WE SACRAMENTAL DEAF

the constraints of language its paltry and inept commands drive the young metaphysical lothario the yml to distraction ... he knows that which he desires is inexpressible given the present deficit in the vocabulary budget ... he will play a weak hand in its strong suit ... a skinny grammar will give him license to say what he wants about any desire he will entertain because the language is so weak ... you know what I mean will be his constant conclusion ... you know his persistent punctuation ... for everyone knows what's best for himself or those who don't will be told ... but not to worry those in the know the real know should they be careless and fall with just a little retraining in the current idiom will be absolved ... for now there's just one deadly sin to avoid ... self-denial ... only one insanity ... picking up the one thing to ignore ... your cross ... a thing we make purposely obvious and easy to avoid by talking around it whenever we can ... fault conscience pain and disease ... by talking round truth as if meaning were a potato too hot to hold and not more and greater reality talking

mccabe god matters ch 14 on sacraments and n t wright judas and the gospel of jesus (esp p 144) on the gnostics

THE OPTIMIST'S CREED

see it pays to wait and hear the other side ... transubstantiation now is said to be a misleading term because it indicates a transfer of substances when the only thing it shows is that we've come to the end of our tether ... the limits of what we can do with the words we have ... what happens to the bread here isn't what happens to dogs on the run or cats on the prowl when they die and decompose but to us when we die and don't decompose but take on a new body so subtle and expertly powerful living in a world which is source and promise to any hope we have here now that all our present words and structures of language must pass it by the elbow and never know it was there ... but that at good times alone in thought we remember in passing a picture a snapshot taken as we went by and later stored but given no caption ... and here finally is time to smile ... what better time to laugh when come to harbor sitting at table having a drink in good company ... remember when we said this remember when we thought that ... we were so young then and since we've grown still younger

mccabe god matters ch 12

PRIME ACT PRECEDES PRIME MATTER

so the argument said a piece of bread is a piece of bread ... we must continue to know at least that ... the essence they say but not the appearance has changed ... the substance not the accidents ... this substantial change would be the activation of a prior potential ... say my potential of becoming food in the belly of the lion ... but in god there is no potential to become another substance ... there is no potential at all ... this pre-prime piece of matter always prime is never material ... and no potential in the other direction of a piece of bread becoming god ... no possible causal connection one way or the other between them ever ... and I before I hear from a better mind agree ... but do say rather on a hint from that mind that this is exactly what you would expect ... the eucharist if it were possible must be miraculous ... no less so than the incarnation resurrection or creation at the start ... especially the last as it makes clear you must start from scratch ... another name for nothing ... if there's a prime lump of matter prior ... a heap of potential only ... that too must start from here

cf g egner in mccabe god matters ch 11

CHRISTIAN CANNIBALS

but what about the argument that if there is this substantial change we wind up eating christ ... yes you may reply we do ... christ's body ... the resurrected body of jesus ... eat it drink it breathe it in ... become intoxicated by this antitoxin supreme ... the air and manner of infallible success ... not the blood and sizzling fat of prime ribs over the fire or shredded muscle in the predator's mouth ... not the satisfied full feeling of rolling over in the leaves with a grunt ... a change in accidental circumstances from relative want to comparative plenty ... but a simple absolute change of substance ... the cannibals knew what they were doing ... they were on the right track ... just off location out of time and dimension ... you can't really swallow spirit ... it's not the murder or the skill it took to do it that can earn spirit as a reward ... there's nothing we can do to earn such a reward ... it has to be given ... that's the spirit ... so yes have a bite of christ ... develop not so much a taste but a hunger for it ... down the hatch they say ... like a lightning bolt 2/2

