Ambrose of Milan

In his own words on Lamentations

• Lamentations 1:16-20

  Repentance came by John, grace by Christ. He, as the Lord, gives the one; the other is proclaimed, as it were, by the servant. The church, then, keeps both that it may attain to grace and not cast away repentance, for grace is the gift of One who confers it; repentance is the remedy of the sinner.Jeremiah knew that penitence was a great remedy, which he in his Lamentations took up for Jerusalem and brings forward Jerusalem itself as repenting when he says, "She wept sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks, nor is there one to comfort her of all who love her. The ways of Zion do mourn." And he says further, "For these things I weep, my eyes have grown dim with weeping, because he who used to comfort me is gone far from me." We notice that he thought this the bitterest addition to his woes, that he who used to comfort the mourner was gone far from him. How, then, can you take away the very comfort by refusing to repentance the hope of forgiveness? But let those who repent learn how they ought to carry it out, with what zeal, with what affection, with what intention of mind, with what shaking of the inmost bowels, with what conversion of heart: "Behold," he says, "O Lord, that I am in distress; my bowels are troubled by my weeping; my heart is turned within me." Here you recognize the intention of the soul, the faithfulness of the mind, the disposition of the body: "The elders of the daughters of Zion sat," he says, "on the ground, they put dust on their heads, they girded themselves with haircloth, the princes hung their heads to the ground, the virgins of Jerusalem fainted with weeping, my eyes grew dim, my bowels were troubled, my glory was poured on the earth." So, too, did the people of Nineveh mourn and escaped the destruction of their city. Such is the remedial power of repentance, that God seems because of it to change his intention. To escape is, then, in your own power; the Lord wants to be asked, he wants people to hope in him, he wants supplication to be made to him. You are a human being, and you want to be asked to forgive, and you think that God will pardon you without asking him? The Lord wept over Jerusalem, that, inasmuch as it would not weep itself, it might obtain forgiveness through the tears of the Lord. He wills that we should weep in order that we may escape, as you find it in the Gospel: "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves."

  Concerning Repentance 2.6.44-49

• Lamentations 3:31-33

  Is it not evident that the Lord Jesus is angry with us when we sin in order that he may convert us through fear of his indignation? His indignation, then, is not the carrying out of vengeance but rather the working out of forgiveness, for these are his words: "If you shall turn and lament, you shall be saved." He waits for our lamentations here, that is, in time, that he may spare us those that shall be eternal. He waits for our tears that he may pour forth his goodness. So in the Gospel, having pity on the tears of the widow, he raised her son. He waits for our conversion that he may himself restore us to grace, which would have continued with us had no fall overtaken us. But he is angry because we have by our sins incurred guilt in order that we may be humbled; we are humbled in order that we may be found worthy rather of pity than of punishment.Jeremiah, too, may certainly teach us this when he says, "For the Lord will not cast off forever; for after he has humbled, he will have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies, he who has not humbled from his whole heart or cast off the children of humankind." This passage we certainly find in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and from it, and from what follows, we note that the Lord humbles all the prisoners of the earth under his feet, in order that we may escape his judgment. But the one who does not bring down the sinner even to the earth with his whole heart is also the one who raises the poor even from the dust and the needy from the dunghill. For he does not wholeheartedly bring down those he intends to forgive. But if he does not wholeheartedly bring down every sinner, how much less does he wholeheartedly bring down someone who has not sinned with his whole heart! For as he said of the Jews, "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me," so perhaps he may say of some of the fallen, "They denied me with their lips, but in their heart they are with me. It was pain that overcame them, not unfaithfulness that turned them aside." But some without cause refuse pardon to those whose faith the persecutor himself confessed up to the point of striving to overcome it by torture. They denied the Lord once but confess him daily; they denied him in word but confess him with groans, with cries and with tears; they confess him with willing words, not under compulsion. They yielded, indeed, for a moment to the temptation of the devil, but even the devil afterwards left those whom he was unable to claim as his own. He yielded to their weeping, he yielded to their repentance, and after making them his own lost those whom he attached when they belonged to Another.

  Concerning Repentance 1.5.22-24

• Lamentations 4:20

  But what wonder, since both the Father and the Son are said to be Spirit. Of this we shall speak more fully when we begin to speak of the unity of the name. Yet since the most suitable place occurs here, that we may not seem to have passed on without a conclusion, let them read that both the Father is called Spirit, as the Lord said in the Gospel, "for God is Spirit," and Christ is called Spirit, for Jeremiah said, "The Spirit before our face, Christ the Lord."So, then, the Father is Spirit and Christ is Spirit, for that which is not a created body is spirit, but the Holy Spirit is not commingled with the Father and the Son but is distinct from the Father and from the Son. For the Holy Spirit did not die. He could not die because he had not taken flesh on himself, and the eternal Godhead was incapable of dying, but Christ died according to the flesh.

  On the Holy Spirit 1.9.105-6

• Lamentations 4:20

  The body of God is a spiritual body; the body of Christ is the body of the divine Spirit, for the Spirit is Christ, as we read: "The Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord."

  On the Mysteries 9:58