Commentary on Luke (Greek fragments)

Contents

Reading pages: 1.2–2.7.3 · 2.10–2.49.2 · 3.4–4.2 · 4.3–4.31 · 4.35–5.17 · 5.18–6.12 · 6.13–6.39 · 6.41–7.9.2 · 7.11–7.36 · 8.4–9.3 · 9.4–9.48 · 9.58–10.30 · 10.34–11.11 · 11.14–11.45 · 11.46–12.15 · 12.16–12.41 · 12.49–13.17 · 13.19–14.3.2 · 14.7–15.1.2 · 15.8–16.13.2 · 16.15–17.1.2 · 17.4–17.34 · 18.1–18.38 · 19.2–19.44 · 20.2–21.29 · 22.1.1–22.39 · 22.40–23.35.2 · 23.44–24.45

1. 1.2Luke calls the apostles eyewitnesses of the Word because the invisible Word became visible in the flesh, and the Son called Son of the Most High lost nothing of his equality with the Father by becoming man.
2. 1.37God’s omnipotence does not mean he can make what has happened not to have happened, since that would be to make a lie true, which is foreign to his nature, not a sign of weakness.
3. 1.42The blessed fruit of Mary’s womb is Christ, whose reward and inheritance are those adopted as sons through faith.
4. 1.51The arm is the Word born of Mary; the proud he scattered are the demons, the Greek sages, and the unbelieving Jews, though the words fit the demons best.
5. 1.52God brought down the proud demons, Greek sages and Jewish leaders and exalted the humble, giving them authority over the enemy; the obscure Gentiles were exalted through faith.
6. 1.53The hungry are the human race, filled with spiritual goods when they received Christ, while the Jews, rich in the law, were sent away empty and suffered a famine of hearing the word of the Lord.
7. 1.54The Israel God helped is chiefly the spiritual Israel of believers, though many Jews also believed; the promise to Abraham is fulfilled in Christ, the horn of salvation, power and kingship.
8. 1.72Christ is the mercy and righteousness by which we are justified through faith in him.
9. 1.76John is called prophet of the Most High, and the Most High is Christ, whose forerunner he was, which refutes those who lessen Christ’s Godhead.
10. 1.79.1John the Baptist was the lamp prepared for Christ and prefigured by the tabernacle lamp, whom the Jews welcomed briefly and then put to death.
11. 1.79.2The world was lost in the night of idolatry and ignorance until the Lord rose on it like the sun.
12. 2.1Luke dates the birth by Caesar’s census to show that Israel’s own rulers of David’s line had failed when Christ came.
13. 2.4Mary was of David’s tribe like Joseph; and the one Christ is formed from two natures united without confusion or division, which is why the Virgin is proclaimed Mother of God.
14. 2.5Christ was conceived without seed during the betrothal so that as second Adam he might pass rebirth by the Spirit on to us; the census brought Mary to Bethlehem, and the shut gate of Ezekiel shows that her virginity was not lost in giving birth.
15. 2.7.1Christ is Only-begotten by nature as God and firstborn by the economy, as brother and firstfruits of those adopted; “firstborn” does not make him one of many sons or one of the creatures, against Eunomius.
16. 2.7.2Christ lay in a manger so that men grown beastlike might find the bread of life; the shepherds prefigure the Church’s pastors; and the birth of Emmanuel undid the curse of painful childbirth, he alone having flesh free of sin.
17. 2.7.3The swaddled infant is the Lord whom the seraphim praise; Isaiah’s Emmanuel, fed on the Virgin’s milk, chose the good as God alone does; at his birth the devil was despoiled, the nations tamed, and peace made between God and men.
18. 2.10An archangel announced the birth; Christ, the Lawgiver, submitted to circumcision and the purification to redeem those under the law, circumcision prefiguring baptism; the Virgin needed no purification, and Christ is the turtledove, the dove and the coin paid as ransom for two peoples.
19. 2.28The offering of turtledoves and pigeons signifies the married and the celibate life, both under Christ’s law; Simeon is released from life’s prison, and Christ is light to the nations and glory of Israel.
20. 2.34.1Christ is the cornerstone laid in Zion: those who believe are not shamed and rise, while unbelieving Israel stumbled over him and fell.
21. 2.34.2Christ is a sign spoken against, a stumbling block and foolishness to unbelievers; the sword that pierces Mary is the grief of seeing her Son crucified.
22. 2.40.1The child’s growth in body and wisdom belongs to his humanity: the all-perfect Word let the laws of human growth govern his flesh and manifested his wisdom gradually, body growing in stature and soul in wisdom.
23. 2.40.2Jesus’ advance in wisdom is shown when, at twelve, he questioned and answered the teachers in the temple and became known to many for his wisdom.
24. 2.48Mary calls Joseph his father, though she knew he was not, because of the suspicion of the Jews.
25. 2.49.1In calling God his Father the boy Jesus first openly reveals his Godhead, teaching Mary that she served the economy by bearing his flesh.
26. 2.49.2Against the Valentinians, the God of the temple is Christ’s Father; and Jesus’ advance in wisdom and grace belongs to his humanity and to the growing wonder of those who saw him, not to the Word as God.
27. 3.4Isaiah foretold John as the voice preparing the Lord’s way; the straight path is the soul kept as God made it, and the obstacles of Satan, demons and the law of sin were levelled by the incarnate Christ.
28. 3.6All flesh, the whole human race and not Israel alone, sees God’s salvation in the Son, while the remnant of Israel is saved with the nations.
29. 3.7The Baptist, foreseeing the Jews’ unbelief toward Christ despite the law and prophets, warns them of the wrath to come.
30. 3.8The fruit of repentance is faith in Christ and righteous living; descent from Abraham avails nothing without his virtue, and the promise of a multitude of descendants is fulfilled in the believing nations.
31. 3.9The axe is God’s wrath on the Jews for rejecting Christ, as Zechariah and Jeremiah foretold; but it is laid at, not into, the root, since the remnant of Israel is saved.
32. 3.10John gave fitting counsel to crowds, tax collectors and soldiers, and refused to be thought the Christ; his unworthiness to touch Christ’s sandals and Christ’s power to baptize with the Spirit show that the incarnate Word is one Son, God and man.
33. 3.17Christ will separate wheat from chaff; he was baptized not from need but to sanctify the waters and give us a pattern, the Spirit being his own though proceeding from the Father; heaven was opened and the Father’s voice declared him Son so that sonship might pass to us.
34. 3.22Christ received the Spirit as man, not as God; against Paul of Samosata, he always was as God and began as man at thirty; and delaying baptism to the end of life is harmful, bringing forgiveness but no fruit.
35. 4.1.1In Christ, full of the Spirit, human nature is anointed as in its firstfruits, so that the promised outpouring of the Spirit and adoption pass to us; the giver of the Spirit received it as our brother.
36. 4.1.2“He was led in the Spirit” means that the Lord lived spiritually in the wilderness, not that he was carried off.
37. 4.2Christ fasted not from need but to give a pattern to those who live in the desert, showing that self-control and fasting defeat Satan; his hunger after forty days shows him one and the same, God and man.
38. 4.3Satan used Christ’s hunger to test whether he was the Christ; Christ neither performed nor denied the miracle, and in him human nature, conquered through eating in Adam, conquered through self-control; the soul lives by God’s word.
39. 4.5The devil has no right to offer the kingdoms of the world, which he seized by deceit, to their Lord; Christ answers with the command to worship God alone, which strips the devil of the worship he had usurped.
