restoring the divine image from the foulness which the flesh wraps round it to its primitive state so that we become that which the first man was at the moment when he first breathed.”47 Christians who practice virginity go back in time, as it were, and reclaim the state of primitive perfection.48 They re-establish it in their soul where they rediscover, like a lost drachma, the mark of divinity. They also re-establish it by detaching themselves from the corruption of life on earth, and hence by escaping that death which was punishment for the fall and which our first [ancestors] did not know—either because they were created immortal, or because before the fall God in his prescience had not allowed death to transform the mortality he had bestowed on them into an event. “After weaning ourselves from this life of the flesh, which has its inevitable follower, death, we should search for a manner of life which does not bring death in its train; now the life of virginity is such a life.”49 Thus, to choose the state of virginity and hold to it rigorously must be regarded as something very different from a simple abstinence that would free one from troubles, passions, worries, and in general from the evils of existence when one is devoted, or simply gives in, to life’s pleasures. It is much more than the practice of a virtue that will merit its subsequent reward—even if it is promised finer rewards than other virtues.50 Virginity is thought of as an actual mutation of existence. It brings about in the individual being—body and soul—a “revolution” that, by restoring it to an original state, frees it from its earthly limits, from the law of death and time and gives it access*1 here and now to the life that will never end. Virginity opens the door to angelic existence. It elevates those who nonetheless still dwell among us to a state of incorruption and immortality: “It makes one rise up to heaven,” says Eusebius of Emesa, “and already live in the company of angels here on earth.”51 Or further, it brings down to earth the principle of heavenly existence. “Though virgins cannot yet ascend to heaven as the angels can because their flesh holds them back, even in this world they have much consolation since they receive the Master of the heavens when they are holy in body and spirit. Do you grasp the value of virginity? that it makes those who spend time on earth live like the angels living in heaven? It does not allow those endowed with bodies to be inferior to the incorporeal powers and spurs all men to rival the angels.”52 And, contrasting virgins who, because of their chastity, pass from the world to heaven, with the fallen angels who, because of their “intemperance,” have fallen into the world, Ambrose affirms that “he who has preserved his chastity is an angel.”53

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  (2) Mark never forgot the divine side of Jesus. He begins his gospel with the declaration of faith, `The beginning of the gospel (good news) of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.' He leaves us in no doubt what he believed Jesus to be. Again and again he speaks of the impact Jesus made on the minds and hearts of those who heard him. The awe and astonishment which he evoked are always in the forefront of Mark's mind. `They were astounded at his teaching' (1:22). `They were all amazed' (1:27). Such phrases occur again and again. Not only was this astonishment in the minds of the crowds who listened to Jesus; it was still more in the minds of the inner circle of the disciples. `And they were filled with great awe, and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"' (4:41). `And they were utterly astounded' (6:51). `They were greatly astounded' (10:26). To Mark, Jesus was not simply one of us; he was God among us, constantly moving people to a wondering amazement with his words and deeds. (3) At the same time, no gospel gives such a human picture of Jesus. Sometimes its picture is so human that the later writers alter it a little because they are almost afraid to say what Mark said. To Mark, Jesus is simply `the carpenter' (6:3). Later Matthew alters that to `the carpenter's son' (Matthew 13:55), as if to call Jesus a village tradesman is too daring. When Mark is telling of the temptations of Jesus, he writes, `The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness' (1:12). Matthew and Luke do not like this word drove used of Jesus, so they soften it down and say, `Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness' (Matthew 4:1; cf. Luke 4:1). No one tells us so much about the emotions of Jesus as Mark does. Jesus sighed deeply in his spirit (8:12; cf. 7:34). He was moved with compassion (6:34). He was amazed at their unbelief (6:6). He was moved with righteous anger (3:5, 8:33, 10:14). Only Mark tells us that when Jesus looked at the rich young ruler he loved him (10:21). Jesus could feel the pangs of hunger (11:12). He could be tired and want to rest (6:31). It is in Mark's gospel, above all, that we get a picture of a Jesus who shared emotions and passions with us. The sheer humanity of Jesus in Mark's picture brings him very near to us.