St Gregory Quotes

We make Idols of our concepts, but Wisdom is born of wonder

Grace is given not to them who speak [their faith] but to those who live their faith.

Be not anxious about what you have, but about what you are.

There are some so restless that when they are free from labour they labour all the more, because the leisure they they have for thought, the worse interior turmoil they have to bear.

Makes you wonder. When I left St. Louis, I was making five dollars a night. Now I'm getting $5,000 a week — for saying the same things out loud I used to say under my breath.

We Catholics are very much given to the Instant Answer. Fiction doesn't have any. It leaves us, like Job, with a renewed sense of mystery. St. Gregory wrote that every time the sacred text describes a fact, it reveals a mystery. That is what the fiction writer, on his lesser level, hopes to do.

Anger is a perversion of courage, as lust is a perversion of love.

After the Guam conference ended, it was reported that Pope Gregory ceased to pray for peace in the world. Two special Masses were sung in the basilica: the Exsurge quare obdormis, Mass against the Heathen, and the Reminiscere, Mass in Time of War; then, the report says His Holiness retired to the mountains to meditate and pray for justice.

How did it ever happen that, when the dregs of the world had collected in western Europe, when Goth and Frank and Norman and Lombard had mingled with the rot of old Rome to form a patchwork of hybrid races, all of them notable for ferocity, hatred, stupidity, craftiness, lust, and brutality--how did it happen that, from all of this, there should come Gregorian chant, monasteries and cathedrals, the poems of Prudentius, the commentaries and histories of Bede, the Moralia of Gregory the Great, St. Augustine's City of God, and his Trinity, the writings of Anselm, St. Bernard's sermons on the Canticles, the poetry of Caedmon and Cynewulf and Langland and Dante, St. Thomas' Summa, and the Oxoniense of Duns Scotus? How does it happen that even today a couple of ordinary French stonemasons, or a carpenter and his apprentice, can put up a dovecote or a barn that has more architectural perfection than the piles of eclectic stupidity that grow up at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars on the campuses of American universities?

Scarcely had Don Christoval ceased to speak, when the Domina* of St. Clare appeared, followed by a long procession of Nuns. Each upon entering the Church took off her veil. The Prioress crossed her hands upon her bosom, and made a profound reverence as She passed the Statue of St. Francis, the Patron of this Cathedral. The

The spiritual reformer cannot expect to have the majority on his side. He must be prepared to stand alone like Ezekiel and Jeremy. He must take as his example St. Augustine besieged by the Vandals at Hippo, or St. Gregory preaching at Rome with the Lombards at the gates. For the true helpers of the world are the poor in spirit, the men who bear the sign of the cross on their foreheads, who refuse to be overcome by the triumph of injustice and put their sole trust in the salvation of God.

God always was, and always is, and always will be. Or rather, God always Is. For Was and Will be are fragments of our time, and of changeable nature, but He is Eternal Being. And this is the Name that He gives to Himself when giving the Oracle to Moses in the Mount. For in Himself He sums up and contains all Being, having neither beginning in the past nor end in the future; like some great Sea of Being, limitless and unbounded, transcending all conception of time and nature, only adumbrated [intimated] by the mind, and that very dimly and scantily.

Almost every sin is committed for the sake of sensual pleasure; and sensual pleasure is overcome by hardship and distress arising either voluntarily from repentance, or else involuntarily as a result of some salutary and providential reversal. ‘For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged; but when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, so that we should not be condemned with the world.’ (1 Cor. 11:31-32).

We must begin by purifying ourselves before purifying others; we must be instructed to be able to instruct, become light to illuminate, draw close to God to bring him close to others, be sanctified to sanctify, lead by the hand and counsel prudently.

God has to undo our illusions secretly, as it were, when we are not watching and not in perfect control, say the mystics. That is perhaps why the best word for God is actually Mystery. We move forward in ways that we do not even understand and through the quiet workings of time and grace. When we get there, we are never sure just how it happened, and God does not seem to care who gets the credit, as long as our growth continues. As St. Gregory of Nyssa already said in the fourth century, “Sin happens whenever we refuse to keep growing.

From his younger years, he always had the mind of an old man; for his age was inferior to his virtue. All vain pleasure he despised, and though he was in the world, and might freely have enjoyed such commodities as it yields, yet he esteemed it and its vanities as nothing.

It is not by chance that the tradition of the Eastern Church has reserved the name of ‘theologian’ peculiarly for three sacred writers of whom the first is St. John, most ‘mystical’ of the four Evangelists; the second St. Gregory Nazianzen, writer of contemplative poetry; and the third St. Symeon, called ‘the New Theologian’, the singer of union with God.

