Tag: Christian Life

True Christians are known and judged according to their works

Of the seed of the tares, who stand mingled in the Church.  When the times of the harvest are filled up, the tares that have sprung up are separated from the fruit, because God had not sent them.  The husbandman separates all those collected tares.  The law is our field; whoever does good in it, assuredly the Ruler Himself will afford a true repose, for the tares are burned with fire.  If, therefore, you think that under one they are delaying, you are wrong.  I designate you as barren Christians; cursed was the fig-tree without fruit in the word of the Lord, and immediately it withered away.  Ye do not works; ye prepare no gift for the treasury, and yet ye thus vainly think to deserve well of the Lord.

Commodianus
Instructions of Commodianus
Chapter LV

We are martyrs when we die to our own desires

Many are the martyrdoms which are made without shedding of blood.  Not to desire other men’s goods; to wish to have the benefit of martyrdom; to bridle the tongue, thou oughtest to make thyself humble; not willingly to use force, nor to return force used against thee, thou wilt be a patient mind, understand that thou art a martyr.

Commodianus
Instructions of Commodianus
Chapter XLVIII

God is everywhere present and fills all things

Thou errest, O man, and art deceived; for from where is God afar off, when all things heavenly and earthly, and which are beyond this province of the universe, are known to God, are full of God?  Everywhere He is not only very near to us, but He is infused into us. Therefore once more look upon the sun:  it is fixed fast in the heaven, yet it is diffused over all lands equally; present everywhere, it is associated and mingled with all things; its brightness is never violated.  How much more God, who has made all things, and looks upon all things, from whom there can be nothing secret, is present in the darkness, is present in our thoughts, as if in the deep darkness.  Not only do we act in Him, but also, I had almost said, we live with Him.

Minucius Felix
Octavius
Chapter XXXII

Let’s repay Christ with our patience

Let us, on the other hand, love the patience of God, the patience of Christ; let us repay to Him the patience which He has paid down for us! Let us offer to Him the patience of the spirit, the patience of the flesh, believing as we do in the resurrection of flesh and spirit.

Tertullian
On Patience
Chapter XVI

Ascetic struggle aids in prayer

In the first place, it is the affliction of the flesh—a victim able to appease the Lord by means of the sacrifice of humiliation—in making a libation to the Lord of sordid raiment, together with scantiness of food, content with simple diet and the pure drink of water in conjoining fasts to all this; in inuring herself to sackcloth and ashes.  This bodily patience adds a grace to our prayers for good, a strength to our prayers against evil; this opens the ears of Christ our God, dissipates severity, elicits clemency.

…That which springs from a virtue of the mind is perfected in the flesh; and, finally, by the patience of the flesh, does battle under persecution.

Tertullian 
On Patience
Chapter XIII

Every sin is a form of impatience

These (I mention) as the principal delinquencies in the sight of the Lord, for, to speak compendiously, every sin is ascribable to impatience. “Evil” is “impatience of good.” None immodest is not impatient of modesty; dishonest of honesty; impious of piety; unquiet of quietness.

Tertullian 
On Patience
Chapter V