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And because of the tender love which our good Lord has for all who shall be saved, he comforts us readily and sweetly, meaning this, ‘It is true that sin is cause of all this suffering, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’

“So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence have touched me in a different way—have affected me with something as like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that had pain for its foundations could—I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now see you..."

And after this I saw God in a point—that is to say, in my understanding—and by seeing this I saw that he is in everything. I looked attentively, seeing and recognizing in that vision that he does everything that is done.

From Eliot's Burnt Norton:
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct
to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way...

And now the winds which had so long been from the north-west began to blow from the west itself and every morning when the sun rose out of the sea the curved prow of the Dawn Treader stood up right across the middle of the sun. Some thought that the sun looked larger than it looked from Narnia, but others disagreed. And they sailed and sailed before a gentle yet steady breeze...

The marvel of the Incarnation is this: it enables God to worship God. God the Son in his humanity adores God the Father, with whom, in his divinity, he is coequal. What is more, this filial worship of the Father begins at the first moment of the Incarnation and has its first sanctuary in the Virgin’s womb.

Building on the testimony of the infancy narratives in the Gospels, the Fathers apply the Old Testament images of God’s presence to the Christ-carrying womb of the Virgin. It is the ultimate Temple, Tabernacle, the Palace of the Great King, the Ark of the Covenant, the Altar of Incense, the Throne of the Cherubim, the Sanctuary of God.

The coincidence of the Virginal Conception and the hypostatic union is a defined doctrine of the Catholic faith. In the words of the ‘Formula of Union’ agreed between St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Antiochene bishops in 433 and canonized by the General Council of Chalcedon in 451, “We confess the holy Virgin to be Mother of God, because God the Word was made flesh and became man ...”

Carl had changed, Alexandra felt, much less than one might have expected. He had not become a trim, self-satisfied city man. There was still something homely and wayward and definitely personal about him. Even his clothes, his Norfolk coat and his very high collars, were a little unconventional. He seemed to shrink into himself as he used to do; to hold himself away from things, as if he were afraid of being hurt.

Alexandra rose and looked about. A golden afterglow throbbed in the west, but the country already looked empty and mournful. A dark moving mass came over the western hill, the Lee boy was bringing in the herd from the other half-section. Emil ran from the windmill to open the corral gate. From the log house, on the little rise across the draw, the smoke was curling. The cattle lowed and bellowed.

With a terrible cry the Balrog fell forward, and its shadow plunged down and vanished. But even as it fell it swung its whip, and the thongs lashed and curled about the wizard’s knees, dragging him to the brink. He staggered and fell, grasped vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss. ‘Fly, you fools!’ he cried, and was gone.

The ten northern tribes call an assembly and make Jeroboam their king. From this point forward, the royal kingdom of Israel is split in two forever. The Northern Kingdom under Jeroboam's leadership retains the name Israel. The Southern Kingdom under Rehoboam and the line of David will be called by the name of David's tribe, Judah.

These and other parallels between Daniel and Joseph have at least one implication: they lead us to think of the Exodus, the archetype of all of God's salvific acts.

‘He came and laid his long hand on my arm. “And why not, Gandalf?” he whispered. “Why not? The Ruling Ring? If we could command that, then the Power would pass to us. That is in truth why I brought you here. For I have many eyes in my service, and I believe that you know where this precious thing now lies. Is it not so?

The black horses were filled with madness, and leaping forward in terror they bore their riders into the rushing flood. Their piercing cries were drowned in the roaring of the river as it carried them away. Then Frodo felt himself falling, and the roaring and confusion seemed to rise and engulf him together with his enemies. He heard and saw no more.

This daring trust in God is a hallmark of David. For him, it is God of Israel who is the true King over Israel and her Deliverer; as he says to Goliath, "the battle is the Lord's" (1 Sam 17:47).

‘For where am I to go? And by what shall I steer? What is to be my quest? Bilbo went to find a treasure, there and back again; but I go to lose one, and not return, as far as I can see.’

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

As for purgatorial punishments, however, he should not imagine that they will have any place following that last and terrible judgment. But, even so, it is certainly not to be denied that the eternal fire itself will be milder for some and harsher for others, according to their differing merits...

One of them, the earthly city, has made for itself whatever false gods it wanted, creating them from anything at all, even from human beings, and serving them with sacrifices. The other, the heavenly city, which is on pilgrimage here on earth, does not make up false gods but is itself created by the true God and is itself his true sacrifice.

Throughout this book, the reader will discover that many similarities between biblical Judaism and Catholicism are incidental, as in the case of the yarmulke. In other cases, elements of the Catholic Faith derive directly from Jewish origins. Sometimes the connection between Judaism and Catholicism is direct (as in the connection between the Passover and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass)—at other times...

Mary was past her prime long ago; she was worn with sorrow and slanders and miseries; yet she appeared to the priest’s eyes, even then, like a figure of a dream. It was partly, no doubt, the faintness of the light that came in through the half-shrouded windows that obliterated the lines and fallen patches that her face was beginning to bear; and she lay, too, with her back even to such light as there was.

First from the darkness outlines only emerged, vast and sinister, of such an appearance that it was impossible to tell their proportions or distances. The skyline a mile away, beyond the Derwent, might have been the edge of a bank a couple of yards off; the glimmering pool on the lower meadow path might be the lighted window of a house across the valley...