Fear

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 218 of 529 · 20 per page

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Last night I gave a talk to the Black students at the university about coming to see ourselves as part of an international community of people of Color, how we must train ourselves to question what our Blackness—our Africanness—can mean on the world stage. And how as members of that international community, we must assume responsibility for our actions, or lack of action, as americans. Otherwise, no matter how relative that power might be, we are yielding it up to the opposition to be used against us, and against the forces for liberation around the world. For instance, what are our responsibilities as educated Black women toward the land-rights struggles of other people of Color here and abroad? I want to write down everything I know about being afraid, but I’d probably never have enough time to write anything else. Afraid is a country where they issue us passports at birth and hope we never seek citizenship in any other country. The face of afraid keeps changing constantly, and I can count on that change. I need to travel light and fast, and there’s a lot of baggage I’m going to have to leave behind me. Jettison cargo. February 19, 1984 New York City Last night at Blanche and Clare’s house was a celebration of my first fifty years. Liz Maybank called—such a wonderful gift to hear her voice across all these years since she helped care for my children. Black Women’s Survival 101. I’ve had many teachers. Forever is too long to think about. But the future has always been so real to me. Still is. Chances are I don’t have liver cancer. No matter what they say. Chances are. That’s good. That’s bad. Either way I’m a hostage. So what’s new? Coming to terms with the sadness and the fury. And the curiosity. March 18, 1984 En route to St. Croix, Virgin Islands I’ve written nothing of the intensity with which I’ve lived the last few weeks. The hepatologist who tried to frighten me into an immediate liver biopsy without even listening to my objections and questions. Seeing the growth in my liver on the CAT scan, doing a face-off with death, again. Not again, just escalated. This mass in my liver is not a primary liver tumor, so if it is malignant, it’s most likely metastasized breast cancer. Not curable. Arrestable, not curable. This is a very bad dream, and I’m the only person who can wake myself up. I had a talk before I left with Peter, my breast surgeon. He says that if it is liver cancer, with the standard treatments—surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy—we’re talking four or five years at best. Without treatment, he says, maybe three or four. In other words, western medicine doesn’t have a very impressive track record with cancer metastasized to the liver.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  GIOVANNI'S ROOM 149 ary prize. But this man's life was over. He was fond of saying that, since to be in prison was simply not to live, the death penalty was the only merciful verdict any jury could deliver. I remember thinking that, in effect, he had never left prison. Prison was all that was real to him; he could speak of nothing else. All his move- ments, even to the lighting of a cigarette, were stealthy, wherever his eyes focused one saw a wall rise up. His face, the color of his face, brought to mind darkness and dampness, I felt that if one cut him, his flesh would be the flesh of mushrooms. And he described to us in avid, nostalgic detail the barred windows, the barred doors, the judas, the guards standing at far ends of corridors, under the light. It is three tiers high inside the prison and everything is the color of gunmetal. Everything is dark and cold, except for those patches of light, where author- ity stands. There is on the air perpetually the memory of fists against the metal, a dull, boom- ing tom-tom possibility, like the possibility of madness. The guards move and mutter and pace the corridors and boom dully up and down the stairs. They are in black, they carry guns, they are always afraid, they scarcely dare be kind. Three tiers down, in the prison's center, in the prison's great, cold heart, there is always activ- ity: trusted prisoners wheeling things about, going in and out of the offices, ingratiating themselves with the guards for privileges of cigarettes, alcohol, and sex. The night deepens James Baldwin 150 in the prison, there is muttering everywhere, and everybody knows—somehow—that death will be entering the prison courtyard early in the morning. Very early in the morning, before the trusties begin wheeling great garbage cans of food along the corridors, three men in black will come noiselessly down the corridor, one of them will turn the key in the lock. They will lay hands on someone and rush him down the corridor, first to the priest and then to a door which will open only for him, which will allow him, perhaps, one glimpse of the morning be- fore he is thrown forward on his belly on a board and the knife falls on his neck.

