God

"[T]hough not being absolutely the same as ours, the difficulties for a Saint Peter or a Saint Paul in believing were no less strong. Nor were those of their successors, the Origens and the Cyrils , the Ambroses and the Augustines. Modern man flatters himself when he judges that the Copernican revolution or the Kantian revolution dug out a new hiatus between his thought and the thought of the Ancients. It was as hard to believe then as it is today! It was hard, for a Jewish monotheist—"Listen, Israel! Your God is one!"—to believe in the divinity of a man. It was hard to believe in the crucifixion of the Son of God. It was hard for a reasonable man, who had been able to see up close the Son of Man in his humiliation, to believe in the resurrected Christ."

"As a creature, human beings are "in relationship". Transcendence which characterizes man in relation to other creatures is like the case of a gardener who is responsible for the whole creation. That is why our land is holy. Likewise it is the habitat chosen by the son of God. Nature is the manifestation of the revelation of a God full of goodness."

"The father is against the son, the brother against the brother: and, Lord, with what conscience! O be thou merciful unto us, and in thine anger remember thy mercy; suffer thyself to be entreated; be reconciled unto us; nay, reconcile us unto thee. O thou God of justice, judge justly. O thou Son of God, which earnest to destroy the works of Satan, destroy his furors, now smoking, and almost set on fire in this realm. We have sinned; we have sinned: and therefore thou art angry. O be not angry for ever. Give us peace, peace, peace in the Lord. Set us to war against sin, against Satan, against our carnal desires; and give us the victory this way. This victory we obtain by faith. This faith is not without repentance, as her gentleman usher before her: before her, I say, in discerning true faith from false faith, lip-faith, Englishmen's faith: for else it springs out of true faith."

"In the Book of Hermes, "Pimander," is enunciated in distinct and unequivocal sentences, the whole trinitarian dogma accepted by the Christians. "The light is me," says Pimander, the DIVINE THOUGHT. "I am the nous or intelligence, and I am thy god, and I am far older than the human principle which escapes from the shadow. I am the germ of thought, the resplendent WORD, the SON of GOD. Think that what thus sees and hears in thee, is the Verbum of the Master, it is the Thought, which is God the Father... The celestial ocean, the AETHER, which flows from east to west, is the Breath of the Father, the life-giving Principle, the HOLY GHOST!" For they are not at all separated and their union is LIFE."

"A Jesus I beseech you, by the living God, to tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. **Caiaphas, Gospel according to Matthew"

"Akin to the monuments of fallen despots in more recent times, religious pictures fell victim to iconoclasms directed against false or misused images (i.e. idols). In Judaism and Islam, the ban on images pertained only to their religious use and was directed against the visual practices of other populations; in Judaism against an older pictorial tradition (Uehlinger 2003) and in Islam against the use of images in Christian churches (Fowden 2014). In the context of Christianity the use of images was central to the project of becoming a world religion and of eschewing its Jewish legacy. The “true” portrait of Christ, a late phenomenon after the Council of Chalcedon (451), possessed a special evidence that was appropriated by competing theological schools in divergent ways. Pictures were then upgraded as originals. Iconic presence began to compete with the word in textual revelation. Already the notion of the Mother of God (Theotokos) at the Council of Ephesus (431) enhanced the doctrine of the two natures of Christ in one human face. Islamic theology returned to the verbal revelation of God. The Qur’an has been introduced as a book which God has sent to his prophet. With the Islamic rejection of Jesus as the son of God, the visibility of God became taboo once more. Aniconism is a picture theory under reverse conditions and usually reflects a negative experience with pictures. In the Reformation, text and picture competed with one other as different religious media, in a turn again Catholic visual politics. The Counter-Reformation above all used the weapons of a re-catholicized visual politics that transformed the space of the church into a theatre of heaven. The church directed this strategy against the private reading of the bible propagated by the Reformation. In modern secular society, religious pictures lost their old credibility, which also damaged their status as works of art. So even within the same religious tradition pictures were subject to historical change."

