Love

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 History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In the life and death of the Redeemer, God’s purpose was to manifest. His love and thus to stir up love in the breast of man, and to draw man by love back to Himself. God might have redeemed man by a word, but He chose to set before man an exhibition of His love in Christ. Christ’s love constitutes the merit of Christ. The theory anticipates the modern moral influence theory of the atonement, so called. 5. Abaelard’s doctrine of sin likewise presents features of difference from the view current in his time.1385 The fall occurred when Eve resolved to eat the forbidden fruit, that is, after her desire was aroused and before the actual partaking of the fruit.1386 The seat of sin is the intention, which is the root, bearing good and bad fruit.1387 Desire or concupiscence is not sin. This intention, intentio, is not the simple purpose, say, to kill a man in opposition to killing one without premeditation, but it is the underlying purpose to do right or wrong. In this

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  geistliche Leben nach der Lehre d. hl. Bernard, Freib., 1906, p. 327. The works of Bernard which present his mystical theology are the Degrees of Humility and Pride, a sermon addressed to the clergy, entitled Conversion, the treatise on Loving God, his Sermons on the Canticles, and his hymns. The author’s intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures is shown on almost every page. He has all the books at his command and quotation follows quotation with great rapidity. Bernard enjoyed the highest reputation among his contemporaries as an expounder of the inner life, as his letters written in answer to questions show. Harnack calls him the religious genius of the twelfth century, the leader of his age, the greatest preacher Germany had ever heard. In matters of religious contemplation he called him a new Augustine, Augustinus redivivus.1425 The practical instinct excluded the speculative element from Bernard as worldly ambition excluded the mystical element from Abaelard. Bernard had the warmest respect for the Apostle Paul and greatly admired Augustine as "the mightiest hammer of the heretics" and "the pillar of the Church."1426 Far more attractive is he as a devotional theologian, descanting on the excellencies of love and repeating Paul’s words. "Let all your things be done in love," 1 Cor. 16:14, than as a champion of orthodoxy and writing, "It is better that one perish than that unity perish."1427 Prayer and personal sanctity, according to Bernard, are the ways to the knowledge of God, and not disputation. The saint, not the disputant, comprehends God.1428 Humility and love are the fundamental ethical principles of theology. The conventual life, with its vigils and fastings, is not an end but a means to develop these two fundamental Christian virtues.1429 Every convent he regarded as a company of the perfect, collegium perfectorum, but not in the sense that all the monks were perfect.1430 The treatise on Loving God asserts that God will be known in the measure in which He is loved. Writing to Cardinal Haimeric, who had inquired "why and how God is to be loved," Bernard replied. "The exciting cause of love to God, is God Himself. The measure of love to God is to love God without measure.1431 The gifts of nature and the soul are adapted to awaken love. But the gifts involved in the soul’s relation to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whom the unbeliever does not know, are inexpressibly more precious and call upon man to exercise an infinite and measureless love, for God is infinite and measureless. The soul is great in the proportion in which it loves God."1432 Love grows with our apprehension of God’s love. As the soul contemplates the cross it is itself pierced with the sword of love, as when it is said in the

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  We were best friends.” Popular, active in school government, and a member of the drill team, Brenda was an ambitious student who excelled at almost everything she tried. She was also beautiful, in the wholesome, all-American farm-girl idiom: in 1980 she was first runner-up in the Miss Twin Falls Pageant. After graduating from high school with honors, Brenda enrolled at the University of Idaho, where she was elected president of her sorority. “But,” says her mother, “that wasn’t the kind of life she wanted to lead, so she came back home to Twin Falls and went to the College of Southern Idaho for two years, then transferred to Brigham Young University.” While attending BYU, Brenda joined a “young adult ward”—an LDS student congregation—where she met Allen Lafferty. “Allen wasn’t a student, but for some reason he started attending that student ward in Provo,” LaRae explains. “He had a lot of charisma, they hit it off, and they just started going together.” “When Brenda started going out with Allen, I was out of the country, on a mission in Argentina,” her sister Betty says. “But she wrote to me every week, and I could tell she was pretty serious about this guy. She’d dated a lot of boys before, but she never got stuck on any one person. Allen was different. He was a returned missionary, and the Laffertys were the picture-perfect LDS family. Everybody in Provo seemed to know them. Plus, Allen is a charmer—all the Lafferty boys have this ability to charm the socks off you. They have this look in their eyes. And Brenda fell for it. Even from Argentina it was obvious she was really in love with Allen.” On April 22, 1982, Allen and Brenda were sealed for time and eternity as husband and wife in the Salt Lake City temple. She was twenty-one years old. At BYU, where Brenda majored in communications, she anchored a television newsmagazine program on KBYU—the local PBS affiliate broadcast throughout Utah on channel 11. According to Betty, “Her ambition was to become an anchorwoman like Michelle King. * We were brought up to be very independent. Our parents taught us that we were given certain talents and we needed to pursue them—that we shouldn’t go through life relying on others when we had all these abilities. “Then Brenda got married, and Allen didn’t want her to work, so she kind of put her broadcasting career on the shelf temporarily, and took a lower-profile job at Castleton’s, one of the nicer stores at the Orem Mall, just to get insurance and help support the family. But Allen started pressuring her to quit that job, too, because he wanted her to be a traditional, subservient wife. He wanted her to be totally reliant on him.” According to LaRae, “Brenda really wanted a career in broadcast journalism. We found out later, after the fact, that she had been offered a job at BYU, teaching in the communications department.