Monday, February 04, 2008

Gah - they found me!

I've been meme'd by Argent. It's the making-the-rounds book meme. Da rulz:

  1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
  2. Open the book to page 123.
  3. Find the fifth sentence.
  4. Post the next three sentences.
  5. Tag five people.
The nearest book is relative to exactly where I'm sitting when I read my notice of memeing (somehow I'm sure that's not properly conjugated). Six inches to the left and it's the 1962 Daily Missal; in the middle it's The Mass of the Early Christians; six inches to the right and it's a tie between the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and The Ratzinger Report. Yeah, I ran out of space on my bookshelf - I knew I should have made it bigger. Since I'm the indecisive type, here they are, in order:

1962 Daily Missal:
Tota pulchra es, Maria. Et macula originalis non est in te. Tu gloria Jerusalem.
Thou art all fair, O Mary. And the original stain is not in thee. Thou art the glory of Jerusalem.
The Mass of the Early Christians (Chapter 15: Sts. Albercius and Pectorius):
Albercius' original burial marker now stands in the Lateran Museum in Rome.

The Latin inscription of Pectorius was unearthed in Autun, France. Its age is uncertain, but its style corresponds to that of Abercius, using similarly cryptic language to describe the Eucharist.
Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
433. Why is the Christian moral life indispensable for the proclamation of the Gospel?

Because their lives are conformed to the Lord Jesus, Christians draw others to faith in the true God, build up the Church, inform the world with the spirit of the Gospel, and hasten the coming of the Kingdom of God.
The Ratzinger Report:
But he immediately adds, "In order to explain the rapid and almost total abandonment of the ancient, common liturgical language, we must also take into account a fundamental cultural change in Western public education. Even in the early sixties when I was a professor, it was possible to read a Latin text to young people coming straight from German secondary schools. Nowadays this is no longer possible."
Yup, surrounded by books. It's a good thing.