ETERNAL TRUTH

the intellect perceives the end and the means leading to it and the relation between the two ... but this allows the intellect to be the cause of its own judgment ... but that which is a cause unto itself we call free ... thus it's our intellect makes us free ... its object is the truth ... so it's the truth that will set us free ... this is offered among others to the listless bored of heart the wanton the promiscuous and the effete to the dilettante in all of us ... leave your room come out of the house wade into the stream of congregants ... each of us has the same purpose ... to tell the truth ... we first must find it ... wade in do the work read the books study ... sooner or later you'll come to christ ... christ who had a plan but was rejected ... jesus who told the truth and was murdered ... how would the intellect read such an encounter ... must it not conclude the truth will set us free but will kill us first ... what sound reason then would choose to continue ... if freedom meant death and death were final ... no ... freedom demands more than that ... after death resurrection 1/3

compendium 76

VADIS?

this inner sense we share with cats and dogs owls and magpies that leads to a first conclusion that we have an inside and out ... what does it say when the teacher comes into the room ... like two cats still staring into the sky we sense the presence of the quiet truth ... here now on the outside a thing to which all the inside is attentive ... this inner sense wordless as always now in the presence of the word ... what will it say and all through history no? keep repeating ... we the intellectualized brute given a big brain to say what with it ... what to answer when called on ... what to say when challenged ... this monad of good animal sense suddenly has a window and look over there a door as well ... look out the window but open the door ... one to be on the inside looking out ... the other to go through ... but you can't do that sitting by the window looking out ... but look again the teacher having been in the room just a short time has walked out ... here's where the theoretical and the practical meet ... says out to in what's your sense of it ... should we follow 2/3

THE PARTICULAR IN THE UNIVERSAL

the intellect and the inner sense would by definition have no point of contact or what would it be where could they meet ... the universal and the particular ... the sense of smell and eternal truth ... not that they don't but how or why should they ... isn't the beating of the heart measured by the inner sense following its flow ... the passage of time ... is outside the heart already in the measure and pace because of its meaning sensed from the start ... the voyage through life beat by beat before the heart's formation up to the moment of death ... the sense of existence inside and out ... resigned both to living and to death the philosopher cat mute for eternity ... unless a friend translate from wordless to word ... unless one animal speak of something more than the particular ... not of this smell or that direction but of why we smell or even bother to go this way or that on a good day as well as a bad ... of how in the midst of all these trends one way or the other one particular not universal one only saved us all 3/3

strobel real jesus ch 4

SALVE

the sage of boston says the only escape from the petty tyrannies of life is praise of the lord for only in that praise can we forget ourselves ... if this is true then praise must be more subtle than we allow ... even with an open mind perhaps especially with an open mind ... and must imply wonder simple admiration by surprise and the persistent indictment I knew this why do I forget it ... who is this self-obsessed forgetful one locked alone in some control room at the back of the mind who thinks self-expression is for the sake of self-consumption and doesn't know what communication means ... picking up meaning and then letting it go you thought you were being most meaningful and profound when you thought some puzzle through ... when in truth it was visiting the sick and those in prison ... you thought your finest moments were the most clever when it was giving comfort to those who mourn ... you sought to solve the world to bring it to salvation ... an easy error when you really meant salve and as in salve regina ... but this you know is nothing new ... each of us is a screech and scrape just beginning to sing

kreeft ycuot p104 on the psalms; mccabe god matters ch 10 on communication

CREATION-SIN-RESURRECTION

what if hume is correct there is no necessary connection between cause and effect ... or if kant's right and time and space are human apperceptions ... or leibniz is right and only coincidental events link person to person ... or berkeley is right and something must be perceived before it can be ... or aristotle and aquinas are right no conception without a preceding perception ... and say finally with thomas that by abstracting the intelligible from the material we get closer to god ... can't we get a group photo showing the universe of space and time together in a great big block ... all the action as we perceive it is bouncing side to side from top to bottom within the box ... in the middle of the turmoil right dab center is the human mind in crisis in a panic that it might get cut off hits the button on the phone and cannot stop repeating ... are you there ... are you there ... can you hear me ... I'm too old for this ... if we ever get reconnected I'm going to insist the next plan has a guaranteed connection ... I know uncertainty is necessary for the virtue of prudence but I need assurance outside the box

