The lover in the Vita Nuova rightly and properly says for the most part Ella and only at times Voi. The spectator of the Paradiso, when he says Colui, speaks from poetic necessity, and knows it. If God is addressed as He or It, it is always allegorically. But if we say Thou to Him, then mortal sense has set the unbroken truth of the world into a word.
Martin Buber, I and Thou, translated by Ronald Gregor Smith, Scribner Classics, 2000 (1958), 96.
Image: Detail of an image of the stained glass work in Hadassah Hospital, Ein Kerem, Israel, “The Tribe of Levi,” Marc Chagall / CC BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons
Matters of Interpretation 