Thomas A. Emanuel, C.SS.R.
The Numen and the Good News What is that which gleams through me and smites my heart without wounding it? I am both a-shudder and a-glow. A¡shudder, in so far a.s I am unlike it,
a-glow in so far as I am like it. -St. Augustine
A great deal of modern study and research has been done in areas which are largely non-rational, though not irrational; that is, many of the outstanding features of these fields cannot be strictly defined by concepts or clear! y grasped by our power of conceiving or pinned down even by philosophical analysis. Witness to this the vast amount of work which has been ac¡ complished and is still taking place in mythology, comparative religion, religious psychology, linguistic analysis, anthropology, archeology, and scriptural theology, to name but a few. In connection with this, existentialism in the broad sense and the rediscovery of myth and symbol have had enormous influence on all religion and related fields over the last half century. And strangely concomitant has been the rise of a deep underswelling interest in Middle and Far Eastern literature 289