Evagrius Ponticus : If those are "blessed who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" and at the same time the kingdom of heaven is the totality of the ideas of the things that have been and will come into being, then it follows that the persecuted are blessed because they have insight into the knowledge of created things. — SCHOLIA ON Ecclesiastes 19:3.15 Jerome : "What has been, already exists, and what is still to be, has already been, and God seeks him that suffers persecution." All things we perceive in the past, present or future, they themselves have been, are, and will be. That same sun which now rises, existed before we were in this world, and after we die, it will rise again. But we have mentioned the sun, so that we understand other things to be the same as they have been before. Because if they are seen to die by what we call death, they do not really die, but grow again given a second life, and nothing dies forever but is reborn and relives as if with a certain new seed. For this is what he says: "and God seeks him that suffers persecution", which is said better in Greek "kai ho theos zetesei to diokomenon "that is what dies, what has perished, and has ceased to be. But if that speaks about all that are in the world there is no doubt about man, that having died he will be reborn. But if anyone likes to choose a beginning as if his own, "and God seeks him that suffers persecution", he uses this evidence in the persecution of certain people: to comfort him, who had persevered in martyrdom. And since all in this world, who want to live religiously, follow the apostle, they suffer persecution and take consolation in the fact that God seeks him that suffers persecution, just as he seeks out the blood of a man who has been murdered, and comes to seek what has perished, and carry the wandering sheep back to the flock on his shoulders. [Cfr Luc. 19, 10 ; 15, 4-7.] — Commentary on Ecclesiastes Peter Chrysologus : "Our Father." No one should be astonished that one not yet born calls God Father. With God, beings who will be born are already born; with God future beings have been made. "The things that shall be," Scripture says, "have already been." [Thus] it is that while John was still in the womb he perceived his creator, and he who was unaware of his own life served as a messenger to his mother. [Thus] too we read that Jacob waged war before he was born and triumphed before he lived. [Thus] too, those who do not yet exist themselves are existent for God, that is, those who were chosen before the foundation of the world. — SERMON 70