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.

Page 127 of 217 · 20 per page

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

  I answer that, Since the whole mystery of our salvation is comprised in this sacrament, therefore is it performed with greater solemnity than the other sacraments. And since it is written (Eccles. 4:17): “Keep thy foot when thou goest into the house of God”; and (Ecclus. 18:23): “Before prayer prepare thy soul,” therefore the celebration of this mystery is preceded by a certain preparation in order that we may perform worthily that which follows after. The first part of this preparation is Divine praise, and consists in the “Introit”: according to Ps. 49:23: “The sacrifice of praise shall glorify me; and there is the way by which I will show him the salvation of God”: and this is taken for the most part from the Psalms, or, at least, is sung with a Psalm, because, as Dionysius says (Eccl. Hier. iii): “The Psalms comprise by way of praise whatever is contained in Sacred Scripture.” The second part contains a reference to our present misery, by reason of which we pray for mercy, saying: “Lord, have mercy on us,” thrice for the Person of the Father, and “Christ, have mercy on us,” thrice for the Person of the Son, and “Lord, have mercy on us,” thrice for the Person of the Holy Ghost; against the threefold misery of ignorance, sin, and punishment; or else to express the “circuminsession” of all the Divine Persons. The third part commemorates the heavenly glory, to the possession of which, after this life of misery, we are tending, in the words, “Glory be to God on high,” which are sung on festival days, on which the heavenly glory is commemorated, but are omitted in those sorrowful offices which commemorate our unhappy state. The fourth part contains the prayer which the priest makes for the people, that they may be made worthy of such great mysteries.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (in Serm. non occ.) Let your holiness consider of what might is the power of the cross. Adam set at nought the commandment, taking the apple from the tree; but all that Adam lost, Christ found upon the cross. The ark of wood saved the human race from the deluge of waters; when God’s people came out of Egypt, Moses divided the sea with his rod, overwhelmed Pharaoh, and redeemed God’s people. The same Moses changed the bitter water into sweet by casting wood into it. By the rod the refreshing stream was drawn out of the rock; that Amalech might be overcome, Moses’ outstretched hands were supported upon his rod; the Law of God is entrusted to the wooden ark of the covenant, that thus, by these steps we may come at last to the wood of the cross. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. de Cruc. et Lat. ii.) He suffered on a lofty cross, and not under a roof, to the end that the nature of the air might be purified; the earth also partook a like benefit, being cleansed by the blood that dropped from His side. GLOSS. (ap. Anselm.) The shape of the cross seems also to signify the Church spread through the four quarters of the earth. RABANUS. Or, according to the practical exposition, the cross in respect of its broad transverse piece signifies the joy of him that works, for sorrow produces straitness; for the broad part of the cross is in the transverse beam to which the hands are fastened, and by the hands we understand works. By the upper part to which the head is fastened is denoted our looking for retribution from the supreme righteousness of God. The perpendicular part on which the body is stretched denotes endurance, whence the patient are called ‘long-suffering.’ (longamines) The point that is fixed into the ground shadows forth the invisible part of a sacrament. HILARY. Thus on the tree of life the salvation and life of all is suspended. AUGUSTINE. (de Cons. Ev. iii. 12.) Matthew shortly says, They parted his garments, casting lots; but John explains more fully how it was done. The soldiers, when they had crucified him, look his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat; now the coat was without seam. (John 19:23.) CHRYSOSTOM. It is to be noted, that this is no small degradation of Christ. For they did this as to one utterly abject and worthless, yet for the thieves they did not the same. For they share the garments only in the case of condemned persons so mean and poor as to possess nothing more.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. This was only a supposition of the disciples that it was cursed because it had not fruit; for another Evangelist says that it was not yet the season. Why then was it cursed? For the disciples’ sake, that they might learn that He had power to wither up those who crucified Him. And He worked this miracle in that which of all plants is the most juicy, that the greatness of the miracle might be more apparent. And when aught of this kind is done to brutes or vegetables, ask not whether the fig were with justice withered up, seeing it was not the season for its fruit; for to enquire thus were extreme madness, for in such creatures there can be neither fault nor punishment; but consider the miracle, and admire the Worker of it. GLOSS. (ord.) The Creator does no wrong to the owner, but His creature at His will is converted to the profit of others. CHRYSOSTOM. And that you may learn that this was done for their sakes, to the end, namely, that they should be stirred up to confidence, hear what is said further. Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, if ye shall have faith. JEROME. The Gentile dogs bark against us, affirming that the Apostles had not faith, because they were not able to remove mountains. To whom we answer, that many wonders were done by the Lord which are not written; and therefore we believe the Apostles to have done some not written; and that they were therefore not written, that the unbelieving might not have in them larger room for cavilling. For let us ask them, do they believe the miracles which are written, or do they not? And when they look incredulous, we can then establish that they who believe not the lesser would not have believed the greater. CHRYSOSTOM. This that the Lord speaks of He ascribes to prayer and faith; whence He continues, And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer believing ye shall receive. ORIGEN. For Christ’s disciples pray for nothing that they ought not, and as confiding in their Master they pray only for things great and heavenly. RABANUS. But whenever we are not heard when we pray, it is either because we ask something adverse to the means of our salvation; or because the perverseness of those for whom we ask hinders its being granted to them; or because the performance of our request is put off to a future time, that our desires may wax stronger, and so may have more perfect capacity for the joys they seek after.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (de Verb. Dom. Serm. lii) Christ went to the grave in which Lazarus slept, as if He were not dead, but alive and able to hear, for He forthwith called him out of his grave: And when He had thus spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. He calls him by name, that He may not bring out all the dead. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxiv. 2) He does not say, Arise, but, Come forth, speaking to the dead as if he were alive. For which reason also He does not say, Come forth in My Father’s name, or, Father, raise him, but throwing off the whole appearance of one praying, proceeds to shew His power by acts. This is His general way. His words shew humility, His acts power. THEOPHYLACT. The voice which roused Lazarus, is the symbol of that trumpet which will sound at the general resurrection. (He spoke loud, to contradict the Gentile fable, that the soul remained in the tomb. The soul of Lazarus is called to as if it were absent, and a loud voice were necessary to summon it.) And as the general resurrection is to take place in the twinkling of an eye, so did this single one: And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face was bound about with a napkin. Now is accomplished what was said above, The hour is coming, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. (5:25) ORIGEN. (t. xxviii.) His cry and loud voice it was which awoke him, as Christ had said, I go to awake him. The resurrection of Lazarus is the work of the Father also, in that He heard the prayer of the Son. It is the joint work of Father and Son, one praying, the other hearing; for as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will. (5:21) CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxiv) He came forth bound, that none might suspect that he was a mere phantom. Besides, that this very fact, viz. of coming forth bound, was itself a miracle, as great as the resurrection. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, that by going near and touching him they might be certain he was the very person. And let him go. His humility is shewn here; He does not take Lazarus about with Him for the sake of display.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  165 In a brilliant article, David Eggenschwiler explicates “The Metamorphosis” by means of two parables from Kafka’s notebooks. In Kafka’s reinterpretation of the story of Odysseus and the Sirens from the Odyssey, he contends that Odysseus’s simplicity in an ironic way defeated the Sirens because they were so astonished by his audacity that they did not sing; Odysseus thought he had heard them singing and had escaped. In “The Metamorphosis,” Gregor’s family does not hear the Sirens; Gregor does, so he dies. His family’s insight is so much less keen than his that they can escape back into a comfortable middle-class life. The family thinks that it has heard the Sirens and thinks that it has defeated them. According to another of Kafka’s parables, Gregor escapes into some fabulous yonder and loses his everyday cares. Interpretation of parable, however, always reduces it to the dimensions of ordinary life, where it loses its meaning. Gregor’s family acts out an interpretation of the parable, reducing it to the everyday world. They win in ordinary life but lose in parable, while Gregor has won in parable but lost in the everyday world. This suggests that whenever we try to reduce the story to the level of the everyday, we win in daily life and lose in parable. According to Eggenschwiler, the greatness of “The Metamorphosis” is that it preserves the parable and the mystery of inner life while acknowledging that people like Gregor’s family—who never see the mystery—can live life on their own terms and win in everyday life. The story incorporates both the mysteries of existence as seen by Gregor and the promises of refuge for those whose sight is not so keen, like his family. How well Kafka did this can be seen by the fact that we are still arguing over the meaning of the story a century after it was written. For Eggenschwiler, every interpretation of a parable is a reduction by which we can win in life but lose in parable. The story thus can still tease us out of thought. The greatness of this story is that in it Kafka preserves … the mystery of the inner life, while acknowledging that people … who don’t see life as mysterious can still have their say.

