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 The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I looked at him humorously. ‘Go into what?’ He was unlocking a door under the shadow of the cantilevered stairs and groping for the light switch. ‘Come down here. Whoopsy! That’s it.’ In front of us a narrow staircase ran steeply down between unplastered rubble walls. It was a squeeze for us side by side, and I tended to be half a step behind, as he, one hand on the rope banister, committed himself with a heavy, lurching tread to each new stair. ‘This is the most remarkable thing,’ he said in a tone of enthusiasm. ‘Oh, he’ll like this, won’t he. There’s no other house in the world that has anything like this. Come along in, come along in.’ He took on for a moment the air of a horror-film villain, muttering gleeful asides while leading his victim into the trap. The stairs turned a corner, and we went down two or three more steps and under a rough wooden lintel into a cool, mildewy darkness. Various fleeting ideas, tinged with alarm, went through my mind as I stood and brushed at my upper arm where it had rubbed against the chalky staircase wall. Then Charles found the second light switch and the darkness fled, revealing a squarish quite lofty cellar room. Though it contained nothing at all there were two remarkable things about it. The walls, which were plastered and painted cream, had a continuous frieze running round, which, being above head height, looked tastefully classical at a glance but, like the library over-door, were homosexual parodies when inspected close to. And the floor, uneven, pitted in places, was a mosaic. We made our way along the walls on old drugget, through which the roughness of the floor obtruded, so that I was afraid of Charles stubbing his toe or even twisting his ankle. On the further side of the room he stopped. ‘You see it best from here,’ he explained. The colours were very subdued, the white almost a light brown, the reds rusty like dried blood. ‘Now, what do you make out?’ I thought about it; it was evidently a Roman pavement—a relic of some riverside palace or temple? I knew nothing about Roman London, had forgotten all but a handful of images from some illustrated lectures that Gavin had given several years before. In the top quarter was a large bearded face, with open mouth and the vestiges of neck and shoulders above a broad rent in the fabric where the tesserae merged into the restorer’s grey cement. To the left at the bottom stylised fish shapes, like an emblem of Pisces, could be made out, sliding past each other; and to the right, and above, the upper parts of two figures could be seen, the one in front turning to the one behind with open, choric mouth as they dissolved into the nothingness beyond the broken edge of the pavement.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Stockholm was beautiful, despite the constant snow and frigid temperatures. I gave some speeches and attended a few dinners. It was a short, cold trip, but the people were lovely and unusually kind to me. I was surprised at how gratifying I found their enthusiasm for our work. Most everyone I met offered support and encouragement. A couple of years earlier, I had been invited to Brazil to talk about punishment and the unjust treatment of disfavored people. I had spent a lot of time in local communities, mostly in the favelas outside São Paulo, where I met hundreds of desperately poor people who were intensely interested in talking. I spent hours in conversation with all sorts of people, from struggling mothers to impoverished children who sniffed glue to help them cope with hunger and police brutality. The cross-cultural conversations with those people, who had shared a lot of the same history and struggle as my clients in America, had a huge impact on me. In Sweden, the people I met were equally interested and responsive, even though they hadn’t experienced profound need or shared struggle with an abusive justice system. People all over the country seemed motivated to connect from a common place of tremendous compassion. The organizers asked me to speak at a high school on the outskirts of Stockholm. Kungsholmens Gymnasium is in an extraordinarily beautiful section of Stockholm, an island surrounded by seventeenth-century architecture. As an American with limited experience outside the United States, I was dazzled by the age of the buildings and marveled at their ornate architecture. The school itself was nearly a hundred years old. I was escorted through the school to a narrow, winding staircase with handcrafted railings that led up to a cavernous auditorium. Several hundred high school students packed the room, waiting for my presentation. The domed ceiling of the enormous hall was covered with delicate hand paintings and Latin phrases written in decorative script. Floating angels and trumpet-wielding infants danced all over the walls and ceiling. A large balcony packed with more students seemed to ascend elegantly into the drawings.

