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...
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...
Augustine here addresses a problem we often face in seeking to do good - we are accused of evil that we do not do and are not given credit for the good we do. He reminds us of the words of both Paul and...
Ambrose explains how the delighteful book of the psalms provides a true gymnasium for the soul with exercises to develop every virtue, and condense all parts of the Old Covenant - law, prophecy, and history and foreshadow the New Covenant as well, predicting as they...
Leo the Great explains how the Ascenion increases our faith in what is unseen, namely the divinity of Christ, and how our Redeemer's visible presence after the Ascension passes into the sacraments....
This excerpt on the sacrament of baptism from St. Basil the Great’s book On the Holy Spirit (ca. AD 360) describes how baptism fulfills what Jesus says to Nicodemus in John 3 about being born again in water and the Spirit. He also here outlines...
Cyril of Alexandria here emphasizes that the risen body of Jesus Christ, received in the Eucharist, gives life to those who receive it, expelling death and corruption....
Tract of Jerome against Helvidius defending the perpetual virginity of Mary, the Mother of Jesus....
Gregory of Nyssa on the famous statement of Ecclesiastes "there is a time to be born and a time to die." He interprets this as a reference to the death and new birth of salvation, dying and rising with Christ through faith and baptism....
Leo the Great exhorts us, in celebrating Christmas, the Nativity of the Lord, to recognize that the incarnation ennobles our humanity. Christian remember your dignity!...