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 The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I half turned and grinned: ‘I’d like that.’ He didn’t grin back; in fact he looked very serious—and there had been something about the way he said ‘you ought to come over some time,’ casual and comradely and yet pondered, or even rehearsed, that convinced me that this was the same uptight, hungry boy I had blown in the Brutus, and that he needed my help, had passively picked on me as the one to show him what it was all about. I held his gaze a little longer, thinking of saying, ‘Well, how about tonight?’ Arthur-less, I was moronically ready for it, but somehow I deferred. I sensed he was relieved when I said, ‘Next week some time?’ ‘OK.’ He lifted his right hand a few inches off the bench in a strangely touching, almost secret wave. Two other hearty figures pushed past me, coming in red and sweaty from the gym. ‘How’re ya doin’, Phil boy,’ said one of them in the routine American disguise of some British queens. I went on into the gym, believing that some kind of agreement had been made, that it filled his thoughts now as it did mine. Then for a few minutes I made myself think about something else, concentrated on my exercises on the mat, stretching and limbering up. Because I was so easily moved by people, I had learned to distance myself, just in those moments when I felt them taking hold: I made myself regard them, and even more myself, with a careless, almost cynical detachment. But as I gathered, spread and folded up my body now, endeavouring to feel alive all over, ready and independent, I saw Phil again, in one of those odd coups d’oeil, typical not only of his hesitant mobile manner but of so much of gay life, where happiness can depend on the glance of a stranger, caught and returned. Aptly enough, I was lying on my back, with my legs in the air, wide apart. Between them I saw him pass the open gym door, his bag in his hand, his shirt-sleeves rolled up in tight bands around his biceps. He went by, but a second or two later stepped back again, and peeped into the gym. Our eyes met, I raised my head, he looked for a moment longer, and then, moved perhaps by the secrecy which characterised his doings, without smiling, turned and went off. As I sat up it was as if a fist squeezed my heart and cracked a tiny flask at its centre, saturating it with love. An hour or so later I found James in the shower. He held out his hands to me in a pathetic gesture; the fingertips were white and puckered. ‘A long time, eh?’ I commiserated. ‘There’s just been nothing, darling. I don’t know why I bother.’

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  It may seem paradoxical, but the legal advantages enjoyed by Roman wives—progressive by primitive standards—conduced to promote the affective nuclear family. In the Roman Empire, a husband took his wife sine manu, meaning that she remained in the legal power of her father, so long as he was alive, rather than passing into the potestas of the husband. A woman could transact legal business only with the representation of a tutor, who came from her father’s family, not her husband or his family; after she bore three children, the woman earned the ius trium liberorum and could act on her own behalf. Created by Augustus, the ius trium liberorum was a badge of honor, and it became a wild success. The wife brought a dowry into the marriage, but it was not a gift to the husband; the property of husband and wife were, legally, distinct funds, and the married pair could not even make significant gifts to one another. All of these rules had the effect of making the wife a partner of her husband, not a ward. We might suspect that Roman women earned considerable legal rights because fathers cared to protect their daughters, and their property, and not because Roman legislators held progressive attitudes toward women. The pressures behind developments in family law are always complex, but whatever the cause, companionate marriage flourished in part because the Roman wife was perched, legally, between her old family and her new.84 Though the Romans did not marry for love, they hoped it would grow within marriage. Marriage in the Roman Empire was freighted with high emotional and spiritual promise. A Roman lawyer could define marriage as “the joining of a husband and a wife and a sharing of their whole life, a union of divine and human law.” There was even a new openness to the potential for romance to germinate in the expectant period of the engagement. The grace of sexual familiarity in marriage would breed philia, a blend of friendship and love. In the letters of Pliny the Younger, we read almost with embarrassment the effusions of saccharine affection toward his wife (more than twenty years his junior), but the public nature of the letters reveals how far private emotional investment had become an acceptable element of the elite’s self-projection. The highest ideal of marriage was harmony, homonoia, a charged term that located the peaceful partnership of husband and wife within the civic and cosmic order. The man who was going to harmonize the city, with its internecine squabbles and intense factionalism, was expected to have a harmonious house. Like the “ceaseless circling dance of the planets,” companionate marriage was part of nature, “an image of order and harmony.”85