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

  CHRYSOLOGUS. (Serm. 77 et 74.) If the earth thus quaked when the Lord rose again to the pardon of the Saints, how will it quake when He shall rise again to the punishment of the wicked? As the Prophet speaks, The earth trembled when the Lord rose again to judgment. (Ps. 76:8.) And how will it endure the Lord’s presence, when it was unable to endure the presence of His Angel? And the Angel of the Lord descended from heaven. For when Christ arose, death was destroyed, commerce with heaven is restored to things on the earth; and woman, who had of old held communication to death with the Devil, now holds communication to life with the Angel. HILARY. This is an instance of the mercy of God the Father, to supply the ministry of heavenly power to the Son on His resurrection from the grave; and he is therefore the proclaimer of this first resurrection, that it may be heralded by some attendant token of the Father’s good pleasure. BEDE. (ubi sup.) Forasmuch as Christ is both God and man, therefore there lack not amidst the acts of His humanity the ministrations of Angels, due to Him as God. And came and rolled back the stone; not to open the door for the Lord to come forth, but to give evidence to men that He was already come forth. For He who as mortal had power to enter the world through the closed womb of a Virgin, He when become immortal, was able to depart out of the world by rising from a sealed sepulchre. REMIGIUS. The rolling back of the stone signifies the opening of Christ’s sacraments, which were covered by the letter of the Law. For the Law having been writen on stones, is here denoted by the stone. CHRYSOLOGUS. (Serm. 74.) He said not ‘rolled,’ but rolled back; because the rolling to of the stone was a proof of death; the rolling it back asserted the resurrection. The order of things is changed; The Tomb devours death, and not the dead; the house of death becomes the mansion of life; a new law is imposed upon it, it receives a dead, and renders up a living, man. It follows, And sat thereon. He sat down, who was incapable of weariness; but sat as a teacher of the faith, a master of the Resurrection; upon the stone, that the firmness of his seat might assure the sted fastness of the believers; the Angel rested the foundations of the Faith upon that rock, on which Christ was to found His Church. Or, by the stone of the sepulchre may be denoted death, under which we all lay; and by the Angel sitting thereon, is shewn that Christ hath by His might subdued death.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  As we climbed the hill to the fortress after our meal I could almost feel the centuries peeling back, exposing a world whose brutality was clear in the walls raised up to resist it. The way things are now, it’s hard to imagine the country that could make this, R. said as we bought our tickets and began walking the long strip of stone leading to the fortress, pausing to stare at the huge square frame for gates that once would have barred our way. We weren’t alone on the path up the hill; there were others too, couples mostly, some of them in clothes that made me feel underdressed, the women picking their way gingerly over the stony ground in heels. Apart from the occasional sign and a few wooden staircases granting access to the ruins, there was little to distract us as we walked the uneven ground, making our way around boulders and the ruins of walls. As we turned past one of these walls we surprised three men chatting, dressed in medieval costumes, two half-naked and muscular in leather tunics and a third in a kind of peasant cloth. They snatched the cigarettes from their mouths and stood up, one of the larger men unfurling his whip; and then, seeing our lack of interest, they leaned back against the stone, entirely contemporary in their strange clothes. At first I thought they might be from the opera, members of the chorus waiting for their call, but their costumes weren’t right, and I realized they must have been performing in some tourist reenactment, Ottoman soldiers and a Bulgarian peasant. They resembled anyway the images in the books that had given me what idea I had of the history of the place, a set of slim illustrated volumes, comic books almost, a children’s history of Bulgaria filled with barbaric invaders and mothers in tears, villains and victims stark in their frames. There were multiple versions of the story, I knew; in some the Bulgarians were valiant, in some savage and cruel, holding out for months against overwhelming forces, ceding an inch of ground at a time. There’s no getting to the truth of such things, they’re so far in the past, though nearly everyone I had met talked about the fall of Tsarevets in 1393 as if it were a personal grief. I hate the Turks, the woman who cuts my hair finds an occasion to say every time I sit in her chair; I’m sorry, but I can never forgive them, they are a terrible people.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Creature Feature You go down into the basement exactly one time, and there are spiders down there, dozens of them. You don’t know what kind, but they are big enough that you can see details on their bodies—their faces! Their spidery faces!—even in the dim light. You run back upstairs, laundry basket abandoned, and beg her to do your laundry for you. She does. Dream House as American Gothic A narrative needs two things to be a gothic romance. The first, “woman plus habitation.” “Horror,” film theorist Mary Ann Doane writes, “which should by rights be external to domesticity, infiltrates the home.” The house is not essential for domestic abuse, but hell, it helps: a private space where private dramas are enacted behind, as the cliché goes, closed doors; but also windows sealed against the sound, drawn curtains, silent phones. A house is never apolitical. It is conceived, constructed, occupied, and policed by people with power, needs, and fears. Windex is political. So is the incense you burn to hide the smell of sex, or a fight. The second necessary element: “marrying a stranger.” Strangers, feminist film theorist Diane Waldman points out, because during the 1940s—the heyday of gothic romance films like Rebecca and Dragonwyck and Suspicion—men were returning from