...God will be 'all in all' (I Cor. 15:28) when we are no longer what we are now, a multiplicity of impulses and emotions, with little or nothing of God in us, but are fully like God , with room for God and God alone. This is the 'maturity' (cf. Col. 1:28) towards which we speed.

...though every thinking being longs for God, the First Cause, it is powerless... to grasp Him. Tired with the yearning it chafes at the bit and, careless of the cost, it tries a second tack. Either it looks at things visible and makes of these a god - a gross mistake, for what visible thing is more sublime, more godlike, than its observer... - or else it discovers God through the beauty and order of things seen, using sight as a guide to what transcends sight without losing God through the grandeur of what it sees.

God thought and things came to be, in-formed: the divine thought is the complicated womb of all that is. For it's not likely that, like some painter, He conjured up an image from a similar image, having seen beforehand things which His own one mind did not write.

May God preserve me from being rich while they are indigent, from enjoying robust health if I do not try to cure their diseases, from eating good food, clothing myself well and resting in my home if I do not share with them a piece of my bread and give them, in the measure of my abilities, part of my clothes and if I do not welcome them into my home

Keep the Feast of the Resurrection. Be a Peter or a John; hasten to the Sepulchre, running together, running against one another, vying in the noble race (cf. Jn. 20:3-4). And even if you be beaten in speed, win the victory of zeal; not looking into the tomb, but going in.

Let us quake before the great Spirit, Who is my God, Who has made me know God, Who is God there above, and Who forms God here: almighty, imparting manifold gifts, Him Whom the holy choir hymns, Who brings life to those in heaven and on earth, and is enthroned on high, coming from the Father, the divine force, self-commandeered; He is not a Child (for there is one worthy Child of the One who is best), nor is He outside the unseen Godhead, but of identical honor.

No one seeing a beautifully elaborated lyre with its harmonious, orderly arrangement, and hearing the lyre's music will fail to form a notion of its craftsman-player, to recur to him in thought though ignorant of him by sight. In this way the creative power, which moves and safeguards its objects, is clear to us, though it be not grasped by the understanding. Anyone who refuses to progress this far in following instinctive proofs must be wanting in judgment. But still, whatever we imagined or figured to ourselves or reason delineated is not the reality of God.