Friday after the Fourth Sunday of Easter

“Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

Saint Gregory of Nyssa offers the following insight on these verses from today's Gospel:

“[Eunomius] speaks of God as “without beginning, eternally without end, alone.” Once more “understand, you simple ones,” as Solomon says, “his subtlety,” in case you might be deceived and fall headlong into the denial of the Godhead of the only-begotten Son. Whatever is devoid of death or decay is that which is without end. That, likewise, is called everlasting that does not exist only for a time. That, therefore, which is neither everlasting nor without end is surely seen in the nature that is perishable and mortal. And so, the one who predicates “unendingness” of the one and only God and does not include the Son in the assertion of “unendingness” and “eternity” maintains by such a proposition that he whom he thus contrasts with the eternal and unending is perishable and temporary. But we, even when we are told that God “alone has immortality,” understand by “immortality” the Son. For life is immortality, and the Lord is that life who said, “I am the Life.”” (Against Eunomius, 2)

Collect

O God,
Author of our freedom and of our salvation,
listen to the voice of our pleading
and grant that those You have redeemed
by the shedding of Your Son’s Blood
may have life through You
and, under Your protection,
rejoice for ever unharmed.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,
who lives and reigns with You in the
unity of the Holy Spirit,
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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