🎶 The Reality of Praise 🕊️ The Lord God gave us the gift of perception and speech so that we, creatures brought from nothingness, might add praise that surpasses the praise of the heavenly hosts; because we praise and glorify the Father in His Son and through the Holy Spirit. And praise - beloved ones - is not merely uttering words, but the heart being filled with the warmth of love, so that this love transforms into intellectual praise that surpasses words. And when this warmth, the warmth of the Spirit, subsides, we speak with words of perception and understanding. We first taste with the heart, then we speak with the mind and the power of speech. We first see, then we speak. Speech without vision is lifeless speech. This is the testimony of the Psalm: "Taste and see" (Psalm 34:8); because he who first tastes can, through intellectual vision, perceive the measure of divine grace poured out by the Heavenly Father according to the Apostle's testimony: "God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Romans 5:5). And thus, we receive this warm love to praise Him who, since before the creation of the world, waited to open the springs of His goodness and the flood of the waters of His love to give life to creation, put sin to death, and transfer the agonies of evil to the well of non-existence. Thus, we receive this surpassing gift to transfer from the rank of visible, irrational creation like rocks and stones to the rank of invisible creation like the heavenly hosts, and become the mediator through which the visible world is united with the invisible world. #DivinePraise #HeartfeltWorship #LoveOfGod #HolySpirit #VisibleAndInvisible #Creation #Grace