The Wisdom of the Saints about Jesus Christ (part 5)

Beloved: If you invoke as Father Him Who judges impartially according to each one’s works, conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your sojourning, realizing that you were ransomed from your futile conduct, handed on by your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless lamb. He was known before the foundation of the world but revealed in the final time for you, who through Him believe in God Who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.” St. Peter the Apostle (1st century)

Jesus Christ, our Salvation, the High Priest of our offerings, the Protector and Helper of our weakness. Through Him we fix our gaze on the heights of heaven. In Him we see mirrored God’s pure and transcendent Face.” Pope St. Clement of Rome (1st century)

‘For with a celerity unsurpassable, and a benevolence to which we have ready access, the divine power, casting its radiance on the earth, has filled the universe with the seed of salvation. For it was not without divine care that so great a work was accomplished in so brief a space by the Lord, Who, though despised as to appearance, was in reality adored, the expiator of sin, the Saviour, the clement, the Divine Word, He that is truly most manifest deity, He that is made equal to the Lord of the universe, because He was His Son, and the Word was in God…assuming the character of man, and fashioning Himself in flesh, He enacted the drama of human salvation: for He was a true champion and a fellow-champion with the creature….Whence He was and what He was, He showed by what He taught and exhibited, manifesting Himself as the Herald of the Covenant, the Reconciler, our Saviour, the Word, the Fount of Life, the Giver of peace, diffused over the whole face of the earth; by Whom, so to speak, the universe has already become an ocean of blessing.” St. Clement of Alexandria (2nd-3rd centuries)

‘Thy kingdom come.’…Christ Himself, dearest brothers, is the kingdom of God, Whom we day by day desire to come, Whose advent we crave to be quickly manifested to us. For since He Himself is the Resurrection, because in Him we rise again, so also the kingdom of God may be understood to be Himself, because in Him we shall reign.” St. Cyprian of Carthage (3rd century)

Jonah, it says, fled from the face of God. Did not the Lord, in order to bear the face and the form of man, flee the face and form of His own divinity?…The Lord fled from Himself into a man, in order to escape the notice of the world, in order to overcome the devil…There is no place where God, Who is everywhere, can flee from Himself. But Christ fled from the face of divinity not by place but by appearance, and He took refuge in all the features of our servitude…” St. Peter Chrysologus (5th century, Doctor of the Church)

In truth all the divine elements bore witness that their creator had come. Indeed, to speak of them in a human way, the heavens knew that He was God because they immediately sent forth a star; the sea knew Him because it allowed Him to walk upon it; the earth knew Him because it trembled when He died; the sun knew Him because it hid the rays of its light; the stones and walls of houses knew Him because they were broken at the time of His death; the lower world recognized Him because it gave up the dead it was holding; and yet some hearts remained full of unbelief, and did not know that He was God, although all the dumb elements perceived Him as Lord.” Pope St. Gregory the Great (6th century, Doctor of the Church)

He is the Word Who uttered the word which created all things; and He still upholds all things by His word.” St. Peter Julian Eymard (19th century)

Oh, may the Master reveal to you His divine presence, it is so pleasant and sweet, it gives so much strength to the soul; to believe that God loves us to the point of living in us, to become the Companion of our exile, our Confidant, our Friend at every moment.” St. Elizabeth of the Trinity (19th-20th centuries)

For justice to be done, the Redeemer of man had to be both God and man: He had to be a man, for otherwise He could not have acted in our name as representing us; He had also to be God, for otherwise He could not have paid the infinite debt owed to God by human sin.” Ven. Fulton Sheen (19th– 20th centuries)

Through the prayer of Christ to which we give voice, our day is sanctified, our activities transformed, our actions made holy. We pray the same psalms that Jesus prayed and come into personal contact with Him – the Person to Whom all Scripture points, the goal to which all history is directed.” Pope St. John Paul II (20th-21st centuries)