Thursday, January 13, 2011

Brethren, fall not back into thyselves…

Hebrews 3:

[12] Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.
[13] But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
[14] For we share in Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end,

12 videte fratres ne forte sit in aliquo vestrum cor malum incredulitatis discedendi a Deo vivo
13 sed adhortamini vosmet ipsos per singulos dies donec hodie cognominatur ut non obduretur quis ex vobis fallacia peccati
14 participes enim Christi effecti sumus si tamen initium substantiae usque ad finem firmum retineamus

12 Gebt Acht, Brüder, dass keiner von euch ein böses, ungläubiges Herz hat, dass keiner vom lebendigen Gott abfällt,
13 sondern ermahnt einander jeden Tag, solange es noch heißt: Heute, damit niemand von euch durch den Betrug der Sünde verhärtet wird;
14 denn an Christus haben wir nur Anteil, wenn wir bis zum Ende an der Zuversicht festhalten, die wir am Anfang hatten.

12 弟兄們!你們要小心,免得你們中有人起背信的惡心,背離生活的天主;
13 反之,只要還有“今天”在,你們要天天互相勸勉,免得你們有人因罪惡的誘惑而硬了心,
14 因為我們已成了有分於基督的人,只要我們保存着起初懷有的信心,

We are called to faith in the God whose splendour blinds the eye of man as the sun blinds the eye of an owl. With that faith in the unseen reality behind all passing realities that crowd our vision, we enter the family of the Church. Washed in the waters of Baptism, Christ's own Death and Resurrection, we are given a new challenge: seeing our true selves in Christ beneath the frail scaffolding of our fallen nature. We are to treat ourselves as clay vessels in which treasure is hidden and likewise to treat the Sacraments as vessels of various textures in which the same treasure is hidden in a boundless way. Only by holding to the substance of the Eucharist, hidden beneath the accidents, can we rightly partake of the Holy Gifts. Likewise, only by holding to the substantial God-likeness of all humans, beneath the accidents of their birth and idolatrous confusions, can we live right among men. In the same vein, only by holding to the substance of a unified, coherent nature, beneath the accidents of empirical error and statistical uncertainty, can we attain a scientific grasp of the world. Thus, all reality is sacramental, all reality a symphony of dim reflections towards Eucharistic fullness.

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