Sermons

At a fitting time the Lord Jesus willed the most blessed festival of Pasch to be celebrated, after the mist of autumn, after the horror of winter, before the heat of summer. For it was fitting that Christ the Sun of Justice should, before the burning of the coming judgment, dispel by the placid light of his Resurrection both the darkness of the Jews and the harshness of the Gentiles, and recall all things to the state of tranquil beginning, which had been thrown into confusion by that dark veil imposed by the prince of darkness. For God founded the world in the season of spring. For in the month of March God said through Moses: This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it is the first of the months of the year. Now truthful God certainly would not call this month first unless it were first; just as he would not call the seventh day sabbath unless the Lord's Day were first.

Therefore the Son of God, through whom all things were made, on that same day and at that same time, raises up the fallen world by his own Resurrection, on which he had first created it out of nothing, so that all things might be reformed in Christ which are in the heavens and which are on earth; since from him, and through him, and in him are all things, as the Apostle says; to him be glory forever. Nor should any of us be troubled if sometimes the reckoning of the moon and the Lord's Day compel us to celebrate Pasch in the second month, that is, April. For in the divine Scriptures days are numbered according to the course of the moon.

But the Gentiles established Calends, and Ides, and Nones, and the names of months and days; so that, for example, what the antiquity of human memory held as the first month, the pagan named March after Mars; and the day of the sabbath, which rational hearts kept as the seventh, he decreed should be called the day of Saturn. But the holy Scriptures, when they relate or command anything about times, speak thus: On the tenth day of the second month, and the tenth moon, or the fifth day of the seventh month; or the twentieth day of the ninth month, or the fourteenth day of the first month, as we have just now heard likewise in the book of Exodus; where the observance of Pasch is described, and the unleavened bread is commanded to be eaten for seven days of the same solemnity.

Yet God also commands this, that if anyone in the first month, either unclean in soul, that is, defiled by contact with the dead, or, being on a long journey, outside the chosen place of sacrifice at Jerusalem, could not celebrate Pasch, he should celebrate it in the second month. For God, foreseeing that the peoples of the Gentiles were then still unclean with the idols of dead men, and, being outside the holy place of the Church, were set far off—we indeed who were far off and have been made near in the blood of Christ—grants license, so that if the Lord's Day and the fitting number of the moon do not fall for us in the first month, we may celebrate in the second month. And therefore we can celebrate neither before the fourteenth moon, nor beyond the twenty-first, because there are only seven days of the paschal unleavened bread, in which we seek the Lord's Day.

For Christ, the promulgator of the Law and of Grace, wills that we neither pass over the lawful days computed according to the course of the moon, nor overstep the day of his Resurrection with ungrateful idleness. For on the sixth day, on which he had made man, he suffered for the same; and on the Lord's Day, which is called in the Scriptures the first of the sabbath, on which the world had taken its beginning, he rose again; so that he who on the first day created heaven and earth (whence afterward, making man, he shaped him), might also on the first day restore the whole of man, for whose sake he had made the world. This much I have said briefly concerning the paschal reckoning. But now it is time that we expound the meaning of what we have heard in the book of Exodus. And first let us note what Exodus is. Exodus is called a going out.

Now the going out was from the captivity of Pharaoh and of the Egyptians, of the people then Israel, not of us. Why then is it read for you, if it profited others only? What is it to you, if it was not for you? But learn now rather from the Apostle that all the things which were written were more for you than for them. The Law, he says, was a shadow of the good things to come; namely of those good things which have been fulfilled in us. For Christ, the Truth, coming, has now given to us in truth the goods which before he did in shadow for the Jews, when he says to the disciples: Amen I say to you, many prophets and just men desired to see what you see, and did not see it; and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. But blessed are your eyes, which see; and your ears, which hear.

Exodus therefore is blessedly and perfectly consummated in us when the true Moses, taken from the water of the Jordan, God by nature, not by position, our Lord Jesus Christ, with the rod of his cross leads us through the water of Baptism out of the captivity of Pharaoh the devil, and snatches us out of all the Egypt of his darkness, calling us into the works of light out of the darkness of worldly deeds, where the most blessed Paul rebukes some still placed there: You ought, he says, to have gone out from this world; but now I have written to you not to be mingled with them. Let us now consider what those who are led out of Egypt hear from God: This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it is, he says, the first for you among the months of the year.

We read in the book of Numbers that whoever has vowed a vow, to abstain either from conjugal use, or from any delights whatsoever of food or drink, until a set time, and has violated it by any lapse, the past days are not to be reckoned to him; but he must begin again from the start. Thus those days which the Israelites spent in Egypt were not reckoned to them; but when they groaned to the Lord, turning from their hard labors, and the Lord struck the firstborn of the Egyptians who would not let them serve the Lord, then they heard: This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it is the first for you among the months of the year. For there are certain days, and months, and years of superstition, which the Apostle abrogates when he rebukes them. There are others, which God commands, and reckons.

We too were once in Egypt, not knowing God, and ignorant of light and truth, whom unclean spirits, the true Egyptians, pressed to make brick, that is, to serve earthly figments: but when we were converted to God, crying out from our hard labors, the Egyptians were beaten with manifold plagues, and their firstborn were struck down. For our salvation is the punishment of the demons. But we breathed again, and were made alive; for we did not live before, in those days when, being dead, we worshipped dead things. Then, therefore, opportunely we heard: This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it is the first among the months of the year. When that new day shone upon us which the Lord made, when we knew the holy month of new things, and the year acceptable to the Lord, and the day of retribution.

This explanation, however, more fittingly agrees with the faithful: for to catechumens as yet only the firstborn of the demons are slain; but to those who deserve to come to the grace of heavenly Baptism, the whole army of the devil is submerged and slain, so that they truly and deservedly hear, reborn in Christ: This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it is the first among the months of the year. This explanation also fits penitents, whom again the darkness of crimes and the gloom of this Egypt had possessed. For if they groan to the Lord, coming to their senses and fleeing from the most wicked works of darkness, they will obtain the light of heavenly indulgence, and will return to eternal light and salvation. For it is written: When you turn and groan, then you shall be saved, and you shall know where you were, when you trusted in those things. You shall know, he says, where you were.

For then does a man understand that he was in the errors of the darkness of Egypt, when he returns to the light of truth and of justice. This same discourse can also be taken in a pious sense concerning that perpetual light which, after the consummation of the age, will be granted to the just and the faithful; when the night of death shall be utterly overcome by the Sun of justice, so that then they may hear: This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it is the first among the months of the year; then indeed, when the whole power of the Egyptians shall perish, and, freed from this Egypt, we shall eat the true manna, and shall drink from the rock, which is Christ himself, cleaving to the footsteps of the spotless Lamb, and saying: My soul has clung fast after you; and your right hand has upheld me.

And therefore every holy person, still placed in this world, sighs for that future light which the world cannot yet grasp, saying: My soul has thirsted for the living God; when shall I come, and appear before the face of the Lord? For now we see through a glass in an enigma, says the holy Apostle, but then face to face. And now indeed, in comparison to the Jews and the Gentiles, who are known to be sunk in the deep night of unbelief, and in comparison to those who linger in the darkness of heresies and the night of luxury, we seem to be, and plainly are, in the light: but our very days are veiled with certain mists, and do not have the joy of serenity, the Prophet saying: My days have declined like a shadow.

But there the Lord himself will be our everlasting light; so that we may no longer be saved merely in his shadow, but may live always in the splendor of his brightness: to whom be all honor, power, and glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, before all ages, now, and always, and unto all ages of ages. Amen.

When Christ rose from the dead, vengeance was wrought upon the Egyptians through the Sacrament of Baptism; the underworld trembling with fear, as he himself returned to the raising up of his body; the enemies of God, that is the foes of his people, were destroyed. For the prophetic spirit cries out: Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered; and let them that hate him flee before his face; as smoke vanishes, let them vanish; as wax melts before the face of fire, so let sinners perish before the face of God, and let the just feast. The merciful Father sent redemption to his people, mindful of his holy covenant, which he arranged for our fathers Abraham and his seed forever. For the mighty God raised up from these once hardest stones sons of Abraham.

Now let all say who have been redeemed by the Lord, whom he has redeemed from the hand of the enemies, and gathered them out of the lands, from the rising of the sun and its setting, from the north and from the sea, because he is good, because his mercy is forever. For at the going out of that Israel from Egypt, of the house of Jacob from a barbarous people, Judea alone was made his sanctuary; but now Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in his ways. Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek: for the same Lord is rich toward all who call upon him; because, as it is written: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

As many of us, therefore, as receive salvation by calling upon the Lord while the Egyptians are destroyed, let us learn to eat the passover, not as the foolish Jews, who after the coming of the truth still follow the shadow, each one killing and eating a sheep through each house on the fourteenth day of the first month. For since He has come whose shadow that sheep had been—the true Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus, who takes away the sins of the world, and who said: Unless you shall eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life in yourselves—it is now in vain that the Jews practice carnally what, unless they do it spiritually with us, they cannot have life in themselves. For the law is spiritual, as the Apostle says, and Christ our Passover is sacrificed.

As for the spiritual virtues that were prefigured in the very history of Exodus, where the celebration of the passover is narrated—what the tenth day is, what the fourteenth, what the sacrifice of the perfect, male, year-old lamb at evening, what the blood to be smeared on the doorposts, what the calling together of neighbors, what the sandals, what the staves, what the leaven, what the unleavened bread signify—we must, with the Lord's help, begin to expound tomorrow. For now only those things must be gathered from this reading which cannot be explained in the presence of the catechumens, and yet which must necessarily be disclosed to the newly baptized. In the shadow of that legal passover, not one lamb was slain, but many; for each was slain in each house, since one could not suffice for all, because it was a figure, not the very reality of the Lord's Passion.

For a figure is not the truth, but an imitation of the truth; for man also was made in the image of God, yet is not therefore God himself: although by that reasoning by which he is called the image of God, he is also called god; just as by nature God is one, by position there are many. Therefore in this reality in which we now exist, one has died for all; and the same one, through each house of the churches, in the mystery of bread and wine, refreshes as one sacrificed, gives life as one believed in, sanctifies those who consecrate as one consecrated. This is the flesh of the Lamb, this is the blood. For the bread which came down from heaven says: The bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.

Rightly also is his blood expressed under the appearance of wine, since when he himself says in the Gospel: I am the true vine, he sufficiently declares that his blood is every wine that is offered in the figure of his Passion: whence the most blessed patriarch Jacob had prophesied concerning Christ, saying: He shall wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape. For he was about to wash the robe—that is, the vesture of our body—with his own blood. He himself, therefore, the creator and Lord of natures, who brings forth bread from the earth, again makes from bread (because he both can and has promised) his own body: and he who made wine from water, also makes from wine his own blood. In what manner, then, this Lamb ought to be eaten, we ought to note from the reading itself. You shall not eat anything of it raw, nor cooked in water, but roasted with fire: the head with the feet and the entrails.

There are two spiritual understandings in these words, of which, if you follow one, you will know both. The whole body of divine Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, contains the Son of God; either promising that he will come in human form, or declaring that he has already come. Whence blessed Philip, found by Christ, found Nathanael, and said to him: Him of whom Moses wrote in the Law, and the Prophets, we have found—Jesus the son of Joseph, from Nazareth. And what more, dearly beloved? In him is contained all the Law, both old and new: and, so to speak, he himself is the soul of the Law. For he spoke through Moses when he said to him: I will open your mouth, and I will breathe into you what you must speak. He also spoke through the Prophets, when he says: I who spoke in the Prophets, behold I am present.

He also spoke through the Apostles, when the apostle Paul says: Or do you seek a proof of him who speaks in me, Christ? Therefore this flesh of the immaculate Lamb—that is, the inward parts of his doctrine—must be taken neither raw without interpretation, nor cooked in water, that is, dissolved and boiled away by the disputation of those who flow downward like water, perceiving nothing lofty; but roasted, it says, with fire, that is, solidified and toasted by the divine spirit. For fire tends upward. Whence the Lord said to the Jews: You are from below, I am from above. Therefore, since we have said that the members of the Lamb of God are his Scriptures, let us see what is the head with the feet and the entrails: namely, that in the head you should understand the divinity in the testimony of the four Evangelists; we take the feet as referring to the incarnation, celebrated near the end of the age.

For the feet are the extreme parts of the body: but in the entrails you may perceive hidden mysteries. And you shall not leave, it says, any of it until morning, and you shall not break a bone of it. But what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire: that is, if any mysteries should remain over, they are to be made manifest in the morning of that future resurrection, which we cannot now comprehend. For now I know in part, says the Apostle, but then I shall know even as I am known. These things are to be burned with fire, that is, handed over to the divine spirit: so that those things whose reason we do not now grasp may be consumed by the spirit of burning faith.

But as for what he said, you shall not break a bone of it: he commands by this that everything which is stronger and more solid in the Scriptures should not be broken or shaken, but should remain whole; which precept those who do not observe rightly incur the woe pronounced by him whose bones they break. Woe to you, he says, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who tithe mint, and dill, and cumin, and have abandoned the weightier matters of the Law, judgment, and mercy, and faith. These are the bones of the lamb. And elsewhere to the same: You make void, he says, the word of God, that you may establish your traditions. God further adds in Exodus, after the previous statements, these words: And thus shall you eat it (namely the lamb): your loins girded, and your sandals on your feet, and your staves in your hands, and you shall eat it in haste. For it is the Passover of the Lord.

