Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram, Vol. 11: Prolegomena (prefaces and canons)
And this is the cause why He wills that holy Scripture and the oracles of the Prophets be assiduously preached not only to Theologians, but to all the faithful. For all human preaching and sermon, unless it rests on the divine, namely on the word of God and the Prophets (who were the heralds of God), and sets and expounds this to the people, is cold, theatrical and vain, as St. Gregory shows, book 18 of the Morals, chapter 14. All the Fathers saw this, the ancient teachers and heralds of the Church: St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, Jerome, Cyprian, Athanasius, Chrysostom and the rest, who spent almost all their time and all their labor on the Prophets and holy Scripture, and from them gave fervent and effective homilies, treatises and sermons to the people, by which they removed vices and implanted Christian and holy morals. Certainly St. Thomas, author and prince of Scholastic Theology, applied himself earnestly to holy Scripture and the Prophets, and thence became an equally distinguished preacher and doctor, and left to posterity learned commentaries on the Prophets.
Moreover the Prophets first teach and move the preacher himself, that he in turn may teach and move the people by the same, which is surely an effective and the best way of preaching. For who will give to another what he has not in himself? Who, himself cold, will inflame the cold? Who, having a hard or earthly heart, will soften others? “If you would have me weep, you must first weep yourself,” says the Poet. For this reason the ancient Saints were ever wont to read the Prophets, to imbue not so much others as themselves with wisdom, virtue and the divine spirit. Read the Lives of the Fathers: you will find that the Antonys, Hilarions, and as many as attained to eminent holiness read hardly anything else than holy Scripture, and especially the Prophets, and from them shaped their lives to their norm, and to the law and will of God expressed in them, and so climbed to the summit of perfection. “For all Scripture,” says the Apostle, and through the Apostle the Holy Ghost, 2 Timothy 3:16, “inspired of God, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice: that the man of God may be perfect, furnished to every good work.” Namely, God in these His Books teaches us to despise earthly things, to love heavenly, to loathe honors and the pomps of the world as smoke straightway vanishing, to esteem as vain wealth, riches, and whatever flatters under the sun. “Vanity of vanities,” says the Ecclesiastes of God, “and all is vanity,” except to love God and serve Him alone. For nothing is great, high, sublime in the world, but God, and the mind fixed on God. “I will lift thee up,” says Isaias, chapter 58, verse 14, “above the high places of the earth, that dwelling in heaven thou mayest wonder at nothing earthly, desire nothing; and will feed thee with the inheritance of Jacob thy father,” that, savoring and tasting heavenly things, you may despise this point of earth, which among mortals is divided with iron and fire; that by the hope of eternal goods, with a lofty mind, you may rise above both prosperity and adversity, and for the love of God shun no labor, no discipline, no danger, no death or martyrdom, but seek them; that, enrolled in the company of Angels, as a fellow-citizen of the Saints and a member of the household of God, you may live as an Angel among men, and emulate on earth the heavenly life of the Angels; nay, may rouse and urge others to a share in such great goods; and may strive to teach, take care of, and lead to salvation and eternal happiness souls, especially of the poor and unlearned, redeemed by the blood of Christ; for “the poor have the gospel preached to them,” says Christ. Finally, that you may keep the memory of the brevity of life, of the last things, and of eternity, for yourself and others always before your eyes, and live not for this modest and slight time, but for ETERNITY, and say with Paul: “That which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory;” that your life may be nothing else than continual love, continual praise of God, so that like the Seraphim you may ceaselessly, in holy voice and holy words, praise and celebrate God, and incite and impel all others to the worship, love and praise of God. For this is all that is good.
“Virtue,” says St. Chrysostom, homily 72 to the People, “is to despise all human things, and at all hours to think of things to come, to gape after none of the present, but to know that all human things are a shadow and a dream. Virtue makes a man as it were dead to the things of this life; but to live and work for spiritual things alone, as Paul also said: And I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me.” And by this serious thought, as by a sharp goad, may you rouse and spur yourself daily, not to common and ordinary works, but to arduous, rare and heroic works of the loftier virtues, and especially to the full victory over yourself and your passions and all things, to the entire resignation of your soul to God and God’s will, to an ardent zeal for promoting the divine glory, and therefore in your actions look always to the eyes not of men but of God, who ever beholds you; revere and seek in all your work not display, not outward show, not vain parade of your affairs, not the applause of the fickle crowd; but the favor and honor of God and the Angels. For we are made a spectacle to God, to Angels and to men. Strive therefore to please God alone in all things, and serve Him with a pure conscience in holiness and justice before Him, all the days of your life: He will bring it about that you please both Angels and men. For what? The figure of this world passeth away, and without Christ all that we live is vain. The very vicissitude of all things, their very fleetingness, death itself, we behold daily before our eyes; while we see now this man, now that, snatched from our side and dying; nay, we daily feel death dwelling in our own vitals, and touch it with the hand. For what are the continual rheums of phlegm, and so many flowings of humors and impurities, but the beginning of corruption, the inchoation of death? which unceasingly cry out to us with silent voice: Live for God, live for Eternity. This cause once impelled wise and religious men, and still impels them, to the frequent, diligent and assiduous reading and meditation of holy Scripture and the Prophets. For we see in the Clergy, in monasteries, in societies, in colleges, wherever it has flourished and flourishes, there likewise has flourished and flourishes divine wisdom, this spirit, these minds; where it languished, there likewise heavenly wisdom and spirit languished, and men vanished away in their human studies and conceits, nay, in worldly and various desires, ambitions, vexations, murmurings, grovelling on the ground, lukewarm, passing and having passed a restless, troublesome, abject and wretched life, nay an irreligious and dangerous one.
Wherefore St. Jerome wonderfully extols Pammachius, son-in-law of St. Paula, because, his wife being dead, he professed himself a monk, gave his wealth to the poor, turned his house into a church (which still exists, and is the Church of Saints John and Paul, near the house and temple of St. Gregory; for there in the Tribune we see St. Pammachius depicted in the habit of a monk with this inscription: “St. Pammachius, founder of this Church”), and consecrated himself wholly to God: and he exhorts him to the reading and study of the Prophets, that in this way he may ascend to the summit of Christian perfection. “To us,” he says, “after the sleep and rest of Paulina (she was the daughter of St. Paula, wife of Pammachius), the Church has borne Pammachius a monk, a posthumous child, a patrician by the nobility of his father and of his wife, rich in alms, lofty in humility. In our times Rome possesses what the world knew not before. Then wise, powerful, noble Christians were rare: now there are many monks wise, powerful, noble, than all of whom my Pammachius is wiser, more powerful, nobler, great among the great, first among the first, general of the monks, almsgiver of the poor, and candidate of the needy, so he hastens to heaven.” And further on: “Drink daily the marrow of the Prophets, thou initiate of Christ, fellow-initiate of the patriarchs.” He soon adds the fruit: “Whether thou read, or write, or watch, or sleep, let love ever sound a trumpet in thy ears; let this clarion rouse thy soul; frenzied with this love, seek in thy bed him whom thy soul desireth, and say confidently: I sleep, and my heart watcheth: and when thou hast found him and held him, let him not go.”
The third office of the Prophets, and their proper one, was to prophesy and foretell things to come, both to the Jews and to the Gentiles, especially to the Church and Christians. For Christ is the end of the law and the Prophets, and the law and the Prophets aim at Christ as at a mark. Truly says Theodoret, On the Cure of Greek Affections: “As the other paths from villages and fields meet in the royal road, so the Prophets (who also are ways to heaven and salvation) have shown to believers that this Christ is the way.” For Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.