Wednesday, August 28 : Saint Gregory of Nyssa

Bodily health is one of the desirable things in human life; but it is blessed not only to know the principle of health, but to be healthy… The Lord Jesu does not say it is blessed to know something about God, but to have God present within oneself. “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5,8). I do not think that if the eye of one’s soul has been purified, he is promised a direct vision of God; but perhaps this marvelous saying may suggest what the Word expresses more clearly…: “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17,21). By this we should learn that if a man’s heart has been purified from every creature and all unruly affections, he will see the Image of the Divine Nature in his own beauty… There is in you, human beings, a desire to contemplate the true good… For He who made you did at the same time endow your nature with this wonderful quality. For God imprinted on it the likeness of the glories of His own Nature, as if moulding the form of a carving into wax. But evil… has rendered useless to you this wonderful thing that lies hidden under vile coverings. If, therefore, you wash off by a good life the filth that has been stuck on your heart like plaster, the Divine Beauty will again shine forth in you. It is the same as happens in the case of iron. If freed from rust it will shine and glisten brightly in the sun. So it is also with the inner man, which the Lord calls the heart. When he has scraped off the rustlike dirt which dank decay has caused to appear on his form, he will once more recover the likeness of the archetype and be good.
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team