Concerning the sandals and the staves there is a long explanation, which will be discussed at another time. Concerning the girding of the loins, which has often been spoken of by me at greater length, it shall now be said briefly. It is written in Jeremiah: And you, gird your loins, and you shall say to the people. And to holy Job: Gird up your loins like a man: I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? And so forth. The Apostles too hear: Let your loins be girded; and why this is so strictly commanded is known from John the Baptist, who was girded with a leather belt about his loins. What the reasoning of the loins is, the Apostle signifies to the Hebrews: Still, he says, Levi was in the loins of his father—that is, the priestly race—when Melchisedek met him. Him: whom? Surely holy Abraham. The leather belt about the loins, then, signifies the mortification of vices.

For skin, which is fitted for use, belongs only to a dead animal. It is fitting, therefore, that we, by the precept of God, first mortify the concupiscences of the flesh; and thus receive the body of Christ, who was sacrificed for us who were serving in the Egypt of this world. Wherefore let a man examine himself, as the Apostle says, and so eat of this bread, and drink of the cup. But as for his saying that it must be eaten with haste, he commands that we should not receive the Sacrament of the Lord's body and blood with a sluggish heart and languid mouth; but with all eagerness of soul, as if truly hungering and thirsting for righteousness. For blessed, says the Lord Jesus, are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. And concluding the passage proposed, with a most fitting ending to what it had said, it says: For it is the Passover of the Lord. O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

It is the Passover, it says, of the Lord: that is, the passing-over of the Lord; lest you should think earthly what has been made heavenly through him who passes into it, and made it his own body and blood. For what we have expounded above generally concerning the eating of the flesh of the lamb must be observed specifically in the tasting of these same mysteries of the Lord's Passion: so that you should not think it raw flesh and raw blood, as the Jew does, and reject it, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Nor should you cook the Sacrament in the pot of a fleshly heart, subject as it always is by nature to fluids, thinking it to be something common and earthly; but rather believe that, through the fire of the divine spirit, that has been effected which was announced: because what you receive is the body of that heavenly bread, and the blood of that sacred vine.

For when he handed the consecrated bread and wine to his disciples, he said thus: This is my body: this is my blood. Let us believe, I ask, him whom we have believed. Truth knows no lie. Therefore, when he was speaking to the crowds, astonished and murmuring, about the eating of his body and drinking of his blood; This is a hard saying, and who can hear it? In order to cleanse away, by heavenly fire, those thoughts which I have said must be avoided, he added thus: It is the spirit that gives life, for the flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. And therefore we are commanded to eat together the head of his divinity with the feet of his incarnation and the interior mysteries within, so that we may equally believe all things, just as they have been handed down, not breaking that most solid bone of his: This is my body: this is my blood.

But if anything should still remain, even now, in anyone's understanding, which this exposition has not grasped, let it be consumed by the ardor of faith: since our God is a consuming fire, purging, instructing, and illuminating our hearts unto the understanding of divine things, that we may also know the cause and reason of that heavenly sacrifice instituted by Christ himself, being about to render thanks without end for his ineffable gift. For truly this is the hereditary gift of his New Testament, which he left us on that night on which he was handed over to be crucified, as a pledge, as it were, of his presence. This is the provision for our journey, by which we are fed and nourished in this way of life, until we go forth to him, departing from this world; whence the same Lord said: Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in yourselves.

For he wished his benefits to remain among us, he wished souls to be sanctified by his precious blood through the image of his own Passion; and therefore he commands his faithful disciples, whom he appointed as the first priests of his Church, to perform unceasingly these mysteries of eternal life, which must necessarily be celebrated by all priests throughout each Church of the whole world, until Christ comes again from the heavens; so that both the priests themselves, and all the peoples of the faithful alike, having before their eyes daily, and bearing in their hands, and also receiving with mouth and breast, the pattern of Christ's Passion, may keep the indelible memory of our redemption, and against the poisons of the devil may obtain the sweet medicine of everlasting protection; as the Holy Spirit exhorts: Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. But as to why he ordained that the Sacraments of his body and blood should be offered under the appearance of bread and wine, there is a twofold reason.

First, that the immaculate Lamb of God might hand over a clean sacrifice for a cleansed people to celebrate, without burning, without blood, without broth—that is, without meat-juice—and one that would be ready and easy for all to offer. Then, just as bread must be made from many grains of wheat reduced to flour by water, and must be finished by fire; reasonably in this a figure is taken of the body of Christ, whom we know to have been made one body from the multitude of the whole human race, completed through the fire of the Holy Spirit. For he was born of the Holy Spirit; and since it thus befitted him to fulfill all righteousness, he entered the waters of Baptism that he might consecrate them, and thence, full of the Holy Spirit, who had descended upon him in the form of a dove, he returns from the Jordan, as the Evangelist attests: Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan.

Likewise also the wine of his blood, gathered from many grapes—that is, the grapes of the vine planted by himself—is pressed out in the winepress of the cross, and by its own power ferments within the capacious vessels of those who receive it with faithful heart. Receive, all of you who go forth from the power of Egypt and of Pharaoh the devil, this sacrifice of the saving Passover, with the whole eagerness of a religious heart together with us, that by the Lord Jesus Christ himself, whom we believe to be present in his Sacraments, the inward parts of our hearts may be sanctified: whose inestimable power endures forever and ever.

God speaks through the prophet: Behold, I make a new heaven and a new earth: and the moon shall shine as the sun, and the sun sevenfold. Although he foretells the future renewal of the elements after the end of this age, that very creation, as the Apostle says, shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. For neither, dearly beloved, shall the elements so fail as to cease to be, nor shall we so die as not to rise made better: yet even on this day we perceive the promise of the Lord to be fulfilled; beholding the souls and bodies of the newly baptized renewed after the likeness of heaven and earth. The moon too, that is the Church, which grows in peace, is diminished in persecution (yet diminished in the sphere of its fullness, not in the light of its brightness), we now behold shining like the sun over the whole world.

Moreover, that Christ the Sun of righteousness shines today upon the earth sevenfold more than he shone before, his rays bear witness, which enlighten every man coming into this world. For now that fiery sevenfold Spirit shines forth from him, who sat like fire upon the Apostles, and burns today in each of the faithful. For before Christ suffered and rose again, God was known only in Judea; now the brightness of the Lord's glory passes through into all nations. For his going forth is from the end of heaven, and his circuit even to the end thereof, and there is no one who can hide himself from his heat. Therefore, since the world has today been restored, let us celebrate with exultation the birthday of the world's reformation. This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

But when I speak of the birthday of the world, I mean our own, we who have been reborn in Christ, who were before indeed alive to sin, but dead to righteousness, and now, dead to our former iniquities and crimes, have begun to live to God, having been made conformed first to the death, then to the resurrection of Christ. For we were buried together with him through Baptism into death; that as Christ rose from the dead, so we also might walk in newness of life, celebrating the feast day, and glorying in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, accepted on the tenth day of the first month, was immolated by the Jews on the fourteenth day at the evening of the world. But what that tenth day signifies, what the fourteenth, that I may satisfy yesterday's promise, I will explain as the Lord shall deign to grant.

God says to holy Moses: Speak to all the assembly of the children of Israel, saying: on the tenth day of this month let each man take a lamb by the houses of their families, a lamb for each house. But if there be too few in the house to suffice for a lamb, he shall take with him his neighbor next to his house, according to the number of souls: each man shall reckon in the lamb what suffices for him. But the lamb shall be perfect, a male, a yearling; you shall take it from the lambs or the goats: and it shall be kept for you until the fourteenth day of this month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel shall kill it at evening. And they shall take of the blood, and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel, in the houses in which they shall eat it.

The manifold wisdom of God speaks thus through the Law, that by the very words it foretells things to come, by which it commands things to be done wholesomely for the present. It saved the Jews then in these observances by the shadow of the truth that was to follow: signifying at the same time that their descendants, unmindful of the divine benefits, would slay him at his coming, under whose shadow they had been saved. For it was by them that Christ, coming into this world, was led as a sheep to the sacrifice; whose blood as a Lamb (namely the sign of the Passion), whether on the two doorposts, that is faith and works, or heart and mouth; or on the lintels of our foreheads, we are protected from every onslaught of the raging plague.

That the lamb is taken on the tenth day, and immolated on the fourteenth, I perceive to signify this: that the people of the Jews would crucify at evening the Son of God, received in the Decalogue of the Law, and, as it is written, born in the fourteenth generation after the Babylonian captivity. But "at evening," either of this world, because he suffered in the last times of the age; or also at the very setting of the sun, since when the Lord was crucified the sun set. For at midday, from the sixth hour, darkness came over the whole earth until the ninth hour. What could be more truly an evening than this?

Nor should you think it without purpose that, whereas above it was said in the imperative mood, "let them take a lamb by houses," below it declares in the indicative mood, "the whole assembly of the congregation of the children of Israel shall kill it at evening." "They shall kill," it says; not, "let them kill." For it was foretold what the synagogue of the Jews would cruelly do; it was not commanded that it should be done: nor was it done because it had been foretold; but it was foretold because it was to be, so that God might show his foreknowledge in those things which were to come through the freedom of human will. We speak of freedom of will, because the Jews willed to do what they did: and certainly, had they not willed it, they would not have done it.

Surely it is an act of great sacrilege even to think that God, who is not only good and just, but is Goodness itself and Justice itself, either commands, or compels to be done, that which he condemns when done. Or do we perhaps suppose that, if the Israelites had repented, the omnipotent Son of God could not otherwise have saved the world? For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Consider in the Gospel how Christ waited for the repentance of the Jews; where he reproaches the cities in which very many of his mighty works were done, because they did not do penance: Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if in Tyre and Sidon had been done the mighty works which have been done in you, they would long ago have repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But I say to you: it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.

And you, Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, shall be brought down to hell; for if in Sodom had been done the mighty works which have been done in you, it would have remained until this day; but I say to you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. The foreknowledge of God indeed is not deceived; but neither is the freedom of will once granted to man taken away, lest nothing could be judged of him who had not been free in acting. God condemns the obstinacy of the wicked; he embraces the conversion of the penitent. But you may say: could God have lied, who foretold that they would do what they did do? We cannot fathom how great is the power of his omnipotence, who calls those things which are not as though they were. We would think he could have lied, if the things he foretold had not been fulfilled. Did he then lie also to the Ninevites?

For he said, yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown: and it was not overthrown, because it did penance at the preaching of Jonah. But understand: the word of God is a sword sharp on both edges. Nineveh was to be overthrown one way, and it was overthrown another way. It was to have been overthrown by destruction, had it persisted in its wickedness: its iniquity was overthrown, because it repented. As the heaven is distant from the earth, says God to men, so are my thoughts distant from your thoughts, and my ways from your ways. It is written: Seek not the things that are higher than you, and search not into things above you; for the suspicion of them has supplanted many. Believe then the Lord to be just, dearest, and true, and pious in all his words and works, that you may attain perfect wisdom.

For "the lamb," it says, "shall be perfect, a male, a yearling": that you may think nothing mediocre of the perfect, nothing weak of the male, nothing half-full of the yearling. He is perfect, because in him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He is male, since he deigned to be born a man of a Virgin, that he might provide for both sexes. He is a yearling, because after that Baptism which he received for us in the Jordan, up to the day of his Passion the space of one year is completed; and only those things are written in the Gospels which he taught or did in that year, and not even all of those.

For thus says John the Evangelist: Many other signs also did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, those namely whom it is written that he chose after his Baptism, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, you may have life everlasting in his name.

But of those things which he did before that year, the same John testifies thus in the last words of his book: But there are also many other things which Jesus did; which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Only Luke the evangelist, in passing, has recorded that the aforesaid Lord Jesus, at twelve years of age, was found by his parents in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions, and that he said to his parents: Why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business? This is the acceptable year of the Lord, which the Lord Jesus, reading in the synagogue the writing concerning his own person from the book of Isaiah, said: Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your ears.

This is the year, whose crown (namely, the victorious circle to be blessed with the works of Christ's goodness) the Prophet joyfully announced in the psalm: You shall bless, he says, the crown of the year of your goodness, and your fields shall be filled with plenty: namely the hearts of the believing peoples, having received the seed of the word of life, shall overflow even with hundredfold fruit. And if, when the legs of the thieves hanging on the cross together with Christ were broken, the Savior's legs were for that reason not broken, as the holy evangelist testifies; that the Scripture might be fulfilled, which says: Not a bone of him shall be broken: this Lamb of God, made a yearling, had to be immolated according to the aforesaid reckoning, that all things which were written of him might be fulfilled in him, to whom is all honor, power and glory, with the Father, and with the Holy Spirit, before all ages, and now, and always, and unto all ages. Amen.

