God's good grace be with you all during this remembrance of the one who is a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to the Jews.
Long ago, at many times and in many ways,
God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,
but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son,
whom he appointed the heir of all things,
through whom also he created the world.
He is the radiance of God's glory and the exact imprint of his nature,
and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
After making purification for sins,
he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
having become as much superior to angels
as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
Friday, December 24, 2004
Stabat Mater Speciosa
This is very, very rough, but given the day I couldn't forebear posting it. It's my translation of the medieval hymn Stabat Mater Speciosa, the companion piece to Stabat Mater Dolorosa, of which I have already given a rough translation and which should be read in conjunction with it.
Stabat Mater Speciosa
The lovely mother was standing here,
Joyful with the cradle near
Where lay her baby boy,
Whose soul with joyful ecstasy,
Happy with great fervency,
Was pierced by jubilation.
O how blessed and how elated
Was that fair immaculated
Mother of the sole-begotten;
Who was laughing and joyful being,
Who was exulting in her seeing
The birth of the one she bore.
Who is the one who will not have joy
To see the mother whose baby boy
Was Christ, in such great solace?
Who cannot be happy made
Watching the mother as she played,
Pious, with her son?
For the sins of Gentiles, Jews,
Jesus with lowly beasts she views,
Subjected to the cold.
She sees, so sweet, the one she bore,
The Son which she does so adore,
Crying, swaddled tight.
Christ, now born, laid in a stall
The citizens of heaven's halls
Praise with endless joy;
The old man stands, wholly dazed
Without speaking, heart amazed,
Beside the girl in wonder.
Pious mother, love's great source,
Make me feel your ardor's force,
Make me sense it deep with you,
Make my heart be set alight
With the love of Godly Christ
And be made to please Him well.
Holy mother, if you will,
Put the blows and wounds you feel
Deep within my heart;
The pains with my own soul dividing
Of your child from heaven gliding,
Deigning to be born.
Make me to rejoice with you,
Share the love of Christ with you,
For as long as I shall live.
In me set up your ardor's light,
In your Son make me delight
While wayfaring I am.
With this ardor make me commune,
And make me never at all immune
From this great desire.
Splendid maiden of all maidens,
With bitter thought be never laden,
Let me take your baby up.
Make me bear the strength and worth
Of Him who conquers by His birth
All death, giving up His life.
Make me like you be satiated
With the one you bore intoxicated,
In such holy rite.
Raised on high and set ablaze,
All my senses He does daze
By such generous gift.
May the one that you now bear
With word of Christ protect and care
And conserve me with His grace.
When my flesh is no longer living,
Grant me grace of my soul's giving
To vision of the one now born.
Stabat Mater Speciosa
The lovely mother was standing here,
Joyful with the cradle near
Where lay her baby boy,
Whose soul with joyful ecstasy,
Happy with great fervency,
Was pierced by jubilation.
O how blessed and how elated
Was that fair immaculated
Mother of the sole-begotten;
Who was laughing and joyful being,
Who was exulting in her seeing
The birth of the one she bore.
Who is the one who will not have joy
To see the mother whose baby boy
Was Christ, in such great solace?
Who cannot be happy made
Watching the mother as she played,
Pious, with her son?
For the sins of Gentiles, Jews,
Jesus with lowly beasts she views,
Subjected to the cold.
She sees, so sweet, the one she bore,
The Son which she does so adore,
Crying, swaddled tight.
Christ, now born, laid in a stall
The citizens of heaven's halls
Praise with endless joy;
The old man stands, wholly dazed
Without speaking, heart amazed,
Beside the girl in wonder.
Pious mother, love's great source,
Make me feel your ardor's force,
Make me sense it deep with you,
Make my heart be set alight
With the love of Godly Christ
And be made to please Him well.
Holy mother, if you will,
Put the blows and wounds you feel
Deep within my heart;
The pains with my own soul dividing
Of your child from heaven gliding,
Deigning to be born.