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

  Reply to Objection 2: The fear of God is compared to a man’s whole life that is ruled by God’s wisdom, as the root to the tree: hence it is written (Ecclus. 1:25): “The root of wisdom is to fear the Lord, for [Vulg.: ‘and’] the branches thereof are longlived.” Consequently, as the root is said to be virtually the tree, so the fear of God is said to be wisdom. Reply to Objection 3: As stated above, faith is the beginning of wisdom in one way, and fear, in another. Hence it is written (Ecclus. 25:16): “The fear of God is the beginning of love: and the beginning of faith is to be fast joined to it.” Whether initial fear differs substantially from filial fear?Objection 1: It would seem that initial fear differs substantially from filial fear. For filial fear is caused by love. Now initial fear is the beginning of love, according to Ecclus. 25:16, “The fear of God is the beginning of love.” Therefore initial fear is distinct from filial fear. Objection 2: Further, initial fear dreads punishment, which is the object of servile fear, so that initial and servile fear would seem to be the same. But servile fear is distinct from filial fear. Therefore initial fear also is substantially distinct from initial fear. Objection 3: Further, a mean differs in the same ratio from both the extremes. Now initial fear is the mean between servile and filial fear. Therefore it differs from both filial and servile fear. On the contrary, Perfect and imperfect do not diversify the substance of a thing. Now initial and filial fear differ in respect of perfection and imperfection of charity, as Augustine states (In prim. canon. Joan. Tract. ix). Therefore initial fear does not differ substantially from filial fear. I answer that, Initial fear is so called because it is a beginning [initium]. Since, however, both servile and filial fear are, in some way, the beginning of wisdom, each may be called in some way, initial. It is not in this sense, however, that we are to understand initial fear in so far as it is distinct from servile and filial fear, but in the sense according to which it belongs to the state of beginners, in whom there is a beginning of filial fear resulting from a beginning of charity, although they do not possess the perfection of filial fear, because they have not yet attained to the perfection of charity. Consequently initial fear stands in the same relation to filial fear as imperfect to perfect charity. Now perfect and imperfect charity differ, not as to essence but as to state. Therefore we must conclude that initial fear, as we understand it here, does not differ essentially from filial fear.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  While the room was very old, the acoustics were perfect, and there was a balance and precision to the space that seemed almost magical. I studied the hundreds of Scandinavian teenagers seated in the hall while I was being introduced. I was impressed by how eager they appeared. I spoke for forty-five minutes to the strangely silent and attentive group of teens. I knew English wasn’t their first language and had real doubts about how much they were even following what I said, but when I finished, they erupted into vigorous applause. Their response actually startled me. They were so young but so interested in the plight of my condemned clients thousands of miles away. The headmaster joined me onstage to thank me and suggested to the students that they offer their own thanks with a song. The school had an internationally famous music program and student choir. The headmaster asked the choir students to stand wherever they were in the auditorium and briefly sing something. About fifty giggling kids stood up and looked around at each other. After a minute of uncertainty, a seventeen-year-old boy with strawberry blond hair stood on his chair and said something to his choirmates in Swedish. The students laughed, but they became more sober. As they became still and perfectly quiet, the boy hummed a note in a beautiful tenor voice. His pitch was perfect. Then he slowly waved his arms to prompt these extraordinary children to sing. Their voices bounced off the walls and ceiling of this ancient hall and fell into a glorious harmony the likes of which I’d never heard. After starting his classmates in song, the young man stepped off his chair and joined them in performing a heartbreaking melody with tremendous care and precision. I could not understand a word of the Swedish lyrics, but it sounded angelic. Dissonance and harmonic tension slowly resolved into warm chords—the sound was transcendent. The singing built gloriously with each line. Standing on a stage above the singers with the headmaster beside me, I looked up at the ceiling—at the majestic artwork. My mother had died a few months before this trip. She’d been a church musician most of her life and had worked with dozens of children’s choirs. When I looked up and saw the drawings of angels on the domed ceiling I thought of her. I quickly realized I would never recover my composure looking up there, so I looked back at the students and forced a smile. When the students finished their song, the rest of the students cheered and applauded wildly. I joined the applause and tried to hold myself together. When I left the stage, students came up to thank me for the talk, ask questions, and take pictures. I was completely charmed.