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  and Urban VI., gave words of counsel, set forth at length measures and motives of action, used the terms of entreaty and admonition, and did not hesitate to employ threats of divine judgment, as in writing to the Queen of Naples. They abound in wise counsels. The correspondence shows that Catherine had some acquaintance with the New Testament from which she quotes the greater precepts and draws descriptions from the miracle of the water changed into wine and the expulsion of the moneychangers from the temple and such parables as the ten virgins and the marriage-feast. One of her most frequent expressions is the blood of Christ, and in truly mystical or conventual manner she bids her correspondents, even the pope and the cardinals, bathe and drown and inebriate themselves in it, yea, to clothe and fill themselves with it, "for Christ did not buy us with gold or silver or pearls or other precious stones, but with his own precious blood."370 To Catherine the religious life was a subjection of the will to the will of God and the outgoing of the soul in exercises of prayer and the practice of love. "I want you to wholly destroy your own will that it may cling to Christ crucified." So she wrote to a mother bereft of her children. Writing to the recluse, Bartolomea della Seta, she represented the Saviour as saying, "Sin and virtue consist in the consent of the will, there is no sin or virtue unless voluntarily wrought." To another she wrote, "I have already seen many penitents who have been neither patient nor obedient because they have studied to kill their bodies but not their wills."371 Her sound religious philosophy showed itself in insisting again and again that outward discipline is not the only or always the best way to secure the victory of the spirit. If the body is weak or fallen into illness, the rule of discretion sets aside the exercises of bodily discipline. She wrote, "Not only should fasting be abandoned but flesh be eaten and, if once a day is not enough, then four times a day." Again and again she treats of penance as an instrument. "The little good of penance may hinder the greater good of inward piety. Penance cuts off," so she wrote in a remarkable letter to Sister Daniella of Orvieto, "yet thou wilt always find the root in thee, ready to sprout again, but virtue pulls up by the root." Monastic as Catherine was, yet no evangelical guide-book could write more truly than she did in most particulars. And at no point does this noble woman rise higher than when she declined to make her own states the standard for others, and condemned those "who, indiscreetly, want to measure all bodies by one and the same measure, the measure by which they measure themselves." Writing to her niece, Nanna Benincasa, she compared the heart to a lamp, wide above and narrow below.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  This woman, the daughter of one of the leading men of Zürich, was an inmate of the convent of Tosse, near Winterthur. When Suso discovered that she had committed his conversations to writing, he treated her act as "a spiritual theft," and burnt a part of the manuscript. The remainder he preserved, in obedience to a supernatural communication, and revised. Suso appears in the book as "The Servant of the Eternal Wisdom." The Autobiography is a spiritual self-revelation in which the author does not pretend to follow the outward stages of his career. In addition to the facts of his religious experience, he sets forth a number of devotional rules containing much wisdom, and closes with judicious and edifying remarks on the being of God, which he gave to Elsbet in answer to her questions.481 The Book of the Eternal Wisdom, which is in the form of a dialogue between Christ, the Eternal Wisdom, and the writer, has been called by Denifle, who bore Suso’s name, the consummate fruit of German mysticism. It records, in German,482 meditations in which use is made of the Scriptures. Here we have a body of experimental theology such as ruled among the more pious spirits in the German convents of the fourteenth century. Suso declares that one who is without love is as unable to understand a tongue that is quick with love as one speaking in German is unable to understand a Fleming, or as one who hears a report of the music of a harp is unable to understand the feelings of one who has heard the music with his own ears. The Saviour is represented as saying that it would be easier to bring back the years of the past, revive the withered flowers or collect all the droplets of rain than to measure the love—Minne — he has for men. The Servant, after lamenting the hardness of heart which refuses to be moved by the spectacle of the cross and the love of God, seeks to discover how it is that God can at once be so loving and so severe. As for the pains of hell, the lost are represented as exclaiming, "Oh, how we desire that there might be a millstone as wide as the earth and reaching to all parts of heaven, and that a little bird might alight every ten thousand years and peck away a piece of stone as big as the tenth part of a millet seed and continue to peck away every ten thousandth year until it had pecked away a piece as big as a millet seed, and then go on pecking at the same rate until the whole stone were pecked away, so only our torture might come to an end; but that cannot be." Having dwelt upon the agony of the cross and God’s immeasurable love, the bliss of heaven and the woes of hell, Suso proceeds to set forth the dignity of suffering.

