Category: Gospels

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Monday of the Second Week of Lent

JUSTIN MARTYR:

We pray for you that you might experience the mercy of Christ. He instructed us to pray for our enemies, when he said, “Be kind and merciful, even as your heavenly Father is merciful.” We can observe that almighty God is kind and merciful, causing his sun to shine on the ungrateful and on the just and sending rain to both the holy and the evil. All of them, he has told us, he will judge.

AUGUSTINE:

The Christian soul understands how far removed he should be from theft of another’s goods when he realizes that failure to share his surplus with the needy is like to theft. The Lord says, “Give, and it shall be given to you. Forgive, and you shall be forgiven.” Let us graciously and fervently perform these two types of almsgiving, that is, giving and forgiving, for we in turn pray the Lord to give us good things and not to repay our evil deeds. read more

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Tuesday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time

CHRYSOSTOM:

If ignorant, how could they be sorrowful? Because they were not altogether ignorant. They knew that he was soon to die, for they had continually been told about it. But just what this death might mean, they did not grasp clearly, nor that there would be a speedy recognition of it, from which innumerable blessings would flow. They did not see that there would be a resurrection. This is why they grieved.

AUGUSTINE:

Observe a tree, how it first tends downwards, that it may then shoot forth upwards. It fastens its root low in the ground, that it may send forth its top towards heaven. Is it not from humility that it endeavors to rise? But without humility it will not attain to higher things. You are wanting to grow up into the air without a root. Such is not growth, but a collapse. read more

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Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

ORIGEN:

The phrase “lift up your eyes” occurs in many places in Scripture. By this expression, the divine Word admonishes us to exalt and lift up our thoughts. It invites us to elevate the insight that lies below in a rather sickly condition and is stooped and completely incapable of looking up. For instance, it is written in Isaiah, “Lift up your eyes on high and see. Who has made all these things known?”

The Savior too, when he is about to deliver the Beatitudes, lifts up his eyes to the disciples and says “blessed” are such and such. read more