Fr Robert McTeigue writes:
“As my mother always used to say …As my father always used to say …I remember that Grandpa always said …”
Every family has oral traditions—maxims, anecdotes, proverbs, etc., that convey history, experience, values and love. Part of being a family is handing on faithfully the family’s accumulated wisdom from one generation to the next. Religious communities and military units do something similar.
What about the Church? Does the Church have a body of “quotable quotes” that should be passed on from one generation to the next?
The Church has accumulated a long list of venerable guides, known for the piety, sanctity, wisdom and antiquity—sages who ranged from the earliest history of the Church, who were disciples of the Apostles, and followed the Tradition and Faith even to the present. Their accumulated writings fill many volumes of Greek and Latin. What they wrote has inspired saints and scholars for centuries. These sages of renown are known as the Church Fathers.
[Orthodox Christian] formation without knowledge of the Fathers would be woefully incomplete. To know all of them well would be the work of several lifetimes. Happily, some of the Fathers, at least some of the time, can be pithy. Below are just a few examples. In today’s computer age, it is so easy to find many more and, of course, there are also books.
“No one can have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.” St. Cyprian of Carthage
“Follow the saints, because those who follow them will become saints.” St. Clement of Rome
“Filthy talk makes us feel comfortable with filthy action.” St. Clement of Rome
“God hates those who praise themselves.” St. Clement of Rome
“You cannot put straight in others what is warped in yourself.” St. Athanasius of Alexandria
“Patience is hope with the lamp lit.” Tertullian
“It is impossible for one to live without tears who considers things exactly as they are.” St. Gregory of Nyssa
(Fr Robert McTeigue, SJ in Aleteia)