Daily Archives: 19 February 2006

EXCERPT:
The language of Latin prayers is quite different from our ordinary speech these days. One of the things you will notice right away is that it is “courtly”: the language immediately differentiates between the addressee and the speaker. The incomparable Lewis & Short Dictionary reveals that our term maiestas means “greatness, grandeur, dignity, majesty” and furthermore it is used “of the gods; also the condition of men in high station, as kings, consuls, senators, knights, etc., and, in republican states, especially frequently of the people”. One of the greatest crimes in ancient Rome was to harm or diminish the maiestas of the people, high treason: majestatem minuere or laedere… laesa maiestas. In English we use the French version, “lese-majesté”. Continue reading →

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EXCERPT:
By our baptism and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we can be admitted to Holy Communion. It is by our baptism that we are enabled to participate at Mass with “full, conscious, and active” participation, with what I call “active receptivity”. “Active participation” reaches its perfection in a good Holy Communion. Communion, however, is never to be isolated from the rest of our lives. Continue reading →

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EXCERPT:
Let’s put this together now. First, we are creatures made in the image and likeness of God. We are made to act like God acts, using our gifts and powers of intellect and will. These faculties are wounded because of Original Sin, but they still separate us from irrational animals. Thus, we can distinguish between “acts of humans” (such as breathing and digesting) that are not much different than what brute animals do except that a human does them, and human acts (like painting, repairing a car, conversing, choosing to love) which involve the use of the higher faculties. Continue reading →

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