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

  51. In view of everything (26). Here he draws from the foregoing arguments his intended conclusion, saying that it is clear from everything that has been said that the name wisdom which we are investigating belongs to the same science which considers or speculates about first principles and causes. This is evident from the six primary conditions which clearly pertain to the science that considers universal causes. But because the sixth condition touched on the consideration of the end, which was not clearly held to be a cause among the ancient philosophers, as will be said below (1177), he therefore shows in a special way that this condition belongs to the same science, namely, the one which considers first causes. For the end, which is a good and that for the sake of which other things are done, is one of the many causes. Hence the science which considers first and universal causes must also be the one which considers the universal end of all things, which is the greatest good in the whole of nature. LESSON 3 The Nature and Goal of Metaphysics ARISTOTLE ’ S TEXT Chapter 2: 982b 11-983a 2327. That this is not a practical science is evident from those who first philosophized. For it is because of wonder that men both now and formerly began to philosophize, about less important matters, and then progressing little by little, they raised questions about more important ones, such as the phases of the moon and the courses of the sun and the stars and the generation of the universe. But one who raises questions and wonders seems to be ignorant. Hence the philosopher is also to some extent a lover of myth, for myths are composed of wonders. If they philosophized, then, in order to escape from ignorance, they evidently pursued their studies for the sake of knowledge and not for any utility. 28. And what has happened bears witness to this; for when nearly all the things necessary for life, leisure and learning were acquired, this kind of prudence began to be sought. It is evident, then, that we do not seek this knowledge for the sake of any other necessity. 29. But just as we say that a man is free who exists for himself and not for another, in a similar fashion this is the only free, science, because it alone exists for itself. 30. For this reason, too, it might rightly be thought that this science is not a human possession, since in many respects human nature is servile.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I jumped in my car and raced to Atmore. As I drove down the interstate to reach the prison, I noticed the long rays of sunlight retreating even as the heat of the Alabama summer persisted. When I arrived at the prison, it was completely dark. Outside the prison entrance were dozens of men with guns sitting on the backs of trucks that lined the long road to the prison parking area. They were state troopers, local police officers, deputy sheriffs, and what appeared to be part of a National Guard unit. I don’t know why the State felt they needed a militia to guard the entrance to the prison on the night of an execution. It was surreal to see all of these armed men gathered near midnight to make sure a life would be taken without incident. It fascinated me that someone thought there might be some violent, armed resistance to the scheduled execution of an indigent black man. I entered the prison and saw an older white woman—the correctional officer who managed the visitation yard. I had become a regular at death row visiting my new clients at least once a month, so she saw me frequently but had never been particularly friendly. Tonight she approached me with unusual warmth and familiarity when I arrived. I thought she was going to hug me. Men in suits and ties hovered in the lobby, eyeing me suspiciously as I walked into the visitation room at a little past nine. The visitation area at Holman is a large circular room surrounded by glass so that officers can look in from any vantage point. There are a dozen small tables with chairs inside for visiting family who come on visitation days, typically scheduled two or three times a month. During the week of a scheduled execution, only the condemned prisoner facing a scheduled death is permitted to have family visits. When I got inside the visiting room, the family had less than an hour left with Herbert. He was calmer than I had ever seen him. He smiled at me when I walked in and gave me a hug. “Hey y’all, this is my lawyer.” He said it with a pride that was surprising and moving to me. “Hello everyone,” I said. Herbert still had his arm around my shoulder, and I wanted to say something comforting but couldn’t think of anything before Herbert jumped in again. “I told the prison people that I want all my possessions distributed just as I’ve said or my lawyer will sue you till you all have to work for him.” He chuckled, and people laughed.

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

  BEDE. (in Marc. 4, 45) As then the women shew the great fervency of their love, by coming very early in the morning to the sepulchre, as the history relates, according to the mystical sense an example is given to us, that with a shining face, and shaking off the darkness of wickedness, we may be careful to offer the fragrance of good works and the sweetness of prayer to the Lord. THEOPHYLACT. He says, On the first of the sabbaths, (μιᾱς σαββάτων.) that is, on the first of the days of the week. For the days of the week are called sabbaths, and by the word ‘una’ is meant ‘prima.’ BEDE. (ubi sup.) Or else, by this phrase is meant the first day from the day of sabbaths, or rests, which were kept on the sabbath. There follows: And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? SEVERIANUS. (Chrysologus ubi sup.) Your breast was darkened, your eyes shut, and therefore ye did not before see the glory of the opened sepulchre. It goes on: And they looked, and saw that the stone was rolled away. BEDE. (ubi sup.) Matthew shews clearly enough, that the stone was rolled away by an Angel. This rolling away of the stone means mystically the opening of the Christian sacraments, which were held under the veil of the letter of the law; for the law was written on stone. It goes on: For it was very great. SEVERIANUS. (Chrysologus ubi sup.) Great indeed by its office rather than its size, for it can shut in and throw open the body of the Lord. GREGORY. (ubi sup.) But the women who came with spices see the Angels; because those minds who come to the Lord with their virtues, through holy desires, see the heavenly citizens. Wherefore it goes on: And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. THEOPHYLACT. Though Matthew says that the Angel was sitting on the stone, whilst Mark relates that the women entering into the sepulchre saw a young man sitting, yet we need not wonder, for they afterwards saw sitting within the sepulchre the same Angel as sat without on the stone.

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

  Further. Everything exists through having existence. Therefore nothing the essence of which is not its existence, exists by its essence, but by participation of something, namely existence. Now that which exists by participation of something cannot be the first being, because that in which a thing participates in order to exist, is previous to that thing. But God is the first being, to which nothing is previous. Therefore God’s essence is His existence. This sublime truth Moses was taught by the Lord: for when he asked the Lord (Exod. 3:13, 14): If the children of Israel should say to me: What is His name? what shall I say to them? the Lord answered: I AM WHO AM.… Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS hath sent me to you; thus declaring His own name to be: HE WHO IS. Now every name is appointed to signify the nature or essence of a thing. Wherefore it follows that God’s very existence itself is His essence or nature. Moreover. The Catholic doctors have professed this truth. For Hilary says (De Trin.): Existence is not an accident in God, but the subsisting truth, the abiding cause, and the natural property of His essence. And Boethius says (De Trin.) that the divine substance is existence itself, and all other existence proceeds therefrom. CHAPTER XXIII THAT THERE IS NO ACCIDENT IN GODFROM this truth it follows of necessity that nothing can accrue to God besides His essence, nor anything be accidentally in Him. For existence itself cannot participate in something that is not of its essence; although that which exists can participate in something else. Because nothing is more formal or more simple than existence. Hence existence itself can participate in nothing. Now the divine substance is existence itself. Therefore He has nothing that is not of His substance. Therefore no accident can be in Him.

