Reading Scripture in Lent with the Church Fathers: Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

Today’s Scripture Readings in the Orthodox Church
Isaiah 1:19-2:4; Genesis 1:14-23; Proverbs 1:20-33

There are also New Testament readings assigned today if a Liturgy is served for one of the feasts of St John the Baptist and Forerunner. But the Old Testament readings are the continuous readings during the weekdays of Lent: Isaiah at the 6th Hour; Genesis and Proverbs at Vespers.

The central place they are all coming to is Christ; he is at the center, because he is equally related to all; anything placed in the center is common to all.…Approach the mountain, climb up the mountain, and you that climb it, do not go down it. There you will be safe, there you will be protected; Christ is your mountain of refuge. And where is Christ? At the right hand of the Father, since he has ascended into heaven. (St Augustine, 354-430)

This mountain is in the house of the Lord, for which the prophet sighed when he said, “One thing I asked from the Lord, this I seek, that I might dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,” and about which Paul wrote to Timothy, “If I am late, you should know how to behave in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.” This house was built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, who are mountains themselves as imitators of Christ. About this house of Jerusalem the psalmist cried out: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which dwells in Jerusalem; it will not be moved forever. The mountains surround her and the Lord surrounds his people.” (St Jerome, 347-420)

It was opportune that the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins through confession of Christ’s name should have started from Jerusalem. Where the splendor of his teaching and virtues, where the triumph of his passion, where the joy of his resurrection and ascension were accomplished, there the first root of faith in him would be brought forth; [there] the first shoot of the burgeoning church, like that of some kind of great vine, would be planted. Just so, by an increase in the spreading of the word, [the church] would extend the branches of her teaching into the whole wide world.… It was opportune that the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins, good news to be proclaimed to idolatrous nations and those defiled by various evil deeds, should take its start from Jerusalem, lest any of those defiled, thoroughly terrified by the magnitude of their offenses, should doubt the possibility of receiving pardon if they showed repentance, when it was a fact that pardon had been granted to those at Jerusalem who had blasphemed and crucified the Son of God. (Bede the Venerable, 673-735)

Mountain refers to the invincible strength of the Church’s teachings. For even if one attacks a mountain with innumerable armies, throws spears or aims javelins, and brings up siege engines, nothing does it harm. The enemy is forced to retreat exhausted. So it is with those who attack the Church. Their assaults are in vain, and as they turn back they are ashamed to have expended all their strength. Exhausted by their flailing and weakened from hurling missiles, they are easily overcome by their enemies. This kind of victory is paradoxical and can only be the work of God, not of men. It is marvelous not only that the Church was victorious, but in what way it conquered. It was hunted out, persecuted, and cut down in countless way, yet not only did it not falter, but it grew in strength and by its suffering overcame its adversaries. (St John Chrysostom, 347-407)

After the creation of the lights, then the waters were filled with living creatures, so that this portion of the world also was adorned. The earth had received its ornamentation from its own plants. The heavens had received the flowers of stars and had been adorned with two great lights as if with the radiance of twin eyes. It remained for the waters, too, to be given their proper ornament. The command came. Immediately rivers were productive, and marshy lakes were fruitful of species proper and natural to each. The sea was astir with all kinds of swimming creatures, and not even the water that remained in the slime and ponds was idle or without its contribution in creation. For clearly frogs and mosquitoes and gnats were generated from them… God also said, “Let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.” Why did he give winged creatures also their origin from the waters? Because the flying animals have a certain relationship, as it were, with those that swim. For just as the fish cut the water, going forward with the motion of their fins and guiding their turns and forward movements by the change of their tails, so also in the case of birds, they can be seen cutting and moving through air on wings in the same manner. (St Basil the Great, 330-379)

 Those who would contend that the soul migrates into natures divergent from each other seem to me to obliterate all natural distinctions—to blend and confuse together in every possible respect the rational, the irrational, the sentient and the insensate; if, that is, all these are to pass into each other with no distinct natural order secluding them from mutual transition. To say that one and the same soul, on account of a particular environment of body, is at one time a rational and intellectual soul, and that then it is caverned along with the reptiles, or herds with the birds, or is a beast of burden, or a carnivorous one, or swims in the deep; or even drops down to an insensate thing so as to strike out roots or become a complete tree, producing buds on branches, and from those buds a flower, or a thorn, or a fruit edible or noxious—to say this is nothing short of making all things the same and believing that one single nature runs through all beings; that there is a connection between them which blends and confuses hopelessly all the marks by which one could be distinguished from another. (St Gregory of Nyssa, 335-394)

For where at all have they found in divine Scripture, or from whom have they heard, that there is another Word and another wisdom besides this Son, that they should frame to themselves such a doctrine? True, indeed, it is written, “Are not my words like fire, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?” and in the Proverbs, “I will make known my words unto you.” But these are precepts and commands, which God has spoken to the saints through his proper and only true Word, concerning which the psalmist said, “I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I may keep your words.” Such words accordingly the Savior signifies to be distinct from himself, when he says in his own person, “The words which I have spoken unto you.” For certainly such words are not offsprings or sons, nor are there so many words that frame the world, nor so many images of the one God, nor so many who have become men for us, nor as if from many such there were one who has become flesh, as John says. He was preached by John as being the only Word of God: “the Word was made flesh,” and “all things were made by him.” Wherefore of him alone, our Lord Jesus Christ, and of his oneness with the Father, are written and set forth the testimonies, both of the Father signifying that the Son is one, and of the saints, aware of this and saying that the Word is one, and that he is Only-begotten. (St Athanasius the Great, 295-373)

What is it then which Scripture says in many places: “They shall call, and I will not hear them”? Yet surely you are merciful to all who call upon you.… Some call, yet call not upon him of whom it is said, “They have not called upon God.” They call, but not on God. You call upon whatever you love: you call upon whatever you draw to yourself, whatever you wish to come to you. Therefore if you call upon God for this reason, in order that money may come to you, that an inheritance may come to you, that worldly rank may come to you, then you are calling upon those things that you desire may come to you; but you are making God the helper of your desires, not the listener to your needs. God is good, if he gives what you wish. What if you wish ill, will he not then be more merciful by not giving? Then if he gives not, then is God nothing to you; and you say, How much I have prayed, how often I have prayed, and have not been heard! Why, what did you ask? Perhaps that your enemy might die. What if he at the same time was praying for your death? God who created you, created him also. You are a human, your enemy also is human. But God is the judge: he hears both, and he grants the prayer to neither. You are sad, because you were not heard when praying against your enemy. But be glad, because his prayer was not heard against you. (St Augustine)