war, no longer familiar to the people they’d left behind. “The rash of hasty pre-war marriages (and the subsequent all-time high divorce rate of 1946), the increase in early marriages in the 40s,” Waldman writes, “and the process of wartime separation and reunion [gave the] motif of the Gothics a specific historical resonance.” “The Gothic heroine,” film scholar Tania Modleski says, “tries to convince herself that her suspicions are unfounded, that, since she loves him, he must be trustworthy and that she will have failed as a woman if she does not implicitly believe in him.” There is, of course, a major problem with the gothic: it is by nature heteronormative. A notable exception is Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, with its powerful queer undertones between the innocent protagonist and the sinister, titular vampire. (“You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish,” Carmilla tells Laura. “How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me and still come with me, and hating me through death and after.”) We were not married; she was not a dark and brooding man. It was hardly a crumbling ancestral manor; just a single-family home, built at the beginning of the Great Depression. No moors, just a golf course. But it was “woman plus habitation,” and she was a stranger. That is probably the truest and most gothic part; not because of war or because we’d only met with chaperones before marriage; rather because I didn’t know her, not really, until I did. She was a stranger because something essential was shielded, released in tiny bursts until it became a flood—a flood of what I realized I did not know. 19 Afterward, I would mourn her as if she’d died, because something had: someone we had created together. 19. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Type T11, Falling in love with person never seen.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Because she hadn’t blinked at the key and its conditions, hadn’t paused when he told her her footfalls were too heavy for his liking, hadn’t protested when he fucked her while she wept, hadn’t declined when he suggested she stop speaking, hadn’t said a word when he left bruises on her arms, hadn’t scolded him for speaking to her like she was a dog or a child, hadn’t run screaming down the path from the castle into the nearest village pleading with someone to help help help—it made logical sense that she sat there and watched him spinning around the body of wife Number Four, its decaying head flopping backward on a hinge of flesh. This is how you are toughened, the newest wife reasoned. This is where the tenacity of love is practiced; its tensile strength, its durability. You are being tested and you are passing the test; sweet girl, sweet self, look how good you are; look how loyal, look how loved. [image file=image_rsrc2K0.jpg] 14. Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Type C610 and C611, The one forbidden place (forbidden chamber).IIThe milk was so hot, she could barely let her lip touch it at first. The tiny sips spread inside her mouth and released a melange of organic flavors. The milk seemed to taste of bone and blood, of warm flesh, or hair, saltless as chalk yet alive as a growing embryo. It was hot through and through to the bottom of the cup, and Therese drank it down, as people in fairy tales drink the potion that will transform, or the unsuspecting warrior the cup that will kill. —Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt Dream House as Heat Death of the UniverseAs long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with physical and temporal limits. The beginning, the end. The first, the last. The edge. Once, when I was a kid, I stood in that wonderful sand right at the lip of the tide—the kind that could be wet and pliable or go hard like damp cornstarch—and yelled to my parents that I was standing on the line of the map. When they didn’t understand, I explained that there was a line on the map between the land and the water, and I was on it, precisely. Many years later I went snorkeling with my brother off the southern coast of Cuba. After dipping around the coral reefs near the shore, my brother asked our guide—a tanned, shirtless, free-diving hippie named Rollo—to take us both farther out. So we went into the open water, where if you relax your body the whole of the ocean will rock you back and forth, make you a little seasick. Rollo took us to the place where the shelf dropped off. One minute I could see the sand, and the next there was a deep, blue-black nothing. The three of us surfaced, and Rollo told me to watch him. Then he dove down and down until the darkness swallowed him up.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  I went into town to sit in the library’s air-conditioning. The librarian wanted to talk to me about the fire. She told me that forest fires are a danger to bulls and cows, but not deer. “They never find deer carcasses after these things,” she said. “Deer know how to get out of the way. But bulls and cows, you can’t get them to move for anything. Fire comes, and they just don’t know what to do with themselves.” On the way back, the toxic amber smoke floated over the sun. That night, it was still burning. I walked out onto my porch to watch, and even as mosquitoes descended to feast I couldn’t look away from the sight: a nearly full moon illuminating fast-moving clouds, and the distant, golden pulse of fire over the mountain, glowing like a second sunrise. The next morning, while I was writing, something emerged from the grass mere feet from my window: a young buck with velvety antlers and comically long and expressive ears. He did not seem to notice me and settled down comfortably in the shade of a tree. I was utterly transfixed by him, a stray remnant of my childhood love of horses. I left him some baby carrots, hoping to let him know I meant no harm, but he didn’t eat them, and within a few hours the air desiccated them into white, withered sticks. Every time I moved, he turned and watched me with black eyes. When he stopped noticing me—when I’d been sitting reading or writing for a while—he relaxed as much as a deer can relax. His eyes blinked more languidly. He nibbled greenery, chased flies away, whisked his ears and tail through