mccabe god matters p109; compendium 75; strobel real jesus challenge 3

THE CHURCH DISCURSIVE IN PRAYER

you can't treat jesus as a buddy ... I don't ... I thank god for the sages and saints in between ... he's not at my right hand not even my elbow but he's just across the room even if the room is crowded ... all around me in between are family ... never was a love like this before ... that's the music playing ... I spend the day attending to the uncles ... most of them still living but some of them dead ... point is they're older and more than me much wiser ... you know I'd slip them a note to carry over to jesus if I weren't more frightened of how they'd respond ... especially the ancients ... I know what they'd say ... take it yourself no one's in your way ... except me I know I'd respond ... except me but say it to myself ... I listen during the day to the uncles talking ... listen with my eyes ... but they understand when we come to dinner at the table I've forgotten what they said ... but I have these notes in my pocket to remind me ... colors on a page ... pages in a book ... on a good day and more good days now than bad something brilliant from the uncles in their notes to god

FOR MEN EVERYMAN'S LILITH

if there is just one story being told and we each tell it by our story the way we live ... and we do this by way of reflection as being made in the image of that story being told ... as a mirror sometimes one way sometimes two ... you see yourself or you see through ... and now in your mind's eye you see above it off to the side in inner immaterial space ... flashes of light here are conceptions ... planets and stars stable ideas ... opinions are comets mistakes are falling stars ... like a wondering child our eyes grow large and we see new worlds where ideas are gods ... we meet there as we grow young the objects of our desire ... or at least we think we do ... in any event we take them back with us as we grow up and our eyes narrow ... we smuggle them in these gods and goddesses of desire ... we don't announce but secretly follow ... but as we grow old and they stay young we find in them what you'd expect ... they were real but not personal ... solid line shape and color but not dimensional ... first love but in someone else's imagination ... in fact for men everyman's lilith

CRUCIFY HIM

if we were made in the image of god some of his perfection must have rubbed off onto us ... for that's what happens to the lesser being in such an encounter ... he learns he grows in wisdom he wakes up and sometimes he has to die to do it ... it's this background static the present reminder that something once did happen and still does behind us almost to touch that drives us though we do our best to veer left or right ... it's a crowded road abreast life's procession as we perform our way through ... speaking singing dancing painting writing filling every space with our mark ... and what a clean-up crew we must be who follow ... I only ask take a look around ... how much of a mess are we in ... the one thing I think would surprise us is what a large part of it makes sense ... in moments of brief clarity it's the same story every time ... indeed if it had no matter this one story told many times would rise up in the air conflate and take off into space ... if it didn't have us to weigh it down ... let's be honest ...to hold it down pin it nail it kill it if we must ... I wouldn't say kill it if it didn't keep pushing

compendium 74; mccabe god matters ch 8

IN TROUBLED TIMES

there are gnostics and agnostics and people who have religion ... gnostics have themselves agnostics the world for what it's worth everyone else has god ... by gnostics I mean western secular progressive culture ... by agnostic I mean the secular libertarians often considered conservative and often well-to-do ... the impetus you might think of most entrepreneurs ... religion thinks it talks about god that is it thinks there is a god and it knows enough to talk about him ... thus him to start with though it knows it's neither him nor her to finish ... you can tell the difference between a progressive and a libertarian by asking if they're religious ... the libertarian says no thanks and the progressive says not religious but spiritual ... and what he means is progress materially ... for himself and others who see or will see the process of history as he does ... now since religion has a larger concern than the human it's the libertarian and the progressive who are the rulers of this world ... and when they collaborate they run it well ... sometimes however the gnostics grow fervid