• From Trash (1988)

  When I visit Mama, I always look first to her hands and feet to reassure myself. The skin of her hands is transparent—large-veined, wrinkled, and bruised—while her feet are soft with the lotions I rubbed into them every other night of my childhood. That was a special thing between my mother and me, the way she’d give herself the care of my hands, lying across the daybed, telling me stories of what she’d served down at the truck stop, who had complained and who tipped specially well, and most important, who had said what and what she’d said back. I would sit at her feet, laughing and nodding and stroking away the tightness in her muscles, watching the way her mouth would pull taut while under her pale eyelids the pulse of her eyes moved like kittens behind a blanket. Sometimes my love for her would choke me, and I would ache to have her open her eyes and see me there, to see how much I loved her. But mostly I kept my eyes on her skin, the fine traceries of the veins and the knotted cords of ligaments, seeing where she was not beautiful and hiding how scared it made me to see her close up, looking so fragile, and too often, so old. When my mama was twenty-five she already had an old woman’s hands, and I feared them. I did not know then what it was that scared me so. I’ve come to understand since that it was the thought of her growing old, of her dying and leaving me alone. I feared those brown spots, those wrinkles and cracks that lined her wrists, ankles, and the soft shadowed sides of her eyes. I was too young to imagine my own death with anything but an adolescent’s high romantic enjoyment; I pretended often enough that I was dying of a wasting disease that would give lots of time for my aunts, uncles, and stepfather to mourn me. But the idea that anything could touch my mother, that anything would dare to hurt her, was impossible to bear, and I woke up screaming the one night I dreamed of her death—a dream in which I tried bodily to climb to the throne of a Baptist god and demand her return to me. I thought of my mama like a mountain or a cave, a force of nature, a woman who had saved her own life and mine, and would surely save us both over and over again. The wrinkles in her hands made me think of earthquakes and the lines under her eyes hummed of tidal waves in the night. If she was fragile, if she was human, then so was I, and anything might happen. If she were not the backbone of creation itself, then fear would overtake me.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  You must know, then, that according to that which the Provençals relate, there were aforetime in Provence two noble knights, each of whom had castles and vassals under him, called the one Sir Guillaume de Roussillon and the other Sir Guillaume de Guardestaing, and for that they were both men of great prowess in arms, they loved each other with an exceeding love and were wont to go still together and clad in the same colours to every tournament or jousting or other act of arms. Although they abode each in his own castle and were distant, one from other, a good half score miles, yet it came to pass that, Sir Guillaume de Roussillon having a very fair and lovesome lady to wife, Sir Guillaume de Guardestaing, notwithstanding the friendship and fellowship that was between them, become beyond measure enamoured of her and so wrought, now with one means and now with another, that the lady became aware of his passion and knowing him for a very valiant knight, it pleased her and she began to return his love, insomuch that she desired and tendered nothing more than him nor awaited otherwhat than to be solicited of him; the which was not long in coming to pass and they foregathered once and again. Loving each other amain and conversing together less discreetly than behoved, it befell that the husband became aware of their familiarity and was mightily incensed thereat, insomuch that the great love he bore to Guardestaing was turned into mortal hatred; but this he knew better to keep hidden than the two lovers had known to conceal their love and was fully resolved in himself to kill him. Roussillon being in this mind, it befell that a great tourneying was proclaimed in France, the which he forthright signified to Guardestaing and sent to bid him come to him, an it pleased him, so they might take counsel together if and how they should go thither; whereto the other very joyously answered that he would without fail come to sup with him on the ensuing day. Roussillon, hearing this, thought the time come whenas he might avail to kill him and accordingly on the morrow he armed himself and mounting to horse with a servant of his, lay at ambush, maybe a mile from his castle, in a wood whereas Guardestaing must pass.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And as though some mysterious cord stretched between them, Stephen’s heart was troubled at that very moment; intolerably troubled because of Morton, the real home which might not be shared with Mary. Ashamed because of shame laid on another, compassionate and suffering because of her compassion, she was thinking of the girl left alone in Paris—the girl who should have come with her to England, who should have been welcomed and honoured at Morton. Then she suddenly remembered some words from the past, very terrible words: ‘Could you marry me, Stephen?’ Mary turned and walked back to the Rue Jacob. Disheartened and anxious, David lagged beside her. He had done all he could to distract her mind from whatever it was that lay heavy upon it. He had made a pretence of chasing a pigeon, he had barked himself hoarse at a terrified beggar, he had brought her a stick and implored her to throw it, he had caught at her skirt and tugged it politely; in the end he had nearly got run over by a taxi in his desperate efforts to gain her attention. This last attempt had certainly roused her: she had put on his lead—poor, misunderstood David. 