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INCOMPLETE WORK ON MATTHEW:

We too, set in the middle, should strive not to descend to those who are in hell but ascend to those who are in heaven. And in case perhaps you do not know which one you ought to shun or which one you ought to aspire to, he has given you as it were a little taste of both while you live between light and darkness: night as a taste of hell, daylight as a taste of heaven.

Be aware that we have been hired as laborers. If we have been hired as laborers, we ought to know what our tasks are, for a hired laborer cannot be without a task. Our tasks are the works of justice, not to till our fields and vineyards; not to amass riches and pile up honors but to benefit our neighbors. And though we can do this tilling and amassing without sin, yet they are not our tasks but our daily occupations.
No one hires a laborer to work only so that the laborer may eat. So we too have been called by Christ to do not merely what pertains to our own benefit but to do what pertains to the glory of God. The hired hand, who only works so that he may fill his belly, wanders purposelessly about the house. So we too, if we do only what pertains to our benefit, live without reason on the earth. And just as the hired hand first looks to his work and then to his wages, so we too are Christ’s hired hands and first ought to look at what pertains to God’s glory and to the benefit of our neighbors.… Charity and true love toward God “does not insist on its own way” but desires to perform everything to the wish of the beloved—then to what pertains to our own benefit. read more

The beheading of St. John the Baptist is horrifying not only because it is an awful way for an innocent man to die, but also because his head is given as a party favor to a young girl.  The young girl won this gift not by her virtue, but by seduction.  The Voice is silenced by the hatred of a woman.  She doesn’t hate John, she hates what he says, she hates to hear the sound of his voice because it delivers the Law.  When John goes silent, the Law itself goes silent.  We see how powerless John was to save all the individuals at this party, we see how the law did not provoke conversion, but rather frustration and rage.  The Law is simply that Word by which we were created calling to the forefront of our mind what our conscience already knows and understands.  The Law amplifies the voice of our conscience, which is why St. Paul said that the Law gives sin more power.  The Law causes the quiet voice of our conscience, that would convict us of our own wrongdoing, to become shrill and unbearable.  The Law then simply implies that if we don’t like hearing how wrong we are, we should change our ways.  The problem is, we are not convinced that we will be happy if we change our ways to conform to the Law.  We can attempt to conform ourselves to the Law and still remain far from God – that was the problem of the Pharisees: they did everything correctly according to their understanding, but could not recognize God when He came in the flesh speaking the very Word they claimed to understand. read more

JEROME:

Jeremiah needed the help of Ahikam. How much more do we need that of God?

AGAINST THE PELAGIANS 2.27. Wenthe, D. O. (Ed.). (2009). Jeremiah, Lamentations (p. 192). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

THEODORE OF HERACLEA:

Thinking that the Baptist had risen from the dead, Herod began to be afraid of him, as though John had become all the more powerful. He was alarmed lest John should employ against him even more of his caustic freedom of speech, which was a terror to him, frustrating him by revealing his crooked deeds.

FRAGMENT 93. Simonetti, M. (Ed.). (2002). Matthew 14-28 (p. 2). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

CHRYSOSTOM:

Do you see the intensity of his fear? Herod did not dare speak of it openly, but he still speaks apprehensively to his own servants. Yet this whole opinion was absurd. It savored of the jittery soldier. Even though many were thought to have risen from the dead, no one had done anything like what was imagined of John. Herod’s words seem to me to be the language both of vanity and of fear. For such is the nature of unreasonable souls; they often accept a mixture of opposite passions. read more