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

  We’ll talk about other tough stuff like money, fear, and the chlamydia we got from that rugby player we met in a New York City bar in the ’90s (or is that just me?), before we’ll go near that which will remain unspeakable. Instead, we shove death under the rug with other unsightly things, like pennies and lint-covered Tic Tacs. Our fear of death starts at a young age. My friend Suzanne O’Brien, RN, founder of Doulagivers, an organization that offers end-of-life care training, says that our first experiences with death often shape our fears around it. (Anyone else completely traumatized as a kid by Bambi?) Many of us were raised by parents who thought it was best to shield us from the topic as a means of protection. But when we’re shielded from conversations or even the acknowledgment of death, we wind up filling in the gaps with our own imagination, which is rarely accurate or helpful— especially when we’re children. One reason adults might be hush-hush about death and mortality is that they have their own disordered relationship to it, so we pick up their baggage, too. So often, it’s not that kids can’t handle the truth but that their caregivers are illequipped to communicate openly about it. One of my first experiences with death was that of my grandpa passing when I was nine years old. I was lucky to have a mom who sat me down and opted to brass-tacks his departure to me. She lovingly stated the facts. And for reasons I can’t fully explain, I understood that he was gone, but that didn’t mean my feelings for him were gone. To me, he was still Pops. I still loved him, and he was still with me. No one needed to explain that to me; it’s just something I innately felt. At his wake, I was so convinced of his continued presence that it was business as usual. I did what I always did when I said goodbye to him after a visit. I leaned over the casket to give him a kiss. Before I knew what hit me, my horrified neighbor swatted my ass. “That’s disrespectful!” Thankfully, I had enough maturity (even though I had yet to reach double digits!) to know that this was her issue, not mine. FYI, grief expert Julia Samuel shares many wonderful approaches to talk to children about death in honest and age-appropriate ways. Her book Grief Works is for all ages and among the most helpful I’ve read. Can someone please drop one off at my old neighbor’s house? Honoring death as the natural and sacred passage it is goes against the grain of most everything we’ve been taught by our age-phobic culture—especially as women.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  had twice laid hands on her, she had strength enough both times to break from his grasp, he despaired of ever taking her ahve, and stabbed her in the loins, to see if pain would make her yield what fear and force had failed to extort from her. But it was quite the reverse ; for as a brave soldier when he sees his own blood is the hotter to revenge himself on his enemies and acquire honour, so, her chaste heart gathering new strength, she ran faster than ever, to escape falling into the hands of that wretch, at the same time remonstrating with him in the best way she could, thinking by that means to make him conscious of his fault. But he was in such a frenzy that he was incapable of profiting by good advice. In spite of the speed with which she ran as long as her strength lasted, she received several more wounds, till at length, weakened by loss of blood, and feeling the approach of death, she raised her eyes and her clasped hands to heaven, and gave thanks to God, whom she called her strength, her virtue, her patience, and her chastity, be- seeching him to accept the blood which, according to his commandment, was shed through respect for that of his son, wherein she was thoroughly assured that all sins are washed out, and effaced from the memory of his wrath. Then exclaiming " Lord, receive my soul which thy goodness has redeemed," she fell on her face, and re- ceived several more wounds from the villain, who, after she had lost the power of speech and motion, satisfied his lust, and fled with such speed that, in spite of all efforts to track him, he was never heard of afterwards. The little girl who had been in bed with the poor woman had hid herself beneath it in her fright; but as soon as she saw that the man was gone, she went to her mistress, and finding her speechless and motionless, she called out through the window to the neighbours for help Ftfstcfay.] QUEEN OF NAVARRE. ' 2% Esteeming and liking the muleteer's wife as much as any woman in the town, they all hurried at once to her aid, and brought with them surgeons, who found that she had received twenty-five mortal wounds. They did all they could for her, but she was past saving. She lin- gered, however, for an hour, making signs with her eyes and hands, and showing thereby that she had not lost consciousness. A priest having asked her in what faith she died, she replied, by signs as unequivocal as speech, that she put her trust in the death of Jesus Christ, whom she hoped to see in his heavenly glory. And so, with a serene countenance and eyes uplifted to heaven, she surrendered her chaste body to the earth, and her soul to her Creator.

