Friday, June 5, 2009

1Pet 5, 9 Resist him, steadfast in faith

(1Pet 5, 9) Resist him, steadfast in faith
[9] Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings.
(CCC 256) St. Gregory of Nazianzus, also called "the Theologian", entrusts this summary of Trinitarian faith to the catechumens of Constantinople: Above all guard for me this great deposit of faith for which I live and fight, which I want to take with me as a companion, and which makes me bear all evils and despise all pleasures: I mean the profession of faith in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. I entrust it to you today. By it I am soon going to plunge you into water and raise you up from it. I give it to you as the companion and patron of your whole life. I give you but one divinity and power, existing one in three, and containing the three in a distinct way. Divinity without disparity of substance or nature, without superior degree that raises up or inferior degree that casts down… the infinite co-naturality of three infinites. Each person considered in himself is entirely God… the three considered together…. I have not even begun to think of unity when the Trinity bathes me in its splendour. I have not even begun to think of the Trinity when unity grasps me (St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 40, 41: PG 36, 417).

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