Undusted Texts

"Read these counsels slowly. Pause to meditate on these thoughts. They are things that I whisper in your ear--confiding them--as a friend, as a brother, as a father. And they are being heard by God. I won't tell you anything new. I will only stir your memory, so that some thought will arise and strike you; and so you will better your life and set out along ways of prayer and of Love. And in the end you will be a more worthy soul." --Prologue to The Way St. Josemaría Escrivá is a 20th-century Spanish saint who founded Opus Dei (which has gotten an unfairly bad rap due to its inclusion in Dan Brown's infamous The Da Vinci Code ). As the Wikipedia article states (bad source, I know), Opus Dei "teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity." These teachings are found in the saint's writings, which I and may others have drawn inspiration from. His works are separated into many tiny sections,

"You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (Ex 20:4-5a). God's forbidding of graven images is a part of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) that I do not hear mentioned often among Catholics. Since the Decalogue does not have a strict division in the Scriptures themselves, there are multiple ways to divide them. The division commonly used by the Orthodox and most Protestants lists "I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before Me" and "You shall not make for yourself a graven image" as two separate commandments, while combining "You shall not covet your neighbor's goods" and "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife" into one commandment. The division commonly used by Catholics and ma

The Church is wise: this is a truth I am reminded of frequently, through various ways. One of these ways is through her selection of Scriptures for the Mass. One of the greatest reforms of the Mass during Vatican II, in my mind, is the ability of the Liturgy of the Word to now draw on all of the Scriptures, not only the Epistles, and to draw on more texts throughout its cycle. The Church has picked these readings carefully so that the Gospel often coheres with the other Scriptures immensely well, particularly on Sundays and solemnities. The particular incident lately that reminded me of the Church's wisdom in her Scripture selection is the selection of readings for the memorial of St. Mary Magdalene, July 22. The readings for this day in the Proper of Saints are Sgs 3:1-4b (or 2 Cor 5:14-17, though the former is the one I discuss in this post), Ps 63:2,3-4,5-6,8-9, and Jn 20:1-2,11-18. The first reading is a selection from the Song of Songs in which the Bride searches for her

The seeking of knowledge is something that has always captivated man. Man wished to know time, so he recorded it and created calendars based on his recordings. Man wished to know the patterns of the stars, so he watched them each night and grouped them into constellations based on what he saw. Man wished to know the workings of animals, plants, and men themselves, so he studied them and wrote books of anatomy and biology based on his observations. Yet even beyond the seeking of this knowledge and information, which can have value in a man's labors in the fields, man sought wisdom, which, as Aristotle says, "exists for its own sake"; "we do not seek [wisdom] for the sake of any other advantage" ( Metaphysics , I.2, 982b24-27). Aristotle remarks on why men philosophize, although his remarks can be broadened to refer to any seeking of wisdom: "It is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize" (ibid., 982b12-13).

Fray Luis de León was an Augustinian friar in Spain during the 1500s. He wrote much, both prose and poetry. Aside from his lyric poetry, his best-known work (and only one easily available in English translation) is The Names of Christ , recently printed as part of Paulist Press' "Classics of Western Spirituality" series. Among his other prose works are La perfecta casada , a marriage handbook based on Proverbs 31, and Traducción literal y declaración del libro de los cantares de Salomón , often abbreviated as Cantar de Cantares . As the name says, Cantar de Cantares is a literal translation and explanation of the book of the Song of Songs. I cannot find an English translation of the Cantar de Cantares online, so I decided to try my hand at my own translation. I must admit, I am not a professional translator, and I cannot vouch for any high technical value in this translation. I am only working on a Spanish minor, and this is also medieval Spanish, so it's mor

The concept of ascending a ladder to reach God is common in Christian spirituality. The basic idea is that a Christian new to the spiritual life begins distant from God and close to the world: as he advances, he grows farther from the world and closer to Christ. Thus the steps in a spiritual ladder are specific guides to draw one away from things of the world and towards the things of God. (As a side note, one could connect this tendency with the Neo-Platonism frequently adopted by early Church Fathers. Neo-Platonism spoke of the world as a series of "emanations" from God (or "the One"): God's self is dispersed through these emanations, with each level of emanation including less of the divine and more of nothingness or "matter." A Platonist strove towards knowing higher emanations, that is, the ones closer to God. Thus a Platonist's view is somewhat similar to the concept of a ladder, although Christianity does not accept the worldview of &qu

My goal in this post is to explain why I created this blog, to explain the τελος (end or purpose) of it. To be honest, I am not wholly certain what that is yet. My original impetus was to have a place to post translations I am slowly working on of the works of Fray Luis de León, a 16th-century Augustinian friar, from Spanish into English. That's not enough to keep this blog going, though (especially since there's a good chance I will run out of steam on this project or become too busy to complete it). The name of the blog is "Treasures of the Church" in Greek (Greek is one of the original languages of the Church, and I have just recently starting learning it, hence why the title is in Greek). This is my goal, in a nutshell: to reveal the little-known treasures of the Church. The thing is, I do not consider myself an authority on these treasures: instead, I am just encountering them myself. More truthfully, then, this blog is documenting my journey of exploring