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

  Secondarily and instrumentally, however, perfection consists in the observance of the counsels, all of which, like the commandments, are directed to charity; yet not in the same way. For the commandments, other than the precepts of charity, are directed to the removal of things contrary to charity, with which, namely, charity is incompatible, whereas the counsels are directed to the removal of things that hinder the act of charity, and yet are not contrary to charity, such as marriage, the occupation of worldly business, and so forth. Hence Augustine says (Enchiridion cxxi): “Whatever things God commands, for instance, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ and whatever are not commanded, yet suggested by a special counsel, for instance, ‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman,’ are then done aright when they are referred to the love of God, and of our neighbor for God’s sake, both in this world and in the world to come.” Hence it is that in the Conferences of the Fathers (Coll. i, cap. vii) the abbot Moses says: “Fastings, watchings, meditating on the Scriptures, penury and loss of all one’s wealth, these are not perfection but means to perfection, since not in them does the school of perfection find its end, but through them it achieves its end,” and he had already said that “we endeavor to ascend by these steps to the perfection of charity.” Reply to Objection 1: In this saying of our Lord something is indicated as being the way to perfection by the words, “Go, sell all thou hast, and give to the poor”; and something else is added wherein perfection consists, when He said, “And follow Me.” Hence Jerome in his commentary on Mat. 19:27, says that “since it is not enough merely to leave, Peter added that which is perfect: ‘And have followed Thee’”; and Ambrose, commenting on Lk. 5:27, “Follow Me,” says: “He commands him to follow, not with steps of the body, but with devotion of the soul, which is the effect of charity.” Wherefore it is evident from the very way of speaking that the counsels are means of attaining to perfection, since it is thus expressed: “If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell,” etc., as though He said: “By so doing thou shalt accomplish this end.”

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  Introduction We were five kids with five different fathers—one jailed and then dead, one missing, and three unknown. Our mother, Cookie, was more gone than there, more drunk than sober, more mentally ill than mentally well. Cookie blew in and out of our lives like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path. Once she arrived, she dispensed beatings, or tied my sister Gi naked to the radiator, or called all my sisters sluts and whores simply because in spite of the fact that they were starving, exhausted, and without heat in many New York winters, they remained beautiful, strong-willed, self-reliant, and loving. Cookie just couldn’t rip all that good out of them, but they hid it from her the best they could, storing all their sweetness and good will in me and our brother, Norm. Norm and I were the babies, the little ones, the ones they wanted to save. My sister Gi looked at me as her do-over. Everything that had been missing from her childhood, she brought to mine. Gi read to me, she piled clothes on top of me to keep me warm. She bathed me, brushed my light brown hair, and taught me how to count to ten in English, Spanish, and French. During the storms of my mother being home and in the calm of her absence, the only thing I knew for sure was that Gi would make everything okay. In this way, I was always safe, loved, and cared for. I was her Rosie, her sweetie, her mia bambina. When she was nine years old, Gi wrote a poem that her teacher saved and gave back to her years later. You have to walk that lonesome road You have to walk it by yourself, And there is nobody whose going to walk it for you. We didn’t know it then, but that poem and those words were words I would have to live by before I turned nine. Gi walked with me as far as she could. But in the end, there was nothing she could do to hang on to me when our mother, the social workers, and the County of Suffolk all decided I’d be better off without my siblings. This story is about the missing years when my sisters weren’t there to save me. These were the years I had to walk the lonesome road. And you can bet that as soon as I was upright and strong enough, I walked that road straight back to the people who loved me.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  There were gods—demi-gods, at least—but a place which gathered the fantasies of so many, young and old, was bound to have its own sorry network of unspoken loyalties, stolen and resented glances, ungainly gambits and humiliating crushes. This naked mingling, which formed a ritualistic heart to the life of the club, produced its own improper incitements to ideal liaisons, and polyandrous happenings which could not survive into the world of jackets and ties, cycleclips and duffel-coats. And how difficult social distinctions are in the shower. How could I now smile at my enormous African neighbour, who was responding in elephantine manner to my own erection, and yet scowl at the disastrous nearly-boy smirking under the next jet along? I first met James at Oxford, where he had heard of me but I knew nothing of him: it was at one of the little parties organised by my tutor at Saturday lunchtimes, with red and white wine, and nuts—genially queeny occasions where gay chaplains (chaplains, that is to say) and the more enlightened dons mingled with undergraduates chosen for their charm or connections, while one or two very old and distinguished people sat among the standing guests, holding audience and spilling their drinks on the carpet. I was feeling particularly full of myself: I had been fucking a French boy from Brasenose, it was a hot early summer in my second year, and I had the strange experience, on arriving in the crowded college room, of standing just behind my tutor and one of his graduate students who said to him, ‘I hope you’ve asked young Beckwith; I must say I should think he’s just in his prime this year …’ before I watched the graduate’s pleasure seep away in blushing discomfiture. James, in a crumpled linen jacket, open Aertex shirt, and baggy russet cords, was standing by the window. He looked very young, innocent, and yet mature, as he was already losing his fair, fine hair. His eyes, in contrast to his general colouring, were deep brown, and as my tutor introduced us James said ‘Oh, how do you do?’, indicating pleasure and surprise, and I said, in the rude way that I then thought brilliant, ‘He has very beautiful eyes.’ I colour to remember how at first I assumed that James fancied me, so infatuated was I with myself. A few days later we met again at a cricket match in the Parks (my French boy having turned moody and hostile), drank beer together all afternoon, sat up late listening to Wagner, and I realised that what he liked was my company, and the fact that we felt the same about boys and music. We reached the stage of drunkenness where Brünnhilde’s Immolation seems to last only thirty seconds or so, though each bar is still a miraculous revelation.