The carnal observance of the Jewish Passover, filled with spiritual figures, we have now taught in three treatises; once yesterday, and twice in the vigils, addressing your charity; clearly proving that the sacrifice of flesh and blood commanded under a shadow rightly ceased when the Lamb of God, Christ, came; who according to the Apostle, is the end of the Law, unto righteousness to every believer. For the most blessed Paul himself, while he was still in Egypt, celebrated the passover in the Jewish rite with the Jews: But after it pleased him who set me apart from my mother's womb, he says, and called me by his grace, that he might reveal his Son in me, immediately I did not yield, he says, to flesh and blood. Therefore, since it is not fitting for him to whom the Son of God has been revealed to linger over carnal matters, let us seek the remaining portions of the spiritual mysteries hidden within the inner parts of the appointed reading.

From the lambs, it says, and from the kids you shall take. From this the Jews ought to have perceived that the Law of God is to be understood spiritually, since they read that the lamb which was to be sacrificed was to be taken from both lambs and kids; whereas it is contrary to nature that, if it is a lamb, it should be taken from lambs and equally from kids. But the whole reasoning of this ambiguous expression is this: that this spotless Lamb, the Lord Jesus, deigned to take upon himself flesh, both of the righteous and of sinners, from the Virgin: for he took his body not only from the patriarchs and prophets, but from the mass of the whole human race. That the righteous are compared to lambs, and sinners to kids, he himself declared in the Gospel, saying that the lambs are to be called on the right hand: Come, ye blessed, he says; but the kids are to be driven away on the left: Depart, ye cursed.

This one, then, taken from the lambs and from the kids, the whole multitude of the Synagogue of the children of Israel slew, when they all cried out to Pilate: Crucify him. Yet according to the history of the legal Passover, not the whole Synagogue slew one victim, but a few individuals in each household. But there the chief priests and elders persuaded the people to ask that the robber Barabbas be released to them, and that Jesus be destroyed. For they destroyed Christ the Savior, and were judged out of their own mouth, that the word of God might die among them, that is, the utterance of the Prophets, through whom he himself spoke: and as it is written in the Prophets, that the wise would perish among them, but that Barabbas, that robber the devil, whom they so earnestly demanded, would live among them.

That this seditious murderer indeed lives among them, the very seditions bear witness which they stirred up against the Apostles, and which even now they do not cease to carry out against all the saints, whenever they find opportunity. But for us Christ lives. For he rose again for us, since he was seen no more by the Jews; nor did he, after the resurrection, enter the synagogue of the Jews, but went in to the assembled disciples. He enters also to us, who are gathered together in the house of the Church, and shows us the truth of his venerable body, if indeed we have deserved, or do deserve, to be his disciples.

For indeed the blessed Apostles, to whom it was truly entrusted to prepare the Lord's Passover in the upper room, since they saw few among the Jews in the house of the Church who were not sufficient to complete the sacrifice of the Passover, called together neighbors from the Gentiles, according to what had been commanded in the Law: But if there be few, it says, in the house, so that they are not sufficient for the lamb, the neighbor shall take with him his neighbor next to his house; for truly they were not sufficient for him who endured death for the sins of the whole world.

For few of the Jews believed in the Lord Jesus; whence the Apostle says: Even so, he says, at this present time (no doubt as in the time of Elijah, to whom God said: I have left me seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee before Baal); so then, he says, at this present time (that is, under the coming of Christ) a remnant according to the election of grace has been saved, indeed from the people of the Jews: for out of so great a multitude scarcely a few are found to have been converted to the faith of Christ. Wherefore also concerning this remnant of the Lord and the mercy of God, the prophet Isaiah bears witness, saying: Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us a seed, we should have become as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.

You therefore, O newly baptized, who have been invited to the feast of this blessed and spiritual Passover, see how you may keep your souls from every pollution of foods which the superstition of the Gentiles has infected. Nor is it enough that the Christian preserve his life from the deadly food of demons; but let him flee from all the abominations of the Gentiles, and all the paths of idolatry, as certain venoms of the serpent devil. For parts of idolatry are sorceries, incantations, amulets, vanities, auguries, lots, the observance of all things, and, I say, funeral feasts for the dead, whence the evil of idolatry first raised the head of its error.

For men, for the sake of their own gluttony, first began to prepare meals for the dead, which they themselves might eat; after this they even dared to celebrate sacrilegious sacrifices to them, although those who practice funeral feasts do not even offer any gift to their own dead, while over the tables of the tombs, pouring out wine with hands trembling from drunkenness, they mutter that the spirit thirsts. Beware, I beg you, of all these things, lest God, indignant against his despisers and enemies, who would not have him reign over them, deliver them to those tormentors of hell: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Keep, O newly baptized, the ornament of saving grace: be sober in all things, lest, being made drunk, you lose it: come diligently to the church: with prayers, hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs join watchfully with us. Let these be the works of your leisure; by rendering to Christ the Lord due service through these, you may obtain from him the reward of eternal life.

Let your feasts, therefore, be sober, your beds chaste: let your mind be modest, your speech gentle, your walk mild. Pray that God may preserve in you the benefits of his grace, and that your faith may more and more increase, by the bounty of Christ the Lord and Savior, to whom belongs one and the same power and Godhead with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, before all things, and now, and always, and unto all ages. Amen.

I have deliberately reversed the order of the reading of Exodus, where the law of celebrating the passover is described, in order that, in unfolding the mysteries, I might keep the order of due reverence; because it was fitting that on that most splendid night of vigils, in the second tractate, not the sequence of the words but what was suitable for the neophytes should be explained, so that the untaught neophytes might learn the discipline of eating the paschal sacrifice, and the instructed faithful might recognize it. To them alike I discussed one point about the dress of those who eat, suitable to the occasion, and reserved two points both for them and for the catechumens. For it says: Thus shall you eat it, that is, the lamb: Your loins girded, and your shoes on your feet, and your staves in your hands. Then we spoke of the girding of the loins; now let us expound on the shoes and the staves.

These are set forth today for this reason, that on the next day, and the third, it will be necessary to explain those points from the beginnings of the reading which I had deliberately passed over earlier. The true Lamb of God, whom John the Baptist points out, is Christ. Behold, he says, the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. His flesh, both the faithful in the mystery and, together with them, all believers in faith, we ought so to eat, and so to commend to the inward parts of our heart, that we may not only have our loins girded with chastity, but also be shod, as the Apostle says, in preparation of the gospel of peace.

For just as earthly shoes are protections for carnal feet, and resist either the harshness of cold, or the bite of serpents, or the prickles of thorns: so the precepts of the divine Law, by which we are commanded to fortify the steps of our minds, resist both the serpent devil, and the harshest north wind of the Gentiles, and the thorns and briars of heretics pricking on every side. With shoes of this sort, then, we ought to be shod, as many of us as celebrate the Lord's passover. Since the Law, as the Apostle says, is spiritual; and Christ our passover is sacrificed. And so both our loins ought to be girded, and our feet shod. For what does it profit a man if he have only chastity of body, and, unwary and without the instruction of the shoes of the Law, be exposed to the aforesaid evils: or if, as is daily the case, he offer the open heel of his heart to be devoured by serpents?

If he think evil thoughts, if he covet what is another's, if he meditate deceit, if he nourish anger, if he lie in wait for his neighbor, if he pursue falsehood, if he be eaten by envy, if he waste away with jealousy, if with venomous mouth he detract from the good; and while he strives to tear the innocent with the sting of a lying tongue, is he not rather himself mangled by the bites of the demons who speak through him? What did it profit to have had the loins girded, if, not keeping the shoes of the divine commandments, you have handed over the steps of your heart (that is, the foundations of your soul) to most cruel laceration? It may perhaps seem contrary to some, that whereas here it is commanded by God that we ought to be so shod, elsewhere it is commanded by the same Lord God to holy Moses, and to holy Joshua: Loose the shoes from your feet.

Great indeed is the reasoning, and it would need to be built up through the windings of many propositions: but since brevity suits both the labor of the preacher and the memory of the hearer, I do not wish to draw you out further. There the question is resolved where the shoes are loosed, since the reason is immediately added: Loose, it says, the shoes from your feet; for the place on which you stand is holy ground. It is shown, then, that the land of Egypt, where that former precept is given, is not holy, and therefore there the shoes are commanded to be kept on; but on holy ground they are decreed to be loosed: for what reasons, however, must be plainly explained.

As long as we dwell in the Egypt of this world, it behooves us, celebrating the Lord's passover, to use the shoes of the holy Scriptures; because our step cannot be safe unless it be covered by the Lord's commandments, until we enter into that holy land of promise which is prepared for the just. For blessed are the meek, says the Lord Jesus, for they shall possess the land; not, of course, this land which sinners possess, but that in which there are no thorns and briars: in which there are no serpents and scorpions: where indeed the devil, with the other unclean spirits, does not come. For then he will be, together with his satellites, in the eternal fire which God has prepared for the devil and his angels. We have also John the Baptist, who said of the Lord Jesus, the Savior of mankind: Whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to loose. But there is another reason in the case of Christ.

He was not shod for his own sake, but for ours; because the earth could not bear the bare footsteps of his majesty. When he speaks of shoes, he shows the steps of the holy Scriptures, by which he walks, and by which his knowledge goes about among all who dwell upon the earth. And therefore John the Baptist in the Gospel denies that he is either fit or worthy to loose the latchet of his shoe, that is, his word; whether to expound one of his commandments; or to be able to lay bare and clearly show the venerable footsteps of the Word of God, still shod in this age.

For now we see through a glass in a dark manner, it says, but then face to face: where nothing will be hidden that shall not be revealed, nor concealed that shall not be known: when to that future feast day the Lord Jesus will come not as among unbelievers, as it were secretly; but as it is written: God shall come manifestly, our God, and shall not keep silence. Therefore also the Apostles are elsewhere forbidden in the Gospels to carry shoes on the way, when it is said to them in the Gospel of Matthew by the Lord: Do not possess gold, nor silver, nor money in your purses, nor a scrip for your journey, nor two coats, nor shoes, nor a staff; for the workman is worthy of his hire. But elsewhere they are commanded to have them, as the evangelist Mark describes: And Jesus went about, it says, the towns teaching.

And having called the twelve together, he sent them two by two, giving them power to cast out unclean spirits; and commanding them that they should take nothing for the way, but a staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money in their purses, but shod with sandals, and that they should not put on two coats. On account of unbelievers and men of little faith, the Apostles are commanded, on the way of preaching, to have shoes, so that they might preach the Word of God shod and covered as in a mystery, on account of the thorns and briars of blasphemers. But to those who hear with faithful mind, as if already on holy ground, being of perfect heart in faith, where they could safely bring forth testimonies bare concerning God; they are commanded not to carry shoes, namely, that they might there plant open footprints of his divinity.

And therefore blessed Peter shod himself in prison with his own shoes: and so went out again to the Jewish enemies and adverse powers, that, with feet shod in the preparation of the gospel, he might tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy. And Moses says in the blessings, either to each believer, or rather to the person of Christ: Iron and brass shall be your shoe; namely, that he might crush the heads of the dragons upon the waters, that is, that he might grind down the principalities of the demon-dragons, who are over the waters of the Gentile peoples. That waters are compared to peoples and Gentiles is revealed in the Apocalypse of John: The waters, it says, which you saw, upon which the harlot Babylon sits, are peoples and nations.

I have need also of a staff, still celebrating the passover in Egypt; so that, if I am an imitator of holy Moses, I may deliver my Hebrew (that is, the understanding Israel, who has deserved to see God) from destruction, the Egyptian being struck down. This applies to each one for his own sake, as long as he serves the Law. But if anyone is apostolic, and, the Egyptian being cast down through Jesus, is made great and powerful, he no longer carries the staff for his own sake, but for those to whom it is necessary to say: What will you? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in charity and the spirit of meekness? He carries it also on account of those who come to us in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. But if the wolf ceases to be a wolf, and feeds with the lamb, as the Prophet says; and if the lion, ceasing to be a lion, eats straw with the ox, there is no need of the staff.

For if the wickedness of savage manners is turned into such gentleness, that with the innocent little sheep, and the clean workers of Christ, they meekly seek and take the pasture of life, and are indeed such as ought to be perfected in charity and the spirit of meekness; it is said by Christ to any apostolic priests, that they should not carry the staves of correction on the way, when among obedient and modest disciples they have already begun to possess the holy land. May the Savior of mankind, the Lord God Jesus, grant this concerning you to my littleness. To whom is one Godhead, and the same omnipotence, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, before all ages, and now, and always, and unto all ages. Amen.

As much as God the Father through His power and His Spirit has deigned to reveal, according to the capacity of our strength; as much as the coequal omnipotence of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit has granted; as much as the one and same divinity of the sempiternal and unoriginate Trinity has inspired, we have set forth to your charity from the first vigils of Easter until this day: what was the reason for the name of the book Exodus; what the power of the Passover, whose observance is there decreed to be first kept; and why that month in which God commands this to be observed is called first among the months of the year; what Egypt signified; what that tenth, or fourteenth day meant; who was the lamb of immolation, and why it was to be taken from the sheep and from the goats; what the evening of the day meant, what that threshold, what those posts, what that blood; and for what reason they are bidden to eat neither raw flesh, nor flesh boiled in water, but roasted with fire, and the head with the feet and the entrails, hastily; that from it no bone should be broken; what the burning of the remains meant, and what mystery was figured either in the shoes of the feet, and the staves of the hands, or in the girding of the loins.

