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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4073 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 17, 2023

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I think you're approaching something close to the classical understanding. I'm going to quote from Dorothy Day's From Union Square to Rome, only because that is what I have read most recently and is easy to copy from (and she's quoting from someone else):

There are some paragraphs about the Holy Trinity which I read not long ago that point out an analogy between the soul and God. The soul is always one. It knows itself and loves itself. “I am conscious of myself, and it is this I that is conscious of this self, the I that is objectified to itself, and knows itself in itself. But once more, whist the principle that is the I is the principle that knows, the myself is the term that is known, and in virtue of this a distinction is established between I and myself, and this perception that I get of myself involves and implies a third term which is the love of I for self.

Whence result three imperfect but irreducible elements, co-existent in the undivided unity of my soul, three that are blended into one without becoming confused; one that radiates out into three without subdividing itself. Now in God there is the same law of activity and fecundity, but in the supreme degree of power and perfection. . . Although we are always capable of thinking and willing, we do not always exercise our faculties in practice, there are interruptions, moments when we feel powerless, when we are weary. A fly is sufficient to prevent a man thinking. In this we distinguish . . . and this is weakness . . . the capability to act and the action itself. In God this weakness does not exist. If we strive in vain to put into our thoughts the best of ourselves, or better still, if we labor, without succeeding, to make ourselves wholly and entirely the objective of our thoughts, to objectify ourselves in our thoughts . . . the Divine Spirit succeeds where we fail.” (Landrieux, Le Divin Méconnu.)

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