Bible in a Year with Fr Paul

Why is the Evangelist so exact about this place? It is so that when you hear the woman say, “Jacob our father gave us this well,” you will not think it strange. For Sychar was the place where Simeon and Levi brought about a great slaughter because of their anger over what happened to Dinah.… And from where did the Samaritans get their name? Samaria receives its name from Somer, a mountain there, s...

That the need of water [in baptism] is absolute and indispensable, you may learn in this way. On one occasion, when the Spirit had flown down before the water was applied, the apostle did not stand idle at this point, but, as though the water were necessary and not superfluous, observe what he says, “Can any one forbid water so that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit a...

Since our Lord was known in Galilee, they invite him to the marriage. And he comes because he cares more about our good than his own dignity. The one who did not despise taking on himself the form of a servant [ Php 2:7 .] would much less despise being present at the marriage of servants—St John Chrysostom

It is fitting that it be recorded that the first Adam was cast out of Paradise into the desert, [ Gen 3:23-24 ; 1Co 15:45 .] that you may observe how the second Adam returned from the desert to Paradise.… Adam brought death through the tree. Christ brought life through the cross. Adam, naked of spiritual things, covered himself with the foliage of a tree. [ Gen 3:7 .] Christ, naked of worldly thin...

The Son of God, who is to gather the church, first works in a servant. Thus St. Luke fittingly says that the Word of the Lord came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness, so that the church would not begin from a man but from the Word. For she is a wilderness, because children of depravity outnumber hers, though she has a husband. Then it is said to her, “Sing, O barren one,” [ Isa 54:1...

A feast day is about to arrive, and it is the most holy and awesome of all feasts. It would be no mistake to call it the chief and mother of all holy days. What feast is that? It is the day of Christ’s birth in the flesh. It is from this day that the feasts of the theophany, the sacred Pasch [Passover], the ascension and Pentecost had their source and foundation. Had Christ not been born in the fl...

St. Luke kept a certain historical order and revealed to us more miracles of the Lord, yet so that the history of his Gospel embraced the virtue of all wisdom. For what more excellent truth did he reveal concerning natural wisdom than that the Holy Spirit also gave rise to the divine incarnation? [See Luk 1:35 .] … He taught that the powers of heaven would be shaken, [ Luk 21:26 .] that the Lord a...

Daniel gave the reason why God permitted them to be involved in such trials. What is the reason? “To purge them, to choose them and to make them white until the time of the end” … so as to cleanse them and to show who among them was genuine and approved—St John Chrysostom

What will you say, Daniel? You are among the good; you enjoy honor before God and people; why do you concern yourself with the others? But Moses also acted the same way. And what does he say? “He asked for the things that were due with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.” Why did he do that, if what he was asking was due the Israelites? He did it so that he might not make them unworthy of this. For ther...

We should therefore concur with the traditional interpretation of all the commentators of the Christian church, that at the end of the world, when the Roman Empire is to be destroyed, there shall be ten kings who will partition the Roman world among themselves. Then an insignificant eleventh king will arise, who will overcome three of the ten kings, that is, the king of Egypt, the king of [North]...

Christ, then, was crucified for us; he was judged in the night, when it was cold, and therefore a fire of coal was laid. He was crucified in the third hour, and “from the sixth hour there was darkness until the ninth hour,” [ Mat 27:45 .] but from the ninth hour there was light again. Are these details written down? Let us inquire. Zechariah says, “And it shall come to pass in that day, and there...

At another time, he speaks of us under the figure of a colt. He means by [the colt] that we are unyoked to evil, unsubdued by wickedness, unaffected, high-spirited only with him our Father. We are colts, not stallions, “who whinny lustfully for their neighbor’s wife, beasts of burden unrestrained in their lust.” [ Jer 5:8 .] Rather, we are free and newly born, joyous in our faith, holding fast to...

