Ambrose of Milan

You are sown as are all other things. Why, then, do you wonder whether you will rise again like the rest? You believe the seed because you see it. You do not believe the rising again because you do not see it. “Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed.” Yet, before the proper season arrives, not even the seed is believed. For not every season is suitable for seeds to grow. Wheat is sown at one time and comes up at another time. At one time the vine is grafted. At another shoots begin to grow, foliage becomes luxuriant, and grapes take form. At one time, the olive tree is planted. At another, as though heavy with child and burdened with a progeny of berries, it is bent low in the abundance of its own fruit. But before the proper time arrives for each, production is restricted. Neither the tree nor the plant has the time of bearing within its own power.

The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual; and then he adds, The first man is of the earth, earthy, the second man is from heaven, heavenly. Rightly therefore is man the last, being as it were the consummation of the whole work, the cause of the world, for whose sake all things were made; the habitant, as it were, of all the elements, he lives among beasts, swims with fishes, soars above birds, converses with Angels, dwells upon the earth, and has his warfare in heaven, ploughs the sea, feeds upon air, tills the soil, is a voyager over the deep, a fisher in the floods, a fowler in the air, in heaven an heir even joint-heir with Christ.

He who has not believed will be forsaken, and by his disbelief he will bring upon himself his own condemnation.

The blossom of the resurrection is immortality and incorruption. What is richer than everlasting rest? What is a source of greater gain and satisfaction than perpetual security? Here is the manifold fruit, the harvest, whereby man’s nature grows more vigorous and productive after death.