My goal was not simply to do well, or hold my own. It was to make a mark at St. Mark’s. I did it for Poetry. I did it for Rimbaud, and I did it for Gregory. I wanted to infuse the written word with the immediacy and frontal attack of rock and roll. Todd suggested that I be aggressive, and he gave me a pair of black snakeskin boots to wear. Sam suggested I add music. I thought about all the musicians who had come through the Chelsea, but then I remembered Lenny Kaye had said he played electric guitar. I went to see him. “You play guitar, right?” “Yeah, I like to play guitar.” “Well, could you play a car crash with an electric guitar?” “Yeah, I could do that,” he said without hesitation, and agreed to accompany me.

Discussion of theology is not for everyone, I tell you, not for everyone-it is no such inexpensive or effortless pursuit. Nor, I would add, is it for every occasion, or every audience; neither are all its aspects open to inquiry. It must be reserved for certain occasions, for certain audiences, and certain limits must be observed. It is not for all people, but only for those who have been tested and have found a sound footing in study, and, more importantly, have undergone, or at the very least are undergoing purification of body and soul. For one who is not pure to lay hold of pure things is dangerous, just as it is for weak eyes to look at the sun's brightness. What is the right time? Whenever we are free from the mire and noise without, and our commanding faculty is not confused by illusory, wandering images, leading us, as it were, to mix fine script with ugly scrawling, or sweet-smelling scent with slime. We need actually "to be still" in order to know God, and when we receive the opportunity, "to judge uprightly" in theology. Who should listen to discussions of theology? Those for whom it is a serious undertaking, not just another subject like any other for entertaining small-talk, after the races, the theater, songs, food, and sex: for there are people who count chatter on theology and clever deployment of arguments as one of their amusements. What aspects of theology should be investigated, and to what limit? Only aspects within our grasp, and only to the limit of the experience and capacity of our audience. Just as excess of sound or food injures the hearing or general health, or, if you prefer, as loads that are too heavy injure those who carry them, or as excessive rain harms the soil, we too must guard against the danger that the toughness, so to speak, of our discourses may so oppress and overtax our hearers as actually to impair the powers they had before.

you have no choice but to consider that "God loves me," yet you spend much of your life unable to shake off what feels like God only embracing you begrudgingly and reluctantly. I suppose, if you insist, God has to love me too. Then who can explain this next moment, when the utter fullness of God rushes in on you-- when you completely know the One in whom "you move and live and have your being," as St. Paul writes. You see, then, that it has been God's joy to love you all along. And this is completely new. (p25)

In the eleventh century, a French archdeacon challenged the Church’s faith that the Blessed Sacrament was in fact the Body and Blood of Christ. Pope Gregory VII (reigned 1073–85) responded with a definitive statement of what the Church had always believed. After the controversy was resolved, Eucharistic adoration began to flourish. The Church soon instituted processions of the Blessed Sacrament, prescribed rules for Eucharistic adoration, and encouraged the faithful to visit Our Lord reserved in the churches. The martyr St. Thomas à Becket (1118–70), for example, once wrote to a friend that he often prayed for him in the church before “the Majesty of the Body of Christ.” In 1226, after King Louis VII of France (1120–80) won a victory over the Albigensian heretics who had taken up arms against him, he asked the Bishop of Avignon to have the Blessed Sacrament exposed for adoration in the Chapel of the Holy Cross. The faithful who came to adore were so numerous that the bishop allowed the adoration to continue indefinitely, day and night. This decision was later ratified by the pope, and adoration at Avignon continued uninterrupted until 1792, when the French Revolution halted the devotion. It was resumed, however, in 1829. Also in the thirteenth century, Pope Urban the IV (reigned 1261–64) instituted the Feast of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ), commissioning St. Thomas Aquinas to write hymns for the feast. The lyrics for these compositions reflect a profound awareness of Christ’s abiding Presence with us in the Blessed Sacrament and of the reverence, adoration, and gratitude we owe Him for that surpassing Gift. In

Before I knew anything about church, I'd assumed that most Christians spoke the same language, shared a sense of fellowship, and beyond minor differences had a faith in common that could transcend political boundaries. But if I had imagined that, initiated as a Christian, I was going to achieve some kind of easy bond with other believers, that fantasy was soon shot. Just a few months after I began going to St. Gregory's, I found myself at a restaurant counter in the Denver airport, waiting for a flight home from a reporting trip. A woman—perhaps noticing the silver crucifix I had recently and self-consciously started to wear around my neck—caught my eye and smiled as she took the stool next to me. She had short blond hair and a cross of her own, and was wearing some kind of sexless denim jumper that reeked of piety. I smiled back, and we exchanged small talk about the weather and flight delays, and then she asked me what I was reading. I showed her the little volume of psalms that I'd borrowed from Rick Fabian. “From my church,” I said proudly. “What church is that?” the woman asked. She leaned forward, in a friendly way. “Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, in San Francisco,” I said, as her face rearranged itself, froze, and closed. It may have been the “San Francisco,” I realized later, but the city's name was a reasonable stand-in, by that point, for everything conservative Christians had come to hate about the Episcopal Church as a whole: homosexuality; wealth; feminism; and morally relativist, decadent, rudderless liberalism. The church I'd unknowingly landed in turned out to be a scandal, a dirty joke at airport restaurants, a sign—in fact, thank God, a sure bet—that I was going to eat with sinners.

