zwaard

Let me add one more prediction...

Christ said: "I did not come to send peace upon the earth, but a sword."

However he did not speak of what he would himself desire, but he was foretelling the end to which things would come. He went on to say: "For I have come to set a man at variance with his father, and a daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law, and a daughter with her mother."

Tell me this...

How did he foretell this, if he was a mere man and one of the crowd?

For this is what he meant.

It sometimes happened, that in one and the same house one person would believe, and another would not. Then the father would want to lead his own son to deny his faith. This is why Christ predicted this very thing.

What he was saying was this: "The power of the gospel will be so strong, that sons despise their fathers, daughters their mothers, and parents their children. For they will choose not only to scorn members of their own household, but even to lay down their lives, to endure and suffer all things, rather than deny their religion."

How could he have managed to know this...

if he was just another man out of the crowd?

How did it occur to him to reach the conclusion...

that sons would pay greater veneration to him than to their fathers?

That parents would find him dearer than their own children?

That wives would have a more ardent love for him than for their own husbands?

And how did he knów that this would happen...

Not in one home only, nor in two, nor three, nor ten, nor twenty, nor a hundred.

But in évery corner of the world...

In every city and country...

On land and sea...

In populous places and in those with few, if any, dwellings...

No one can say that he foretold this and then failed to fulfill his prediction.

Certainly it was not only at the very beginning...

But it is true - even today - that because of their religion, many are hated and cast forth from their fathers' houses. However, THEY PAY NO HEED TO THIS. The fact that they suffer it for the sake of Christ is consolation enough for them.


~chrysostomos~
against the jews
homily