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

  I answer that, Consent to conjugal union if expressed in words of the future does not make a marriage, but a promise of marriage; and this promise is called “a betrothal from plighting one’s troth,” as Isidore says (Etym. iv). For before the use of writing-tablets, they used to give pledges of marriage, by which they plighted their mutual consent under the marriage code, and they provided guarantors. This promise is made in two ways, namely absolutely, or conditionally. Absolutely, in four ways: firstly, a mere promise, by saying: “I will take thee for my wife,” and conversely; secondly, by giving betrothal pledges, such as money and the like; thirdly, by giving an engagement ring; fourthly, by the addition of an oath. If, however, this promise be made conditionally, we must draw a distinction; for it is either an honorable condition, for instance if we say: “I will take thee, if thy parents consent,” and then the promise holds if the condition is fulfilled, and does not hold if the condition is not fulfilled; or else the condition is dishonorable, and this in two ways: for either it is contrary to the marriage blessings, as if we were to say: “I will take thee if thou promise means of sterility,” and then no betrothal is contracted; or else it is not contrary to the marriage blessings, as were one to say: “I will take thee if thou consent to my thefts,” and then the promise holds, but the condition should be removed. Reply to Objection 1: The betrothal itself and giving of sureties are a ratification of the promise, wherefore it is denominated from these as from that which is more perfect. Reply to Objection 2: By this promise one party is bound to the other in respect of contracting marriage; and he who fulfills not his promise sins mortally, unless a lawful impediment arise; and the Church uses compulsion in the sense that she enjoins a penance for the sin. But he is not compelled by sentence of the court, because compulsory marriages are wont to have evil results; unless the parties be bound by oath, for then he ought to be compelled, in the opinion of some, although others think differently on account of the reason given above, especially if there be fear of one taking the other’s life. Reply to Objection 3: Such things are added only in confirmation of the promise, and consequently they are not distinct from it.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  L’adoptada, she came to be called in the household. The adopted one. M’ija she was also called. My daughter. Adoption, I was to learn although not immediately, is hard to get right. As a concept, even what was then its most widely approved narrative carried bad news: if someone “chose” you, what does that tell you? Doesn’t it tell you that you were available to be “chosen”? Doesn’t it tell you, in the end, that there are only two people in the world? The one who “chose” you? And the other who didn’t? Are we beginning to see how the word “abandonment” might enter the picture? Might we not make efforts to avoid such abandonment? Might not such efforts be characterized as “frantic”? Do we want to ask ourselves what follows? Do we need to ask ourselves what words come next to mind? Isn’t one of those words “fear”? Isn’t another of those words “anxiety”? Terra incognita, as I had seen it until then, meant free of complications. That terra incognita could present its own complications had never occurred to me. 11On the day her adoption became legal, a hot September afternoon in 1966, we took her from the courthouse in downtown Los Angeles to lunch at The Bistro in Beverly Hills. At the courthouse she had been the only baby up for adoption; the other prospective adoptees that day were all adults, petitioning to adopt one another for one or another tax advantage. At The Bistro, too, more predictably, she was the only baby. Qué hermosa, the waiters crooned. Qué chula. They gave us the corner banquette usually saved for Sidney Korshak, a gesture the import of which would be clear only to someone who had lived in that particular community at that particular time. “Let’s just say a nod from Korshak, and the Teamsters change management,” the producer Robert Evans would later write by way of explaining who Sidney Korshak was. “A nod from Korshak, and Vegas shuts down. A nod from Korshak, and the Dodgers suddenly can play night baseball.” The waiters placed her carrier on the table between us. She was wearing a blue-and-white dotted organdy dress. She was not quite seven months old. As far as I was concerned this lunch at Sidney Korshak’s banquette at The Bistro was the happy ending to the choice narrative. We had chosen, the beautiful baby girl had accepted our choice, no natural parent had stood up at the courthouse and exercised his or her absolute legal right under the California law covering private adoptions to simply say no, she’s mine, I want her back. The issue, as I preferred to see it, was now closed. The fear was now gone. She was ours. What I would not realize for another few years was that I had never been the only person in the house to feel the fear.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  What if this neuritis or neuropathy or neurological inflammation has evolved into a condition more malign? I once in my late twenties had an exclusionary diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, believed later by the neurologist who made the diagnosis to be in remission, but what if it is no longer in remission? What if it never was? What if it has returned? What if I stand up from this folding chair in this rehearsal room on West Forty-second Street and collapse, fall to the floor, the folding metal chair collapsing with me? Or what if— (Another series of dire possibilities occurs to me, this series even more alarming than the last—) What if the damage extends beyond the physical? What if the problem is now cognitive? What if the absence of style that I welcomed at one point—the directness that I encouraged, even cultivated—what if this absence of style has now taken on a pernicious life of its own? What if my new inability to summon the right word, the apt thought, the connection that enables the words to make sense, the rhythm, the music itself— What if this new inability is systemic? What if I can never again locate the words that work? 22 W hat if you hadn’t been home when Dr. Watson called— What if you couldn’t meet him at the hospital— What if there’d been an accident on the freeway— What would happen to me then? A ll adopted children, I am told, fear that they will be abandoned by their adoptive parents as they believe themselves to have been abandoned by their natural. They are programmed, by the unique circumstances of their introduction into the family structure, to see abandonment as their role, their fate, the destiny that will overtake them unless they outrun it. Quintana . All adoptive parents, I do not need to be told, fear that they do not deserve the child they were given, that the child will be taken from them. Quintana. Quintana is one of the areas about which I have difficulty being direct. I said early on that adoption is hard to get right but I did not tell you why. “Of course you won’t tell her she’s adopted,” many people said at the time she was born, most of these people the age of my parents, a generation, like that of Diana’s parents, for which adoption remained obscurely shameful, a secret to be kept at any cost. “You couldn’t possibly tell her.” Of course we could possibly tell her. In fact we had already told her. L’adoptada, m’ija . There was never any question of not telling her. What were the alternatives?