the air. I even once saw him lick his lips, and then yawn. The intimacy, the trust, would have been almost unbearable, if I thought it was trust. Once I walked by the window and there were two of them, two bucks, sitting under the tree. Their fur looked soft, and they panted in the heat like large, beautiful dogs. But my foot creaked on the floorboards, and they bounded liquidly away through the grass. Half a mile away, they were still running. A few days later, the full moon rose—blood-red because of the smoke—and I went for a hike on the lake. As the moon climbed higher and higher, it escaped the smoke and became a bright coin against the sky. Every detail of the cracked soil was surreally crisp; the crevices dark and deep. I wished everything had this much clarity. I wished I had always lived in this body, and you could have lived here with me, and I could have told you it’s all right, it’s going to be all right. When I turned around, my dark silver moon-shadow walked in front of me as I made my way back to the shore. My tale goes only to here; it ends, and the wind carries it to you.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  We left shortly after, our bags still unpacked, and began to explore the little town. It wasn’t like the other tourist towns in Bulgaria; in the shops there were handmade crafts among the mass-produced souvenirs, and in the old town, its vertiginous streets lined with National Revival houses, at first newly renovated but growing more decrepit as we climbed, there were artisans’ shops in which men and women looked up hopefully from their work, calling zapovyadaite, welcome, come in, to everyone who passed. A year before, the town had been crowded with tourists, their buses nosing through the tiny streets and their bags piled high in lobbies; but now there were few visitors, maybe because it was later in the season and the seaside had drawn them away, and we were often alone as we climbed the steep paths, the cobblestones shifting beneath us. One woman was standing in front of her shop, and beckoned us inside so fervently it would have been difficult to refuse. I glanced at R., who shrugged, and we walked over to her. She spoke to us in English at first, but visibly relaxed when I answered in Bulgarian. My husband speaks perfect English, she said, but he’s gone with my son to Sofia for the day, they’ve left me here alone. The building she welcomed us into was lovely, a two-story house of stone and wood, with cement urns overflowing with flowers at the threshold. The first floor served as a gallery, the walls crowded almost to the ceiling with paintings; others, unhung, leaned in their frames against the walls. I was overwhelmed by the number of them, for a minute I wasn’t sure where to look. Please, the woman said, walk around, there are more in the other rooms, and she gestured toward an open doorway to my right. All of them were done by us, she said, we’re all three painters, and then, at my little murmur of interest, we graduated from the fine arts academy in Plovdiv, my husband and I, and now our son studies in Sofia, at the best school.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  There’s no getting to the truth of such things, they’re so far in the past, though nearly everyone I had met talked about the fall of Tsarevets in 1393 as if it were a personal grief. I hate the Turks, the woman who cuts my hair finds an occasion to say every time I sit in her chair; I’m sorry, but I can never forgive them, they are a terrible people. We reached the top of the hill, where the medieval atmosphere was broken by two large trucks parked close to the ruins, each of them marked SOFIISKA NATSIONALNA OPERA I BALET in the block Cyrillic of government pronouncements. Tents had been set up to sell wine and refreshments, and genteel white folding chairs were arrayed on wooden platforms in front of the stage, where men in costumes, doubling as stagehands, were arranging scenery and props. A few potted plants and a painted backdrop sketched an idea of a forest, while complicated wooden scaffolding scaled the medieval wall, at the top of which a large statue of Ganesh reached out his many arms. I tried to take it in while R. flipped through the program: the ruins, the socialist-era trucks, the European refinement of the audience, the nineteenth-century sets, the ancient god serenely gazing; it was like a palimpsest with no original text, just endless layers peeling away, and I felt a quick shudder of vertigo, as though the ground might swing open beneath me. I was surprised by how large an audience there was for a summer opera in a little town, and for an opera not quite in the standard repertoire. R. didn’t know anything about it, of course, and as we waited for the performance to start, listening to the clatterings of the invisible orchestra, the occasional brass instrument clearing its throat, I gave him a sketch of the story, how a British soldier falls in love with a young priestess, who betrays her vows and then, when she’s betrayed in turn, kills herself in a sacred grove. Well, that sounds awful, R. said. It’s really not the best choice for a first opera, I said, wanting to lower his expectations, feeling protective of the experience I had been so eager to share. But I loved it when I was a kid, I said, and it has some beautiful music; though I worried that even the music would be less transporting than I remembered. And I was right, there was something a little embarrassing about it; everything seemed hopelessly dated, the sentimental music and oriental fantasy of a plot, and the first notes of the overture made clear that the performance wouldn’t be very good.