Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go. Then He said to them, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs among wolves.… He who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me. (Luke 10:1–3, 16)

For consider how great was the authority He gave the holy apostles, and in what manner He declared them to be praiseworthy, and adorned with the highest honors. For let us search the sacred Scripture, even the treasure of the written words of the Gospel: let us there see the greatness of the authority given unto them. “He who hears you,” He says, “hears Me: and he who rejects you, rejects Me: and he who rejects Me, rejects Him who sent Me.” O what great honor! What incomparable dignities! O what a gift worthy of God! Though but men, the children of earth, He clothes them with a godlike glory; He entrusts to them His words, that they may be condemned who in ought resist, or venture to reject them: for when they are rejected He assures them that He it is Who suffers this; and then again He shows that the guilt of this wickedness, as being committed against Him, mounts up to God the Father. See, therefore, see with the eyes of the mind, to how vast a height He raises the sin committed by men in rejecting the saints! What a wall He builds around them! How great security He contrives for them! He makes them such as must be feared, and in every way plainly provides for their being uninjured.

And there is yet another way in which you may attain to the meaning of what is said by Christ. “For he,” He says, “who hears you, hears Me.” He gives those who love instruction the assurance, that whatsoever is said respecting Him by the holy apostles or evangelists, is to be received necessarily without any doubt, and to be crowned with the words of truth. For he who hears them, hears Christ. For the blessed Paul also said; “Or seek proof of Christ Who speaks in Me!” And moreover Christ Himself somewhere said to the holy disciples; “For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaks in you.” For Christ speaks in them by the consubstantial Spirit. And if it be true, and plainly it is true, that they speak by Christ, how can that man err from what is fitting who affirms, that he who does not hear them, does not hear Christ, and that he who rejects them rejects Christ, and with Him the Father.

Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 63