40. 4.9The third temptation was vainglory; Christ refused to tempt God or give a sign, and his victory passed to us the power to conquer the devil.
41. 4.10Satan misapplied Ps 91 to Christ as if he needed angels; the Arians, reading the psalm as Christ taking the Father as his refuge, follow Satan’s error, for the psalm speaks of every righteous man, while the Son is himself the Most High and refuge of all.
42. 4.14Having conquered Satan in the desert and crowned human nature in himself, Christ returned to Galilee working signs by the power of the Spirit, which is his own, not borrowed as by the saints.
43. 4.16At Nazareth Christ revealed the mystery of the incarnation by reading Isaiah’s prophecy of his anointing; as God he gives the Spirit and as man he receives it.
44. 4.18Christ, who has the Spirit by nature, was anointed as man for our sake, since humanity had lost the Spirit; he released Satan’s captives, enlightened the blind nations and Israel, proclaimed the acceptable year of salvation, and declared the prophecy fulfilled in himself.
45. 4.19The acceptable year is Christ’s first coming and the day of recompense the judgment; the people of Nazareth admired his words but belittled him as Joseph’s son, blind to his signs.
46. 4.23“Physician, heal yourself” was a proverb; Christ answers that people despise what is familiar, and so those of his own town despised him.
47. 4.24Elijah’s widow and Elisha’s Naaman, both foreigners, signify the Church of the nations, which would receive Christ and be cleansed when Israel did not.
48. 4.28The people of Nazareth, angry at his claim, tried to throw Jesus from the hill; he passed through them because his time to suffer had not come, showing that his later suffering was voluntary.
49. 4.31Christ added signs to his teaching for the unbelieving, especially at Capernaum, taught openly, and spoke not as a prophet saying “Thus says the Lord” but as Lord of the law, the ruler and commander foretold by Isaiah.
50. 4.35Christ cast out demons by his own authority as God; in him human nature is crowned with victory over Satan, and he silenced the demons’ flattering confession.
51. 4.38Christ lodged with the poor Simon; his rebuke of the fever suggests a hostile power behind it; his touch healed because his flesh, united to the Word like fire in bronze, bore divine power, which we receive through the mystical blessing; he silenced the demons’ confession.
52. 5.2.1The lemma of Luke 5:2: two boats by the lake and the fishermen washing their nets.
53. 5.2.2Christ caught the apostles through their own trade and made them fishers of the world, as Jeremiah foretold; their successors in the churches are the hunters; his signs confirmed his words.
54. 5.4The miraculous catch assured the apostles that their preaching would gather the nations; the partners who helped them signify later interpreters, pastors and teachers who still draw in the net.
55. 5.8Peter, remembering his sins, feared to receive the pure Christ, rightly distinguishing holy from profane as the law taught.
56. 5.12The leper’s faith confessed Christ’s divine power; Christ’s will to cleanse was divine and his outstretched hand human, one Christ from both.
57. 5.14Christ forbade publicity to teach healers humility and sent the leper to the priests as a testimony that he surpasses Moses, who could only pray for Miriam; the two birds of Lev 14 depict the one Christ who died in the flesh and lives as God, not two sons, as a painter shows one Abraham in several scenes.
58. 5.17The power to heal in Christ was not borrowed but his own as God, unlike the intermittent gifts of the saints.
59. 5.18The paralytic, let down through the roof, was healed through the faith of those who carried him; Christ first forgave his sins, since God often uses sickness to discipline sinners and sin is the root of disease; by reading the scribes’ thoughts he showed himself God, who alone forgives sins.
60. 5.24The visible healing proved the unseen forgiveness; Christ forgives sins as God and has also given the apostles, filled with the Spirit, authority to forgive and retain sins.
61. 5.27The greedy tax collector Levi was called and saved by Christ, giving us hope that repentance saves; the Pharisees were not moved.
62. 5.30The Pharisees, who reject repentance, grumbled at Christ eating with sinners, but he came as physician, not judge; they also attacked the disciples for not fasting, though they themselves did not know God’s fast, and Christ, free of passion, fasted only to give us a pattern.
63. 5.34Christ’s coming is a wedding feast uniting human nature to him as bride; his disciples are sons of the bridechamber who fast after the Bridegroom is taken up.
64. 5.36The new wine and garment of the Gospel cannot be held by hearts bound to the old covenant and not renewed by the Spirit; Christ has filled us with these new goods.
65. 6.2The new covenant replaces the old, but the Pharisees, ignorant of Scripture, accused the disciples of breaking the sabbath by rubbing grain, though they themselves break bread on the sabbath.
66. 6.3If David, who broke the law by eating the holy bread, is admired as a saint, the disciples should not be condemned; the holy loaves foreshadow the eucharistic bread, and the twelve loaves the twelve apostles.
67. 6.6Christ followed his teaching with a sign, while the envious Pharisees watched; he set the man with the withered hand in the middle, perhaps to move them to pity.
68. 6.9Christ’s question traps the Pharisees: if good may be done on the sabbath, they slander him; if not, they accuse the Lawgiver; and the sabbath law itself was given for mercy, even to animals.
69. 6.11Instead of believing at the healing, the Pharisees in their envy plotted murder.
70. 6.12Christ’s night of prayer on the mountain teaches us to pray in secret, intently and patiently; it does not show the Son lacking anything, against the Arians, nor that a separate man prayed, against the followers of Nestorius, since the Word made flesh prayed as man for our example.
71. 6.13After praying, Christ chose and named the twelve apostles, the lights of the world, so that no one might usurp their office as false apostles do; the twelve loaves of the Presence, with frankincense and salt, prefigured them, and unlettered fishermen prevailed over Greek eloquence.
72. 6.17The apostles plundered Satan of the nations he had enslaved; they were appointed publicly before Jews and half-pagan crowds from Tyre and Sidon, and Christ’s signs, worked by his own power, showed that God had appointed them.
73. 6.20Luke’s “poor” differ from Matthew’s “poor in spirit” not by contradiction but by complement: here Christ blesses those free from love of money, as the apostles had to be, while the rebuke falls on those who set their hearts on wealth.
74. 6.21The hungry whom Christ blesses are those who for the apostolic work embrace voluntary poverty and its hardships, and those who weep are those who renounce worldly pleasures; both will be filled with spiritual goods.
75. 6.22Christ forewarned the apostles of hatred and persecution so that they would not lose heart, promising reward and the prophets’ crowns to those who share the prophets’ sufferings.
76. 6.24The woes on the rich warn against luxury as the beatitudes invite to poverty; yet the rich are not excluded from mercy, for they can make friends by almsgiving, as the rich man could have pitied Lazarus.
77. 6.27Love of enemies was necessary for the apostles, who would face countless persecutors, and is modelled by Christ’s prayer on the cross, Stephen and Paul; the weak can achieve it because Christ dwells in them through the Spirit.
78. 6.29The law was a tutor teaching equal retribution and abstention from wrong; Christ, the end of the law, gives the more perfect righteousness of bearing wrongs, offering the other cheek, despising possessions, and giving to all who ask.
79. 6.31Christ makes our own desire for kindness the measure of how we treat others, a law God writes on believing hearts; mercy forms in us the likeness of God.
80. 6.37Judging others springs from arrogance and condemns the judge, who usually shares the faults he condemns; we should pity and pray for the weak and examine our own sins, as the Psalmist did.
81. 6.38Almsgiving is rewarded by God with overflowing measure; the measure we use corresponds to the generosity of our sowing, and God accepts each according to what he has, as the law accepted offerings according to means.
