Why deliberately unsettle ecumenical rapprochements by unilaterally moving with the bitter fruit of Medjugore? I’m on board with plena gracia mediatrix (riches which still to be peeled over and over like a proverbial onion). But IMHO coredemptorix is too mental-gymnastic-masculine and intellectual cerebral, too ‘scholastic’ of a category for the spiritual apophatic gift of Our Lady’s transparent receptive purity as understood by Duns Scotus? In light of this afternoon’s tornado, my heart goes out to the devastated parents of the crushed children? My pray, that the terror of such violent May winds not be a permanent memorial of Pentecost devestation but rather “that out evil they bring forth good”.

As I tweeted earlier today re: Pentecost’s patristic ladder symbolism (5 and 8 approach the golden mean, as Fibonacci numbers in sequence, as in biological zoe fecundity akin to a theology of the body POV with Mary’s virginity the culminating mystery, “our fallen nature’s solitary boast” as Cardinal Dolan reminded the ND grads). Plato and Euclid’s primitive geometry seems to hit the target in a physical world or natural way: as exposition of excellence in Mary’s supernatural perfect harmony: ἄκρος καὶ μέσος λόγος, (the whole is to the longer part as the longer part is to the shorter part).her charity oriented inerrantly and perfectly to her telos (ekros, extreme perfection) and measure (mesos, the means, ie full of grace). As I understand it, this would correspond to the basic structure of Aquinas’ argument on the virtues?

All that God created is good, vice is ‘merely’ our human will thwarting His love’s proper end or appropriate measure? Dante’s love-less pit descends in opposition to Divine Gifts’ transcendent end (captive to self) all the while loosing ‘radiating’ steam, coiling into collapsing implosion and frozen stasis. Plato’s Analogy of the Divided Line, a literary device detailing the relationship of perception to reality between signs in ephemeral perishable things pointing to universals and the true absolute, eternal things themselves? Solomonic columns (cf baldachin pillars of St. Peters basilica) spiral in an logorhythmic Archimedian 3-D fashion ascending as sign of transcendence of earthly cares, never spinning out of control like the tornado, held in tension via cohesion to its axis, the Godhead. As the root of stump of Jesse, Mary’s ‘aurea ratio’ mimics balanced harmonious phyllotaxis (the growth of plants, fruits, seeds) regularity and branching periodicity in a natural Mandelbrot-like symmetry of Fermat-spiral subsidiarity. Nature’s visual beauty. Aural harmonies of musical instruments and voices.

Could Rome not seek to honor our Western concept of sanctification-theosis foreshadowed in Christ’s Transfiguration and communicated perfectly in the Assumpta’s theology-of-the-body reality with cultural exploration of commonalities that are based in eccesial expressions proper to the lay state, rather than an ultramontane heirarchy of ‘redeemer’ship? Mary is rules regally as Queen, but she’s our closest advocate first. Is not a unifying rapprochement with Mary’s children in the East, healing misunderstanding via a sympathetic veneration of her Dormition and Intercession based on joint patristics, a hermeneutic of deeper “ressourcement” rather than past-the-sell-by-date “aggioramento” a better way to proceed?

God Bless you for your indulgence of my blatherings!

and symbolic use in representations of various sanct e beati

and the eastern style of depicting a deprated’s soul as a wee infant self going to meet his maker, e.g. Acts 7, Stephen’s famous last words “You received the law as transmitted by angels, but you did not observe it.” v53 “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”* v59 in imitation of Christs last words,“Lord, do not hold this sin against them”; (v60) as here in Arles’ St-Trophime Cathedral (founded 8thC ie Byzantine uniformity stil evident in church art).

I can’t help thinking Ascent of Mt Carmel (spirituality of St John of Cross) and pious legends associated with Simon Stock’s receipt scapular and Dominic’s of the Rosary aren’t “novelties” rather a renewed appreciation of Marian intercession, an eikon archeopoeita of ‘lost’ Byzantine traditions (mozarabic rite suppressed in former Greco-Roman territories of Spain and Sicily, continued on in Crete)?

CHAPTER XXX
from
ASCENT OF
MOUNT CARMEL

Which begins to treat of the fifth kind of good wherein the will may rejoice, which is
the supernatural. Describes the nature of these supernatural good things, and how
they are distinguished from the spiritual, and how joy in them is to be directed to
God.
IT now behoves us to treat of the fifth kind of good
4. With respect to the first kind of benefit — namely, the temporal –
supernatural works and miracles merit little or no rejoicing on the part of the soul;
6291 Corinthians xii, 9-10.
6301 Corinthians xii, 7.
236
for, without the second kind of benefit, they are of little or no importance to man,
since they are not in themselves a means for uniting the soul with God, as charity
is. And these supernatural works and graces may be performed by those who are
not in a state of grace and charity, whether they truly give thanks and attribute
their gifts to God,631 as did the wicked prophet Balaam, and Solomon, or whether
they perform them falsely, through the agency of the devil, as did Simon Magus, or
by means of other secrets of nature. These works and marvels, if any of them were
to be of any profit to him that worked them, would be true works given by God. And
Saint Paul teaches us what these are worth without the second kind of benefit,
saying: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
charity, I am become as a sounding bell or metal. And though I have prophecy and
know all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, even as much as
may remove632 mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing, etc.’633 Wherefore
Christ will refuse the requests of many who have esteemed their good works in this
way, when they beg Him for glory because of them, saying: Lord, have we not
prophesied in Thy name and worked many miracles? Then Christ will say to them:
‘Depart from Me, workers of iniquity.’634
Source:
http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~andy/spiritual/Ascent.pdf

“It should be kept in mind that the primary or principle aim of many charisms is not the personal sanctification of those who receive them, but the service of others and the welfare of the Church. . . in that it concerns the growth of Christ’s Mystical Body.”

I hope I might not seem pedantict. I just like talking about the books and texts that I have alredy read. They are about topics very dificult to find someone who you can talk about it.