The Spirit is the Ointment of Christ Because He is called the oil of gladness, the joining together of many graces giving a sweet fragrance. God the Almighty Father anointed Him the Prince of priests, [Who was] both according to the Law anointed in the body, and in truth was full with the virtue of the Holy Spirit from the Father above the Law. This is the oil of gladness, […]
Read moreLatest Posts
Ambrose: On the Duties of the Clergy
The Feast of Wisdom The feasting that Solomon speaks of has not to do with common food only, but it is to be understood as having to do with good works… The Lord has told us that He had this food alone in abundance, as it is written in the Gospel, “My food is to do the will of My Father which is in heaven.” In this food let us […]
Read moreAmbrose: Exposition of the Christian Faith
The Spiritual Sandal For, by the Law, when a man died, the marriage bond with his wife was passed on to his brother, or other man next of kin, in order that the seed of the brother or next of kin might renew the life of the house, and thus it was that Ruth, though she was foreign-born, but yet had possessed a husband of the Jewish people, who had […]
Read moreJerome’s Eulogy of Saintly Women
Paula Before the Cross she threw herself down in adoration as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it: and when she entered the tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre. Indeed so ardent was her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lord’s body had […]
Read moreJerome on Translation
Cicero on Translating Demosthenes [Tully,] who has translated the Protagoras of Plato, the Œconomicus of Xenophon, and the two beautiful orations which Æschines and Demosthenes delivered one against the other … has spoken as follows in a prologue prefixed to the orations. ”I have thought it right to embrace a labour which though not necessary for myself will prove useful to those who study. I have translated the noblest speeches […]
Read moreJerome On the Art of Rhetoric
Rhetoric in Classical Writers Read, I beg of you, Demosthenes or Cicero, or (if you do not care for pleaders whose aim is to speak plausibly rather than truly) read Plato, Theophrastus, Xenophon, Aristotle, and the rest of those who draw their respective rills of wisdom from the Socratic fountain-head. Do they show any openness? Are they devoid of artifice? Is not every word they say filled with meaning? And […]
Read moreJerome On Origen (Part I)
Origen’s Prolificity Antiquity marvels at Marcus Terentius Varro, because of the countless books which he wrote for Latin readers; and Greek writers are extravagant in their praise of their man of brass [Didymus], because he has written more works than one of us could so much as copy. … Our Christian man of brass, or, rather, man of adamant—Origen, I mean—whose zeal for the study of Scripture has fairly earned […]
Read more