Supporters of apokatastasis in roughly chronological order: - [c. 30-105] Apostle Paul and various NT authors - [c. 80-150] Scattered likely references among Apostolic Fathers o Ignatius o Justin Martyr o Tatian o Theophilus of Antioch (explicit references) - [130-202] Irenaeus - [c. 150-200] Pantaenus of Alexandria - [150-215] Clement of Alexandria - [154-222] Bardaisan of Edessa - [c. 184-253] Origen (including The Dialogue of Adamantius) - [♱ 265] Dionysius of Alexandria - [265-280] Theognustus - [c. 250-300] Hieracas - [♱ c. 309] Pierius - [♱ c. 309] St Pamphilus Martyr - [♱ c. 311] Methodius of Olympus - [251-306] St. Anthony - [c. 260-340] Eusebius - [c. 270-340] St. Macrina the Elder - [conv. 355] Gaius Marius Victorinus (converted at very old age) - [300-368] Hilary of Poitiers - [c. 296-373] Athanasius of Alexandria - [♱ c. 374] Marcellus of Ancrya - [♱378] Titus of Basra/Bostra - [c. 329-379] Basil the Cappadocian - [327-379] St. Macrina the Younger - [♱387] Cyril of Jerusalem (possibly) - [c. 300-388] Paulinus, bishop of Tyre and then Antioch - [c. 329-390] Gregory Nazianzen - [♱ c. 390] Apollinaris of Laodicaea - [♱ c. 390] Diodore of Tarsus - [330-390] Gregory of Nyssa - [c. 310/13-395/8] Didymus the Blind of Alexandria - [333-397] Ambrose of Milan - [345-399] Evagrius Ponticus - [♱407] Theotimus of Scythia - [350-428] Theodore of Mopsuestia - [c. 360-400] Rufinus - [350-410] Asterius of Amaseia - [347-420] St. Jerome - [354-430] St. Augustine (early, anti-Manichean phase) - [363-430] Palladius - [360-435] John Cassian - [373-414] Synesius of Cyrene - [376-444] Cyril of Alexandria - [500s] John of Caesarea - [♱520] Aeneas of Gaza - [♱523] Philoxenus of Mabbug - [475-525] Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite - [♱543] Stephen Bar Sudhaili - [580-662] St. Maximus the Confessor - [♱ c. 700] St. Isaac of Nineveh - [c. 620-705] Anastasius of Sinai - [c. 690-780] St. John of Dalyatha - [710/13-c. 780] Joseph Hazzaya - [813-903] Moses Bar Kepha - [815-877] Johannes Scotus Eriugena

The heart is the center of the human microcosm, at once the center of the physical body, the vital energies, the emotions, and the soul, as well as the meeting place between the human and the celestial realms where the spirit resides. How remarkable is this reality of the heart, that mysterious center which from the point of view of our earthly existence seems so small, and yet as the Prophet has said it is the Throne (al-‘arsh) of God the All-Merciful (ar-Rahmân), the Throne that encompasses the whole universe. Or as he uttered in another saying, “My Heaven containeth Me not, nor My Earth, but the heart of My faithful servant doth contain Me.” It is the heart, the realm of interiority, to which Christ referred when he said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:21), and it is the heart which the founders of all religions and the sacred scriptures advise man to keep pure as a condition for his salvation and deliverance. We need only recall the words of the Gospel, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8) […] In Christianity the Desert Fathers articulated the spiritual, mystical, and symbolic meanings of the reality of the heart, and these teachings led to a long tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church known as Hesychasm, culminating with St Gregory Palamas, which is focused on the “prayer of the heart” and which includes the exposition of the significance of the heart and the elaboration of the mysticism and theology of the heart. In Catholicism another development took place, in which the heart of the faithful became in a sense replaced by the heart of Christ, and a new spirituality developed on the basis of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Reference to His bleeding heart became common in the writings of such figures as St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Catherine of Sienna. The Christian doctrines of the heart, based as they are on the Bible, present certain universal theses to be seen also in Judaism, the most important of which is the association of the heart with the inner soul of man and the center of the human state. In Jewish mysticism the spirituality of the heart was further developed, and some Jewish mystics emphasized the idea of the “broken or contrite heart” (levnichbar) and wrote that to reach the Divine Majesty one had to “tear one’s heart” and that the “broken heart” mentioned in the Psalms sufficed. To make clear the universality of the spiritual significance of the heart across religious boundaries, while also emphasizing the development of the “theology of the heart” and methods of “prayer of the heart” particular to each tradition, one may recall that the name of Horus, the Egyptian god, meant the “heart of the world”. In Sanskrit the term for heart, hridaya, means also the center of the world, since, by virtue of the analogy between the macrocosm and the microcosm, the center of man is also the center of the universe. Furthermore, in Sanskrit the term shraddha, meaning faith, also signifies knowledge of the heart, and the same is true in Arabic, where the word îmân means faith when used for man and knowledge when used for God, as in the Divine Name al-Mu’min. As for the Far Eastern tradition, in Chinese the term xin means both heart and mind or consciousness. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Chapter 3: The Heart of the Faithful is the Throne of the All-Merciful)