For he appeared to the powers above not only in the form in which he came for us, that is, as a human, but also showing the signs of his passion. Thus, we say that after his resurrection from the dead the marks of the nails and the other things of his wounds were marked on the holy flesh.… So that the angels asking each other might say, “Who is this?” He considers and replies to them, “I speak jus...

And the Logos, exhorting us to come to this light, says, in the prophecies of Isaiah, “Enlighten yourself, enlighten yourself, O Jerusalem, for your light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen on you.” Observe now the difference between the fine phrases of Plato respecting the chief good and the declarations of our prophets regarding the light of the blessed; and notice that the truth as it...

No one should be exercised by the words said to the Israelites about keeping the law, which doubtless belongs to the shadows of the world of types; for no one is justified by the law with God.… We should understand this spiritually; and abstaining from the care of the flesh we should offer spiritual sacrifices with the odor of a good spiritual fragrance and minister to God … to keep the sabbath sp...

What a servile mentality from a crazed brain that knows how to do nothing else but gabble. We must reply to our opponents, “You are drunken men; rouse yourselves from your cups.” Why do you do such violence to the truth? Why have you twisted the sense of the divine teachings so as to have been carried off the royal road?—St Cyril of Alexandria

It is in all respects an apt and appropriate end to the work of building the holy city and the temple of the Lord that when the citizens have been purified by God from all the filth of foreign pollution, which is alien to God, the orders of the priests and the Levites should be duly preserved in their own ministry in order that the teachers of the church who have been instructed according to rule...

And now that we have thus distinguished the various modes of generation, it will be time to observe how the benevolent provision of the Holy Spirit, in delivering to us the divine mysteries, imparts that instruction that transcends reason by such methods as we can receive. For the inspired teaching adopts, in order to set forth the unspeakable power of God, all the forms of generation that human i...

And that this is the opinion either of all or the best of the Platonists can be ascertained by their writings. And regarding the name itself, if they see fit to call such blessed and immortal creatures gods, this need not give rise to any serious discussion between us, since in our own Scriptures we read, “The God of gods, the Lord hath spoken;” [ Psa 50:1 (49:1 LXX, Vg.).] and again, “Confess to...

People of true and good sense, who have intellectually gathered that knowledge that gives life, are never jaded by the sacred sciences. Indeed it is written that “humankind shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” [ Mat 4:4 ; Deu 8:3 .] The word of God is food for the mind and a spiritual “bread that strengthens the heart of humankind,” as the book of Psal...

People sit when they disparage, but they stand when they bless the Lord, to whom it is said, “Behold, now bless you the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord.” One who sits (to speak of the bodily habit) is, as it were, unnerved, when the body is idle and when he relaxes the tension of his mind. But a cautious watchman, an active searcher, a wide-awake guard before...

For on that day of perpetual light about which Zechariah said, “And there shall be one day that is known to the Lord, not day or night” [ Zec 14:7 .] (that is, a day that is remote from the usual experience of passing time), the elect sacrifice great victims to the Lord, namely, those about which the psalmist, tasting them in the hope of things to come, said, “You have broken my bonds; I will offe...

Hear me, therefore, my fellow servant, my friend, my brother; give ear for a moment that I may tell you how you are to walk in the holy Scriptures. All that we read in the divine books, while glistening and shining without, is yet far sweeter within. “He who desires to eat the kernel must first break the nut.” [Plautus Curc . 1.1.55.] “Open my eyes,” says David, “that I may behold wondrous things...

Like the foundation in a house, the keel in a ship and the heart in a body, so is [Psalm 1 as a] brief introduction to the whole structure of the Psalms. For when David intended to propose in the course of his speech to the combatants of true religion many painful tasks involving unmeasured sweats and toils, he showed first the happy end, that in the hope of the blessings reserved for us we might...

“And they rose up to stand, and they read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God four times a day, and four times a night they confessed and prayed to the Lord their God.” For who would not be amazed that such a great people had such extraordinary concern for devotion that four times a day—that is, at the first hour of the morning, the third, the sixth and the ninth, when time was to be ma...