Choose a topic from Part 1:
1. God is the source of being, bodily and spiritual, substantial and accidental. God is therefore the Creator of bodies as well as of spirits. And while some bodies can propagate and reproduce their kind, God had to give first beginnings and the power to propagate; God must also support the process of propagating in its being and effectiveness. Scripture says (Ps.145) that God is the Creator "who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them."
2. The entire universe, bodily and spiritual, is the work of God's goodness. All creatures manifest the divine goodness and tend to it as to their goal or final cause.
3. The theory that God made the angels, and then the angels made the bodily world, cannot stand. For, as we have seen elsewhere, only God can create. No secondary cause (that is, no creature) can produce anything without having something to work on. But creation is total production of a thing from nothing.
4. A body is made of primal matter and substantial form. Some have said that the substantial forms of bodies were taken from the angels. This is false doctrine. Bodies come in first instance from God the Creator; no bodily element is supplied by angels or other creatures.
"Try to turn your heart from the love of things visible and bring yourself to things invisible. For they who follow their own evil passions stain their consciences and lose the grace of God.
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Thomas á Kempis
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"Lord, here burn, here cut, and dry up in me all that hinders me from going to You, that You may spare me in eternity."
St Louis Bertrand
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"There is nothing which gives greater security to our actions, or more effectually cuts the snares the devil lays for us, than to follow another person’s will, rather than our own, in doing good."
St Philip Neri
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