Guerric of Igny: If Anyone is Nailed to the Cross with Christ He is Altogether Wise, Righteous, Holy and Free Tuesday, Mar 26 2013

It seems to me that during these days when we are solemnly observing the annual commemoration of our Lord’s passion and crucifixion, I cannot speak to you on a more appropriate subject than that of Jesus Christ himself, and him crucified.

Even at another season of the year it would be hard to find a worthier theme. Could you hear anything more salutary or occupy your minds with anything more profitable?

Surely nothing can so sweetly stir the hearts of the faithful or exert so wholesome an influence on their lives; nothing has such power to cut off their sins, root out their vices, nourish and strengthen their virtues, as the remembrance of Jesus crucified.

To those who have reached maturity Saint Paul may preach about the hidden wisdom of God; but to me, whose shortcomings are visible to all, let him speak of the crucified Christ, who indeed seems mere foolishness to those who are on the road to perdition, but is the power and the wisdom of God to those who are on the way to salvation.

For me this is the highest and noblest philosophy, in the light of which all worldly and human wisdom is of no account.

How perfect I might think myself, how advanced in wisdom, if only I could qualify as a true disciple of Jesus crucified, for God has made him not only our wisdom but also our righteousness, our holiness and our freedom!

If anyone is nailed to the Cross with Christ he is altogether wise, righteous, holy and free.

Wise, because he has been raised with Christ above the earth, and now seeks and understands the things of heaven;

righteous, because sin has been put to death in him and he is no longer enslaved to it;

holy, because he has offered himself to God as a living sacrifice, consecrated and acceptable to him;

free, because the Son of God has redeemed him, and in freedom of spirit he can now boldly repeat the Son’s confident words: The prince of this world is on his way, but he has no claim on me.

Truly there is mercy and fullness of redemption with our crucified Lord. So completely has he redeemed Israel from all its iniquity that it is now acquitted of any accusation that the prince of this world could make against it.

The Lord has redeemed his people from the land of the foe and gathered them from far-off lands. Let them be of one mind with their teacher, Saint Paul, in declaring: God forbid that 1 should boast of anything but the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Guerric of Igny (c.1070/80-1157): Sermon 2, On the Palm Branches, 1 (PL 185:130-131); from the Monastic Office of Vigils, Wednesday in Holy Week, Year 1.

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Cyril of Alexandria: The Publican and the Pharisee (2) – The Publican Friday, Mar 1 2013

But what of the publican? He stood, it says, “afar off,” not even venturing, so to speak, to raise up his eyes on high.

You see him abstaining from all boldness of speech, as having no right thereto, and smitten by the reproaches of conscience: for he was afraid of being even seen by God, as one who had been careless of His laws, and had led an unchaste and dissolute life.

You see also that by his external manner, he accuses his own depravity. For the foolish Pharisee stood there bold and broad, lifting up his eyes without scruple, bearing witness of himself, and boastful.

But the other feels shame at his conduct: he is afraid of his Judge, he smites upon his breast, he confesses his offences, he shows his malady as to the Physician, he prays that he may have mercy.

And what is the result? Let us hear what the Judge says, “This man, He says, went down to his house justified rather than the other.”

Let us therefore “pray without ceasing,” according to the expression of the blessed Paul: but let us be careful to do so aright.

The love of self is displeasing to God, and He rejects empty haughtiness and a proud look, puffed up often on account of that which is by no means excellent.

And even if a man be good and sober, let him not on this account suffer himself to fall away into shameful pride: but rather let him remember Christ, Who says to the holy apostles, “When you have done all those things, those namely which have been commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants, we have done that which was our duty to do.’’

For we owe unto God over all, as from the yoke of necessity, the service of slaves, and ready obedience in all things.

Yes, though you lead an excellent and elect life, don’t exact wages from the Lord; but rather ask of Him a gift. As being good, He will promise it you: as a loving Father, He will aid you.

Restrain not yourself then from saying, “God be merciful to me the sinner.” Remember Him Who says by the voice of Isaiah, “Declare you your sins first, that you may be justified.”

Remember too that He rebukes those who will not do so, and says, “Behold, I have a judgment against you, because you say  ‘I have not sinned’.”

Examine the words of the saints: for one says, “The righteous is the accuser of himself in the beginning of his words.”

And another again, “I said, I will confess against myself my transgression unto the Lord: and you forgave the iniquity of my heart.”

Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376-444): Homilies on the Gospel of St. Luke, 120 @ Pravoslavie.

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Benedict XVI: Letting God Act On Us – That Is Christian Sacrifice Thursday, Feb 28 2013

To many, many Christians…it looks as if the Cross is to be understood as part of a mechanism of injured and restored right.

It is the form, so it seems, in which the infinitely offended righteousness of God was propitiated again by means of an infinite expiation.

[...] Many devotional texts actually force one to think that Christian faith in the Cross visualises a God whose unrelenting righteousness demanded a human sacrifice, the sacrifice of his own Son, and one turns away in horror from a righteousness whose sinister wrath makes the message of love incredible.

[...] The expiatory activity by which men hope to conciliate the divinity and put him in a gracious mood stands at the heart of the history of religion.

In the New Testament the situation is almost completely reversed. It is not man who goes to God with a compensatory gift, but God who comes to man in order to give to him.

He restores disturbed right on the initiative of his own power to love, by making unjust man just again, the dead living again, through his own creative mercy.

His righteousness is grace; it is active righteousness, which sets crooked man straight, that is, bends him straight, makes him right.

[...] The New Testament does not say that men conciliate God, as we really ought to expect, since after all it is they who have failed, not God. It says on the contrary that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).

[...]  God does not wait until the guilty come to be reconciled; he goes to meet them and reconciles them. Here we can see the true direction of the incarnation, of the Cross.

Accordingly, in the New Testament the Cross appears primarily as a movement from above to below.

It does not stand there as the work of expiation which mankind offers to the wrathful God, but as the expression of that foolish love of God’s which gives itself away to the point of humiliation in order thus to save man; it is his approach to us, not the other way about.

With this twist in the idea of expiation, and thus in the whole axis of religion, worship too, man’s whole existence, acquires in Christianity a new direction.

Worship follows in Christianity first of all in thankful acceptance of the divine deed of salvation. The essential form of Christian worship is therefore rightly called “Eucharistia”, thanksgiving.

Christian sacrifice does not consist in a giving of what God would not have without us but in our becoming totally receptive and letting ourselves be completely taken over by him.

Letting God act on us – that is Christian sacrifice.

Benedict XVI (b. 1927): Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, pp. 281-283; a longer extract from this passage can be read at the excellent Eclectic Orthodoxy.

With thanks to The Ironic Catholic for the suggestion that bloggers should pay tribute to Benedict the XVI on this particular day by posting a favourite quotation or extract from his writings.

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John Chrysostom: “To Fulfil Every Righteousness” Wednesday, Jan 9 2013

For whom was Jesus baptised, if this was done not for repentance, nor for the remission of sins, nor for receiving the gifts of the Spirit?

[...] When John said: I have need to be baptised of Thee, and Thou art come to me?—He answered thus: Stay now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil every righteousness (Matthew 3:14-15).

[...] What does He mean: To fulfill every righteousness? By righteousness is meant the fulfillment of all the commandments, as is said: Both were righteous, walking faultlessly in the commandments of the Lord (Luke 1:6).

Since fulfilling this righteousness was necessary for all people, but no one of them kept it or fulfilled it, Christ came then and fulfilled this righteousness.

And what righteousness is there, someone will say, in being baptised? Obedience for a prophet was righteous.

As Christ was circumcised, offered sacrifice, kept the sabbath and observed the Jewish feasts, so also He added this remaining thing, that He was obedient to having been baptised by a prophet.

[...] If obedience to God constitutes righteousness, and God sent John to baptise the nation, then Christ has also fulfilled this along with all the other commandments.

Consider, that the commandments of the law is the main point of the two denarii (see Luke 10:35). The human race needed to pay this debt [i.e. observing the commandments] but did not pay it…, and so is embraced by death. Christ…paid the debt…and seized from it those who were not able to pay.

Wherefore He does not say: It is necessary for us to do this or that, but rather, To fulfill every righteousness. It is for Me, being the Master, says He, proper to make payment for the needy.

[...] Wherefore also the Spirit did descend as a dove: because where there is reconciliation with God, there also is the dove.

So also in the ark of Noah the dove did bring the branch of olive—a sign of God’s love of mankind and of the cessation of the flood.

And now in the form of a dove, and not in a body…the Spirit descended, announcing the universal mercy of God and showing with it, that the spiritual man needs to be gentle, simple and innocent, as Christ also says: Except ye be converted and become as children, you shall not enter into the Heavenly Kingdom (Mt 18:3).

But that ark, after the cessation of the flood, remained upon the earth; this ark, after the cessation of wrath, is taken to heaven, and now this Immaculate and Imperishable Body is situated at the right hand of the Father.

John Chrysostom (c.347-407): Discourse on the Day of the Baptism of Christ @ Pravoslavie.

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Evagrius the Solitary: Keep Powerful Guard Over Your Memory Monday, Jun 4 2012

If you long to pray, renounce everything at once (cf. Lk 14:33) so that you may inherit all.

Pray [1] first, for purification from the passions;

[2] and second, for deliverance from ignorance and forgetfulness;

[3] and third, for deliverance from all temptation and abandonment.

In your prayer seek only righteousness and the kingdom, namely, virtue and knowledge; and all the rest will be added unto you (Mt 6:33).

It is just to pray not only for your own purification, but also to pray for your own kindred, so as to imitate the angelic way.

[...] Whether you pray with brothers or by yourself, struggle to pray not only in the customary way, but also with perception.

Perception in prayer is concentration (sunnoia), with reverence and compunction and distress of soul, as you confess your failures with silent groans.

If the intellect (nous) is still staring around at the time of prayer, it does not yet know how to pray as a monk; it is still a secular, decorating the exterior tabernacle (cf. Mt 23:27).

When you pray, keep powerful guard over your memory: in this way, instead of placing its own passions before you, it will, instead, move you to the knowledge that you stand before God.

For the nous is easily, naturally disarmed and plundered by the memory at the time of prayer.

When you are praying the memory brings you fantasies of either: [1] ancient issues; [2] or new worries; [3] or the face of one who has distressed you.

The demon is very malignant towards any person who prays, and it employs every means to defeat his purpose.

It does not cease [1] moving thoughts (noemata) of matters through the memory and [2] stirring up all the passions through the flesh, so as to be able to impede his excellent course and his departure to God.

When, despite all his efforts, the malevolent demon is unable to hinder the prayer of one who is earnest, it lets up for a time and then takes its revenge when he finishes praying. It either:

[1] enflames him with anger, thus ruining the excellent state that, through prayer, has been welded together in him;

[2] or it entices him to some irrational pleasure and so commits an outrage on the nous.

Having prayed properly, expect what is improper; and stand courageously to keep guard over your harvest.

Indeed from the beginning you were assigned this: namely, to work and keep guard (Gen. 2:15).  So do not leave your work unguarded after your labor, otherwise you do not receive any benefit from praying.

Evagrius Ponticus (345-399): On Prayer, 37-49, translated by Luke Dysinger OSB.

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John Cassian: With All Our Exertions and Zeal We Can Never Arrive at Perfection Wednesday, Feb 29 2012

It is well for us to be sure that although we practise every virtue with unceasing efforts, yet with all our exertions and zeal we can never arrive at perfection.

Neither is mere human diligence and toil of itself sufficient to deserve to reach the splendid reward of bliss, unless we have secured it by means of the co-operation of the Lord, and His directing our heart to what is right.

And so we ought every moment to pray and say with David “Order my steps in thy paths that my footsteps slip not:” and “He has set my feet upon a rock and ordered my goings.”

We should pray that He Who is the unseen ruler of the human heart may vouchsafe to turn to the desire of virtue that will of ours, which is more readily inclined to vice either through want of knowledge of what is good, or through the delights of passion.

We read this in a verse in which the prophet sings very plainly: “Being pushed I was overturned that I might fall,” where the weakness of our free will is shown.

Yet he also sings “the Lord sustained me,” showing that the Lord’s help is always joined to our free will, and by this, that we may not be altogether destroyed by our free will.

When God sees that we have stumbled, He sustains and supports us, as it were by stretching out His hand.

[...] And again: “According to the multitude of the sorrows which I had in my heart,” which sprang most certainly from my free will, “Thy comforts have refreshed my soul.”

It is as if David were saying “Coming through Thy inspiration into my heart, and laying open the view of future blessings which Thou hast prepared for them who labour in Thy name, they not only removed all anxiety from my heart, but actually conferred upon it the greatest delight.”

