Patristic Reading.
SAINT AMBROSE OF MILAN
Born ca. 339
Died April 4, 397
“The Pastoral Doctor”
Note; Word in Season VII, 1999 Augustine Press.
Of the three alternative Readings, St. Ambrose is selected.
2nd reading, Thursday of the 1st Week in Ordinary Time Year II
First Reading: BOOK OF GENESIS
(The consequences of sin: Genesis 4:1-24)
Second Reading:
A COMMENTARY ON PSALM 39 BY ST AMBROSE
In the first pages of the Bible we read: Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh! Because of this a man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they will be two in one flesh. If you wish to know the real speaker of these words, listen to the following: this is a great mystery; I tell you it refers to Christ and the Church. The meaning is that the love that should exist between man and wife can be compared with Christ's love for his Church. We are members of Christ's body, sharers of his flesh and bone. What greater well-being can we have than to be so close to Christ, to cleave to him in a kind of bodily oneness, in a union with that body of his which is without blemish or stain of sin?
We are told in the early pages of the same book that righteous Abel’s sacrifice was acceptable to God while his murderous brother’s was rejected. This, surely, is a clear sign that the Lord Jesus was to offer himself up for us, and that in and through his passion he would hallow a new sacrifice to supersede a rite proper to a parricidal people. It is even more clearly expressed in the holy Patriarch Abraham’s offering of his son Isaac, in whose stead a ram was ultimately immolated. And this showed that it was man’s flesh, the flesh he has in common with the animals and not the divinity of the only Son of God, that was destined to endure the rigours of the passion.
At the beginning of the book it is written that in due time there would come a man who held command over the powers of heaven. This prophecy was fulfilled when the Lord Jesus arrived on earth and angels ministered to him, according to his own prediction: You will see the heavens opened and God's angels ascending and descending around the Son of Man.
Again at the beginning of the book it is said that you must choose out for yourselves a full-grown yearling lamb, a male without blemish, which the whole assembly shall then ceremonially slay. The identity of that lamb you know already: Behold the Lamb of God who is to bear away the sin of all the world! He is the one that was slain by the entire Jewish people. It was indeed necessary that he should die for all men, so that through his cross every sin might find forgiveness and in his blood the stains of all the world be washed away.
St Ambrose, In Ps. 39, 11-14 (PL14:1061-1062); Word in Season VII.
Christ's love for his Church.
At the beginning of the book Scripture speaks of me. In the opening chapters of Genesis it was foretold that Christ would come to fulfil his Father’s will for the redemption of mankind. This was when the sacred writer described how in creating Eve to be man’s helpmate God made her a type of the Church. Where indeed can we find help for our bodily weakness and protection against the upheavals of the world around us, except in the grace of salvation which comes to us through the Church and the faith by which we live? In the first pages of the Bible we read: Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh! Because of this a man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they will be two in one flesh. If you wish to know the real speaker of these words, listen to the following: this is a great mystery; I tell you it refers to Christ and the Church. The meaning is that the love that should exist between man and wife can be compared with Christ's love for his Church. We are members of Christ's body, sharers of his flesh and bone. What greater well-being can we have than to be so close to Christ, to cleave to him in a kind of bodily oneness, in a union with that body of his which is without blemish or stain of sin?
We are told in the early pages of the same book that righteous Abel’s sacrifice was acceptable to God while his murderous brother’s was rejected. This, surely, is a clear sign that the Lord Jesus was to offer himself up for us, and that in and through his passion he would hallow a new sacrifice to supersede a rite proper to a parricidal people. It is even more clearly expressed in the holy Patriarch Abraham’s offering of his son Isaac, in whose stead a ram was ultimately immolated. And this showed that it was man’s flesh, the flesh he has in common with the animals and not the divinity of the only Son of God, that was destined to endure the rigours of the passion.
At the beginning of the book it is written that in due time there would come a man who held command over the powers of heaven. This prophecy was fulfilled when the Lord Jesus arrived on earth and angels ministered to him, according to his own prediction: You will see the heavens opened and God's angels ascending and descending around the Son of Man.
Again at the beginning of the book it is said that you must choose out for yourselves a full-grown yearling lamb, a male without blemish, which the whole assembly shall then ceremonially slay. The identity of that lamb you know already: Behold the Lamb of God who is to bear away the sin of all the world! He is the one that was slain by the entire Jewish people. It was indeed necessary that he should die for all men, so that through his cross every sin might find forgiveness and in his blood the stains of all the world be washed away.
St Ambrose, In Ps. 39, 11-14 (PL14:1061-1062); Word in Season VII.
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