Undusted Texts

 Pope Leo XIV's recent encyclical  Magnifica Humanitas  builds on the Social Doctrine of the Church, of which Pope Leo XIII is generally considered the father (though, of course, he built on principles found in the Church Fathers and other theologians).  Due to that, almost all of the quotations and citations in the document are from the pontificates of Leo XIII and later, with the vast majority being from Vatican II and thereafter.   There are only a handful of quotations from non-papal authors; most-reported in the press is the quotation from Gandalf in Tolkien's  Lord of the Rings  (MH 213); another is from Viktor Frankl (MH 121).   But the one that most caught my eye is from one of my favorites, Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle . Pope Leo quotes from Bérulle's masterwork, the  Discourses on the States and on the Grandeurs of Jesus : “According to the teaching of our faith, we have and adore, in our mysteries, a God who is born in a ma...

Introduction Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-1657) was a French priest and founder of the Sulpicians (Society of the Priests of Saint Sulpice).  Though encouraged at a young age, by St. Francis to Sales, to become a priest, he lived for fashionable society; when he studied at the Sorbonne, he hoped for academic glory, striving to learn Hebrew in order to defend his thesis in that language, just for the thrill of it.  When his eyesight began to fail, he undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy House of Loreto, where he was cured and converted.  Taught by St. Vincent de Paul and Charles de Condren, superior general of Pierre de Bérulle's Oratory of Jesus, he undertook both spiritual reform and works of charity.  Eventually headquartered at the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, he founded a seminary and an order of priests, the Sulpicians, who continued Olier's dual aim, especially in following St. Vincent de Paul's lead in caring for the poor.  (A pupil of the se...

Christ is risen! A translation is always a balancing act between an ungrammatical, too-strict word-for-word replacement and a new work merely "inspired by" the original text.  I've always loved the way John Dryden describes the issue in his essay "Ovid and the Art of Translation."   Dryden defines three distinct styles of translation: "metaphrase, or turning an author word by word, and line by line, from one language into another"—about which he later says, "'Tis much like dancing on ropes with fettered legs: a man may shun a fall by using caution; but the gracefulness of motion is not to be expected"—"paraphrase, or translation with latitude, where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense; and that too is admitted to be amplified, but not altered," and finally "imitation, where the translator (if now he has not lost that name) assumes the ...

The Canon for the Third Sunday of the Great Fast , the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross, comes as a shock.  We know Sundays are always mini-Paschas, celebrations of the Resurrection, even in the depths of the Fast. (So they always have full canons, rather than the penitential three-ode canons found during weekdays, for which the  Triodion  is named.)  We have continued to sing the resurrectional hymns from the Octoechos throughout the Fast.  Yet the Canon for this week hits us with unbridled Paschal joy, for the ikoi come from the great Paschal Canon that we gloriously shout out during Paschal Matins. The Cross is the great reverser: through the Cross, a Person bearing the deathless divine nature dies; through the Cross, we deathbound men gain deathlessness. So perhaps we should not be surprised that the Cross brings a burst of joy in the middle of the somber Fast, just as its feast on September 14 is a day of fasting n the midst of the year's longest gap b...

Along with the announcement of my new book translation, Not of This World  by St. Claude La Colombière, I'm also proud to announce a new article publication: "Christ Our Fellow-Pilgrim," published today at the Homiletic & Pastoral Review .  It is a reflection on a sermon by St. John of Ávila, whose full text can be found in my book of translations,  My Burden Is Light: Suffering and Consolation in the Christian Life .

My most recent book is now available for pre-order : Not of the World: 20 Lessons on Following Christ Without Compromise , by St. Claude La Colombière (1641-1682).  See the publisher's blurb below: "Discover the wisdom of St. Claude La Colombière (1641–1682), the Jesuit saint who served as confessor to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and ardently promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In Not of the World: 20 Lessons on Following Christ without Compromise , readers encounter a treasury of spiritual reflections drawn from his sermons, offering clarity, conviction, and pastoral depth for Christians seeking holiness amid a fallen culture. With charity and precision, St. Claude explains the sacrifice demanded by authentic love of Christ. He addresses the realities of Christian life in the world without surrendering to it, calling believers to humility, courage, and fidelity. Topics include love of neighbor, human respect, humility, the education of children, and the ...

Below is an anonymous translation of a 1929 lecture by Edith Stein; I found the text in a collection of handouts for a class given by Sr. Johanna Paruch.  Possibly she is the translator, though no information was given in the text itself.  I reformatted the text into a more readable form and added a few editor's notes of my own.   The original German text is “Die Mitwirkung der klösterlicken Bildungsanstalten an der religiösen Bildung der Jugend,” Ganzheitliches Leben: Schriften zur religiösen Bildung , Edith Steins Werke, Vol. 12 (Freiburg: Herder, 1990), 95-108.    

