The Gospel Readings

The Fathers on the Gospels is an Orthodox patristic commentary on the Gospels, in Albanian and English: beside each Gospel passage it sets the voices of the Fathers who first expounded it (St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alexandria, Blessed Augustine, and many others), so that Scripture is read with the mind of the Fathers. Much of the Albanian here is the first time these Fathers have spoken the language at all.

Each passage opens with the Gospel text itself, in both languages: English in the King James Version, Albanian in Kostandin Kristoforidhi's New Testament (Tosk, 1879), still used in the Orthodox Church of Albania. A short reading then gives a faithful summary of how the Fathers understood it, not a quotation, and then the Fathers themselves: brief excerpts under In their own words, and, for a growing number of passages, the option to open a Father's complete homily or sermon, bilingual, with the quotation highlighted in place.

Behind these readings stands a library of complete works, translated into Albanian for the first time: St. John Chrysostom's Homilies on Matthew and on John, St. Cyril of Alexandria's Commentaries on Luke and on John, works of St. Basil the Great, and Blessed Augustine's Tractates on John. The collection keeps growing, from the miracles and parables toward the whole of Christ's earthly life.

Every quotation is taken word for word from a pre-1900 public-domain English translation, free to read online: the Nicene & Post-Nicene Fathers and the Ante-Nicene Fathers at CCEL and New Advent; R. Payne Smith's Commentary on Luke of St. Cyril of Alexandria at Tertullian.org; and the Catena Aurea in J. H. Newman's 1841 translation. Nothing is paraphrased, any omission inside a quotation is marked with an ellipsis, and the names of the saints follow the usage of the Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania. Copyrighted modern editions are cited but never reproduced.