Undusted Texts

St. Makarios of Egypt (also known as St. Makarios the Great: not the same St. Makarios who helped compile the Philokalia ) was a Coptic monk from the 300s who has been well-revered in the East for his homilies. Though the homilies are now often called Pseudo-Makarian (they seem to have more of a Syrian background than an Egyptian one), they continue to be popular today. Some of them are even included in the Philokalia (though via an eleventh-century adaptation by St. Symeon Metaphrastis, "the Translator"). One section of these homilies (§88) cut me to the heart and prompted me to clarify something about this blog: the majority of the spiritual insights presented here are not my own. This may be obvious to some due to my extensive references, but I am confessing it for clarity's sake: in my work on this blog, I am more of a repeater and synthesizer than a spiritual forerunner. My goal is to channel the insights of past spiritual writers to my readers and only occasi...

"Behold, God is great, and we know Him not; the number of His years is unsearchable... God thunders wondrously with His voice; He does great things which we cannot comprehend... The Almighty--we cannot find Him; He is great in power and justice, and abundant righteousness He will not violate. Therefore men fear Him."--Job 36:26,37:5,23-24a As I mentioned in my first post on mystery , God Himself is mysterious. One of the authors who understood this the best is Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite . This odd name comes from the fact that the writings of this author were originally connected to an Athenian converted by St. Paul named Dionysius the Areopagite, mentioned in Acts 17:34. However, these writings are from the 5th or 6th century, and thus they could not be written by someone from the apostolic times. The true writer of these works is unknown, so he is referred to as Pseudo-Dionysius to reference the tradition. Pseudo-Dionysius combines Neo-Platonism (such as the wo...

"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...