— Saints Cyril and Methodius —Ordinary Time Week 5: Saturday

“The LORD God made for the man and his wife garments of skin, with which he clothed them.” (Genesis 3:21)

Saint Gregory of Nyssa (part 2 of the background of Saint Gregory of Nyssa is found here) offers the following insight on this verse from today’s First Reading:

“In the same way, when our nature becomes subject to the disequilibrium and paroxysm of disordered passions, it encounters those conditions that necessarily follow the life of the passions. But when it returns again to the blessedness of an ordered emotive life, it will no longer encounter the consequences of evil. Since whatever was added to human nature from the irrational life was not in us before humanity fell into passion, we shall also leave behind all the conditions that appear along with passion. If a man wearing a ragged tunic should be denuded of his garment, he would no longer see on himself the ugliness of what was discarded. Likewise, when we have put off that dead and ugly garment that was made for us from irrational skins (when I hear “skins” I interpret it as the form of the irrational nature that we have put on from our association with disordered passions), we throw off every part of our irrational skin along with the removal of the garment.” (On the Soul and the Resurrection)

Collect

O God,
Who enlightened the Slavic peoples
through the brothers
Saints Cyril and Methodius,
grant that our hearts may grasp
the words of your teaching,
and perfect us as a people of one accord in true faith and right confession.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen

 

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