Memorial of Saint Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

Clement of Alexandria:

The vine produces wine as the Word produces blood, and both are drunk for the health of men and women—wine for the body, blood for the spirit.¹

Cyril of Alexandria:

For it is his Holy Spirit who has united us with the Savior Christ since connection with the vine produces a choice of those things that belong to it. And our connection with the vine holds us fast. From a firm resolve in goodness we proceed onward by faith and we become his people, obtaining from him the dignity of sonship.… He says that he is a vine, the mother and nourisher, as it were, of its branches. For we are begotten of him and in him, in the Spirit, to produce the fruits of life.²

Cyril of Alexandria:

This is why he represents God the Father as cooperating with him, calling himself the vine that enlivens his own branches with life and the power to produce, and the Father as the vinedresser, thereby teaching us that providential care over us is a sort of distinct activity of the divine substance.²

Clement of Alexandria:

The Lord clearly reveals himself when describing figuratively his many and various ways of service.… For the vine that is not pruned grows to wood. It is the same way with humankind. The Word—the knife—clears away the wanton shoots, compelling the impulses of the soul to become fruitful, not to indulge in lust. Now, reproof addressed to sinners has their salvation for its aim, the word being harmoniously adjusted to each one’s conduct, now with tightened, now with relaxed cords.³

Chrysostom:

Then, in case they might ask about whom he said these things and become anxious again, he says, “Now you are clean through the word that I have spoken to you.”⁴

Cyril of Alexandria:

For this is his living Word, sharp as a sword, “piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” For, reaching into the depths of each person’s inmost soul and having every person’s hidden purpose revealed before it as God, it brings its keen edge to bear on our vain pursuits by the working of the Spirit. For this is what our purification consists in, I suppose. And all things that are for our profit in the attainment of virtue it increases and multiplies to bear the fruit that is conceived in righteousness.²

1. Christ the Educator 1.5.
2. Commentary on the Gospel of John 10.2.
3. Christ the Educator 1.8.
4. Homilies on the Gospel of John 76.1.