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

  JEROME. (cont. Helvid.) From this Helvidiusd strives to prove that no one can be called firstborn who has not brothers, as he is called only-begotten who is the only son of his parents. But we thus determine the matter. Every only-begotten is firstborn, not every firstborn is only-begotten. We say not that he is first-begotten whom others follow, but before whom there is no one; (otherwise, supposing there is no firstborn but who has brothers following him, there are then no firstlings due to the priests as long as there are no others begotten;) lest perchance when no birth follows afterward, there should be an only-begotten and not a firstborn. BEDE. He is also only-begotten in the substance of His divinity, firstborn in the taking upon Himself humanity, firstborn in grace, only-begotten in nature. JEROME. (ubi sup.) Now here was no midwife, no tender anxiety of women; she wrapped the Child up in swaddling clothes, herself both mother and midwife. BEDE. He who clothes the whole world with its varied beauty, is wrapped up in common linen, that we might be able to receive the best robe; He by Whom all things are made, is folded both hands and feet, that our hands might be raised up for every good work, and our feet directed in the way of peace. GREEK EXPOSITOR. (Metaphrastes) Oh the wonderful straitening and banishment which He underwent, Who holds the whole world in His hands! From the very beginning He seeks for poverty, and ennobles it in His own person. CHRYSOSTOM. (non occ.) Surely if He had so willed it, He might have come moving the heavens, making the earth to shake, and shooting forth His thunderbolts; but such was not the way of His going forth; His desire was not to destroy, but to save; and to trample upon human pride from its very birth, therefore He is not only man, but a poor man, and has chosen a poor mother, who had not even a cradle where she might lay her new born Child; as it follows, and she laid him in the manger. BEDE. He is confined in the narrow space of a rude manger, whose seat is the heavens, that He may give us ample room in the joys of His heavenly kingdom. He Who is the bread of Angels is laid down in a manger, that He might feast us, as it were the sacred animals, with the bread of His flesh. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. He finds man in his corrupt affections become like the beasts that perish, and therefore He is laid in the manger, in the place of food, that we changing the life of beasts, might be brought to the knowledge that befits man, partaking not of hay, but of the heavenly bread, the lifegiving body.

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

  GREGORY. (18 Moral. c. 52. super Job 28:19.) To distinguish His holiness from ours, Jesus is stated in an especial manner to be born holy. For we although indeed made holy, are not born so, for we are constrained by the very condition of our corruptible nature to cry out with the Prophet, Behold, I was conceived in iniquity. (Ps. 51:5.) But He alone is in truth holy, who was not conceived by the cementing of a fleshly union, nor as the heretics rave, one person in His human nature, another in His divine; not conceived and brought forth a mere man, and afterwards by his merits, obtained that He should be God, but the Angel announcing and the Spirit coming, first the Word in the womb, afterwards within the womb the Word made flesh. Whence it follows, Shall be called the Son of God. GREEK EXPOSITOR. (Victor Presbyter.) But observe, how the Angel has declared the whole Trinity to the Virgin, making mention of the Holy Spirit, the Power, and the Most High, for the Trinity is indivisible.c 1:36–3836. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. 37. For with God nothing shall be impossible. 38. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. CHRYSOSTOM. (49 in Gen.) Seeing that his previous words had overcome the mind of the virgin, the angel drops his discourse to a humbler subject, persuading her by reference to sensible things. Hence he says, And, behold, Elisabeth thy cousin, &c. Mark the discretion of Gabriel; he did not remind her of Sarah, or Rebecca, or Rachel, because they were examples of ancient times, but he brings forward a recent event, that he might the more forcibly strike her mind. For this reason also he noticed the age, saying, She also hath conceived a son in her old age; and the natural infirmity also. As it follows, And this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For not immediately at the beginning of Elisabeth’s conception did he make this announcement, but after the space of six months, that the swelling of her womb might confirm its truth.

