Christ – All in All

“I share everything with Christ, spirit and body, nails and resurrection.

Christ… Thou art for me my native land, my strength, my glory, my everything.

Christ is my strength and my breath and the wonderful prize for my running.

It is He who enables me to run well.

I love Him as my purest love because for those whom He loves He is faithful beyond all that we can conceive.

In Him is my joy even if He chooses to send me some suffering, because I aspire to be purified as gold in the fire.” St. Gregory The Theologian, Theological Poems.

It is only after St. Gregory has said that Christ is for him both native land and his glory that he can rejoice in redemptive suffering by which we can be refined into ever more brilliant gold in the fire. In this case, we become ever more brilliant Christians, “little Christs”.