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djeter
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Josef Pieper moves from St. Thomas’ reflections on the destructive power of unchastity and of the preserving, perfecting, fulfilling power of chastity to a consideration of spirit and truth and how sensual joy is provoked by the sensually beautiful.
This enjoyment is made possible, oddly enough, only by the virtue of temperance and moderation. I couldn’t help but think how the world’s richest and most powerful often maintain the world’s chintziest art. It’s almost a stereotype when encountered in movies and books.
Think also the account of a woman who performs an extravagant act on the beginning of the Passion narratives in Mark: “While he (Jesus) was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head.” This gesture wasting something as expensive as an entire jar of perfume — is sniffed at by the bystanders, who complain that, at the very least, the nard could have been sold and the money given to the poor.
But think of our Lord’s reaction to it: “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me.” Authentic religion, ultimate concern, can never be hemmed in by reason alone. Flowing from the deepest place in the heart, religion resists the strictures set for it by a fussily moralizing reason (on full display in those who complain about the woman’s extravagance).
At the climax of his life, Jesus will give himself away totally, lavishly, unreasonably — and this is why the woman’s beautiful gesture is a sort of overture to the opera that will follow. And it is rooted in the sensual and the extravagance of man’s response to it. Read the Pieper essay with this scene in mind and you will see how true Temperantia creates the indispensable prerequisite for both the realization of actual good and the actual movement of man toward his goal.
Without it, the stream of the innermost human will-to-be would overflow destructively beyond all bounds, it would lose its direction and never reach the sea of perfection. Yet temperantia is not itself the stream. But it is the shore, the banks, from whose solidity the stream receives the gift of straight unhindered course, of force, descent, and velocity.
I’ve been dealing with St. Thomas’ reflections on temperance these past three days and this is sort of a final send off, perhaps the most nuanced piece of the three I carved out of Pieper’s book on the Cardinal Virtues. Hope you like it.
You can find it here:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/01/22/the-satiation-of-the-spirit-with-truth/
dj
Josef Pieper moves from St. Thomas’ reflections on the destructive power of unchastity and of the preserving, perfecting, fulfilling power of chastity to a consideration of spirit and truth and how sensual joy is provoked by the sensually beautiful.
This enjoyment is made possible, oddly enough, only by the virtue of temperance and moderation. I couldn’t help but think how the world’s richest and most powerful often maintain the world’s chintziest art. It’s almost a stereotype when encountered in movies and books.
Think also the account of a woman who performs an extravagant act on the beginning of the Passion narratives in Mark: “While he (Jesus) was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head.” This gesture wasting something as expensive as an entire jar of perfume — is sniffed at by the bystanders, who complain that, at the very least, the nard could have been sold and the money given to the poor.
But think of our Lord’s reaction to it: “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me.” Authentic religion, ultimate concern, can never be hemmed in by reason alone. Flowing from the deepest place in the heart, religion resists the strictures set for it by a fussily moralizing reason (on full display in those who complain about the woman’s extravagance).
At the climax of his life, Jesus will give himself away totally, lavishly, unreasonably — and this is why the woman’s beautiful gesture is a sort of overture to the opera that will follow. And it is rooted in the sensual and the extravagance of man’s response to it. Read the Pieper essay with this scene in mind and you will see how true Temperantia creates the indispensable prerequisite for both the realization of actual good and the actual movement of man toward his goal.
Without it, the stream of the innermost human will-to-be would overflow destructively beyond all bounds, it would lose its direction and never reach the sea of perfection. Yet temperantia is not itself the stream. But it is the shore, the banks, from whose solidity the stream receives the gift of straight unhindered course, of force, descent, and velocity.
I’ve been dealing with St. Thomas’ reflections on temperance these past three days and this is sort of a final send off, perhaps the most nuanced piece of the three I carved out of Pieper’s book on the Cardinal Virtues. Hope you like it.
You can find it here:
payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/01/22/the-satiation-of-the-spirit-with-truth/
dj