82. 6.39The apostles had to be enlightened themselves so as not to be blind guides of the blind; disciples must not seek to surpass their teacher, and since Christ did not come to judge, neither should they.
83. 6.41Instead of judging others we should ask God to heal our own hearts; above all teachers must live what they teach, since one guilty of great sins (the beam) cannot rebuke small ones (the speck).
84. 6.42Only one clean of great sins may counsel others; teachers are to be discerned not by appearance but by their lives, as a tree by its fruit, for no good fruit grows on thorns.
85. 6.45Besides works, speech too reveals a man, since the mouth pours out what is stored in the heart, good or evil.
86. 6.46Lordship belongs to Christ alone as God, so to call him Lord without obeying him deserves punishment; obedience to his word brings freedom and sonship, and the obedient man is a house founded on rock that withstands temptation, the hearer only a house on sand.
87. 7.9.1The lemma of Luke 7:9: Christ’s praise of the centurion’s faith.
88. 7.9.2The centurion’s faith shows that the nations, readier to believe, have been called in place of unbelieving Israel, as the Psalms and Hosea foretold.
89. 7.11Christ came uncalled to Nain and raised a widow’s only son, a miracle that silences any who might belittle the healing of the centurion’s servant.
90. 7.14Christ touched the bier to show that his body, being the Word’s own flesh, is life-giving, as iron heated by fire does the work of fire.
91. 7.16The people praised Christ as a prophet now, but soon handed the destroyer of death over to death, not knowing that he destroyed death by his own resurrection.
92. 7.17John knew who Jesus was but feigned ignorance so that his envious disciples might be convinced; “the one who is coming” is Scripture’s title for the divine Lord, not a question about Christ’s descent to Hades.
93. 7.21Christ answered John’s messengers with many healings rather than a bare claim, so that the doubters might be persuaded by the deeds themselves.
94. 7.22Christ answered John by doing what the prophets foretold and warned those offended at him; praising John as more than a prophet, he set above him the one reborn by the Spirit and baptism, which from John’s time is seized by faith.
95. 7.25The crowds did not go out for a courtier but for a prophet; John was more than a prophet because he pointed Christ out and was himself foretold as the messenger preparing his way.
96. 7.28Believers reborn of God through the Spirit, given after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, are greater than John, who was born of a woman; the apostles received with the Spirit the power to forgive and retain sins.
97. 7.32The parable of the children who neither danced nor mourned describes the Jews, who neither lamented at the prophets’ warnings nor rejoiced at the proclamation of Christ and the apostles.
98. 7.33The Pharisees condemned both John’s austerity and Christ’s company with sinners; but Christ, sinless as God, could associate with sinners to save them, like the sun untouched by what it shines on, while weaker people should avoid bad company though they may admonish it.
99. 7.36Christ accepted the Pharisee’s invitation out of love for all, and the sinful woman came to him for forgiveness, standing behind him because she was not yet forgiven.
100. 8.4The prophets foretold that Christ would hide his words in parables; their mysteries were obscure to unbelievers but given to believers, since parables picture spiritual realities through sensible things.
101. 8.9The road is the hard heart trodden by Satan, the rock the rootless faith that flees in persecution, the thorns worldly cares; the good soil is the pure soul, bearing fruit in different degrees, and we should aim at the highest.
102. 8.21In calling those who hear and do God’s word his mother and brothers, Christ does not despise his mother, whom the law bids honour, but exalts his love for the obedient so as to draw all to obedience.
103. 8.22Christ slept in the storm so that the disciples, in real danger, might experience his power; calming the sea, he showed himself God and calmed their little faith; the storm also figures the Jews’ rage at the passion and the trials of the Church, which Christ, seeming asleep, ends when his people cry to him.
104. 8.26God allowed the Gergesene to be possessed so that we might learn the demons’ cruelty; the demons’ confession mixed madness and fear, they melted before Christ’s power, and he asked their name only so that they would confess their number.
105. 8.31Christ let the demons enter the pigs to show that they have no power even over pigs without his leave, still less over the faithful, and to reveal their savage malice.
106. 8.45Christ made known the healing of the woman with the flow of blood, not for glory but to strengthen Jairus’s hope; the power going out from him as his own shows that he is true God.
107. 8.55Read as a type, the dying daughter is the synagogue and the woman with the flow of blood the Church of the nations, healed first by faith after vain cures from the philosophers; when the nations are healed, Israel too will rise.
108. 9.1Christ crowned the apostles with his own power over demons and disease, which belongs to God alone, so that they might despoil Satan, as Isaiah and Habakkuk foretold, and so that their preaching might be confirmed by miracles for those slow to believe.
109. 9.3Christ sent the apostles without provisions so that, free of worldly care and trusting God, they might devote themselves wholly to preaching.
110. 9.4The apostles were to stay in one house, supported by those they taught, avoiding greed and restlessness; honour paid to them is paid to Christ, and from those who reject them they should accept nothing.
111. 9.12The disciples, already learning to care for the people, asked Christ to dismiss the crowds; he multiplied five loaves and two fish, looking to heaven to teach us to bless our food, and the miracle matches the manna as the work of the same divine power.
112. 9.18Christ’s prayer after the miracle of the loaves might have confused the disciples, so he drew from them, through Peter, the confession that he is the Christ of God—not one of many anointed ones but the Father’s own Son made flesh, one Christ, not two.
113. 9.21Christ forbade the disciples to proclaim him as Christ until the passion and resurrection had shown him to be God; after rising he sent them to preach to all nations and baptize.
114. 9.26Those ashamed of Christ will be shamed at his glorious coming, while the faithful will be rewarded; to encourage the disciples he showed three of them a foretaste of his glory, with Moses and Elijah, the law and prophets, speaking of his passion; Peter’s proposal of tents was untimely, since the passion was still to come.
115. 9.29The transfiguration gave a pattern of the resurrection body: not a change of human form but a clothing of the flesh with divine glory, as the righteous will shine in the kingdom.
116. 9.35The Father’s voice commanded the disciples to listen to Jesus, found alone, rather than to Moses and the prophets; their fear shows the need of the incarnate Mediator, without whom no one could bear God’s glory; the father of the possessed boy wrongly blamed the disciples.
117. 9.41Christ rebuked the father as faithless, since faith is required for healing and to blame the disciples was to blame the grace Christ had given them.
118. 9.42Christ cast out the spirit himself so that no one would think him powerless, and restored the boy, who had belonged to the demon, to his father.
119. 9.44Christ foretold his passion to the disciples privately so that, when it came, they would not doubt his divinity, while the crowd was not to know it in advance.
120. 9.45The disciples, though versed in the law, did not grasp the prophecy of the passion because of the veil over Israel’s heart, which only Christ removes.
121. 9.46Probably only one disciple fell into the vainglory of asking who was greatest, and Luke tactfully does not name him; Christ uprooted the passion at once by setting a child before them as the image of a guileless life free of ambition.
122. 9.48Since the reward for receiving the least is the same, rivalry for first place is pointless, and the humble are great; the would-be follower was turned away because he had not renounced worldly distractions, and the foxes and birds also signify the demons.
123. 9.58Foxes and birds in Scripture often mean demons, which leave no room for Christ in the heart; the man who wished first to bury his father and take leave of his household showed a divided mind, unlike the apostles who left all at once.
