Undusted Texts

 Introduction In keeping with today's Roman Catholic reading regarding the various gifts given by the Spirit for varied tasks (1 Cor 12), I decided to post this little essay I wrote back in 2015, about the variety of vocations.  I may have gone a bit overboard in my quotations, and perhaps the style and precise formulations are not how I would word them now, but, overall, I think it's still a decent piece of writing. The Many-Lighted Stars of Vocation “One [is the] glory of [the] sun, and another [the] glory of [the] moon, and another [the] glory of [the] stars: therefore star differs from star in glory” (1 Cor 15:41).  Each of these has its own role, and usurping another’s role leads to chaos.  So if the sun were the moon, the earth would be consumed like a dry leaf in a bonfire; if the moon were the sun, the earth would be frozen.  Even having any other star replace the sun could have disastrous results: the star could be too large and engulf the solar system,...

Dom Lorenzo Scupoli, C.R.'s Il combattimento spirituale ( The Spiritual Combat ) is one of the classic works of Catholic spirituality regarding spiritual warfare.  The author was a member of the Congregation of Clerks Regular of the Divine Providence, better known as the Theatines, who lived between 1530 and 1610, publishing this work, his most famous, in 1589.  For centuries, this work has been an ascetic classic in the Western Church: one great devotee of the work was St. Francis de Sales, a Doctor of the Church, who carried it in his pocket for 20 years. The work's popularity did not stop in the Western Church, though: it migrated to the East, making this classic one revered by both lungs of the Church, West and East.  Nicodemus the Hagiorite (Hagiorite means "of the Holy Mountain," that is, Mount Athos in Greece), a Greek Orthodox saint of the 18th century, came across this text and was enamored by it.  Seeing its potential for spiritual growth among the Orth...