GNOSTIC IN REMISSION

packing boxes in a warehouse or grocery bags at the checkout year after year ... say the soul behind the hands has come to peace and packs what he must with grace ... he fills the form and does it blithely ... what's the meaning of that ... the poet with his sonnet the reporter his five hundred words after a while they flow with the go of it no matter what they say ... how do they explain that ... the retired scholar defeated by his craft still follows the routine ... each morning read underline make a note ... what's the point when phrases are moved massaged and put into new skimping clauses that sound sweet but mean less than they did before ... are all the planets waltzing over the falls are the galaxies twirling out into space and just one voice to cry wait I know something better ... freeze the frame ... everybody turns to hear ... forget it he says my mistake in truth I have nothing to add ... and in truth what could he have said that hasn't been heard before when everything was said two thousand years ago ... press the button return to play on with the show ... we know our part when we mean the lines

lee strobel the case for the real jesus ch 1; kreeft ycuot 98-99; and compendium 73: for his cure

MOVE ON

there had to be diversity because nothing can be one but one and we're not it ... but did there have to be so much of it ... it's confusing ... now it wouldn't be if something weren't broken ... at the least our understanding but more ... something in the fabric of the law that says after addition there must come subtraction ... first a birth then a death ... and before you can multiply and be fruitful you must divide and destroy ... the old must hurry from the path that now belongs to the young ... think for a moment it has to be done ... but that doesn't make it right ... if we must take the worm's part even a worm can turn and tunnel back up to the surface ... and isn't that the meaning of our life in all this diverse confusion to break through the static out into the clear ... repeatedly or to try ... suddenly the old medium oxygen and gravity is breathless and too light ... out with the bad air in with the new ... so rarefied and pure you're immediately up high ... and now see your eyes are finally open ... that is we come into a new dimension ... we must ... from the start we knew we were told that the old one would die

compendium 72; mccabe god matters 71; kreeft ycuot 97-98

BEFORE WE BEGIN

to us it's all a matter of technique ... if I know how to do it I am it ... at least as long as I want to be ... but what if there's something wrong with this and the more successful I am at doing things the greater the distance grows between subject and predicate ... between me and my success ... identity can't be built on practice or technical know-how ... I have an internal sense telling me I was here before my nature ... otherwise there was nothing to know ... no way to be ... nothing to say ... don't get me wrong I know once we are there's plenty to do ... and wonderful to see connections and causes all the way through ... right turns left turns wrong turns ... advances and retreats ... but falling back in one of these last you can turn down a culvert to hide till the enemy pass ... all your disaffected relations ...till they disappear over the hill ... and you're alone isolated and cut off ... isn't this the point to learn when there's nothing left least of all you ... which will it be then ... less than nothing or more than everything ... if here's the space all things start ... before anything is new

mccabe god matters p59; kreeft ycuot 96-97; compendium 71

THE EPISTEMIC HUMILITY OF JOB

job's friends are wrong in their assumption that it's a simple causal connection between our behavior and god's judgment ... or between infinite goodness and our reward ... such that no reward or punishment instead must mean bad behavior ... not a bad assumption on the surface however ... for if there is no clear connection what can it mean ... that god doesn't care ... he's not involved ... surely not that he's sadistic ... there's no sense in that at all ... but that he's transcendentally distant seems transparently true ... what's the distance between potency and act when there is no potential ... if a difficult potential makes a happy conclusion more remote how impossible must it be if you start with nothing ... that's why creation as opposed to the thing we call creative is a great mystery ... now make it twice as hard and say this same creator at an inconceivable distance is also inconceivably close ... between me and my conception ... between me and myself ... that I can't get from one to the other unless I go through him ... that I can't do anything unless I do it in him ... faced with these two puzzles of the infinitely far and near who am I to say it's clear

kreeft ycuot 94-96; compendium 70; mccabe god matters ch4

NONE DARE ASK

you can argue there are no evil desires just ill-proportioned and misdirected ... too intense not intense enough ... too angry not angry enough ... right place wrong time ... too bright too mellow ... always out of step even to murder ... it's why job has a fair complaint ... he's innocent as far as that goes but his punishment goes way further out of all proportion ... but you know job is in pain ... he's the hero in the final scene of a passion play ... he's naturally anxious to see how it turns out we say in ironic advantage ... he's fed up too tired of being too passive too long ... answer me make things right you've weighed all my freedom down except my hope you've given me that you must mean to give me more ... or I die ... up here at our end we just close the book light the pipe go to bed ... down there the conversation's just begun ... job powerless but in conversation full of potential ... potent pregnant with hope ... what an ambition ... how many born so we may come to the right conclusion ... the right answer to job's question ... his potential ours speaking to pure act ... here on the shore and we silent