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  Given that point of view, any real incarnation is impossible. That is exactly what, centuries later, St Augustine was to point out. Before he became a Christian, he was skilled in the philosophies of the various schools. In the Confessions (8:9), he tells us that somewhere in the writings of the Platonists he had read in one form or another nearly all the things that Christianity says; but there was one great Christian saying which he had never found in any of these works and which no one would ever find - and that saying was: `The Word became flesh and lived among us' (John 1:14). Since these thinkers believed in the essential evil of matter and therefore the essential evil of the body, that was one thing they could never say. It is clear that the false teachers against whom John was writing in this First Letter denied the reality of the incarnation and of Jesus' physical body. `Every spirit', writes John, `that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God' (i John 4:2-3). In the early Church, this refusal to admit the reality of the incarnation took, broadly speaking, two forms. (i) In its more radical and wholesale form, it was called Docetism, which the scholar E. J. Goodspeed suggests might be translated as Seemism. The Greek verb dokein means to seem; and the Docetists taught that Jesus only seemed to have a body. They insisted that he was a purely spiritual being who had nothing but the appearance of having a body. One of the apocryphal books written from this point of view is the Acts of John, which dates from about AD rho. In it, John is made to say that sometimes when he touched Jesus he seemed to meet with a material body, but at other times `the substance was immaterial, as if it did not exist at all', and also that, when Jesus walked, he never left any footprint upon the ground. The simplest form of Docetism is the complete denial that Jesus ever had a physical body. (2) There was a more subtle, and perhaps more dangerous, variant of this theory connected with the name of Cerinthus. In tradition, John and Cerinthus were sworn enemies. The great early Church historian Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History, 4:14:6) hands down a story which tells how John went to the public bathhouse in Ephesus to bathe. He saw Cerinthus inside and refused even to enter the building. `Let us flee,' he said, `lest even the bathhouse fall, because Cerinthus the enemy of truth is within.' Cerinthus drew a definite distinction between the human Jesus and the divine Christ.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  The confessions of a synesthete must sound tedious and pretentious to those who are protected from such leakings and drafts by more solid walls than mine are. To my mother, though, this all seemed quite normal. The matter came up, one day in my seventh year, as I was using a heap of old alphabet blocks to build a tower. I casually remarked to her that their colors were all wrong. We discovered then that some of her letters had the same tint as mine and that, besides, she was optically affected by musical notes. These evoked no chromatisms in me whatsoever. Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds. Under certain emotional circumstances I can stand the spasms of a rich violin, but the concert piano and all wind instruments bore me in small doses and flay me in larger ones. Despite the number of operas I was exposed to every winter (I must have attended Ruslan and Pikovaya Dama at least a dozen times in the course of half as many years), my weak responsiveness to music was completely overrun by the visual torment of not being able to read over Pimen’s shoulder or of trying in vain to imagine the hawkmoths in the dim bloom of Juliet’s garden. My mother did everything to encourage the general sensitiveness I had to visual stimulation. How many were the aquarelles she painted for me; what a revelation it was when she showed me the lilac tree that grows out of mixed blue and red! Sometimes, in our St. Petersburg house, from a secret compartment in the wall of her dressing room (and my birth room), she would produce a mass of jewelry for my bedtime amusement. I was very small then, and those flashing tiaras and chokers and rings seemed to me hardly inferior in mystery and enchantment to the illumination in the city during imperial fêtes, when, in the padded stillness of a frosty night, giant monograms, crowns, and other armorial designs, made of colored electric bulbs—sapphire, emerald, ruby-glowed with a kind of charmed constraint above snow-lined cornices on housefronts along residential streets.