"When the Son of God comes to rescue us and bring us back to God, He does not find in us the ability to believe."

"There is a certain stillness at the center of the Christmas story. A silent night when all the world goes quiet and all the glamour, all the noise, everything that divides us, everything that pits us against one another, everything — everything that seems so important but really isn’t, this all fades away in stillness of the winter’s evening. And we look to the sky, to a lone star, shining brighter than all the rest, guiding us to the birth of a child — a child Christians believe to be the son of God; miraculously now, here among us on Earth, bringing hope, love and peace and joy to the world."

"To the members of the Sanhedrin, after Jesus had confirmed that he considered himself the Son of God He blasphemed! Why do we still need witnesses? Behold, now ye have heard the blasphemy; What do you think?"

"The possibility of the knowledge of God springs from God, in that He is Himself the truth and He gives Himself to man in His Word by the Holy Spirit to be known as the truth. It springs from man, in that, in the Son of God by the Holy Spirit, he becomes an object of the divine good-pleasure and therefore participates in the truth of God."

"The Holy Spirit is the coming of the man Jesus, who is the Son of God, to other men who are not this but with whom He still associates* And the witness of the Holy Spirit is the disclosure to these men, and therefore their discovery, of the fact that because they are associated with Him they can be called what they are certainly not called of themselves, and be what they can certainly never become or be of themselves children of God, children of light who in the midst of death are freed from the fear of death because as sinners they are freed from the curse of sin, and as such messengers to all those who, because they do not see the light, are still in darkness, but are not to remain in this darkness."

"’’’Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’’’"

"Christ's Passion, viewed from within, is of a diversity that the biblical texts and images leave hidden; but numerous mystics through the centuries have been allowed to experience a great deal of it in ever-varying aspects—if only by drops, as it were, compared with the Son of God."

"I entreat you to devote one solemn hour of thought to a crucified Saviour — a Saviour expiring in the bitterest agony. Think of the cross, the nails, the open wounds, the anguish of His soul. Think how the Son of God became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, that you might live forever. Think as you lie down upon your bed to rest, how your Saviour was lifted up from the earth to die. Think amid your plans and anticipations of future gaiety, what the redemption of your soul has cost, and how the dying Saviour would wish you to act. His wounds plead that you will live for better things."

"When you realize that every breath is a gift from God. When you realize how small you are, but how much he loved you. That he, Jesus, would die, the son of God .."

"This is the highest honour of the Church, that, until He is united to us, the Son of God reckons himself in some measure imperfect. What consolation is it for us to learn, that, not until we are along with him, does he possess all his parts, or wish to be regarded as complete! Hence, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, when the apostle discusses largely the metaphor of a human body, he includes under the single name of Christ the whole Church."

"Step by step, He had raised their conceptions of Him nearer the unspeakable grandeur of His true nature and work. At first the Teacher, He had, after a time, by gradual disclosures, revealed Himself as the Son of God veiled in the form of man; and, now, since His crucifixion and resurrection, He had taught them to see in Him the Messiah, exalted to immortal and Divine majesty, as the conqueror of Death and the Lord of all."

"This is what the Son of God desires of you: that he might be able to embellish, perfect and gain you lustre with the fullness of his gifts. Since he is so taken by your Beauty, which flows and gushes from him to you, as I have said, what he desires of you is that he might have the supreme pleasure of an eternity enjoying you and his gifts. Thus, everyone who proceeds to live in a way that is contrary to his own self, lives in God; his whole being is God-orientated; he sees nothing but God and himself."

"Today is the beginning of our salvation, And the revelation of the eternal mystery! The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin As Gabriel announces the coming of Grace. Together with him let us cry to the Theotokos: "Rejoice, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with you!""

"Now, as the Word of God is the Son of God, so the love of God is the Holy Spirit."

"A monk used to say: "The prayer Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me; this is the foundation of monastic life.""