The heart is the center of the human microcosm, at once the center of the physical body, the vital energies, the emotions, and the soul, as well as the meeting place between the human and the celestial realms where the spirit resides. How remarkable is this reality of the heart, that mysterious center which from the point of view of our earthly existence seems so small, and yet as the Prophet has said it is the Throne (al-‘arsh) of God the All-Merciful (ar-Rahmân), the Throne that encompasses the whole universe. Or as he uttered in another saying, “My Heaven containeth Me not, nor My Earth, but the heart of My faithful servant doth contain Me.” It is the heart, the realm of interiority, to which Christ referred when he said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:21), and it is the heart which the founders of all religions and the sacred scriptures advise man to keep pure as a condition for his salvation and deliverance. We need only recall the words of the Gospel, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8) […] In Christianity the Desert Fathers articulated the spiritual, mystical, and symbolic meanings of the reality of the heart, and these teachings led to a long tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church known as Hesychasm, culminating with St Gregory Palamas, which is focused on the “prayer of the heart” and which includes the exposition of the significance of the heart and the elaboration of the mysticism and theology of the heart. In Catholicism another development took place, in which the heart of the faithful became in a sense replaced by the heart of Christ, and a new spirituality developed on the basis of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Reference to His bleeding heart became common in the writings of such figures as St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Catherine of Sienna. The Christian doctrines of the heart, based as they are on the Bible, present certain universal theses to be seen also in Judaism, the most important of which is the association of the heart with the inner soul of man and the center of the human state. In Jewish mysticism the spirituality of the heart was further developed, and some Jewish mystics emphasized the idea of the “broken or contrite heart” (levnichbar) and wrote that to reach the Divine Majesty one had to “tear one’s heart” and that the “broken heart” mentioned in the Psalms sufficed. To make clear the universality of the spiritual significance of the heart across religious boundaries, while also emphasizing the development of the “theology of the heart” and methods of “prayer of the heart” particular to each tradition, one may recall that the name of Horus, the Egyptian god, meant the “heart of the world”. In Sanskrit the term for heart, hridaya, means also the center of the world, since, by virtue of the analogy between the macrocosm and the microcosm, the center of man is also the center of the universe. Furthermore, in Sanskrit the term shraddha, meaning faith, also signifies knowledge of the heart, and the same is true in Arabic, where the word îmân means faith when used for man and knowledge when used for God, as in the Divine Name al-Mu’min. As for the Far Eastern tradition, in Chinese the term xin means both heart and mind or consciousness. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Chapter 3: The Heart of the Faithful is the Throne of the All-Merciful)

Every human being with normal mental and emotional faculties longs for more. People typically associate their longing for more with a desire to somehow improve their lot in life—to get a better job, a nicer house, a more loving spouse, become famous, and so on. If only this, that, or some other thing were different, we say to ourselves, then we’d feel complete and happy. Some chase this “if only” all their lives. For others, the “if only” turns into resentment when they lose hope of ever acquiring completeness. But even if we get lucky and acquire our “if only,” it never quite satisfies. Acquiring the better job, the bigger house, the new spouse, or world fame we longed for may provide a temporary sense of happiness and completeness, but it never lasts. Sooner or later, the hunger returns. The best word in any language that captures this vague, unquenchable yearning, according to C. S. Lewis and other writers, is the German word Sehnsucht (pronounced “zane-zookt”).[9] It’s an unusual word that is hard to translate, for it expresses a deep longing or craving for something that you can’t quite identify and that always feels just out of reach. Some have described Sehnsucht as a vague and bittersweet nostalgia and/or longing for a distant country, but one that cannot be found on earth. Others have described it as a quasi-mystical sense that we (and our present world) are incomplete, combined with an unattainable yearning for whatever it is that would complete it. Scientists have offered several different explanations for this puzzling phenomenon—puzzling, because it’s hard to understand how natural processes alone could have evolved beings that hunger for something nature itself doesn’t provide.[10] But this longing is not puzzling from a biblical perspective, for Scripture teaches us that humans and the entire creation are fallen and estranged from God. Lewis saw Sehnsucht as reflective of our “pilgrim status.” It indicates that we are not where we were meant to be, where we are destined to be; we are not home. Lewis once wrote to a friend that “our best havings are wantings,” for our “wantings” are reminders that humans are meant for a different and better state.[11] In another place he wrote: Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside is . . . the truest index of our real situation.[12] With Lewis, Christians have always identified this Sehnsucht that resides in the human heart as a yearning for God. As St. Augustine famously prayed, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.”[13] In this light, we might think of Sehnsucht as a sort of homing device placed in us by our Creator to lead us into a passionate relationship with him.

