CONTRA FATUM

"If we who are united to Him by faith in Him, are synonymous with Him whose incorruptible nature is beyond verbal interpretation, it is entirely necessary for us to become what is contemplated in connection with the incorruptible nature and to achieve an identity with the secondary elements [virtues] which follow along with it." ( On What it Means to Call Oneself a Christian , Callahan, Fathers of the Church vol. 58, 1967)

"Any interest which people have in worldly things is quite simply the same as children's toys of sand (Homer, II. 15,363-364), in which the enjoyment of the products ends with the interest in their construction. As soon as they cease from their toil, the sand collapses, leaving behind no trace of what the children worked at. This is human life: ambition is sand, power is sand, wealth is sand, and sand each of the pleasures eagerly enjoyed in the flesh." ( Homilies on Ecclesiastes , Hall, 1993, 289,18)

“How can a man be master [a magistrate] of another's life, if he is not even master of his own? Hence he ought to be poor in spirit, and look at Him who for our sake became poor of His own will; let him consider that we are all equal by nature, and not exalt himself impertinently against his own race on account of that deceptive show of office[...]" (On the Beatitudes, Graef, 1954, pp. 94-95)

" You have learned, He says, from the Old Law, Thou shalt not kill. Learn now to keep your soul from wrath against your neighbour. He has not forbidden wrath completely. For sometimes one may lawfully turn such an emotion also to good use; what the precept abolishes is to be angry with one's brother for no good reason - for everyone who is angry with his brother in vain: the addition in vain shows that the use of anger is often opportune, namely, whenever this passion is roused for the chastisement of sin. [...] [but] He prevents the beginning of unjust violence by not even permitting self-defence." (On the Beatitudes, Sermon 6,  Graef 1954, p. 152)

"Hope always draws the soul from the beauty which is seen to what is beyond, always kindles the desire for the hidden through what is constantly perceived. Therefore, the ardent lover of beauty, although receiving what is always visible as an image of what he desires, yet longs to be filled with the very stamp of the archetype." (Life of Moses, Ferguson, §231)

"[...]the Divine is by its nature life-giving. Yet the characteristic of the divine nature is to transcend all characteristics. Therefore, he who thinks God is something to be known does not have life, because he has turned from true Being to what he considers by sense perception to have being." (Life of Moses, Ferguson, §234)

"In my view the definition of truth is this: not to have a mistaken apprehension of Being." (De Vita Moysis II, Ferguson, 1978, p. 23)

"The blessed and eternal substance of God, that surpasses all understanding, contains all perfection within itself and cannot be limited. Hence nothing that is limiting, whether name, or concept or thing, can be considered as His attribute, as, for example, time, place, colour, shape, form, mass, magnitude, dimension." (Comm. Song, Musurillo, From Glory to Glory, 2001, p. 189)

"[...] man was brought into the world last after the creation, not being rejected to the last as worthless, but as one whom it behoved to be king over his subjects at his very birth. And as a good host does not bring his guest to his house before the preparation of his feast, but, when he has made all due preparation, and decked with their proper adornments his house, his couches, his table, brings his guest home when things suitable for his refreshment are in readiness,—in the same manner the rich and munificent Entertainer of our nature, when He had decked the habitation with beauties of every kind, and prepared this great and varied banquet, then introduced man, assigning to him as his task not the acquiring of what was not there, but the enjoyment of the things which were there; and for this reason He gives him as foundations the instincts of a twofold organization, blending the Divine with the earthy, that by means of both he may be naturally and properly dispos