“God,” says Saint Paul in the night office for this Sunday, “hath spoken to us by His Son, Whom He hath appointed heir of all things ... Who being the brightness of His glory and the figure of His substance and upholding all things by the word of His power, making purgation of sins sitteth on the right hand of the Majesty on High ... To which of the angels hath He said at any time: Thou art My Son, today have I begotten Thee! ... And again, when He bringeth the First begotten into the world He saith: And let all the angels of God adore Him” (First Nocturn).
Saint Athanasius remarks that the Apostle affirms the superiority of Christ to the angels, by way of showing the difference between the nature of the Son and that of His creatures (Second Nocturn). Similarly the Mass for today brings out the Divinity of Our Blessed Lord.
He is God because He utters things hidden in God and unknown to the world (Gospel). His word, compared by Him to a tiny seed cast into the field of the world, and to a little leaven in the lump, is divine because it calms our passions and brings forth in our hearts those marvels of faith, hope, and charity of which we read in the Epistle.
Of the Church, stirred to greater effort by Our Lord’s words, we have an excellent figure in the three measures of meal, the whole of which was leavened by the expanding force of the yeast (Gospel), and in the mustard tree, the largest of its kind, where the birds of the air gladly come for shelter.
We must constantly meditate on Our Lord’s doctrine, that like leaven it may pervade and transform our hearts, and like the mustard tree may spread abroad its fruits of holiness in those of our neighbour.
Epistle Commentary
The Church continues reading Saint Paul’s Epistles, as during the whole time after the Epiphany, this Epistle to the Thessalonians being full of the thought of Christ’s Second Coming. Having appeared in lowliness He will return in glory. The Apostle congratulates his readers on their unshaken hope in Him Who at the Day of Judgment is to deliver them from the divine wrath. Let them, let us with confidence, await the Son of God Who will give to each one according to his works.
Gospel Commentary
May God’s Kingdom, to which Christ its King has called us, be extended even more and more.
“The man who sows,” says Saint Jerome, “is understood by most to be Our Redeemer because He sows in the hearts of believers. The preaching of the Gospel is the humblest of all arts, since it has for its message a Man-God, a Christ Who died, and the scandal of the Cross.
If we compare such teaching with the doctrine and writings of philosophers, with the brilliance of their eloquence and the able composition of their discourse, we shall see how the good grain of the Gospel is the least, as compared with all other seeds. Yet these, when they spring up show no vigor or power of resistance, while on the other hand, we see the Gospels, although hardly sown either in the heart of a believer or in the world at large, growing like a tree so that the birds of the airs (by which must be understood the souls of believers or powers of the world pressed into the service of God) come to dwell among its branches (Third Nocturn).