Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

GREGORY OF NANZIANZUS:

It is a sad thing that we watch for opportunities against each other and having destroyed our fellowship of spirit by diversities of opinion have become almost more inhuman and savage to one another than even the barbarians who are now engaged in war against us, banded together against us by the Trinity whom we have separated. We are not foreigners making forays and raids upon foreigners or nations of a different language, which is some little consolation in the calamity. But we are making war upon one another, and almost upon those of the same household. Or if you will, we the members of the same body are consuming and being consumed by one another. Nor is this, bad as it is, the extent of our calamity, for we even regard our diminution as a gain. But since we are in such a condition and regulate our faith by the times, let us compare the times with one another; you your emperor, and I my sovereigns; you Ahab and I Josiah.¹

AMBROSE:

“You have been told, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love mercy and to be prepared to walk with your Lord?” Accordingly, the gospel says to you, “Arise, let us go from here,” while the law says to you, “You shall walk after the Lord your God.” You have learned the method of your flight from here—why do you delay?²

BEDE:

Here is a priest who serves at every hour with great fear while walking humbly with the Lord his God in accordance with the word of the prophet. Meanwhile another priest is hardly capable of having that much fear even when he is about to die and enter into the last judgment before his Lord. But the full expression of the priesthood is comprised of the combination of the teaching of truth with good works. This is in accord with blessed Luke’s comment that in writing his Gospel he had composed a treatise concerning all the things that Jesus began both to do and to teach.³

AUGUSTINE:

You ask what you should offer: offer yourself. For what else does the Lord seek of you but you? Because of all earthly creatures he has made nothing better than you, he seeks yourself from yourself, because you have lost yourself.⁴

1. AGAINST THE ARIANS AND ON HIMSELF, ORATION 33.2. Ferreiro, A. (2003). Introduction to the Twelve Prophets. In A. Ferreiro (Ed.), The Twelve Prophets (p. 170). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
2. FLIGHT FROM THE WORLD 6.33. Ferreiro, A. (2003). Introduction to the Twelve Prophets. In A. Ferreiro (Ed.), The Twelve Prophets (p. 171). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
3. ON THE TABERNACLE 3.6. Ferreiro, A. (2003). Introduction to the Twelve Prophets. In A. Ferreiro (Ed.), The Twelve Prophets (p. 171). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
4. SERMON 48.2.  Ferreiro, A. (2003). Introduction to the Twelve Prophets. In A. Ferreiro (Ed.), The Twelve Prophets (p. 172). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.