Friday, June 21 : Saint Gregory of Nyssa

At the beginning, human nature was golden and gleaming because of its likeness to the undefiled Good. For he says Behold, you are beautiful, my close one, behold, you are beautiful: your eyes are doves. By these expressions the Word teaches that restoration of the soul’s beauty consists in her drawing near once again to the true Beauty from which she departed.the loveliness of her eyes that is extolled. The praise given to her eyes is to the effect that they are doves, and to me the sense of this seems to be as follows. We see faces in the clear pupils of eyes that are focused on someone (for people who can give the scientific explanations of such things say that the eye activates its vision by receiving the impressions of the images given off by visible bodies), and for this reason it becomes a commendation of the eyes’ form that the shape of a dove shows in their pupils. For people receive in themselves the likeness of whatever they gaze upon intently. Since, then, one who no longer gazes upon flesh and blood looks toward the spiritual life, as the apostle says, and lives in the Spirit, and walks by the Spirit (cf. Gal 5:25), it follows that the soul that has been delivered from bodily passion is attested as having in its eyes the shape of the dove—that is, the imprint of the spiritual life is beheld in the clear vision of the soul. Since, then, her purified eye has received the imprint of the dove, she is also capable of beholding the beauty of the Bridegroom.9 For now for the first time, the virgin gazes upon the form of the Bridegroom, now, that is, that she has the dove in her eyes (for “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord!’ except by the Holy Spirit” [1 Cor 12:3]), and she says Behold, you are beautiful, my kinsman, and glorious. “From this point, nothing else seems lovely to me, but I have turned away from all things that were thought noble before. My judgment of what is noble no longer errs so as to deem anything lovely besides you.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team