Hebrews 3:1
Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly vocation, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus:
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The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Unde, fratres sancti, vocationis cælestis participes, considerate Apostolum, et pontificem confessionis nostræ Jesum :
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- Ὅθεν, ἀδελφοὶ ἅγιοι, κλήσεως ἐπουρανίου μέτοχοι, κατανοήσατε τὸν ἀπόστολον καὶ ἀρχιερέα τῆς ὁμολογίας ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν,
Haydock's commentary
The....high priest of our profession. That is, of the faith we confess, or profess. Christ is also here called our apostle, i.e. sent by his Father. (Witham)
Jesus Christ is not only our apostle, he is the doctor, the legislator of the religion we profess. He is our high priest, who offered himself in sacrifice for the sanctification of his Church, and who is now exercising at the right hand of his Father the office of the priesthood in our behalf, both in heaven and on earth. We here see our dignity: we have a God for the apostle and high priest of our religion.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hebrews 2.16-17
C. iii. 1, 2 . “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus , who was faithful to Him that appointed [ or made] Him, as also Moses [was faithful] in all His house.” Being about to place Him before Moses in comparison, he led his discourse to the law of the high-priesthood; for they all had a high esteem for Moses: moreover, he is already beforehand casting down the seeds of the superiority. Therefore he begins from the flesh, and goes up to the Godhead, where there was no longer any comparison. He began from the flesh [from His Human nature], by assuming for a time the equality, and says, “as also Moses in all His house”: nor does he at first show His superiority lest the hearer should start away, and straightway stop his ears. …
Theodoret Counter-statements of Theodoret
Against X. The unchangeable nature was not changed into nature of flesh, but assumed human nature and set it over the common high priests, as the blessed Paul teaches in the words, “For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins: who can have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is encompassed with infirmity. …
St Basil The Letters, To the Cæsareans. A defence of his withdrawal, and concerning the faith
8. Again, as is said through Solomon the Wise in the Proverbs, “He was created;” and He is named “Beginning of ways” of good news, which lead us to the kingdom of heaven. He is not in essence and substance a creature, but is made a “way” according to the œconomy. Being made and being created signify the same thing. As He was made a way, so was He made a door, a shepherd, an angel, a sheep, and again a High Priest and an Apostle, the names being used in other senses. What again would the heretics say about God unsubjected, and about His being made sin for us? For it is written “But when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him.” Are you not afraid, sir, of God called unsubjected? For He makes thy subjection His own; and because of thy struggling against goodness He calls himself unsubjected. …
St Hilary of Poitiers De Trinitate or On the Trinity, Book IV
11. Now that we have exposed their plan of belittling the Son under cover of magnifying the Father, the next step is to listen to the exact terms in which they express their own belief concerning the Son. For, since we have to answer in succession each of their allegations and to display on the evidence of Holy Scripture the impiety of their doctrines, we must append, to what they say of the Father, the decisions which they have put on record concerning the Son, that by a comparison of their confession of the Father with their confession of the Son we may follow a uniform order in our solution of the questions as they arise. …