"For when God said, “Let there be light, and there was light,” if we are justified in understanding in this light the creation of the angels, then certainly they were created partakers of the eternal light which is the unchangeable Wisdom of God, by which all things were made, and whom we call the only-begotten Son of God; so that they, being illumined by the Light that created them, might themselves become light and be called “Day,” in participation of that unchangeable Light and Day which is the Word of God, by whom both themselves and all else were made. “The true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” — this Light lighteth also every pure angel, that he may be light not in himself, but in God; from whom if an angel turn away, he becomes impure, as are all those who are called unclean spirits, and are no longer light in the Lord, but darkness in themselves, being deprived of the participation of Light eternal. For evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name “evil.”"

""When all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him: that God may be all in all." (1 Cor 15:28) ... Are not all things now subject unto Him? ... How, then, will they be brought into subjection? In the way that the Lord Himself has said. "Take My yoke upon you." (Mat 11:29) It is not the fierce that bear the yoke, but the humble and the gentle. This clearly is no base subjection for men, but a glorious one... all things were not made subject before, for they had not yet received the wisdom of God, not yet did they wear the easy yoke of the Word on the neck as it were of their mind. ... Will any one say that Christ is now made subject, because many have believed? Certainly not. For Christ's subjection lies not in a few but in all. ... we divide Christ as long as the human race disagrees. Therefore Christ is not yet made subject, for His members are not yet brought into subjection. But when we have become, not many members, but one spirit, then He also will become subject, in order that through His subjection "God may be all and in all." But as Christ is not yet made subject, so is the work of God not yet perfected; for the Son of God said: "My meat is to do the will of My Father that sent Me, and to finish His work." (John 4:34)"

"Now this ratio of the single to the double arises, no doubt, from the ternary number, since one added to two makes three; but the whole which these make reaches to the senary, for one and two and three make six. And this number is on that account called perfect, because it is completed in its own parts: for it has these three, sixth, third, and half; nor is there any other part found in it, which we can call an aliquot part. The sixth part of it, then, is one; the third part, two; the half, three. But one and two and three complete the same six. And Holy Scripture commends to us the perfection of this number, especially in this, that God finished His works in six days, and on the sixth day man was made in the image of God. And the Son of God came and was made the Son of man, that He might re-create us after the image of God, in the sixth age of the human race."

"“You are complex.” “No. Within this giant house of flesh lives a quiet man who would prefer working at a trade. Or perhaps he is a poet whose dreams are too large for his words. “My home is among the mountains. Men destroy what they do not understand, as they destroyed the son of God when he chose to walk among them. I do not wish to be understood. I wish to be left alone. Your Johannes has done this. He is a kind man, a thoughtful man.” “Are you never lonely?” “When would I not be lonely? When a man is one of a kind, he will be lonely wherever he is. I am a man apart but have become adjusted to it. I have the mountains, and I have my books. I also have the friendship of Johannes.”"

"The spirit in man is undying; it forever endures, progressing from point to point, and stage to stage upon the Path of Evolution, unfolding steadily and sequentially the divine attributes and aspects... The immortality of the human soul, and the innate ability of the spiritual, inner man to work out his own salvation under the Law of Rebirth, in response to the Law of Cause and Effect, are the underlying factors governing all human conduct and all human aspiration. They condition him at all times, until he has achieved the desired and the designed perfection, and can manifest on earth as a rightly functioning son of God."

"He (the Risen Christ) will not this time demonstrate the perfected life of a Son of God, which was His main mission before; He will appear as the supreme Head of the Spiritual Hierarchy, meeting the need of the thirsty nations of the world – thirsty for truth, for right human relations, and for loving understanding. He will be recognised this time by all, and in His Own Person testify to the fact of the resurrection, and hence demonstrate the paralleling fact of the immortality of the soul, of the spiritual man. The emphasis during the past two thousand years has been on death; it has coloured all the teaching of the orthodox churches; only one day in the year has been dedicated to the thought of the resurrection. (9 – 151)."