124. 10.1Because of the great number who would believe, Christ appointed seventy besides the twelve, prefigured by Moses’ seventy elders and by the twelve springs and seventy palms of Elim; he sent them as lambs among wolves, without provisions or delay, under his protection.
125. 10.17The miracles of the seventy confirmed their mission; Satan, once worshipped everywhere, fell like lightning and was put under the feet of believers, who received authority over the demons.
126. 10.21Christ’s thanksgiving to the Father does not make him less, since he rules with the Lord of heaven and earth; the Father revealed the mystery of the incarnation, hidden before the ages, to the guileless believers, but hid it from the worldly wise and from the scribes who rejected the Word.
127. 10.22“All things have been delivered to me” is said by the economy of the incarnate Son, who is Lord of all; that only the Father knows the Son and only the Son the Father shows their equality, for the Trinity alone knows itself and reveals itself through the Spirit.
128. 10.23Christ spoke privately to his disciples, his friends; their eyes are blessed not by mere sight but by enjoying what they saw: the Word made man to make us sons, Satan’s fall, and human nature victorious in him—what prophets and kings longed to see.
129. 10.25The lawyer, a supposed expert in the law, tried to trap Christ into speaking against Moses, borrowing his phrase “eternal life” in feigned respect; since he tested rather than sought to learn, he was referred to the law, whose promises were earthly.
130. 10.28The lawyer’s trap failed, and he fell into pride, thinking no one his neighbour; the commandments of love, extended by Christ to all mankind and to laying down one’s life, turn a Jew into a Christian, and he who loves no neighbour cannot love God.
131. 10.30Christ defines the neighbour by shared human nature, not race or virtue; the humble Samaritan, not the proud priest and Levite, fulfilled the law of love.
132. 10.34Allegorically the Samaritan is Christ, who carries fallen humanity in his own body to the inn of the Church open to all nations, leaving the two denarii of the two Testaments, from one God against Mani and Marcion, to the Church’s pastors; literally, mercy, not office or learning, makes one a neighbour.
133. 10.38Martha’s hospitality and Mary’s eagerness to learn are both to be imitated; Christ teaches missionaries not to seek ease in their hosts’ houses but to teach, and hosts to receive them gladly without excessive serving.
134. 11.1Christ, full of all that is the Father’s, needed nothing, yet prayed as man by the economy, as he ate and slept, to teach us to pray earnestly, alone and quietly, not for show like the Pharisees.
135. 11.2.1By letting us call God Father, Christ, the only Son free by nature, raises us slaves to the freedom of sons through rebirth by water and Spirit, having taken our poverty to give us his riches; calling God Father obliges us to live worthily of him.
136. 11.2.2“Hallowed be your name” asks not that God become holier but that we and all the world confess his holiness and become holy; “Your kingdom come” is fitting only for those ready to face Christ’s return in judgment; “Your will be done” asks that men on earth live like the angels and that sin be removed.
137. 11.3Though some read the “daily bread” spiritually, Christ meant real bread for the day, teaching his disciples a holy poverty that asks only for sufficiency; ἐπιούσιος means “sufficient.”
138. 11.4We may ask forgiveness only having forgiven others and turned from sin; “lead us not into temptation” teaches humility about our weakness, yet when temptation from heretics or passions comes we must fight with God’s help.
139. 11.5The parable of the friend at midnight teaches persevering prayer: God may delay because he knows what and when to give, and what is won without effort is despised; against the devil, our passions and heretics we must pray unceasingly.
140. 11.11God does not grant harmful requests any more than a father gives a stone to a child asking for it, but he gladly gives the good Spirit, that is spiritual grace, to those who ask.
141. 11.14Christ healed the dumb man without asking for faith, since the demon had bound his tongue; the envious scribes and Pharisees ascribed the miracle to Beelzebul, and others demanded a sign from heaven like those of Moses and Joshua.
142. 11.17Christ, knowing their thoughts, showed from common experience that a divided kingdom falls and Satan would not drive out his own, so he must expel demons by divine power; Hosea foretold the Pharisees’ slander.
143. 11.19The disciples, Jews by birth, cast out demons in Jesus’ name, so their faith condemns those who say Jesus himself works by Beelzebul.
144. 11.20The finger of God is the Holy Spirit, joined to the Son as the finger to the hand by consubstantiality though proceeding from the Father; one working shows one nature, against the Pneumatomachi; in Christ human nature received the kingdom by defeating Satan.
145. 11.21The parable of the strong man shows that Christ, the Word made man, overpowered the devil, who held God’s flocks captive, and through the apostles gave his spoils, the converted nations, to God.
146. 11.23Satan, who scatters what Christ gathers, cannot be helping him; Christ then explains by a parable why the Jews fell into such thoughts.
147. 11.24The unclean spirit expelled at the Exodus and the Passover returned sevenfold to the Jews when they rejected Christ, finding their hearts empty of godliness, so that their last state became worse than the first.
148. 11.29The sign of Jonah, Christ’s death and resurrection, was given the unbelieving generation only for its condemnation, for even the bribing of the guards did not move them to faith.
149. 11.31The queen of the south came far to hear Solomon’s earthly wisdom, while the Jews ignored Wisdom himself present among them; Christ says “here” rather than “in me” out of restraint; the barbarous Ninevites who repented at Jonah’s preaching will condemn them.
150. 11.33Against the charge that he worked miracles for applause, Christ compares himself to a lamp set on a stand: the Father gave him to dispel Satan’s darkness, and he shows himself so that men may believe that God became man, shining in the Church through preaching.
151. 11.37Christ dined with a Pharisee, as a physician visits the sick, to teach him; the Pharisee was offended that he did not wash before eating, a custom not in the law, which provided ritual washings only as types of Christian baptism.
152. 11.39Using the cup and dish at table, Christ taught that God, maker of body and soul, requires inner as well as outer cleanness, unlike the Pharisees, whitewashed tombs; the remedy he prescribes is almsgiving.
153. 11.41Christ prescribes almsgiving rather than other virtues because the Pharisees were ruled by love of money, as Isaiah described.
154. 11.42The Pharisees neglected justice and the love of God, which consist in fearing every transgression and judging impartially, while exacting tithes of herbs for gain.
155. 11.43By rebuking the Pharisees’ love of greetings and first seats, Christ teaches us to seek being rather than seeming; such hypocrites are unmarked tombs, fair outside and unclean within.
156. 11.45The lawyers took the rebuke of the Pharisees as an insult to themselves instead of welcoming correction, so Christ rebuked them more sharply.
157. 11.46The lawyers laid the law’s burdens on others without bearing them, unlike Christ’s gentle yoke; honouring the prophets their fathers killed, they condemned themselves and would kill Christ and his apostles; Zechariah slain between sanctuary and altar was, by tradition, John’s father, killed for testifying to the Virgin and her divine Son.
158. 11.51Zechariah was killed for fear of the king he foretold; the blood of all the prophets will be required of every murderous generation; the lawyers took away the key of knowledge—the law that leads to Christ and faith in him—by turning the people from believing, and then tried to trap him with questions.
159. 12.1.1The lemma of Luke 12:1: beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.
160. 12.1.2The leaven of the Pharisees is hypocrisy, useless because God sees all and every word and deed will be revealed at the judgment.
161. 12.4Christ calls his friends, those who love him wholeheartedly, to fear not those who kill only the body, since he died for us and God can raise the dead, while God’s punishment reaches the soul; his care for sparrows and numbered hairs assures us he will either spare us temptation or give strength to bear it.