• From Untrue (2018)

  But at this particular meeting, it would turn out, Tim wanted to let me know more about himself. As we sat across from each other with the clatter and noise of people all around, he asked me for some additional details about my book project, which I had described to him briefly several months before. Tim asked a few more questions about my recent work. Then he looked at me intently, leaning forward to close the gap between us over the table, and said, “So here’s something kind of interesting. My wife has two husbands.” Tim first caught sight of Lily at work when he was in his late twenties. They were both in the news business and in the process of adjusting to the hectic, do-or-die ethos of a daily publication, the need to understand, edit, and communicate a story of consequence in minutes and under pressure of breaking it before other news outlets did. “Lily just had this way of knowing what to lead with, no matter how confusing the news item was. She was so confident and so independent. I found that incredibly sexy,” Tim recalled when I asked him how their relationship had begun. “I had to know her better. It took me weeks, but I finally worked up the nerve to ask her out.” They had what Tim described as “great chemistry,” and one date led to another and another. Soon things were serious, but they agreed to keep it all under wraps at work, apprehensive about how their coworkers and higher-ups might react. “Then we’d go to my place and tear each other’s clothes off,” he recalled with a laugh. Their emotional connection was as strong as their physical one. Lily was direct and honest, more so than any woman he’d ever been with, but she was also a great compartmentalizer, Tim told me. She liked to confront issues head-on, resolve them, and move forward. Lily wasn’t a wallower; she was a realist. She was compassionate and loving and avid about her life and their shared life but also tough and focused on resolutions in all matters, from work to scheduling their time together. She was fun—Lily loved to dance, cook, and spend time with friends and was often the party starter—but also calm under pressure and rational. Tim was smitten. When they announced their engagement after a year and a half of seeing each other, Tim’s boss said, “It was so obvious you guys were into each other and are meant to be,” and that everyone already knew and had been waiting for them to come forward about it. A few weeks before their wedding, Lily told Tim, in effect, that whatever his dreams were, he should follow them, and that he had freedom to do as he wished:

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  Love is handing your heart to someone and taking the risk that they will hand it back because they don’t want it. That’s why it’s such a crushing ache on the inside. We gave away a part of ourselves and it wasn’t wanted. Love is a giving away of power. When we love, we give the other person the power in the relationship. They can do what they choose. They can do what they like with our love. They can reject it, they can accept it, they can step toward us in gratitude and appreciation. Love is a giving away. When we love, we put ourselves out there, we expose ourselves, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all of the desires within us to manipulate the relationship. So if you were God—which I realize is an odd way to begin a sentence—but if you were God, the all-powerful creator of the universe, and you wanted to move toward people, you wanted to express your love for the world in a new way, how would you do it? If you showed up in your power and control and might, you would scare people off. This is what happens at the giving of the Ten Commandments.8 The first two commandments are in the first person: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image . . . for I, the Lord . . .” But starting with the third commandment, someone else is talking: “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord . . .” The rabbis believed that this is because God was speaking directly to the people in the first two commands, but they couldn’t handle it. As it says in the text, “They trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, ‘Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.’ ”9 So, the rabbis reasoned, the switch in person is because Moses gave them the remaining eight commandments. Just God speaking is too much to bear. If you’re God and you want to express ultimate love to your creation, if you want to move toward them in a definitive way, you have a problem, because just showing up overwhelms people. You wouldn’t come as you are. You wouldn’t come in strength. You wouldn’t come in your pure, raw essence. You’d scare everybody away. The last thing people would perceive is love. So how would you express your love in an ultimate way? How do you connect with people in a manner that wouldn’t scare them off but would compel them to want to come closer, to draw nearer?

