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Translation
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What the Fathers say
Eastern Fathers
Basil of Caesarea
But from His very first years being obedient to His parents, He endured all bodily labours, humbly and reverently. For since His parents were honest and just, yet at the same time poor, and ill supplied with the necessaries of life, (as the stable which administered to the holy birth bears witness,) it is plain that they continually underwent bodily fatigue in providing for their daily wants. …
Gregory of Nyssa
Further, since the young have not yet perfect understanding, and have need to be led forward by those who have advanced to a more perfect state; therefore when He arrived at twelve years, He is obedient to His parents, to show that whatever is made perfect by moving forward, before that it arrives at the end profitably embraces obedience, (as leading to good.) (Hom. 3. …
Cyril of Alexandria
Be not therefore offended, considering perchance within thyself, How can God increase? or how can He Who gives grace to angels and to men receive fresh wisdom? Rather reflect upon the great skill wherewith we are initiated into His mystery. For the wise Evangelist did not introduce the Word in His abstract and incorporeal nature, and so say of Him that He increased in stature and wisdom and grace, but after having shewn that He was born in the flesh of a woman, and took our likeness, he then assigns to Him these human attributes, and …
Western Saints
Ambrose of Milan
And can you wonder if He who is subject to His mother, also submits to His Father? Surely that subjection is a mark not of weakness but of filial duty. Let then the heretic so raise his head as to assert that He who is sent has need of other help; yet why should He need human help, in obeying His mother's authority? He was obedient to a handmaid, He was obedient to His pretended father, and do you wonder whether He obeyed God? Or is it a mark of duty to obey man, of weakness to obey God?
Bede
For what is the teacher of virtue, unless he fulfil his duty to his parents? What else did He do among us, than what He wished should be done by us? The Virgin, whether she understood or whether she could not yet understand, equally laid up all things in her heart for reflection and diligent examination. Hence it follows, And his mother laid up all these things, &c. Mark the wisest of mothers, Mary the mother of true wisdom, becomes the scholar or disciple of the Child. …
Bernard of Clairvaux
Have you not read in the Gospel what pattern of obedience the boy Jesus handed on to holy children? For when he had remained in Jerusalem and had said that he must be about the things that are his Father's, yet when his parents did not agree, he did not disdain to follow them to Nazareth—the Master following disciples, God following human beings, the Word and Wisdom following a carpenter and a woman. What? The sacred history even adds: "And he was," it says, "subject to them." How long will you be wise in your own eyes? …
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