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 Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Now Jesus sat opposite the treasury and saw how the people put money into the treasury. And many who were rich put in much. Then one poor widow came and threw in two mites, which make a quadrans. So He called His disciples to Himself and said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all those who have given to the treasury; for they all put in out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had, her whole livelihood.” (Mark 12:41–44)

We have been entrusted with the administration and use of temporal wealth for the common good, not with the everlasting ownership of private property. If you accept the fact that ownership on earth is only for a time, you can earn eternal possessions in heaven. Call to mind the widow who forgot herself in her concern for the poor and, thinking only of the life to come, gave away all her means of subsistence, as the Judge Himself bears witness. Others, He says, have given of their superfluous wealth; but she, possessed of only two small coins and more needy perhaps than many of the poor—though in spiritual riches she surpassed all the wealthy—she thought only of the world to come, and had such a longing for heavenly treasure that she gave away, all at once, whatever she had that was derived from the earth and destined to return there. Let us then invest with the Lord what He has given us, for we have nothing that does not come from Him: we are dependent upon Him for our very existence.

Paulinus of Nola, Letters 34