from girard (actually from benoit chantre, but girard agrees)

The two ages of war could provide a means of sketching out a paradoxical law that is both similar to and different from Bergson's "double frenzy." On one hand, we would have the escalation to extremes, and on the other a return to origins, a "tracing back" of history as [Charles] Peguy said, towards what you call the founding murder. The two movements would be linked: the closer we get to the end, the further back we go. The more history tends towards the worst, the less we will be able to hide the need for a clear discussion of archaic religion.

I've often thought that history is moving backward. I'd guess we're now somewhere in the late 4th / early 5th century AD.

from the dream of gerontius

ANGEL:

Thy judgment now is near, for we are come / Into the veiled presence of our God.

SOUL:

I hear the voices that I left on earth.

ANGEL:

It is the voice of friends around thy bed, / Who say the 'Subvenite' with the priest. / Hither the echoes come; before the Throne / Stands the great Angel of the Agony, / The same who strengthen’d Him, what time He knelt / Lone in that garden shade, bedew’d with blood. / That Angel best can plead with Him for all / Tormented souls, the dying and the dead."