Make me to rejoice with you,
Share the love of Christ with you,
For as long as I shall live.
In me set up your ardor's light,
In your Son make me delight
While wayfaring I am.
With this ardor make me commune,
And make me never at all immune
From this great desire.
Splendid maiden of all maidens,
With bitter thought be never laden,
Let me take your baby up.
Make me bear the strength and worth
Of Him who conquers by His birth
All death, giving up His life.
Make me like you be satiated
With the one you bore intoxicated,
In such holy rite.
Raised on high and set ablaze,
All my senses He does daze
By such generous gift.
May the one that you now bear
With word of Christ protect and care
And conserve me with His grace.
When my flesh is no longer living,
Grant me grace of my soul's giving
To vision of the one now born.
Blue Sapphire Clasping All the Lights
From George MacDonald's Diary of an Old Soul for December 24:
A God must have a God for company.
And lo! thou hast the Son-God to thy friend.
Thou honour'st his obedience, he thy law.
Into thy secret life-will he doth see;
Thou fold'st him round in live love perfectly--
One two, without beginning, without end;
In love, life, strength, and truth, perfect without a flaw.
And for December 25:
Thou hast not made, or taught me, Lord, to care
For times and seasons--but this one glad day
Is the blue sapphire clasping all the lights
That flash in the girdle of the year so fair--
When thou wast born a man, because alway
Thou wast and art a man, through all the flights
Of thought, and time, and thousandfold creation's play.
A God must have a God for company.
And lo! thou hast the Son-God to thy friend.
Thou honour'st his obedience, he thy law.
Into thy secret life-will he doth see;
Thou fold'st him round in live love perfectly--
One two, without beginning, without end;
In love, life, strength, and truth, perfect without a flaw.
And for December 25:
Thou hast not made, or taught me, Lord, to care
For times and seasons--but this one glad day
Is the blue sapphire clasping all the lights
That flash in the girdle of the year so fair--
When thou wast born a man, because alway
Thou wast and art a man, through all the flights
Of thought, and time, and thousandfold creation's play.
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Beginning of a Transition
For those of you interested in these sorts of things, I have begun to make some of the changes to Houyhnhnm Land. It is nowhere near done (indeed, it is just barely started), and I still want to put in tabs, rework the sidebar, modify the entry-format a bit, etc., etc. But you can get a bit of a feel for the direction I'm going. I'm not a big fan of green, but I find it much easier on my eyes. I have a slight color deficiency in the red spectrum; now that I've changed from dark red to bright green, I can see the links more easily than I could before. I had never really noticed the problem, until I had something to contrast it with. There's lots and lots still to do, with the color scheme and whatever else. But you can see what's going on, if you want. (At this point, of course, I can't guarantee how it will look in every browser.) Naturally, I'm interested in any thoughts you might have.
UPDATE (Dec 24): For cool stuff I'm trying out at HL, run your cursor over the links in the navigation box. Also, refresh your browser while looking at the post pictures.
UPDATE (Dec 24): For cool stuff I'm trying out at HL, run your cursor over the links in the navigation box. Also, refresh your browser while looking at the post pictures.
Carnival of the Reformation and Some Verbal Remarks
The Second Carnival of the Reformation is up at "Jollyblogger"; the theme is Solus Christus. There are some interesting posts.
With regard to the post at "CoffeeSwirls," on the 'descended into hell' part of the Apostle's Creed, I'm not sure the problem is so much anything to do with the Creed as it is with unbiblical notions of what hell (hades) is; in particular, with the tendency to conflate mentions of hades with those of the second death; 'hades' and 'second death' are entirely distinct. If we have good reasons for confining the word 'hell' to a usage different from 'hades', we will need to be consistent about it. We could go this route; being very conservative about this sort of thing, I'm not inclined to it, but if that's the best way it would be fine with me (after all, there's nothing particularly significant about the English translation, whatever value you put on the original). It's a good post, though.
