St Basil on Beauty

In praise of the Beauty of God, this passage sings, today, from the Office of Readings—a selection from St Basil the Great:

“What, I ask, is more wonderful than the beauty of God? What thought is more pleasing and satisfying than God’s majesty? What desire is as urgent and overpowering as the desire implanted by God in a soul that is completely purified of sin and cries out in its love: I am wounded by love? The radiance of the Divine Beauty is altogether beyond the power of words to describe.”