Saint Theophilus of Antioch

And about your laughing at me and calling me Christian, you know not what you are saying. First, because that which is anointed is sweet and serviceable, and far from contemptible. For what ship can be serviceable and seaworthy, unless it be first anointed? Or what castle or house is beautiful and serviceable when it has not been anointed? And what man, when he enters into this life or into the gymnasium, is not anointed with oil? And what work has either ornament or beauty unless it be anointed and burnished? Then the air and all that is under heaven is in a certain sort anointed by light and spirit; and are you unwilling to be anointed with the oil of God? Wherefore we are called Christians on this account, because we are anointed with the oil of God.

-- Saint Theophilus of Antioch

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.

-- Saint Augustine of Hippo

Pope Saint Gregory the Great

Our fatherland is paradise, heaven. We have departed from it by pride, disobedience, abuse of the senses, therefore it is needed that we return to it by obedience, contempt of the world, and by taming the desires of the flesh; thus we return to our own country by another road. By forbidden pleasures we have forfeited the joys of paradise, by penance we must regain them.

-- Pope Saint Gregory the Great

Saint Peter Chrysologus

Today the Magi find, crying in a manger, the One they have followed as He shone in the sky. Today the Magi see clearly, in swaddling clothes, the One they have long awaited as He lay hidden among the stars.

Today the Magi gaze in deep wonder at what they see: heaven on earth, earth in heaven, man in God, God in man, one whom the whole universe cannot contain now enclosed in a tiny body. As they look, they believe and do not question, as their symbolic gifts bear witness: incense for God, gold for a king, myrrh for one who is to die.

So the Gentiles, who were the last, become the first: the faith of the Magi is the first fruits of the belief of the Gentiles.

-- Saint Peter Chrysologus from a sermon