Monday, June 15, 2009

Theology, innit.

I know this isn't about guns, horses, dogs, the failed modernist liberal humanist secular project et al., but it is about God, or rather one of His followers - St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. Maritain has this to say:

"Between Aristotle as viewed in himself and Aristotle viewed in the writings of St. Thomas is the difference which exists between a city seen by the flare of a torchlight procession and the same city bathed in the light of the morning sun."

Here's an excerpt from one of Thomas' hymns, the Pange Lingua, which he wrote for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, in the 13th C. Some believe that the rythm of the hymn comes down from a marching song of Caesar's Legions: "Ecce, Caesar nunc triumphat qui subegit Gallias."

PANGE, lingua, gloriosi
Corporis mysterium,
Sanguinisque pretiosi,
quem in mundi pretium
fructus ventris generosi
Rex effudit Gentium.

The translation doesn't do justice, but...

SING, my tongue, the Savior's glory,
of His flesh the mystery sing;
of the Blood, all price exceeding,
shed by our immortal King,
destined, for the world's redemption,
from a noble womb to spring.

As the legend has it, "Thomas, you have written well on the Sacrament of my Body."

Have a blessed (late) Feast of Corpus Christi.

LSP

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