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  she was an object rather to inspire pity than love. When the young prince saw her at his bedside, he took her cold and trembling hand, and said, " Why, Francoise, do you think me such a dangerous and cruel man that I eat the women I look at ? Why do you so much fear a man who desires only your honour and advantage ? You know that I have everywhere sought in vain for oppor- tunities to see and speak to you. To grieve me the more, you have shunned the places where I had been used to see you at mass, and thereby you have deprived me of the satisfaction of my eyes and my tongue. But all this has availed you nothing. I have done what you have seen in order to come hither, and have run the risk of breaking my neck in order to have the pleasure of speaking to you without restraint, I entreat you, then, Francoise, since it would be hard for me to have taken all this pains to no purpose, that as I have so much love for you, you will have a little for me." After waiting a long while for her reply, and seeing she had tears in her eyes, and durst not look up, he drew her towards him and almost succeeded in kissing her. " No, my lord, no," she then said, " what you ask cannot be. Though I am but a worm in comparison with you, honour is so dear to me that I would rather die than wound it in the least degree for any pleasure in the world ; and my fear, lest those who have seen you come in conceive a false opinion of me, makes me tremble as you see. Since you are pleased to do me the honour to address me, you will also pardon the liberty I take in replying to you as honour prescribes. I am not, my lord, so foolish or so blind as not to see and know the advantages with which God has endowed you, and to believe that she who shall possess the heart and person of such a prince will be the happiest woman in the world. But what good Fifth day:\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 363

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

  AUGUSTINE. (de Trin. iii. 8.) Yet are we not therefore to think that this visible material world attends the nod of the disobedient angels, but rather the power is given them of God. Nor are we to suppose that such evil angels have creative power, but by their spirituality they know the seeds of things which are hidden from us, and these they secretly scatter by suitable adaptations of the elements, and so they give occasion both to the whole being, and the more rapid increase of substances. For so there are many men who know what sort of creatures use to be generated out of certain herbs, meats, juices and humours, bruised and mingled together in a certain fashion; save only that it is harder for men to do these things, inasmuch as they lack that subtlety of sense, and penetrativeness of body in their limbs dull and of earthly mould. GREGORY. (Mor. xv. 61.) When then Antichrist shall have wrought wonderful prodigies before the eyes of the carnal, he shall draw men after him, all such as delight in present goods, surrendering themselves irrevocably to his sway, Insomuch that if it were possible the very elect should be led astray. ORIGEN. That, If it were possible, is spoken hyperbolically; not that the elect can be led astray, but He wishes to shew that the discourse of heretics is often so persuasive, as to have force to prevail even with those who act2 wisely. GREGORY. (Hom. in Ev. xxxv. i.) Or, because the heart of the elect is assailed with fearful thoughts, yet their faithfulness is not shaken, the Lord comprehends both under the same sentence, for to waver in thought is to err. He adds, If it were possible, because it is not possible that the elect should be taken in error RABANUS. He says not this because it is possible for the divine election to be defeated, but because they, who to men’s judgment seemed elect, shall be led into error. GREGORY. And as darts, when foreseen, are less likely to hit, He adds, Lo, I have told you. Our Lord announces the woes which are to precede the destruction of the world, that when they come they may alarm the less from having been foreknown. HILARY. The false prophets, of whom He had spoken above, shall say of Christ one while, Lo, He is in the desert, in order that they may cause men to wander astray; another while, Lo, He is in the secret chambers, that they may enthral men under the dominion of Antichrist. But the Lord declares Himself to be neither lurking in a remote corner, nor shut up to be visited singly, but that He shall be exhibited to the view of all, and in every place, As the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.

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

  I answer that, Given that the fire of hell is not so called metaphorically, nor an imaginary fire, but a real corporeal fire, we must needs say that the soul will suffer punishment from a corporeal fire, since our Lord said (Mat. 25:41) that this fire was prepared for the devil and his angels, who are incorporeal even as the soul. But how it is that they can thus suffer is explained in many ways. For some have said that the mere fact that the soul sees the fire makes the soul suffer from the fire: wherefore Gregory (Dial. iv, 29) says: “The soul suffers from the fire by merely seeing it.” But this does not seem sufficient, because whatever is seen, from the fact that it is seen, is a perfection of the seer. wherefore it cannot conduce to his punishment, as seen. Sometimes, however, it is of a penal or unpleasant nature accidentally, in so far, to wit, as it is apprehended as something hurtful, and consequently, besides the fact that the soul sees the fire, there must needs be some relation of the soul to the fire, according to which the fire is hurtful to the soul. Hence others have said that although a corporeal fire cannot burn the soul, the soul nevertheless apprehends it as hurtful to itself, and in consequence of this apprehension is seized with fear and sorrow, in fulfillment of Ps. 13:5, “They have trembled for fear, where there was no fear.” Hence Gregory says (Dial. iv, 29) that “the soul burns through seeing itself aflame.” But this, again, seems insufficient, because in this case the soul would suffer from the fire, not in reality but only in apprehension: for although a real passion of sorrow or pain may result from a false imagination, as Augustine observes (Gen. ad lit. xii), it cannot be said in relation to that passion that one really suffers from the thing, but from the image of the thing that is present to one’s fancy. Moreover, this kind of suffering would be more unlike real suffering than that which results from imaginary vision, since the latter is stated to result from real images of things, which images the soul carries about with it, whereas the former results from false fancies which the erring soul imagines: and furthermore, it is not probable that separated souls or demons, who are endowed with keen intelligence, would think it possible for a corporeal fire to hurt them, if they were nowise distressed thereby.