It remains that we discuss the striking of the firstborn of Egypt, and the unleavened bread with bitterness, and the seven days of unleavened bread. I will pass through, He says, the land of Egypt this night, and I will strike every firstborn in the land of Egypt from man even to beast: and on all the gods of the Egyptians I will execute vengeance, I the Lord. And the blood shall be to you for a sign in the houses in which you shall be: and I will see the blood, and I will protect you: and there shall not be among you the plague of destruction when I strike Egypt. And this day shall be to you for a memorial.

Now God did indeed strike in that night, at that time, all the firstborn of the Egyptians, just as He had threatened through Moses to Pharaoh, when he refused to let go the people of Israel, whom people the same Lord deigned to call His firstborn son; when the Egyptians, struck suddenly by the slaughter of so great deaths, drove out in the middle of the night the Israelites whom they had long refused to release, as though they were captives. But since the same God did much greater things for our people against the true Egyptians, and in us were fulfilled the things which then happened in shadow; mindful of our redemption, we ought not to conceal in ungrateful silence the gifts of His loving-kindness.

On the day on which the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus, was immolated, toward evening (for indeed darkness was already impending, which straightway, when He was crucified, covered the whole earth), in the night of that day He struck the firstborn of the demons of the Egyptians, that is, the images of dead men, which they themselves first created in this world, that through them they might be worshipped. But since it is added there, "On all the gods of the Egyptians I will execute vengeance," perhaps you may say: who are these gods of the Egyptians, if the demons whom the pagans think to be gods are themselves of Egypt? Hear then, that not only are the demons Egyptians; but also their worshippers, whoever obstinately persist in unbelief, since they are children of darkness, are Egyptians: because they are, by nature, children of the Egyptians, others are children of the demons.

Whence it is said to all unbelievers: "You are of your father the devil." For just as all who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God, according to the teaching of the apostle Paul, so too all who are led away by the spirit of the devil are children of the demons. And the reason Sacred Scripture calls the devil and his army "Egyptians" is that they are estranged from God, who is light, by rebelling against their own Creator. For the holy Apostle says: "What wonder if Satan transfigures himself into an angel of light?" Proving indeed that he is an angel of darkness, who strives to show himself as though an angel of light, in order to deceive.

By similar reasoning, all unbelievers who oppose God, and are exiles from the light of His divinity, are called Egyptians; whom nevertheless the Lord Himself exhorts to salvation, saying: "While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may be children of light." And so, if voluntary faith can make them children of light, then the fact that they are children of darkness is a fault of will, not of nature. Therefore, in the night in which the Son of God, leaving His lifeless body on the cross, passed with His soul to the lower Egypt, that He might visit the souls placed in hell; then He wrought vengeance on all the unclean spirits, the gods of the Egyptians, slaying in their firstborn the powers of their principality. For, near His Passion, the Lord Jesus says: "Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out.

And I, when I shall be lifted up, will draw all things to myself." And so the Lord Jesus recalled to Himself all His creation, which the most unjust usurpers of divinity had enslaved to themselves by a rebellious spirit; that all things might be made subject to His dominion, through whom all things were made; and who protected and will protect those believing in Him from the plague of destruction, by the sign of His cross, when it is said: "And the blood shall be to you for a sign in the houses: you shall be there: and I will see the blood, and I will protect you." Yet we must inquire, before we pass on to the things that follow, how He can say, "I will protect you," as though from another, the destroyer; and again Moses says, "The Lord will pass over to strike the Egyptians, and He will see the blood on the lintel, and on both posts, and will pass over the door." What then is this?

Did the Lord pass over to strike the Egyptians by the hand of the destroyer? Far from it. For shortly after He says: "And He will not allow the destroyer to enter into your houses." If He Himself strikes, how is it said, He will not allow the destroyer to enter? Consider this, therefore, attentive reader, in the very text of the reading: that where it says the Egyptians are struck, it does not say, "by the destroyer"; but where it speaks of the Hebrews being protected, it is said that He who struck the Egyptians did so, but not the destroyer. For the destroyer does not strike the Egyptians, whose friend and prince he is; since, as the Lord says in the Gospel of the most blessed Mark, if Satan has risen up against himself, he is divided; this, He says, he cannot do, or he has an end. But surely, dearest brethren, the destroyer wishes to strike the Hebrews, while God strikes the Egyptians.

For he contrives retribution against the servants of God, indignant that his own satellites have been struck by Him; since the devil is then most enkindled, when he is being extinguished. For then he rages most against the servants of God, when his first power is slain in its firstborn, while God destroys from among us either idolatry, or superstition, or the other principal errors of the demons. For that most wicked one says, murmuring against God: "Because of your Hebrews you strike my Egyptians, and because of my Egyptians I will persecute and kill your Hebrews." For the enemy said: "I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoils, my soul shall be filled, I will kill with my sword, my hand shall have dominion": but his threatening is frustrated, if we diligently obey the Lord's precept, by which He has forewarned us that we can be safe.

For it is added: "And you shall keep this word as a law for yourself and your children forever": namely, that we should always be careful to celebrate the Passover of the Lord with lawful zeal, and watchfully do the things commanded to us, lest, through our contempt or our negligence, the destroyer find an opening to rage, the protection of God our guardian ceasing. Let each one of us, then, be on the side of the Lord, who struck the Egyptians; let him be an Israelite, ever beholding God in mind, that he may be protected from the plague of the destroyer. Let him have—nay, let us have—on both posts, that is, in the heart, and in the mouth, the saving Passion of the Lord. How?

As the Apostle teaches: "With the heart one believes unto righteousness, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." Let us also have on the threshold of the forehead the sign of the blood of the Lamb, that God may not allow the destroyer to enter to us: for this was not done only then, either in the history of the Law, or in the time of the cross of the Lord Jesus, but even now God, the avenger of His people, always strikes the Egyptians: always the devil, the destroyer, strives to enter into the houses of the Israelites, desiring to kill them: always the Son of God guards His own, and protects them, wherever He recognizes the sign of His Passion. To Him be glory with the Father, and with the Holy Spirit, through all ages. Amen.

Having discussed the stronger members of the paschal commandments, we said yesterday that three species of the proposed reading from Exodus still remained: of which the first, concerning the killing of the firstborn of Egypt, we have just now, as best we could, interpreted; the two remaining ones, concerning the prohibition of leaven, and concerning the seven days of unleavened bread, we now propose to explain, by the grace of the Lord bestowing it. Seven days, he says, shall you eat unleavened bread: and from the first day you shall put away leaven from your houses: whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall perish out of Israel.

Certain of the old heretics, among whom are the insane Marcion and the execrable Manichaeus, since, led by a spirit of error, they contend that all the Scriptures of the Old Testament are to be rejected; through many chapters of the Scriptures they attempt to assert that the God of the ancient Law is evil, as though either the God of the New Testament were other than He who indeed came foretold from the Law, or as though someone could rightly be called good in comparison with the goodness of God: whereas even angels or men are judged to have some participation in goodness from this, if they know, adore, venerate, and love the good God; the Lord Jesus attesting that a good man brings forth good things from the good treasure of his heart.

But God the Son of God, possessing perfect goodness together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and knowing that there is one goodness of the Trinity, just as there is one divinity; took it ill to be called good according to the condition of created goods, and said: Why do you call me good? That is: I do not wish you to call good one whom you do not know; know first who I am, and when you have known the true God, I welcome your calling me good, because no one is good but God alone. For that Jew had said to the Son of God (God and man) as though to a certain man only, indeed a good teacher: Good Master, what shall I do that I may possess eternal life? And therefore the Lord said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. For God is one, where there is no division of Deity.

Throughout all the books of the sacred Scriptures we read of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—not gods, because the Unity of majesty does not permit them to be called gods; for there is only a distinction of persons in the Trinity, not a diversity of nature. Now if Marcion and Manichaeus had deserved to perceive this, they surely would never have said that one God indeed, of the New Testament, is good, while another, who spoke through the old Law, is evil. They have even dared, in the aforesaid Law concerning unleavened bread, to ascribe to Him cruelty, saying that a man's soul is destroyed on account of leavened bread, than which nothing could be more cruel. For, being senseless, they did not understand either how great was the utility in the commandment, or that God has a greater cause for avenging Himself then, if in small matters (where there is no difficulty in observing) He is despised out of sheer stubbornness of spirit. God more easily pardons necessity than presumption.

Finally it is not imputed as sin to holy David that, being in the necessity of hunger, he ate the holy loaves which it was not lawful to eat except for the priests alone; but let us see there what necessity could have pressed. God commanded the Israelites that for the seven days of the passover they should not make leavened bread for themselves. If He had commanded leavened bread to be made, diligence would have been necessary there, lest it be lacking: what He commanded is a matter of idleness, not of labor. He commands negligence, that He may test obedience; and do you not wish that He should condemn that soul which has applied diligence in order to show contempt? But let us now see what was the reason of utility in this very precept, both for the Jews historically up to the coming of Christ, and for us today what edification there might be according to spiritual understanding.

When the sons of Israel were oppressed in Egypt with the grievous wrongs of captivity, groaning, they cried out to the Lord God that He would deign to deliver them. God immediately chose from among them Moses and Aaron, through whom He might approach Pharaoh, king of Egypt, that he should let them go. When he would not let them go, having been scourged with many plagues along with his people, he received this last plague of punishment, that the firstborn of all the Egyptians should be struck down and perish by divine action on that night on which the Jews, by God's command, had to celebrate the sacrifice of the passover. At midnight therefore there arose a cry and a wailing throughout all Egypt; for there was no house in which there was not one dead. Then the king of Egypt, fearing lest he himself, and all his people likewise, should perish, compelled Moses and Aaron to lead out all the people from Egypt at that hour of the night.

Let us note what they did when they were being urged to depart. And the people, he says, took the dough kneaded before it was leavened, and bound it up in their garments, and put it upon their shoulders. And going out, when they had come to Succoth, they baked, he says, the dough which they had brought out of Egypt, unleavened cakes baked under the ashes. Therefore, that they might be mindful of this necessity and of the benefits of God, He commanded them to celebrate the passover in this way for seven days of the first month, that they should not eat leavened bread, and that they should always tell their sons the reason for which they were commanded to do this; namely so that the people itself, being ungrateful, might be compelled, admonished at least by the image of the things done, to give thanks to its liberator.

And therefore it is so strictly commanded them: Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread: and from the first day you shall put away leaven from your houses: whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall perish out of Israel. God did many other things also for them, both at the Red Sea and in the desert: but forgetful of the mercies of God (to say nothing of their other evils), besides having made the golden calf's head, and having said, worshiping it: These are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt: they also rejected with sacrilegious minds Jesus the Son of God, who had been their liberator, when He came to them.

Whence the holy evangelist John recalls, not without complaint: He came unto His own, and His own received Him not; that is, He came to those whom He had freed from the slavery of Egypt; whom He had led across the Red Sea with dry footstep; in whose sight He had overwhelmed Pharaoh and the Egyptians when the surrounding walls of water were released; whom He had satisfied with heavenly manna in the desert; for whom He had brought forth fountains from the dry rock; to whom He had entrusted the words of the Law; to whom He had foretold by the prophecy of the Prophets His coming according to the flesh; to whom especially He had come, saying: I was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

These not only refused to receive Him, but even slew Him by the punishment of the cross; yet He, having taken on a body, endured to die for this reason, that He might show the omnipotence of His majesty by His own power in rising again, and that in death being removed and conquered He might restore life to believers, and condemn the full wickedness of those who crucified Him. Wherefore, rising on the third day, He transferred Himself to the Gentiles, as He had long before threatened: The kingdom shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. Therefore, since it has been given to us, who faithfully follow Christ, to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, let us see what our same Lord and Master taught us to understand about this leaven.

Take heed, He says, and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees; which when He had repeated more clearly, the Apostles understood that they were to beware not of the leaven of bread, but of the wickedness of corrupting doctrine. Whence the fitting preacher of the Gospel, the apostle Paul, cries out to us: Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. For Christ our passover is sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the feast, he says, not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness: but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Let us therefore beware of the leaven of malice; for wherever the leaven of wickedness, compounded by the devil from the kneading of sins and iniquities, appears, there destruction draws near to that soul.

When therefore you see that evil thoughts have entered your soul, scheming to twist you away from the worship of God, or to make you commit some sin, know that there has entered in one who is accustomed to make the leaven of death: therefore beware, lest such leaven be found in you, and your soul be destroyed from before God. Do you not know, says the Apostle, that a little leaven corrupts the whole lump? See to it, then, that you are not persuaded to yield even in a small matter either to the error of the Gentiles, or to the iniquity of the Jews, or to the wickedness of heretics, who corrupt the whole lump of the faith with the leaven of the devil through the rancor of perfidy. Now what he said, that unleavened bread must be eaten with bitterness, taught that no one can lead a sincere life without affliction of the flesh.

Bitterness appears in fasting, and in all abstinence from carnal delights; but the Lord's passover is not otherwise celebrated; nor is the unleavened bread of sincerity otherwise eaten. But when you shall have gone out of the Egypt of this world's activity, or of the body, you shall eat the food of manna; you shall receive the bread of heaven, and having been led into that holy land of promise, you shall enjoy both the pleasantness of paradise, and the eternal sweetness of the Lord Himself. Sweet is the bitterness which is followed by so great a recompense of sweetness.