  I have had little time to work on translation or writing projects recently, though I do have a few in progress, including a new Bérulle volume and a translation that I aim to have published in an academic journal.  However, I wanted to share some information I recently discovered. Over a decade ago, on the former home of my blog, θησαυρος της εκκλησιας , I posted a discussion of the Prayer Rule of the Theotokos, popularized by St. Seraphim Zevzdinsky.  Drawing from various sources, I put together a couple variants of the Prayer Rule in a PDF booklet ( available from my website ).   It has always been one of the more popular pages on my blogs, and it still lists high in searches for "prayer rule of the Theotokos."  (Even higher, at least on Google, are the Internet Archive and Scribd mirrors of the PDF.)  So I was pleased, though not too surprised, to see it cited as a source in a recent book on the Prayer Rule, published by Eastern Christian P...

 Introduction I translated a few other writings by Jean Gerson (1363-1429), including a section of a sermon on St. Nicholas and a series of texts relating to the Feast of the Espousals of Mary and Joseph .  The below text is an odd allegorical one, considering various virtues as handmaidens ministering to the Child Jesus in the mind.  The original title reads "How, in the Devoted Mind, the Child Jesus Is Conceived, Bathed, Born, Nourished, etc."; I slightly renamed it for catchiness.  The text, as found in Gerson's collected writings, ends with a bit at first discussing the "wise man" asking what he must do to be saved (Mt 19:16-24), before seguing into a discussion of Lk 17:9-10.  The text, however, cuts off mid-sentence, and this passage seems to have little connection, if any, with the allegorical text.  Therefore, I have not included this final paragraph.  The original text also only had a single paragraph break; I have included many more for eas...

 Introduction Jean de La Ceppède (c. 1550-1623) was a French nobleman, judge, and poet, best-known for his sonnet series  Theorems on the Sacred Mystery of Our Redemption , sometimes known as the  Spiritual Theorems  for short.  Below, I have given a translation of one of the best-known of these sonnets. My translation is a poetic one, which matches La Ceppède's rhyme scheme (ABAB BABA CCD EDE); for a more literal translation, see Christopher O. Blum's article on La Ceppède, "A Poet of the Passion of Christ."  To keep a rhythm and to keep the rhyme, I sometimes had to reword some of La Ceppède's lines, or omit phrases.  The last tercet is the oddest in translation, particularly the first line: "Beauty for whom this Beauty dies alove."  A literal translation of the French is "Beautiful woman for whom this beautiful man dies while loving you well."  This is far too wordy for my rhythm, hence my compression.  For the final phrase, and to ma...

At a thrift store recently, I came across a binder labelled "Sketches of Saints."  Intrigued by the find, I decided to bring it home and scan it to share it with others. Unfortunately, the artist's name appears nowhere in the portfolio.   Based on where I found the sketches and on the saints included (particularly St. Isaac Jogues and St. Frances Xavier Cabrini), I assume the artist was American.  Based on the paper's evident age and on the fact that the descriptions accompanying each sketch were prepared on a typewriter, the portfolio cannot be too new; my best guess is that it was prepared in the 1980s.  The  terminus a quo  seems to be 1982, the date of St. Maximilian Kolbe's canonization; his description classifies him as a "saint."  My only hesitation about this date is the fact that, in an accompanying chart of included saints, Maximilian Kolbe's name has an asterisk next to it, and it is printed in smaller font.  This most likely means...

 Introduction Though St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690) is often considered the founder of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, she was not the first to praise the Heart (though she fought to gain the Heart a feast).  Hints of this devotion can be found in earlier writers, such as St. Gertrude (1256-1302), but the best formulator of the devotion was St. John Eudes (1601-1680).  (St. John also wrote the texts of the Offices of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, which were celebrated in a few areas; it was St. Margaret Mary's demand that the Feast of the Sacred Heart be a universal feast, set on the first Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi, as was eventually done.)  Hints of devotion to the Sacred Heart were already arising in France, such as in the writings of Jean de Bernières-Louvigny , but it was St. John who theologically fleshed out the devotion and its rationale.  Among earlier writers he points to is Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle (1575-1629), wit...

I recently ran across a video on a topic that I've been somewhat interested in for a while: the influence of the Desert Fathers on Celtic Christianity.  Below is a talk from Orthodox scholar Fr. Gregory Telepneff on this topic:     Fr. Telepneff also wrote a book on the same theme:  The Egyptian Desert in the Irish Bogs: The Byzantine Character of Early Celtic Monasticism . Other resources on this topic include Connie Marshner's  Monastery and High Cross: The Forgotten Eastern Roots of Irish Christianity  and Robert K. Ritner, Jr.'s "Egyptians in Ireland: A Question of Coptic Peregrinations."

