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Wednesday of Easter week

Commentary of the day
Saint Gregory the Great (c.540-604), Pope, Doctor of the Church
Homily 23 on the Gospel (©Cistercian Studies series)

"Their eyes were prevented from recognizing him"

You have heard, dearly beloved, that the Lord appeared to two disciples while they were walking on the road. They were talking about him, even though they did not believe. He did not show them an appearance which they could recognize, but the Lord behaved before the eyes of their bodies in accord with what was going on inwardly before the eyes of their hearts. Within themselves they were both loving and doubting; and the Lord was present to them out. outwardly, but did not show them who he was. He manifested his presence to them as they talked about him, but hid the appearance by which they would recognize him on account of their doubts. He did indeed talk with them, reproving the hardness of their understanding and opening to them the mysteries of holy scripture concerning himself: and yet, because as an object of faith he was still a stranger to their hearts, he made a pretense of going on farther... The perfect Truth did nothing deceitful; he was only manifesting himself to them materially as they were thinking of him.

It had to be shown whether those who did not as yet love him as God were at least able to love him as a stranger. Since those with whom Truth was walking couldn't be alien to charity, they invited him, a stranger, to be their guest. But why do I say they invited him, when it is written that they compelled him? We must surely infer from this example that strangers are not only to be invited to be guests but even forcibly persuaded.

They set the table, brought food, and recognized in the breaking of the bread the God they did not know as he explained the sacred scriptures. They were not enlightened by hearing God's commandments, but by putting them into practice.

'I had treated you with contempt, Demetrian, as you railed with sacrilegious mouth against God, who is one and true, and frequently cried out with impious words, thinking it more fitting and better to ignore with silence the ignorance of a man in error than to provoke with speech the fury of a man in madness. And I did not do this without the authority of the divine teaching, since it is written: "Do not say anything in the ears of the foolish, lest when he hears he may mock your wise words," and again: "Do not answer the foolish according to his folly, lest you become like him," and let us be admonished to keep within our own conscience what is holy, and not to expose it to be trampled upon by swine and dogs, for the Lord speaks saying: "Do not give that which is holy to the dogs, and do not cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet." For when you came to me often rather with an eagerness to contradict than with a wish to learn, and you preferred impudently to insist on your own views, shouting with noisy words, rather than to listen patiently to our own, it seemed foolish to contend with you, since it would be an easier and lighter task to restrain the angry waves of a turbulent sea by shouting than to check your madness by arguments. Surely it is a futile labor and of no effect to offer light to someone blind, words to a deaf person, and wisdom to a brute, since a brute cannot understand, and a blind person cannot admit light, and one deaf cannot hear.'

St. Cyprian of Carthage