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  A VALEDICTIONThere was a moment, as the little beaten cab took another tight turn too quickly, when suddenly to our left we could see all at once the three hills of Veliko Turnovo, the houses of the old town clinging to their terraces, the river Yantra snaking its way beneath. I had seen it in precisely this way when I had visited the city a year before, and now R., sitting in the back seat beside me, took a sharp breath at the wonder of it. His fingers found mine as I reached for him across the seat, and we continued looking with our hands linked low, beneath the driver’s notice, freed from the weight of uncertainty or sorrow we had carried with us on the train from Gorna Oryahovitsa, a pressure that had almost seemed caused by the trees crowding the tracks, their long branches brushing the clouded glass of our wagon. It was mid-August, nearly the end of summer; R. would be leaving soon. He had come back to Sofia in May, just after finishing his degree in Lisbon, and our idea had been that he would stay, though it was a sacrifice for him to exchange his sun-drunk city, with its river and avenues and tiles, for a city that even in high summer held on to its grayness, like an animal somehow suspicious of the season, unwilling to shed its coat. But R. quickly realized how little there was for him in Sofia, where he had no friends or relatives, and where without the language there was almost no prospect of work, and so what we had thought of as the beginning of real life had become instead an extended vacation, culminating in this final trip together before he went back home.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  For us the frog is a symbol, the man said, it means poverty, here in Bologna, in Italy, so it means to burn poverty. You know the crisis is very hard here, he said, the austerity is very hard, it would be good to burn it away. He had apologized for his English, but it was very good, less stiff than he seemed in his jacket and tie; he was young, midtwenties, a college student in a university town. You should go, he said, it’s a party, there will be music and lots of people and you can watch the fire, it’s something you should see. THERE WAS SO MUCH TO SEE , too much; I walked around in a daze of looking. We moved in and out of churches crowded with paintings, huge and smoke-darkened, the ceilings crammed with color, I got tired of trying to see them. R. was full of zeal, he wanted to see everything—who knows when we’ll be back, he said. The dilemma of vacations, the exhaustion of the last chance. Everything became unremarkable, nothing moved me, it was all a blur of perfection. I wanted to get the bus back to the hotel, I wanted to rest my eyes. But just one more thing, R. said, paging through the guidebook we had bought, and he led me to a small museum, a house converted after the artist who had lived in it had died. There were just a few rooms, open and uncluttered, the walls painted mercifully white; it wouldn’t take long for R. to make his circuit. I followed him, barely looking at the paintings, which were small and unremarkable, or remarkable only for their plainness. They were quiet and unambitious, minor, I thought at first, still lifes and modest landscapes, interesting mostly for having so little to do with everything else we had seen; the painter had spent his whole life in this city but seemed indifferent to the examples it offered, to the virtuousity and gorgeousness it prized. I found myself looking longer, looking more slowly, I let R. walk on ahead. The same subjects appeared again and again, household objects, plates and bowls, not filled with flowers or fruit but empty, set against a plain background. I stopped in front of one that showed a pitcher and cups, white and gray on a tan surface, behind them a blue wall. Something held me there looking, something made me lean in to look more closely. The cups were mismatched in color and in shape, the pitcher rose oddly elongated behind them, the whole painting was eccentric, asymmetrical. There was a kind of presence in the painting, I felt, I could sense it humming at a frequency I wanted to tune myself to catch.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  In the middle of the table was an enormous pot of stew which smelled so delicious that the rabbi’s mouth watered. Each person around the table held a spoon with a very long handle. Although the long spoons just reached the pot, their handles were longer than would-be diners’ arms: thus, unable to bring food to their lips, no one could eat. The rabbi saw that their suffering was terrible indeed. “Now I will show you Heaven,” said the Lord, and they went into another room, exactly the same as the first. There was the same large round table, the same pot of stew. The people, as before, were equipped with the same long-handled spoons—but here everyone was well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The rabbi could not understand. “It is simple, but it requires a certain skill,” said the Lord. “In this room, you see, they have learned to feed each other.” Although Paula’s independent decision to start the session by reading the parable threw me off balance, I let it pass. That’s her way, I thought, knowing that we had not yet worked out our roles and our collaboration in the group. Besides, her judgment was impeccable—it remains to this day the most inspired beginning of a group I have ever witnessed. What to name the group? Paula suggested the “Bridge Group.” Why? Two reasons. First, the group created a bridge from one cancer patient to another. Second, it was a group where we put our cards on the table. Hence, the Bridge Group. A typical Paula touch. Our “flock,” as Paula called it, grew rapidly. New, terror-stricken faces appeared every week or two. Paula took the new members in hand, inviting them out to lunch, teaching, charming, and spiritualizing them. Soon we were so large we had to split into two groups of eight, and I introduced some psychiatric residents as coleaders. All the members resisted the splitting; it threatened the integrity of the family. I suggested a compromise: we would meet as two separate groups for an hour and a quarter and then, in the final fifteen minutes, merge so that the two groups could inform one another of the details of their meetings. The meetings were powerful and dealt, I believe, with issues that were more painful than any group had ever dared to face before. Meeting after meeting, members came in with new metastases, new tragedies; each time we found a way to offer presence and comfort to each stricken person. Occasionally, if someone were too weak, too close to death to attend, we would hold the group meeting in that member’s bedroom. There was no topic too difficult for the group to discuss, and Paula played an important role in every critical discussion.

