Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

See, I set before you today life and death, good and evil. If you hear the commandments of the Lord your God I command you today, to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His ordinances and judgments, then you shall live and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you go to inherit. But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but go astray and worship different gods and serve them, I announce to you today, you shall surely perish; you shall not prolong your days in the land the Lord your God is giving you, into which you are crossing over the Jordan to inherit. I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you: I set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live and love the Lord your God, obey His voice, and cling to Him. For this is your life and the length of your days, that you may dwell in the land the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them. (Deut 30:15–20 LXX)

When the Gospel was read, beloved brethren, you heard the Lord mention two paths: the one terrible and to be feared, the other very desirable and to be followed. By the one, the just are lifted up into heaven after short labor, while on the other, lovers of the world after brief pleasure are dragged into hell. ‘Enter by the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who enter that way. How close the gate and narrow the way that leads to life! And few there are who find it.’ Behold, beloved brethren, God has placed in the sight of the whole human race what we should seek and what we should avoid, what we should desire and what flee, what to fear and what to love with our whole heart. As He Himself said earlier through the prophet: ‘Before man are life and death, whichever he chooses shall be given him.’ and again: ‘Behold before you are fire and water, death and life; choose life, that you may live.’ Everything that we mentioned above, that is, good and evil, is contained in these two. For heaven and hell, Christ and the devil, height and depth are proposed to us in them. Through His grace God has put it into the power of each one to choose and to stretch out his hand to whatever he wishes.

Christ presides over the straight and narrow way, while the devil commands the wide and broad way. The former invites man to heaven, the latter moves him toward hell; the one raises him on high, the other presses him down into the depths. The devil shows a false sweetness, in order that he may attract man to true bitterness; Christ invites him to brief difficulty, in order to lead him to long blessedness. If we open only our bodily eyes, the wide and broad way deceives us, but if we listen with the eyes of our heart, the rough and difficult way makes us safe.

Therefore, let us admonish each other, dearly beloved, and continually encourage each other with true charity that we ought rather to choose the short and narrow way by which we may merit to arrive at the celestial expanse of paradise. However, with God’s help, we ought to reject and despise as much as we can that way which, after a short expanse, is wont to plunge its lovers into the depths of hell. If, then, we contemn the path on the left whose end brings us into hell and follow the one on the right which leads to eternal life, we will merit to reach Him who is ‘The way, and the truth, and the life.’ And it is no wonder if we happily come to Him through whom we faithfully walk, for since He Himself is the way, we run through Him, and since He is our true country, we will reach Him when we have finished our course. Although He is rest and the land of the angels in accord with His Divine Nature, He became the way of pilgrims through His human nature. What is the true country and the repose of the angels or of all the faithful? ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God; and the Word was God.’ What is the way of pilgrims? ‘The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.’

Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 149.1–