Thursday, May 12, 2016

St. Paul Speaking to the Athenians for God

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God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.
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Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.
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And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,
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so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;
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for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’
Acts 17:26, speaking to Athenians for the Unknown God.  

St. Augustine In love my God

But what do I love, when I love Thee?

not beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time, nor the brightness of the light, so gladsome to our eyes, nor sweet melodies of varied songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments, and spices, not manna and honey, not limbs acceptable to embracements of flesh. None of these I love, when I love my God; and yet I love a kind of light, and melody, and fragrance, and meat, and embracement when I love my God, the light, melody, fragrance, meat, embracement of my inner man: where there shineth unto my soul what space cannot contain, and there soundeth what time beareth not away, and there smelleth what breathing disperseth not, and there tasteth what eating diminisheth not, and there clingeth what satiety divorceth not.This is it which I love when I love my God. 

Confessions of St. Augustine


Saint Paul Hymn to Love

I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (I Corinthians 13) 
Saint Paul’s Hymn to Love


Read more: One God



Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Empedocles

(Wiki)
'For before now I have been at some time boy and girl, bush, bird, and a mute fish in the sea' (fr. B 117)

Empedocles (encyclopedia of philosophy)