How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of
God. Life in immortality! Brightness in righteousness! Truth in full assurance!
Faith in confidence! Temperance in holiness! And all this God has subjected to
our understandings: What therefore will those things be which he has prepared
for them that wait for him? Only the Creator and Father of spirits, the Most
Holy, knows both the greatness and beauty of them. Let us therefore strive with
all earnestness, that we may be found in the number of those that wait for him,
and that we may receive the reward which he has promised. But how, beloved,
shall we do this? We must fix our minds by faith towards God, and seek those
things that are pleasing and acceptable to him. We must perform those things
that are agreeable to his holy will and follow the way of truth, casting off
from us all unrighteousness and iniquity, together with all covetousness,
strife, evil manners, deceit, whispering, detractions, all hatred of God, pride
and boasting, or vain-glory and ambition; For they that do these things are
odious to God, and not only they that do them, but also all such as approve of
those that do them. (St Clement I to the Corinthians 17)
Pope Saint Clement I
How blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of
God. Life in immortality! Brightness in righteousness! Truth in full assurance!
Faith in confidence! Temperance in holiness! And all this God has subjected to
our understandings: What therefore will those things be which he has prepared
for them that wait for him? Only the Creator and Father of spirits, the Most
Holy, knows both the greatness and beauty of them. Let us therefore strive with
all earnestness, that we may be found in the number of those that wait for him,
and that we may receive the reward which he has promised. But how, beloved,
shall we do this? We must fix our minds by faith towards God, and seek those
things that are pleasing and acceptable to him. We must perform those things
that are agreeable to his holy will and follow the way of truth, casting off
from us all unrighteousness and iniquity, together with all covetousness,
strife, evil manners, deceit, whispering, detractions, all hatred of God, pride
and boasting, or vain-glory and ambition; For they that do these things are
odious to God, and not only they that do them, but also all such as approve of
those that do them. (St Clement I to the Corinthians 17)
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