A brilliant student, John Wesley pursued his education at Oxford University from 1720 until 1724. He was adept in a number of languages and appreciated classical culture. He became very interested in the writings of the church fathers (especially St. Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, and later Macarius). He meditated on Bishop Taylor’s Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Holy Living and Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying

HOW DID IT EVER HAPPEN THAT, WHEN THE DREGS OF the world had collected in western Europe, when Goth and Frank and Norman and Lombard had mingled with the rot of old Rome to form a patchwork of hybrid races, all of them notable for ferocity, hatred, stupidity, craftiness, lust, and brutality—how did it happen that, from all this, there should come Gregorian chant, monasteries and cathedrals, the poems of Prudentius, the commentaries and histories of Bede, the Moralia of Gregory the Great, St. Augustine’s City of God, and his Trinity, the writings of St. Anselm, St. Bernard’s sermons on the Canticles, the poetry of Caedmon and Cynewulf and Langland and Dante, St. Thomas’ Summa, and the Oxoniense of Duns Scotus?

St. Gregory the Great says: “Men ought by prayer to dispose themselves to receive what Almighty God from eternity has decided to give them.”1096

it was the miracle of St. Gregory’s (the IEnlightener, “Sourb Grigor Lusavorich”) that brought about the conversion of Tiridates III, King of Armenia, to Christianity, and with it the nation.

No one presumes to teach an art that he has not first mastered through study. How foolish therefore for the inexperienced to assume pastoral authority when the care of souls is the art of arts.

I say all this to note the paradox of that generation of Americans that spent childhood in the Depression, fought in World War II as teenagers, and as adults built the country as we know it today, for better or worse, richer or polluted, in plutonium and in health. That paradox is one of excess and selflessness. It was a generation that acted first, thought later. Ours, on the other hand, thinks almost everything into oblivion. Ours projects all, yet seems at a loss to do anything that will substantially alter what we so brilliantly project, most of which is payment for fifty years of excess since the war—chemical water, dying forests, soaring deficits, clogged arteries, rockets and bombs like hardened foam from a million panting mouths.

A man ought so to avoid giving offence, that he is not by improper word or deed the occasion of anyone’s downfall. “But if scandal arise from the truth, the scandal should be sustained rather than the truth be relinquished,” as [St.] Gregory says.

Description: SCP-222 designates an area of tunnels in the Dolomites mountains, near Aviano, Italy. The site is close to the Church of St. Gregory, and Aviano Air Force Base is also nearby. The tunnels are filled with carved stone coffins; one coffin in particular has unusual properties, and some portion of the tunnels is also involved. The carvings in the tunnels appear very old and of fairly good workmanship. History

This violence was not condemned by religious officials. To the contrary, Catholic priests applauded the killing of heretics (that is, Protestants) while Protestant clergy endorsed the killing of agents of the anti-Christ (that is, Catholics). After about 13,000 French Protestants were slaughtered in Paris and other cities during the notorious St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of August 1572, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a special celebratory mass and had a medal struck to commemorate the event.

The Orthodox Church of Christ is the Body of Christ, a spiritual organism whose Head is Christ. It has a single spirit, a single common faith, a single and common catholic consciousness, guided by the Holy Spirit; and its reasonings are based on the concrete, definite foundations of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Apostolic Tradition. This catholic consciousness is always with the Church, but, in a more definite fashion, this consciousness is expressed in the Ecumenical Councils of the Church. From profound Christian antiquity, local councils of separate Orthodox Churches gathered twice a year, in accordance with the 37th Canon of the Holy Apostles.18 Likewise, often in the history of the Church there were councils of regional bishops representing a wider area than individual Churches and, finally, councils of bishops of the whole Orthodox Church of both East and West. Such Ecumenical Councils the Church recognizes as seven in number. The Ecumenical Councils formulated precisely and confirmed a number of the fundamental truths of the Orthodox Christian Faith, defending the ancient teaching of the Church against the distortions of heretics. The Ecumenical Councils likewise formulated numerous laws and rules governing public and private Christian church life, which are called the Church canons, and required the universal and uniform observance of them. Finally, the Ecumenical Councils confirmed the dogmatic decrees of a number of local councils, and also the dogmatic statements composed by certain Fathers of the Church — for example, the confession of faith of St. Gregory the Wonderworker, Bishop of Neo-Caesarea,19 the canons of St. Basil the Great,20 and so forth.

