Moralitates
The Word Who Is God
The Son, as the eternal Word, was with God and was God from the beginning.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.✦ In the Father was the Son, who is the Word of the Father, and that Word was God.✦
Living by the Word
Human life depends on God's Word, and the Spirit of truth teaches believers all things from Christ.
A person does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.✦ The human spirit has its life in the Word and from the Word, and so the Savior says in John of the Spirit: 'He will teach you all truth, because he will receive from what is mine and announce it to you.'✦
The Word Made Bread
Because human frailty cannot sustain the Word alone, Christ united the Word with bread, offering himself as nourishment through the Eucharist.
Since a human being has a spirit of understanding good and evil, which the Creator breathed into them in the Word by the consent of the Holy Spirit when he said, 'Let us make humanity in our image and likeness,' they can live not only from bread but from the bread of the Word. Nor likewise can our humanity sustain the Word alone, because it has not yet fulfilled the Word's commands.✦ But a person must also take bread in the Word, so that what the mind's understanding cannot grasp in the Word itself, it may attain through faith in the bread of the Word, which was given to us in the word of salvation when he said: 'Whoever eats this bread will not die forever.'✦ He willed, moreover, to unite the Word with bread, and the divine height with the food of our frailty. He who did not shrink from the hungry one humbled himself so far as to offer himself to them as nourishment, and who did not recoil from the Virgin's womb for their sake. And he willed not only to feed the spirit with the word, but also our frailty with material bread — bread that he changed into himself through the word when he said: 'This is my body.'✦
The Prayer of Glory
Christ prays that believers may share in his divine glory and be united with him in eternal love.
And when he prayed to the Father for our humanity, that it might be glorified, he was praying for our frailty, that it might be strengthened, saying: 'The glory that you gave me, I gave to them, so that they may be one, just as we are one.' Father, those whom you gave me — I wish that where I am, they also may be with me, so that they may see my glory, which you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
Read the original Latin
In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat aput Deum et Deus erat Verbum. In Patre erat Filius, qui est Verbum Patris, quod Verbum Deus erat. Non enim in solo pane vivit homo, sed ex omni verbo, quod procedit ex ore Dei. Spiritus hominis habet vivere in Verbo et ex Verbo, et ideo Salvator de Spiritu in Iohanne ait docebit vos omnem veritatem, quia de meo accipiet et annuncciabit vobis. Homo, cum habeat spiritum intelligencie boni et mali, quem inspiravit sibi Creator in Verbo in consensu Spiritus sancti, dum dixit “Faciamus hominem ad ymaginem et similitudinem nostram”, non solum potest vivere ex pane, sed ex pane Verbi, nec similiter humanitas potest sustinere solum Verbum, quia nondum implevit precepta Verbi. Sed opportet eum sumere et panem in Verbo, ut ea, que mens intelligencie capax non existit in Verbo, assequatur in fide in pane Verbi, qui datus est nobis in verbo salutis, dum dixit: Quicumque manducaverit ex hoc pane, non morietur in eternum. Voluit autem uniri Verbum cum pane ac altitudinem divinam cum cibo nostre fragilitatis, qui noluit abhorrere esurientem, sed in tantum se humiliavit, ut ei semetipsum offerret in cibum, et qui non abhorruit pro eo Virginis uterum. Et non solum voluit pascere spiritum verbo, sed et fragilitatem nostram pane materiali, quem panem per verbum in semetipsum mutavit, dum dixit: Hoc est corpus meum.
Et cum oraret Patrem pro humanitate, ut clarificaretur, oravit pro nostra fragilitate, ut corroboraretur, dicens: Claritatem, quam dedisti michi, dedi eis, ut sint unum, sicut et nos unum sumus. Pater, quos dedisti michi, volo, ut ubi sum ego, et illi sint mecum, ut videant claritatem meam, quam dedisti michi, quia dilexisti me ante mundi constitucionem.
Scripture echoes
- ↩John.1.1 — In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
- ↩John.1.1 — In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
- ↩Deut.8.3;Matt.4.4 — He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, in order to make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD does man live. Matt.4.4 — But he answered, "It is written: 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"
- ↩John.16.13 — But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are coming.
- ↩Gen.1.26 — Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
- ↩John.6.51 — I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.
- ↩Matt.26.26;Mark.14.22;Luke.22.19 — While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and having blessed it, he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is my body." Mark.14.22 — And while they were eating, he took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them, and said, 'Take; this is my body.' Luke.22.19 — And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, 'This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'
Moralitates of Charles IV companion
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