I pray we... come to this darkness so far above light! If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseeing and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge. For this would be really to see and to know: to praise the Transcendent One in a transcending way... We would be like sculptors who set out to carve a statue. They remove every obstacle to the pure view of the hidden image, and simply by the act of clearing aside they show up the beauty which is hidden.

Our Lord Jesus Christ made the merciful shepherding of His sheep the proof of love for Himself (cf. Jn. 21:15-17). He denounces as 'wicked' the servant who refused to pardon the debt of his fellow servant and who did not share in even the smallest way, the immense kindness that was bestowed on himself; that he should suffer the fate which he dealt is plainly shown to be right (cf. Mt. 18:32-33).

[God] is perfect not only insofar as He is absolute perfection, defining perfection in Himself and from His singular existence and total perfection, but also because He is far beyond being so. He sets a boundary to the boundless and in His total unity He rises above all limitation. He is neither contained nor comprehended by anything. He reaches out to everything and beyond everything and does so with unfailing generosity and unstinted activity.

'Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights' (Jms. 1:17). But there is something more. Inspired by the Father, each procession of the Light spreads itself generously toward us, and, in its power to unify, it stirs us by lifting us up. It returns us back to the oneness and deifying simplicity of the Father who gathers us in. For, as the sacred Word says, 'from Him and to Him are all things' (Rom. 11:36).

We make assertions and denials of what is next to [the Divine Nature], but never of It, for It is both beyond every assertion, being the perfect and unique cause of all things, and, by virtue of Its preeminently simple and absolute nature, free of every limitation, beyond every limitation; it is also beyond every denial.

The name 'cherubim' means 'fullness of knowledge' or 'outpouring of wisdom'... The name cherubim signifies the power to know and to see God, to receive the greatest gifts of His light, to contemplate the divine splendor in primordial power, to be filled with the gifts that bring wisdom and to share these generously with subordinates as a part of the beneficent outpouring of His wisdom.

I pray we... come to this darkness so far above light! If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseeing and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge. For this would be really to see and to know: to praise the Transcendent One in a transcending way... We would be like sculptors who set out to carve a statue. They remove every obstacle to the pure view of the hidden image, and simply by the act of clearing aside they show up the beauty which is hidden.