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Automatically I took down the volume and it opened of itself at the last page of Emerson’s advice to the scholars of Dartmouth College. Every word is still printed on my memory: I can see the left-hand page and read again that divine message: I make no excuse for quoting it almost word for word: “Gentlemen, I have ventured to offer you these considerations upon the scholar’s place and hope, because I thought that standing, as many of you now do, on the threshold of this College, girt and ready to go and assume tasks, public and private, in your country, you would not be sorry to be admonished of those primary duties of the intellect whereof you will seldom hear from the lips of your new companions. You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. ‘What is this Truth you seek? what is this beauty!’ men will ask, with derision. If nevertheless God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, ‘As others do, so will I: I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season’;—then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history, and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. It is this domineering temper of the sensual world that creates the extreme need of the priests of science.... Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept another’s dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men’s affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.” The truth of it shocked me: “then perish the buds of art and poetry and science in you as they have perished already in a thousand, thousand men!” That explained why it was that there was no Shakespeare, no Bacon, no Swinburne in America where, according to population and wealth there should be dozens. There flashed on me the realization of the truth, that just because wealth was easy to get here, it exercised an incomparable attraction and in its pursuit “perished a thousand, thousand” gifted spirits who might have steered humanity to new and nobler accomplishment.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  2. Secondly, it is proved by a clear reason, which is this, that the Son of Man shares the power of the Son of God, because of the unity of person. St. Ambrose says, ‘As the Son of God and the Son of Man are one person, so they have one power.’ Hence, as the Son of God is essentially everywhere, He has given to the Son of Man that His Body shall be sacramentally present in many places. St. Augustin says, ‘The Body of Christ is in one place, that is, in Heaven, for visibly, in human shape, He went up to the right hand of the Father. His truth, however, that is, His Godhead, is everywhere; and His truth, that is, His true Body, is sacramentally on every Altar where Mass is said.’ Pope Innocent III. says, ‘The height of heavenly wisdom has ordained, that as there are Three Persons in unity of essence, namely, the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, so there should be three substances in unity of person, that is, the Godhead of Christ, His Soul, and His Body. Since, therefore, Christ in His divine nature exists in three ways in things created—that is to say, in all things by His essence; in the just, and only in the just, by grace; and in our assumed manhood by the hypostatic union—He willed also to exist in three ways as to His human nature. In Heaven He is locally, in the Word He is personally, and on the Altar He is sacramentally. Hence, as by His Godhead He is essentially in all things, so in His manhood He is whole in many places.’ 3. Thirdly, this is proved by the visible likeness which is shown to all in a glass. If you set many glasses, so that your face can be seen in them, one face will appear in all equally and wholly. If, on the other hand, you break up a glass into many little bits, one face will be seen perfectly in each bit. Moreover, though the glass be broken into many pieces, your face remains one in all, and is not changed. So is it in truth in this Sacrament of Jesus, who is called the mirror and image of the goodness of God. If then this glass, namely, the form of bread, be broken into many parts, in each it will be united to God, that is to say, will be the true Body of Christ. St. Jerome says, ‘Each of the faithful receives Christ whole. He is whole in each part, and is not lessened in each part, but in each part gives Himself whole.’

