As the first week in Passiontide begins, beautiful words by Spanish writer Eugenio D'Ors (Eugeni D'Ors i Rovira), the author of one of our favorite aphorisms, "Todo lo que no es tradición es plagio" ("All that is not tradition is plagiarism").
The voice of Simeon already rises up, it elevates itself in the midst of the House of God. He had been there for many years, and he did not wish to leave it. He did not leave, nor did he die, in expectation of this, so that his eyes could see it.... His hands take the Child, Whom you had already once removed from the menaces of the Herod of Death. The prophetic voice rises up in the Temple:-Behold this One is set for the fall and disorientation of many, and will lead to contradiction.And to you he says:- Your own soul shall be pierced by a sword.Now - now, it pierces you. Now that you know the first Sorrow, from which all Sorrows shall come forth, and to its wound the other sorrows will not add anything else. Now that, with the fate of the Son, your fate has been set for ever. Now that, in the dust of your path, the footmarks of all future suffering have already been set. Now, when you already feel the Son to be lost, lost among the doctors, then among the apostles, then among the soldiers, then between the thieves, and in death, and in the tomb. Now that you can already see how the blessed flower of your flesh belongs to contradiction, and not to rest; to war, and not to peace; to your mission, and not to yourself...
Eugenio D'Ors
(1926)