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

  AMBROSE. And can you wonder if He who is subject to His mother, also submits to His Father? Surely that subjection is a mark not of weakness but of filial duty. Let then the heretic so raise his head as to assert that He who is sent has need of other help; yet why should He need human help, in obeying His mother’s authority? He was obedient to a handmaid, He was obedient to His pretended father, and do you wonder whether He obeyed God? Or is it a mark of duty to obey man, of weakness to obey God? BEDE. The Virgin, whether she understood or whether she could not yet understand, equally laid up all things in her heart for reflection and diligent examination. Hence it follows, And his mother laid up all these things, &c. Mark the wisest of mothers, Mary the mother of true wisdom, becomes the scholar or disciple of the Child. For she yielded to Him not as to a boy, nor as to a man, but as unto God. Further, she pondered upon both His divine words and works, so that nothing that was said or done by Him was lost upon her, but as the Word itself was before in her womb, so now she conceived the ways and words of the same, and in a manner nursed them in her heart. And while indeed she thought upon one thing at the time, another she wanted to be more clearly revealed to her; and this was her constant rule and law through her whole life. It follows, And Jesus increased in wisdom. THEOPHYLACT. Not that He became wise by making progress, but that by degrees He revealed His wisdom. As it was when He disputed with the Scribes, asking them questions of their law to the astonishment of all who heard Him. You see then how He increased in wisdom, in that He became known to many, and caused them to wonder, for the shewing forth of His wisdom is His increase. But mark how the Evangelist, having interpreted what it is to increase in wisdom, adds, and in stature, declaring thereby that an increase or growth in age is an increase in wisdom.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  He was then , and is now, working all the time, or perhaps it \\'ould be more accurate to say that he is seeing all the time; and the reality of his seeing caused me to begin to see. Now, what I began to see was not, at that time, to tell the truth, his painting; that came later; what I saw, first of all, was a brown leaf on black asphalt, oil moving like mercury in the black water of the gutter, grass pushing itself up through a crevice in the sidewalk. And because I was seeing it with Beauford, because Beauford caused me to see it, the very col ours underwent a most disturbing and salutary change. The brown leaf on the black asphalt, fi>r example -what colours were these, really? To stare at the leaf long enough, to try to apprehend the leaf , was to discover many colours in it; and though black had been described to me as the absence of light, it became very clear to me that if this were true, we would never have been able to see the colour; black: the light is trapped in it and struggles upward, rather like that grass pushing upward through the cement. It was humbling to be forced to realise that the light fell down from heaven, on everything, on everybody, and that the light was always chang ing. Paradoxically, this meant for me that memory is a traitor and that lif e docs not contain the past tense: the sunset one saw yesterday, the leaf that burned, or the rain that fell, have not really been seen unless one is prepared to see them every day. As Bcauf(Jrd is, to his eternal credit, and for our health and hope. Perhaps I am so struck by the light in Beauford's paintings because he comes from darkness-as I do, as, in fact, we all do. But the darkness of Bcauf(>rd's beginnings, in Tennessee, many years ago, was a black-blue midnight indeed, opaque, and full of sorrow. And I do not know, nor will any of us ever really know, what kind of strength it was that enabled him to make so dogged and splendid a journey. In any case, from 720 ON THE PAINTER BE AUFORD DEL AN EY 721 Tennessee, he eventually came to Paris (I have the impression that he walked and swam) and for a while lived in a suburb of Paris, Clamart.

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

  Accordingly the higher intelligences receive their perfection from a higher source of knowledge. Now in every disposition of providence, the order of effects is derived from the form of agents: since the effect must needs proceed from its cause in some kind of likeness. Now it is for the sake of an end that the cause communicates the likeness of its form to the effect. Hence the first principle in the dispositions of providence is the end; the second is the form of the agent; the third is the appointment of the order of effects. Consequently in the order of the intellect the highest degree is the consideration of the idea of order, in the end; the second degree is the same consideration, in the form; while the third is the knowledge of the disposition of order in itself and not in a higher principle. Wherefore the art which considers the end governs the art which considers the form, as the art of sailing governs the art of shipbuilding. And the art which considers the form governs the art which considers only the order of movements which prepare the way for the form, as the art of shipbuilding governs the handiwork of the builders. Accordingly there is a certain order among the intelligences who take from God Himself immediate and perfect cognizance of the order of divine providence. The first and highest perceive the ordered scheme of providence in the last end itself which is the divine goodness, some of them, however, clearer than others; and these are called Seraphim, i.e. fiery or setting on fire, because fire is used to designate intensity of love or desire, which are about the end. Hence Dionysius says that this name indicates both their fervent and quivering activity towards God, and their leading lower things to God as their end. The second place belongs to those who acquire perfect knowledge of the scheme of providence in the divine form: and these are called Cherubim which signifies fulness of knowledge: for knowledge is made complete through the form of the thing known. Wherefore Dionysius says that their name indicates that they contemplate the highest operative power of the divine beauty. The third grade is of those who contemplate the disposition of divine judgements in itself: and they are called Thrones: because the throne is significative of judicial power, according to Ps. 9:5: Thou hast sat on the throne, who judgest justice. Hence Dionysius says that this name signifies that they are God-bearers and adapted for the obedient fulfilment of all divine undertakings. What has been said must however be understood, not as though the divine goodness, essence, and knowledge of the disposition of things were three distinct things, but in the sense that according to what we have been saying we may look at the matter in question from different points of view.

