Loading…
VRSZ
This sets the art on your cards and whose commentary you read on each verse. You can change it later in settings.
Translation
Loading…
What the Fathers say
Eastern Fathers
John Chrysostom
"How then," asks some one, "came it into the mind of His mother to imagine anything great of Him?" He was now beginning to reveal Himself, and was plainly discovered by the witness of John, and by what He had said to His disciples. And before all this, the Conception itself and all its attending circumstances had inspired her with a very great opinion of the Child; "for," said Luke, "she heard all the sayings concerning the Child, and kept them in her heart." "Why then," says one, "did not she speak this before?" Because, as I said, …
Cyril of Alexandria
Most excellently did the Saviour fashion for us this discourse also. For it behoved Him not to come hastily to action, nor to appear a Worker of miracles as though of His Own accord, but, being called, hardly to come thereto, and to grant the grace to the necessity rather than to the lookers on. But the issue of things longed for seems somehow to be even more grateful, when granted not off-hand to those who ask for it, but through a little delay put forth to most lovely hope. …
Theophylact of Ohrid
But He rebukes Her, and not without reason. "If," He says, "there is no wine, then those who do not have it should have come and asked for it themselves, not You, the Mother." For when one's own relatives ask for a miracle to be performed, the spectators are scandalized, but when those in need themselves ask, then the matter is free from suspicion. …
Western Saints
Augustine of Hippo
Some who derogate from the Gospel, and say that Jesus was not born of the Virgin Mary, try to draw an argument for their error from this place; for, how, say they, could she be His mother to whom He said, What have I to do with thee? Now who is it who gives this account, and on whose authority do we believe it? The Evangelist John. But he himself says, The mother of Jesus was there. Why should He say it, unless both were true. But did He therefore come to the marriage to teach men to despise their mother? …
Thomas Aquinas
Then when he says, Jesus said to her, the answer of Christ is given. This answer has been the occasion for three heresies. The Manicheans claim that Christ had only an imaginary body, not a real one. Valentinus maintained that Christ assumed a celestial body and that, as far as his body was concerned, Christ was not related to the Virgin at all. The source of this error was that he understood, Woman, what does that have to do with me and you? …
Bonaventure
But the Lord, indicating to his Mother that she could not command this insofar as she was his mother, nor could he do it insofar as he was her son, nor ought he to do it unless the proper time was at hand: hence there follows: And Jesus says to her: What is it to me and to you, woman? The Gloss: "That is, what nature is common to me and to you, according to which I should do this?" He calls her woman, not from frailty, but from nature and sex. …
Translation