Godzdogz has started a new series of blogposts on ‘The Life of Virtue’. The most recent one is ‘religion‘ and I was struck by this quote from Hans Urs von Balthasar:
‘that man, though he is not God, can nevertheless be defined by his immediate relation to God or the Absolute… Man experiences himself as a frontier between this world and the world above: as one who cannot feel completely at home in the Cosmos and is haunted by a longing to return to the Absolute’
It made me think of St Bede. On his feast day the daily reading at universalis included a near-contemporary account of his death in which he said that he wanted nothing now but to ‘dissolve into Christ’ (which sounded familiar – is it from St Paul?). I don’t have any comment on that other than I thought it was wonderful. Often I think that religion gets in the way of a longing for God, but then you get someone like Bede who demonstrates the opposite.
7 Comments
I love that Bede reading. On the one hand it contains mystical passages such as “I long to be dissolved and be with Christ; my soul longs to see Christ my King in all his beauty”. On the other hand, just before that, you have the bit where Bede says “I have a few treasures in my box, some pepper, and napkins, and some incense”. Bede is longing for God to the extent that he wants to be dissolved into him, yet he still pays such attention to the tiny details of everyday human living that he’s thinking about his little store of pepper.
Comment by Mark July 9, 2009 @ 5:12 pmAwww. I’d forgotten about his little treasures. Yes, he really was fabulous x
Comment by madame evangelista July 9, 2009 @ 6:20 pmOn universalis, I can’t see how to look at any readings other than for the current day. I’m sure there must be a simple way and I’m just too thick to work it out – does anyone else use the site?
Comment by madame evangelista July 9, 2009 @ 6:22 pmI checked that out earlier today. There is a way – but you have to pay a one-time licence-fee of £19.
http://www.universalis.com/n-download.htm
Comment by Mark July 9, 2009 @ 7:22 pmThanks Mark! £19 is really very reasonable considering the book of Morning and Evening prayer alone is £30 (or £21 on amazon). God bless universalis.
Comment by madame evangelista July 9, 2009 @ 7:48 pmhttp://thomism.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/4308/
Comment by berenike July 13, 2009 @ 10:25 amthanks x
Comment by madameevangelista July 14, 2009 @ 7:26 am