   Introduction The Sacred Heart was not a new concept when it was revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690), though the official consecration and liturgical feast requested through those revelations was new.  A number of St. Margaret Mary's near-contemporaries wrote about the devotion, such as St. John Eudes (1601-1680) and Jean de Bernières-Louvigny (1602-1659).  Bernières was a lay Third Order Franciscan who founded a hermitage in Caen; he also served as a treasurer for the same region, and he provided financial support to the still-young Church in Canada, particularly through his relationship with St. Marie of the Incarnation (1599-1672).  Among his writers, the greatest is the  Interior Christian , published posthumously in 1661.  It was a great favorite of St. Claude La Colombière and others; however, its influence among Catholics fell drastically when Bernières was posthumously condemned as a Quietist in 1689, and his writings placed on...

Introduction One of the requests found in the revelations to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690) was that of a consecration to the Sacred Heart.  Though devotion to the Sacred Heart existed before St. Margaret Mary—perhaps most prominently in her older contemporary, St. John Eudes (1601-1680)—this request for consecration was new.  Even her confessor and spiritual director, St. Claude La Colombière (1641-1682), who was inclined to this devotion, and who came to accept her revelations, seemed to be wary of this consecration at first; yet he did, in time, come to fulfill Our Lord's request.  He probably did not do so in June 1675, when he was with St. Margaret Mary in Paray-le-Monial—at that time, he may have only made the act of reparations, or "honorable amends" ( amende honorable ), also requested by the Lord—but he most likely made his consecration sometime before a spiritual retreat in London in 1677, though it is at the end of his notes from this retreat that his f...

 For ease of reading, I have consolidated three prior posts from Jean Gerson ( Letters on the Espousals of Mary and Joseph , Office of the Espousals , and Matins Readings for the Espousals ) into a single PDF.       Direct Download  

 Francis Jammes (1868-1938) was a French poet and author; I previously published a translation of one of his novels,  The Rosary in the Sun .  Now I have translation an essay of his on poetic theory:  The Poet and Inspiration  (1922).  As an appendix, I have also translated a short manifesto from his early days, "Jammism" (1897).     Direct Download

 Introduction Even a cursed poet can write a holy poem.  Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) was such a poet.  Though much of his life was spent in violence, debauchery, alcoholism, and addiction, he had a brief time when he experienced a return to the faith, while in prison for shooting his lover in the wrist (deemed by the courts "attempted murder").  Most of the poems from this time were published in his 1880 collection  Sagesse (Wisdom) .  The following poem is one such poem, from the time when Verlaine had "prostrated before the long-unknown Altar...adores the All-Good and invokes the Almighty, sworn son of the Church, the last in merits, but full of good will" (Preface to  Sagesse ).  The poem is made of tercets in which lines 1 and 3 are identical, and line 2 unique.  Other than the identical rhymes of lines 1 and 3 of each tercet, no rhyme scheme is involved.  My translation aims at accuracy of meaning rather than any attempt to replicate ...

 Questions to Antiochos and Other Theological Questions  Pseudo-Athanasius Buy the Kindle Edition Here Buy the Kobo Edition Here    It was Luther who made the question-and-answer format popular for catechisms, but it had been used for teaching for centuries before him.  Often, the curious would prepare lists of questions and send them to authorities to answer: so we have a set of  Solution to Thirty-Eight Questions  from St. Hildegard of Bingen, or the set of detailed questions that the Khan of Bulgaria sent to the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople to decide whether he would become Catholic or Orthodox.  (One question queried the sinfulness of wearing trousers.)   This volume consists of a variety of sets of questions, all falsely ascribed to St. Athanasius, but instead probably written in the 7th century.  The sets included are the  Questions to Antiochos , the  Sequential Questions on the Gospels , the  Scrip...

 Introduction I am finishing up a translation of a series of Greek questions-and-answers falsely ascribed to St. Athanasius; at the least the main group of questions (the  Questions to Antiochos ) seem to date from the 7th century.  One group of questions, simply named "Other Questions," goes into detail about the metaphysics of the Trinity and the Incarnation.  Below is an excerpt from Q. 4 of the  Other Questions , discussing how man can understand the Trinity.  I hope to release the full translation of these works soon.      The Sun As An Image of the Trinity Pseudo-Athanasius (c. 7th c.)  Listen with understanding, and you will know the Holy Trinity’s mystery, as far as the mind of men is able to know.  Or, rather, it seems to me, insofar as our words are able to tell.  For God is unexplainable, and, therefore, we cannot comprehend His nature, nor is He, like us, one-personed.  For if He were one-personed, we would kno...