Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Robin Williams

Beneath it all, he had class...
May he rest in peace and may the Lord have mercy on his soul.

Added August 28, 2018:

Two years ago Robin Williams' widow revealed the horrible illness, Lewy body disease, he suffered and which may well have led him to take his own life. She called it "The terrorist inside my husband's brain." 

Friday, August 8, 2014

Eye has not seen...

As has become my practice in recent years, I take advantage of websites which provide the prayers and readings from the Liturgy of the Hours rather than the designated volume. An American site, DivineOffice.org is the preferred service as it uses the readings from the American version, although I assume, for copyright reasons, it does not always produce the indicated hymn in the published Liturgy of the Hours (or Christian Prayer -- the condensed version). Sometimes DivineOffice.org is apparently down for maintenance or there are traffic issues, so I access www.Universalis.com which, while it utilizes other translations of the Liturgy, it has a smaller footprint and loads faster.

Today, the Feast in honor of St. Dominic. Universalis includes a familiar text of St. Paul's, designated for Friday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary time:
The hidden wisdom of God which we teach in our mysteries is the wisdom that God predestined to be for our glory before the ages began. It is a wisdom that none of the masters of this age have ever known, or they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory; we teach what scripture calls: the things that no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond the mind of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him. These are the very things that God has revealed to us through the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:7-10; taken from the Jerusalem Bible©; quotation with italics and bold are from the Universalis website)
The original New American Bible translation of the same text, taken from another site, Liturgies.net, reads:
There is a certain wisdom which we express among those who are spiritually mature. It is not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away. Rather, we speak God's wisdom, mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages for our glory, and which none of the rulers of this age knew; for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written: "What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him," this God has revealed to us through the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:6-10a)
Meanwhile, DivineOffice.com provides the reading in honor of a priest-saint:  
To the elders among you I, a fellow elder, a witness of Christ’s sufferings and sharer in the glory that is to be revealed, make this appeal. God’s flock is in your midst; give it a shepherd’s care. Watch over it willingly as God would have you do, not under constraint; and not for shameful profit either, but generously. Be examples to the flock, not lording it over those assigned to you, so that when the chief Shepherd appears you will win for yourselves the unfading crown of glory. (1 Peter 5:1-4)
Returning to the reading of St. Paul's, how often do we hear someone quoting "eye has not seen...," and then uses the citation as an encouragement of all the blessings we will have in heaven (God willing). But, notice how the verse above concludes: "These are the very things that God has revealed to us through the Spirit. (Jerusalem) or  "this God has revealed to us through the Spirit. (New American). When Paul uses the plural second person, "we" or "us" he is not invoking a royal "we" but, rather, means all believers. God has revealed himself through Christ Jesus -- we already have an understanding; we already know so much. Or, is it too much? We have to avoid presumption, but hold to the truth: the way, the truth, and the life, and then God reveals himself to us that we become a dwelling place of the Spirit, indeed the Holy Trinity.