Sunday, February 19, 2017

The falcon's sole chance of hearing (and honing in on) the falconer

"In the exitus of creatures from the First Principle one observes a sort of circulatio or regiratio [(= regyratio < re-gyro, -avi, to turn about again, to wheel round)] from the fact that all things return as to their end, to that from which they issued as from their principle.  And this is why it is necessary to attend to this, that their return to their end [(reditus in finem)] is accomplished by the same causes as their departure from the principle [(exitus a principio)]. . . . [Now] the procession of [the divine] Persons is the ratio [(explicative reason and model)] of the production of creatures by the First Principle, [so] that same procession [of the divine Persons] is therefore also the ratio of the[ir] return to their end, for just as we were created by the Son and by the Holy Spirit, so it is by [the Son and the Holy Spirit] that we are united to our ultimate end", i.e. the Father.

     St. Thomas Aquinas, 1 Sent. d.14 q.2 a.2 co., as translated into French by Jean-Pierre Torrell, "Thomas d’Aquin," Dictionnaire de spiritualité 15 (1991), col. 751 (718-773).  The original Latin as reproduced at Corpus Thomisticum:
in exitu creaturarum a primo principio attenditur quaedam circulatio vel regiratio, eo quod omnia revertuntur sicut in finem in id a quo sicut a principio prodierunt. Et ideo oportet ut per eadem quibus est exitus a principio, et reditus in finem attendatur. Sicut igitur dictum est, dist. 13, quaest. 1, art. 1, quod processio personarum est ratio productionis creaturarum a primo principio, ita etiam est eadem processio ratio redeundi in finem, quia per filium et spiritum sanctum sicut et conditi sumus, ita etiam et fini ultimo conjungimur. . . .

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