Saint Stanislaus Papczynski Selected Writings

the mystical temple of god 578 move and run over the earth, and whatever is beneath God and not endowed with reason, be inferior to human nature. “For in the image of God has man been made.” But you, earthen deity, learn with me, and recognize; what are you? The image of God. In what way? Let the Fathers inspired by the Holy Spirit explain it. And listen first of all to Gennadius:16 “It is to be understood” (he affirms), “that man is in the image of God for the following reason. God is provident for all things; man too provides for some of these. God is boundless and is present to all things; and man is present, wherever he wishes, in an instant by thought. God is the king of all things, man too has been graced by God with the power to judge. God is invisible, immortal, and a creator; nor is human nature altogether devoid of these divine distinctions.”17 But that most eloquent and wise Bishop Ambrose depicts this image of God in the Mystical Temple of God more properly and in a manner most suitable to the present subject: “This Image,” (he says), “must be considered in conformity with the inner nobility of man. The first thing indeed is that just as the one God is always and everywhere in His totality, enlivening, moving, and directing all things, as the Apostle confirms, that in Him “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), just so the soul in its body is active everywhere in its totality, enlivening, moving and directing it, being present in its totality in both the smallest and largest members. This is the image of the unity of God. The soul is also the image of the Trinity both because as God exists, lives and has intelligence, so also the soul in its own fashion exists, lives and has intelligence; and equally because, just as God is one nature but three Persons, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, in like manner the soul also is one nature, but possesses within itself three dignified features, that is: the intellect, the will and the memory. This same fact is indicated in the 16 Gennadius of Marsilia (d. 496); cf. Draczowski, Franciszek, Gennadiusz, kaplan z Marsylii: EK V, 963. 17 Gennadius, from an unknown work, in: LCG, f.41v (on Genesis, chapt. I).

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