Libraries and Live Ordinance

All part of this excellent piece by Fr. Schall.  An excerpt:

...In Paris, Benedict recalled that the very purpose of monastic life was to seek God. This seeking included the love of letters. Why? "Because in the biblical Word, God comes towards us and we turn towards him, we must learn to penetrate the secret of language, to understand it in its construction and in the nature of its expression." The sciences are driven by this search for the truth of things. Monasteries thus always had libraries to preserve the Word. Schools followed. The ultimate aim of learning is "how to serve God."

"The Vatican Library is then the place in which the loftiest human words are gathered and kept, the mirror and reflection of the Word, the Word that enlightens every man." What is in the Library is saved from our past, for our present. We hope it is handed on. To do so, we must keep them as they were first spoken and written. All words, to repeat, mirror and reflect the Word, the Word that enlightens. All being looks to what is. All words look to the Word. The Vatican Library not only assists the popes in governing, but in recalling and knowing the truth, lest we should forget it...