From the first day, then, of our regeneration or of our conversion, let us cast out the leaven of wickedness from our own dwellings of this earthly habitation; and for the seven days of our whole life, since they are unrolled through the ages in faith, let us eat the unleavened bread of sincerity and purity, that we may deserve to obtain the gifts of the heavenly promises, which may God the Father almighty deign to grant us, through His co-eternal Son, living with Him and reigning together with the Holy Spirit, before all ages, and now, and always, and unto all ages. Amen.

After the end of that treatise which we set before your charity up to yesterday, from the book of Exodus, where the Law of celebrating the Passover is described; now, with the Lord's help, let us discuss something from the Gospel reading which was read a little while ago: that by the very facts we may prove that the same God is the author of the Old Instrument as of the New. For we have heard that the Saviour of the human race, Jesus, was invited to a wedding, and there converted water into the taste and nature of wine. Plainly this history too has the order of truth. For the very one who from the beginning had instituted marriage blessed it; and he converted the creature which he had made into that which he willed, by his own power.

And concerning the power of God omnipotent there can be no doubt creeping into a faithful soul as to the deed; yet that he went to a wedding feast, that is, into a house of feasting, some of us will not without reason wonder.

For indeed, dearest ones, almost the whole text of the Gospels suggests that the Lord Christ, dwelling among men, brought help to desperate situations, and was present above all in sorrows: as he rebukes the blaspheming Jews, as he convicts the Scribes and Pharisees guilty of deceit, guile, avarice, and vanity; as he reproaches and threatens unbelieving cities; as he torments unclean spirits, that he might come to the aid of his captive image, and, driving out demons, restore possessed minds to health; as he cleanses lepers who beseech him; as he restores paralytics, living only by the service of the tongue with which they entreated, rather forming anew than merely healing; as he, walking upon the waters, comes serene and calms those in peril from the tempest of the sea; as he restores to the blinded eyes the gift of lost light, or infuses new light into those blind from birth; as he stands, skilled in healing, amid the sorrowful crowds of the sick; as he removes the varied griefs of beseeching parents, restoring their dying dear ones to health, or their dead to life.

For to this end the Son of God, God without beginning, at the end of the age took the beginning of flesh from the Virgin, and deigned to dwell among men, that he might succor this perishing world; since, as he himself says, they that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. For a physician is wont to enter the house of sorrow rather than of joy. For he is necessary either to those afflicted with the pain of wounds, or to those laboring under the sickness of disease, or to those wasted by the slow decay of the bowels; because prosperity does not require the office of a physician. What then is it, that this Gospel reading which was recited today declares that the Lord was present, invited, at a wedding feast, except that there wine—that is, the power of spiritual joy—had failed, and the mouths of the thirsting guests languished for want of the wine that gladdens; since wine gladdens the heart of man, as the Prophet says?

But before we reveal the spiritual understanding, let us set forth the reason of the deed historically. Therefore Christ does not scorn the celebration of a wedding, that he may attest that he himself is the same God who from the beginning fashioned man and woman from the slime of the earth, and granted to them the license of marriage, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth. This ordinance so displeases the ruined Manichees; to whom, I think, on account of their own uncleanness, it is not indeed the matter of marriage that displeases, but the law, which joins not many women to one man, nor one woman to many men, but one woman to one man. For these execrable Manichees are unwilling to live according to the doctrine of the Apostle Paul, that each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband.

Christ, then, blessed the lawful marriage which he had established from the beginning, when, being invited, he did not refuse to go to the wedding; and yet he taught that virginity is better, since he deigned to be born the more through it. God proved the holy Virgin to be his own dwelling, where, entering, he preserves the perpetual pillar of modesty, being born without detriment to maternal integrity, conceived without corruption. And therefore the vessel of election, the Apostle, invited others to that good which he himself had attained, saying to the unmarried: It is good for them if they so remain, even as I. He exhorts by the example of happiness, he does not compel by the power of law, saying concerning virgins: I have no commandment of the Lord; but I give counsel, as one who has obtained mercy of the Lord, that I may be faithful; because it is expedient for a man so to be.

And after a long exhortation, in which he preferred the blessedness of chastity to the condition of marriage, he concluded with this final sentence: Therefore he also who gives his virgin in marriage does well; and he who does not give her does better. This, I judge, was said by the blessed Apostle not to the parents of virgins, who, it is plain, cannot rule over another's will; but to each person, whether man or woman, an option was set forth by that same saint, that each should either preserve his own virgin (that is, his own virgin-born flesh) in integrity, choosing the better and free part, or, the condition being acknowledged, give her in marriage, if he does not contain himself. But let not the parents, or any kinsfolk of virgins, whether of boys or of girls, flatter themselves with the aforesaid freedom of choice, since we have argued that they cannot rule over the minds of others.

They cannot indeed command perpetual continence, since it is known to be a matter of the will; but they can nourish the will toward the better, and are debtors to admonish, to exhort, to cherish, that they may be eager to bind their own pledges to God rather than to the world, so that from their own offspring they may present some, worthy in the order of the clergy, as ministers of the divine altar, or nourish girls dedicated to chastity in the number of holy women; that, adorning the Church of God with such nurslings, they may attain the blessedness that is owed them. For it is written: Blessed is he who has seed in Sion, and household in Jerusalem. But in this illustrious prophetic utterance there is also a loftier meaning, to be unfolded in its proper place with full discussion.

But since we have been usefully drawn into this discourse by our zeal for chastity, while explaining the reason for which the Saviour went to the wedding, let us meanwhile briefly suggest a wholesome counsel to our neophytes, intending in what follows to show the spiritual understanding of this reading to be explained figuratively.

That you have been regenerated through Baptism, and reborn, you can perceive from the very appellation by which you are called infants. If therefore any of you, bound in marriage, desire rather to preserve their virgins than to give them in marriage, let them have wives as though not having them; and there shall be for them great recompense with the Lord our God, because they have preserved such flesh as was reborn in the sacrament of Baptism. This I say for your benefit, not to cast a snare upon you; for even if you have served a lawful marriage after the washing, you have not sinned. Only take care not to abandon the faith in any other way, that you flee from fornications, having now become a believer. But you will be able to keep this only if you avoid drunkenness and disgraceful banquets, where the serpentine gestures of shameful women stir up illicit desire; where the lyre sounds, and the flute; where finally all kinds of musical instruments clash amid the dancers' cymbals.

Unhappy are those houses which differ in nothing from theatres. Let all these things, I beg, be removed from your midst. Let the house of a Christian and baptized man be free from the dance of the devil, let it be truly human, let it be hospitable; let it be sanctified by assiduous prayers; let it be frequented with psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles: let the word of God, and the sign of Christ, be in the heart, in the mouth, on the forehead, amid food, amid drink, amid conversation, in the baths, in the bedchambers, in coming in, in going out, in joy, in sorrow; so that, according to the teaching of most blessed Paul, whether you eat, or drink, or do anything, you may do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has called you to grace. For he himself both grants pardon for past sins, and promises rewards for an amended life. But having explained these things morally for common edification, I now come to the promised allegories of this Gospel reading itself.

And although I do not judge myself fit for the explanation of the mysteries of Christ, who do not yet deserve to presume upon the authority of most blessed Paul, who says: for we speak not in the taught words of human wisdom, but in the teaching of the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual; yet I desire, from this reading of the divine Gospel, to reveal to you a heavenly and hidden understanding, insofar as the Lord shall deign to grant it. For a little before, while I was discussing the beginning of the proposed discourse, explaining the reason for which the Savior went, being invited, to the wedding, I passed over to the commendable treatise on preserving virginity, and there I seem to have lingered somewhat. Now, however, I will repeat the narration itself of the blessed evangelist, that we may more fittingly seek the spiritual understanding in the words. And on the third day, he says, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee: and the mother of Jesus was there.

And Jesus also was invited, and his disciples, to the wedding. And they had no wine, for the wine of the wedding was consumed. Having, as was fitting, come to know the true history of the event, let us now explain spiritually what this third day is, on which the wedding is recorded to have taken place. It is the day of light, dearest brothers; and therefore it is most fittingly compared to the precepts of the Lord, who is the true light, as the Prophet testifies: The precept of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes. And again elsewhere: How like light, he says, are your commandments upon the earth. Whence the Lord Savior rightly admonished that one must walk in the light, saying: But if anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. For truly, if anyone walks in the light of God's precepts, he cannot possibly stumble.

There was therefore a first day under the commandment, from Adam to Moses: the second day was under the Law of Moses: the third day is under the Grace of the Savior. On which day the heavenly Bridegroom himself, the lover of believing souls, the Lord Jesus, joined to himself as bride the Church from among the Gentiles, to whom he might give the ring of his seal, and the precious earrings of faith (for faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of God, namely the Son; because in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God); to which bride the same Son of God, God the Word, might also give golden bracelets, namely of approved works and right deeds, and might also bestow other precious jewels one by one, which are the ornaments of the spiritual virtues.

And that you might recognize that these spiritual nuptials are celebrated by Christ among the people of the Gentiles on this third day, they take place not in Judea, but in Cana of Galilee: which, besides the testimony of holy Isaiah, who mentioned Galilee of the Gentiles, will be shown more clearly from the interpretation of the names themselves. For Cana is said to mean "possession"; and Galilee is called either "rolling" or "wheel," interpreted from the Hebrew tongue. Now it is agreed that the people of the Gentiles, from the error of idolatry into which they had once fallen, now hasten to the worship of Christian truth with the speed of a certain running wheel. Whence also the prophet David sang figuratively, speaking to God: The voice of your thunder was in the wheel. For God thundered from heaven, and the Most High gave his voice, saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: hear him.

The voice of this thunder clings in the hearts of this people, which from Gentile superstition hastened swiftly to the faith of the Lord Jesus, like a running wheel. For which reason we also rightly consider that the blessed Apostles were worthily called by Christ sons of thunder, Boanerges. For we read in another place of the Gospel that certain ones from among the Gentiles, desiring to draw near to Christ, sought access through the apostle Philip, who was from Bethsaida, a city of Galilee; trusting, I suppose, in familiarity: Lord, they say, we wish to see Jesus. Philip comes and tells Andrew: Andrew and Philip go and tell Jesus. To these are connected the things which, in their proper place, as your charity remembers, I discussed in detail, where the Lord, immediately embracing with gladness the envoys of the Gentiles, and foreseeing in a few believers the faith of innumerable peoples, said to the Apostles: The hour has come that the Son of man should be glorified.

And a little after, turning his voice to the Father, he said: Father, glorify your name. And immediately a voice coming from heaven said: I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. The crowd of Jews standing around, hearing this voice of God the Father resounding from the lofty seats of the heavens, thought it was thunder, because they did not grasp the words: for the people, according to the prophecy of holy Isaiah, hearing with the ear and not hearing, had heard only the sound of the divine voice, without understanding of the words. Therefore the Lord, both in the Gospel to all, and in the Apocalypse after the heavenly teaching, cries out: He who has ears to hear, let him hear. For he knew that all have ears, but not all have ears for hearing: for he who, dulled by hardness of heart, does not know what he heard, will not be reckoned as having heard.

But the Apostles, and those who through the Apostles ran to the faith of Christ, who had ears to hear, merited to understand the divine sayings, compared, according to their greatness, as we read in the Apocalypse, to thunders; since indeed they were held worthy to be instructed from heaven by the Father's testimony, unto the saving knowledge of the truth. Cana, moreover, is a small city in the Galilee of the Gentiles, in whose regions is also situated the city of Capernaum, where the blessed evangelist Matthew testifies that Christ dwelt, saying: When Jesus had heard that John was delivered up, he withdrew into Galilee; and leaving the city of Nazareth, that is, of the other Galilee, he came, he says, and dwelt in Capernaum, a maritime town in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim; that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled: The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, the way of the sea beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.

The people who sat in darkness saw a great light: and to those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has arisen. The most blessed evangelist John also records that the Lord Jesus left the land of Judea, and went again into Galilee. But it was necessary, he says, for him to pass through Samaria, where, describing him as having lingered a while in that very passage because of the Samaritan woman, he then added: And after two days he departed from there and went into Galilee. For Jesus himself bore witness, he says, that a prophet has no honor in his own country. But when he had come into Galilee, he says, the Galileans received him, having seen all the signs which he did at Jerusalem on the feast day: for they too had come to the feast. He came therefore, he says, again into Cana of Galilee, where he made water into wine. Now there was a certain ruler, whose son was sick at Capernaum.

He, when he had heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, went to him, and begged him to come down and heal his son who was beginning to die. Whom, having healed him though absent, immediately by the power of his word, like a heavenly physician, the holy evangelist thus concluded: This second sign Jesus did again, when he had come from Judea into Galilee. Therefore, to return to the interpretation of the names, and the figural reasoning; in Cana of Galilee, that is in the possession of the Gentiles, spiritual nuptials are celebrated in the presence of Christ. The prophet, speaking in his person to the Church in the Song of Songs, says: Come from Lebanon, my spouse: come from Lebanon; that is, from that Gentile incense-offering. For we interpret Lebanon as "incense" from the Greek, which those magi, coming from among the Gentiles, believed ought rather to be offered to Christ.

