[God] is perfect not only insofar as He is absolute perfection, defining perfection in Himself and from His singular existence and total perfection, but also because He is far beyond being so. He sets a boundary to the boundless and in His total unity He rises above all limitation. He is neither contained nor comprehended by anything. He reaches out to everything and beyond everything and does so with unfailing generosity and unstinted activity.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the nature of God as an absolute perfection beyond all limitations and boundaries.
Pope Dionysius articulates a profound understanding of God's essence, emphasizing His unparalleled perfection and unity. It suggests that God transcends all known limitations, existing in a realm beyond comprehension while simultaneously engaging with the universe through infinite generosity and activity. This perspective invites reflection on the nature of divinity as not only perfect in a conventional sense but also as fundamentally beyond any human understanding of perfection.
In practice
In a sermon about the nature of God, this quote could be used to illustrate His boundless nature.
The fact is that the more we take flight upward [to God], the more our words are confined to the ideas we are capable of forming; so that now as we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing.
...God does not possess a private knowledge of Himself and a separate knowledge of all the creatures in common. The universal Cause, by knowing Itself, can hardly be ignorant of the things which proceed from It and of which It is the source. This, then, is how God knows all things, not by understanding things, but by understanding Himself.
...if we know God our knowledge of... everything will be brought to perfection, and, in so far as is possible, the infinite, divine and ineffable dwelling place (cf. Jn. 14:2) will be ours to enjoy. For this is what our sainted teacher said in his famous philosophical aphorism: 'Then we shall know as we are known' (I Cor. 13:12), when we mingle our god-formed mind and divine reason to what is properly its own and the image returns to the archetype for which it now longs.
I come from the so-called Third World (what is the Second)?
I have a collective sense of suffering.
In a certain sense all men are historians.
Jesus didn't come to tell us the answers to the questions of life, he came to be the answer.
THEOSOPHY, n. An ancient faith having all the certitude of religion and all the mystery of science.
The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
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