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  3. The memory of His Passion; In like manner also the chalice, after He had supped, saying, This chalice is the new testament in My Blood; this do ye, as often as ye shall drink, for the commemoration of Me. 1 Cor. 11:25. The blood shall be to you for a sign in the houses where you shall be; and I will see the blood, and will pass over you. Ex. 12:13. They rose early in the morning, and the sun being now up and shining upon the waters, the Moabites saw the waters over against them red like blood. And they said, It is the blood of the sword; the kings have fought among themselves. 4 Kings 3:22, 23. He beholdeth every high thing; He is king over all the children of pride. Job 41:25. N. The kings; He hath gathered together his fury against Me, and threatening Me he hath gnashed with his teeth upon Me; My enemy hath beheld Me with terrible eyes.… He hath taken Me by My neck, and hath broken Me, and hath set Me up to be his mark. He hath compassed Me round about with his lances.… He hath torn Me with wound upon wound, and hath rushed in upon Me like a giant. Job 16:10, 13–15. Arise, arise, put on thy strength, O arm of the Lord; arise as in the days of old, as in the ancient generations. Hast Thou not struck the proud one and wounded the dragon? Hast Thou not dried up the sea, the water of the mighty deep? Hast Thou not made the depth of the sea a way, that Thy ransomed might pass over? Is. 51:9, 10. Turn thy hand and carry me out of the army, for I am grievously wounded. And the battle was fought that day: and the King of Israel stood in his chariot against the Syrians, and in the evening he died; and the blood ran out of the wound into the midst of the chariot. 3 Kings 22:34, 35. He, the Conqueror, will lead me upon my high places singing psalms. Hab. 3:19. That through death He might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil. Heb. 2:14. (2) Communion in one kind; 1. A fitting vessel; a. A consecrated Altar; The blood of thy victims thou shalt pour on the Altar, and the flesh thou thyself shalt eat. Deut. 12:27. Thy Altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are they that dwell in Thy house, O Lord; they shall praise Thee for ever and ever. Ps. 83:4, 5. b. A bowl with bands; Then Moses took half of the blood and put it into bowls; and the rest he poured upon the Altar. Ex. 24:6.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  2262. He says here, “ if there is some such substance ” apart from sensible substances which is immovable in every respect. He says this because the existence of some such substance has not yet been proved, although he intends to prove this. 2263. And if there is some such nature among existing things, i.e., one which is separable and immovable, it is necessary that “ such a nature exist somewhere, ” i.e., that it be attributed to some substance. And whatever has this nature must be something that is divine and the highest of all; because the simpler and more actual a being is, the nobler it is and the more it is prior and a cause of other things. Thus it is evident that the science which considers separate beings of this kind should be called the divine science and the science of first principles. 2264. From this he again concludes that there are three classes of speculative science: the philosophy of nature, which considers things that are movable and have sensible matter in their definition; mathematics, which considers immovable things that do not have sensible matter in their definition yet exist in sensible matter; and theology, which considers beings that are entirely separate from matter. 2265. The class (961). Next he compares this science with the others from the viewpoint of nobility. He says that the speculative sciences are the noblest, because of all the sciences the speculative seek knowledge for its own sake, whereas the practical seek knowledge for the sake of some work. And among the speculative sciences there is one that, is highest, namely, theology, since a science which deals with more noble beings is itself more noble; for a science is more noble in proportion to the greater nobility of its object. 2266. However, one might (962). Then he compares this science with the others from the viewpoint of universality. He says that one might raise the question whether or not the science which deals with separate beings must be held to be a universal science of being as being; and that it must be such he shows by a process of elimination.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  3. With a great sweetness of love this Holy Sacrifice draws the souls of the faithful to itself. What is so full of sweetness as this Sacrifice of our Lord’s Body? There is a fragrance from the precious works of His Godhead and manhood. Hence all who truly believe hasten often and lovingly to the church to see this Sacrifice and to adore it. Here is their hope of grace and devotion. ii. Its great dignity is proved by three very precious things of which it consists: a, the most pure Flesh of Christ; b, His most just Soul; c, His most glorious Godhead. These three things, perfected in our Sacrifice, were figured in the Paschal lamb. For, a, the feet signify His Flesh; b, the purtenance signifies His Soul; c, the head signifies His Divinity. Thus in Jesus there are a Body and a Soul and the Godhead; for which reason it is said, ‘Hail, Salvation of the world; perfect God, and true man of flesh and soul.’ Through the greatness of this dignity, our Sacrifice, above all others, has a triple prerogative: 1, it is in itself acceptable to God; 2, it is revered by Angels; 3, it is adored by men. The first is because of His just Soul; the second is because of His unstained Flesh; the third because of His supreme Godhead. 1. This Sacrifice is pleasing to God because the Father accepts the offered Body of our Lord. In that Body He greatly humbled Himself, even unto death, obeying the Father, triumphing over the devil, redeeming the race of men. 2. St. Leo says, ‘The eagles that gather round the Body of Jesus are those that fly on spiritual wings, that is the holy Angels, pure spirits, lovers of cleanness of heart, adoring the unspotted Body of our Lord, and protecting the faithful who are present.’ St. Gregory says, ‘Who of the faithful can doubt that in the hour of that Sacrifice the heavens are opened, that in this mystery of Christ are present the choirs of the Angels, and that here the highest and the lowest are joined together?’