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

  GREGORY. (Hom. 7. in Evan.) But John denounces himself as unworthy to loose the latchet of Christ’s shoes: as if he openly said, I am not able to disclose the footsteps of my Redeemer, who do not presume unworthily to take unto myself the name of bridegroom, for it was an ancient custom thata when a man refused to take to wife her whom he ought, whoever should come to her betrothed by right of kin, was to loose his shoe. Or because shoes are made from the skins of dead animals, our Lord being made flesh appeared as it were with shoes, as taking upon Himself the carcase of our corruption. The latchet of the shoe is the connexion of the mystery. John therefore can not loose the latchet of the shoe, because neither is he able to fathom the mystery of the Incarnation, though he acknowledged it by the Spirit of prophecy. CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) And having said that his own baptism was only with water, he next shews the excellence of that baptism which was brought by Christ, adding, He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and fire, signifying by the very metaphor which he uses the abundance of grace. For he says not, “He shall give you the Holy Spirit,” but He shall baptize you. And again, by the addition of fire, he shews the power of grace. And as Christ calls the grace of the Spirit, water, (John 4:14; 7:38.) meaning by water the purity resulting from it, and the abundant consolation which is brought to minds which are capable of receiving Him; so also John, by the word fire, expresses the fervour and uprightness of grace, as well as the consuming of sins. BEDE. The Holy Spirit also may be understood by the word fire, for He kindles with love and enlightens with wisdom the hearts which He fills. Hence also the Apostles received the baptism of the Spirit in the appearance of fire. There are some who explain it, that now we are baptized with the Spirit, hereafter we shall be with fire, that as in truth we are now born again to the remission of our sins by water and the Spirit, so then we shall be cleansed from certain lighter sins by the baptism of purifying fire. ORIGEN. And as John was waiting by the river Jordan for those who came to his baptism, and some he drove away, saying, Generation of vipers, but those who confessed their sins he received, so shall the Lord Jesus stand in the fiery stream with the flaming sword, that whoever after the close of this life desires to pass over to Paradise and needs purification, He may baptize him with this laver, and pass him over to paradise, but whoso has not the seal of the former baptisms, him He shall not baptize with the laver of fire.

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

  31. Hence, according, to Simonides, “ Only God has this honor, ” I and it is unfitting that a man should not seek a knowledge which befits him. Some poets accordingly say that the deity is naturally envious; and it is most likely that it should happen in this case, and that all those who are imperfect are unfortunate. But it is not fitting that the deity should be envious, for as the proverb says: “ The poets tell many lies. ” 32. Nor must we think that any other science is more honorable than this. For what is most divine is most honorable. But then it alone will be such, and in two ways. For of all knowledge that which God most properly has is divine; and if there is any such knowledge, it is concerned with divine matters. But this science alone has both of these characteristics; for God seems to be a cause and in some sense a principle according to all men; and such [knowledge as this] God either alone has, or has in the highest degree. Therefore, all the other sciences are more necessary, but none is more excellent. 33. But it is necessary in a sense to bring to a halt the progression of this science at the contrary of our original questions. Indeed, as we have said, all men begin by wondering whether things are as strange as chance occurrences appear to those who do not yet know the cause; or by wondering about the changes in the course of the sun, or about the incommensurability of the diagonal [of a square]. For it would seem an object of wonder to all it something having the nature of number were immeasurable. But it is necessary to advance to the contrary view and, as the proverb says, the worthier one, as also happens in a sense in these matters when men have learned them. For nothing would surprise a geometrician more than if the diagonal [of a square] should become commensurable [with a side]. It has been stated, then, what the nature is of the science which we are seeking, and what its goal is for which our search and whole method must be undertaken. COMMENTARY WHY THIS SCIENCE IS CALLED SPECULATIVE53. First, he gives this argument. No science in which knowledge itself is sought for its own sake is a practical science, but a speculative one. Bot that science which is wisdom, or philosophy as it is called, exists for the sake of knowledge itself. Hence it is speculative and not practical. He proves the minor premise in this way. Whoever seeks as an end to escape from ignorance tends toward knowledge for itself. But those who philosophize seek as an end to escape from ignorance. Therefore they tend towards knowledge for itself.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  As I walked along that path, I felt drawn from myself, elated, struck stupidly good for a moment by the extravagant beauty of the world. The air was thick with movement, butterflies and day moths and also, hanging iridescent in the sun, tiny ephemerae shining and embalmed, pushed helplessly here and there by the light breeze. The grasses and trees were releasing in a great exhalation pods of seeds, the tiny grains each sheltered and propelled by a tuft of hair like a parachute or umbrella. I thought, as I watched this sowing of the earth, of Whitman, whose poems I had just taught to the students who were listening now to their lectures on mathematical linguistics, which they would recount to me over dinner in the town, telling me how they imagined my reactions to the arguments made about poetry and the structures of meter and rhyme, their numerical claims on our pleasure. There were lines in Whitman’s poems that had always struck me as exaggerated in their enthusiasm, their unhinged eroticism; they embarrassed me a little, though my students loved them, greeting them each year with laughter. It was these lines that came to me as I stood on that path in Blagoevgrad, watching seeds come down like snow, that defined and enriched that moment. What were those seeds if not the wind’s soft-tickling genitals, the world’s procreant urge, and I realized I had always read them poorly, the lines I had failed to understand; they weren’t exaggerated at all, they were exact, and for a moment I understood his desire to be naked before the world, his madness, as he says, to be in contact with it. I even felt something of that desire myself, though it was nothing like madness for me, in my life lived almost always beneath the pitch of poetry, a life of inhibition and missed chances, perhaps, but also a bearable life, a life that to some extent I had chosen and continued to choose. I crossed a small wooden footbridge, stopping briefly to peer at the churning waters and feel their vibration in the structure that held me above them, and found a small café nestled in a bend in the river, on a plot of land the waters had spared. The café was little more than a shack, but clean and well kept; beside it picnic tables were arranged haphazardly by the water. Many of these were taken already, and I had to sit some distance from the river, though I could still hear the water, a sound that has soothed me ever since I was a child. I sipped my cup of coffee and warm milk, looking at the other tables, which were overrun by large, festive groups, and I remembered there was a holiday of some sort that weekend, there are too many here to keep track.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  It was Billy Budd, an opera I recalled as a gauche, almost amateur affair, and I had not in the least expected to enjoy it; and yet, when Captain Vere’s monologue ended and the scene on board the Indomitable opened up, with the men holy-stoning the deck and singing their oppressed, surging chorus, I was covered in goose-flesh. When Billy, press-ganged from his old ship, sang his farewell to his former life and comrades—‘Farewell, old Rights o’ Man, farewell’—the tears streamed down my face. The young baritone, singing with the greatest beauty and freshness, brought an extraordinary quality of resisted pathos to Billy; in the stammering music his physiognomy, handsome and forthright and yet with a curious fleshy debility about the mouth, made me believe it as his own tragedy. None of this should have surprised me. I had not heard any music for a few days, and I was all charged up, glowing and gratified, so that my sense of everything was heightened. I felt every phrase of the music in a physical way, as if I had turned into a little orchestra myself. In the interval we had champagne, though James would only take a drop, saying it would give him a headache. He was prone to bad headaches, often of a nervous kind (for instance, when he had a clear weekend after being on call for two or three weeks he would spend it supine in a darkened room, a hand pressed to his brow). The heat and intensity of a theatre always brought on a bit of a head for him too. I think he concentrated exceptionally hard—at a concert he would either follow the score or his knuckles would be white with tension—whereas I, though I was gripped and appalled by the opera, blubbing again at the despair of the poor little Novice, his body and spirit broken by his flogging, had also had periods of several minutes’ duration when I had paid no attention at all, thinking about Phil, and sex, and what I was going to do later. My grandfather looked at me apprehensively. ‘Are you enjoying it, darling?’ he asked. ‘I think it’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘It’s a funny old production, but there’s something quite touching about that.’ ‘Mm—I agree. Quite unchanged since the very first performance, of course. It’s a museum piece, still being used after thirty years. We had a lot of talk about a new production, but we felt the loot could be better spent on something else.’ ‘Yes.’ I was on for more champagne already. ‘What do you think, James?’ ‘Oh, I’m enjoying it,’ James said, with an emphasis that suggested reservations. His eyes were darkly rimmed, he looked sallow with lack of sleep, and I wondered what it would be like to come to the crowded unreality of a theatre after a day’s long concentration on illness and misery. ‘I don’t know if it’s a piece you especially care for.’

