Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Fifth Sunday in Lent

“Behold, days are coming,” says the Lord, “when I shall make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not according to the covenant I made with their fathers in the day I took hold of their hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not abide in My covenant, and I disregarded them,” says the Lord. “For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will surely put My laws into their mind and write them on their hearts. I will be as God to them, and they shall be as My people. Each shall not teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their wrongdoings, and I will no longer remember their sins.” (Jer 31:31-34)

Obviously, those who have heard the gospel and refused to believe are all the more inexcusable than if they had not listened to any preaching of the truth. But it is certain that in God’s foreknowledge they were not children of Abraham and were not reckoned among the number of them of whom it is said, “In your seed all the tribes of the earth shall be blessed.” He promised them the faith when he said, “And no one shall teach his neighbor and no one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord.’ For all shall know me, from the small among them even to the great.” He promised them pardon when he said, “I will forgive their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” He promised them an obedient heart when he said, “I will give them another heart and another way, that they may fear me all days.” He promised them perseverance when he said, “I will give my fear in their heart, that they may not revolt from me, and I will visit them, that I may make them good.” Finally, to all without exception he promised the faith when he said, “I have sworn by myself, justice alone shall go out of my mouth, and my words shall not be turned away. Every knee shall be bowed to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.”

Prosper of Aquitane, The Call of All Nations 1.9

Faith Is a Gift of God

We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.… And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.  (1 Thess 1:2-3; 2:13)

Could there be a fuller or more evident proof that the faith of the believers is a gift of God, than these thanks given to God precisely because they who heard the word of God in man’s preaching did not disbelieve in it as coming from man’s mouth, but believed in God speaking through men and producing in their hearts this very faith?

Prosper of Aquitaine, The Call of All Nations I.23

Pray for Those of Whom Christ Gave Himself As a Ransom—All

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.  This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.  For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.  (1 Tim 2:1-6)

The apostle commands—rather, the Lord speaking through the apostle commands through him—that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions.  All priests and all faithful adhere unanimously to this norm of supplication in their devotions.  There is no part of the world in which Christian peoples do not offer up these prayers.  The Church, then, pleads before God everywhere, not only for the saints and those regenerated in Christ, but also for infidels and all enemies of the cross of Christ, for all worshipers of idols, for all who persecute Christ in His members, for the Jews whose blindness does not see the light of the gospel, for heretics and schismatics who are alien to the unity of faith and charity.

But what does she beg for them if not that they leave their errors and be converted to God, that they accept the faith, accept charity, that they be freed from the shadows of ignorance and come to the knowledge of the truth?…  While thanking Him for those who are saved, we should hopefully pray that the same divine grace may deliver from the power of darkness those who are still without light and conduct them into the kingdom of God before they depart this life.

Prosper of Aquitaine, The Call of All Nations 1.12

A New Thing Promised and Completed

Through Isaiah also the Lord foretells the same things about His grace by which He fashions all men into a new creation.

Behold, I am doing a new thing;
        now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
        and rivers in the desert.
The wild beasts will honor me,
        the jackals and the ostriches,
for I give water in the wilderness,
        rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
        the people whom I formed for myself
that they might declare my praise.  (Isa 43:19-21)

And again:

By myself I have sworn;
        from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
        a word that shall not return:
To me every knee shall bow,
        every tongue shall swear allegiance.  (Isa 45:23)

If, then, it is not possible that these shall not take place, because God’s foreknowledge is not faltering and His design not changeable, nor His will inefficacious nor His promise false, then all, without any exception, about whom these predictions were made are saved.  He establishes His laws in their understanding and writes them with His finger in their hearts, so that they recognize God not through the working of human learning, but through the working of the Supreme Instructor….  In all is implanted the fear that makes them keep the commandments of God.  A road is opened in the desert, the parched land is watered with streams.  They who formerly did not open their mouths to praise God but like dumb and irrational animals had taken on the ferocity of beasts, now, having drunk at the fountain of the divine pronouncements, bless and praise God and recount the power and wonders of His mercy, how He chose them and adopted them to be His sons and made them heirs of the New Testament.