3Mary went into Stephen’s study and sat down at the spacious writing-table, for now all of a sudden she had only one ache, and that was the ache of her love for Stephen. And because of her love she wished to comfort, since in every fond woman there is much of the mother. That letter was full of many things which a less privileged pen had best left unwritten—loyalty, faith, consolation, devotion; all this and much more she wrote to Stephen. As she sat there, her heart seemed to swell within her as though in response to some mighty challenge. Thus it was that Mary met and defeated the world’s first tentative onslaught upon them. CHAPTER 431T here comes a time in all passionate attachments when life, real life, must be faced once again with its varied and endless obligations, when the lover knows in his innermost heart that the halcyon days are over. He may well regret this prosaic intrusion, yet to him it will usually seem quite natural, so that while loving not one whit the less, he will bend his neck to the yoke of existence. But the woman, for whom love is an end in itself, finds it harder to submit thus calmly. To every devoted and ardent woman there comes this moment of poignant regretting; and struggle she must to hold it at bay. ‘Not yet, not yet—just a little longer’; until Nature, abhorring her idleness, forces on her the labour of procreation.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Here, then, was a large field of usefulness for a preacher. The convent library afforded special facilities for study. Zwingli made considerable progress in his knowledge of the Scriptures and the Fathers. He read the annotations of Erasmus and the commentaries of Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, and Chrysostom. He made extracts on the margin of his copies of their works which are preserved in the libraries at Zurich. He seems to have esteemed Origen, Jerome, and Chrysostom more, and Augustin less, than Luther did; but he also refers frequently to Augustin in his writings.32 We have an interesting proof of his devotion to the Greek Testament in a MS. preserved in the city library at Zurich. In 1517 he copied with his own hand very neatly the Epistles of Paul and the Hebrews in a little book for constant and convenient use. The text is taken from the first edition of Erasmus, which appeared in March, 1516, and corrects some typographical errors. It is very legible and uniform, and betrays an experienced hand; the marginal notes, in Latin, from Erasmus and patristic commentators, are very small and almost illegible. On the last page he added the following note in Greek: — "These Epistles were written at Einsiedeln of the blessed Mother of God by Huldreich Zwingli, a Swiss of Toggenburg, in the year one thousand five hundred and seventeen of the Incarnation, in the month of June.33 Happily ended."34 At the same time he began at Einsiedeln to attack from the pulpit certain abuses and the sale of indulgences, when Samson crossed the Alps in August, 1518. He says that he began to preach the gospel before Luther’s name was known in Switzerland, adding, however, that at that time he depended too much on Jerome and other Fathers instead of the Scriptures. He told Cardinal Schinner in 1517 that popery had poor foundation in the Scriptures. Myconius, Bullinger, and Capito report, in substantial agreement, that Zwingli preached in Einsiedeln against abuses, and taught the people to worship Christ, and not the Virgin Mary. The inscription on the entrance gate of the convent, promising complete remission of sins, was taken down at his instance.35 Beatus Rhenanus, in a letter of Dec. 6, 1518, applauds his attack upon Samson, the restorer of indulgences, and says that Zwingli preached to the people the purest philosophy of Christ from the fountain.36 On the strength of these testimonies, many historians date the Swiss Reformation from 1516, one year before that of Luther, which began Oct. 31, 1517. But Zwingli’s preaching at Einsiedeln had no such consequences as Luther’s Theses. He was not yet ripe for his task, nor placed on the proper field of action. He was at that time simply an Erasmian or advanced liberal in the Roman Church, laboring for higher education rather than religious renovation, and had no idea of a separation. He enjoyed the full confidence of the abbot, the bishop of Constance, Cardinal Schinner, and even the Pope. At Schinner’s

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It is not addressed to the king of France, and the implied comparison of Francis with Nero in the incidental reference to the Neronian persecution would have defeated such a purpose.411 Calvin, like Melanchthon and Zwingli, started as a humanist, and, like them, made the linguistic and literary culture of the Renaissance tributary to the Reformation. They all admired Erasmus until he opposed the Reformation, for which he had done so much to prepare the way. They went boldly forward, when he timidly retreated. They loved religion more than letters. They admired the heathen classics, but they followed the apostles and evangelists as guides to the higher wisdom of God. § 72. Calvin’s Conversion. 1532. Preface to his Commentary on the Psalms (Opera, XXXI. 21, 22, Latin and French in parallel columns), and his Reply to Sadolet (Opera, V. 389). See above, p. 296. Henry, I. ch. II. Stähelin, I. l6–28. Kampschulte, I. 230. Lefranc, 96 sqq. A brilliant career—as a humanist, or a lawyer, or a churchman—opened before Calvin, when he suddenly embraced the cause of the Reformation, and cast in his lot with a poor persecuted sect. Reformation was in the air. The educated classes could not escape its influence. The seed sown by Lefèvre had sprung up in France. The influence from Germany and Switzerland made itself felt more and more. The clergy opposed the new opinions, the men of letters favored them. Even the court was divided: King Francis I. persecuted the Protestants; his sister, Marguerite d’Angoulème, queen of Navarre, protected them. How could a young scholar of such precocious mind and intense studiousness as Calvin be indifferent to the religious question which agitated the universities of Orleans, Bourges, and Paris? He must have searched the Scriptures long and carefully before he could acquire such familiarity as he shows already in his first theological writings. He speaks of his conversion as a sudden one (subita conversio), but this does not exclude previous preparation any more than in the case of Paul.412 A city may be taken by a single assault, yet after a long siege. Calvin was not an unbeliever, nor an immoral youth; on the contrary, he was a devout Catholic of unblemished character. His conversion, therefore, was a change from Romanism to Protestantism, from papal superstition to evangelical faith, from scholastic traditionalism to biblical simplicity. He mentions no human agency, not even Volmar or Olivetan or Lefèvre. "God himself," he says, "produced the change. He instantly subdued my heart to obedience." Absolute obedience of his intellect to the word of God, and obedience of his will to the will of