162. 12.8To confess Christ rightly is to confess the Word as Lord by nature, equal to the Father, and his resurrection as man; such confessors he will acknowledge at his coming, while apostates and heretics he will deny; words spoken against the Son of Man in ignorance of his divinity can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit, the whole Godhead, cannot.
163. 12.11The Spirit gives confessors their words; Christ, King on Zion, refused to divide an inheritance because he came to teach detachment from earthly goods, dividing only the heavenly inheritance to those who obey.
164. 12.15Greed is a diabolical pit, called idolatry, and God punishes those who defraud the poor; nor does wealth lengthen life; Satan turns the rich from almsgiving to hoarding and forgetfulness of death, as the parable of the rich fool depicts.
165. 12.16The rich fool, though his whole country was fruitful, spoke like a poor man in his anxiety, hoarded for his belly instead of sharing as God’s steward, and promised himself long life, only to die that night.
166. 12.20The rich fool’s goods pass to others; life does not consist in possessions, and only the one rich toward God, in good works, has treasure in heaven.
167. 12.22Better than Israel’s boast in the law is our being taught by Christ himself; he forbids anxiety for food and clothing, since he who gave life and body will give the lesser things, and luxury leads away from God.
168. 12.24God, who feeds the birds and clothes the lilies more splendidly than Solomon, will provide for those made in his image; the apostles above all had to be free of such care; we should seek what saves the soul and the kingdom, not food and clothing, as the nations do.
169. 12.32The little flock is the saints, poor by choice, or few among unbelievers, or mankind compared with the countless angels, like the one sheep among a hundred; the Father who gives them the kingdom will surely give their bodily needs.
170. 12.33Selling possessions and giving alms is hard for the rich but profitable, exchanging temporary goods for an inviolable treasure in heaven.
171. 12.34Girded loins and burning lamps signify a mind ready for good works and awake to await the Lord, as Israel ate the Passover dressed for travel; the faithful must expect Christ’s return in glory, when he will serve them his spiritual gifts.
172. 12.38In his gentleness Christ gives repentance and blesses those found watching in the second or third watch, that is, in youth or old age, childhood not being called to account; since the day of the Lord comes like a thief, we must be found holy at any hour.
173. 12.41Peter asked whether the parable was for all; Christ’s answer shows that it concerns especially the Church’s teachers, stewards who must give each believer fitting spiritual food; faithful ones will be rewarded, while negligent or greedy shepherds share the lot of unbelievers, for much is required of those given much.
174. 12.49The fire Christ came to cast is the saving word and the working of the Spirit, which rekindles hearts grown cold, refines like a smelter’s fire as Malachi foretold, and cleanses like Isaiah’s coal; kindled first in the disciples, it was to spread through the world after his passion.
175. 12.51Christ is our peace, reconciling Jew and Gentile to God, yet he brings a sword: peace must be refused with unrepentant sinners and heretics, and even family ties broken for faith, while peace is kept with fellow believers.
176. 12.54Those who read the weather should have discerned the time of salvation foretold by the law, the prophets and the Song, and the coming fire of judgment, and should have been persuaded by Christ’s signs or by the coming fall of Jerusalem; we must settle with our accuser, Satan, through Christ’s grace before we reach the judge.
177. 13.1.1Only the lemma of Luke 13:1 survives here; the comment follows in the next passage.
178. 13.1.2The Galileans killed by Pilate were followers of Judas the Galilean; Jesus grants they were sinners but warns the people that unless they turn from rebellion they will perish likewise, and the tower of Siloam foreshadows the fall of the whole city.
179. 13.7The vinedresser who intercedes for the fig tree may be the angel set over the synagogue or the Son himself; the barren fig tree is Israel, visited three times (Moses, Joshua and the judges, the prophets) and found fruitless, its shadowy worship rejected by God.
180. 13.11Satan, by God’s permission, afflicts some with bodily illness to turn them to better things, and he caused bodily weakness through Adam’s fall; Christ, the incarnate Word, heals the bent woman with a word of divine authority and the touch of his own flesh.
181. 13.14Unlike Moses, who prayed for Miriam and could not heal her, Christ heals by his own power through his own flesh; the synagogue ruler, pretending zeal for the Sabbath, is really moved by envy, since God’s Sabbath rest was given for relief, and a word of healing is no forbidden work.
182. 13.15The synagogue ruler cares for ox and ass on the Sabbath but grudges a woman, a daughter of Abraham by faith, her healing, out of envy toward Christ.
183. 13.17Christ’s opponents were put to shame and silenced, while the crowds, helped by his signs, rejoiced.
184. 13.19The mustard seed is the gospel, small at first in Judea but grown to shelter all nations; the two silver trumpets of the law signify the old and new proclamation, which advance when Christ shines forth.
185. 13.21Like leaven, the divine word entering mind and heart transforms the whole person, body, soul and spirit, into its own holiness.
186. 13.23Christ turns an idle question about the number of the saved to what is useful, the way of salvation: right faith and a blameless life, entering by the narrow gate through toil and leaving the broad way of pleasure.
187. 13.25“I do not know you” means not ignorance but the absence of intimacy with Christ; those who ate and drank before him are Israel, whose sacrificial worship did not justify them without faith, and also Christians who hear the gospel and attend church but bear no fruit.
188. 13.29The believing gentiles, called last, will be first, and unbelieving Israel, called first, last; the second excerpt reads the hours of the vineyard parable as the ages of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and the prophets, and the gentiles called at the eleventh hour.
189. 13.31The Pharisees urge Jesus to leave out of envy; by saying “this fox,” not “that fox,” he points to the crafty Pharisee present rather than to Herod.
190. 13.32Christ will continue his works until he freely accepts his perfecting on the cross in Jerusalem, the killer of the prophets; leaving the city as unworthy, he returns at the triumphal entry when the crowds cry “Blessed is he who comes,” and then suffers for us.
191. 14.3.1Only the lemma of Luke 14:3 survives here; the comment follows in the next passage.
192. 14.3.2When the lawyers fall silent on whether healing on the Sabbath is lawful, Christ shows that the law, which lets them rescue an animal or a son, teaches love of neighbour, and heals the man with dropsy, who had stood silently before him.
193. 14.7Seeing guests seize the first places, Christ teaches humility: one who yields his place will be honoured by the host and by God, imitating Christ, who is gentle and lowly in heart.
194. 14.11Humility and pride are judged by God; hosts should invite the poor and maimed, who cannot repay, not to avoid honouring their own, but so that God may repay them in the life to come.
195. 14.15The guest who called blessed those who eat in the kingdom was not yet spiritual and imagined the saints’ rewards as bodily.
196. 14.16The man giving the great dinner is God the Father; the dinner is the festival of salvation in Christ in the last times, where he gives his flesh as food; the servant sent is Christ in his humanity, who invites Israel first to forgiveness, the Spirit, adoption and the kingdom, but they refuse.
197. 14.18Those who excused themselves for fields and marriage are the money-loving leaders of the Jewish synagogue; the servant’s sending refers to Christ’s incarnate economy, and the rulers’ refusal brought the master’s anger.
198. 14.21The angry master turns from the Jewish rulers to the common people of the streets and lanes, the spiritually blind and lame who believed in great numbers, as Acts shows.
199. 14.23Those in the roads and hedges are the gentiles, wild outside the city of the law; though faith is free, they needed an urgent call that imitates compulsion to break the devil’s chains, as God draws and bridles those who flee him.
