Wednesday, August 24 : Saint Athanasius

This world is very good, as it has been done, and as we see it taking place, since that is what He wills; and this we can hardly refuse to believe. For if the movement of creation were irrational and the universe were borne along without plan, a man might fairly disbelieve what we say. But if it subsist in reason and wisdom and skill and is perfectly ordered throughout, it follows that he that is over it and has ordered it is none other than the Reason and Word of God… Being the good Word of the Good Father he produced the order of all things, combining one with another things contrary, and reducing them to one harmonious order. He, being “the Power of God and Wisdom of God” (1Cor 1,24), causes the heavens to revolve and has suspended the earth and made it fast, though resting upon nothing, by his own will (cf Heb 1,3). Illumined by him, the sun gives light to the world, and the moon has her measured period of shining. By reason of him the water is suspended in the clouds, the rains shower upon the earth and the sea is kept within bounds, while the earth bears grasses and is clothed with all manner of plants (cf Ps 104[103])… But the reason why the Word, the Word of God, has united Himself with created things is truly wonderful… For the nature of created things… is of a fleeting sort, and weak and mortal, if composed of itself only. But the God of all is good and exceeding noble by nature,— and therefore is kind… Seeing, then, that all created nature, as far as its own laws were concerned, was fleeting and subject to dissolution, lest it should come to this and… be broken up again into nothingness… he did not leave it to be tossed in a tempest in the course of its own nature. But because God is good he guides and settles the whole Creation by his own Word… lest that should come to it which would have come but for the maintenance of it by the Word — namely, dissolution—for “He is the Image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all Creation, for through him and in him all things consist, things visible and things invisible, and He is the Head of the Church” (Col 1,15-18).

maronite readings – rosary,team