Lebanon, moreover, is also seen to be a steep mountain among the Phoenicians, compared to the proud empire of the Gentiles: whence the Church is especially called forth as bride, hearing the voice of Christ saying: Come from Lebanon, my spouse: come from Lebanon; that is, you shall come, and you shall pass from the beginning of the faith, from the top of Sanir and Hermon: and from the dens of lions, from the mountains of leopards; that is, so that, forsaking the horrid forests of idolatry, and leaving behind the stables of monstrous beasts, namely the dens of demons, she may hasten to the worship of almighty God, and embrace the faith of him who deigns, by the grace of divine love, to call her his spouse.

But someone may say: If God, according to the teaching of the Apostle, wills all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth; why is it that these saving nuptials are celebrated chiefly among the Gentiles at the consummation of the age, and the peoples of the former age were not joined in the divine marriage? I will show you, dearly beloved, that Adam himself, the first-formed man, was joined to divine intimacy, having received from the Bridegroom himself the insignia of the divine image, the ornaments of wisdom, and understanding, and everlasting life. But after, through the seduction of the devil, the faith of the commandment was adulterated, immortality together with the freedom of divine love was taken away; yet there remained, up to the flood, and up to the Law itself, a revived love of certain just men toward God, and a renewed union of God toward a few saints.

But because, apart from a few, as I have said, holy men, all the earth was fornicating away from the Lord, and the human race in mad lust had joined to itself innumerable gods of idols, God at once chose the stock of the just seed of Abraham; and confirmed, through Moses his minister, the lawful tablets of covenant, inscribed by his own finger, between himself and that people. From then on that people, conceiving the divine precepts, and fruitful with the offspring of saints, began to be most dear to God, whose union they had merited. But in process of time, presuming too much upon God's love, they declined through delights into luxury, and through luxury broke out into contempt and rebellion; and so they were scourged both often and in various ways, because they had succumbed to the adulteries of idols.

For often they were delivered to the sword, often to captivity, but, as it is written, they refused to accept discipline; for which reason God speaks to her through the Prophet: You shall no more be called soft and delicate: but sit, he says, on the ground, and take the millstone, and grind. And what after all this? Your shame, he says, shall be exposed. And again the Lord complains of her through the Prophet: Have you seen, he says, what the house of Israel has done to me? She went up on every high mountain, and under every leafy tree, and there committed fornication with idols: and she committed adultery, he says, with wood and stone. And I said, after she had committed all this fornication: Return to me: and she did not return. And I sent her away, and gave her a bill of divorce. Let us flee, I beg, from idols, lest we too, being likewise repudiated, deserve to hear the same.

Let us hear, however, what bill of divorce the people of Judea received: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kill the prophets, and stone those who are sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not? Behold, your house shall be left to you desolate. After the Passion of the Lord also, a fuller bill of divorce is given by the Apostles to the Synagogue of the Jews, when it is said: To you it was necessary that the word of God be announced first: but since you have rejected it, and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold we turn to the Gentiles, as it has been commanded us. The people of the Jews being therefore forsaken and repudiated, our people from among the Gentiles is taken into marriage: For I will call not-my-people, my people; and not-beloved, beloved.

The Lord had indeed foretold through the Prophet, that on the first day under the commandment, and on the second under the Law, the nuptials, as I have explained, had been celebrated. Therefore the holy evangelist does not say absolutely, on the third day there was a wedding; but he speaks with a conjunction prefixed, and on the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee: and the mother of Jesus was there. Where? Surely among the Gentiles; for it is agreed that blessed Mary, on her mother's side, traced her origin from the nation of the Moabites. For Boaz begot Obed of Ruth, that woman of Moab. Obed begot Jesse: Jesse begot David the king; from whose seed Joseph was born, to whom the virgin Mary was betrothed (indeed of the same tribe, since otherwise it was not lawful), who bore Jesus, who is called Christ. There, then, was the mother of Jesus: and Jesus also was invited, and his disciples, to the wedding. Great mystery of piety!

He who is the Bridegroom is himself invited: and he is invited by the voices of the Prophets thus entreating: O Lord, bow down your heavens and come down. And again: Stir up your might, and come, that you may save us. And there are many similar prayers of Prophets supplicatingly inviting. There are also invited the holy disciples together with Christ, as faithful friends of that same heavenly Bridegroom, when it is said through the Prophet: There are no speeches nor words, of which their voices are not heard. For, filled with the Holy Spirit, they were to speak in the tongues of various nations. Whence the prophetic spirit, proclaiming as already done things which would undoubtedly come to pass, added: Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world. And to show more clearly who these were, and whose heralds they were, he added: He has set his tabernacle in the sun: and he himself, like a bridegroom, coming forth from his chamber.

Then follows the evangelist's narration: And they had no wine. That the wine of the wedding was consumed, evidently expressed that the Gentiles had not the wine of the Holy Spirit. But what he says, that the wine of the wedding was consumed, that is, had failed, he did not say absolutely, lest you think perhaps that it had failed for those to whom it had not yet been given at all. For he did not say, the wine of the wedding had failed for them, but only says that the wine of the wedding failed; as if he were saying "the nuptial wine." Wherefore it is understood that the wine failed, not of this wedding, but of the preceding weddings; for the nuptial wine of the Holy Spirit had failed, the Prophets having ceased who had ministered among the people of the Jews.

For all the Prophets, and the Law, prophesied until John; nor was there anyone sufficient to give the thirsting Gentiles drink of the spiritual wine: but the Lord Jesus was awaited, who would fill new wineskins with new wine through Baptism. For old things, he says, have passed away: behold, all things are made new. Yet all things are made new in such a way that the origin remains from the old, since the wine is not begotten from nothing, but from the ancient element of water. Nor should you think that the Law of the letter is to be despised, whence the Holy Spirit, Jesus working, is drawn through faithful ministers; and therefore in the ancient flood men perished, and now in Baptism they are reborn; because the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. For the letter alone kills, and, tempered by the Holy Spirit, regenerates. It is agreed that all the men of that time perished in that flood, except those who were found worthy to be within the Ark, which bore the type of the Church.

For likewise now those who have been alienated from the apostolic faith and from the Catholic Church cannot possibly be entirely safe. Let each one of you, then, strive with all zeal to remain in the house of the Lord, exercising works fitting to the grace received. For it is necessary that those reborn into a new man should now beware of former sins. Keep, I beg you, new wineskins, you newly baptized; lest, returning to the old life, you burst and lose the new wine; for new wine will burst old wineskins, and the wine will be poured out, and the wineskins will perish. Keep therefore the entire newness of the regenerated man, and preserve the heavenly wine in your wineskins, so that this same faith, kept, may preserve you, through Christ Jesus the Savior of the human race, the Lord our God, reigning with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, before all things, and now, and always, and unto all ages. Amen.

We explained yesterday to your charity, from the Gospel reading which shows our Saviour to have made wine from water at a wedding, first according to the history of the deed, for what reason he deigned to go there; then according to the spiritual understanding of the heavenly mystery, what the day was, and which was the first day, which the second, which the third, what the reckoning of the wedding was, who that bridegroom was, who that bride, what the place where those weddings were held, and that those were not the first weddings held, and why the Mother of the Lord Jesus is said to have been there; then why the bridegroom himself was invited to the wedding, or by whom; how also the disciples were likewise invited; then what that wine was which they did not have, and what the failing of the wedding wine was; and how, the Jewish people having been repudiated on account of the adultery of idolatry, the Church of the Gentiles was joined to divine love.

Whence we must beware, dearest ones of every kind, lest we again be defiled by some contagion of idolatry, and deserve not only to be repudiated but even to be condemned in perpetuity; since if anyone shall have violated the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, says the Apostle, which you are: beware more attentively, lest, just as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your senses be corrupted from the chastity which is in Christ Jesus, as the same most blessed Paul admonishes; and lest we be repelled from him who loved us, and gave the pledge of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Let us therefore hold fast the grace of the Holy Spirit, poured in by the generous gift of the heavenly Bridegroom, lest we return to our former poverty. Of this poverty the Mother of the Lord then spoke in a riddle to him, saying: they have no wine. But let us now hear with astonished minds what the Lord answered her.

Jesus said to her: What is it to me and to you, woman? My hour has not yet come. According to the reasoning of the simple understanding it shall suffice to prove that the blessed Virgin Mary was called “woman” on account of her sex, just as it is written of Eve in Genesis: “And the Lord cast a deep sleep upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and filled up flesh in its place. And the Lord God built the rib which he had taken from Adam into a woman: and indeed he fashioned her a virgin, and brought her to Adam.

And Adam said: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called ‘virago,’ because she was taken from her man.” But perhaps someone of little faith and little prudence may say that the Virgin Mary indeed conceived Christ not from a man but from the Holy Spirit, as the archangel Gabriel says to her in the Gospel; yet that once Christ was born, she could no longer be called a virgin, since it is agreed she gave birth; and therefore that Christ did not say, “What is it to me and to you, virgin?” but “What is it to me and to you, woman?” Hear, then, the divine reasoning of our common hope and life. Christ is born not for himself but for us. For he who was always is born: he who was in the beginning is born, both Son of God, and Word of God, and God.

He therefore was born near the end of the age from a Virgin, that the Word made flesh might dwell in us, remaining nevertheless what he always was, God. But the Son of God is born in man, that the world might be able even thus to look upon its creator: and he is born of the Holy Spirit from a Virgin, that he might reform, by the Holy Spirit, from that same clay, the man whom he had fashioned from the mud of the earth. If we believe in the conception of the Virgin, we must also believe in the birth: both seem impossible to man, but are a small thing to divine omnipotence. For what is great to God (to omit his more sublime works) who out of nothing made the earth, and out of the mud of the earth flesh, and out of the flesh of the man, woman?

So that neither did the remaining part of the earth become anything other than it had been; nor did Adam have less of what God had taken away; nor was the woman only that which had been taken from the man. The whole Adam recognizes his bones and flesh in the woman, saying: “This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh”; and do you not wish that the intact Virgin should recognize as her son him who works these things? He who is believed to have been conceived without corruption of his mother, why should he not also be presumed to have been brought forth without corruption? The incorrupt Virgin bore what the untouched Virgin conceived. He could not violate her integrity in being born, who had come to restore integrity to nature.

If anyone, still weighed down by earthly thought and hindered by carnal sense, follows the faith of this deed with a slower step, and hesitates with an unbelieving heart concerning the omnipotence of God, let him learn from the Gospel of John that the same God, after his resurrection, entered twice to the Apostles, where they were gathered in the house for fear of the Jews, the doors indeed being shut; and entered assuredly. But lest he be thought not to be in true flesh but in a phantasm, he offers his hands and his other members to be touched by the doubting apostle Thomas. Likewise also in the Gospel of blessed Luke he testifies, having entered while all the disciples were together: “Touch me, and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see me have.” O wondrous faith! The doors were not opened, and yet he himself, within, with his true body, is not only seen by apostolic eyes but even touched by their hands!

The truth of a wondrous deed, whose reason only faith alone attains, proclaims the omnipotence of its author: nor shall the deed be denied because the smallness of the human mind has not grasped the greatness of the divine work. By that same power of divinity, then, through an inviolate woman, he entered the lodging of this world, preserving the enclosure of virginal modesty even in being born, by which also, after the resurrection, with the doors kept shut, he was able to enter the house with his body. This too fits very well for resolving this question, that the Apostle recalls Christ as “made of a woman, made under the Law, that he might redeem those who were under the Law.” So that she, though a Virgin, is called “woman” by the truth of sex, not by the loss of integrity; just as God, the Son of God, is proclaimed to have been made under the Law for the dispensation of our salvation, though he himself is the giver of the Law.

All this I would say for the blessedness of Mary, since Christ called her “woman” who, by a divine birth, so began to be a mother that she remained a more sacred virgin. But as to what he said: “What is it to me and to you? My hour has not yet come”; this response does not seem to me sensibly to correspond to that suggestion of Mary’s, unless the Lord is said to have spoken spiritually in a mystery; so that, since the wine of the Holy Spirit could not be given to the Gentiles before the passion of Christ and his resurrection (the evangelist testifying, the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified), he rightly then, among the beginnings of signs, answered his mother: “What is it to me and to you, woman?

My hour has not yet come”; as if he were saying: Why is your suggestion, O woman, so premature, since the hour of my passion has not yet come, in which, all the powers of my teaching and of my divine works being fulfilled, I have arranged to die for the life of believers? After my passion and resurrection, when I shall have returned to the Father, then the wine of the Holy Spirit will be given to them. Wherefore she also, most blessed, having recognized the deep mystery of this answer, understood that her present suggestion was not rejected as unaccepted, but according to that spiritual reasoning deferred then in mystery. Otherwise she would never have commanded the servants, “Whatever he shall say to you, do it,” unless, being full of the Holy Spirit after the divine birth, she had known not only the power of Christ’s answer, but had also foreseen the whole order of what he would then do from water into wine.