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

  JEROME. The Apostles clothes which are laid upon the beasts may be understood either as the teaching of virtues, or discernment of Scriptures, or verities of ecclesiastical dogmas, with which, unless the soul be furnished and instructed, it deserves not to have the Lord take His seat there. REMIGIUS. The Lord sitting upon the ass goes towards Jerusalem, because presiding over the Holy Church, or the faithful soul, He both guides it in this life, and after this life leads it to the view of the heavenly country. But the Apostles and other teachers set their garments upon the ass, when they gave to the Gentiles the glory which they had received from Christ. The multitudes spread their garments in the way, when they of the circumcision who believed, despised the glory which they had by the Law. They cut down branches from the trees, because out of the Prophets they had heard of the green Branch as an emblem of Christ. (Is. 11:1. Jer. 23:5.) Or, the multitudes who spread their garments in the way, are the martyrs who gave to martyrdom for Christ their bodies, which are the clothing of their minds. Or, they are signified, who subdue their bodies by abstinence. They who cut down the branches of the trees, are they who seek out the sayings and examples of the holy fathers for their own or their children’s salvation. JEROME. When He says, The multitudes that went before and that followed, He shews that both people, those who before the Gospel, and those who after the Gospel, believed on the Lord, praise Jesus with the harmonious voice of confession. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Those prophesying spoke of Christ who was to come; these speak in praise of the coming of Christ already fulfilled. 21:10–1610. And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this? 11. And the multitude said, This is Jesus the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee. 12. And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, 13. And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. 14. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them. 15. And when the Chief Priests and Scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David; they were sore displeased, 16. And said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? JEROME. When Jesus entered with the multitudes, the whole city of Jerusalem was moved, wondering at the crowds, and not knowing the power.

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

  HILARY. The earth quaked, because it was unequal to contain such a body; the rocks rent, for the Word of God that pierces all strong and mighty things, and the virtue of the eternal Power had penetrated them; the graves were opened, for the bands of death were loosed. And many bodies of the saints which slept arose, for illumining the darkness of death, and shedding light upon the gloom of Hades, He robbed the spirits of death. CHRYSOSTOM. When He remained on the cross they had said tauntingly, He saved others, himself he cannot save. But what He would not do for Himself, that He did and more than that for the bodies of the Saints. For if it was a great thing to raise Lazarus after four days, much more was it that they who had long slept should now shew themselves alive; this is indeed a proof of the resurrection to come. But that it might not be thought that that which was done was an appearance merely, the Evangelist adds, And came out of the graves after his resurrection., and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. JEROME. As Lazarus rose from the dead, so also did many bodies of the Saints rise again to shew forth the Lord’s resurrection; yet notwithstanding that the graves were opened, they did not rise again before the Lord rose, that He might be the first-born of the resurrection from the dead. The holy city in which they were seen after they had risen may be understood to mean either the heavenly Jerusalem, or this earthly, which once had been holy. For the city of Jerusalem was called Holy on account of the Temple and the Holy of Holies, and to distinguish it from other cities in which idols were worshipped. When it is said, And appeared unto many, it is signified that this was not a general resurrection which all should see, but special, seen only by such as were worthy to see it. REMIGIUS. But some one will ask, what became of those who rose again when the Lord rose. We must believe that they rose again to be witnesses of the Lord’s resurrection. Some have said that they died again, and were turned to dust, as Lazarus and the rest whom the Lord raised. But we must by no means give credit to these men’s sayings, since if they were to die again, it would be greater torment to them, than if they had not risen again. We ought therefore to believe without hesitation that they who rose from the dead at the Lord’s resurrection, ascended also into heaven together with Him.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It must have meant the clashing of armies, though which were the virtuous Bulgarian forces and which the victorious Turks was lost on me, despite the narration of two children who stood on the rearmost bench, whispering excitedly to each other Turtsite! Turtsite! at each sweep of the lights. Whatever was happening a climax was approaching, it was clear in the martial lament of the music and also in the lights, which were mounting ever higher, toward the citadel itself and its reconstructed tower, though the effect was dampened by an anachronistic line of vehicles, the opera trucks at the fore, making its way down the hill. Then, from the tower, beams of light shot out, first in one direction, then in the other, then in both directions at once. What could it possibly mean, I wondered; it was clear it meant something, even the children were rapt, everyone sat transfigured. At the far end of one of the benches I saw that an old man had bent his head and covered his face with his hands, and that his shoulders were shaking as he wept. Then the lights went dark, and the speakers behind us fell silent, and from the hill itself in front of us rolled the slow sound, unamplified, of bells. There were many of them ringing together in the darkness, their tolling layered and fluid, the most affecting music of the evening, I thought, plangent and bare. And then, as they continued to ring, the hill was suddenly ablaze with light, not the colored floods of the warring sides but a white light, unsparing, so that every tree stood out and every stone was exposed, the ineffective walls, the whole much-repaired skeleton of it laid out at once grievous and proud. I heard R. make a little gasping sound beside me of marvel or dismay, and suddenly I was inside it, the wonder of the place, for a brief time at least I felt it too. Then the hill went dark again, and silent, and in the pause before anyone spoke or moved to leave I leaned toward R., wanting to feel him beside me, and for a moment he pressed warm against me in the dark. THE LITTLE SAINT His name meant light, or that was the root of it, the root too of the word for holy, for any number of words associated with sanctity and the church; and this was why later, when I grew fond of him, I called him Svetcheto , the little saint.