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  A city: that framework constructed by men for men, monotonous if you will, but only as are wax cells laden with honey, a place of meeting and exchange, where peasants come to sell their produce, and linger to gape and stare at the paintings of a portico. . . . My cities were born of encounters, both my own encounters with given corners of the earth and the conjunction of my plans as emperor with the incidents of my personal life. Plotinopolis grew from the need to establish new market towns in Thrace, but also from the tender desire to honor Plotina. Hadrianotherae is designed to serve as a trading town for the forest dwellers of Asia Minor: at first it had been for me a summer retreat, with its forest full of wild game, its hunting lodge of rough hewn logs below the hill of the god Attys, and its headlong stream where we bathed each morning. Hadrianopolis in Epirus reopened an urban center in the heart of an impoverished province: it owes its start to a visit which I made to the oracle of Dodona. Hadrianopolis in Thrace, an agricultural and military outpost strategically placed on the edge of barbarian lands, is populated by veterans of the Sarmatian wars: I know at first hand the strength and the weakness of each one of those men, their names, the number of their years of service, and of their wounds. Antino�polis, dearest of all, born on the site of sorrow, is confined to a narrow band of arid soil between the river and the cliffs. I was only the more desirous, therefore, to enrich it with other resources, trade with India, river traffic, and the learned graces of a Greek metropolis. There is not a place on earth that I care less to revisit, but there are few to which I have devoted more pains. It is a veritable city of columns, a perpetual peristyle. I exchange dispatches with its governor, Fidus Aquila, about the propylaea of its temple and the statues of its triumphal arch; I have chosen the names of its district divisions and religious and administrative units, symbolic names both obvious and secret which catalogue all my memories. I myself drew the plan of its Corinthian colonnades and the corresponding alignment of palm trees spaced regularly along the river banks. Countless times have I walked in thought that almost perfect quadrilateral, cut by parallel streets and divided in two by the broad avenue which leads from a Greek theatre to a tomb. We are crowded with statues and cloyed with the exquisite in painting and sculpture, but this abundance is an illusion, for we reproduce over and over some dozen masterpieces which are now beyond our power to invent. Like other collectors I have had copied for the Villa the Hermaphrodite and the Centaur, the Niobid and the Venus. I have wanted to live as much as possible in the midst of this music of forms.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  And yet this submission was not blind; those lids so often lowered in acquiescence or in dream were not always so; the most attentive eyes in the world would sometimes look me straight in the face, and I felt myself judged. But I was judged as is a god by his adorer: my harshness and sudden suspicions (for I had them later on) were patiently and gravely accepted. I have been absolute master but once in my life, and over but one being. If I have said nothing yet of a beauty so apparent it is not merely because of the reticence of a man too completely conquered. But the faces which we try so desperately to recall escape us: it is only for a moment ... I see a head bending under its dark mass of hair, eyes which seemed slanting, so long were the lids, a young face broadly formed, as if for repose. This tender body varied all the time, like a plant, and some of its alterations were those of growth. The boy changed; he grew tall. A week of indolence sufficed to soften him completely; a single afternoon at the hunt made the young athlete firm again, and fleet; an hour's sun would turn him from jasmine to the color of honey. The boyish limbs lengthened out; the face lost its delicate childish round and hollowed slightly under the high cheekbones; the full chest of the young runner took on the smooth, gleaming curves of a Bacchante's breast; the brooding lips bespoke a bitter ardor, a sad satiety. In truth this visage changed as if I had molded it night and day. When I think back on these years I seem to return to the Age of Gold. Trouble was no more: past efforts were repaid by an ease which was almost divine. Travel was play, a pleasure well known, controlled, and skilfully planned. Work, though incessant, was only a form of delight. My life, where everything came late, power and happiness, too, now acquired the splendor of high noon, the luminous glow of siesta time when everything, the objects of the room and the figure lying beside one, bathes in golden shade. Passion satisfied has its innocence, almost as fragile as any other: the remainder of human beauty was relegated to the rank of mere spectacle, and ceased to be game for my pursuit. This adventure, begun casually enough, served to enrich but also to simplify my life: the future was matter for slight concern; I ceased to question the oracles; the stars were no longer anything more than admirable patterns upon the vault of heaven. Never before had I noted with such elation the glimmer of dawn on the distant islands, the coolness of caves sacred to nymphs and haunted by birds of passage, the low flight of quail at dusk. I reread the poets; some seemed better to me than before, but most of them worse.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  In a swift, unconscious convulsion he clutched together the bevelled glass salt and pepper pots. ‘Of course not. I love you.’ He looked up for a split second and then went on very quickly and quietly, pushing the last French beans around his plate with his fork, ‘I really love you, I don’t think I could live without you. I couldn’t bear it when you were ill, and … I don’t know …’ It was much more of an avowal than I’d asked for, and the tears came to my eyes and I grinned at the same time. I covered his hand that was coupling the cruet with my own, and looked anywhere but at him—around the horrible, narrow but disproportionately tall room, which had obviously been made by splitting some more generous space in two. Afterwards we got changed upstairs and shared a tooth-mug of vodka, which made me if anything more amorous, though in a generalised way, as if it were not just Phil but the whole world that was in love with me. I put on some very old, faded, tight-loose pink jeans and a white T-shirt with no arms and side-seams ripped open almost to my hips. Phil squeezed into other new acquisitions—some hugging and rather High Street dark blue slacks with a thin white belt, and a gripping pale blue T-shirt. When we were clear of the hotel I took Phil’s arm. It moved me to do this, to insist out loud that he was mine (he himself, keen to be so claimed, didn’t quite flow with it, butchly somehow held himself apart—though I locked my fingers through his). At Winchester one summer day I had run across a couple of queens-one perhaps an old Wykehamist showing his friend the places where his honour died. They had wandered over to Gunner’s Hole, that curving canal-like backwater, drawn off and returning to the Itchen, where in Charles’s day swimming had taken place. Now, of course, there was a beautiful indoor pool—where I was soon to establish my freestyle record—and the Hole had surrendered, as it must always have promised to do, to crowding cow-parsley and heavy seeded grasses, while in the water itself long green weeds curled to and fro in the current. I came scuffing past through the meadow, hot, shirt undone, and saw them gazing, one pointing at the rioting May-time flowers, then spotting me, giving me a glance—very brief but I felt it—and then the two of them turning back towards College, arm in arm. I mastered a frisson of shock into pleasure—not at them individually (they seemed hopelessly old and refined) but at the openness of their gesture. I wanted men to walk out together. I wanted a man to walk out with. Well, I had one. My heel was suddenly tacky, and I stopped—though Phil kept going and almost pulled me over. I hopped forwards, supported by him, and turned my sole upwards under the yellow street light.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  And this was only the beginning of a really useful night.’ This touched me far more than the attacks on me—which I read as a kind of flattery—and humbled me with a true sense of my uselessness. James was like Charles in this: without in the least intending it they exposed my egoism by the example of their goodness, by all their sweet, philanthropic sublimations. There was the jolt of the lift being called, and its whining descent. I jumped up and put the diary back, but not quite in line, so that it would be clear that I had looked at it. I nipped into the kitchen for the Guardian , sprawled on the sofa and then—since there was something farcical and implausible in this—decided I would be asleep. I pretended to surface as James came in: ‘Dearest! Sorry, I’m so tired—frightful night. Down the Shaft till all hours.’ He didn’t seem too thrilled about this. ‘I hope it was fun.’ ‘Up to a point. I went with my little Philpot but ran into Arthur …’ ‘So you had them both, I imagine?’ ‘Well …’—I left it in the realm of possibilities. He slammed around the kitchen, ground more coffee, put bread in the toaster almost as if to complain that I should have done all this for him already; but to fend off what had to be said, too. ‘You’d better tell me what happened,’ I said. He hugged me suddenly and hard. ‘Yes; do you mind if I tell you the whole thing? At the risk of sounding rather foolish.’ ‘My darling.’ ‘Let’s go in the other room.’ We did so and he opened one of the big windows on the faint summer roar, and walked about and gazed into the rooms across the road while I sat attentively. ‘I suppose I’ve been feeling a bit wretched lately,’ he said, and then stopped. ‘What sort of wretched?’ ‘About love and sex and life in general.’ He put down his coffee mug as if it were a nuisance. ‘I don’t know, I just feel so out of it. I’m working so hard I can scarcely do anything I want—I never see anybody. Well, I see hundreds of people, but never anybody I want to see. When did we last meet, for instance? I know you’re busy with your boys and what have you—but I would like to see you darling a bit more often, you know? You are one of my oldest, dearest friends, fuck it.’ ‘I do feel the same, James. I’m always thinking of you and having conversations with you in my head and imagining what you would say about things. You’re my most constant companion, even though I’m so pathetic and never get in touch with you.’ He smiled: ‘You see, just talking to you now makes me feel better.