For what could be hidden from the Mother of Wisdom, capable of God, the most worthy temple of such great power? The truth of the deed having been established historically, let us now pursue the figures set forth spiritually; for just as you have understood the bridegroom and the bride, the day and the days, the wedding and the place, the lack of wine and of what wine; so also understand the mother of the Lord figuratively, as the people of the holy Patriarchs and Prophets and of all the just, from whom the same Lord is shown in the Gospel to have drawn the origin of our flesh. For it is written: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of Abraham,” and of the rest that follow. This mother of the Lord, therefore, the generation of the Patriarchs and Prophets, interceded for us Gentiles with the eternal Son of God, her own offspring according to the flesh, that he might grant to us, in our need, the joy of heavenly wine.

Similar are those words which the Apostles, pleading on behalf of the Canaanite woman, a Gentile woman indeed, heard: “It is not good to take the bread of the children and give it to the dogs,” that is, to the Gentiles who, formerly placed in superstition, were accustomed like dogs to lap up the unclean blood of the victims sacrificed to idols, barking with rabid mouth against the Lord God whom they did not know.

For we Gentiles were once dogs, and the Jews were once sons; and therefore the Lord was unwilling to take the bread of the children and give it to the dogs: but after the heavenly Bread himself came unto his own, and his own did not receive him; after the same our Lord came to be known by the Gentiles, once dogs, and to be barked at with blasphemous mouth by the sons; after they cried out together to Pilate, who was resisting pronouncing that Christ, who was believed to be their king, should be crucified, “We have no king but Caesar”; God accuses them again thus through the Prophet: “I have begotten sons, and exalted them, but they have despised me”. “But they shall be converted at evening,” as the Prophet says, “and shall suffer hunger like dogs”. For the Jews themselves shall also be converted, late at last, namely at the evening of the world.

For it is written: “If the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved”: and the apostle Paul confesses that the people of the Jews have been struck with blindness, until the fullness of the Gentiles enters in. But they shall be converted at the consummation of the age, and shall suffer hunger for the word of God, like those dogs who desired to be filled with the crumbs falling from the table of their masters. The Gentiles, then, once dogs, are adopted as sons, and the sons are compared to dogs: for all unbelievers are beasts, not by nature but by manners; since man, set in honor, did not understand: he is compared to the unwitting beasts of burden, and made like unto them.

Although, therefore, the Jews with greater wickedness had once committed things similar to the sacrilegious Gentiles; Christ nevertheless, still loving them—not now for their own merit, but for the merit of the just Fathers—although now unworthy, still called them sons, in order yet to convert them, and in fatherly piety, being merciful, was unwilling to abandon them. He was unwilling to withdraw quickly from them the heavenly Bread, the Prince of life, and grant it to the Gentiles; until the persistent faith of those Gentiles should confute their faithlessness, and until he himself, coming in the flesh, should teach and instruct them: should scourge them with the benefits of healings; because they remained ungrateful, should judge them by divine powers; because they neglected to be bent to faith, should condemn them: and thus at last, their wickedness being consummated in his Passion, after his own resurrection he should migrate to the Gentiles, to whom he would give himself, the Bread of life, and through the water of Baptism would offer the cup of the Holy Spirit.

Now let us see to which ministers this mother of the Lord Jesus says, “Whatever he shall say to you, do it”; and what was commanded, and what was done. With the Lord Saviour himself illuminating the eyes of our heart, who is light co-eternal with the eternal Light, we have recognized, besides the blessed Mary his proper mother, that the people of the holy Patriarchs and Prophets, by reason of Christ’s origin, is a mother, who performed an embassy with him for our need: now let us note to which ministers he speaks, “Whatever he shall say to you, do it.” But I do not take “ministers” to mean only, according to the literal event, those who then served at that wedding banquet; but according to the reasoning of the spiritual banquet, I understand first the ministers of the New Testament to be the Apostles; then the apostolic priests, to whom both the Law and all the teaching of the holy Prophets suggest that whatever the Lord Jesus commands them, they should carry out with prompt obedience.

Now what is commanded by him to the ministers, the following speech tells. Meanwhile, listen to what the evangelist interjects: “There were,” he says, “six stone water-jars set there, according to the manner of the purifying of the Jews, each holding two or three measures.” These weddings, though held in Galilee of the Gentiles, and having the figure we have mentioned, were nevertheless then conducted among Jews; and there were six stone jars set there according to the manner of the purifying of the Jews, each holding two or three measures. For the Jews had this custom, that before they entered the synagogue, or returned home from the marketplace before they dined, they would wash the skin of their body with water. Now the measure of water sufficient for washing the body was either two measures or three, according, that is, to the size of their bodies. I cannot forbear, in passing, from speaking of the unclean purification of the Jews.

They wash their polluted bodies, and, once washed, immediately pollute them again: they always wash, they are always impure; and, as is commonly said, they wash a brick. That brick which they had prepared in Egypt for Pharaoh the devil, offering themselves as weapons of iniquity to sin, for the building of hostile cities. For they are earthen, and in no way solidified by the fiery heat of the Holy Spirit. Wherefore, until they melt away into death, they do not cease washing their brick, only to have it polluted again. Indeed, in the manner of swine, they return from the water to the mire. These are the swine to whom the angry Lord handed over the legion of demons, that they might be cast headlong into the lake, to be slain by perpetual death. Flee this example of uncleanness, newly baptized ones, lest you become partakers of the punishment.

The Apostles decreed for us one Baptism, according to the divine sentence; for he says: “Whoever shall drink of this water shall not thirst forever.” You have been washed once by the saving Baptism: do not return from the fountain to the mire; keep the cleanness that has been given. What has once been lost cannot be repeated. But let us now see what those six stone water-jars, holding two or three measures each, signify allegorically among the Gentiles. In each man six things are counted as being present: the sight of the eyes, the hearing of the ears, the smell of the nostrils, the speech of the mouth, the touch of the hands, the walking of the feet. All these, when we were Gentiles, were stony in us, and dead, as the holy prophet David testifies in his execration: “The idols of the Gentiles are silver and gold”. He purposely kept silent about the other, baser metallic materials, so that he might condemn even precious things all the more, along with the vile.

Let us then declare in what sense the idols of the Gentiles were reproached, since they had sufficiently wealthy makers: “They shall be,” he says, “insensible metals, silver and gold, the works of men’s hands. They have a mouth, and shall not speak; they have eyes, and shall not see; they have ears, and shall not hear; they have nostrils, and shall not smell; they have hands, and shall not feel; they have feet, and shall not walk”.

And what then? “They who make them shall become like unto them; and all who trust in them.” Therefore, when we consider the idols, these six senses were in us, according to the sentence of the prophet, dead and stony, without their proper function, without fitting motion; but when we believed, turned from dead idols to the living God, we were vivified, hearing from him himself: “Because I live, you also shall live.” And again: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, even if he be dead, shall live: and everyone who lives,” that is, who now believes, if he shall have believed to the end, “shall never die.” Converted, therefore, to the faith, and vivified through Baptism, we raise our eyes to the Lord, we draw in the fragrance of the knowledge of him with an insatiable spirit, and testify with glad affection, “Because the odor of your ointments is above all spices.” We receive the divine readings with our ear, with our mouth we confess the Lord, we praise, we bless, we entreat; we stretch out suppliant hands to heaven, we run with our feet to the church, and, with knees bent to the earth, we adore the one Godhead of the Trinity.

Jesus, therefore, having called the ministers—that is, the Apostles and their successors, who in each Church are the priests—says to them: “Fill these jars with water”; that is: “Baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” And plainly, because these same ministers had heard the venerable Mary saying, “Whatever he shall say to you, do it,” they filled them up to the brim: heaping up, that is, the Baptism poured in with the fullness of doctrine. He rightly said, “having called the ministers”; for Paul, called an apostle, was set apart unto the Gospel of God: likewise also all the Apostles were called: “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” “For whom he foreknew, these he also called; and whom he called, these he also justified; and whom he justified, these he also glorified.” Jesus, then, having called the ministers, enjoined upon them the work of celebrating Baptism.

Nor do I pass over, in this last part of this discourse, the fact that these jars of ours are said each to hold two or three measures. On this point some of our writers have said that the two or three measures signify the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit: and that some among the Gentiles to be baptized could grasp knowledge only of the Father and the Son, while others were more capacious, grasping also the Holy Spirit: but I judge that he who does not grasp the Holy Spirit grasps neither the Son nor the Father. For no one can be baptized except into the whole and inseparable Trinity, since no one confesses, by the property of nature, as is fitting, that the Lord Jesus Christ is Lord, except in the Holy Spirit. And: no one goes to the Father except through the Son, as he himself testifies: “No one comes to the Son, unless the Father has drawn him.” Therefore whoever diminishes one person of the adorable Trinity has denied the whole Trinity.

Since then there is no more or less in the confession of faith which is handed down through Christ's ministers in the sacrament of Baptism, let us see how many measures each of our waterpots holds, whether two or three. The holy apostle Paul, writing to the Corinthians, among the other kinds of spiritual virtues which must necessarily be abolished by the progress of better things, declares these three to remain forever: hope, faith, and charity. "And now abideth," he says, "faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity." Faith is that by which we confess the Trinity of one substance; hope is that by which we hope for the resurrection of the flesh and future rewards according to merit; charity is that by which we so love Christ that we suffer with equanimity to be slain for his name.

But because all who are baptized in the apostolic faith indeed believe in the Trinity and hope for future things, yet not all dare say with the holy Apostle, out of affection: "Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? Tribulation? Or distress? Or persecution? Or famine? Or nakedness? Or peril? Or the sword?"—for this reason some of our waterpots hold two measures, but some indeed even three. May the Lord Jesus, the giver, rich unto all and above all who call upon him, grant that, perfected in his charity, we may hold three measures even without an open battle of persecution; so that, with minds ready in the love of God for the endurance of all present punishments, we may steadfastly deserve, from the triumph of hidden combat, the illustrious crown of a victorious conscience.

Therefore, after the most blessed Apostles, fulfilling the office of faithful ministers, had filled the waterpots of the believing peoples with the water of venerable Baptism, and the Lord Jesus by invisible power turned this water into wine, so that those baptized by them at once bore witness, by the sudden grace of tongues, to the taste of the divine Spirit working in them; and to whom the first martyr Stephen, full of grace and truth, did signs and great wonders among the people, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then the Lord Jesus himself said to these same ministers: "Draw out now, and carry to the ruler of the feast." And they carried it.

"And when the ruler of the feast," it says, "had tasted the water made wine, and knew not whence it was (but the servants knew who had drawn the water), the ruler of the feast calleth the bridegroom, and saith to him: Every man at first setteth forth good wine, and when men have well drunk, that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good wine until now." Let us first explain the history of the deed itself, and then return to the proposed line of spiritual understanding. When weddings were held among the Jews, one man (as far as we have learned by tradition) was appointed from the priestly order, who would legitimately govern the manner of discipline and take care of the modesty of the married couple; and he would also arrange the ministers and order of the banquet preparations, and for this office he was called architriclinus, that is, one set over the triclinium (the banquet hall).

To him, therefore, the ministers of the feast were bidden to bring a taste of the wine made from water. The ruler of the feast tastes it, not knowing whence it was; and, calling the bridegroom, praises to him the flavor of the wine kept until that time. By all these things done, the power of the Savior is proved, in this sign too, not to have been a phantasm, but truth; since the one set over the feast testified not merely to seeing but to the goodness of the wine which the ministers, at the Lord's bidding, brought him to taste. Now, returning from these things to the spiritual lines, let us note who this ruler of the feast is. I think the ruler of the feast is the most blessed Moses, a man of the tribe of Levi, a faithful steward of God in all his house; who was set over not only those ancient nuptials of that people of Israel which later deserved to be repudiated, but also over those which are celebrated among the Gentiles.

For which of us could learn, without Moses as ruler of the feast, that the Lord our God is one God, and not gods? And lest you think that what is said of one Deity is absolute, the Trinity is proclaimed there by him, since he calls the Lord both God and Lord. For he did not simply say: "Hear, O Israel, thy God is one"; but what? "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord"; that is to say, God is one in the Trinity, the Divinity is one, and the dominion of the Trinity is one, the true distinction of the subsisting persons remaining. Just as also the two wings of the Seraphim, bearing the image both of the Law and the Prophets, and of the old and new Testament, offer the hymn of the adorable Trinity, and continually cry: "Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of Sabaoth." Lord, not Lords: for the one and the same Divinity of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit does not admit of the plural number.

Then, as I said, which of us could know, without Moses as ruler of the feast, that in the beginning God made heaven, and earth, and sea, and all things that are in them; and whence man was formed as male, and whence also female, from whom the whole offspring of the human race is known to be multiplied? Then, what was the first bliss granted in paradise, what was the beginning of the fault by which man provoked God's offense; then, what were the generations of the just, and what of the wicked; and why, and when, the flood, and the other things written in the Law of Moses, came to pass; and, to speak briefly, whose soul among us has deserved to be joined to divine Love, and to Christ the heavenly Bridegroom, without the preparation of this ruler of the feast?

For Moses himself foretold the coming of Christ to the people of Israel, saying: "A prophet shall the Lord our God raise up unto you from among your brethren, like unto me: him shall you hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you.

