The 1st Cause: The Cause of Sacred Life - God
"Sacred Life is all of life, plant and animal, above all human life."
This is the Cause for which all the other Causes exist:
Sacred Life is All of life, seen and unseen, as well as all of life's distinctly individual relationships with and to the LORD, our God, the one Creator of all of life, first of all and then to each other - Angels first, then Man, then animals, then trees, then plants.
It includes both being (dignity) and becoming (potential) especially in the visible realms of Man.
To this Cause belong the exercise of Christian charity - as a sacred duty - which is compassion, kindness, and mercy tempering truth, common humanity, and justice in that order.
It bids all human hearts - Love first, all else follows.
Because Our God, O my beloved of my heart, is a God of relationships.
---<--@
The Noahide Covenant: The Covenant of the Nations
"You shall love the LORD, thy God, O my nation, with everything and in everything."
Reading: Genesis 9: 1-17 -
God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: "Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth.
Dread fear of you shall come upon all the animals of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon all the creatures that move about on the ground and all the fishes of the sea; into your power they are delivered.
Every creature that is alive shall be yours to eat; I give them all to you as I did the green plants.
Only flesh with its lifeblood still in it you shall not eat.
For your own lifeblood, too, I will demand an accounting: from every animal I will demand it, and from man in regard to his fellow man I will demand an accounting for human life.
If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; For in the image of God has man been made.
Be fertile, then, and multiply; abound on earth and subdue it."
God said to Noah and to his sons with him:
"See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you
and with every living creature that was with you: all the birds, and the various tame and wild animals that were with you and came out of the ark.
I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth."
God added: "This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come, of the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you:
I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds,
I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings.
As the bow appears in the clouds, I will see it and recall the everlasting covenant that I have established between God and all living beings--all mortal creatures that are on earth."
God told Noah: "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all mortal creatures that are on earth."
---<--@
O Unspeakable Beauty
O UNSPEAKABLE BEAUTY that surrounds, penetrates and transcends into eternity, O Beauty that shines forever brightly, ever here and ever there, ever always present in places sacred to Thy holy remembrance, in places found within the soul of every creature in need of Thee.
Arise in me and cure me of my deformity, my perversity, my ugliness, my constant rebellion.
Though I weep with guilt and shame at every thought of Thee, though I should recede back into the darkness where I truly belong, Thou has seen into my soul and my soul has caught a glimpse of Thee!
O what can a mere creature do at the hint of Thee, O unspeakable Beauty?
By Thy own Truth, Thou hast enraptured my heart and now I am madly in love with Thee.
I reject all that is not Thee!
Ever in spite of me, I constantly long for Thee, I thirst and I hunger for Thee.
O Beauty, Thou art Beautiful for Thy being Beautiful, who can resist Thee?
Bless me, convince me, lead me on and fulfill what Thou sees as Thy reflection in me. Become the fullness of Thy own image and likeness that Thou has imparted in me, and lose me forever into the depths of Thy Being.
Make use of me and recreate me into an instrument of Thy holy creation and a servant to all Thy beautiful works of divine artistry.
O wonderful God, O wonderful God! O what majesty! O what glory! O what Beauty! Thou art truly Beautiful for Thy being Beautiful.
Arise in me and cure me of my deformity, my perversity, my ugliness, my constant rebellion.
Though I weep with guilt and shame at every thought of Thee, though I should recede back into the darkness where I truly belong, Thou has seen into my soul and my soul has caught a glimpse of Thee!
O what can a mere creature do at the hint of Thee, O unspeakable Beauty?
By Thy own Truth, Thou hast enraptured my heart and now I am madly in love with Thee.
I reject all that is not Thee!
Ever in spite of me, I constantly long for Thee, I thirst and I hunger for Thee.
O Beauty, Thou art Beautiful for Thy being Beautiful, who can resist Thee?
Bless me, convince me, lead me on and fulfill what Thou sees as Thy reflection in me. Become the fullness of Thy own image and likeness that Thou has imparted in me, and lose me forever into the depths of Thy Being.
Make use of me and recreate me into an instrument of Thy holy creation and a servant to all Thy beautiful works of divine artistry.
O wonderful God, O wonderful God! O what majesty! O what glory! O what Beauty! Thou art truly Beautiful for Thy being Beautiful.
Arise in the hearts of all Thy servants, arise in our poor world, that we may learn to see what is beautiful for being beheld by Thee.
Abide in us, O dearest LORD and Love of my love, spread upon our souls Thine infinite horizons and become for each one of us as the breaking of the new dawn from on high.
AMEN.
AMEN.
---<--@
One Heart, One People, One Destiny
My fellow Filipino compatriots,
in the Final Accounting of all things, it shall be shown and made known to to All that
we are a nation distinct
but not apart from all our other kindred nations - a human nation, allied to the kindred peace of all the other nations of our one family of nations.
We are a nation, my brothers and sisters of the Promise, and so it is as a nation
that we shall be held responsible by both heaven and earth before the God of all heaven and earth.
As a nation, O my people, we are by our individualities, families, tribes, communities and generations bound by one heart, one labor, and one destiny.
We are thus called, according to our fidelity to the truths of our nationhood, to make a shelter for our generations, the shelter of Country - a home away from Home for all living beings.
As a nation, we shall rise or fall upon the void of the unknown earth