Social ecologist Gregory Bateson foresaw how the separating of mind from matter – spirit from nature – creates all sorts of problems. For Bateson, this separation is an error of the most fundamental degree. This error, Bateson saw woven into Western habits of thought at deep and partly unconscious levels, undermining our capacity to flourish sustainably on Earth. He felt that it is what pits humanity against nature and provides for our prevalent worldview of survival through competition, in what he viewed as “an ecology of bad ideas” breeding parasitic humans, purely self-centered and destructive of their host environment. He noted that if you, “see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration, the environment will be yours to exploit…If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or, simply, of over-population and over-grazing” (Bateson, 2000).

You ask if St. Dominic was really the institutor of the Rosary, you declare yourselves perplexed and full of doubt upon the subject. But what account do you make of the decisions of so many Sovereign Pontiffs of Leo X., of Pius V., of Gregory XIII. , of Sixtus V., of Clement VIII. , of Alexander VII., of Innocent XL, of Clement XL, of Innocent XIII., of Benedict XII I., and of many others, who are all unanimous in declaring the Rosary to have been instituted by St. Dominic himself?

St. Martin's Press, whose erudition, urbanity, and love for the world of the word are an artist's inspiration.

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

St. Gregory spoke well when he said: "Do not marvel at anything that does not remain, and do not overlook anything that does. Do not moreover try to grasp at something that simply escapes us when held." (p. 127)

story of Private Stephen Kelly of Co. E, 91st Pennsylvania. He joined that unit in August 1861, and was mustered out three years later in Philadelphia. Several years after the war Kelly had occasion to visit the battlefield park and was surprised to find his own grave, (#A-88) nicely defined in the Pennsylvania section of the National Cemetery. It is there today, but Kelly was not in it. He took the whole matter in stride and in good humor, and was once heard to say: “[E]ach Decoration Day I go up there and strew some flowers on the tomb of the man who is substituting for me.

Living in the body and yet in the same way as of the immaterial beings, they were not bowed down by the weight of the body, but their life was exalted to the skies, and they walked on high in company with the powers of Heaven. –St. Gregory of Nyssa, Life of St. Macrina

He whom presently you scorn was once transcendent, over even you. He who is presently human was incomposite. He remained what he was; what he was not, he assumed. No “because” is required for his existence in the beginning, for what could account for the existence of God? But later he came into being because of something, namely for your salvation, yours, who insulted him and despised his Godhead for that very reason, because he took on your thick corporeality. Through the medium of the mind he had dealings with the flesh, being made that God on earth….He was carried in the womb, but acknowledged by a prophet yet unborn himself, who leaped for joy at the presence of the Word for whose sake he had been created. He was wrapped in swaddling bands, but at the Resurrection he unloosed the swaddling bands of the grave. He was laid in a manger, but was extolled by angels, disclosed by a star and adored by Magi. Why do you take offense at what you see, instead of attending to its spiritual significance?

Whoever does not accept Holy Mary as the Mother of God has no relation with the Godhead. - St. Gregory of Nazianzus , On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius (First Letter to Cledonius the Presbyter, n. 5)

Whoever does not accept Holy Mary as the Mother of God has no relation with the Godhead. -St. Gregory of Nazianzus, First Letter to Cledonius, n. 5

Secretary

theology must be not so much a quest of positive notions about the divine being as an experience which surpasses all understanding. ‘It is a great thing to speak of God, but still better to purify oneself for God,’ says St. Gregory Nazianzen.[47] Apophaticism is not necessarily a theology of ecstasy. It is, above all, an attitude of mind which refuses to form concepts about God. Such an attitude utterly excludes all abstract and purely intellectual theology which would adapt the mysteries of the wisdom of God to human ways of thoughts. It is an existential attitude which involves the whole man: there is no theology apart from experience; it is necessary to change, to become a new man. To know God one must draw near to Him. No one who does not follow the path of union with God can be a theologian. The way of the knowledge of God is necessarily the way of deification.

I’d have thought you’d obey the injunction of St. Paul and put away the things of a child.” “One does that when one has stopped being a child, as I recall the verse. So perhaps I’ve never stopped.

Russia has denied any involvement in either of the attacks. However, Irakli Porchkhidze, President Saakashvili’s deputy national security adviser at the time, told me the assault actually began a month before the conflict broke out and involved tens of thousands of botnets, mostly controlled by a St. Petersburg criminal group. Some of the attacks disseminated images of Saakashvili in Nazi uniform and other propaganda. The size, timing and complexity of the assault implicated the Kremlin, which Porchkhidze believes used the attacks as a weapon. “It was a new page in the history of cyberwarfare,” he said.

