|
HOME | GREEK LANGUAGE | LIBRARIES | BLOG | HELP | SEARCH | FREEWARE | BOOKSTORE |
|
|
Translated by W. Curtis.
Origen Resources OnLine & in Print
|
104 Pages
Page 25
Now one of these excellences in the strictest sense according to the divine word is love for one's neighbor, and this accordingly we are compelled to think of as possessed in a far higher degree by saints already at rest than by those who are in human weakness and wrestle on along with the weaker. It is not only here that "if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it and if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it" in the experience of those who love their brethren, for it beseems the love also of those who are beyond the present life to say "I have anxiety for all the churches:
Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble and I do not burn?" Especially when Christ avows that according as such one of the saints may be weak, He is weak in like manner, and in prison and naked and a stranger and hungry and athirst. For who that reads the gospel is ignorant that Christ, in taking on himself whatever befalls believers, counts their sufferings His own?
And if angels of God came to Jesus and ministered to Him, and if we are not to think of the ministry of the angels to Jesus as having been limited to the brief space of His bodily sojourn among men while He was still in the midst of believers not as one that reclined at table but as one that ministered, how many angels, I wonder, must now be ministering to Jesus when He would "bring together the Children of Israel one by one" and gather them from the dispersion, saving those who fear God and call upon Him, and must be cooperating more than the apostles in the increase and enlargement of the church! Thus in John certain angels are spoken of in the Apocalypse as actually presiding over the churches.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/origen/prayer.asp?pg=25
