1. Prayer:
Jesus said, "But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first."
MARK 10
Dear God, give me the humility to be last so that I may be first!!! We always seem to be jockeying around for the best of situations. Help me to serve my family by serving them selflessly. Amen.

2. "Since that revolution [scientific] overturned the authority in science not only of the middle ages but of the ancient world – since it ended not only in the eclipse of scholastic philosophy but in the destruction of Aristotelian physics – it outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom."
(Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science ).

3. “We praise progress and denounce every manifestation of decline
“We praise progress and denounce every manifestation of decline. But is the universe on our side, or are we just gamblers and, if we are gamblers, are we not perhaps fools, individually struggling for authenticity and collectively endeavoring to snatch progress from the ever-mounting welter of decline?
Does there or does there not necessarily exist a transcendent, intelligent ground of the universe? ... Are cosmogenesis, biological evolution, historical process basically cognate to us as moral beings or are they indifferent and so alien to us?
Such is the question of God.”
Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, p

4. “If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages, which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St Benedict.”
Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue