Catena Aurea

Isaiah. 40:9

Go up to the top of the mountain, thou that preachest glad tidings in Sion; lift up thy voice with might, thou that preachest in Jerusalem: cry aloud, fear not: say to the cities of Judah, Behold your God! Lo, the Lord God shall come with power, and His arm shall have dominion; Lo, His reward is with Him.

THE. Prophet Isaiah, a manifest preacher of the Gospel, briefly expressing the loftiness, the name, and the substance of the Gospel doctrine, addresses the evangelic teacher in the person of the Lord, saying, Go up to the top of the mountain, &c.

But to make our beginning with the title, The Gospel.

AUGUSTINE. (contra Faust. ii. 2.) The word ‘Evangelium,’ (Gospel,) is rendered in Latin ‘bonus nuntius,’ or ‘bona annuntiatio,’ (good news.) It may indeed be used on all occasions whenever any good is announced; but it has come to be appropriated to the announcement of the Saviour.

GLOSS. Those who have related the birth, deeds, words, and sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ, are properly styled Evangelists.

CHRYSOSTOM. (Homil. in Matt. i. 2.) For what is there that can equal these good tidings? God on earth, man in heaven; that long war ceased, reconciliation made between God and our nature, the devil overthrown, death abolished, paradise opened. These things, so far beyond our merits, are given us with all fulness; not for our own toil or labour, but because we are beloved of God.

AUGUSTINE. (de vera relig. c. 16.) Whereas God in many ways heals the souls of men, according to the times and the seasons which are ordained by His marvellous wisdom, yet has He in no way more beneficently provided for the human race, than when the Very Wisdom of God, the Only Son of one substance and coeternal with the Father, stooped to take upon Him perfect man, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Hereby He made manifest how high a place among creatures had human nature, in that He appeared to men as Very Man.

PSEUDO-AUGUSTINE. (Serm. de Nativ. Serm. ix.) God was made man, that man might be made God.

GLOSS. This part of the glad tidings that should be preached, the Prophet foretells saying, Behold, your God, &c.

LEO. (Epist. ad Flavian. xxviii. 3.) Pope; For this emptying of himself, by which the Invisible made Himself Visible, and the Creator and Lord of all things chose to become one of us mortal creatures, was a stooping of His mercy, not a failing of His power.

GLOSS. Therefore that the Lord should not be supposed to be present in such a way as that there should be any thing lost of His power, the Prophet adds, The Lord shall come with power.

AUGUSTINE. (de doct. Christ. i. 12.) Come, not by passing through the regions of space, but by shewing Himself to men in the flesh.

LEO. (Serm. in Nativ. s. xix. 3.) By the unspeakable power of God, it was wrought, that while very Man was in the inviolable God, and very God in passible flesh, there was bestowed upon man, glory through shame, immortality through punishment, life through death.

AUGUSTINE. (de Peccatorum Meritis, ii. 30.) For blood that was without sin being shed, the bond of all men’s sins was done away, by which men were before held captive by the Devil.

GLOSS. Therefore because men, having been delivered from sin by virtue of Christ suffering, became the servants of God, it follows, And His arm shall have dominion.

LEO. (Ubi sup.) In Christ then was given us this wonderful deliverance, that on our passible nature the condition of death should not abide, which His impassible essence had admitted, and that by that which could not die, that which was dead might be brought to life.

GLOSS. And thus through Christ is opened to us the entrance of immortal glory, concerning which it follows, Lo, His reward is with Him; that, namely, of which Himself speaks, Your reward is abundant in heaven. (Matt. 5:12.)

AUGUSTINE. (contra Faust. iv. 2.) The promise of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven belongs to the New Testament; in the Old Testament are contained promises of temporal things.

GLOSS. So then evangelic teaching delivers to us four things concerning Christ; the Divinity that takes upon it, the Humanity that is taken upon it, His Death by which we are delivered from bondage, His Resurrection by which the entrance of a glorious life is opened to us. On this account it is represented in Ezekiel under the figure of the four animals.

GREGORY. (in Ezek. Hom. iv.) The Only-begotten Son of God was Himself verily made Man; Himself condescended to die as the sacrifice of our redemption as a Calf; He rose again through the power of His might, as a Lion; and as an Eagle He ascended aloft into heaven.