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

  Reply to Objection 1: From the very fact that truth is the end of contemplation, it has the aspect of an appetible good, both lovable and delightful, and in this respect it pertains to the appetitive power. Reply to Objection 2: We are urged to the vision of the first principle, namely God, by the love thereof; wherefore Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ezech.) that “the contemplative life tramples on all cares and longs to see the face of its Creator.” Reply to Objection 3: The appetitive power moves not only the bodily members to perform external actions, but also the intellect to practice the act of contemplation, as stated above. Whether the moral virtues pertain to the contemplative life?Objection 1: It would seem that the moral virtues pertain to the contemplative life. For Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ezech.) that “the contemplative life is to cling to the love of God and our neighbor with the whole mind.” Now all the moral virtues, since their acts are prescribed by the precepts of the Law, are reducible to the love of God and of our neighbor, for “love . . . is the fulfilling of the Law” (Rom. 13:10). Therefore it would seem that the moral virtues belong to the contemplative life. Objection 2: Further, the contemplative life is chiefly directed to the contemplation of God; for Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ezech.) that “the mind tramples on all cares and longs to gaze on the face of its Creator.” Now no one can accomplish this without cleanness of heart, which is a result of moral virtue [*Cf.[3720] Q[8], A[7]]. For it is written (Mat. 5:8): “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God”: and (Heb. 12:14): “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see God.” Therefore it would seem that the moral virtues pertain to the contemplative life. Objection 3: Further, Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ezech.) that “the contemplative life gives beauty to the soul,” wherefore it is signified by Rachel, of whom it is said (Gn. 29:17) that she was “of a beautiful countenance.” Now the beauty of the soul consists in the moral virtues, especially temperance, as Ambrose says (De Offic. i, 43,45,46). Therefore it seems that the moral virtues pertain to the contemplative life. On the contrary, The moral virtues are directed to external actions. Now Gregory says (Moral. vi [*Hom. xiv in Ezech.; Cf. A[1], OBJ[3]]) that it belongs to the contemplative life “to rest from external action.” Therefore the moral virtues do not pertain to the contemplative life.

