# “Help me to devote all my words and thoughts to You” by Hilary of Poitiers (A.D. 315-368)

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2021/11/10/all-my-words-and-thoughts-to-you-by-hilary-of-poitiers/
- Published: 2021-11-10T12:00:16-06:00
- Author: tollelege

“I know, O Lord God Almighty, that I owe You, as the chief duty of my life, the 
devotion of all my words and thoughts to Yourself.

The gift of speech which You have bestowed can bring me no higher reward than the
opportunity of service in preaching You and displaying You as You are, as Father
and Father of God the Only-begotten, to the world in its blindness and the heretic
in his rebellion.

This is, to be sure, only the expression of my will. Besides this, I must pray for
the gift of Your help and mercy that You may fill the sails of our faith and profession
which have been extended to You with the breath of Your Spirit and direct us along
the course of instruction that we have chartered.

The Author of this promise is not unfaithful to us who says: ‘Ask, and it shall 
be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.’(**
Matthew 7:7**)

We, of course, in our helplessness shall pray for those things that we need, and
shall apply ourselves with tireless zeal to the study of all the words of Your Prophets
and Apostles and shall knock at all the doors of wisdom that are closed to us, but
it is for You to grant our prayer, to be present when we seek, to open when we knock.

Because of the laziness and dullness of our nature, we are, as it were, in a trance,
and in regard to the understanding of Your attributes we are restricted within the
confines of ignorance by the weakness of our intellect.

Zeal for Your doctrine leads us to grasp the knowledge of divine things and the 
obedience of faith carries us beyond the natural power of comprehension.

And therefore we look to Your support for the first trembling steps of this undertaking,
to Your aid that it may gain strength and prosper.

We look to You to give us the fellowship of that Spirit Who guided the Prophets 
and the Apostles, that we may take their words in the sense in which they spoke 
and that we may explain the proper meaning of the words in accordance with the realities
they signify.

We shall speak of things which they preached in a mystery; of You, O God Eternal,
Father of the Eternal and Only-begotten God, Who alone are without birth, and of
the One Lord Jesus Christ, born of You from everlasting.

We may not sever Him from Thee, or make Him one of a plurality of Gods, on any plea
of difference of nature. We may not say that He is not begotten of You, because 
You are One.

We must not fail to confess Him as true God, seeing that He is born of You, true
God, His Father.

Grant us, therefore, precision of language, soundness of argument, grace of style,
loyalty to truth.

And grant that what we believe we may also speak, namely, that, while we recognize
You as the only God the Father and the only Lord Jesus Christ from the Prophets 
and the Apostles, we may now succeed against the denials of the heretics in honoring
You as God in such a manner that You are not alone, and proclaiming Him as God in
such a manner that He may not be false.”

–Hilary of Poitiers, [_The Trinity_](https://amzn.to/3mY5xcb), ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari,
trans. Stephen McKenna, [_vol. 25, The Fathers of the Church_](https://amzn.to/3mY5xcb)(
Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1954), 25: 33–34. ([1.37-38](https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/330201.htm))

More on [Truth](https://tollelege.net/category/truth/)