GLOSS. In which ascension He shewed manifestly His Divinity; Matthew then is denoted by the Man, because he dwells chiefly on the humanity of Christ; Mark by the Lion, because he treats of His Resurrection; Luke by the Calf, because he insists on His Priesthood; John by the Eagle, because he describes the sacraments of His Divinity.

AMBROSE. (Comm. in Luc. pref.) And it has happened well that we set out with delivering the opinion that the Gospel according to Matthew is of a moral kind, for morals are the peculiar province of man. The figure of a Lion is ascribed to Mark, because he begins with an assertion of His Divine power, saying, The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. The figure of the Eagle is given to John, because he has described the miracles of the Divine Resurrection.

GREGORY. (Ubi sup.) These things the commencement of each of the Gospel books testifies. Because he opens with Christ’s human generation, Matthew is rightly designated by a Man; Mark by a Lion, because he begins with the crying in the desert; Luke by a Calf, because he begins with a sacrifice; because he takes his beginning from the divinity of the Word, John is worthily signified by an Eagle.

AUGUSTINE. (de Consensu Evang. i. 6.) Or, Matthew who has chiefly represented the regal character of Christ, is designated by a Lion; Luke by a Calf, because of the Priest’s victim; Mark, who chose neither to relate the royal nor the priestly lineagea, and yet is clearly busied about His human nature, is designated by the figure of a Man. These three animals, the Lion, the Man, the Calf, walk on the earth, whence these three Evangelists are mostly employed about those things which Christ wrought in the flesh. But John, as the Eagle, soars on high, and with most keen eyes of the heart beholds the light of unchangeable Truth. From which we may understand, that the other three Evangelists are occupied about the active, and John about the contemplative, life. The Greek Doctors by the Man understood Matthew, because he has deduced the Lord’s lineage according to the flesh; by the Lion, John, because as the lion, strikes terror into the other beasts by his roaring, so John struck terror into all heretics; by the Calf, they understood Luke, because the calf was the victim of the Priests, and he is much employed concerning the Temple and the Priesthood; and by the Eagle they understood Mark, because the eagle in the Divine Scripture is used to denote the Holy Spirit, who spake by the mouths of the Prophets; and Mark begins with a citation from the Prophets.

JEROME. (Prolog. in Evan. Matt. ad Euseb.) Concerning the number of the Evangelists, it should be known, that there were many who had written Gospels, as the Evangelist Luke witnesses, saying, Forasmuch as many have taken in hand, &c. (Luke 1:1.) and as books remaining to the present time declare which divers authors have set forth, therein laying the foundation of many heresies; such as the Gospel according to the Egyptians, according to Thomas, Matthias, and Bartholomewb; that of the twelve Apostles, and Basilides, and Apelles, and others whom it would be long to reckon up. But the Church, which is founded by the Lord’s word upon the rock, sending forth, like Paradise, its four streams, has four corners and four rings, by which as the ark of the covenant, and the guardian of the Law of the Lord, it is carried about on moveablec staves.

AUGUSTINE. (de cons. Evan. i. 2.) Or, Because there are four quarters of the world, through the whole of which Christ’s Church is extended. In learning and preaching they had a different order from that they had in writing. In learning and preaching they ranked first who followed the Lord present in the flesh, heard Him teaching, saw Him acting, and by His mouth were sent to preach the Gospel; but in penning the Gospel, an order which we must suppose to have been fixed by Heaven, the first place, and the last place were filled out of the number of those whom the Lord chose before His passion, the first by Matthew, the last by John; so that the other two, who were not of that number, but who yet followed Christ speaking in them, were embraced as sons, and placed in the middle between the other two, so as to be supported by them on both sides.

REMIGIUS. Matthew wrote in Judæa in the time of the Emperor Caius Caligula; Mark in Italy, at Rome, in the time of Nero or Claudius, according to Rabanus; Luke in the parts of Achaia and Bæotia, at the request of Theophilus; John at Ephesus, in Asia Minor, under Nerva.

BEDE. But though there were four Evangelists, yet what they wrote is not so much four Gospels, as one true harmony of four books. (non occ.) For as two verses having the same substance, but different words and different metre, yet contain one and the same matter, so the books of the Evangelists, though four in number, yet contain one Gospel, teaching one doctrine of the Catholic faith.