Matt

and of course if you always hand-hold the congregation through worship so as not to lose any newcomers, regulars can easily plateau in their spiritual growth (a common experience) and find nowhere to go beyond the altar call because you never advance to the “big leagues.”

This can be disorienting for other Christians who are familiar with evangelical worship (especially in “seeker” churches) where the focus is more on taking the temperature of your experience as a newcomer. For introverts that can have the inverse effect of applying more pressure

It’s interesting to me that Mass might feel more “welcoming” to non-Christians than to evangelicals (setting aside theological differences) because of expectations about what worship looks like. I’ve sometimes said that Mass is like attending a Major League Baseball game:

Remembering when I used to walk the streets of DC to work with my head down in the Cooper edition of the Complete Works of Plato

The books that have been sitting there for years are my old friends. They’ll be there for me when the time is right.

People who care about the life of the mind understand it is a sort of adventure. Reading a new book followed by one that’s been on your shelf for ten years has its own unexpected pleasure, not to mention the way odd pairings can stimulate your thought in ways you hadn’t planned.

@FrDylanSchrader Exactly! The way it links up with Thomas’s account of the divine missions is very cool.

@scriptumsent I like the image of the Son's divine mission (which for Thomas just is his eternal procession with the added terminus of his humanity) as his "going out to work." Verbum supernum prodiens Nec Patris linquens dexteram Ad opus suum exiens Venit ad vitae vesperam. (cf. Ps 104:23)

Tomorrow’s Mass reading is the Parable of the Sower. Aquinas’s comment on it contains one of my favorite gems of medieval exegesis. While many jump right to the fate of the seeds, he lingers on the opening—“a sower went out to sow”—and draws out from it a gospel in miniature. 🧵

@FrDylanSchrader Oh, It’s going to be just fine

@scriptumsent I hope you're not starting to lose It.

I’ve started longposting… serious threads… what is happening to me

@AKTR33 Thanks! Probably a sign that I need to start writing more…

@scriptumsent FWIW I’m enjoying it.

and (4) I’ve begun to think of the library as a work of curation for my kids, so my judgments on what things are worthwhile and important to spend your life reading will be available to them even if I’m not, and even if I don’t get through them all myself.

I know I already have more books than I’ll probably live to read but I’m still a used book junkie because (1) I do want and aspire to read them, (2) having them near is its own satisfaction, (3) choosing the next book is its own adventure—things can climb up the queue on a whim,

So many people were trashing this adaptation without even seeing it yet and look how it turned out. Moana is as fresh as it was when Homer first wrote it.

So before turning to the various outcomes Aquinas highlights what is truly at stake in the Parable of the Sower, what is to be gained or lost. And that is that the brief opening statement “a sower went out to sow”—if the logic is carried through—implies a doctrine of deification.

In answer he quotes Psalm 81:6: “I have said: you are gods and all of you sons of the Most High.” And John 10:35: “He called them gods, to whom the word of God was spoken.” And John 1:12: “He gave them power to be made the sons of God.”