From this day on there will be another constant presence in Journeys of Life, namely Monthly Latin. That old language isn’t of course an official language anywhere except perhaps in the Vatican State, and in the Catholic Church the use of Latin has greatly diminished since the old-style Latin Mass was phased out more than 40 years ago - in favor of local languages. Latin does remain the official language of the universal Church, but it is used mainly as the language of reference for translating major documents into modern languages.

Still, Latin has a lot to give to modern man. The myriad of great Latin quotes keep on fascinating us, and it will most probably always be so. So this otherwise pretty dead language (some people might quite rightly protest that) will perhaps never really die, and how neat is that!

Even for those of us who never had Latin in school or never studied it elsewhere, Latin may have such an appeal that we regret never having studied it. This site tries to remedy that in a most humble way by publishing one single Latin phrase or quotation a month, with a little background story along with it when possible. As with Who Said That! we reveal the person who said that only at the end of the article. So always scroll down slowly. Some of the quotes will be very familiar, some less so, but all equally valid to modern life. Or as someone said:

_Nihil Sub Sole Novum _

  Which translates _Nothing new under the sun _- or nothing under the sun is new. Who said that? We don’t know exactly. It is a phrase from Ecclesiastes 1:9.

And what then is Ecclesiastes? It is one of the 24 books from Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible which consists of Torah (Instruction), Nevi’im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings). Ecclesiastes, which has had a deep influence on Western literature, is part of Ketuvim.

The underlying message is of course that there is nothing truly novel in existence. Every new idea has some sort of precedent or echo from the past. Sure we have new inventions, new products, new ways of doing things. But they too are just different ways of having something or having something done. The nature of the world and us remains pretty much the same, as do our needs, desires and ambitions. It can in fact be seen as a statement of continuity wherein we can affect changes in our own and common lives.

Next Monthly Latin will appear July 11th.

To access all Monthly Latin articles, please click at the appropriate title on the right under Categories.