For Sharing Chrustian Religious Philosophy

I love reading religious philosophy, Christian medieval one is particular, so I though to make a thread on which I can post quotes that grabbed my attention while reading one or another such book. I don't have desire to discuss the existence or non-existence of divinity here - just to share and possibly discuss the said quotes.

I'm going to start with "The Divine Milieu", /1957 by Harper Torchbooks/ by , a French religious philosopher, Jesuit, palentologist and geologist, 1881-1955.

"...Thus every man, in the course of his life, must not only show himself obedient and docile. By his fidelity he must build - starting with the most natural territory of his own self - a work, an opus, into which something enters from all the elements of the earth. He makes his own soul throughout all his earthly days; and in the sa,e time he collaborates in another work, in another opus, which infinitely transcends, while at the same time it narrowly determines, the perspectives of his individual achievemen: the completing of the world. For in presenting the christian doctrine of salvation, it must not be forgotten that the world, taken as a whole, that is not to say in so far as it consists in a hierarchy of souls - which appears only successively, develop only collectively and will be completed only in union - the world, too, undergoes a sort of vast "ontogenesis" /a vast becoming, that is/ in which the development of every soul, assisted by the perceptible realities on which it depends, is but a diminished harmonic. Beneath efforts to put spiritual form into our won lives, the world slowly accumulates, starting with the whole of matter. that which wil make of it the Heavelny jerusalem or the New Earth..." pgs. 60-61

"...To create, to organize, material energy, or truth, or beauty, brings with it the inner torment which prevents those who faced it hazards form sinking into the quiet and closed-in life wherein grows the vice of self-regard and attachment /in the technical sense/...pg.71

"...And however autonomous our soul, it's indebted to an inheritance worked out from all sides - before ever it came into being - by the totality of the energies of the earth: it meets and rejoins life at a determined level. Then, hardly has it entered actively into the universe at that particular point that it feels, in it's turn, besieged and penetrated by the flow of cosmic influences which have to be ordered and assimilated. Let us look around us: the waves come from all sides and from the farthest horizon.

Through every cleft the world we perceive floods us with its riches - food for the body, nourishment for the eyes, harmony of sounds and fullness for the heart, unknown phenomena and new truths, all these treasures, all there stimuli, all these calls, coming to us from the four corners of the world, cross our consciousness at every moment. What is their role within us? What will their effect be, even if we welcome them passively or distinctly, like bad workmen? They will merge into the most intimate life of our soul and either develop it or poison it. We only have to look at ourselves for one moment to realise this, and either feel delight or anxiety.

If even the most humble and most material of our foods is capable of deeply influencing our most spiritual facilities, what can be said of the infinitely more penetrating energies conveyed to us by the music of tones, or words, or ideas? We have not, in us, a body that takes it's nourishment independently of our soul. Everything that the body has admitted and has begun to transform must be transfigured by the soul in its turn. The soul does this, no doubt, in its own way and with its own dignity. But it cannot escape from this universal contact nor from that unremitting labor..." pgs. 69-60

"... It is through the collaboration which he stimulates in us that Christ, starting form all created things, is consummated and atteins his plentitude. St. Paul himself tells us so. e may, perhaps, imagine that the creation was finished long ago. but that would be quite wrong. It continues still more magnificently, and at the highest levels of the world. And we serve to complete it, even by the humblest work of our hands. That is, ultimately, the meaning and value of our acts. Owing to the interrelation between matter, soul, and Christ, we bring part of the being which he desires back to God in whatever we do. With each one of our works, we labor - in individual separation, but mo less really - to build the Pleroma; that is to say, we bring to Christ a little fulfilment..." pg 62

"...Growth seems so natural to us that we do not, as a matter of fact, pause to separate from our action the forces which nourish that action or the circumstances which favor it's success. And yet "quid habes quod non accepisti" /what does thou possess that thou hast not previously received?/ We undergo life as much as we undergo death, if no more.
We must try to penetrate our most secret self, and examine our being from all sides. Let us try, patiently, to perceive the ocean of forces to which we are sunjected and in which our growth is, as it were, steeped. This is a salutary exercise; for the depth and universality of our dependence on so much altogether outside our control all go yo make up the embracing intimacy of our communion with the world to which we belong.

...And so, for the first time in my life perhaps /although i'm supposed to meditate every day!/ I took the lamp and. leaving the zone of everyday occupation and relationships where everything seems clear, I went down into my inmost self, to the deep abyss whence I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from the conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it came - arising I know not from where - the current which I dare to call my life...." ppg, 76-77 Ibid

"...After the consciousness of being something other and something greater than myself - a second thing made me dizzy; namely, the supreme improbability, the tremendous unlikelyhood of finding myself existing in the heart of a world that has survived and succeeded in being a world.
At that moment, as anyone else will find who cares to make this same interior experiment, I felt the distress characteristic to a particle adrift in the universe, the distress which makes human wills founder daily under the crushing number of living things and of stars. And if something saved me, it was hearing the voice of the Gospel, guaranteed by divine success, speaing to me from the depth of the night: ego sum, noli me timere / It is I, be not afraid/..."pg. 78 Ibid