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  2:4).855 "The grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men" (Tit. 2:11). "The Lord is long-suffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Pet. 3:9).856 "Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for (the sins of) the whole world" (1 John 2:2). It is impossible to state the doctrine of a universal atonement more clearly in so few words.857 To these passages should be added the divine exhortations to repentance, and the lament of Christ over the inhabitants of Jerusalem who "would not" come to him (Matt. 23:37). These exhortations are insincere or unmeaning, if God does not want all men to be saved, and if men have not the ability to obey or disobey the voice. The same is implied in the command of Christ to preach the gospel to the whole creation (Mark 16:15), and to disciple all nations (Matt. 28:19). It is impossible to restrict these passages to a particular class without doing violence to the grammar and the context. The only way of escape is by the distinction between a revealed will of God, which declares his willingness to save all men, and a secret will of God which means to save only some men.858 Augustin and Luther made this distinction. Calvin uses it in explaining 2 Pet. 3:9, and those passages of the Old Testament which ascribe repentance and changes to the immutable God. But this distinction overthrows the system which it is intended to support. A contradiction between intention and expression is fatal to veracity, which is the foundation of human morality, and must be an essential attribute of the Deity. A man who says the reverse of what he means is called, in plain English, a hypocrite and a liar. It does not help the matter when Calvin says, repeatedly, that there are not two wills in God, but only two ways of speaking adapted to our weakness. Nor does it remove the difficulty when he warns us to rely on the revealed will of God rather than brood over his secret will. The greatest, the deepest, the most comforting word in the Bible is the word, "God is love," and the greatest fact in the world’s history is the manifestation of that love in the person and the work of Christ. That word and this fact are the sum and substance of the gospel, and the only solid foundation of Christian theology. The sovereignty of God is acknowledged by Jews and Mohammedans as well as by Christians, but the love of God is revealed only in the Christian religion. It is the inmost essence of God, and the key to all his ways and works. It is the central truth which sheds light upon all other truths. § 115. Calvin’s Theory of the Sacraments. Inst. bk. IV. chs. XIV.–XIX.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He showed his zeal as well as biblical learning by giving public lectures on the Epistle to the Romans and on the Epistles of Peter; and that he still was a poet, and that, too, of the Renaissance, only in the religious and not usual sense (of regeneration and not renascence), by continuing the translation of the Psalms begun by Clement Marot, and by publishing a drama, classically constructed, on the Sacrifice of Abraham.1283 All these performances were in the French language. While at Lausanne, Beza was taken sick with the plague. Calvin in writing of this to Farel, under date of June 15, 1551, thus pays his tribute to the character of Beza: "I would not be a man if I did not return his love who loves me more than a brother and reveres me as a father: but I am still more concerned at the loss the church would suffer if in the midst of his career he should be suddenly removed by death, for I saw in him a man whose lovely spirit, noble, pure manners, and open-mindedness endeared him to all the righteous. I hope, however, that he will be given back to us in answer to our prayers." Lausanne was then governed by Bern. It was therefore particularly interested in Bern’s alliance with Geneva, and when this was renewed in 1557, after it had been suffered to lapse a year, Beza considered it very providential. In the spring of that year, 1557, persecution broke out against the neighboring Waldenses, and on nomination of the German clergy and with special permission of Bern, Beza, and Farel began a series of visits through Switzerland and upon the Protestant princes of Germany in the interest of the persecuted. The desire was to stir up the Protestants to unite in an appeal to the king of France. Beza was then thirty-eight years old and had been for eight years a successful teacher and preacher. He was therefore of mature years and established reputation. But what rendered the choice of him still more an ideal one was his aristocratic bearing and his familiarity with court life. He accepted his appointment with alacrity, as a man enters upon a course particularly suited to him. Thus Beza started out upon the first of the many journeys which furnished such unique and invaluable services to the cause of French Protestantism. The two delegates made a favorable impression everywhere. The Lutherans especially were pleased with them, although at first inclined to look askance upon two such avowed admirers and followers of Calvin. But when they had returned full of rejoicing that they had accomplished their design and that the Protestant princes and cantons would unite in petitioning the French king on behalf of the persecuted Waldenses, albeit to small effect, alas!

