Pange Lingua

Sing, my tongue, the Savior’s glory,
of His flesh the mystery sing;
of the Blood, all price exceeding,
shed by our immortal King,
destined, for the world’s redemption,
from a noble womb to spring.

Of a pure and spotless Virgin
born for us on earth below,
He, as Man, with man conversing,
stayed, the seeds of truth to sow;
then He closed in solemn order
wondrously His life of woe.

On the night of that Last Supper,
seated with His chosen band,
He the Pascal victim eating,
first fulfills the Law’s command;
then as Food to His Apostles
gives Himself with His own hand.

Word-made-Flesh, the bread of nature
by His word to Flesh He turns;
wine into His Blood He changes;-
what though sense no change discerns?
Only be the heart in earnest,
faith her lesson quickly learns.

Down in adoration falling,
Lo! the sacred Host we hail;
Lo! o’er ancient forms departing,
newer rites of grace prevail;
faith for all defects supplying,
where the feeble sense does fail.

To the everlasting Father,
and the Son who reigns on high,
with the Holy Ghost proceeding
forth from Each eternally,
be salvation, honor, blessing,
might and endless majesty.
Amen. Alleluia.

St. Thomas Aquinas

“Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?”

“If then He wept and was troubled, it was not the Word, considered as the Word, who wept and was troubled, but it was proper to the flesh; and if too He besought that the cup might pass away, it was not the Godhead that was in terror, but this affection too was proper to the manhood. And that the words ‘Why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ are His, according to the foregoing explanations (though He suffered nothing, for the Word was impassible), is notwithstanding declared by the Evangelists; since the Lord became man, and these things are done and said as from a man, that He might Himself lighten these very sufferings of the flesh, and free it from them. Whence neither can the Lord be forsaken by the Father, who is ever in the Father, both before He spoke, and when He uttered this cry. Nor is it lawful to say that the Lord was in terror, at whom the keepers of hell’s gates shuddered and set open hell, and the graves did gape, and many bodies of the saints arose and appeared to their own people. Therefore be every heretic dumb, nor dare to ascribe terror to the Lord whom death, as a serpent, flees, at whom demons tremble, and the sea is in alarm; for whom the heavens are rent and all the powers are shaken. For behold when He says, ‘Why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ the Father shewed that He was ever and even then in Him; for the earth knowing its Lord who spoke, straightway trembled, and the vail was rent, and the sun was hidden, and the rocks were torn asunder, and the graves, as I have said, did gape, and the dead in them arose; and, what is wonderful, they who were then present and had before denied Him, then seeing these signs, confessed that ‘truly He was the Son of God.’”

St Athanasius
Against the Arians III.56

True catholicity

When the testimony of Scripture is lacking, then not even the consensus of the whole world is sufficient to prove that something is catholic for the church of Christ. The Vincentian Canon’s criteria of “everywhere, always, and by everyone” are marks of true catholicity only if ecclesiastical observances enjoy scriptural attestation. Not even the universal assent of the masses signifies catholicity. Catholicity, rather, is the assent of the church to the Word of God.

Lutheran Patristic Catholicity
Quentin D. Stewart

Ipsum esse subsistens

I suppose many people imagine that Christians think of God as some sort of Super-Being among the many beings and realities his science studied. But that is exactly wrong. God, as Christians ought to know (and preach, and teach), is not the supreme instance of the class of beings known as superheroes in Marvel comic books. No, as Thomas Aquinas taught more than seven centuries ago, God is ipsum esse subsistens: God is sheer Being itself, which makes it possible for everything else “to be.”

Sacramental signs

Sacra­mental signs do not make present the realities which they signify by spatially enclosing them, in the way in which a gas-cylinder may contain hydrogen, or by being instruments by which they are manufactured, as a sausage machine produces sausages, or by being channels through which they are communicated, as a water-pipe delivers water, but by being divinely-ordained efficacious signs of them.

E.L. Mascall

Holy

Holy” is the real name of God, of the God not of scholars and philosophers, but of the living God of faith. The knowledge about God results in definitions and distinctions. The knowledge of God leads to this one, incomprehensible, yet obvious and inescapable word: holy. And in this word we express both that God is the Absolutely Other, the One about whom we know nothing, and that He is the end of all our hunger, all our desires, the inaccessible One who mobilizes our wills, the mysterious treasure that attracts us, and there is really nothing to know but Him. “Holy” is the word, the song, the “reaction” of the Church as it enters into heaven, as it stands before the heavenly glory of God.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann

‘For the Life of the World’

God in Three Persons

Therefore, while being One in what they are; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are Three in who they are. And because of what and who they are—namely, uncreated, divine persons—they are undivided and perfectly united in their one divine life, knowledge, love, goodness, power, will, action, etc.

 

Luther’s baptismal theology

Luther’s baptismal theology cannot be presented as ‘moderate’ or as the fruit of a compromise between the conflicting claims of the necessity of faith and sacramental objectivity. ‘Tension’ and ‘paradox’ are far more appropriate descriptions of Luther’s baptismal thinking.

Prayer of St. Anselm

Hope of my heart, strength of my soul, help of my weakness, by your powerful kindness complete what in my powerless weakness I attempt. My life, the end to which I strive, although I have not yet attained to love you as I ought, still let my desire for you be as great as my love ought to be. 

Orationes siue meditationes, oratio 2 (printed in his Opera Omnia, ed. F.S. Schmitt, 1946, vol. 3, p. 6)

The true use

“Although righteousness received in the past is not to be denied, it is not a present possession in the sense that it may be the object of our self-congratulatory reliance. The true use of past blessings or enlargement is in the confidence to pray for mercy and righteousness in the future.”

Jonathan Trigg

The Baptismal Theology of Martin Luther (pg 164)