Re: (IVÁN): ORAR ES PODER

[Mary1973]

to
pass to the other members, they would be not only unjust, but also
miserable, and would hate rather than love themselves; their blessedness, as
well as their duty, consisting in their consent to the guidance of the whole
soul to which they belong, which loves them better than they love
themselves.

483. To be a member is to have neither life, being, nor movement, except
through the spirit of the body, and for the body.

The separate member, seeing no longer the body to which it belongs, has only
a perishing and dying existence. Yet it believes it is a whole, and, seeing
not the body on which it depends, it believes it depends only on self and
desires to make itself both centre and body. But not having in itself a
principle of life, it only goes astray and is astonished in the uncertainty
of its being; perceiving in fact that it is not a body, and still not seeing
that it is a member of a body. In short, when it comes to know itself, it
has returned, as it were, to its own home, and loves itself only for the
body. It deplores its past wanderings.

It cannot by its nature love any other thing, except for itself and to
subject it to self, because each thing loves itself more than all. But, in
loving the body, it loves itself, because it only exists in it, by it, and
for it. Qui adhaeret Deo unus spiritus