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  through Leviticus were edited by Priestly writers. Deuteronomy was added to this corpus, but there was relatively little Deuteronomic editing in the first four books. Together with the Priestly edition of the Torah, Deuteronomy was a major influence on Jewish theology in the Second Temple period. The main emphasis of that theology was on the observance of the law. Those who kept the law would prosper and live long in the land. Those who did not keep the law would come to grief. This theology did not go unquestioned in Second Temple Judaism. We find a major critique of it in the book of Job. But Deuteronomic theology should not be construed too narrowly as a legalistic religion. At the heart of it stood the command to love the Lord God with all one’s heart and soul. The ordinances and commandments were concerned with human relations, with a strong emphasis on compassion for the disadvantaged in society. Jewish teachers in the Hellenistic period sometimes taught that the whole law could be summed up under two headings, love of God and love of one’s neighbor. The saying attributed to Jesus in the Gospels (Matt 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-31; Luke 10:25-28), on the twofold greatest commandment, sums up at least one strand of Deuteronomic theology as it developed in the Second Temple period.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  The Understanding of God No book of the Hebrew Bible is so rich in metaphorical expressions as Hosea. Often the metaphors are applied to Israel, either to express YHWH’s affection for her (“like grapes in the wilderness,” 9:10) or her wayward behavior (“a luxuriant vine,” 10:1). Even more striking is Hosea’s use of metaphor to portray God. We have already explored one such metaphor, the jealous husband. In chapter 11 Hosea develops another: the loving father. Here God remembers Israel as a child whom he taught to walk and lifted to his cheek. So now, despite their disobedience, he cannot bring himself to destroy them. “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath” (11:8-9). (Admah and Zeboiim were cities destroyed with Sodom and Gomorrah.) On the one hand, God is portrayed in very human terms as someone who can be overcome by emotion. On the other hand, he is “God and no mortal” ( adam’, “man” in the generic sense of human being). What then is the difference between God and a human being? It is not that humans are guided by emotion, and God is not, but that God can overcome the more destructive emotions and be guided by the better, whereas human beings often succumb to the worst. We have no better way to imagine God than in the likeness of human beings, but we should attribute to God what is best in human nature and then some, not human weakness or malevolence. Unfortunately, the generous promise “I will not again destroy Ephraim,” made perhaps when Samaria survived the invasion of Tiglath-pileser, was not fulfilled. It is contradicted outright in 13:9: “I will destroy you, O Israel, who can help you?” God will not ransom them from the power of Sheol: “O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your destruction? Compassion is hidden from my eyes” (13:14; this verse is cited in 1 Cor 15:55, in a very different sense). In the end, God’s burning anger seems to prevail. The contradictions in Hosea’s prophecy arose from the changing fortunes of Israel in its final years. They also illustrate one of the fundamental problems of all human speech about God. On

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  with the institution of marriage. According to Deuteronomy 22, if a man is caught lying with the wife of another, both must die. Also if a man lies with a woman who is betrothed, both are subject to the death penalty, except that if the incident happens in an isolated area the woman is not held accountable. In the case of a woman who is neither married nor betrothed, however, the penalty is much less severe: “The man who lay with her shall give fifty shekels of silver to the young woman’s father, and she shall become his wife. Because he violated her he shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives” (Deut 22:29). The formulation in Deuteronomy implies that the young woman was forced. It does not appear, however, that premarital sex was regarded as a grievous matter so long as a marriage ensued. The perspective from which the Song of Songs is written, however, differs greatly from that of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is concerned with social control, from the viewpoint of the authorities in the society. The Song of Songs articulates the viewpoint of the lovers, who find love intoxicating, delightful, and irresistible. From this perspective there can be no question of condemnation, regardless of social disapproval. The Song is unique in the Bible in giving expression to the romantic and erotic feelings of a woman. The Song is one of only two books in the Hebrew Bible that does not mention God (the other is the book of Esther). Nonetheless, Rabbi Akiba declared it to be “the Holy of Holies.” The reason, perhaps, was the purity of the love expressed, which validates itself by its strength and beauty. Love is affirmed as an ultimate value in life. Nowhere is this expressed more powerfully than in 8:6-7: “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. . . . Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of one’s house, it would be utterly scorned.” In the New Testament, the author of the Johannine epistles wrote: “If we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). No doubt, the author had a less passionate kind of love in mind. Nonetheless, the saying might also be applied to the love expressed in the Song of Songs. Love so intense is perhaps as close as mortals can come to participation in something divine.