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

  I answer that, As stated above ([3745]FS, Q[114], A[4]), the root of merit is charity; and, while, as stated above (Q[25], A[1]), charity consists in the love of God and our neighbor, the love of God is by itself more meritorious than the love of our neighbor, as stated above (Q[27], A[8]). Wherefore that which pertains more directly to the love of God is generically more meritorious than that which pertains directly to the love of our neighbor for God’s sake. Now the contemplative life pertains directly and immediately to the love of God; for Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xix, 19) that “the love of” the Divine “truth seeks a holy leisure,” namely of the contemplative life, for it is that truth above all which the contemplative life seeks, as stated above (Q[181], A[4], ad 2). On the other hand, the active life is more directly concerned with the love of our neighbor, because it is “busy about much serving” (Lk. 10:40). Wherefore the contemplative life is generically of greater merit than the active life. This is moreover asserted by Gregory (Hom. iii in Ezech.): “The contemplative life surpasses in merit the active life, because the latter labors under the stress of present work,” by reason of the necessity of assisting our neighbor, “while the former with heartfelt relish has a foretaste of the coming rest,” i.e. the contemplation of God. Nevertheless it may happen that one man merits more by the works of the active life than another by the works of the contemplative life. For instance through excess of Divine love a man may now and then suffer separation from the sweetness of Divine contemplation for the time being, that God’s will may be done and for His glory’s sake. Thus the Apostle says (Rom. 9:3): “I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren”; which words Chrysostom expounds as follows (De Compunct. i, 7 [*Ad Demetr. de Compunct. Cordis.]): “His mind was so steeped in the love of Christ that, although he desired above all to be with Christ, he despised even this, because thus he pleased Christ.” Reply to Objection 1: External labor conduces to the increase of the accidental reward; but the increase of merit with regard to the essential reward consists chiefly in charity, whereof external labor borne for Christ’s sake is a sign. Yet a much more expressive sign thereof is shown when a man, renouncing whatsoever pertains to this life, delights to occupy himself entirely with Divine contemplation.

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

  I answer that, Among means to an end that one is the more suitable whereby the various concurring means employed are themselves helpful to such end. But in this that man was delivered by Christ’s Passion, many other things besides deliverance from sin concurred for man’s salvation. In the first place, man knows thereby how much God loves him, and is thereby stirred to love Him in return, and herein lies the perfection of human salvation; hence the Apostle says (Rom. 5:8): “God commendeth His charity towards us; for when as yet we were sinners . . . Christ died for us.” Secondly, because thereby He set us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues displayed in the Passion, which are requisite for man’s salvation. Hence it is written (1 Pet. 2:21): “Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps.” Thirdly, because Christ by His Passion not only delivered man from sin, but also merited justifying grace for him and the glory of bliss, as shall be shown later ([4230]Q[48], A[1];[4231] Q[49], AA[1], 5). Fourthly, because by this man is all the more bound to refrain from sin, according to 1 Cor. 6:20: “You are bought with a great price: glorify and bear God in your body.” Fifthly, because it redounded to man’s greater dignity, that as man was overcome and deceived by the devil, so also it should be a man that should overthrow the devil; and as man deserved death, so a man by dying should vanquish death. Hence it is written (1 Cor. 15:57): “Thanks be to God who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” It was accordingly more fitting that we should be delivered by Christ’s Passion than simply by God’s good-will. Reply to Objection 1: Even nature uses several means to one intent, in order to do something more fittingly: as two eyes for seeing; and the same can be observed in other matters. Reply to Objection 2: As Chrysostom [*Athanasius, Orat. De Incarn. Verb.] says: “Christ had come in order to destroy death, not His own, (for since He is life itself, death could not be His), but men’s death. Hence it was not by reason of His being bound to die that He laid His body aside, but because the death He endured was inflicted on Him by men. But even if His body had sickened and dissolved in the sight of all men, it was not befitting Him who healed the infirmities of others to have his own body afflicted with the same. And even had He laid His body aside without any sickness, and had then appeared, men would not have believed Him when He spoke of His resurrection. For how could Christ’s victory over death appear, unless He endured it in the sight of all men, and so proved that death was vanquished by the incorruption of His body?”

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

  JEROME. We have often said that Peter had too hot a zeal, and a very great affection towards the Lord the Saviour. Therefore after that his confession, and the reward of which he had heard from the Saviour, he would not have that his confession destroyed, and thought it impossible that the Son of God could be put to death, but takes Him to him affectionately, or takes Him aside that he may not seem to be rebuking his Master in the presence of his fellow disciples, and begins to chide Him with the feeling of one that loved Him, and to contradict Him, and say, Be it far from thee, Lord; or as it is better in the Greek, ἵλεώς σοι Κύριε, οὐ μὴ ἔσται σοι τοῦτο, that is, Be propitious to Thyself, Lord, this shall not be unto Thee. ORIGEN. As though Christ Himself had needed a propitiation. His affection Christ allows, but charges him with ignorance; as it follows, He turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offence unto me. HILARY. The Lord, knowing the suggestion of the craft of the devil, says to Peter, Get thee behind me; that is, that he should follow the example of His passion; but to him by whom this expression was suggested, He turns and says, Satan, thou art an offence unto me. For we cannot suppose that the name of Satan, and the sin of being an offence, would be imputed to Peter after those so great declarations of blessedness and power that had been granted him. JEROME. But to me this error of the Apostle, proceeding from the warmth of his affection, will never seem a suggestion of the devil. Let the thoughtful reader consider that that blessedness of power was promised to Peter in time to come, not given him at the time present; had it been conveyed to him immediately, the error of a false confession would never have found place in him. CHRYSOSTOM. For what wonder is it that this should befal Peter, who had never received a revelation concerning these things? For that you may learn that that confession which he made concerning Christ was not spoken of himself, observe how in these things which had not been revealed to him, he is at a loss. Estimating the things of Christ by human and earthly principles, he judged it mean and unworthy of Him that He should suffer. Therefore the Lord added, For thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.

