Friday, August 22, 2008
children & animals
If children's love for their parents is a natural feeling that manifests itself in both animal instinct and in the human disposition to love the mother from babyhood, let us not be less intelligent than children nor more stupid than the wild animals! Don't let us stand before the God who created us like loveless strangers! Even if we haven't learned what he is from his goodness, yet we should love him above all else simply because we have been created by him, and hold fast to the remembrance of him as children do to the remembrance of their mother.
-- St. Basil (c.330-379), monk & Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia
