Книга пророка Варуха, Глава 3, стих 24. Толкования стиха

THE WORLD WAS GIVEN TO ALL. AMBROSE: The elements have been given to all for their common use. The splendid ornaments of the world are enjoyed by the rich and poor alike. Are perhaps the gilded ceilings of the palaces of the wealthy more beautiful than the glistening stars that gild the sky? Are perhaps the estates of the rich more expansive than the surface of the earth? For this is what was said to those who were adding house to house, villa to villa: “Will you alone dwell over the earth?” You, though poor, have a larger house in which when you raise your voice it is heard and listened to. “O Israel,” says the prophet, “how great is the house of God and how vast the place of his possession! It is large and has no end, immense and high.” The house of God belongs to the rich and poor alike; it is difficult, however, for the rich to enter into the kingdom of heaven. HEXAMERON 9.8.52.

THE CHURCH GROWS TOWARD PERFECTION. OLYMPIODORUS OF ALEXANDRIA: This treats of the church and of the nature of the mystery, since now “our knowledge is imperfect,” and the perfection of knowledge has not yet arrived. He refers to compassion as territory, which increases as one grows toward the good. FRAGMENTS ON BARUCH 3.24.

WHEN CHRIST BECAME INCARNATE. FULGENTIUS OF RUSPE: Not the Trinity but Christ, who is God above all things, who ascended to heaven in the flesh under the gaze of the disciples and who will come from heaven in the flesh. He who did not leave heaven when he took on flesh on earth and did not leave his own on earth when he ascended into heaven in the flesh, because of his divinity. Indeed, he promised this, saying, “See, I am with you all days, until the end of the world.” He is that God, therefore, who according to the prophecy of blessed Jeremiah “is great and without limits, sublime and immense” in the divine nature and of whom a little later the same prophet says, “He is our God, and no other can be compared with him. He has searched every way of knowledge and has given it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved.” It is this God who made himself for a little while lower than the angels, taking on the nature of a servant, as the same prophet says, “After these things he appeared on the earth and lived among human beings.” The faithless thought he was a mortal and changeable human being, but he is precisely the same one that those who truly believe in him will see—now that their hearts have been cleansed from sin—as the immortal and unchangeable God according to his own nature. LETTERS 17.10.18.