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

  JEROME. The Lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for Him, is to rouse the stewards to watchfulness and carefulness. He shall cut him in sunder, is not to be understood of execution by the sword, but that he shall sever him from the company of the saints. ORIGEN. Or, He shall cut him in sunder, when his spirit, that is, his spiritual gift, shall return to God who gave it; but his soul shall go with his body into hell. But the righteous man is not cut in sunder, but his soul, with his spirit, that is, with his gift, spiritual enters into the kingdom of heaven. They that are cut in sunder have in the in thenceforth no part of that spiritual gift which was from God, but there remains to them that part which was their own, that is, their soul, which shall be punished with their body. JEROME. And shall appoint him his portion with the hypocrites, with those, namely, that were in the field, and grinding at the mill, and were nevertheless left. For as we often say that the hypocrite is one who is one thing, and passes himself for another; so in the field and at the mill he seemed to be doing the same as others, but the event proved that his purpose was different. RABANUS. Or, appoints him his portion with the hypocrites, that is, a twofold share of punishment, that of fire and frost; to the fire belongs the weeping, to the frost the gnashing of teethk. ORIGEN. Or, there shall be weeping for such as have laughed amiss in this world, gnashing of teeth for those who have enjoyed an irrational peace. For being unwilling to suffer bodily pain, now the torture forces their teeth to chatter, with which they have eaten the bitterness of wickedness. From this we may learn that the Lord sets over His household not the faithful and wise only, but the wicked also; and that it will not save them to have been set over His household, but only if they have given them their food in due season, and have abstained from beating and drunkenness.

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

  ORIGEN. Or the Scribes who are sent by Christ, are Scribes according to the Gospel, whom the spirit quickens and the letter does not kill, as did the letter of the Law, which whoso followed ran into vain superstitions. The simple words of the Gospel are sufficient for salvation. But the Scribes of the Law do yet scourge the Scribes of the New Testament, by detracting from them in their synagogues; and the heretics also, who are spiritual Pharisees, with their tongues murder the Christians, and persecute them from city to city, sometimes in the body, sometimes also in the spirit, seeking to drive them from their own city of the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospel, into another Gospel. CHRYSOSTOM. Then to shew them that they should not do this without punishment, He holds out an unspeakable terror over them, That upon you may come all the righteous blood. RABANUS. That is, all the vengeance due for the shedding of the blood of the righteous. JEROME. Concerning the Abel here spoken of, there is no doubt that it is he whom his brother Cain murdered. He is proved to have been righteous, not only by this judgment of the Lord, but by the passage in Genesis, which says that his offerings were accepted by God. But we must enquire who is this Zacharias, son of Barachias, because we read of many Zachariases; and that we might not mistake, here it is added, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Some say that it is that Zacharias who is the eleventh among the twelve Prophets, and his father’s name agrees to this, but when he was slain between the temple and the altar, Scripture does not mention; but above all, in his time there were scarce ‘even the ruins of the temple. Others will have it to be Zacharias the father of John. ORIGEN. A tradition has come down to us, that there was one place in the temple in which virgins were allowed to worship God, married women being forbidden to stand there. And Mary, after the Saviour’s birth, going into the temple, stood to pray in this place of the virgins. And when they who knew that she had borne a Son were hindering her, Zacharias said, that forasmuch as she was still a virgin, she was worthy of the place of the virgins. Whereupon, as though he manifestly were contravening the Law, he was slain there between the temple and the altar by the men of that generation; and thus this word of Christ is true which He spake to those who were standing there, whom ye slew.a