Prosper of Aquitaine, The Call of All Nations 1.9

The Word Becomes Sweet to the Soul

Whenever, then, the Word of God enters into the ears of the body through the ministry of the preachers, the action of the divine power fuses with the sound of a human voice, and He who is the inspirer of the preacher’s office is also the strength of the hearer’s heart.  The food of the Word becomes sweet to the soul; the darkness of old is expelled by new light; the interior eye is freed from the cataracts of the ancient error; the soul passes from one will to another, and although the will that is driven out lingers on for a while, yet the newborn one claims for itself all that is better in man, so that the law of sin and the law of God do not dwell in the same way and together in the same man.

Prosper of Aquitaine, The Call of All Nations 1.8

You Have Nothing Apart from the Author of Life

He is eternal wisdom, eternal truth, eternal goodness, eternal justice, He is, in short, the eternal light of all virtues, and all that is virtue is God.  Unless He works in us, we cannot be partakers of any virtue.  For indeed without this Good nothing is good, without this Light nothing is bright, without this Wisdom, nothing is wise, without this Justice nothing is right.  For the Lord says through the mouth of Isaiah, I am, I am, the Lord, and there is no one besides me who saves;* and Jeremiah says, I know, O Lord, that the way of a man is not in himself; neither is it in a man to direct his steps.†

Prosper of Aquitaine, The Call of All Nations 1.8

*  Isaiah 43:11
†  Jeremiah 10:23

Your Self-Effort Cannot Make You Good Enough

We have all become like one who is unclean,
        and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.
We all fade like a leaf,
        and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
There is no one who calls upon your name,
        who rouses himself to take hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us,
        and have made us melt in the hand of our iniquities.  (Isaiah 64:6-7)

[W]e have all lost the integrity of our nature through the sin of the first man.  Hence followed mortality, hence the manifold corruption of body and mind, ignorance and difficulty, useless cares, unlawful desires, sacrilegious aberrations, vain fears, harmful love, unholy pleasures, blamable designs, and as great a host of woes as of sins.  With these and other evils assailing human nature, with faith lost, hope abandoned, the intellect blinded, the will enslaved, no one finds in himself the means of a restoration.  Although some tried, guided by their natural reason, to resist vices, the life of decency they led here on earth was sterile.  They did not acquire true virtues and attain eternal happiness.  Without worship of the true God even what has the appearance of virtue is sin.  No one can please God without God.

Prosper of Aquitaine, The Call of All Nations 1.7

Christ's Redemption: Good News for All

There can, therefore, be no reason to doubt that Jesus Christ our Lord died for the unbelievers and the sinners.  If there had been anyone who did not belong to these, then Christ would not have died for all.  But He did die for all men without exception.  There is no one, therefore, in all mankind who was not, before the reconciliation which Christ effected in His blood, either a sinner or an unbeliever.  The Apostle says:

For why did Christ, when as yet we were weak, according to the time, die for the ungodly?  For scarce for a just man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man one would dare to die.  But God commends His love towards us, because if when as yet we were sinners, Christ died for us, much more, being justified by His blood, shall we be saved from wrath through Him.  For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.

The same Apostle says in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians:

For the love of Christ constrains us, judging this, that if One died for all, then all were dead.  And He died for all, that they also who live, may not live to themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again.

And let us hear what he says of himself.

A faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation: that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief.  But for this reason I have obtained mercy: that in me first Christ Jesus might show forth all patience, for the information of them that shall believe in Him unto life everlasting.

Therefore, the whole of mankind, whether circumcised or not, was under the sway of sin, in fetters because of the very same guilt.  No one of the ungodly, who differed only in their degree of unbelief, could be saved without Christ's Redemption.  This Redemption spread throughout the world to become the good news for all men without any distinction.

Prosper of Aquitane, Call of the Nations, 2.16