Athanasius sees a marvelous unity and order in creation that is held together and orchestrated by the divine word. He uses the metaphor of harmony in music to describe the magnificent unity found among the magnificent diversity of the world's creatures. [dropcaps type='normal' font_size='100' color='' background_color=''...
Here St. Cyril of Alexandria comments on the promise of God the Father to pour out his Holy Spirit on all mankind in order to renew and restore our wounded human nature. In his baptism, the Lord Jesus Christ, "the first-fruits of our restored nature," receives...
Gregory of Nazianzen's memoire of his friendship with Basil the Great. These Cappadocian church fathers are honored on January 2 by Catholics & Orthodox...
Augustine comments on the image of the shepherds of the Church as watchmen who are obligated to warn God's people when they are going astray. He also comments on the words of Jesus to his disciples that they are to do what the chief Priests...
Augustine explains that constant prayer does not mean non-stop church services or recitation of prayers, but a ceaseless desire of the heart for union with God in heaven. This constant desire for God, actually, is one of the three theological virtues, namely the virtue...
Leo on the second & third of the Beatitudes, calling blessed the meek and those who mourn. The mourning Christ references here has little to do with worldly sorrow, and the reward promised to the lowly & gentle goes well beyond the things of...
Leo the Great, comments on the first of the Beatitudes "blessed are the poor in spirit." He makes clear that it is not economic poverty that is blessed, but that poverty of spirit called humility expressed in generosity to others and detachment from the...
Writing to Proba regarding prayer, Augustine notes that the hope of happiness in heaven is so great and incapable of being expressed in words that the Spirit comes to help us in our weakness. [dropcaps type='normal' font_size='100' color='' background_color='' border_color='']T[/dropcaps]he person who asks for and seeks...
By his wounds we are healed- this reading on the Savior's passion is taken from a treatise On the Incarnation of the Lord by Saint Theodoret of Cyr. It reflects on several key scripture passages, including the Song of the Suffering Servant found in...
Augustine had sought God through an exotic Eastern cult and then through the best that Greco-Roman philosophy had to offer before he finally found Him through the Catholic Christianity that he had rejected as a teen. So he could proclaim from personal experience that Jesus...