Luke 1:77
To give knowledge of salvation to his people, unto the remission of their sins:
Open Luke 1:77 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- ad dandam scientiam salutis plebi ejus in remissionem peccatorum eorum
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- τοῦ δοῦναι γνῶσιν σωτηρίας τῷ λαῷ αὐτοῦ ἐν ἀφέσει ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν,
Haydock's commentary
Jesus is our salvation, and St. John [the Baptist] was sent to give to the people the knowledge of this salvation: he bore testimony of Christ; (Theophylactus) by whom alone remission of sins can be obtained.
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
Theophylact Catena Aurea
For the manner in which the forerunner prepared the way of the Lord he explains, adding, To give knowledge of salvation. The Lord Jesus is salvation, but the knowledge of salvation, i.e. of Christ, was given in John, who bore witness of Christ.
St Bede Catena Aurea
For as if desiring to explain the name of Jesus, i.e. the Savior, he frequently makes mention of salvation, but lest men should think it was a temporal salvation which was promised, he adds, for the forgiveness of sins.
Theophylact Catena Aurea
For in no other way was He known to be God, but as having forgiven the sins of His people. For or it is of God alone to forgive sins.
St Bede Catena Aurea
But the Jews prefer not to receive Christ, but to wait for Antichrist; for they desire to be delivered not from the dominion of sin within, but from the yoke of man’s bondage without.
St Peter of Alexandria The Canonical Epistle, with the Commentaries of Theodore Balsamon and John Zonaras, Canon V
But upon those who have used dissimulation like David, who feigned himself to be mad to avoid death, being not mad in reality; and those who have not nakedly written down their denial of the faith, but being in much tribulation, as boys endowed with sagacity and prudence amongst foolish children, have mocked the snares of their enemies, either passing by the altars, or giving a writing, or sending heathen to do sacrifice instead of themselves, even though some of them who have confessed have, as I have heard, pardoned individuals of them, since with the greatest caution they have avoided to touch the fire with their own hands, and to offer incense to the impure demons; yet inasmuch as they escaped the notice of their persecutors by doing this, let a penalty of six months’ penance be imposed upon them. …
St Augustine Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, Chapter XVII. 20
2. In this prayer, therefore, Jesus may seem to have omitted praying for some of His own, unless we carefully examine His words in the prayer itself. For if He prayed first for those, as we have already shown, who were then with Him, and afterwards for those also who should believe on Him through their word, it may be said that He prayed not for those who were neither with Him when He so spake, nor afterwards believed through their word, but had done so at some previous time either of themselves, or in some other supposable manner. …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).