Alex

“Cosmologists say that the universe as we know it began about 13.7 billion years ago in a flash of energy that resulted in electromagnetic radiation and some particulate matter that was so hot that matter as we know it could not even form. As soon as the universe came into being, it instantaneously expanded in a process known as inflation by a factor of a billion billion billion times. After inflation, which lasted less time than you can even imagine, the universe was a seething, hot soup of particles and radiation. The universe was so dense that the radiation could not escape. 380,000 years after the new universe was expanding and cooling, it had cooled enough so that radiation could escape and this radiation is still detectable today! This is called the “cosmic microwave background radiation.”
― Jerome Freedman, Cosmology and Buddhist Thought: A Conversation with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson

“They, then, who are able also to fight for us are able to guard the fruit that is in us. And for you, holy virgins, there is a special guardianship, for you who with unspotted chastity keep the couch of the Lord holy. And no wonder if the angels fight for you who war with the mode of life of angels. Virginal chastity merits their guardianship whose life it attains to.”
― Ambrose of Milan, Concerning Virgins

“I do not then discourage marriage, but recapitulate the advantages of holy virginity. This is the gift of few only, that is of all. And virginity itself cannot exist, unless it have some mode of coming into existence. I am comparing good things with good things, that it may be clear which is the more excellent. Nor do I allege any opinion of my own, but I repeat that which the Holy Spirit spoke by the prophet: Blessed is the barren that is undefiled.”
― Ambrose of Milan, Concerning Virgins

“Blessed be the Merciful One, who saw the weapon by Paradise, that closed the way to the Tree of Life; and came and took a Body which could suffer, that with the Door, that was in His side, He might open the way into Paradise.”
― Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on the Nativity