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

  BEDE. (ubi sup.) And fitly the man who is offended is called a little one, for he who is great, whatever he may suffer, departs not from the faith; but he who is little and weak in mind looks out for occasions of stumbling. For this reason we must most of all look to those who are little ones in the faith, lest by our fault they should be offended, and go back from the faith, and fall away from salvation. GREGORY. (in Ezech. 1. Hom. 7) We must observe, however, that in our good works we must sometimes avoid the offence of our neighbour, sometimes look down upon it as of no moment. For in as far as we can do it without sin, we ought to avoid the offence of our neighbour; but if a stumblingblock is laid before men in what concerns the truth, it is better to allow the offence to arise, than that the truth should be abandoned. GREGORY. (de cura past. p. i. c. 2) Mystically by a millstone is expressed the tedious round and toil of a secular life, and by the depths of the sea, the worst damnation is pointed out. He who therefore, after having been brought to a profession of sanctity, destroys others, either by word or example, it had been indeed better for him that his worldly deeds should render him liable to death, under a secular garb, than that his holy office should hold him out as an example for others in his faults, because doubtless if he had fallen alone, his pain in hell would have been of a more endurable kind. 9:43–5043. And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: 44. Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 45. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: 46. Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 47. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: 48. Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 49. For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. 50. Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.

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

  BEDE. For there were many leaders when the destruction of Jerusalem was at hand, who declared themselves to be Christ, and that the time of deliverance was drawing nigh. Many heresiarchs also in the Church have preached that the day of the Lord is at hand, whom the Apostles condemn. (2 Thess. 2:2.) Many Antichrists also came in Christ’s name, of whom the first was Simon Magus, who said, This man is the great power of God. (Acts 8:10.) 21:9–119. But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified: for these things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and by. 10. Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: 11. And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven. GREGORY. (in Hom. 35. in Evang.) God denounces the woes that shall forerun the destruction of the world, that so they may the less disturb when they come, as having been foreknown. For darts strike the less which are foreseen. And so He says, But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, &c. Wars refer to the enemy, commotions to citizens. To shew us then that we shall be troubled from within and without, He asserts that the one we suffer from the enemy, the other from our own brethren. AMBROSE. But of the heavenly words none are greater witnesses than we, upon whom the ends of the world have come. What wars and what rumours of wars have we received! GREGORY. But that the end will not immediately follow these evils which come first, it is added, These things must first come to pass; but the end is not yet, &c. For the last tribulation is preceded by many tribulations, because many evils must come first, that they may await that evil which has no end. It follows, Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, &c. For it must needs be that we should suffer some things from heaven, some from earth, some from the elements, and some from men. Here then are signified the confusions of men. It follows, And great earthquakes shall be in divers places. This relates to the wrath from above. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 11. in Acta.) For an earthquake is at one time a sign of wrath, as when our Lord was crucified the earth shook; but at another time it is a token of God’s providence, as when the Apostles were praying, the place was moved where they were assembled. It follows, and pestilence.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints Course Guidebook (2023)

  6. Radegund: Survivor, Queen, Abbess 44 From Court to Convent Women had little in the way of legal or financial freedoms, but they could own property. Typically, a new wife would receive a dowry from her new husband. For wealthy matches, the gift might be multiple estates or considerable properties. These became the woman’s property to own and manage and to support her if she were widowed. Queens and princesses were certainly conduits for power and wealth, bringing important alliances, trade, and even religion between kingdoms. But in terms of personal power, even a role as an important political pawn did not grant protection. Royal favor was fickle and not to be depended upon. But it was a combination of wealth and political inf luence that bolstered most successful Merovingian queens’ longevity. Their reputation and status at court enabled queens to practice a quiet sort of diplomacy. Merovingian queens did enter convents in widowhood, but Radegund’s feat in achieving separation from her husband during his life was extraordinary. Her departure from court seems to have been closely linked to Chlotar’s murder of her brother, who had also been taken as a child captive after the fall of Thuringia and may have been killed as a consequence of an uprising there. Venantius gives the most detailed account of Radegund’s gradual progression to a consecrated monastic life. At first, he says, she left court and sought refuge with the friendly bishop Médard, who was later himself recognized as a major Merovingian saint. Knowing that she was still married, he refused to consecrate her as a nun. After a bold effort to persuade him, she got her wish. As a queen, Radegund knew how to exert her limited personal influence just where it mattered most. Her skillful networking was on thrilling display in the founding of her monastery of the Holy Cross and in the ways in which she elevated it from an aristocratic women’s refuge to a center of political and spiritual power.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints Course Guidebook (2023)