"...Once we realize that the divine milieu discloses itself to us as a modification of the deep being of things, it is possible to make two important observations touching the manner in which it's perception is introduced and preserved within our human horizons.
In the first place, the manifestation of the divine no more modifies the apparent order of things than the eucharistic consecration modifies the sacred Species to our eyes. Since the psychological even consists, at first, solely in the appearance of an inward tension or deep brilliance, the relations between creatures remains exactly the same. They are merely accentuated in meaning. Like those translucent materials which a light within them can illuminate as a whole, the world appears to the christian mystic bathed in an inward light which intensifies it's relief, it's structure and its depth. This light is not the superficial glimmer which can be realised in coarse enjoyment. Nor it is a violent flash that destroys objects and blind our eyes. It is the calm and powerful radiance engendered by the synthesis of all the elements of the world of Jesus. The more fulfilled, according to their nature, are the beings in whom it comes to play, the closer and more sensible this radiance appears; and the more sensible it becomes, the more the objects which it bathes become distinct in contour and remote in substance. If may slightly alter a hallowed expression, we could say that the great mystery of Christianity is not exactly the appearance, but the transparence, of god in the universe...." pgs, 130-131, Ibid

"...The perception of the divine omnipresence is essentially a seeing, a taste, that is to say a sort of intuition bearing upon certain superior qualities in things, It cannot, therefore, be attained directly by any process of reasoning, nor any any human artifice. It is a gift, like life itself, of which it is undoubtedly the supreme experimental perfection. And so we are brought back again to the centre of ourselves, to the edge of that mysterious source to which we descended /at the beginning of Part Two/and watched it as it welled up. To experience the attraction of God, to be sensible of the beauty, the consistency and the final unity of being is the highest and at the same time the mos complete of our "passivities of growth". God tends, by the logic of his creative effort, to make himself sought and perceived by us ...Posiut homines...si forte attrectent eum. His prevenient grace is therefore always on the alert to excite our first look and our first prayer. But in the end the initiative, the awakening, always come from him, and whatever the further developments of our mystical faculties, no progress is achieved in this domain except as the new response to the new gift. Nemo venit ad me, nisi Pater traxerit eum...."pgs. 131-132.

I really loved the book, it's a very uplifting, and I love many of the ideas in it, like this oen taht humans are created to create, and that only while creating they are part of the divine milieu, because then they participate in the whole creation thing - so humans are not just crated and placed here to eat each other hearts, but actually are a living part of the whole divine plan.

To what ends - to whatever ends you see fit. I like to share what I came to find meaningful, and like to be challenged with what others came to see as meaningful. After all it's a question of free choice - to share or not; it's no one's duty, since we are all humans, no matter if we are warriors, mystics, or saints, whatever the last word means - I believe that we are all of that, in different nuances and put stress on different sides, but basically we have all in us from all of those.

So, do as you feel, when you feel so, to whatever ends you see as meaningful - sharing thoughts is not proselyting. In a way, if I accept the thoughts of someone, say the quoted above guy, they become mine too in a sense - this is why humans share, to enrich each other with what each has to offer.

What about Jeanne d'Arc?  As great a fighting warrior in my estimation as Boudica.

I know that men will pause in their madness when voices of women are raised...scripture and history tell me this.

Yes, very true. Women have always been the stabilizers and influencers of men. As Aristotle says, what difference does it make whether women rule, or the rulers are ruled by women? And Chesterton, Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.

Sorry if I went too far off-topic.

"Ascent of Mount Carmel" by St. John of the Cross . The book is based on this poem:

1. On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings -
- oh, happy chance! --
I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest.

2. In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised -
- oh, happy chance! --
In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest.

3. In the happy night, In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught, Without light or guide,
save that which burned in my heart.

4. This light guided me More surely than the light of noonday,
To the place where he (well I knew who!) was awaiting me -
- A place where none appeared.

5. Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!

6. Upon my flowery breast, Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

7. The breeze blew from the turret
As I parted his locks;
With his gentle hand he wounded my neck
And caused all my senses to be suspended.

8. I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

It's very beautiful and poetic. I'll post here a part of the prologue:
"...In order to expound and describe this dark night, through which the soul passes in order to attain to the Divine light of the perfect union of the love of God, as far as is possible in this life, it would be necessary to have illumination of knowledge and experience other and far greater than mine; for this darkness and these trials, both spiritual and temporal, through which happy souls are wont to pass in order to be able to attain to this high estate of perfection, are so numerous and so profound that neither does human knowledge suffice for the understanding of them, nor experience for the description of them; for only he that passes this way can understand it, and even he cannot describe it.

2. Therefore, in order to say a little about this dark night, I shall trust neither to experience nor to knowledge, since both may fail and deceive; but, while not omitting to make such use as I can of these two things, I shall avail myself, in all that, with the Divine favor, I have to say, or at the least, in that which is most important and dark to the understanding, of Divine Scripture; for, if we guide ourselves by this, we shall be unable to stray, since He Who speaks therein is the Holy Spirit. And if aught I stray, whether through my imperfect understanding of that which is said in it or of matters uncollected with it, it is not my intention to depart from the sound sense and doctrine of our Holy Mother the Catholic Church; for in such a case I submit and resign myself wholly, not only to her command, but to whatever better judgment she may pronounce concerning it.

3. To this end I have been moved, not by any possibility that I see in myself of accomplishing so arduous a task, but by the confidence which I have in the Lord that He will help me to say something to relieve the great necessity which is experienced by many souls, who, when they set out upon the road of virtue, and Our Lord desires to bring them into this dark night that they may pass through it to Divine union, make no progress. At times this is because they have no desire to enter it or to allow themselves to be led into it; at other times, because they understand not themselves and lack competent and alert directors70 who will guide them to the summit. And so it is sad to see many souls to whom God gives both aptitude and favour with which to make progress (and who, if they would take courage, could attain to this high estate), remaining in an elementary stage71 of communion with God, for want of will, or knowledge, or because there is none who will lead them in the right path or teach them how to get away from these beginnings. ..."

here a link on which the whole work can be read, with a very interesting foreword that includes biography of the guy, chronology of his life and analyses of the work.
http://www.basilica.org/pages/ebooks...t%20Carmel.pdf