mccabe god matters ch 3 p36; kreeft ycuot 93-94; compendium 78; john 21:12b

THE WAY IN WHICH EVERYTHING INDEPENDENT STILL DEPENDS

if anything is free it's also independent ... but everything depends on god ... therefore nothing is free ... what kind of trouble would we all be in if this syllogism is valid ... thank god it's not ... the first premise means more than it lets on ... its deficiency hides itself in custom ... namely the verbal usage of god's name as just another noun ... as if god were just another subject to which predicates adhere ... a thing with an essence we can define ... with characteristics we can describe ... sooner or later we come to resent those we most rely on ... it's part of our essence the way we've come to develop ... who can deny god ... he fills the room of anyone's presence with his own ... who can breathe for fury that all the freedom is sucked out of the air ... if god were just another thing competing for space and attention ... if not the foundation before anything making everything possible ... if not the conclusion every argument attempts ... the answer every time we ask ... what then should we have but manipulation and control ... if god is not always other than where would we find the room to love 1/2

mccabe god matters ch 2

A LITTLE DISTANCE PLEASE

if whenever we love we're in god's presence but more to the point he's in ours ... when we die and come to our reward in heaven how then could there be any distance or room between god and us ... where's our freedom then if we're just fingers to his glove ... but if god is freedom are we not less and less free the more static there is between us ... if god is generosity particularly in revelation ... if god gives us a motion picture of his life his internal essence ... shouldn't we buy a ticket ... but maybe not if we're the screen the picture plays on ... if yes we can get to heaven but don't leave the show early ... all right if every breath you take fills you with being and every thought you have clothes you in truth but first you have to hear the whole story ... understand how it reads in human ... and play your part too ... will you see the argument through ... this is how it runs ... this is how it ends ... each of us takes the starring role ... with all this power in your fist wouldn't it be easy to love everyone ... if you had the script to write ... but here's the one you're given and it ends with a cross 2/2

mccabe god matters ch 2

THE LORD OF VICODIN AND VIAGRA

turtles all the way down ... one on top of another to infinity ... that way the circle of nothing that almost surrounds what there is never closes ... and this is our warrant our key in the lock to keep things going forever with no questions asked ... if things had a beginning couldn't they have an end as well ... and if just once they could end wouldn't you have to worry that once might be soon ... now the hero sits on the throne ... he doesn't care ... not only about his own death he doesn't care about the loss of everything the impossibility of anything the wonder and the eternal surprise of something something at all ... lost ... and he doesn't care ... it's not an act ... it's not a pose ... he wonders why you keep bringing up the question ... truth is for him the line between is a bit fuzzy ... lots of pinprick points but put together in a line the surface they form has too many perforations the code too many exceptions ... that's just the way it is ... why do we have to talk about it ... but especially why this unseemly sense of urgency ... all this drama ... my lord and my god indeed ... the law and what's good instead for as long as it lasts ... seek pleasure avoid pain ... live until you die

herbert mccabe god matters p7; john 20:28; ruth 1:16

PEACE BE WITH US

honor is beautiful ... in a soldier a priest a politician a marriage ... but if the link between the two is more than accidental how close to necessary does it become that the beautiful is honest ... no more beautiful villains or evil-minded courtesans or great but bad men ... the picture of his own dorian gray is on every man's face ... and would be of course if we saw as we were meant to be ... and why blame that we're not on what we should be ... don't the freudians call that projection ... and isn't that just what we mean ... throw it away pin it on someone else ... aren't they all just more forms of rejection ... won't have the truth won't take the offer but will do all we can to cover it up to forget it ... clarity and proportion the two hallmarks of the honest truth ... obfuscation and injustice the trademarks of deceit ... we must admit no ... the parts do seem to fit ... honor knows it will wait if it must for beauty ... it's what gives patience its appeal ... and beauty never was she more stirring than sitting by the window with her feet up and a book in her lap thinking softly in repose ... ah there now she says ... that surely that ... that's the truth