The Crusty Curmudgeon has an interesting post as well. I'm not really convinced by his argument to extend the solus Christus to a rejection of Marian mediatricity, but Catholics do get in their heads the oddest sorts of justifications for their practices sometimes, such as the one noted there (which seems, alas, quite common). The real point of the title 'Mediatrix', I take it, is the rather universally orthodox point that Mary through her submission as handmaiden of the Lord 'mediated' Christ to us in that Christ was conceived of her body (she was truly Theotokos), combined with the claim of Marian intercession (in which she 'mediates' in the way anyone does in praying for someone) as part of the perfectly orthodox communion of saints (although admittedly by an inference that not everyone makes). I can't help but think this is one of those severe verbal misunderstandings that tend to arise in theological matters. In Latin 'mediator' just means someone who serves as a middle in some way; the NT Greek 'mesites', despite its similar etymology, seems to be a stronger, narrower word. Of the six times it is used in the NT, it is always used to indicate the one who mediates in the giving of a covenant; four times it is used explicitly of Christ; the other two, in Galatians, are a bit obscure but seem to refer to Moses. And I don't know of any Catholics who hold that Mary is mediatrix in the sense of being the one who mediates the actual giving of the covenant. But this was a good post, too, with much that's of interest.
UPDATE (12/22 evening): clarified one or two points, and corrected one or two things that slipped by revision, so that I don't sound entirely like an illiterate.
With regard to the post at "CoffeeSwirls," on the 'descended into hell' part of the Apostle's Creed, I'm not sure the problem is so much anything to do with the Creed as it is with unbiblical notions of what hell (hades) is; in particular, with the tendency to conflate mentions of hades with those of the second death; 'hades' and 'second death' are entirely distinct. If we have good reasons for confining the word 'hell' to a usage different from 'hades', we will need to be consistent about it. We could go this route; being very conservative about this sort of thing, I'm not inclined to it, but if that's the best way it would be fine with me (after all, there's nothing particularly significant about the English translation, whatever value you put on the original). It's a good post, though.
The Crusty Curmudgeon has an interesting post as well. I'm not really convinced by his argument to extend the solus Christus to a rejection of Marian mediatricity, but Catholics do get in their heads the oddest sorts of justifications for their practices sometimes, such as the one noted there (which seems, alas, quite common). The real point of the title 'Mediatrix', I take it, is the rather universally orthodox point that Mary through her submission as handmaiden of the Lord 'mediated' Christ to us in that Christ was conceived of her body (she was truly Theotokos), combined with the claim of Marian intercession (in which she 'mediates' in the way anyone does in praying for someone) as part of the perfectly orthodox communion of saints (although admittedly by an inference that not everyone makes). I can't help but think this is one of those severe verbal misunderstandings that tend to arise in theological matters. In Latin 'mediator' just means someone who serves as a middle in some way; the NT Greek 'mesites', despite its similar etymology, seems to be a stronger, narrower word. Of the six times it is used in the NT, it is always used to indicate the one who mediates in the giving of a covenant; four times it is used explicitly of Christ; the other two, in Galatians, are a bit obscure but seem to refer to Moses. And I don't know of any Catholics who hold that Mary is mediatrix in the sense of being the one who mediates the actual giving of the covenant. But this was a good post, too, with much that's of interest.
UPDATE (12/22 evening): clarified one or two points, and corrected one or two things that slipped by revision, so that I don't sound entirely like an illiterate.
The Real Divide
See the county map here (hat-tip: prosthesis). I refuse to let those 'pop' people gain power in this country. (Although, I do admit, it does sometimes get confusing, in some of those dark-red counties of Texas, when people ask you for a Coke and get annoyed that you don't bring them a Dr. Pepper.)
ubi venit plenitudo temporis
Rebecca has a good post on the phrase "in the fullness of time" as applied to Christ's birth.
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