"The visible universe itself was infinitely smaller than the realm of man. The medieval thinker never forgot that his philosophy was a religious philosophy, with a firm persuasion of man's immortal destiny. The Unmoved Mover of Aristotle and the personal Father of the Christian had become one. There was an eternal Reason and Love, at once Creator and End of the whole cosmic scheme, with whom man as a reasoning and loving being was essentially akin. ...the religious experience to the medieval philosopher was the crowning scientific fact. Reason had become married to mystic inwardness and entrancement..."

"The svastika, commonly used as an aniconic representation of the Buddha, is also homologous with the wheel. If the svastika is compared with the figure of the cross inscribed within a circle, the basic equivalence of the two symbols is apparent, the rotation of the wheel being indicated in the first case by the circumference of the circle and in the svastika by the lines at right angles to the four arms of the cross, which are to be thought of in the manner of ribbons streaming in the wind. Like the wheel, the svastika represents movement about a fixed and unmoving axis and, like the wheel, it is a symbol of the generation of universal cycles from a forever-Present Centre. It represents the generation of currents of energy, and is a symbol of the action of immutable Principle, the "unmoved mover", within manifestation."

"Through Plato, Aristotle came to believe in God; but Plato never attempted to prove His reality. Aristotle had to do so. Plato contemplated Him; Aristotle produced arguments to demonstrate Him. Plato never defined Him; but Aristotle thought God through logically, and concluded with entire satisfaction to himself that He was the Unmoved Mover."

"What Christians consider to be Aristotle's “God”, i.e. the first unmoved mover – which for Aristotle is ‘a god’ because it is an immortal and happy living being – is not creator, it is not providential, and above all it is not a saviour. However, like the Christian God, it is transcendent and personal. Its transcendence is expressed by its immutability, which distinguishes it from every other reality we experience. His personality, on the other hand, is due to the fact that he thinks, therefore lives, and is happy to think, therefore possesses a will. However, I believe it is wrong to compare a philosophical doctrine, conquered by a man through exclusively human abilities (experience and reasoning), with a concept that is the result of divine revelation."

"I conclude by saying that each of us must keep faith in the future. Let us not despair. Let us realize that as we struggle for justice and freedom, we have cosmic companionship. This is the long faith of the Hebraic-Christian tradition: that God is not some Aristotelian Unmoved Mover who merely contemplates upon himself. He is not merely a self-knowing God, but an other-loving God forever working through history for the establishment of His kingdom."

"And I'm going on in believing in Him. You'd better know Him, and know His name, and know how to call His name. You may not know philosophy. You may not be able to say with Alfred North Whitehead that He's the Principle of Concretion. You may not be able to say with Hegel and Spinoza that He is the Absolute Whole. You may not be able to say with Plato that He's the Architectonic Good. You may not be able to say with Aristotle that He's the Unmoved Mover. But sometimes you can get poetic about it if you know Him. You begin to know that our brothers and sisters in distant days were right. Because they did know Him as a rock in a weary land, as a shelter in the time of starving, as my water when I'm thirsty, and then my bread in a starving land. And then if you can't even say that, sometimes you may have to say, "He's my everything. He's my sister and my brother. He's my mother and my father." If you believe it and know it, you never need walk in darkness. Don't be a fool. Recognize your dependence on God. As the days become dark and the nights become dreary, realize that there is a God who rules above. And so I'm not worried about tomorrow. I get weary every now and then. The future looks difficult and dim, but I'm not worried about it ultimately because I have faith in God."

"By the Holy Face of Lucca."

"Unlike Marian devotion, scripture provided no unequivocal justification for mandatory clerical celibacy; many of Jesus’s apostle had been married men, including Peter, the rock whom the Church was built. In the 1980s, Marian piety came under vehement attack by European feminist theologians, such as Catherina Halkes and Uta Ranke-Heinemann. They argued that Marian piety provided the means by which celibate priests sublimated their sexuality into a sexually safe relationship with a virgin mother, untainted by original sin; the hostility caused by this sublimation was then projected onto real women, who could never realize the unattainable feminine ideal represented by Mary. The Church's exaltation of Mary did not speak to the dignity of women, but rather served as a counterpoint to real women, who in Church teachings remained the daughters of the sexual temptress Eve."

