Creation

God brought all creatures out of nothing by His impersonal command: Let there be light, let there be a firmament, let there earth bring forth, etc. But when creating man, He begins with Let us make, not let there be; and, with Himself as Model – to Our Image and Likeness. But man is not yet, not even after that ample phrase so full of power and majesty. God bends His Heavenly Might, no, not to touch the summits of lofty mountains, but down to the depths where, from the slime of the earth, He fashions the body of Adam… This indeed was something beautiful, but lifeless. God contemplated the work of His hands with delight and, bending over it He breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul – (Gen. ii, 7) ~Fr. Escribano

My spirit is not, like the Heavens, the work of God’s Fingers – ópera digitórum tuórum – my soul cannot say to its Maker, like the body: Manus tuæ plasmavérunt me: my spirit God breathed into me from the depths of His own Being, like a breath that I exhale from the recesses of my lungs; that is what my soul is: spíritus, spiráculum, the Breath of God. Has anything more mysterious, more profound and beautiful ever been said about the nature of my soul? Is it possible to go further without touching pantheism? … Recognise, my soul, thy dignity; regret having trailed thy mantle of glory through earthly mire. ~Fr. Escribano

To the foregoing proofs of ineffable love on the part of God, there is another, tenderer still. More than a hundred years ago, more than a thousand, a million, a thousand million… how will my imagination encompass the thought, the magnificent reality?... From all eternity… God thinks of me… Before the first break of the first dawn; before the coverlet of the skies was spread, God thought of me! ~Fr. Escribano

I have learnt that Thou, my God and my Father, though in need of nought that is mine – quia bonórum meórum non eges (Ps. xv, 2) – has nevertheless a longing for something which only I can give, just one small thing: my love, my heart; and Thou dost long for this with such intensity as to stoop down and beg it of me… ~Fr. Escrbano