Hebreus 7
Gregory of Nazianzus · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Hebreus 7:2
Using the principles of pastoral science, he gathers us into his heavenly fold. He is called "sheep," because he was sacrificed, a "Lamb," because he was without blemish. He is the "high priest" because he presented the offering. "Melchizedek," because on the transcendent level he had no mother, on the human level no father, and his high estate is without genealogy. "Who," it says, "can recount his generation?" He is "Melchizedek" too, as king of Salem or peace, as king of righteousness, and because he tithes the patriarchs who prevailed over evil powers. — ON THE SON, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 4(30).21
Hebreus 7:3
The old has passed away,behold all things have been made anew. The letter withdraws, the Spirit advances. The shadows flee, the truth breaks in. Melchizedek is summed up; the motherless becomes fatherless. The first without a mother, The second without a father, The laws of nature are abrogated that the cosmos above be brought to perfection. — ON THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, ORATION 38.2
Hebreus 7:25
Petition does not imply here, as it does in popular parlance, a desire for legal satisfaction; there is something humiliating in the idea. No, it means interceding for us in his role of mediator, in the way that the Spirit too is spoken of as "making petition" on our behalf. "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." Even at this moment he is, as human, interceding for my salvation, until he makes me divine by the power of his incarnate humanity. "As human," I say, because he still has with him the body he assumed, though he is no longer "regarded as human," meaning the bodily experiences, which, sin aside, are ours and his. This is the "advocate" we have in Jesus—not a slave who falls prostrate before the Father on our behalf. Get rid of what is really a slavish suspicion, unworthy of the Spirit. It is not in God to make the demand, nor in the Son to submit to it; the thought is unjust to God. No, it is by what he suffered as man that he persuades us, as Word and encourager, to endure. That, for me, is the meaning of his "advocacy." — ON THE SON, THEOLOGICAL ORATION 4(30).14