200. 14.26“Hating” one’s family does not abolish natural affection, which Christ and Paul honour, but means using nature for salvation and choosing whatever agrees with following Christ; as Paul shows, life itself is to be kept or given up for Christ.
201. 14.28Like a builder counting the cost or a king weighing a war, believers must store up zeal before undertaking the Christian life, fighting the spiritual powers and passions in God’s strength; salt is the apostles’ teaching, without which the soul is insipid.
202. 15.1.1Only the lemma of Luke 15:1 survives here; the comment follows in the next passage.
203. 15.1.2Christ came to save, not judge, sinners, so the Pharisees’ murmuring against his meals with tax collectors is empty; the hundred sheep are the rational creation, the lost one is humankind on earth, which the chief shepherd sought while the ninety-nine angelic flocks remained safe in heaven, and he gathered us into the church.
204. 15.8The lost drachma shows we were made in the royal image and restored by Christ, the lamp lit by the Father’s Wisdom; the prodigal son can be the gentiles fed on Greek myths and revived in Christ; Cyril rejects reading the elder son as the angels or Israel, and finds the parable’s aim in rebuking those who grudge God’s mercy to repentant sinners, whom he restores with the first robe, which is Christ.
205. 15.16The prodigal starved for heavenly teaching; calling God Father requires a worthy life; the sinner who confesses is near to salvation; and the fatted calf is Christ, the spotless sacrifice foreordained before the world, shared by those who return from sin.
206. 16.1.1Only the lemma of Luke 16:1 survives here; the comment follows in the next passage.
207. 16.1.2Not every detail of a parable needs interpreting; the unjust steward teaches that the rich, entrusted with wealth as stewards of the poor, will lose it at death, and should use at least part of it to win friends among the poor who will receive them in the eternal dwellings.
208. 16.10Faithfulness in the “very little,” earthly wealth that is not truly ours and belongs to the poor, is the condition for receiving “the true” and “our own,” the divine gifts that restore God’s image in the soul.
209. 16.13.1A servant of two opposed masters cannot please both; so no one can serve God and mammon.
210. 16.13.2The money-loving Pharisees, like fierce diseases that resist medicine, scoffed at Christ’s counsel, so he sharply exposes them as hypocrites who seek the glory of the righteous without being so.
211. 16.15Hypocrites seek glory from men and crown themselves, but God, who knows the heart, honours the truly righteous and scatters men-pleasers; Christ then foretells what their disobedience will bring.
212. 16.16The law and prophets foretold Christ’s death and resurrection and Israel’s disobedience up to John; from John the kingdom is preached—justification by faith, cleansing in baptism, sanctification and adoption by the Spirit—and the eager force their way in.
213. 16.17The law and prophets cannot fail: they foretold Israel’s darkening and loss of intimacy with God, and the enlightenment and justification of believers in Christ; Christ came not to abolish but to fulfil the law and prophets.
214. 16.19The rich man and Lazarus is a parable, not an account of judgement already given, since judgement follows the resurrection at Christ’s return; it warns the rich, unable to give up everything, at least to help the poor, lest they share the nameless rich man’s fate, while Lazarus is carried to Abraham’s bosom.
215. 17.1.1Only the lemma of Luke 17:1 survives here; the comment follows in the next passage.
216. 17.1.2Stumbling blocks are of two kinds: heresies, which attack God’s glory and lead the world astray, and the everyday offences between brothers that arise from human weakness, not from God; here Christ means the latter, warning the offender while commanding patience with him.
217. 17.4We must forgive the brother who repents as often as he sins, as physicians treat the sick every time they fall ill, remembering our own weakness and bearing one another’s burdens.
218. 17.5Faith is the chief spiritual gift: our part is to begin to believe, God’s grace confirms it; the apostles, of little faith before the resurrection (the storm, Peter on the water, the flight at the arrest), received an increase of faith at Pentecost; faith like a mustard seed can move or stop anything, though God works wonders for our salvation, not for empty astonishment.
219. 17.7To heal the love of glory that can follow good works, Christ teaches that servants owe their master obedience as a debt and should claim no thanks; yet God in his generosity rewards his servants beyond their toil and calls them sons.
220. 17.12Christ again shows his glory to draw unbelieving Israel to faith, which leaves them without excuse at the judgement; the ten lepers, excluded by the law, beg him, calling him Master.
221. 17.13Christ, who became man to have mercy on all, sends the ten lepers to the priests as men already healed, to bear witness to the envious Jewish leaders; the nine Jews forget to give thanks, while the Samaritan foreigner returns to glorify God.
222. 17.20The Pharisees mockingly ask when the kingdom comes, expecting Christ’s death; he answers patiently that the kingdom of God is within them, lying in their power to attain by faith and virtue, and present among them in Christ himself.
223. 17.22Christ prepares the disciples for the tribulation before his return, when they would long for even one day of his company, for their later sufferings would exceed even the hostility he met from his enemies.
224. 17.24Christ’s second coming will be sudden and glorious like lightning, unlike his humble first coming; he must first suffer, abolish death and sin, ascend, and then come to judge; as in the days of Noah and Lot, the end will find people unprepared, so we must always keep watch.
225. 17.31At the end, those in ease and wealth must disregard their possessions, and those labouring for spiritual fruit must not turn back, lest they be like Lot’s wife; each must look only to saving his soul.
226. 17.33One saves his life by losing it: by crucifying the flesh and its passions, as Paul teaches, and by martyrdom; those who live for pleasure, or deny the faith to escape death, lose their souls.
227. 17.34The night is the unexpected judgement; of those in wealth or in poverty, the kind, compassionate and orthodox will be taken and the wicked left for punishment; the eagles gathering to the body are the saints, lifted above earthly things, whom the angels will gather to meet Christ.
228. 18.1We must pray constantly and without doubting, as the persistent widow did; Christians bear their own injuries without rancour, but may pray against heretics and persecutors who attack God’s glory and the preaching of the faith.
229. 18.8The question whether the Son of Man will find faith foretells apostasy in the last times; we may pray against heretics and against Satan, whom the incarnate Word cast out; the parable is not to be allegorized curiously, and “will he find faith?” signals that few will keep it.
230. 18.10The Pharisee is condemned for praising himself and measuring himself against the wicked; the tax collector, ashamed and confessing his sins like a patient to his physician, went home justified; the humble are exalted and the proud brought low.
231. 18.15Christ welcomes the infants as symbols of innocence: we are to be children in wickedness but mature in understanding, simple and guileless yet firm in the knowledge of God.
232. 18.18The ruler addresses Christ as “good” to test him; Christ replies that goodness belongs to God by nature, so the ruler should recognize him as God; against the Arians Cyril argues that the Son, consubstantial with the Father, is good as God, the good fruit and image of the good Father.
233. 18.20Christ disappoints the ruler’s hope of catching him rejecting Moses by pointing him to the commandments, which forbid adultery, murder and theft and command honour of parents; the ruler, an old wineskin, could not hold the new wine; the rich who will not give up everything may still win friends with their wealth.
234. 18.28The disciples, who left little, rightly ask what reward awaits those who gave up small possessions for the kingdom; in eagerness and obedience they rank with the rich who gave up much.
235. 18.29Christ solemnly promises that those who leave family and home for him, as converts often had to leave unbelieving relatives, receive far more now: the Spirit, the Father in heaven, brotherhood with Christ, divine wisdom as a spouse, and the heavenly Jerusalem as mother.
236. 18.31Christ foretold his passion so that the disciples would not stumble at it, showing that he foreknew it and accepted it willingly for the world’s salvation; by rising he planted his life in human bodies, all human nature returning in him to incorruption.