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Few stories in the Hebrew Bible have such popular appeal as that of David and Goliath. It has become the proverbial story of the underdog. It has much in common with the classic Near Eastern myth of the combat of Marduk and Tiamat (Enuma Elish), with the Philistine in the role of the chaos monster. There is no suggestion, however, that David and Goliath are more than human. David triumphs by wit and agility over the huge but rather immobile Philistine. The Deuteronomist sees another dimension in the conflict. Goliath comes with sword and spear, but David comes in the name of the Lord of hosts (17:45). As in the story of the exodus, YHWH is the God of the underdog and outsider, and no human power can prevail against him. Despite its legendary character, the story of Goliath fits the most plausible scenario of David’s rise. He was successful in battle and outshone his master, King Saul. Hence the popular acclaim: Saul has killed his thousands, but David his tens of thousands. David, at this point, is still supposedly Saul’s loyal servant, but rivalry between the two men is inevitable. Their relationship is complicated by the friendship between David and Saul’s family. We are told that Jonathan, Saul’s son, loved David as himself (18:1). Much has been made of the relationship between David and Jonathan as a possible biblical model of a positive homosexual relationship. Homosexual attraction is certainly a factor in male bonding, especially in all-male institutions like the army (down to current times). (Homoerotic overtones have also been suspected in the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh.) But if there is a sexual dimension in this relationship, it is never acknowledged explicitly. David also has relationships with Saul’s daughters. The marriage with the elder daughter, Merab (18:17), is part of the secondary Goliath story. It is not found in the Old Greek. The story of Michal is more easily intelligible if there was no marriage to the elder daughter. Michal, like Saul, is eventually a tragic character. In 1 Samuel 18 the initiative for the marriage comes from Michal, who loves David, with Saul’s approval. David, then, cannot be accused of marrying for expediency. When David is estranged from Saul, Michal becomes the wife of another man, but David recalls her after Saul’s death, when he is trying to secure the kingship over all Israel. After the kingship has been

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  The next time I would do so was with the man who would become my husband. Not long after our breakup, and following a few interim dalliances, I found love again, this time with a man with whom I had been working for nearly two years, without the remotest interest in him. Over a simple lunch, we ended up discovering that each of us was in essence single—I recently ditched and he in the midst of a divorce after eighteen years of marriage and three children. We dated for some months before I felt comfortable telling my story for only the second time in my life. John had grown up in Washington, D.C., in the 1950s, in an era of debutante balls and society dances, and his instinctual reaction to my tale was one of disbelief at the life I had missed, one he had taken for granted. As I shared my story with him, I found myself laughing and using one of my favorite expressions, from the then famously popular song in the Broadway musical, Evita , “Don’t cry for me, Argentina.” Three years later, almost to the day, we became husband and wife in an intimate ceremony that included only our closest family. The fact that he was divorced made it impossible for us to be married in the Catholic Church, which disappointed me but not him. He, an Episcopalian, liked to call me kiddingly a “mackerel snapper.” For my part, I told him (in good humor) that his religion was based on the selfish whim of the Catholic King Henry VIII. If he hadn’t demanded a divorce from his wife because she couldn’t produce a son, there’d be no Episcopal Church. My parents voiced no objection to our mixed marriage, for which I was enormously grateful. In truth, they thought the world of my husband and were more than happy to remain silent on the matter of religion. However, the depth of my own concern about what my Center family might think of my getting married outside of the Catholic Church was revealed to me through a dream I had several nights before our wedding. In my dream, I was visiting the Center and excitedly telling the Big Brothers and Sisters about my upcoming nuptials. I was careful to omit the word “Episcopal” from the name of the Church—St. Paul’s—hoping they would think the wedding was to take place at the beautiful church of the same name that was directly across from the original Center in Cambridge. A sense of relief came over me when I realized that I hadn’t slipped up on the “Episcopal” part. After describing the music and telling them that my brother David and my sister Cathy would be singing the Ave Maria—sure signals, I trusted, that this was a Catholic wedding—I offered to show them my wedding dress.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I know that may seem strange, but I did not grow up as an unhappy child, and I want to tell that story for my children and my grandchildren. In fifty years, long after I’m dead and buried, there won’t be anyone alive who was part of the Center.” I was aware that I could offer only my own account, which might differ from other eyewitness versions, but growing up in St. Benedict Center was part of the history of the Catholic Church in America during the mid-twentieth century, and firsthand versions are better than second and third, or speculation and hearsay. Their response was unsurprising: “Tell it exactly as you remember it. It’s a part of history. Yes, there are things that we wish we could do over, but you should tell the story.” After thinking about the project for a full five years, I finally put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) a little more than ten years ago. In truth, my initial instinct was to hide behind a pseudonym. I was still anxious about what the world might think of me. But as I started to share the unfolding chapters with the women in my memoir writing group, I was encouraged by their reactions. They found the story fascinating. They expressed empathy for my parents. It was Sister Catherine whom each of them despised. Through their encouragement and support, I was able to overcome my anxiety about publishing my book. The first rendition was more diary than memoir—a blithe recollection of anecdotes, events, and memories. But the more I wrote, the more I became involved in the depth of the full story. I engaged in the dual roles that are the prerogative of the memoirist—to be both protagonist and narrator, both insider and observer. The passage of so many decades from my childhood to the recording of it was beneficial because it allowed me to have a better sense of perspective and a deeper sense of perception. At the heart of my story is a tale of love—the story of a family that may have been separated but could not be broken. A family that found a way to spin an endless and unbreakable web of devotion so strong that when the day came and they were reunited, there was no rancor, no need to rebuild trust. The family was whole, and so it remained. For nearly forty years after life at the Center, we were once again a complete family, until my father died peacefully during a nap, four months shy of his ninetieth birthday. My mother, for the next eleven years attended daily Mass and was abundantly cheerful—enjoying her five children, ten grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren. She passed away as this memoir was going to print. She read it in its entirety and it had her blessing.