mccabe on aquinas ch 15, pp 171-172

CALLS YOUR NAME

the foundation of justice is friendship so the sage the saint and the scholar all say ... am I my brother's keeper the surly sinner says ... worse still the trio respond ... you must keep your neighbor in virtue also ... for all people are your brother sister and parent too ... I never did like justice the solipsist complains ... makes my inward life awkward to think of another and his due ... I've my own house to put in order ... what a revolution if this unreal other were true ... well think of it this way the sage says ... life should be like a well-run city where at first people do things for a reward but at last do them because they're a part of that reward ... a new and better second nature ... think of it like this says the saint ... life is a journey from one garden to another but through a jungle a desert and a flood to get there ... a healthy well-ordered growing place during the day ... a cool place for reflection in the evening ... well-ordered in virtue ... no social contract needed ... where the soil is fertile and the grave empty ... and the gardener knows your name

mccabe on aquinas ch 14; john 20: 15-16

WHEN THE UNIVERSAL MEETS THE PARTICULAR

if there were no true distinction between universal and particular then porn would just be skin and nothing wrong with that ... if there were nothing immaterial then the light on a tanned forearm the light through all the air in a lovely day at the beach on that arm nonetheless would be the end of day its desire and satisfaction all day long till night ... if there were nothing past the senses ... and surely surely that's the attraction ... not purpose or plan or conflicted execution ... but a lovely warm bright distraction ... when time itself as we live it is layered out like slices on a plate some tastier and others more healthy till we die ... if truth were just a word and every word just another sound ... unless time were in fact the measured beat of a story ... and a word whispered in your ear at night filled with venom or delight each had its meaning ... unless meaning had a master in the truth and truth a name you'd remember ... unless all the universe in one bright flash of an idea gave truth its meaning and put us in touch with something really solid here now

mccabe on aquinas chs 12 + 13

WITH NO ONE ELSE TO TALK TO

who better than the dilettante to prove the impossibility of a private language ... or a private understanding ... for their failure is what makes the dilettante what he is ... effete ... a touch here and a dab there in a hundred different interests ... and nothing deep ... nothing from found to profound ... all the brilliance stays on the surface and soon is in the past disconnected from the start ... for all those lovely thoughts are purloined letters smuggled into a corner and not let loose from there ... and the author like a parrot on his perch with just a new line every day ... never was a thought he said till it came in a word ... no sentiment no perception till it settled down into a sentence ... no understanding till you told it to another ... the dilettante's dilemma there was no other ... no thought no word no deed that wasn't so because of its part in the discourse ... and our hero on a log in space talking to himself as if it were talk when it had no other purpose with no one else to talk to ... couldn't really speak at all ... just a colorful flash of sound not understanding language is a prayer

mccabe on aquinas chs 12 + 13

STUPID!

why is it that we're so stupid ... it's not just that people have different talents and that in many perhaps most ways each of us doesn't have this particular talent ... but we're also stupid because we're stubborn ... say we have a mind for universals and a sense for particulars ... so we get to brand as stupid those who don't have a talent for abstraction and as wise those who can handle the details ... the advantage belonging to abstraction is detachment ... its temptation is to a canny calculation in which everything is assigned a number and a value ... every triumph transaction and trespass ... prudence is an intellectual virtue and under this temptation it can become purely theoretical ... and in that way vicious ... how worthwhile is this class of eggheads ... how far worthless are the poor and the stupid ... under what conditions and in what manner can we rid ourselves of this liability ... euthanasia give them a good death ... birth control discourage their conception ... if there's one thing we need now it's a few less particulars ... be bold ignore the sentimental ... be ruthless on principle and stubborn