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  But the truth is I don’t know, Ma. I have theories I write down then erase and walk away from the desk. I put the kettle on and let the sound of boiling water change my mind. What’s your theory—about anything? I know if I asked you, you’d laugh, covering your mouth, a gesture common among the girls in your childhood village, one you’ve kept all your life, even with your naturally straight teeth. You’d say no, theories are for people with too much time and not enough determination. But I know of one. We were on a plane to California—do you remember this? You were giving him, my father, another chance, even with your nose still crooked from his countless backhands. I was six and we had left Lan behind in Hartford with Mai. At one point on the flight, the turbulence got so bad I bounced on the seat, my entire tiny self lifted clean off the cushion, then yanked down by the seatbelt. I started to cry. You wrapped one arm around my shoulders, leaned in, your weight absorbing the plane’s throttle. Then you pointed to the thick cloud-bands outside the window and said, “When we get this high up, the clouds turn into boulders—hard rocks—that’s what you’re feeling.” Your lips grazing my ear, your tone soothing, I examined the massive granite-colored mountains across the sky’s horizon. Yes, of course the plane shook. We were moving through rocks, our flight a supernatural perseverance of passage. Because to go back to that man took that kind of magic. The plane should rattle, it should nearly shatter. With the laws of the universe made new, I sat back and watched as we broke through one mountain after another. — When it comes to words, you possess fewer than the coins you saved from your nail salon tips in the milk gallon under the kitchen cabinet. Often you’d gesture to a bird, a flower, or a pair of lace curtains from Walmart and say only that it’s beautiful—whatever it was. “Đẹp quá!” you once exclaimed, pointing to the hummingbird whirring over the creamy orchid in the neighbor’s yard. “It’s beautiful!” You asked me what it was called and I answered in English—the only language I had for it. You nodded blankly. The next day, you had already forgotten the name, the syllables slipping right from your tongue. But then, coming home from town, I spotted the hummingbird feeder in our front yard, the glass orb filled with a clear, sweet nectar, surrounded by colorful plastic blossoms with pinhead holes for their beaks. When I asked you about it, you pulled the crumpled cardboard box from the garbage, pointed to the hummingbird, its blurred wings and needled beak—a bird you could not name but could nonetheless recognize. “Đẹp quá,” you smiled. “Đẹp quá.” —

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

  JEROME. This which was now done to Christ had been prophesied in the Psalm, They parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. (Ps. 22:18.) It proceeds, And sitting down, they watched him there. This watchfulness of the soldiers and of the Priests has proved of use to us in making the power of His resurrection greater and more notorious. And they set up over his head his accusation written, This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. I cannot sufficiently wonder at the enormity of the thing, that having purchased false witnesses, and having stirred up the unhappy people to riot and uproar, they found no other plea for putting Him to death, than that He was King of the Jews; and this perhaps they set up in mockery. REMIGIUS. It was divinely provided that this title should be set up over His head, that the Jews might learn that not even by putting Him to death could they avoid having Him for their King; for in the very instrument of His death He not only did not lose, but rather confirmed His sovereignty. ORIGEN. The High Priest also in obedience to the letter of the Law wore on his head the writing, ‘Holiness to the Lord,’ but the true High Priest and King, Jesus, bears on His cross the title, This is the King of the Jews; when ascending to His Father, instead of His own name with its proper letters, He has the Father Himself. RABANUS. For because He is at once King and Priest, when He would offer the sacrifice of His flesh on the altar of the cross, His title set forth His regal dignity. And it is set over and not beneath the cross, because though He suffered for us on the cross with the weakness of man, the majesty of the King was conspicuous above the cross; and this He did not lose, but rather confirmed, by the cross. JEROME. (non occ.) As Christ was made for us a curse of the cross, so for the salvation of all He is crucified as guilty among the guilty. LEO. (Serm. 55, 1.) Two thieves were crucified with him, one on the right hand and one on the left, that in the figure of His cross might be represented that separation of all mankind which shall be made in His judgment. The Passion then of Christ contains a sacrament of our salvation, and of that instrument which the wickedness of the Jews provided for His punishment, the power of the Redeemer made a step to glory. HILARY. Or otherwise; Two thieves are set up on His right and left hand, to signify that the entire human race is called to the Sacrament of the Lord’s Passion; but because there shall be a division of believers to the right, and unbelievers to the left, one of the two who is set on His right hand is saved by the justification of faith.