Ever a sucker for a good turn of phrase

Before the uber intelligent Scott Carson of An Examined Life wanders off into prose that I'm not smart enough to understand (at least at this hour), he frequently kicks it off with a pithy introduction. I thought I'd bring you an example in hope that some of you will find his thoughts as intriguing as I.

To be perfectly honest, dear reader, I begin this post in the hope of allowing myself the luxury, at some point herein, to trash the liturgical tastes of my co-religionists at great length, because verily I say unto you that I have suffered through too many banal liturgies with too much banal music and I am about ready to puke.

God da....oh, I'm sorry

I often praise the Lord (though I also wonder why it should be so) that merely by his presence, and without saying a word, a servant of God should frequently prevent people from speaking against Him.

- St. Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection

Anybody familiar with her style knew it was her by the first parenthetical comment - Teresa and St. Paul ("I am not lying" or "I speak as a fool") both have this habit.

Isn't this true? How many times have people to whom you have never deliberately witnessed, taken the name of the Lord in vain or used a vulgarity and then turned and apologized to you? Or, conversely, when you yourself have used a swear word (I'm thinking of the milder scatalogical ones), they laugh and say "I never expected to hear that out of you!"

It IS a good reminder to guard our tongues when someone is surprised by our speech, but the original thought is nice, isn't it? When people have to think about using the name of our Lord and Savior to express frustration or anger? Does it make Him more real to them?

I have devout friends who are driven piously crazy by "brown talk," as they term it. Having a taste for the salty, I like this verse:

Let your speech be always in grace seasoned with salt: that you may know how you ought to answer every man.

- St. Paul to the Colossians 4:6

That's so on the blog!

It's time to initiate a new classification here on Exultet. It's an homage to (heck, it's an outright theft from) Cacciguida's description of one of his and Elinor's priceless dialogues.

To kick it off, here's something that caught my attention during this morning's homily on our need to become well-formed in Scripture and Church teaching:

"The 'trickle-down effect' of infallibility does not make it all the way to this pulpit."

Where the heck am I?

The development labs of the Curt Jester have once again come up with an indispensable piece of equipment for our Christian travels - a spiritual GPS (Grace Positioning System).

Through gyroscopic precession the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son into your life is tracked. When you start to back slide it causes our specially made gyroscope and accelerometer in our inertial guidance system. The inertial guidance system measures directly how inert you are to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. When it detects back sliding the negative acceleration is detected and you are immediately warned.

One of its extra features is the Tabernacle Locator, handy for those churches where it's hard to know which direction to genuflect. Warning: plotted routes will tend to be narrow and steep rather than broad and flat.

Deeded over

I found something beautiful today in one of the books in the adoration chapel:

Has God, then, in giving himself for us, made himself ours? Yes, replies St. Bernard. 'He is born who belonged to himself.' He who appertained to himself chose to be born for us and to become ours; love triumphs over God.

This God, over whom none besides can rule, yielded himself captive to love. Love has gained the victory over him and, from being his own, has reduced him into our possession.

St. Alphonsus Liguori
The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ
--the Eternal Word, from being his own, has made himself ours