  16. Elizabeth Ann Seton: Convert and Caretaker 120 It was clear to Elizabeth that her husband did not have a head for business, and by early 1800, the business was clearly going under. In the nick of time, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Act, allowing businessmen to organize and discharge their debts in a highly structured process overseen by committee. The family managed to limp along thanks to the kindness of friends. They moved into the first of a long series of rental homes. It’s at this point that Elizabeth was drawn to organized religion. She and her sister-in-law Rebecca became regular attendees at Trinity Church, the parish for New York’s wealthy Episcopalians. They were particularly enthralled by an assistant rector there, John Henry Hobart, whose impassioned sermons stirred the women to form a private prayer circle. Elizabeth’s faith seems especially linked to fear of death—she had seen a good friend die recently, and William was increasingly showing signs of consumption, or tuberculosis. As they could no longer afford their rental home, Elizabeth and the children spent a summer with her father, who lived now in an isolated house as the quarantine officer for the Port of New York. It was his responsibility to inspect ships coming in and quarantine the passengers and crew if they showed signs of communicable disease. The entire family contracted typhus at the end of the summer. The children recovered quickly, but Richard Bayley died of it, and Elizabeth tended him in his final days. In the fall of 1803, Elizabeth, William, and their eldest daughter, Anna Maria, sailed to Livorno to stay with William’s business associates, the Filicchis. Their four younger children were parceled out to various relatives to await their return. In Italy, William’s symptoms meant that they were sent into a 30-day quarantine—not a field hospital with medical treatment, as Richard Bayley had run, but a cold stone room with three pallets on the f loor, a locked door, and apologetic but firm Italian jailers. Her beloved William died only a week after their release from quarantine, and in his final days, Elizabeth cared for him alone.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints Course Guidebook (2023)

  21. Padre Pio: The Science of Miracles 164 In 1960, the Vatican was sent a series of tapes purporting to hold private conversations from the friar’s chambers and confessional. Pope John XXIII wrote privately that he had been told the tapes contained disturbing revelations about improper relationships with women. Yet another apostolic visitor was dispatched to investigate the convent. Extended interviews between the visitor and Padre Pio revealed how the friar had come to mistrust the Vatican. He particularly suspected they wanted to take control of the cash f low coming to the convent from his followers. And he resisted any efforts to turn away journalists or to impose order on the lay Franciscan women who jealously guarded access to him. The visitor made several recommendations to address the issues, and for several years, Padre Pio lived under the new strictures. The Vatican’s efforts to bring Padre Pio’s organization in line ended, however, with the election of Paul VI in 1963, who granted him “full liberty” in his ministry. Pio ended his years among the company of his trusted friends, living simply as he preferred and enjoying the good that his hospital was doing in the community. In the summer of 1968, observers noticed the stigmata on his hands appeared to have healed. A few months later, on September 23, he died quietly in the night. Padre Pio’s feast day is September 23. He is the patron saint of civil defense volunteers, teenagers, stress relief, and the town of Pietrelcina. Some would say he is an unofficial patron saint of Italy as well, so widespread is his veneration there. Reading Luzzatto, Sergio. Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age. Translated by Frederika Randall. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010. During World War II, rumors spread that Padre Pio had powers of levitation and even flight, that he’d miraculously intercepted bombs, and that he’d even appeared to Allied fighters in flight and turned them away from civilian areas. 165 22 Josephine Bakhita: Freed from Slavery T he name her parents called her is lost to today’s scholars and even to herself. But the saint known as Josephine Bakhita is recognized around the world as a symbol of freedom from slavery and of welcome for refugees. Bakhita is the name given her by her kidnappers, who seized her from her village in Darfur and sold her into slavery in faraway cities. For years, she suffered horrific cruelty at the hands of those who enslaved her before she could finally choose her own path.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  After I had gone to bed she called me back to her twice. The first time I could not pierce through the veil of sleep, but I saw her light and heard her in my dreams. Then at 4:30 in the morning, her little fingers of light reached under the lined window curtains, and I got up as if bidden and went out onto the terrace to greet her. The night was very very still; she was low and bright and brilliantly clear. I stood on the terrace in my robe bathed in her strong quiet light. I raised my arms then and prayed for us all, prayed for the strength for all of us who must weather this time ahead with me. My mother moon had awakened me, calling me out into her brightness, and she shone down upon me as a sign, a blessing on that terrace with the soft gurgle of flowing water in my ears, a promise of answering strength to be whoever I need to be. I felt her in my heart, in my bones, in my thin blood, and I heard Margareta’s voice again: “It’s going to be a hard lonely road, but remember, help is on the way.” That was her farewell Tarot reading for me, seventeen years ago. December 27, 1985 Arlesheim Last night I dreamed I was asleep here in my bed at the Klinik and there was a strange physical presence lying beside me on the left side. I couldn’t see it because it was dark, but I felt this body start to touch me on my left thigh, and I knew that this meant great danger. “It must think I’m dead so it can have (claim) me,” I thought, “but if I moan it will know I’m awake and alive and it’ll leave me alone.” So I began to moan softly, but the creature didn’t stop. I could feel its cold fingers beginning to creep over my left hip, and I thought to myself, “Oh, oh, nightmare time! I’ve got to scream louder. Maybe that noise will make it go away, because there is nobody else here to wake me up!” So I screamed and roared in my sleep, and finally after what seemed like a very long time, I woke myself up calling out, and of course there was nothing in my bed at all, but it still felt as if death had really been trying. December 30, 1985 Arlesheim Frances and I went to the Konditorei [pastry shop] in town this afternoon to have a cup of tea and be together away from the hospital, when the elderly schoolteacher with the rhodonite necklace came in and wanted to sit down with us. It was so apparent how badly she wanted to talk that we couldn’t say no, even though we never have enough time alone together.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, de- signed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not. This is certainly what my decision, made so long ago in Joey's bed, came to. I had decided to allow no room in the universe for something which shamed and frightened me. I succeeded very well—by not looking at the universe, by not GIOVANNI'S ROOM 31 looking at myseK, by remaining, in effect, in constant motion. Even constant motion, of coiurse, does not prevent on occasional mysteri- ous drag, a drop, like an airplane hitting an air pocket. And there were a number of those, all drunken, all sordid, one very frightening such drop while I was in the Army which involved a fairy who was later court-martialed out. The panic his punishment caused in me was as close as I ever came to facing in myself the terrors I sometimes saw clouding another man's eyes. What happened was that, all unconscious of what this ennui meant, I wearied of the motion, wearied of the joyless seas of alcohol, wearied of the blunt, bluff, hearty, and totally meaning- less friendships, wearied of wandering through the forests of desperate women, wearied of the work, which fed me only in the most brutally literal sense. Perhaps, as we say in America, I wanted to find myself. This is an interesting phase, not current as far as I know in the lan- guage of any other people, which certainly does not mean what it says but betrays a nagging sus- picion that something has been misplaced. I think now that if 1 had had any intimation that the self I was going to find would turn out to be only the same self from which I had spent so much time in flight, I would have stayed at home. But, again, I think I knew, at the very bottom of my heart, exactly what I was doing when I took the boat for France. — Chapter Two. I met Giovanni during my second year in Paris, when I had no money. On the morning of the evening that we met I had been turned out of my room. I did not owe an awful lot of money, only around six thousand francs, but Parisian hotel-keepers have a way of smelling poverty and then they do what anybody does who is aware of a bad smell; they throw what- ever stinks outside.

