Joseph R. > Recent Status Updates

A good reflection for the Halloween season: "There is no human body without a human soul; a corpse is what once was a human body but no longer is one. And the human soul without the human body is like a ghost; it is not fully human until it receives its human body in the Resurrection. Ghosts and corpses scare us precisely because they are not human." [p. 113]

"For glory is like the human shadow: if you follow it, it runs away; if you run away, it follows. Always value yourself least of all and remember, whenever any good befalls you throughout your life, ascribe it all to God who gave it, not to yourself who received it." Exhortation to Humility 8 by Martin of Braga

From the commentary on Psalm 105, about slavery: "So the psalmist beautifully says, 'Joseph had been sold into slavery. They had bound his feet with fetters.' 'He had been sold into slavery,' he says; he did not become a slave. They had bound his feet, but not his soul." Letter 53 by Ambrose, p. 245

"(Jesus) took a body capable of suffering, and with the body a human soul. Both of these he kept unstained from the defilements of sin and gave his soul for the sake of the souls that had sinned and his body for the sake of the bodies that had died. And since the body that was assumed is described as the body of the very only-begotten Son of God, he refers the passion of the body to himself." Theodoret of Cyr

This is one of those books I fell like I should have read by now. A Good Story is Hard to Find podcast is discussing it next month, so I am getting it in ahead of time.

Only God is beyond the universe. For if the word universe means anything, it excludes the possibility of another universe, let alone of other universes. If universes are in interaction with one another, they form only one universe. If they are not in interaction, they are mutually unknowable. There is indeed...profundity in Newman's remark that only one thought is greater than the Universe, the thought of its Maker.

Why we have different charisms: "These and many other virtues I give differently to different souls, and the soul is most at ease with that virtue which has been made primary for her. But through her love of that virtue she attracts all the other virtues to herself, since they are all bound together in loving charity." [pp. 37-38]

Tackling something tough for Lent!

Can I finish Enchanted April before it's March?

"God will not forget even the saliva that has dried in your mouth as a result of fasting....humble yourself in all things, hold back your word even if you understand the whole affair....joyfully put up with every trial. For if you knew the honor that results from trials you would not pray to be delivered from them." Pachomius on Psalm 62-We should pray for strength, not deliverance. Maybe even joy? That's hard to do.

Reading for Christmas and to get a head start on my 2025 reading list!

[A pagan] points to the sun and says again, "Look, there's my god! Where is yours?" He has found something he can demonstrate to my bodily eyes. For me it is different, not because I have nothing to demonstrate but because he lacks the kind of eyes to which I could demonstrate it. He was able to point the sun out to my bodily eyes as his god, but how can I point out to any eyes he has the sun's Creator?-St. Augustine

Fun line from The Mezzotint: "...tea was taken to the accompaniment of a discussion which golfing persons can imagine for themselves, but which the conscientious writer has no right to inflict upon any non-golfing persons." [p.27]

I'm reading a ghost story a day as a lead up to Halloween. So far, James's stories are very delightful and spooky.

Comm on Ps 32: God wants us to confess our sins, not because he himself cannot know them but because the devil longs to find something to charge us with before the tribunal of the eternal Judge and wants us to defend rather than to acknowledge our sins. Our God, on the contrary, because he is good and merciful, wants us to confess them in this world so we will not be confounded by them later on in the world to come.

Here's a line for you: "The more one is crucified, the more one burns to participate in the crucifixion of someone more crucified than oneself." [p.21]

Sample quote from Basil the Great commenting on Psalm 29: The cedar is at time praised by Scripture as a stable tree, free from decay, fragrant, and adequate for supplying shelter, but at times it is attacked as unfruitful and hard to bend, so that it offers a representation of impiety.

#949 It is false piety to preserve peace at the expense of truth. It is also false zeal to preserve truth at the expense of charity.

This finally came in from the library, the day that the podcast about it drops at A Good Story is Hard to Find. Do I listen to the spoiler point in the podcast or just defer listening until I've finished the book? If only I could travel back in time!

A book full of aphorisms and short essays. Check out # 70, "If our condition were truly happy we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it."

"The ideological spirit is the opposite of the Gospel spirit. That is why priests who choose to follow or to propagate political ideas are necessarily on the wrong path, since they make sacred something that is not supposed to be. Ideology is by nature disconnected from reality, and it is necessarily a source of division, since it cannot win the lasting allegiance of people who are still anchored in reality." p. 130

I only just started this but his story is already amazing. He grew up in an isolated town in Guinea, West Africa. Missionaries had come there a few decades before he was born and their work bore fruit in his vocation to the priesthood (among much other fruit). His journey to ordination is where I am now in the book.

I am finally starting this book since my pastor is doing a Psalm-a-week commentary. So I will read about a psalm each week to keep up. My plan is to read first, then watch his video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYMsN... is the first one). I have some catch-up to do!

This book has 29 chapters for the 29 monster movies Universal Studios made from 1931 (Dracula) to 1956 (The Creature Walks among Us). My plan is to read one a day, sort of a Halloween countdown. It will go well with the Halloween Advent calendar from the Great Library of Dreams podcast.

The voices in my head told me to read this!

I am reading this as a possible book club/discussion with my kids this summer, if it is not too challenging. Heck, I want to read this for my own enjoyment....

I am re-reading this in anticipation of the sequel coming soon!

I'm returning to last Lent's practice of reading 3 chapters a day. Hopefully, this time it will stick beyond Lent!

Now I am onto the St. Francis part!

This finally came in from the library. I only just heard about it this December and wanted to read it. Better late than never, I guess!