miniZibaldone

With the mainsail of reason adjusted to the breeze of my desire, I launch on the deep with hope of pleasant voyage. When we look into the cause of what annoys us, we find that in every case it comes from not knowing how best to use time. —Dante Alighieri

The interests of a writer and the interests of his readers are never the same and if, on occasion, they happen to coincide, this is a lucky accident. In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them. To read is to translate, for no two persons’ experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally. In learning to read well, scholarship, valuable as it is, is less important than instinct; some great scholars have been poor translators. —W. H. Auden

Suffering: the superiority of man over God. We needed the Incarnation to keep that superiority from becoming a scandal! — Simone Weil

The Root of Forgiveness In secular society, forgiveness, like hope, is doomed to fail without a foundation in Christ, the origin of the love which is the only truth that can uphold such an ideal by lorenzo albacete Recently, I was watching the movie  Gladiator  with Russell Crowe on the movie classic channel, and I was struck by how the highest ideals were pursued by the most shocking cruelty without anyone noticing the incompatibility between the two. I thought how this was the dominant culture when the first Christians arrived in Rome and the great cities of the Empire. These first Christians did not seek protection from this culture. Instead, by engaging with it at all of its levels, they humanized it, inserting into it their experience of the dignity of the person, the greatness of reason, and the possibility of mercy and forgiveness. This happened not as the result of political strategies, but as a fruit of their efforts to respond to their encounter with Christ...

God Is Mercy Notes from a talk by Luigi Giussani during the Memores Domini Lenten Retreat in Pianazze, Italy, on February 16, 1975 The prayer last night [ “Through our annual Lenten observance, Lord, deepen our understanding of the mystery of Christ and make it a reality in the conduct of our lives.” ] called us to the two results of conversion: the passion of the knowledge of Christ (“knowledge” in the full, biblical sense of the word), thus the passion for Christ, the love of Christ as the desire to cling to Him, and hence the second result, good works. Lent is the instrument–the sacramental instrument–for fostering this conversion. In other words, operating the Lenten sign, making ours the pedagogic indications that the Church uses for the Lenten call to conversion, something happens in us through the power of the Holy Spirit that is greater than what our usual efforts would yield. It is a sacramental time, a time destined by God to give us a greater impetus of transf...