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

  4. He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. 5. After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. THEOPHYLACT. Our Lord being about to depart out of this life, shews His great care for His disciples: Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. BEDE. The Jews had many feasts, but the principal one was the passover; and therefore it is particularly said, Before the feast of the passover. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. lv) Pascha is not a Greek word, as some think, but Hebrew: though there is remarkable agreement of the two languages in it. The Greek word to suffer being πασχεῖν, pascha has been thought to mean passion, as being derived from the above word. But in Hebrew, pascha is a passing over; the feast deriving its name from the passing of the people of God over the Red Sea into Egypt. All was now to take place in reality, of which that passover was the type. Christ was led as a lamb to the slaughter; whose blood sprinkled upon our door-posts, i. e. whose sign of the cross marked on our foreheads, delivers us from the dominion of this world, as from Egyptian bondage. And we perform a most wholesome journey or pass-over, when we pass over from the devil to Christ, from this unstable world to His sure kingdom. In this way the Evangelist seems to interpret the word: When Jesus knew that His hour was come when He should pass over1 out of this world unto the Father. This is the pascha, this the passing over. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxx. 1) He did not know then for the first time: He had known long before. By His departure He means His death. Being so near leaving His disciples, He shews the more love for them: Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end; i. e. He left nothing undone which one who greatly loved should do. He reserved this for the last, that their love might be increased by it, and to prepare them by such consolation for the trials that were coming. His own He calls them, in the sense of intimacy. The word was used in another sense in the beginning of the Gospel: (c. 1:11) His own received Him not. It follows, which were in the world: for those were dead who were His own, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who were not in the world. These then, His own which were in the world, He loved all along, and at the last manifested His love in completeness: He loved them unto the end.

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

  GREGORY. (ubi sup.) But both debtors being forgiven, the Pharisee is asked which most loved the forgiver of the debts. For it follows, Who then will love him most? To which he at once answers, I suppose, that he to whom he forgave most. And here we must remark, that while the Pharisee is convicted upon his own grounds, the madman carries the rope by which he will be bound; as it follows, But he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged. The good deeds of the sinful woman are enumerated to him, and the evils of the pretended righteous; as it follows, And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thy house, thou gavest me no water for my feet, but she hath washed my feet with her tears. TITUS BOSTRENSIS. As if He said, To provide water is easy, to pour forth tears is not easy. Thou hast not provided even what was at hand, she hath poured forth what was not at hand; for washing my feet with her tears, she washed away her own stains. She wiped them with her hair, that so she might draw to herself the sacred moisture, and by that by which she once enticed youth to sin, might now attract to herself holiness. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 6. in Matt.) But as after the breaking of a violent storm there comes a calm, so when tears have burst forth, there is peace, and gloomy thoughts vanish; and as by water and the Spirit, so by tears and confession we are again made clean. Hence it follows, Wherefore I say unto you, Her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loveth much. For those who have violently plunged into evil, will in time also eagerly follow after good, being conscious to what debts they have made themselves responsible. GREGORY. (Hom. 33. in Evan.) The more then the heart of the sinner is burnt up by the great fire of charity, so much the more is the rust of sin consumed. TITUS BOSTRENSIS. But it more frequently happens that he who has sinned much is purified by confession, but he who has sinned little, refuses from pride to come to be healed thereby. Hence it follows, But to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 67. in Matt.) We have need then of a fervent spirit, for nothing hinders a man from becoming great. Let then no sinner despair, no virtuous man fall asleep; neither let the one be self-confident, for often the harlot shall go before him, nor the other distrustful, for he may even surpass the foremost. Hence it is also here added, But he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven thee.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  I have encouraged experimentation with the thought and methods of the past, a learned archaism which might recapture lost intentions and lost techniques. I tried those variations which consist of transcribing in red marble a flayed Marsyas, portrayed heretofore only in white, going back thus into the world of painted figures; or of transposing to the pallor of Parian marble the black grain of Egypt's statues, changing the idol to a ghost. Our art is perfect, that is to say, completed, but its perfection can be modulated as finely as can a pure voice: we have still the chance to play with skill the game of perpetual approach to, or withdrawal from, that solution found once for all; we may go to the limit of control, or excess, and enclose within that beauteous sphere innumerable new constructions. There is advantage in having behind us multiple points of comparison, in being free to follow Scopas intelligently, or to diverge, voluptuously, from Praxiteles. My contacts with the arts of barbarians have led me to believe that each race limits itself to certain subjects and to certain modes among those conceivable; each period, too, makes a selection among the possibilities offered to each race. In Egypt I have seen colossal gods, and kings; on the wrists of Sarmatian prisoners I have found bracelets which endlessly repeat the same galloping horse, or the same serpents devouring each other. But our art (I mean that of the Greeks) has chosen man as its center. We alone have known how to show latent strength and agility in bodies in repose; we alone have made a smooth brow the symbol of wise reflection. I am like our sculptors: the human contents me; I find everything there, even what is eternal. The image of the Centaur sums up for me all forests, so greatly loved, and storm winds never breathe better than in a sea goddess' billowing scarf. Natural objects and sacred emblems have value for me only as they are weighted with human associations: the phallic and funeral pine cone, the vase with doves which suggests siesta beside a fountain, the griffon which carries the beloved to the sky. The art of portraiture was of slight interest to me. Our Roman busts have value only as records, faces copied to the last wrinkle, with every single wart; stencils of figures with whom we brush elbows in life, and whom we forget as soon as they die. The Greeks, on the contrary, have loved human perfection to the point of caring but little for the varied visages of men. I tend merely to glance at my own likeness, that dark face so changed by the whiteness of marble, those wide-opened eyes, that thin though sensuous mouth, controlled to the point of quivering. But I have been more preoccupied by the face of another.

