Thursday, August 20 : Saint Gregory of Nyssa

‘The fragrance of your garments is as the fragrance of frankincense.” (Song of Songs 4:11) This indicates what the goal of the life of virtue is for human beings. For the limit that the virtuous life approaches is likeness to the Divine, and for the sake of this goal both the soul’s purity and its separation from any passionate disposition are in virtuous persons carefully realized, so that a certain impress of the transcendent Nature comes to them also, on account of the nobler quality of their life. Now the virtuous manner of life is not uniform or marked by a single style, but just as in the making of a fabric the weaver’s art creates the garment by using many threads, some of which are stretched vertically and others are carried horizontally, so too, in the case of the virtuous life, many things must twine together if a noble life is to be woven. Just so the divine apostle enumerates threads of this sort, threads by means of which | pure works are woven together; he mentions love and joy and peace, patience and kindness (cf. Gal 5:22) and all the sorts of thing that adorn the person who is putting on the garment of heavenly incorruptibility in place of a corruptible and earthly life (1 Cor 15:53). Thus the meaning of the enigma is this: “In your case, O Bride, the garment of virtues imitates the divine blessedness because it has been made like the unapproachable Nature by its purity and impassibility.
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team