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I know that may seem strange, but I did not grow up as an unhappy child, and I want to tell that story for my children and my grandchildren. In fifty years, long after I’m dead and buried, there won’t be anyone alive who was part of the Center.” I was aware that I could offer only my own account, which might differ from other eyewitness versions, but growing up in St. Benedict Center was part of the history of the Catholic Church in America during the mid-twentieth century, and firsthand versions are better than second and third, or speculation and hearsay. Their response was unsurprising: “Tell it exactly as you remember it. It’s a part of history. Yes, there are things that we wish we could do over, but you should tell the story.” After thinking about the project for a full five years, I finally put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) a little more than ten years ago. In truth, my initial instinct was to hide behind a pseudonym. I was still anxious about what the world might think of me. But as I started to share the unfolding chapters with the women in my memoir writing group, I was encouraged by their reactions. They found the story fascinating. They expressed empathy for my parents. It was Sister Catherine whom each of them despised. Through their encouragement and support, I was able to overcome my anxiety about publishing my book. The first rendition was more diary than memoir—a blithe recollection of anecdotes, events, and memories. But the more I wrote, the more I became involved in the depth of the full story. I engaged in the dual roles that are the prerogative of the memoirist—to be both protagonist and narrator, both insider and observer. The passage of so many decades from my childhood to the recording of it was beneficial because it allowed me to have a better sense of perspective and a deeper sense of perception. At the heart of my story is a tale of love—the story of a family that may have been separated but could not be broken. A family that found a way to spin an endless and unbreakable web of devotion so strong that when the day came and they were reunited, there was no rancor, no need to rebuild trust. The family was whole, and so it remained. For nearly forty years after life at the Center, we were once again a complete family, until my father died peacefully during a nap, four months shy of his ninetieth birthday. My mother, for the next eleven years attended daily Mass and was abundantly cheerful—enjoying her five children, ten grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren. She passed away as this memoir was going to print. She read it in its entirety and it had her blessing.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Those Sunday dinners were an opportunity for my father to catch up on the news of the world. He read the newspapers that were forbidden at the Center, and when dinner was over, he found reasons to stay on, watching television with my mother as the two of them held hands. It was often long after dark when he bade her a prolonged farewell in the front hall, while I headed off to bed. I wondered sometimes if the two of them weren’t driving Sister Catherine crazy. In my mind’s eye, I could visualize the tautness that would grip her face, particularly when my father would openly flout the rules. She couldn’t control them, and I relished the distress it must have been causing her. The true state of my parents’ marriage was brought home to me one Sunday evening at our intimate family dinner. It was a homey setting, a freshly pressed white linen tablecloth covering the round dining room table, in sharp contrast to the institutional setup in Still River that was devoid of tablecloths and even place mats. That evening, when my mother had gone into the kitchen to get dessert, my father turned to me and spoke, his words seeming to be carefully chosen. “My little princess,” he began (I relished that he still called me that), “if something should happen to me and I die at the Center, I want you to take my wedding ring from inside my scapular and put it on my finger in the casket. I want to be buried as a married man.” It was a poignant moment—my father making a plea to his now-worldly eldest daughter to ensure that the message was loud and clear that, although he was living a celibate religious life today, in his heart he was a married man who loved his wife. I was not prepared to probe his heart or his mind on the matter. Instead, I responded with all my heart. “I promise you I will do that, but you’re nowhere near dying. You just turned fifty.” His request might have been an opportunity to question him about the Center, about the breakup of the families, about why he and my mother made the sacrifices they did, but I wasn’t comfortable going down that path. Instead I buried my burning desire to tell him how much I wanted to see that ring back on his finger, the ring I had played with as a tiny child long before he had been forced to take it off. In my heart, I felt I knew the reason he was still at the Center—four of his children were still there, and he held firm to his belief that an education at the Center provided the best opportunity for a solid grounding in Catholic doctrine and morals. While Mary Catherine was about to graduate from high school, my youngest sister, Veronica, was not quite fourteen, with several years of school still ahead of her.