Let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders that were shown to me by the Lord many years before they happened, who knew everything, even before the beginning of time.
Saint PatrickRead
He [God] watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the idea of a protective and nurturing divine presence in one's life, even before one is aware of it.
In this quote, Saint Patrick reflects on the notion that God's guidance and protection were present in his life even during his most formative and unaware years. The imagery of a fatherly figure suggests a deep, unconditional love and care that transcends understanding, highlighting the belief that divine support is continuously offered, shaping one's journey toward moral discernment and personal growth.
In practice
In a sermon about faith and divine guidance.
Let anyone laugh and taunt if he so wishes. I am not keeping silent, nor am I hiding the signs and wonders that were shown to me by the Lord many years before they happened, who knew everything, even before the beginning of time.
I see that already in this present world I am exalted above measure by the Lord. And I was not worthy nor such a one as that he should grant this to me, since I know most surely that poverty and affliction become me better than delights and riches.
The Lord is greater than all: I have said enough.
He that offereth sacrifice of the goods of the poor is as one that sacrificeth the son in the presence of his father.
I partly know why I have not led a perfect life like other believers. But I avow to my Lord, and I do not lie, that from the time when I first knew him, the love of God and the fear of him has grown in me from my youth so that I have, by the power of God, always till now kept the faith.
I only seek in my old age to perfect that which I had not before thoroughly learned in my youth, because my sins were a hindrance to me.
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?
Whence comes war and fighting, and factions? Whence but from the body and the lust of the body? Wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the same and service of the body.
The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.
People are not interested in you. They are not interested in me. They are interested in themselves - morning, noon and after dinner.
We live in a world of diverse cultures, and we know very little about social engineering and how to 'build nations.' And when we cannot be sure how to improve the world, hubristic visions pose a grave danger.
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