For all people who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; and they were unable from the good things that are seen to know the one who exists, nor did they recognize the artisan while paying heed to his works;  but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world.  If through delight in the beauty of these things people assumed them to be gods, let them know how much better than these is their Lord, for the author of beauty created them.  And if people were amazed at their power and working, let them perceive from them how much more powerful is the one who formed them.  For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator. 

Yet these people are little to be blamed, for perhaps they go astray while seeking God and desiring to find him.  For while they live among his works, they keep searching, and they trust in what they see, because the things that are seen are beautiful.  Yet again, not even they are to be excused;  for if they had the power to know so much that they could investigate the world, how did they fail to find sooner the Lord of these things?  For the idea of making idols was the beginning of fornication, and the invention of them was the corruption of life;  for they did not exist from the beginning, nor will they last for ever.  For through human vanity they entered the world, and therefore their speedy end has been planned.  But you, our God, are kind and true, patient, and ruling all things in mercy.  For even if we sin we are yours, knowing your power; but we will not sin, because we know that you acknowledge us as yours.  For to know you is complete righteousness, and to know your power is the root of immortality.  For neither has the evil intent of human art misled us, nor the fruitless toil of painters, a figure stained with varied colours,  whose appearance arouses yearning in fools, so that they desire the lifeless form of a dead image.  Lovers of evil things and fit for such objects of hope are those who either make or desire or worship them.

 

 

We must ask how we can know God, since he cannot be understood by our minds or perceived by our senses, and belongs in no way to the category of existent things. Perhaps it is true to say, then, that we do not know God from his own nature (for this is unknown and surpasses all our powers of thought and perception); but from the regulation of all existent things, since this emanates from himself and contains images and likenesses of the patterns of his own divine reality. Thus step by step to the best of our ability we rise to what surpasses all in the negation of all things and the supremacy over all things, and by the cause of all things.  Therefore God is known both in everything and apart from everything; and God is known through knowledge and through ignorance, and although there is thought and speech of him, and there is knowledge, contact, sense, opinion, imagination, naming and all the rest, he is also neither thought nor spoken of or named; nor is he anything existent, or known in anything existent; but he is all in all, and nothing in nothing, and known by all things to all people, and by nothing to no one; for indeed we say this rightly about God, and he is praised because of all existent things and the resemblance of all to their creator.  And again the most divine knowledge of God is that which is known through ignorance, by a union which transcends the mind, when the mind withdraws from all existent things and then lets go even of itself, and is made one with rays of transcendent light, where it is illuminated in the unfathomable depth of wisdom.  Yet, as I said, wisdom must also be known from all things; for according to Scripture wisdom is productive of all things and constantly joining all, and is the cause of the indestructible union and order of all things, and eternally uniting the ends of earlier things to the beginnings of later, and making a single beautiful concord and harmony of the whole. (Denys the Areopagite)

 

 

 

God of surpassing love,
you enrich us with every blessing;
grant that, by setting aside our former ways
for a life that is new,
we may be ready for the glory of your kingdom.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever. Amen.