mccabe on aquinas ch 11

LATE TESTIMONY

we were kids in college and we heard there were people who wanted to be totally aware ... so not wishing to join them or study too much about them we figured to save time we'd crack the code ourselves ... what we came up with was a two-part combination will and idea ... not the chronological order between them but the one that counted in importance ... for we meant to do things and get them done with our wisdom once we got it together ... half a century later we see indeed things did get done and we were the ones that did them ... during the day ... but at night we still planned the big things ... thus the disconnect between night and day ... between mature practice and theory still developing ... till a messenger arrives with the last piece ... one word ... virtue ... and another word vice on the reverse ... completes the picture ... potential practice dispositions forming ... reliable habits for good or bad ... farewell fealty to the immature ... we're headed up to the east side philosophy intact ... virtue is better than vice ... we all saw the same thing after all ... nothing else has relevance ... we see vaguely what the young one saw brightly ... evidence

mccabe on aquinas ch 10; kreeft ycuot pp 78-79; john 19:35

THE COMMON AND PROPER END TO SORROW

the bishop asked why didn't you call for help ... the priest answered I thought it was too far away ... it's easy to think big thoughts ... they are most natural ... from the particular just strip the universal ... from matter take away the form ... from anything proper we can always get something common ... it only depends on what you think is common ... in the rooms where things are most proper they serve the finest wine but caesar's common soldiers on duty got a wine that was sour ... common is not usually a thing to aim for but proper in its perfection does seem so far away ... whatever was common to that must surely bring an end to this world ... the universal that raised the particular ... the material brought finally to act by the form ... it's easy if you have the talent fine if you have the friends but commonly at least impossible if you don't ... you need a sharp eye and an educated ear to pick out the proprieties ... what good are courage and temperance if you don't have their address ... but I hear the bishop talking and suddenly I see how he's right ... the hyssop by itself isn't strong enough but after the wine everything's done

manzoni the betrothed chs 25 + 26; compendium 62; tom wright john for everyone 19:29-30

WHAT SHOULD THEY HAVE DONE

without anger how would you have the strength or courage to defend justice ... pilate was angry with the jews ... together he and they had murdered a just man ... the jews and the romans who lived by the law ... now the scribes came demanding a he said and king of the jews in quotes ... a typical passion for men of the pen ... but pilate was a man of the sword who are often touchy about spelling and grammar and he refused ... what I've written I have written ... and he had his revenge ... which is what anger is for ... so he posted his horizontal notice in three layers of speech hebrew latin and greek with the cross running through it and the body of christ below to support it ... pinned down as it were to the earth against the sky ... or like a red flag on the map ... we had a second chance and they just skewered it to hell ... why the hell then aren't we angry too ... justice incarnate defiled and we to pay the price ... I don't know why most of us are not or how many just don't care but for me it's guilt ... complicity ... much too much I'd have done the same ... I still don't understand

mccabe on aquinas ch 8; john 19:19-22; kreeft ycuot p75

I WANTED TO KNOW

I find it hard usually to think clearly ... hard to speak simply ... and hardest of all to remember ... it may be part of an original misconception that the language I spoke to myself when most intimately alone was private ... but of course all my secrets could be told ... and in a sense had been told already ... if not in detail then certainly in type ... just the use of language betrays my solitude pulls me back into the crowd ... hence my amnesia pulling back ... trying to get away ... if I can't remember the name I'm already passing it by ... isn't a word that's not tainted ... every one seeks a response ... philia philia we tell them to you in love ... sharp eyed with a precise tongue it makes us friends that we play the game together ... keeps us alert and engaged ... when we lose interest we have the one option only ... and we hope to do it soundly ... I don't know that we do want thereafter to wake with alertness ... it's a pleasure that almost shames me ... the skill that comes from practice ... the thoughts of others more virtuous ... their actions complete in wisdom and will ... while I turn and ask him where did you say you were from

mccabe on aquinas ch 7; john 19:9