And again David writes: “Had it not been that the Lord helped me, my soul had almost dwelt in hell.”

He certainly shows that through the depravity of this free will he would have dwelt in hell, had he not been saved by the assistance and protection of the Lord.

For “By the Lord,” and not by free-will, “are a man’s steps directed,” and “although the righteous fall” at least by free will, “he shall not be cast away.”

[...] None of the righteous are sufficient of themselves to acquire righteousness, unless every moment when they stumble and fall the Divine mercy supports them with His hands, that they may not utterly collapse and perish, when they have been cast down through the weakness of free will.

John Cassian (c. 360-435): Conferences 13,12.

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John Henry Newman: “Blessed are they that Do His Commandments, that they may have Right to the Tree of Life” Thursday, Oct 20 2011

(On 2 Kings 22:19-20.)

In conclusion, my brethren, I would have you observe in what Josiah’s chief excellence lay.

This is the character given him when his name is first mentioned; “He did … right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left.” (2 Kings 22:2).

[...] Now what is this strict virtue called? it is called faith. It is no matter whether we call it faith or conscientiousness, they are in substance one and the same:

where there is faith, there is conscientiousness—where there is conscientiousness, there is faith; they may be distinguished from each other in words, but they are not divided in fact.

They belong to one, and but one, habit of mind—dutifulness; they show themselves in obedience, in the careful, anxious observance of God’s will, however we learn it.

Hence it is that St. Paul tells us that “the just shall live by faith” under every dispensation of God’s mercy.

And this is called faith, because it implies a reliance on the mere word of the unseen God overpowering the temptations of sight.

Whether it be we read and accept His word in Scripture (as Christians do), or His word in our conscience, the law written on the heart (as is the case with heathens); in either ease, it is by following it, in spite of the seductions of the world around us, that we please God.

St. Paul calls it faith; saying after the prophet, “The just shall live by faith”;

and St. Peter, in the tenth chapter of the Acts, calls it “fearing and working righteousness,” where he says, that “in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.”

It is all one: both Apostles say that God loves those who prefer Him to the world; whose character and frame of mind is such.

Elsewhere St. Paul also speaks like St. Peter, when he declares that God will render eternal life to them, who by “patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory” (Rom. 2:7).

St. John adds his testimony: “Little children, let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous.” (1 John 3:7).

And our Saviour’s last words at the end of the whole Scripture, long after the coming of the Spirit, after the death of all the Apostles but St. John, are the same: “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life” (Rev. 22:14).

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890): Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 8,  Sermon 7. Josiah, a Pattern for the Ignorant. 

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John Cassian: “The Kingdom of God is Within You” Sunday, Jul 31 2011

To cling to God continually, and as you say inseparably to hold fast to meditation on Him, is impossible for a man while still in this weak flesh of ours.

But we ought to be aware on what we should have the purpose of our mind fixed, and to what goal we should ever recall the gaze of our soul.

And when the mind can secure this it may rejoice, and grieve and sigh when it is withdrawn from this, as often as it discovers itself to have fallen away from gazing on Him, it should admit that it has lapsed from the highest good….

And when our gaze has wandered ever so little from Him, let us turn the eyes of the soul back to Him, and recall our mental gaze as in a perfectly straight direction.

For everything depends on the inward frame of mind, and when the devil has been expelled from this, and sins no longer reign in it, it follows that the kingdom of God is founded in us.

Thus the Evangelist says “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, nor shall men say Lo here, or lo there: for verily I say unto you that the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20-21).

But nothing else can be “within you,” but knowledge or ignorance of truth, and delight either in vice or in virtue, through which we prepare a kingdom for the devil or for Christ in our heart.

And of this kingdom the Apostle describes the character, when he says “For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost” (Rom.14:17).

And so if the kingdom of God is within us, and the actual kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy, then the man who abides in these is most certainly in the kingdom of God.

[...] And in truth if lifting up our mental gaze on high we would consider that state in which the heavenly powers live on high, who are truly in the kingdom of God, what should we imagine it to be except perpetual and lasting joy?

For what is so specially peculiar and appropriate to true blessedness as constant calm and eternal joy?

[...]  “Behold,” says He, “I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former things shall not be remembered nor come into mind. But ye shall be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create” (Is. 65:17-18).

And again “joy and gladness shall be found therein: thanksgiving and the voice of praise, and there shall be month after month, and Sabbath after Sabbath” (Is. 51:3; 66:23).

