Patristic Quote for the Day

Come, then, with precision let us launch the ship that never perishes nor sustains shipwreck. But pay precise attention to what's being said. For today the psalm leads us out into battle array against the heretics, not so that we might fell them as they stand, but so that we might raise them up from their fallen state. I mean, that's how our battle works. It doesn't make corpses of the living, but fashions living people of the dead, brimming as it is with gentleness and considerable kindness. For I don't hound in reality, but pursue verbally, not the heretic, but the heresy. I don't reject the person, but hate the error and want it overturned. My fight is not with substance. For substance is a work of God. Rather, I want to set straight the thinking which the Devil destroyed. - St. John Chrysostom, *On Saint Phocas* par. 4