Saint John Chrysostom here speaks of the gift of prayer as continual conversation with God that proceeds from longing for God that lifts the soul into the heavens where it embraces God and brings great joy and light to the soul....
[dropcaps type='normal' font_size='100' color='' background_color='' border_color='']P[/dropcaps]ROLOGUE: There was a man of venerable life, blessed by grace, and blessed in name, for he was called "Benedictus" or Bennet: who, from his younger years, carried always the mind of an old man; for his age was inferior to...
Here Basil the Great reflects on the abundant goodness of God and the unimaginable beauty of his inumerable gifts. The only proper repayment is love....
Here St. Cyril of Alexandria comments on the promise of God the Father to pour out his Holy Spirit on all mankind in order to renew and restore our wounded human nature. In his baptism, the Lord Jesus Christ, "the first-fruits of our restored nature," receives...
Gregory of Nazianzen's memoire of his friendship with Basil the Great. These Cappadocian church fathers are honored on January 2 by Catholics & Orthodox...
Augustine comments on the image of the shepherds of the Church as watchmen who are obligated to warn God's people when they are going astray. He also comments on the words of Jesus to his disciples that they are to do what the chief Priests...
Augustine explains that constant prayer does not mean non-stop church services or recitation of prayers, but a ceaseless desire of the heart for union with God in heaven. This constant desire for God, actually, is one of the three theological virtues, namely the virtue...
Leo on the second & third of the Beatitudes, calling blessed the meek and those who mourn. The mourning Christ references here has little to do with worldly sorrow, and the reward promised to the lowly & gentle goes well beyond the things of...
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...