Fathers

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What the Fathers say

Matthew 13:7

Eastern Fathers

Theophylact of Ohrid

These are they who choke the word with worldly thoughts. For though a rich man thinks he is doing a good deed, yet the deed does not grow and flourish, hindered as it is by worldly cares.

Commentary on Matthew ↗

Western Saints

Gregory the Dialogist

For who would ever have believed me if I had wished to interpret thorns as riches, especially since the former prick while the latter delight? And yet they are thorns, because they tear the mind with the prickings of their thoughts, and when they drag it all the way to sin, they cause it to bleed as if by an inflicted wound. These, in this passage, as another evangelist attests, the Lord calls not simply riches, but deceitful riches, and rightly so. …

Forty Gospel Homilies, Homily 15 ↗

Thomas Aquinas

And others fell among thorns. Now thorns are anxieties, angers, quarrels, and things of this kind; Jeremiah 4:3: do not sow upon thorns; Proverbs 24:30: I passed by the field of the slothful man; and there follows: and thorns had covered its surface. And the thorns grew up and choked them.

Commentary on Matthew ↗