And again: “they shall obtain joy and gladness; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Is. 35:10).

John Cassian (c. 360-435): Conferences 1,13.

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Cyril of Alexandria: Like Abraham, We Shall Be Called Righteous and Friends of God Monday, Jun 27 2011

Abraham believed in God and that his faith was counted as righteousness and he was called a friend of God.

[...] He heard God say to him: Leave your own land and your kindred, and go to the land that I will show you.

When he was commanded to sacrifice his only son as a type of Christ, he learned God’s hidden purpose.

[...] He was even deemed worthy to converse with God, and he knew God’s plan, which was to be accomplished in the last days.

[...] But now see how events have repeated themselves for those who rise through faith to the friendship of our Saviour Christ.

They too heard the command to leave their country, and that they left it eagerly we know from their own declaration that We have here no lasting city, but seek one that is to come, whose builder and maker is God.

For those who are citizens of heaven are strangers and sojourners on earth; so great is their love for God that they have abandoned as it were their native land, and long for the resting place above.

The Saviour gave them a glimpse of this when he said to them: I am going to prepare a place for you; and when I come again I will take you with me, so that where I am you may be also.

They heard the command to leave their kindred. How shall we show this? We will refer to Christ’s own words: Anyone who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.

There can be no doubt that relationship with God comes before earthly and physical relationship, and that among his followers love for Christ is far stronger than any other love.

Blessed Abraham was commanded to offer his own son to God as a fragrant odour; others, girded with the righteousness of faith, are commanded to offer only them­selves.

Present your bodies, wrote the Apostle, as a living sacrifice, holy and well pleasing to God – that is your spiritual worship.

Of these it is also written: Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh, with its passions and desires.

Such people know the mystery that is in Christ, since they know the powers of the age to come, and what will happen at the end of time, when they will receive the rewards of their labours, and the recompense for their devotion to Christ.

Thus, like Abraham, we shall be called righteous and friends of God.

Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376-444): Commentary on John X (PG 74:386-7); from the Monastic Office of Vigils, Sunday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Year 1.

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Irenaeus of Lyons: Through the Adoption of Sons God Enabled Man to Love Him with His Whole Heart Tuesday, Mar 22 2011

Israel’s fathers [i.e. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob] were righteous: they had the power of the Decalogue implanted in their hearts and in their souls.

[...] For this reason they did not need to be admonished by written rebukes: they had the righteousness of the law in their hearts.

When this righteousness and love for God had passed into oblivion and had been extinguished in Egypt, God had necessarily to reveal himself through his own voice, out of his great love for men.

He led the people out of Egypt in power, so that man might once again become God’s disciple and follower.

He made them afraid as they listened, to warn them not to hold their Creator in contempt.

He fed them with manna, that they might receive spiritual food…. He commanded them to love himself and trained them to practise righteousness toward their neighbour, so that man might not be unrighteous or unworthy of God.

Through the Decalogue he prepared man for friendship with himself and for harmony with his neighbour. This was to man’s advantage, though God needed nothing from man.

This raised man to glory, for it gave him what he did not have, friendship with God. But it brought no advantage to God, for God did not need man’s love.

Man did not possess the glory of God, nor could he attain it by any other means than through obedience to God.

This is why Moses said to the people: Choose life, that you may live and your descendants too; love the Lord your God, hear his voice and hold fast to him, for this is life for you and length of days.

This was the life that the Lord was preparing man to receive when he spoke in person and gave the words of the Decalogue for all alike to hear.

These words remain with us as well; they were extended and amplified through his coming in the flesh, but not annulled.

God gave to the people separately through Moses the commandments that enslave: these were precepts suited to their instruction or their condemnation.

As Moses said: The Lord commanded me at that time to teach you precepts of righteousness and of judgement.

The precepts that were given them to enslave and to serve as a warning have been cancelled by the new covenant of freedom.

The precepts that belong to man’s nature and to freedom and to all alike have been enlarged and broadened.

Through the adoption of sons God had enabled man so generously and bountifully to know him as Father, to love him with his whole heart, and to follow his Word unfailingly.

Irenaeus of Lyons (2nd century AD – c. 202): Adversus Haereses 4.16.2-5:, from the Office of Readings for Friday in the 2nd Week of Lent @ Crossroads Initiative.

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