Since it was no mere death from suffocation that Jesus suffered, but a bloody death, in which His veins were emptied of their blood, this condition of separation must receive visible representation on the altar. This condi tion is fulfilled only by the double Consecration, which brings before our eyes the Body and Blood in the state of separation and thus represents the mystical shedding of the Blood. It is this consideration that suggested to the Fathers the idea, which was adopted into some litur gies, of the double Consecration as a two-edged " mys tical sword." Thus St. Gregory of Nazianzus says: " Hesitate not to pray for me, . . . when with bloodless stroke thou separatest the Body and Blood of the Lord, employing speech as a sword." 21

Gutberlet answers this question suc cinctly as follows: " First and above all we uphold the idea of the mystical slaying of the sacrificial Victim by means of the double Consecration. In connection with this, the preparation of the food signifies the preparation of the slain lamb for the sacrificial feast. In this sense the preparation of the sacrificial food continues, supple ments, and completes the mystic slaying. Only a lifeless lamb that has been sacrificed can be eaten, as St. Gregory of Nyssa says. Because the Eucharist is also a Sacra ment, the Consecration, as an offering, reduces the Body of the Lord to the condition of food, which condition 18 fjS-r} r6 awfia IrtQvro* l» V. supra, pp. 162 sqq. 370 THE EUCHARIST AS A SACRIFICE is at the same time that of a sacrificial lamb/' 20 Cfr. i Cor. V, 7: " Etenim Pascha nostrum immolatus est Christus — For Christ our pasch is sacrificed.

St. Gregory (A. D. 240), bishop of Neo-Cæsarea in Pontus, was another celebrated Christian Father, born of Pagan parents and educated a Pagan. He is called Thaumaturgus, or the wonder-worker, and is said to have performed miracles when still a Pagan. [413:4] He, too, was an Alexandrian student. This is the Gregory who was commended by his namesake of Nyssa for changing the Pagan festivals into Christian holidays, the better to draw the heathen to the

In the second place, care must be taken not to apply the ideas of to-day to another age

Mirroring his own active life, St Gregory stressed the complementary function of action and contemplation. He taught that prayer and the meditative reading of Scripture eventually allow the soul to experience divine presence, which in turn prepares and strengthens the soul for the active life.

St. Gregory of Nice relates a story of a nun who forgot to say her benedicite, and make the sign of the cross, before she sat down to supper, and who, in consequence, swallowed a demon concealed among the leaves of a lettuce.

Gregory Mankiw’s widely used contemporary textbook, Principles of Economics, the definition has become even more concise. ‘Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources,’ it declares—erasing the question of ends or goals from the page altogether.

Raskob, the son of an Irish mother and a cigar-maker father of Alsatian descent, was a Roman Catholic from a large family, and he would remain a devout Roman Catholic all his life. In 1928 he was a member of the Knights of Malta and a Knight of St. Gregory, and he was generous to the Church. One

But Benedict wished to suffer the world’s wrongs rather than its praises, and to be worn out by labors for God rather than flattered by worldly praise. So he quietly slipped away...

St. Gregory Palamas asks: Why should anybody who is endowed with a nous think it improper to bring their nous into a body whose very nature it is to be the dwelling place of God?[78]

Since the orthodox Christian church continued to slip farther and farther toward the belief that sex was evil, the doctrine of the “Ever-Virginity” of Mary was established. This was the belief that Mary conceived as a virgin, but also remained a virgin even after giving birth to Jesus and thereafter for the rest of her life. The Catholic Church rejects the idea that Mary had other children, although the Bible speaks of the brothers and sisters of Jesus. The doctrine of “virginity” was established around 359 A.D. The doctrine of the bodily Assumption of Mary was formally developed by St. Gregory of Tours around 594 A.D. This doctrine stated that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was taken up into heaven to be seated at the side of Jesus. The idea has been present in apocryphal texts since the late fourth century.

expiation: A sacrifice that wipes away sin. • The expression is used multiple times in the Greek OT for the mercy seat, or golden lid that covered the Ark of the Covenant (Ex 25:17; Heb 9:5). The high priest of Israel sprinkled blood on the mercy seat once a year on the Day of Atonement to expiate the sins of the people and restore them to fellowship with Yahweh (Lev 16:1-34). For Paul, the mercy seat typifies Christ as the living seat of God's presence and the place where atonement is made with sacrificial blood (CCC 433). • Christ, who became an expiation by blood, teaches us to follow his example by the mortification of our members (St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Perfection). Back

By the wounds of his body, he cured the wounds of his soul, in that he turned pleasure into pain, and by the outward burning of extreme smart, quenched that fire which, being nourished before with the fuel of carnal cogitations, inwardly burned in his soul: and by this means he overcame the sin, because he made a change of the fire.

