An interesting historical primary document from the beginning of the Counter Reformation (id say)
Following on the heels of Saint Sebastian, the epitome of the active will, today is celebrated his counterpart of the elevated intellect on my birthday of all days, one of my favorite writers in the past 2000 years……Saint Francis de Sales. He was a young priest sent to the southern region of France in the latter 16th century, I believe, to try and counter the influence of Calvinism there which had converted nearly the entire population. For years he tried to get people to listen to him, much less donate food for him to survive while he was there, but he roamed without much of anything other than his two books. He later then had the idea of writing pamphlets and leaving them under the doors of houses on certain topics. Soon after his success with some families took off and by the end of his life, it is said that the entire region had reverted back to the universal faith, some number greater than 50,000. Not bad for starting with just a few dozen Catholic families. These pamphlets were later gathered into a single book, under the name Controversies. He also has another one that’s not too shabby.
Oh yeah, I would also like to apologize for my leaving out a word in one of the comments on the discussion about faith a few posts ago. I left out the word ‘not’, when I said, “and let it be known that I do agree with the analogy of us being a dunghill covered by snow.” Oops, the devil is working overtime lately.
Speaking of the devil, man I’ve had a fever and headache the past few days, and it peaked the night of my bday when well… it was a long night. Hopefully it’s out of my system today. Some say that it’s from the powder from the roads here, that’s seems to be a popular reason for sickness this time of year. Oh well.
It wont fit.
Let’s see what else. There were some interesting conversations last night after dinner. I think it all started when I brought the Iliad and the Odyssey over to show their kids the size of the actual stories….they are reading excerpts right now in school of them. Later the topic of encyclicals came up and I told him that I had found a Spanish copy of Benedict’s first one “God is Love” here in the house if he wanted to read it… he’s always sad that I don’t have anything in Spanish that he can read too…haha. The access to that kind of stuff is somewhat non-existent here, for so many reasons. From there, we were all around a bucket of some kind of beans and we were peeling them and talking about random things. Francisco, one of the kids who I would say is the least religious in the family, I think he basically just doesn’t see its use, so after Don Raul asked his usual history or religious questions, I asked Francisco the question that Edward asked earlier in the comments to see how he would respond. If God is all powerful, can he create a rock so big that he can’t lift it. He laughed and without skipping a beat said, “While I think its kind of obvious that if he can create it, he can pick it up.” Which I know only answers part of the question, but I was happy to accept that part, because my Spanish wasn’t good enough to fully express what I wanted at the moment haha. After we discussed Pascal’s Wager for a few minutes, to which Don Raul really enjoyed, laughing for a while at the end. The final story that came up while stripping beans, was a discussion between Don Raul and his wife Dona Amalia about some person in the Bible, and whether they were the same person or different because they had the same name.
I think Im hurting.
I couldn’t help but lead in to the subject by using the Mary situation. I told them that many Protestants believe that Mary had more children than just Jesus. Dona Amalia’s first response was ‘ahhhh whatever’ (a liberal translation). So I had to explain that they take it from a few certain verses in the Bible where we have in our English translation as Mary being the mother of James and Joses (Joseph) as well (Mark 6:3). But I told her (who thought that the person of discussion was the same) that she has to be careful at times when thinking people with same names are the same person. Using the Mary situation, I pointed to the fact that at the crucifixion of Christ it says that Mary and John were at the base of the cross, and that a separate Mary, the mother of James and Joses, looked on from afar with some other people (Matt 27:55-6). So just reading one verse, she might come to that conclusion, but sometimes you have to dig into Scripture a little more ;) (or more in this case in Tradition that has always supported the fact that Mary had no other seed…..check out one example in St. Jerome’s late fourth century rebuttal On the Perpetual Virginity of Mary against Helvidius, you can find the complete transcript of the ancient document here… http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3007.htm)
As far as the birthday goes, I was writing grants with Don Mauricio all morning, even though the temperature came back and I became somewhat useless haha. I rested during the day and took some drugs and felt better and then went to dinner with the Lopez family. They had made chicken tamales and then we had sweet bread and coffee. It was fun, they told jokes and took pics with my camera etc. I ended up going to bed early at 930 after reading some more Fyodor, but was back up again by 1030 :)
Don Raul cracks me up in the background.
Saturday I’m planning on going to the capital with Francisco to check out some rumors of cleats that can fit me in the capital. As well as Saturday morning talking with the fam through the internet. Hoorah.
Dante has an interesting allusion in Paradiso.
“On earth my body[John the Evangelist] now is earth and shall
be there together with the rest until
our number equals the eternal purpose.
Only those two lights [Jesus and .....see 4th Catholic/Lutheran Commandment and 5th others] that ascended wear
their double garment [body and soul] in this blessed cloister[heaven].
And carry this report back to your world [earth].”
Just wanted to write this to congratulate Ansley on her package arriving on my birthday, that’s impressive timing. Once again, she came through with the Reese’s. Very Nice. This quotes for you, letter to follow.
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