Five From The Fathers
When you perceive that God is chastising you, fly not to his enemies . . . but to his friends, the martyrs, the saints and those who were pleasing to him, and who have great power . . .
A Christian people celebrates together in religious solemnity the memorials of the martyrs, both to encourage their being imitated and so that it can share in their merits and be aided by their prayers.
In this way is he (the true Christian) always pure for prayer. He also prays in the society of angels as being already of angelic ran, and he is never out of their holy keeping; and though he pray alone, he has the choir of the saints standing with him.
In additon to the stuyd and true knowledge of the Scriptures are needed a good life and pure soul and virtue in Christ, so that the mind, journeying in this path, may be able to obtain and apprehend what it desires, in so far as human nature is able to learn about God the Word. For without a pure mind and a life modeled on the saints, no one can apprehend the words of the saints.
The divine Scripture likewise says that the souls of the just are in God’s hands and death cannot lay hold of them. For death is rather the sleep of the saints than their death. “For they travailed in this life and shall to the end,”and Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” What then, is more precious than to be in the hand of God. For God is Life and Light, and those who are in God’s hand are in life and light.
Courtesy of Holy Myrrh-Bearers Church of Swarthmore.
Five From The Fathers