After the beach on Friday, I persuaded Jeff to drive the kids home while I browsed bookstores in Eatontown.

I had in mind a book but didn't find it.

I bought another one of Wills's books; it has some "how-to," if anyone needs that.

Like his other books, I appreciate his translation of the Scriptures. He might convince me to adopt those Mysteries of Light I've been shunning. I was relieved to learn from him that some freedom I take with the mediation is allowed, even encouraged.

"Devotion to Mary does not divert us from the path to Christ. In fact, her very title in the Hail Mary, Mother of God (Theotokos), was hammered out in the debates on the nature of Christ at the Council of Ephesus. Arians there wanted to deny her that title as a way of denying the divinity of her son. They would call her only Mother of Christ (Christotokos)." The Rosary, xvi.

"It should be remembered that all this activity [the history of the Rosary - tks] took place before the Reformation, so that the rosary is part of the history of Protestants as well as Catholics." ibid., 6.

I appreciate what Wills says on the Our Father:

"Scholars are now agreed that this is an apocalyptic prayer. ... In an apocalyptic context, where the messianic meal at the end of time comes first to mind, this suggests the feast God will have with his saved ones.

"We are asking to anticipate our homecoming, to sample even now the final blissful meal.

"The Lord's Prayer refers, then, to our participation in the Eucharist as a prefiguration of the feast at the end-time." 17-18.

I remember reading a more thorough explanation of the Our Father along those apocalyptic lines in an article by Raymond Brown, published in his New Testament Essays which I have, a used copy from Amazon, around here somewhere.

Brown's article is the seminal piece on an apocalyptic interpretation, and no doubt Wills draws from Brown anonymously¹, as he does by name in the Introduction, "The Finding in the Temple" from Luke (xv).

¹ In fact, Fr. Brown's article appears in the Background Reading listing on page 187.