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  The Dome of the Rock, I was told, was the first major building to be constructed in the Muslim world. Here was another faith that, in its earliest days, had been proud to declare to the world that it was firmly rooted in Judaism. Ahmed and his family took me up to the Dome one Saturday, and I stared at the rock from which the prophet Muhammad was said to have ascended to heaven. It was also the rock on which the prophet Abraham had offered his son to God, Ahmed explained. Again, I felt ashamed of my ignorance. I knew nothing— nothing at all— about any of these traditions. I had had no idea that Muslims venerated Abraham, but now Ahmed told me that the Koran revered all the great prophets of the past, even Jesus. And when we visited the Mosque of al-Aqsa at the southern end of Herod’s huge platform, I felt immediately at home. There were light, space, and silence. A bird flew in from outside: the mosque seemed to be inviting the world to enter, instead of shutting the profane world out. I watched Muslims sitting on the floor, studying the Koran— looking remarkably like the Jews studying Torah in the yeshiva as their lips mouthed the sacred language. This, I realized, was a form of communion. By repeating words that God had in some sense spoken to Muhammad, Muslims were taking the Word of God into their very being. By doing what God had somehow done, they were symbolically positioning themselves in the place where God was. My project, of course, demanded that I concentrate on Judaism and Christianity. I had no brief as yet to study Islam, but I found that in Jerusalem it was impossible to ignore this third member of the Abrahamic family. On my very first morning, I had been torn violently from sleep at dawn by the ear- splitting call to prayer, which exploded at dawn from the minaret beside the American Colony Hotel. I had sprung up in bed, dry mouthed, with my heart beating wildly. Islam had erupted into my world as a reality that was raw, alien, shocking, intrusive, and wholly unexpected. But after that first morning, the muezzin never woke me again, though the dawn call was still issued at exactly the same number of decibels. I had somehow managed to absorb and accommodate it. Indeed, I soon learned to love the strange Arabic chant as it echoed through the streets of Jerusalem and filled the valleys and hills around the Old City. The call to prayer was a constant reminder that whether Christians or Jews liked it or not, Islam was a part of their story too. Perhaps we were talking about a tradition that had gone not in two directions but in three.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I had not known that there was such a place as this, at all - this place that was so squalid and so splendid, so ugly and so grand, where every imaginable manner of person stood, or strolled, or lounged, side by side.There were ladies and gentlemen, stepping from carriages.There were girls with trays of flowers and fruit; and coffee-sellers, and sherbet-sellers, and soup-men.There were soldiers in scarlet jackets; there were off-duty shop-boys in bowlers and boaters and checks. There were women in shawls, and women in neck-ties; and women in short skirts, showing their ankles.There were black men, and Chinamen, and Italians and Greeks. There were newcomers to the city, gazing about them as dazed and confounded as I; and there were people curled on steps and benches, people in clothes that were crumpled or stained, who looked as if they spent all their daylit hours here - and all their dark ones, too.I gazed at Kitty, and my face, I suppose, showed my amazement, for she laughed, and stroked my cheek, then seized my hand and held it.‘We are at the heart of London,’ said Mr Bliss as she did so, ‘the very heart of it. Over there’ - he nodded to the Alhambra - ‘and all around us’ - and here he swept his hand across the square itself - ‘you see what makes that great heart beat: Variety! Variety, Miss Astley, which age cannot wither, nor custom stale.’ Now he turned to Kitty. ‘We stand,’ he said, ‘before the greatest Temple of Variety in all the land. Tomorrow, Miss Butler - tomorrow, or next week, or next month, perhaps, but soon, soon, I promise you - you will stand within it, your feet upon its stage. Then it will be you that sets the heart of London racing! You that makes the throats of the city shout, “Brava!”’As he spoke he lifted his hat, and punched the air with it; one or two passers-by turned their faces towards us, then looked away quite unconcerned. His words, I thought, were marvellous ones - and I knew Kitty thought so, too, for she gripped my hand at the sound of them, and gave a little shudder of delight; and her cheeks were flushed, as mine were, and her eyes, like mine, were shining and wide.We didn’t linger very long in Leicester Square after that. Mr Bliss hailed a boy, and gave him a shilling to fetch us three foaming glasses from the sherbet-seller, and we sat for a minute in Shakespeare’s shadow, sipping our drinks and gazing at the people who passed us by, and at the notices outside the Empire, where Kitty’s name, we knew, would soon be pasted in letters three feet high. But when our glasses were empty, he slapped his hands together and said we must be off, for Brixton and Mrs Dendy - our new landlady - awaited; and he led us back to the brougham and handed us to our seats.

• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  He therefore invoked the language of the book of Daniel—against the very city and Temple for which Daniel had been so concerned. The “abomination that desolates” would stand in the Temple (Dan. 9:27; Matt. 24:15) not as a prelude to the Temple being rescued, but rather as a prelude to the tumultuous event that would be like the fall of Babylon itself, an event for which the only appropriate language would be the darkening of sun and moon and the falling of the stars (Matt. 24:29; Isa. 13:10). And in that terrible event, Jesus wanted his followers to see the sign of his own vindication. No longer would the Temple in Jerusalem be the place where heaven and earth met. From now on, heaven and earth would meet in the person and through the achievement of the “one like a son of man,” who after his suffering would be vindicated, who would be “coming on the clouds of heaven” to be seated beside “the Ancient One” (Matt. 24:30, quoting Dan. 7:13). The greatest empires of the world would do their worst, and Israel’s representative would be enthroned as their Lord, establishing a kingdom that could never be shaken. To say that this was not what anyone else in Israel at the time had imagined, let alone dreamed of or prayed for, was putting it mildly. The disciples themselves must have been shocked and dismayed. But this vision of judgment is not an extra bit of teaching tacked onto the end of a public career that was in all other respects about something else. The note of warning had been there throughout, from the Sermon on the Mount (think of the foolish man building his house on the sand!), to the Nazareth Manifesto (think of God’s blessing bypassing God’s people and going out to the foreigners!), to the solemn warnings in Luke 13, following reports of Jews being killed by Roman soldiers and by a falling tower in the southeast corner of Jerusalem, to repent or to perish in the same way. No wonder people thought Jesus was like Jeremiah, always warning that the enemy would come and destroy, and that when that happened it would be God’s own wrath rather than simply a ghastly accident. Then comes the twist. Jesus was not simply announcing God’s judgment on his rebel people, warning like Jeremiah that Israel and its leaders had so badly misread God’s vocation that they were now rushing down a steep slope to destruction. Jesus was speaking and acting in such a way as to imply that he was to go ahead of his people, to meet the powers of destruction in person, to take their full weight on himself, so as to make a way through, a way in which God’s people could be renewed, could rediscover their vocation to be a light to the nations, could be rescued from their continuing slavery and exile.