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. in Matt. 56) And He did not declare the names of those who were about to go up, lest the other disciples should feel some touch of human frailty, and He tells it to them beforehand, that they might come with minds better prepared to be taught all that concerned that vision. BEDE. (ubi sup.) Or else the present Church is called the kingdom of God; and some of the disciples were to live in the body until they should see the Church built up, and raised against the glory of the world; for it was right to make some promises concerning this life to the disciples who were uninstructed, that they might be built up with greater strength for the time to come. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Orig. in Matt. tom. xii. 33, 35) But in a mystical sense, Christ is life, and the devil is death, and he tastes of death, who dwells in sin; even now every one, according as he has good or evil doctrines, tastes the bread either of life or of death. And indeed, it is a less evil to see death, a greater to taste of it, still worse to follow it, worst of all to be subject to it. CHAPTER 9 9:1–81. And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power. 2. And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before them. 3. And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them. 4. And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses: and they were talking with Jesus. 5. And Peter answered and said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. 6. For he wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid. 7. And there was a cloud that overshadowed them; and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him. 8. And suddenly, when they had looked round about, they saw no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves. PSEUDO-JEROME. After the consummation of the cross, the glory of the resurrection is shewn, that they, who were to see with their own eyes the glory of the resurrection to come, might not fear the shame of the cross; wherefore it is said, And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and led them up into an high mountain apart by themselves, and he was transfigured before them.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  ORIGEN. (tom. ii. c. 20) As the light of men is a word expressing two spiritual things, so is darkness also. To one who possesses the light, we attribute both the doing the deeds of the light, and also true understanding, inasmuch as he is illuminated by the light of knowledge: and, on the other hand, the term darkness we apply both to unlawful acts, and also to that knowledge, which seems such, but is not. Now as the Father is light, and in Him is no darkness at all, so is the Saviour also. Yet, inasmuch as he underwent the similitude of our sinful flesh, it is not incorrectly said of Him, that in Him there was some darkness; for He took our darkness upon Himself, in order that He might dissipate it. This Light therefore, which was made the life of man, shines in the darkness of our hearts, when the prince of this darkness wars with the human race. This Light the darkness persecuted, as is clear from what our Saviour and His children suffer; the darkness fighting against the children of light. But, forasmuch as God takes up the cause, they do not prevail; nor do they apprehend the light, for they are either of too slow a nature to overtake the light’s quick course, or, waiting for it to come up to them, they are put to flight at its approach. We should bear in mind, however, that darkness is not always used in a bad sense, but sometimes in a good, as in Psalm 17. He made darkness His secret place: (Ps. 18:11) the things of God being unknown and incomprehensible. This darkness then I will call praiseworthy, since it tends toward light, and lays hold on it: for, though it were darkness before, while it was not known, yet it is turned to light and knowledge in him who has learned. AUGUSTINE. (de Civit. Dei, l. x. c. 29. circ. fin.) A certain Platonist once said, that the beginning of this Gospel ought to be copied in letters of gold, and placed in the most conspicuous place in every church. BEDE. (in loc.) The other Evangelists describe Christ as born in time; John witnesseth that He was in the beginning, saying, In the beginning was the Word. The others describe His sudden appearance among men; he witnesseth that He was ever with God, saying, And the Word was with God. The others prove Him very man; he very God, saying, And the Word was God. The others exhibit Him as man conversing with men for a season; he pronounces Him God abiding with God in the beginning, saying, The Same was in the beginning with God. The others relate the great deeds which He did amongst men; he that God the Father made every creature through Him, saying, All things were made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made.