By St. Gregory of Nyssa
It is not the Human Nature that raises up Lazarus, nor is it the power that cannot suffer that weeps for him when he lies in the grave: the tear proceeds from the Man, the life from the true Life.
(Against Eunomius, Bk. 5)
* * *
Our Lord does not declare in word alone that the bodies of the dead shall be raised up again; but He shows in action the Resurrection itself, making a beginning of this work of wonder from things more within our reach and less capable of being doubted.
First, that is, He displays His life-giving power in the case of the deadly forms of disease, and chases those maladies by one word of command;
then He raises a little girl just dead;
then He makes a young man, who is already being carried out, sit up on his bier, and delivers him to his mother;
after that He calls forth from his tomb the four-days-dead and already decomposed Lazarus, vivifying the prostrate body with His commanding voice;
then after three days He raises from the dead His own human body, pierced though it was with the nails and spear, and brings the print of those nails and the spear-wound to witness to the Resurrection.
(On the Soul and the Resurrection)
