The Virtual Oratory

From Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, noted by Fr. David in a book from undergraduate years, 1969:

In this passage SK skewers the "I didn't know" defense. "The difficulty with the Socratic definition is that it leaves undetermined how ignorance itself is to be more precisely understood, the question of its origin, etc. ...[ignorance can be grounded] in the activity with which we have labored to obscure our intelligence...What determinant is it then that Socrates lacks in determing what sin is? It is will, defiant will. The Greek intellecfualism was too happy, too naive, too aesthetic, too ironical, too witty....too sinful to be able to get it into its head that a person knowingly could fail to do the good, or knowingly, with knowledge of what was right, do what was wrong...So then, Christianity understood, sin lies in the will, not in the intellect, and this corruption of the will goes well beyond the consciousness of the individual."

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From Fr. Hal's reading:

From Cornelia Connelly: Accepted suffering...one simple remembrance of his presence that unwraps all the windings of the heart and makes us true as he is true. 

From St Francis de Sales to St. Jeanne Francoise de Chantal:  Your powerlessness hurts you greatly, for you say, it keeps you from entering yourself and approaching God. This is wrong. Without doubt, God leaves this powerlessness in us for His glory and our great benefit. He wants our misery to be the throne of His mercy, and our powerlessness the seat of his omnipotence.

Eckhardt commenting on the deserted places of the heart: "where never was seen difference, neither Father, Son, nor Holy Spirit, where there is no one at home, yet where the spark of the soul is more at peace than in itself. (found in John S Dunne's The Music of Time). Also Wm James The Varieties of Religious Experience mentor edition, p. 320.

Psalm 35: 27 b...Great is the LORD who delights to see his servant in peace.

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 Fr. David Tracy, theologian, teacher and preacher, reaches for a book. 

 
The Oratory provides workshops and bulletins about books.

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