Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Fifth Sunday in Lent

Again the hand of the Lord came upon me, and brought me by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me in the midst of the plain, which was full of human bones. So He led me round about them, and behold, there was a great multitude of bones on the face of the plain. They were very dry. Then He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” So I answered, “O Lord, You know this.” Then He said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord to these bones: “Behold, I will bring the Spirit of life upon you. I will put muscles on you and bring flesh upon you. I will cover you with skin and put my Spirit into you. Then you shall live and know that I am the Lord.”’” (Ezek 37:1-6)

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live.” (John 11:25)

Christ has healed the vices of my soul, and taken on Himself the sicknesses of my body, Man by His mother, God by His Father. He bore the weaknesses of the flesh that are appointed by nature, and evinced the feelings of the human body. He ate and drank, and closed his eyes in sleep, and grew weary with journeying in accord with His human sensibilities. He shed tears over the death of a friend like a man, but then as God raised him from the tomb. As a man He sailed on a ship, and as God He governed the winds; by His strength as God the Man walked over the sea. With His human mind He feared the hour of imminent death, but with His divine mind He knew that the moment of execution was at hand. As man He was nailed to the cross, and as God He terrified the world from the cross. The Man endured death, but death itself endured the true God. The Man hung on the cross, but as God He forgave sins from the cross, and by dying destroyed the life of sin. He who was counted among the guilty, and was assessed as worse than the thief whom the Jews ranked before their devoted Lord, gave the kingdom of heaven to the thief who believed, and while still confined to earth opened the gates of Paradise.

Accordingly, though we share with other breathing creatures the same substance of flesh, we are not at death’s dissolution restored to nothingness as souls excluded because of the death of the flesh. No, when the trumpet sounds every region of earth will restore our bodies from their hidden seeds; our body, mind, soul will be joined in their compact with each other, and we shall be haled before the Lord God in our wholeness. If you are skeptical that ashes can be reassembled into bodies and souls restored to their vessels, Ezekiel will be your witness, for long ago the whole process of resurrection was revealed to him by the Lord. In his pages you will behold the dusty remains of people of old come to life over the entire region, bones scattered far and wide over the broad plain spontaneously hastening to fuse together when bidden, sprouting sinews from the innermost marrow and then drawing the skin over the flesh that had grown on them. Then the limbs are perfectly ordered more quickly than words can tell, and from the ancient dust stand forth people made new.

Paulinus of Nola, Poem 31.115–134, 303–322

Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Fourth Sunday in Lent

I held My peace, and I will not always be silent and restrain Myself. Now I will be steadfast, like a woman in labor. I shall amaze and dry up together. I will make the rivers into coastlands and dry up marsh-meadows. I will bring the blind by a way they did not know and will cause them to tread paths they have not known. I will turn darkness into light for them, and make crooked places straight. These things I will do for them and not forsake them. But they turned back. You be greatly ashamed who trust in carved images, who say to the molded images, “You are our gods.” (Isa 42:14-17 LXX)

The prophetic words are describing the glorious advent of the Savior, of which the Apostle Paul also speaks, “In accordance with the illumination of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” He compares him to a very mighty man who will wage war against his adversaries and stir up jealousy... And the meaning is,

For a long time I carried you as you transgressed often, but I who had previously held my peace will no longer keep silent. And just as a woman in labor brings forth an infant into the light and brings into the open what was previously being held confined within, so I will now bring forth my grief and dissimulation that I always had because of your evil deeds, and I will destroy your plans. At one time I will swallow up every nation and all the pride of the mountains and the swelling up of your hills, and I will reduce to a desert the grass, of which it was said above, “Truly the people is grass,” that is, both the princes and the ignoble common people.

And when I will have dried you up and destroyed you from head to foot, at that time I will cause rivers of my teaching to flow to the islands of the Gentiles, and will reduce to dryness your standing pools, or “marshes.” Accordingly, the knowledge of the Scriptures will be among the Gentiles, and the dryness of doctrine among you. And I will lead the blind by the way which they did not know before. We also read about this above, “I have given you for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, that you may open the eyes of the blind” (Isa 42:6). They will be led by the way of which Christ speaks: “I am the way”; or I will make them walk on the way of the knowledge of God and in the paths of the prophets.

At that time their darkness will be turned to light, and crooked things will be turned to straight so that they understand what they read, and view with the eyes of their hearts the bright light of Christ in the Old Testament.

And at the same time he adds, These things have I done, or “will I do,” to them. I am not promising additional things to come, but delivering on what I had previously promised. But while I am saying these things, the Jewish people have been turned back, so that they did not believe the one who made the promises, and they were confounded by their own errors, and they neglected God’s promise, the people who had previously believed in idols.

Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah

Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Third Sunday in Lent

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom 5:1–8)

How we may have access to grace through our Lord Jesus Christ the Savior himself states, “I am the door, and no one comes to the Father except through me.” We have access to grace through him, then, because he is the door. But let us see what sort of door he is in order that we might understand what sort of people they ought to be who would enter through it and have access to grace. The door is truth, and through the door of truth liars cannot enter. Again, the door is also righteousness, and through the door of righteousness the unrighteous do not pass. The door says, “Learn from me because I am gentle and humble in heart.” Through the door of humility and gentleness, then, neither the wrathful nor the arrogant may enter. Consequently, if there is someone who, in accordance with the Apostle’s word, wants to have access through our Lord Jesus Christ to the grace of the Lord in which Paul and those who are like him claim to stand, he must be purged from all these things we have recorded above. Otherwise, this door will not allow those who are doing things alien to it to enter through it. Instead, it closes at once and does not allow those who are dissimilar to it to pass through.

Since he had said above that “Christ, at the set time, died for those who were still ungodly,” now he wants to show from this the greatness of God’s love for men. For if it was so great for the ungodly and sinners that he gave his only Son for their salvation, how much more bountiful and widespread shall it be toward those who have been converted and atoned and, as he himself says, redeemed by His own blood?

In my opinion, for Paul this variety of words is not superfluous, that sometimes he calls those for whom Christ died “the weak,” sometimes “the ungodly,” and sometimes “sinners.” And even though he confesses that he is unskilled in speech, nevertheless I do not believe that he has alternated in this through any lack of skill, but rather through profound knowledge. For in these three terms every class of sin is collected. A person, being ignorant of God, is led into every evil and is called “ungodly.” Another, while knowing God and wanting to keep the commandment, is conquered by the frailty of the flesh and becomes ensnared by the allurements of the present life and is called “weak.” Or a person may knowingly and willingly despise the commandment and hate the correction of God and cast his words behind him and is named “sinner.” And so Paul, who, as we have said, confesses that he is untrained in speech, has comprehended by this threefold diversity of expressions all those for whom Christ is being proclaimed to have died.

Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans 8.5, 11.1–2

Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Second Sunday in Lent

What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works:

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
And whose sins are covered;
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. (Rom 4:1–8)

Faith relies on the grace of the justifier. Works rely on the justice of the rewarder. When I consider the greatness of Paul's speech, by which he says that the worker receives what is due to him, I can hardly persuade myself that there is any deed which could claim a reward from God as its due.… Faith, which believes in the justifier, is the beginning of justification before God. And this faith, when it is justified, is like a root in the soil of the soul, which the rain has watered, so that as it begins to grow by the law of God, branches appear, which bring forth fruit. The root of righteousness does not spring from works; rather, the fruit of works grows from the root of righteousness, viz., by that root of righteousness by which God brings righteousness to the one whom he has accepted apart from works.

Origen, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans