Every calling is great when greatly pursued. Lord thank you that your gracious hands are upon me. God has created us to be, and we will have everything that God intended for us to have. Considering the Universe as a whole both directions of time are still indistinguishable just as space knows no above and below. Yet at a specific point of the surface of the Earth we call the direction towards the center “downward” direction; in the same way, a living World will distinguish the direction towards the more improbable state from the opposite direction calling the former past, and the latter future. This seems to be the only method which will allow us to conceive the term “space lived in,” which designates a nonobjective relationship to reality that is captured only approximately by such a concept as familiarity, intimacy, and identification, and that corresponds most closely to the way in which a human may be said to have their body. Here for the first time the existentialist problem of human’s becoming oneself is given a deeper foundation. For if confidence, hope, security, and dwelling are indispensable conditions for the possibility of human life, then the concerns of the philosophy of existence can be retained and validated anew only in a philosophical anthropology.  

I believe that I have seen God’s favor in my life is because I have learned to ask for it.  God has helped me to maintain not only what my parents have built, but God has also let me go further. Just as the Universe is created and governed by one God, so both the church and state must preserve administrative unity. However, since the church is the direct channel of communication between God and his creatures, the state and its subjects must be governed in moral affairs by the church. It is interesting that some people actually believe in capital punishment, since God will see to it that the innocent will not suffer in the afterlife. There are two ways of life for the soul, one which is subject to the laws of fate and another which, although it recognizes these laws, is able to rise above them and use them as tools. The conscious subject can be aware of other things only if it is capable at one and the same time of being modified and of remaining identical with itself, or inalterable. The solution of this apparent contradiction might lie in distinguishing between consciousness, understood as thought or pure mentality, and sensibility. The act of consciousness detaches the psychic event from its matrix in reality and thinks it is possible essence or its possibility or quiddity or whatever you wish to call it.

Consciousness is thought turned back upon itself and almost creating itself, but also as freely accepting the yoke of logic. If consciousness were not of this nature, it would be reduced to a logical machine, whereas it is free reflection on itself, grasping itself by directing itself toward objects. However, although the distinctive essence of consciousness is its infinite turning back upon itself (la riflexione infinita degli atti, “the infinite reflection of acts”), this reflection is not an infinite succession in which consciousness would lose itself in an endless postponement but rather is a completed penetration of self, the fullness and richness of the activity of thought. As the Son said: I came forth from the Father and have come into the World; again I leave the World and go to the Father [Johnson 16.28], so anyone may say: Lord, I came forth from you, the All High; I go to you, the All High, and by means of you, the All High. Here is the metaphysical medium leading us back. And this is the whole of our metaphysics: it concerns emanation, exemplarity, and consummation [that is, being illumined by spiritual rays and led back to the All High]. It is the way one becomes a true metaphysician. God has promised to give us the desires of our hearts. I have dreams in my heart that are extraordinary. God’s favor will shine down upon us and make a way. God create opportunities that cannot be taken away.

Pray for great things, expect great things, work for great things, prayer is the hand that moves the World. With the recognition of exemplarism, on the other hand, the whole of creation takes on a sacramental character—that is, it becomes a material means of bringing the soul to God. Nature becomes the mirror of God, reflecting his perfections in varying degrees. Although we see only a shadowy likeness (umbra) or trace (vestigium) of the creator in inorganic substances and the lower forms of life, the soul of man is God’s image (imago) and the angel his similitude. The recognition of God in nature begins in philosophy, but it is continued and perfected in theology. If there are potential beings, then pure act must also exist; composite things imply the existence of something simple; the changeable can only coexist with the unchangeable. More can be learned by the soul reflecting upon itself. The soul, possess memory, intelligence, and will, is an image of God, not only mirroring his spiritual nature but adumbrating the Trinity itself. Memory, which creates its own thought objects, resembles the Father who beget the Son or Logos (intelligence) as an intellectual reflection of himself, and the two through their mutual love (will-the active principle of “spiration”) breathe the Holy Spirit.

One can discover a spiritual God as the ultimate object of the soul’s search for the truth and happiness, however, only a person of faith can find the Trinity manifest throughout the creation. We can return to God by living an upright life—that is, by being rightly aligned with God—and this can be accomplished only through the grace of Christ. This return is a fulfillment of one’s destiny and is called reductio and the creation is achieved through one who praises God for and through subhuman creation. The human mind is right (rectus) when it has found truth, and above all, eternal truth. One’s will is right when one loves what is really good, one’s exercise of power is right when it is a continuation of God’s ruling power. Through original sin or the Fall, humans lost this triple righteousness. The human intellect, lured by vain curiosity, has enmeshed itself in interminable doubts and futile controversies; one’s will is ruled by greed and concupiscence; in one’s exercise of power one seeks autonomy. However, although humanity lost the state of original justice, we all still hunger for it. This longing for the infinite good is revealed in our ceaseless quest for pleasures. Through faith and love (grace), humans can find their way back.

Since knowledge is involved at every stage of return, reductio is also a quest for wisdom and hence, in an extended theological sense, it is metaphysical. It is an enlightened return, because every branch of learning is a gift from above, from the “Father of lights,” and can be put into the service of theology. Although human’s return begins with the natural illumination of the divine ideas and then by a varying additional degree of supernatural illumination which culminate in the experiential cognition of God through mystical union. This experience is not the same as the clear vision of the blessed in Heaven but is learned ignorance referred to the mystical union of the soul with God in darkness, granted to saints like Francis before death. Light of the agent intellect illumines the possible intellect. At the birth, the mind is at tabula rasa. It needs sensory stimulation before it can acquire any notions about the external World of objects. Illumination explains how the mind passes judgment on sensible things in terms of their values. For when the mind judges something to be, for example, good or beautiful, there must be an implicit awareness of what beauty and goodness are in themselves; and this requires that the human mind have some knowledge of the divine ideas.

Obviously, this is not a clear or intuitive knowledge of God such as the angles or the blessed in paradise possess. Yet, just as one sees the Sunlight without looking into the Sun itself, so one can have knowledge of divine ideas. These ideas are the residual effects of the divine action—effects which remain in the soul like habitual or buried memories. Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses. The intellect can turn inward, reflecting on the soul and its tendencies, and the mind discovers God and itself as his image. Reasoning proceeds by progressively deepening insights into what the desire for truth and perfect happiness involve. The existence of God is truth implanted by nature in the human mind, and is our desire for knowledge, truth, happiness, or goodness—all of which need explication before humans realize they have God as their ultimate object. Only God is pure actuality. You are good and you are clean. None of this is your fault. This spiritual matter, found both in the angel and in the human soul, is never separable from its spiritual form; hence, such spiritual substances are not subject to change—they cannot die nor disintegrate like terrestrial bodies, nor can they be perfected by a hierarchy of forms, as can corporal matter. Try claiming God’s blessings instead of merely longing for them.