• From Another Country (1962)

  This was the night that he saw the eyes unglaze. Later, a girl came over to him. They went around the corner to her room. There they were; he had his tie loosened and his trousers off and they had been just about to begin when the door opened and in walked her “husband.” He was one of the smooth-faced, laughing men who had been in the bar. The girl squealed, rather prettily, and then calmly began to get dressed again. Vivaldo had first been so disappointed that he wanted to cry, then so angry that he wanted to kill. Not until he looked into the man’s eyes did he begin to be afraid. The man looked down at him and smiled. “Where was you thinking of putting that, white boy?” Vivaldo said nothing. He slowly began pulling on his trousers. The man was very dark and very big, nearly as big as Vivaldo, and, of course, at that moment, in much better fighting condition. The girl sat on the edge of the bed, putting on her shoes. There was silence in the room except for her low, disjointed, intermittent humming. He couldn’t quite make out the tune she was humming and this, for some insane reason, drove him wild. “You might at least have waited a couple of minutes,” Vivaldo said. “I never even got it in.” He said this as he was buckling his belt, idly, out of some dim notion that he might thus, in effect, reduce the fine. The words were hardly out of his mouth before the man had struck him, twice, palm open, across the face. Vivaldo staggered backward from the bed into the corner which held the sink and a water glass went crashing to the floor. “Goddamnit,” said the girl, sharply, “ain’t no need to wreck the joint.” And she bent down to pick up the bits of glass. But it also seemed to Vivaldo that she was a little frightened and a little ashamed. “Do what you going to do,” she said, from her knees, “and get him out of here.” Vivaldo and the man stared at each other and terror began draining Vivaldo’s rage out of him. It was not merely the situation which frightened him: it was the man’s eyes. They stared at Vivaldo with a calm, steady hatred, as remote and unanswerable as madness. “You goddamn lucky you didn’t get it in,” he said. “You’d be a mighty sorry white boy if you had. You wouldn’t be putting that white prick in no more black pussy, I can guarantee you that.” Well, if that’s the way you feel, Vivaldo wanted to say, why the hell don’t you keep her off the streets? But it really seemed better—and it seemed, weirdly enough, that the girl was silently trying to convey this to him—to say as little as possible.