GIFTS

How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of God. Life in immortality, splendor in righteousness, truth in perfect confidence, faith in assurance, self-control in holiness! And all these fall under the cognizance of our understandings now; what then shall those things be which are prepared for such as wait for Him? The Creator and Father of all worlds, the Most Holy, alone knows their amount and their beauty. Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number of those that wait for Him, in order that we may share in His promised gifts.

First Epistle of Clement

For every created being whatsoever that is endowed with power, whether of healing, or the like, possesses it not of itself, but as a thing given it by God. For to the creature all things are given, and wrought in it, and of itself it can do nothing (cf. Jn. 15:5; 1 Cor. 4:7).

Cyril of Alexandria

God’s gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.

Meister Eckhart

Nothing is small if God accepts it.

Teresa of Avila