237. 18.34The apostles did not understand the prediction of the passion, as Peter’s protest shows, until the risen Christ opened their minds and the Spirit enlightened them to grasp the prophetic word.
238. 18.38The blind man calls Jesus Son of David yet approaches him as God, believing the Word took flesh from the Virgin, a rebuke to those who divide Christ into two; his persistent faith, undeterred by rebukes, brings him near to Christ, who heals both his bodily and spiritual blindness.
239. 19.2Zacchaeus, a greedy tax collector, was shown mercy by Christ, who saw the seed of salvation in him; his small stature and the crowd signify his sins, and the sycamore (“foolish fig”) signifies mortifying earthly members and following Christ’s cross, which seems folly to those who keep the law literally.
240. 19.5Christ, foreknowing Zacchaeus’s readiness to live a holy life, chooses to stay with him though he is still a tax collector, calling to repentance one eager for it.
241. 19.8Zacchaeus the money-lover at once becomes a lover of the poor, giving half his goods and repaying fourfold as the law and David’s judgement require.
242. 19.9Because Zacchaeus acted at once, not postponing his generosity, Christ grants him salvation today; he too is a son of Abraham, heir of the promised redemption.
243. 19.11The parable of the nobleman sketches the whole economy: the Word’s incarnation, his ascension to receive the kingdom, his return as king and judge; it corrects the crowd’s expectation that he would take the kingdom at once in Jerusalem; the Father gives the kingdom to the Son as incarnate.
244. 19.13The ten minas are the diverse spiritual gifts entrusted to Christ’s faithful servants; the citizens who hated the nobleman are those who rejected his kingship, as the prophets foretold he would be king and as they denied him before Pilate.
245. 19.15At Christ’s return the faithful ministers of the word, who multiplied the gifts entrusted to them, will be rewarded; Christ rejoices in the salvation of the lost as his food; teachers must not grow slack even if hearers are idle, since sowing is theirs and fruitfulness God’s; the lazy servant loses his gift, and those who rejected the king perished.
246. 19.35The colt, brought by two disciples from a village, is a type of the untamed gentiles brought to faith by prophets and apostles and tamed under Christ; the children with palms depict the new people from the nations.
247. 19.36As Christ rides into Jerusalem to the cross, the crowds and children acclaim him; “peace in heaven” means God is no longer at war with us, for the King of heaven has come down among his enemies.
248. 19.39The envious Pharisees object that Jesus, a man, accepts praise fit for God; he does not rebuke the children but says the stones would cry out, bearing witness to his own divine glory; he is not a man sharing another’s glory but the one Lord, God and Most High.
249. 19.41Though Israel was rejected for refusing God’s word, Christ, who wills all to be saved, wept over Jerusalem as he wept over Lazarus, showing by a human act God’s grief at fallen humanity; the things that make for peace were faith, obedience, and worship in spirit and truth through Christ.
250. 19.42The things that make for peace were hidden from Jerusalem because, with a veil over their hearts, they did not see Christ, the truth, in the types of the law; first of these is faith, which justifies the ungodly and unites them to God.
251. 19.44Those in Jerusalem who recognized Christ’s visitation escaped the city’s capture; his cleansing of the temple, as its Lord and Son of the Father, signals the end of the sacrificial worship of the law and teaches boldness for the church; the leaders sought to kill him but the people hung on his words.
252. 20.2The leaders question Christ’s authority as one not of Levi, but he is priest after the order of Melchizedek, whom Abraham honoured, and as God may change the law; they evade his question about John’s witness; the parable of the tenants sums up Israel’s history of rejecting the prophets and finally the Son, so the vineyard passes to the ministers of the new covenant.
253. 20.17Christ, the stone rejected by the Jewish teachers, became the cornerstone uniting Israel and the gentiles in one new man; he saves those joined in the corner and crushes those who stumble; he is the church’s foundation and the rock of confession on which heresies break; Matthew reports more fully, Luke more briefly.
254. 20.19Enraged that the parable was aimed at them, the Pharisees wished to kill Christ but feared the people more than God; instead of believing they sought pretexts to accuse him.
255. 20.20The spies, outwardly reasonable but wicked, approached Christ as a mere man, forgetting that God sees hidden counsels and that his signs showed him to be God as well as man.
256. 20.21Israel, subject to Rome for breaking God’s laws, tried to trap Christ into forbidding tribute; he answered, “Render to Caesar … and to God,” since God asks not money but faith, love and good works; they marvelled yet later falsely accused him before Pilate of forbidding tribute.
257. 20.27Against the Sadducees, who deny the resurrection, Christ teaches that the risen are like angels, needing no marriage, since marriage and childbearing were given after Adam’s fall to preserve the race; in the resurrection we shall have spiritual bodies held fast to God’s will by the Spirit.
258. 20.37God’s words at the bush, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” prove the resurrection, for he is the God of the living.
259. 20.40Christ’s question how David’s son is David’s Lord confounds the Pharisees, and Cyril puts it to the “new Pharisees” who divide Christ into two sons: seated at the Father’s right hand, consubstantial and equal with him, the Word made flesh is David’s Lord as God and his son according to the flesh, as Isaiah’s Emmanuel prophecy shows.
260. 20.46Christ warns the disciples against the scribes’ love of display and gain: their fine robes, proud looks, desire for praise, feigned character and babbling prayers.
261. 21.1The rich gave much from their abundance, but the poor widow, living on alms, gave her two coins, her very livelihood, lending to God from her poverty, and so surpassed them all.
262. 21.5Christ predicts the temple’s destruction by Rome after the cross; the disciples take it to mean the end of the age, so he speaks of false christs before his glorious second coming, which unlike his hidden first coming will be manifest, and of the signs of the end, interweaving the fall of Jerusalem.
263. 21.12Before Jerusalem’s fall and the end, the disciples were persecuted and brought before rulers, as Paul was, which became their glory of martyrdom; Christ promises them wisdom to answer and that none will truly perish, and foretells Jerusalem’s siege.
264. 21.25As creation begins to change, terror will grip the nations so that many die of fear; then the Son of Man will come in a cloud.
265. 21.27At his second coming Christ will come on the clouds in the great power and glory of the Godhead, as God always appears, to raise the dead and clothe them in incorruption; the judgement given by the Father to the Son is his by nature, as God from God, inseparable from the Father as light from the sun.
266. 21.29The fig tree’s leaves show the end is near but not yet; “this generation” means those of like character; Christ’s words cannot fail; we must stay watchful and sober; he taught daily in the temple, turning the types to spiritual worship, and lodged on the Mount of Olives as a pattern for us.
267. 22.1.1Only the lemma of Luke 22:1 survives here; the comment follows in the next passage.
268. 22.1.2The law gave the truth in shadows; now Christ, the truth, shows the reality; the Jews keep unleavened bread literally, but Christians keep the feast spiritually by putting away wickedness as leaven and fasting from evil, so as to recline with Christ in the heavenly Jerusalem.
269. 22.8The Passover means passing over, from the flesh, ignorance and death to self-control, knowledge of God and incorruption; Christ hid the place of the supper from Judas; the man with the water jar signifies baptism; the true Passover is fulfilled in the church, where Christ himself, the living bread, is offered; the sheaf of first fruits prefigures his resurrection on the third day and his ascension, and the seven weeks prefigure Pentecost.
