Monday, May 19 : Saint Gregory of Nyssa

For the Word says, Come for your self, my dove, to the shelter of the rock, close by the wall. What step upward toward perfection is shown us in these words? No longer to focus attention on making an eff ort to attain the things that attract but to take one’s own desire as a guide toward what is better. For he says, “Come for yourself—not out of grief or compul sion but for yourself, not shown the way by compulsion but with your own thoughts lending strength to your desire for the good.” For virtue has no master. | It is voluntary and free of all compulsion. Such a one was David, who prayed that only his voluntary deeds might fi nd approval with God (cf. Ps 118:108) and promised to sacrifi ce of his own will (cf. Ps 53:8). Such was each of the saints who brought himself to God without being compelled. So, then, do you demonstrate your mature state by taking up for your self this desire for an ascent toward what is higher. And having become this sort of person,” he says, “you will have come to the shelter of the rock, close by the wall.” The point of the text, then, is this: The meaning is something on this order (for we have to trans pose what is said from its enigmatic form to one of greater clarity): one shelter of the human soul is the exalted gospel. Whoever is within it no longer has need of the shadowy teaching that comes through types and symbols, for the truth has brought the hidden enigmas of the law’s regulations to light, while none of those who have any part what ever in faith can deny that the gospel’s grace is named “rock.”“If, O soul, you have been exercised in the law, if in your understanding you have beheld the rays of light that come through the prophetic windows, remain no longer under the shadow of the law’s wall, but rather make the short move from the wall to the rock. For the rock lies close by the wall.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team