Ezequiel 3
Augustine of Hippo · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Ezequiel 3:4
What does that show, if not that God was speaking through the prophet? Now it is we clergy who were above all terrified by the prophet's words, that is, the leaders whom God appointed to speak to his people, and so we begin by seeing our own faces in those words. For as the reader intoned them we had a kind of mirror held up to us in which we could inspect ourselves, and inspect ourselves we did. Inspect yourselves, too, then. — SERMON 17:2
Ezequiel 3:18
You have frequently heard in the holy Scriptures in what great danger bishops are placed, if they are unwilling to carry out what the apostle urges on them.… But when we reprove someone, if the person we reprove is bad, he fixes his attention on the one he is being reproved by and happily and more readily acknowledges what has to be put right in his reprover than in himself. And if he can find something true to say against the one who is reproving him, he is delighted. How much better to rejoice about his own healthy condition when he has been put right than about another person's illness when he is rebuked! — SERMON 387:1
Ezequiel 3:19
If he does this, he goes out from there, not by physical withdrawal but defended by his behavior; he has done what he had to do, even if the other person did not heed the warning he should have heeded. — SERMON 88:23