270. 22.19Christ’s thanksgiving is a pattern for the church’s eucharistic prayer; since death came through the devil, the Word, life by nature, made our flesh his own and life-giving, as fire fills iron; eating his flesh and drinking his blood we have life in us; his indwelling in us by participation differs from his becoming flesh; God transforms the bread and wine on the holy tables into the life-giving energy of his flesh, so we must believe his words, “This is my body.”
271. 22.21Judas, though he shared Christ’s table and gentleness, thought to escape the notice of God and is exposed; Christ gave himself for us by the Father’s will, but Judas, who handed him over, will share the devil’s penalty.
272. 22.24Christ rebukes the disciples’ dispute over rank, a love of glory unlike the rulers of the nations; the Lord of glory served and washed their feet as our example; he speaks humanly before the cross when he promises them a kingdom and a place at his table, meaning not food but the first honours in his presence.
273. 22.31As a third help against pride, Christ teaches that we are nothing in ourselves and must boast only in his gifts; he warns Peter, the chief disciple, that Satan seeks to sift him as he tested Job; Satan is strong against human nature, but Christ has put him under the saints’ feet.
274. 22.32Christ prays for Peter as man, though God by nature; Peter, weak even untested, would have failed under Satan’s trial; Christ foretells his denial yet gives him hope, forgiving him before the sin and restoring him to strengthen his brothers.
275. 22.34After predicting Peter’s denial, Christ foretells the war that would fall on the Jews: the instruction to take purse and bag and buy a sword is addressed to every Jew, for their very life would be at stake, because he would be counted with the lawless and crucified, and what the prophets foretold would befall his killers.
276. 22.38The disciples misunderstood the saying about swords as a call to defend Jesus at his arrest; his reply, “It is enough,” is ironic, since no number of swords could withstand the coming war against the Jews.
277. 22.39In Gethsemane Christ’s grief was not fear of death, for he knew his death would save the world, but sorrow for Israel and Jerusalem, which he disclosed to the disciples; the divine nature of the Word cannot suffer grief, but the incarnate Word willed to enter the measures of humanity, as he hungered and grew weary.
278. 22.40Christ prays alone, as a pattern of quiet prayer, not needing help as the Father’s own power; his request to be spared the cup shows human reverence and grief at Israel’s guilt, yet he freely chose the cross; his human fear was real but mastered by the Word’s power, so that human nature, transformed first in him, might be healed and strengthened in us.
279. 22.47“The one called Judas, one of the twelve” exposes the traitor who made a kiss the sign of betrayal; Christ gave himself up of his own will, as John’s account of the soldiers falling back shows; his death was not forced by necessity, but, foreseeing his enemies’ hostility, he chose to suffer for the world’s salvation, with the Father’s approval.
280. 22.51Christ heals the servant’s ear; he did not reproach his enemies for delaying, but showed that his arrest was his own free choice at the appointed hour, the brief “hour of darkness” given to Satan and the Jews, after which he would rise and they would be punished.
281. 22.57Peter denied Christ three times, even under oath; Cyril rejects the view that he only denied that Jesus had become man, since Peter knew and confessed the Word made man as Son of God; his denial came from human weakness, foreknown but not caused by Christ, and his bitter tears of repentance brought forgiveness and restoration.
282. 22.63Heaven is amazed that the Lord of all endures being mocked and struck like one of us, giving us an example of perfect forbearance; he who searches hearts knew well who struck him.
283. 22.66The council asked whether Jesus was the Christ though they could have learned it from the law and prophets, and he had shown them before that they would neither believe nor answer; he then declares that the Son of Man will sit at God’s right hand with his flesh, and they seize on this as blasphemy, turning the way of salvation into their ruin.
284. 23.1.1Only the lemma of Luke 23:1 survives here; the comment follows in the next passage.
285. 23.1.2Those who handed Jesus to Pilate were themselves later handed over to the Roman armies; they falsely accused him of forbidding tribute to Caesar, though he had said, “Render to Caesar …”; Pilate, an idolater, three times declared him innocent, showing them more impious than he.
286. 23.18The crowd demanded Barabbas, denying the holy and righteous one for a murderer, and so shared his fate in their destruction; Jeremiah and Hosea foretold this outcry and its punishment.
287. 23.24Pilate granted the crowd’s demand, a victory that brought their ruin; Christ carrying his cross was prefigured by Isaac carrying the wood; he carried it himself and Simon of Cyrene carried it part of the way; the cross on his shoulder is the rule foretold by Isaiah, by which he reigns.
288. 23.27Christ tells the weeping women to weep for themselves and their children because of the coming war, in which childlessness and the shelter of mountains will be preferable; if the Romans so treated him, the fruitful green wood, they would burn barren Israel, the dry wood.
289. 23.33At the crucifixion Christ neither fully revealed nor wholly hid his Godhead, showing both divine and human activities; to refute the coming heresy that his body was a phantom or heavenly, he let his flesh suffer what is proper to it, the one and same Christ suffering as man and acting as God.
290. 23.35.1The rulers of the synagogue mocked the crucified Christ in vain, shaking their heads.
291. 23.35.2The mockers’ taunt refutes itself; the trilingual title proclaims the crucified one King of practical (Latin), natural (Greek) and theological (Hebrew) wisdom; the penitent thief confessed his sin and Christ’s innocence and won the lot of the saints.
292. 23.44The darkness at the crucifixion fulfilled Amos and signified the spiritual darkening of those who crucified the Lord of glory, while creation mourned its Master; after his passion Christ began to draw many to faith, the centurion and some of the Jews; the women came to care for his body, thinking he would remain dead.
293. 24.4.1Only the lemma of Luke 24:4 survives here; the comment follows in the next passage.
294. 24.4.2The women found the tomb empty and were perplexed.
295. 24.4.3A scholion on Christ’s last words: through him the souls of the justified no longer go to Hades but into God’s hands, as Stephen and Peter show; then, on the women at the tomb: for their love they saw angels who announced that the living one, who tasted death as the death of death, had risen, as angels had announced his birth.
296. 24.9The women, first to learn and announce the resurrection, are freed from the reproach of Eve and the curse of painful childbirth; the apostles at first dismissed their report as nonsense, though John records that the beloved disciple saw and believed.
297. 24.13The two disciples on the road to Emmaus, grieving and not recognizing Jesus, disbelieved the women’s report and Peter’s inference from the empty linen cloths; they were of the seventy, Cleopas’s companion being another Simon.
298. 24.27Christ opened the law and prophets to the Emmaus disciples, since the prophecies prepared faith in the resurrection; once the word had moved their hearts, he made himself known in the breaking of bread and vanished, for after the resurrection only the renewed and incorruptible can be with him, as Mary was forbidden to touch him.
299. 24.33The commentator reports a view that the Emmaus disciples returned at once to Jerusalem but that Luke compresses events, passing over the days between the resurrection and the ascension, in which the appearance to Simon and the events in Galilee recorded by Matthew took place.
300. 24.36The risen Christ appears to the longing apostles, calms their fear with “Peace to you,” shows he is God by knowing their thoughts, and proves the same body that suffered has risen by showing his wounds, letting them touch him and eating fish; the “spiritual body” is one subject to the Spirit, not a non-bodily one, and heretical denials of bodily resurrection are refuted.
301. 24.45The risen Christ opened the disciples’ minds to the prophecies of his passion, promised them the Spirit foretold by Joel and baptism in the Spirit beyond John’s water, and ascended to sit with the Father in his united flesh; the commentary ends with a doxology to the incarnate Word who suffered, rose, ascended and will come to judge.