Many have emphasized that our ability to reason is the distinguishing mark of the soul. Others have argued that our ability to communicate sets us apart. Still others have stressed that our ability to love or to sense God or to make moral judgments manifests our imago Dei. Many theologians have concluded that all of these features manifest the soul. In each case, however, the divine image is located in the soul of humans. St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvin are classic representatives of this perspective. A

The most important anchor, and therefore our “greatest help and blessing,” St. Teresa noted, is the fact that in Christ God became a man, hence someone we can concretely envision in our minds when we pray.

St. Gregory enunciates this truth still more plainly: “Although Christ dies not again, yet He suffers again for us in the Sacrifice of the Mass after a mysterious, mystical manner.” Theodoret speaks no less plainly: “We offer no other sacrifice but that which was offered upon the Cross.

St. Gregory: "Remember that the riches you have unlawfully acquired remain in this world, but the sins you committed in obtaining them will accompany you into the next. How great is your folly, then, to leave your profit here and to take only your loss with you-to afford others gratification in this world while you endure everlasting sufferings in the world to come!" (Epist. ad Just).

How should a man be who is to see God? He must be dead. Our Lord says: "No man can see me and live". Now st Gregory says he is dead who is dead to the world. Now judge for yourself what a dead man is like and how little he is touched by anything in the world.

Most of us are really good at knowing when we are in the expressing role. As St. Teresa of Ávila said, “Many people are good at talking but bad at understanding.” That’s because most of us always want to be in the expressing role. We feel like our perspective or opinion is vital to the conversation, more so than the other person’s, and so the motivation is to make sure that our side is understood.

A few days later, Pellegrini took his wife on vacation in Anguilla. Stopping at an automated-teller machine in the hotel lobby on New Year's Eve to withdraw some cash, she checked the balance of their checking account. She was immediately taken aback. On the screen before her was a figure she had never seen before, at least not on an ATM. It's not clear how many others ever had, either: $45 million, newly deposited in their joint account. It was Pellegrini's bonus for the year, including some deferred compensation. He was still special to John Paulson, after all. In truth, Pellegrini had withheld more from his bonus than he needed in order to pay the year's taxes, so the figure in the bank account that day was skimpier than it could have been. Paulson paid him about $175 million for his work in 2007. Pellegrini would never again have to worry about finding a career, keeping a job, or stretching his savings. "Wow," his wife said quietly, still staring at the ATM. Then they left, arm in arm, to meet a chartered boat to take them to nearby St. Barts. Paulson did quite well for himself as well. His hedge fund got to keep 20 percent of the $15 billion or so gains of all his funds. He also was a big investor in the credit funds. His personal tally for 2007: nearly $4 billion. It was the largest one-year payout in the history of the financial markets.

Mercy is a voluntary sorrow which enjoins itself to the suffering of another. -St. Gregory of Nyssa

certain Goth, named Galla, was of the impious sect of the Arians. This terrible Goth, during the reign of King Totila, did with monstrous cruelty persecute religious men of the Catholic Church. If any cleric or monk came into his sight, he was sure not to escape from his hands alive. This man, enraged with an insatiable desire of spoil and pillage, lighted one day upon a husbandman, whom he tormented with cruel torments. The rustic, overcome with pain, professed that he had committed his goods to the custody of the servant of God, Benedict. This he feigned that he might free himself from torments and prolong his life for some time. Then this Galla desisted from tormenting him and, tying his arms together with a strong cord, made him run before his horse to show him who this Benedict was that had received his goods. Thus the man went in front, having his arms bound, and brought him to the holy man’s monastery, whom he found sitting alone at the monastery gate, reading. Then the countryman said to Galla, who followed furiously after him, “See! This is Father Benedict whom I told you of.” The barbarous ruffian, looking upon him with enraged fury, thought to affright him with his usual threats, and began to cry out with a loud voice, saying, “Rise, rise and deliver up this rustic’s goods which thou hast received.” At whose voice the man of God suddenly lifted up his eyes from reading and saw him and also the countryman whom he kept bound; but, as he cast his eyes upon his arms, in a wonderful manner the cords fell off so quickly that no man could possibly have so soon untied them. When Galla perceived the man whom he brought bound so suddenly loosened and at liberty, struck with fear at the sight of so great power, he fell prostrate and bowed his stiff and cruel neck at the holy man’s feet, begging his prayers. But the holy man rose not from his reading, but called upon the brethren to bring him to receive his benediction. When he was brought to him, he exhorted him to leave off his barbarous and inhuman cruelty.

Through the wisdom and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and through adoption to sonship, we are crucified with Christ and buried with him, and we rise with him and ascend with him spiritually by imitating his way of life in this world. To speak simply, we become gods by the adoption through grace, receive the pledge of eternal blessedness, as St. Gregory the Theologian says. In this way, with regard to the eight evil thoughts, we become dispassionate, just, good, and wise, having God within ourselves -- as Christ himself has told us (John 14:21-23) -- through the keeping of the commandments in order, from the first to the last. - St. Peter of Damaskos