Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

This was the vision of the likeness of the Lord’s glory. And I saw and fell on my face and I heard the voice of one speaking. And he said to me, “Son of man, stand upon your feet and I will speak to you.” And the spirit came upon me and took me up and lifted me up and made me stand on my feet, and I heard him speaking to me. And he said to me, “Son of man, I am dispatching you to the house of Israel who provoke me, they and their fathers who have provoked me up to the present day. And you shall say to them, ‘This is what the Lord says!’ whether they hear or are terrified, because it is a rebellious house, and they will know that you are a prophet in their midst. And you, son of man, do not be frightened by them or confounded by them, because they will incite and gather against you, and you dwell in the midst of scorpions; do not be frightened by their words or be confounded by their face, because it is a rebellious house. And you shall tell them my words, whether they hear or are terrified, because it is a rebellious house. (Ezekiel 2:1–7 LXX)

It is a sign of great mercy that God sends him to people like these, and that He does not give up hope for their salvation; and it is also a sign of the prophet’s boldness that he does not fear to go to such as these. Now we should understand of a hard face and of an obstinate heart in accordance with what is said to the sinner: “Your neck is an iron sinew and your forehead brazen.” They are the ones who are rebuked in what follows for having a stony heart, which God says He will remove and shall put in its place a fleshly one, so that it might receive God’s precepts with their own softness.

Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel 1.2.4

But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country, among his own relatives, and in his own house.” Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them. And He marveled because of their unbelief. Then He went about the villages in a circuit, teaching. (Mark 6:4–6)

Can and cannot may denote something which is contrary to the will, as in the text: He could do no deed of power there because of unbelief, that is, the unbelief of those who should have received Him. For since a healing requires both faith in the patient and power in the Healer, when one of the two was absent the other was impossible. But probably this use of cannot is related to the sense of something unreasonable. For healing is not reasonable in the case of those who would afterwards be injured by unbelief. The same sense applies to the saying, The world cannot hate you, as well as to the saying, How can you speak good things, when you are evil? For how is either of these things impossible, except that it is contrary to the will? There is a somewhat similar meaning in the texts which imply that a thing impossible by nature is possible to God if He so wills—as that a man cannot be born a second time, or that the eye of a needle will not let a camel through it. For what could prevent either of these things happening, if God so willed? And besides all this, there is the absolutely impossible and inadmissible, such as what we are now examining. For as we assert that it is impossible for God to be evil or not to exist—for this would indicate weakness in God rather than strength—or for the non-existent to exist, or for two and two to make both four and ten, so it is impossible and inconceivable that the Son should do anything that the Father does not do.

Gregory Nazianzen, On the Son, 2 10–11