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

  Reply to Objection 3: To understand and to will denote the act alone, and do not include in their meaning objects from the diversity of which God may be said to know or will more or less, as has been said with respect to God’s love. Whether God always loves more the better things?Objection 1: It seems that God does not always love more the better things. For it is manifest that Christ is better than the whole human race, being God and man. But God loved the human race more than He loved Christ; for it is said: “He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32). Therefore God does not always love more the better things. Objection 2: Further, an angel is better than a man. Hence it is said of man: “Thou hast made him a little less than the angels” (Ps. 8:6). But God loved men more than He loved the angels, for it is said: “Nowhere doth He take hold of the angels, but of the seed of Abraham He taketh hold” (Heb. 2:16). Therefore God does not always love more the better things. Objection 3: Further, Peter was better than John, since he loved Christ more. Hence the Lord, knowing this to be true, asked Peter, saying: “Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me more than these?” Yet Christ loved John more than He loved Peter. For as Augustine says, commenting on the words, “Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?”: “By this very mark is John distinguished from the other disciples, not that He loved him only, but that He loved him more than the rest.” Therefore God does not always love more the better things. Objection 4: Further, the innocent man is better than the repentant, since repentance is, as Jerome says (Cap. 3 in Isa.), “a second plank after shipwreck.” But God loves the penitent more than the innocent; since He rejoices over him the more. For it is said: “I say to you that there shall be joy in heaven upon the one sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance” (Lk. 15:7). Therefore God does not always love more the better things. Objection 5: Further, the just man who is foreknown is better than the predestined sinner. Now God loves more the predestined sinner, since He wills for him a greater good, life eternal. Therefore God does not always love more the better things. On the contrary, Everything loves what is like it, as appears from (Ecclus. 13:19): “Every beast loveth its like.” Now the better a thing is, the more like is it to God. Therefore the better things are more loved by God.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  She agreed to listen because her sisters, children, husband and her close friends begged her to stay and learn. They asked her to have an open mind and learn about cults and mind control from me. With the help of long-term former members who had been her friends while in the group, she was overwhelmed with compelling and believable stories. She learned about horrible abuses of power that her daughter experienced and discovered had happened to others. She sat with and listened to her old friends she had previously dismissed and avoided. Love, patience, and respect guided the process. It worked beautifully! As I am waiting at the airport, I get into a conversation with some fellow travelers who have recognized me from my appearance on the Leah Remini show exposing Scientology abuses. They have many questions. They ask me to tell them more about how I got interested in helping people out of cults. I ask them if they have ever heard of the Moon cult? No, they haven’t. But they have heard of the newspaper owned by them, the Washington Times. As I’m describing how high-demand groups have proliferated over the past few years, reaching what I consider epidemic proportions, they stop me. They can’t believe it’s true. They are amazed to hear that cults are successfully recruiting people. I go back through decades of big stories: “Charles Manson?” The woman had read that he was supposed to get married. “Patty Hearst and the SLA?” They’ve never heard of her. “Do you know about Jonestown and Jim Jones?” Astonishingly, no, they don’t. This edition is being published on the 40th anniversary of the Jonestown tragedy, which took place November 18th, 1978. The hardcover edition of Combating Cult Mind Control came out on the 10th anniversary of the Jonestown tragedy. While today most Americans know the expression “drink the Kool-Aid,” many people have never heard of Jim Jones and his cult, the Peoples Temple. Even fewer know the grim story of how cyanide was mixed with Flavor Aid and forced down the throats of over 300 children and hundreds of adults. Jones told them it was an act of “revolutionary suicide.” They believed he was God on earth. In total, he killed 912 people.