When God was about to give the Law he ordered the people to wash their clothes, to wash their bodies, and to cleanse themselves entirely from every contagion of the flesh, since the human being cannot draw near to God if he is polluted with bodily impurity or earthly filth. And if the Law, which contained a shadow and figure of grace, was right to require such purification and to demand such purity for those who are about to hear the entire mystery of divinity, how great must be their purity in both mind and body? So let us cleanse our hearts, let us purify our bodies, let us open our eyes, let us unlock our understanding, let us open wide all the doors of our soul, so that we can listen to, grasp, retain, and always preserve in the very depths of our heart the Creed, which is the pact of faith.
Sermon 59, section 2. It is a common theme in Chrysologus's sermons on the Creed to insist that the Creed can only be understood properly if those who approach it prepare by ascetic discipline and repentance.
