Friday, 21 August 2015

Omnia Instaurare

Today is the memorial of St. Pius X. At Mass the priest memorized that his motto was Omnia instaurare in Christo, ‘To restore all things in Christ’. The word suddenly looked familiar: the Greek word stauros means ‘cross’.

Intrigued, I searched for an etymological connection, and found one. The words instaurare and stauros can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root stā- ‘stand, set down, make or be firm’.

Incidentally, the Hebrew root for ‘make or be firm’ is ’MN, from which the Hebrew word for ‘faith’ is derived (emunah); from the same root comes the word amen.

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