"That the simulacrum of Christ Crucified known as the Holy Face (which Dante also wanted to touch in his Poem) is very ancient is beyond doubt; all its characteristics, which we will discuss below, are those of an image of great antiquity and, in the opinion of many, of a Byzantine image. Although explicit records show that it did not appear in Lucca Cathedral until the 12th century, and coins bearing its image cannot be traced back beyond the 13th century, according to numismatists, however, from these documents it can be argued that it existed long before, and there are many reasonable inferences that demonstrate that its transfer to Lucca dates back to the end of the 8th century."

"The Orthodox surpass us in Marian devotion."

"All the saints say that you must have a deep devotion to Our Lady to be a saint. Medieval chivalry and medieval Marian devotion go hand in hand. A man must always live, work, and pray as if he were under the gaze of a Mother."

"The Marian dogmas are, as we know, four in all: perpetual virginity and divine motherhood; then, after almost fifteen centuries of debate and exploration of the mystery, here is the conception without the stain of original sin and the assumption into heaven. Well, these truths have been codified and solemnly protected as dogmas, that is, as basic and indisputable truths of the faith, not so much out of devotion to Mary, but as a defense of faith in Jesus. In fact, if we reflect on their content , we realize that they reaffirm the authentic faith in Christ as true God and true man: two natures in one Person. They then reiterate the fundamental eschatological expectation, indicating in Mary the immortal destiny that awaits us all. And, finally, they secure the faith, now threatened, in a creator God (it is one of the meanings of the more misunderstood truth about Mary's perpetual virginity), a God who can freely intervene even on matter."

"Old and new mafia forces try to pollute popular faith with malignant weeds, passing off a pseudo religion as devout."

"yellow: Hail Holy Queen; Sign of the Cross]]"

"Marian devotion is very deeply embedded in Ultramontane papalist Catholicism, and has been for centuries. The Virgin in the nineteenth century, apparitions of the Virgin, play an enormous part in focusing Catholic loyalty, Catholic identity, and also in offering a dimension of Christianity... If you've got a very rigid, hierarchical, masculinely-dominated form of Christianity, the tender, nurturing, feminine element in Christianity can only be rescued by some sort of balancing act. This I think was an enormous strength in nineteenth century Catholicism over and against say nineteenth century Fundamentalist Evangelicalism - with which it has a great deal in common in some respects - but where I think it has an edge is in this feminine dimension."

"Verlaine, the maudit poet, but with a strong religious torment that ended up prevailing, speaking of the love for Mary: «all other loves are orders». With similar words, he wanted to underline that "free" character of Marian devotion that the Church has always safeguarded. Over 20 centuries, only a few dogmas have been proclaimed about her di lei: which among other things, we know, are at the service and shelter of her di lei Son di lei, well before her di lei. Only to these defined truths does the Catholic owe homage. Everything else, regarding Mary, is left to the free sensitivity and initiative of the believer."

"blue/medium blue: introduction of the relevant Mystery; Our Father"

"blue: Our Father"

"pink: Hail Mary"

"[Inside the Wedding dress shop, Louise enters in Janet's chosen wedding dress] Donna: [Gasp] You look like a sweet! Louise: ...a sweet what? Donna: No, just a sweet, like a Campino, or a truffle. Better than that, you look like a toilet roll cover! Louise: Thank you! Janet: That's a wedding dress... Louise: Janet, we're in a wedding dress shop, what do you expect me to be wearing? The Turin Shroud?"

"The Shroud represents a message of peace that, as a believer, moves and overwhelms me. It is a message that applies to all of civilisation and, of course, to the world of sport and football."

"brown: Sign of the Cross; Apostles' Creed"

"pink/dark pink: Hail Mary; Glory Be; Fátima Prayer"