Among the many things I have enjoyed in particular throughout the preceding summer (as we adjust to our new digs in Riverfront Estate along the Mississippi River) is the ineluctable formulation of patterns of conversion and clarity. The expressions are at times as patent as the arithmetic precision of a farmer’s field; and, at other times as whimsical as the beauty of a child. The collation however is always assured to create an identity which is at once both undeniable and fanciful.
Certainly one of those thoughts has involved the arrangement or sequence regularly found in comparable subjects; namely, the composition of life itself and its benchmark molds. What however has elevated me in this process of change and lucidity is the uncommon frequency of artistic renditions of noticeable appeal. Whether it is Nature or Humanity I am overtaken by the magnificence of its production. I have come to regard my position at my desk overlooking the fields and river beyond as a lighthouse upon a vast horizon. Indeed there is some substance to the gusto because the horizon quite literally stretches before me in its bucolic state as far as I can see, uninterrupted by anything but grand trees or wavering fields of green, bordered by the restful river and a dusty country road.
The subtraction and abstraction have combined to evoke what has hitherto lacked simplicity and crispness. It would be illogical to dedicate the potency of the alteration and limpidity solely to the effluxion of time. Something else is at play. It is a remarkable though indescribable evolution.
Anyone who knows me, knows I have an affection for the passenger automobile. I hesitate to dwell upon the subject because it is so obviously – at least on its face – materialistic (though privately I assert to myself a far greater spiritual bond with the machinery and composition of the whole). Today for example, pointedly I suppose after having attended upon my family physician who reiterated the significance of recent events, I drove my XT4 as is my custom along the Appleton Side Road into the city for a wash. I was totally engrossed in the present, the rambunctious noise and wind of the open car, the spirit of the engine, the repetitive sounds and surges, the exactitude of performance, the music of choice and that ineffable dominion of nowhere to go, nothing to do. These pleasures are to my thinking unsurpassable. I won’t equate the refinement to the majesty of a riparian plateau or a shimmering harvest, nor to the dome of an azure sky embellished with mountains of fluffy white clouds, but the sensation was for me as wonderful as being in a rocket to the moon! The mystical absorption is inexplicable. I am frankly wary to the point of resistance about enduring any modification whatsoever (a limitation which I can safely say is as alarming as it is atypical).
This unique moderation doesn’t tilt the sonority of the overall experience. Once again by incomprehensible resolution the picture is wholesome and delicious! Everything resonates with colour and tenor. The pyramids are by comparison mere fiction!
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“It was enacted that every English sovereign should, in full Parliament, and at the coronation, repeat and subscribe the Declaration against Transubstantiation.”
Excerpt From
The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 3
Thomas Babington Macaulay
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The Council of Trent did not impose the Aristotelian theory of substance and accidents or the term “transubstantiation” in its Aristotelian meaning, but stated that the term is a fitting and proper term for the change that takes place by consecration of the bread and wine. The term, which for that Council had no essential dependence on scholastic ideas, is used in the Catholic Church to affirm the fact of Christ’s presence and the mysterious and radical change which takes place, but not to explain how the change takes place, since this occurs “in a way surpassing understanding”.
The Catholic Church firmly believes and professes that in this Sacrament the words of consecration accomplish three wondrous and admirable effects.
The first is that the true body of Christ the Lord, the same that was born of the Virgin, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven, is contained in this Sacrament.
The second, however repugnant it may appear to the senses, is that none of the substance of the elements remains in the Sacrament.
The third, which may be deduced from the two preceding. although the words of consecration themselves clearly express it, is that the accidents which present themselves to the eyes or other senses exist in a wonderful and ineffable manner without a subject. All the accidents of bread and wine we can see, but they inhere in no substance, and exist independently of any; for the substance of the bread and wine is so changed into the body and blood of our Lord that they altogether cease to be the substance of bread and wine. (Catechism of Trent, pg. 147)
Substance is a key concept in ontology, the latter in turn part of metaphysics, which may be classified into monist, dualist, or pluralist varieties according to how many substances or individuals are said to populate, furnish, or exist in the world. According to monistic views, there is only one substance. Stoicism and Spinoza, for example, hold monistic views, that pneuma or God, respectively, is the one substance in the world. These modes of thinking are sometimes associated with the idea of immanence. Dualism sees the world as being composed of two fundamental substances (for example, the Cartesian substance dualism of mind and matter). Pluralist philosophies include Plato’s Theory of Forms and Aristotle’s hylomorphic categories.