Romanos 12
Augustine of Hippo · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Romanos 12:1
If the body, which is less than the soul and which the soul uses as a servant or a tool, is a sacrifice when it is used well and rightly for the service of God, how much more so is the soul when it offers itself to God? In this way, aflame in the fire of divine love and with the dross of worldly desire melted away, it is remolded into the unchangeable form of God and becomes beautiful in his sight by reason of the bounty of beauty which he has bestowed upon it. — City of God 10.6
Romanos 12:2
Those who are moved … to turn again to the Lord out of that state of deformity wherein worldly desires conformed them to this world must receive from the Lord their reformation. — THE TRINITY 14.22
Romanos 12:12
We rejoice in hope in order to look forward to the rest to come and so conduct ourselves cheerfully in the midst of toils. — LETTER 55
Romanos 12:20
This may seem to many people to contradict what the Lord teaches, that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, or the apostle's own statements [in verses 14 and 17] above. For how can it be love to feed and nourish someone just in order to heap coals of fire on his head, assuming that "coals of fire" means some serious punishment? Therefore we must understand that this means that we should provoke whoever does us harm to repentance by doing him a good turn. For the coals of fire serve to burn, i.e., to bring anguish to his spirit, which is like the head of the soul, in which all malice is burnt out when one is changed for the better through repentance. These coals of fire are mentioned in the Psalms: "What should be given to you or what appointed to you, for your deceitful tongue? Sharp arrows of the warrior with devouring burning coals." — AUGUSTINE ON ROMANS 71
Romanos 12:21
The evil man who is overcome by good is set free, not from an exterior, foreign evil but from an interior, personal one, by which he is more grievously and ruinously laid waste than he would be by the inhumanity of any enemy from without. — LETTER 138