Gregory of Nyssa

In his own words on Mark

• Mark 2:17

  They who use the knife or cautery to remove certain unnatural excrescences in the body, such as wens or warts, do not bring to the person they are serving a method of healing that is painless, though certainly they apply the knife without any intention of injuring the patient. In like manner whatever material excrescences are hardening on our souls, that have been sensualized by fellowship with the body's affections, are, in the day of the judgment, as it were cut and scraped away by the ineffable wisdom and power of Him Who, as the Gospel says, "healeth those that are sick." For, as He says again, "they that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick." Since, then, there has been inbred in the soul a strong natural tendency to evil, it must suffer, just as the excision of a wart gives a sharp pain to the skin of the body.

  THE GREAT CATECHISM 8

• Mark 5:6

  (non occ.) Now the assembly of the devils had prepared itself to resist the Divine power. But when He was approaching Who had power over all things, they proclaim aloud His eminent virtue. Wherefore there follows, But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, saying, &c.

  Catena Aurea by Aquinas

• Mark 8:38

  For the Son does not divide the glory with the Father, but has the glory of the Father in its entirety, even as the Father has all the glory of the Son. For thus He spake to the Father, "All Mine are Thine and Thine are Mine." Wherefore also He says that He will appear on the Judgment Day "in the glory of the Father," when He will render to every man according to his works. And by this phrase He shows the unity of nature that subsists between them. For as "there is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon," because of the difference between the natures of those luminaries (since if both had the same glory there would not be deemed to be any difference in their nature), so He Who foretold of Himself that He would appear in the glory of the Father indicated by the identity of glory their community of nature.

  Against Eunomius, Book 2

• Mark 9:35

  Let vanity be unknown among you. Let simplicity and harmony and a guileless attitude weld the community together. Let each remind himself that he is not only subordinate to the brother at his side, but to all. If he knows this, he will truly be a disciple of Christ.

  ON THE CHRISTIAN MODE OF LIFE 8.1

• Mark 9:41

  God never asks his servants to do what is impossible. The love and goodness of his Godhead is revealed as richly available. It is poured out like water upon all. God furnishes to each person according to his will the ability to do something good. None of those seeking to be saved will be lacking in this ability, given by the one who said: "whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose his reward."

  ON THE CHRISTIAN MODE OF LIFE 8.1

• Mark 9:48

  Nor, too, does anything which afflicts the senses here equal in torment the future life of sinners. Even if we denote some of those torments by terms familiar to us here, the difference is not slight. When you hear the word "fire," you have been taught to think of it differently from ordinary fire, since a new factor is added. For that fire is not quenched, while experience has devised many ways to quench the fire we know. And there is a great difference between fire which is quenched and that which cannot be put out. They are, therefore, different, and not the same. Then again, when a person hears the word "worm," the analogy must not be misapplied directly from the creature we know to the eternal. For the addition of the phrase "that does not die" suggests the thought that this worm is not simply the creature we know.

  ADDRESS ON RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 40

• Mark 12:30

  Man consists of these three: as we are taught the like thing by the apostle in what he says to the Ephesians, praying for them that the complete grace of their "body and soul and spirit" may be preserved at the coming of the Lord; using the word "body" for the nutritive part, and denoting the sensitive by the word "soul," and the intellectual by "spirit." Likewise too the Lord instructs the scribe in the Gospel that he should set before every commandment that love to God which is exercised with all the heart and soul and mind: for here also it seems to me that the phrase indicates the same difference, naming the more corporeal existence "heart," the intermediate "soul," and the higher nature, the intellectual and mental faculty, "mind."

  ON THE MAKING OF MAN 8.5