St. Bridget, Widow

St. Bridget, a descendant of the royal house of Sweden, was married to prince Ulfo. After the death of the latter, she founded the Order of the Most Holy Savior, commonly called Bridgettines. She died at Rome in 1373.

I'm in the library right now trying to write a paper having to do with Plato's Republic and my poor little brain needs a break. So, I decided that I'll give you an update on all my classes since we are just about one third of the way through the semester.

German: I learned the word "langsam" (slowly), which describes the movement of the class perfectly. So far I've learned how to introduce myself (Ich bin John, Mein Name ist John) and how to count to 100. I desperately need a non-conversational text book that explains grammar rules, has vocab lists and exercises, etc. Any ideas Christina?

Political Philosophy: This is the one that is taxing my brain right now. The course consists of reading in their entirety Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics. We have read so far 7 of 10 books in Plato and the question at hand right now is why on earth does Socrates claim that cities will never have any rest from ills unless philosophers rule as kings?

Natural Philosophy: This course has definitely taken a turn for the better. We began by reading Jean Henri Fabre's writings on his observations of insects (moderately interesting) and then turned to Goethe's botanical writings (bored to tears took on new meaning for me). At last, though, we turned to familiar ground - the presocratic philosophers, then selections from the Phaedo and the Timaeus by Plato, and now Deo gratias Aristotle's Physics, which we will read in its entirety.

Ecclesiology: This course is appropriately subtitled The City of God as the only reading required for the whole semester is St. Augustine's masterpiece by that name. Today we completed the first main part of the book in which he first refutes those who claim that their pagan gods are to be worshipped for the sake of happiness in this life and then also refutes those who hold that the gods are to be worshipped for the sake of happiness in the next life. Having read this we are now about to embark on his discussion of the origins, progress in history, and destined ends of the two cities: the city of man and the city of God.

Synoptic Gospels: This class has turned out to focus mostly on the Pope's new book, Jesus of Nazareth. Early on we also read some of Romano Guardini's The Lord, but even then classroom discussion centered primarily on Ratzinger's book (which is better than I anticipated). I have been particularly delighted by this class because it has been shedding fresh light for me on the doctrine of the Atonement, which I have been trying to understand more fully for quite some time now.

Prophets: So far we've read Amos, Micah, and Isaiah. Jeremiah is next. I'm not sure at all what the rationale is for the order, but I particularly enjoyed reading Isaiah because the figure of the suffering servant in Is. 52-53 is obviously quite important to a proper understanding of Christ's vicarious atonement. In studying Isaiah I took the opportunity to translate some of Aquinas' commentary on Isaiah, which has never been translated into English. Even though we are moving on to Jeremiah I'm going to continue to work on it in my spare time for the sake of keeping up on my Latin and because I can't image St. Thomas' commentary on the suffering servant is uninteresting.