Sublime

what substantiates this death experience as a union in the person of Jesus is that divine action enters death as ministry. When Paul is ministered to, in and through his death experience he is taken from cross to resurrection, he is swept up into participation in the ontic union of the Trinity, giving a new narrative arc to his very being.

He is struck by the power of maternal “weakness,” the saving power of the one who humbled himself, a power that mothers exhibit every day. “This is maternal love, expressing itself as weakness,” he tells his congregation. “All this is the mark of a mother’s weakness, not of lost majesty.” The mother, in other words, is an icon of the incarnation, t

THE CULT OF Monica is as wide as the world, found wherever there are weeping mothers. Indeed, if you roam around Italy with your eyes peeled, looking for Augustine’s legacy, Monica seems more ubiquitous. She represents the yearning of mothers everywhere, weeping over their children, hoping, praying, tenacious in their fierce love that the children