And it shall be, that every soul that will not hear that prophet shall perish from among the people." But when he saw them fighting against the Christ whom he had foretold, he turned himself to the Gentiles, and together with the holy Apostles reproaches the people of the Jews: "It was necessary that the word of God should first be preached to you, but since you have rejected it, and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles; for so the Lord has commanded us: I have set thee for a light of the Gentiles, that thou mayest be for salvation unto the uttermost part of the earth." Therefore after the Lord Jesus made wine from water in us, that he might show, as the Apostle says, the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy; and seasoned all the baptized with the flavor of the Holy Spirit, turning the water of the legal letter through the hearts of believers into spiritual wisdom; then he says to the ministers:

"Draw out now, and carry to the ruler of the feast." The Apostles draw from the waterpots of the baptized Gentiles both the spiritual flavor and the grace of the vigor of the Gospel: the flavor in faith, the grace of color in work: one is perceived by feeling, the other by sight; and they carry it to Moses. For which of the priests ministering to Christ does not compare all the wisdom of the New Testament with the Law of Moses: since he hears that the Lord himself commanded it, and sees that he did it?

For when he had cleansed a leper by the touch of his power, he immediately sent him to the Law, saying: "Go, show thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing the gift which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them." The ruler of the feast tasted the hidden mystery of Christ from the ages, which was not made known to other generations of the sons of men, as it is now revealed to his holy Apostles and Prophets in the Spirit: that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel, of which, Paul says, I was made a minister. The Gentiles, therefore, were made partakers, through each Apostle, evangelical minister, of the promise of God in Christ: that very promise, indeed, which the Apostles themselves first obtained, who afterward ministered it to the rest.

For when Christ conversed with them after his resurrection for forty days, as Luke the evangelist testifies at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles: he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to await the promise of the Father, which, he says, you have heard of me; for John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence. In his Gospel too, at its end, he records the Lord speaking thus to the Apostles themselves: "Behold," he says, "I send the promise of my Father upon you: but stay you in the city, till you be endued with power from on high." Although, therefore, Moses the ruler of the feast does not know that so great a grace has been conferred by the gift of Baptism, which the Apostles did not fail to know, who were ministers of the word; yet, marveling at the flavor of the Holy Spirit present in the waterpots of the Gentiles, he praises the bridegroom's generosity, who kept such wine for the Gentiles.

Which wine the Jews, having had it at the earlier wedding, did not drink for their own health, but were made drunk, and wounded by a pernicious heaviness; being indeed weaker in mind, and unable to bear the power of the divine Spirit: but he who is strong in faith, filled with the Holy Spirit, is not made drunk. For that reason the cup of God that inebriates is glorious, since the inebriation of the divine drink makes sober the minds of those who drink it; whence the Apostle says: "Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit." For Stephen too, full of the Holy Spirit, not drunk, saw the heavens opened, and Jesus at the right hand of God.

Therefore the most blessed Peter also condemned drunkenness, saying: "For these are not drunk, as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day; but this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel: And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith the Lord, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy: your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." "This beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee," that is, in the possession of the Gentiles; "and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him." Nor is it without purpose that it says "disciples," not "Apostles." For to signify the multitude of believers, he used the name of disciples, not of Apostles. For all who believe are his disciples; but, as blessed Paul says, are all Apostles?

Let us now strive, and pray, dearly beloved, that after this beginning of signs which the Lord Jesus wrought, by giving the Holy Spirit in our hearts, he may also perfect in us the other signs of virtues; for to one is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith in the same Spirit; to another healing in one Spirit; to another the working of miracles, to another discernment of spirits, to another prophecy, to another kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of speeches. But all these things worketh one and the same Spirit, dividing to every man as he will. Having these promises, therefore, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh, perfecting sanctification of the spirit in the fear of God.

Now the Apostle proclaimed that the Holy Spirit distributes the gifts of heavenly graces by the judgment of his own authority, saying: "All these things worketh one and the same Spirit, dividing to every man as he will"—and not as he is commanded; lest anyone, through hostile persuasion, dare to suspect that in that substance of the adorable Trinity there is anything subject, or less powerful, or contrary to itself; since there is, of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one and the same will alike, and power, through all ages. Amen.

Having finished here what I had proposed to discuss, both concerning the reading of Exodus and of the Gospel, I have reserved something fitting for the Lord's Day, which it is written that God commanded in the latter part of that reading, where he first announces the law of the passover. For after the pronouncement which he had made: Everyone who eats leavened bread from the first day even to the seventh day, that soul shall perish from Israel: and he added, saying: And the first day shall be called holy, and the seventh day shall be called holy for you: you shall do no servile work, except what must be done for every soul. That the first day of the world is the Lord's Day, the seventh day, the sabbath, proves, on which God is said to have rested, Scripture saying: And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because on it he rested from all his works which God had begun to make.

The divine Scripture speaks cautiously, not saying absolutely that God rested from his works, but from the works which God had begun to make, lest, when you hear that he rested, you should suppose that the Almighty, who does all things by the command of his word, had labored; but that you should understand that, all the things of this world having been completed, from which he is described as having rested, that is, ceased, he does not cease to work other things pleasing to his will: as the Lord Jesus attests in the Gospel, saying: My Father works even until now, and I work. The rest of God, therefore, is not a remedy for labor, but the end of works begun; since, after he completed the world, he did not cease to govern his work. For by his nod the nature of all things either carries out its course as commanded, or withdraws what is forbidden.

For in the days of holy Noah, by his providence he either destroyed by the cataclysm the world polluted with various iniquities, or restored it after the flood. He rained sulphur and fire from heaven, against custom, upon the four cities of the Sodomites, where males practiced shameful acts with males, so that the fiery rain might extinguish those whom illicit ardor had inflamed to the overthrow of the very custom of nature. He chose the patriarchal race out of the Gentiles, namely the people of the Hebrews; for whose liberty he afflicted the kingdom of Egypt with nine plagues, and destroyed it with the tenth. He divided the Red Sea; when the wave of the liquid element hardened into the firmness of walls, for the waters froze like a wall: the waves froze in the midst of the sea, as the faith of that triumphal Canticle attests in Exodus.

He, I say, divided the Red Sea, which is called by the Greeks Erythraean; that he might prepare both a passage for his own people, and a pit for their pursuers. For when the Israelites had gone out through the foundation of the sea with dry footsteps, and all the Egyptians had hastily entered by the same path after them, immediately God, who had taken away the proper fluidity of the astonished waters, restored it, and destroyed the armed ranks of horsemen, and Pharaoh himself together with the chariots and the whole army, the waves overwhelming them. The walls of water, which had protected the believing people, by their own collapse laid low the hostile band. He rained manna as food for his worshippers in the wilderness, he who had rained fire upon the criminals for their nefarious sacrilege: he, gentle, rained manna, he who, indignant, had rained flame. But since the treatise proposed for the first and seventh days cannot contain a repetition of each thing in order, passing over necessary matters briefly, I will touch on a few.

He split the rock, and waters flowed for so many thousands of men thirsting in the desert, he laid low countless peoples of adversaries, he destroyed very many kingdoms of hostile nations. He also dried up the river Jordan, that he might lead the believing people into the land of promise. He dried up the river Jordan, who had turned the dry rock into a stream of water: For at the presence of the Lord the earth was moved, at the presence of the God of Jacob. Who turned the solid rock into a pool of water, and the crag into fountains of waters. Then he established in Sion the Law which he had given on Sinai, increased it in Jerusalem; and after the offense of his beloved people, he extended the same to the Gentiles.

For after the Son of God, through whom all these things were made, and without whom nothing was made, came in man, he was not only rejected but even crucified by those very sons of his own whom he had once protected and exalted, and indeed cries out through the Prophet: I have begotten sons, and exalted them, but they have despised me. The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib, but Israel has not known me, and my people has not understood; as if he were saying, that once the brute animals of the Gentile peoples recognized the ruler of heaven, their own possessor and Lord, clothed in the rags of human sins, and placed in the narrow manger of Judaea, but the people of Israel did not wish to acknowledge their liberator: I will take away, as it has been foretold, from Judaea and from Jerusalem, the strong and the strong man.

The incarnate Word, certainly; the strength of bread, and the strength of water, the strength of heavenly food, and the strength of regenerating water; and the prudent man of fifty years, that is, the jubilee, the year of remission; and the wise architect, namely the Holy Spirit, through whom I might build myself a new Church out of the Gentiles. For the Lord took away all the gifts of saving blessings, whether those he had bestowed, or those he had promised, from the ungrateful Jews; and bestowed them upon those converted from every nation, ready in service to his faith. When, then, did the Lord rest, who has always worked, whom, from the few of his works which I have just now mentioned in passing, we are most certainly assured has always worked, and whom we perceive to work daily? For it is his work that the elements, both heavenly and earthly, serve the human race. For how would they not despise the small and earthly man, unless they obeyed the command of their Creator?

We ourselves too, in that we are born, in that we know these very works of the Lord in part, in that by living we seek life, in that, bearing the hope of things to come, we live and speak piously; these, I say, are the works of God, of God. Of whose mercy this too is a great work, that he patiently endures even the wicked and unbelieving, mercifully waits, and, if they repent, embraces them like a merciful father. Truly the Son of God rested then also from all his works which God had begun to make, when, all the miracles having been accomplished, and the whole work of the Passion completed on the sixth day, on the seventh day, that is, on the sabbath day, he rested, buried. But since the rest of God is a laboring rest, that rest could not be idle.

For while the body was laid apart in the tomb, the divinity, together with the soul of the man, descending to the lower regions, called forth from their places the souls of the saints, whose bodies the evangelist Matthew testifies rose again, saying: And many bodies of the saints who slept arose; and coming forth, he says, from the tombs after his resurrection, they entered into the holy city, and appeared to many. That the Savior's soul descended to visit the dead below is attested not only by the Epistle of blessed Peter, but also by the prophecy of blessed David, when he says: For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt thou give thy Holy One to see corruption. For the Son of God did not descend to the lower regions with the soul of the man he had taken on in order to leave it in hell, but in order to call back many souls of the saints whose bodies were to rise again.

For this reason he who was always in the form of God, taking on the form of a servant, took on also the cross; that by rising on the third day he might triumph over the death he had taken on, which it was not at all fitting for the Lord of life to endure permanently. Therefore, since after his Passion the Lord Jesus was to rise from the dead when the Lord's Day dawned, and was to bestow the first holiness upon the first day of his resurrection; therefore the ancient Law foretells, and says, the first day shall be called holy, and the seventh day shall be called holy for you. It declares that the first day of the resurrection is to be called holy, and says that the seventh, already called, will be holy; namely the seven-thousandth year, of which the Prophet says to the Lord: For a thousand years before your eyes are as one day.

Thus, therefore, all festivity was to be transferred to the first day of Christ's resurrection, so that we should expect both the rest and the holiness of the seventh day at the same time; when it is said, the first day shall be called holy, and immediately it is added, and the seventh day shall be called holy for you. You shall do no servile work, except what must be done for every soul. For as many of us as call the first day, that is the Lord's Day, holy, believing it to have been sanctified by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, we also await that truly holy day, the day of the seven-thousandth year, which will come after these six days, namely the six thousand years of the world, which being completed, there will be true rest for the truly holy, and for those faithfully believing in the resurrection of Christ.

For there will be no fight there against the devil, who will then indeed be held bound in punishments; no struggle against the vices of the body, which will no longer be subject to concupiscences. For the body will rise spiritual, as the Apostle says: What is sown in corruption shall rise in incorruption; what is sown in dishonor shall rise in glory; what is sown in weakness shall rise in power; what is sown a natural body shall rise a spiritual body. And again, a little after, the same most blessed Paul: It behooves, he says, this corruptible to put on incorruption, and this mortal to put on immortality. But when this mortal shall have put on immortality, then, he says, shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting? And what this sting of death is, the connected discourse of the same blessed Apostle discloses: But the sting of death is sin: and the strength of sin is the Law.

The sting of death indeed is sin, dearest brethren, because through sin comes death: but the strength of sin is the Law, since without the Law sin is dead. For sin is not imputed where there is no law. For neither would Adam have died, because he ate of the fruit of that tree, unless he had eaten contrary to the prohibition, despising the law of the command: nor today does anyone incur the guilt of sin, unless he be bound either by natural law, or the law of commandment, or the law of the letter.

Natural law is that by which the Gentiles, not having the Law of the letter, naturally do the things that are of the Law; because the rational nature of the human soul, so as to perceive its Creator, so as not to harm its neighbor, so as not to do what it does not wish to suffer, understands by a certain natural law: whence every man is without excuse who either denies his author, or does the evil which he is not ignorant, through the law of nature, is evil. Again the law of the commandment is: You may eat of every fruit of the tree that is in paradise for food: but of this one you shall not eat; and whatever else the Lord is known to have commanded by word alone before Moses.

The law of the letter is: You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not bear false witness, and the rest, which, when now half the number of the years of the world had already passed, were therefore forbidden through the law of the letter, so that to the negligent man either the natural law or the law of the commandment might be delivered by the written reminder of the Law, and forgetfulness might have a tutor, and negligence a compeller; the Apostle saying: For the Law was our tutor unto Christ. But the Law, whether of nature, or of commandment, or of the letter, then rules over a man, when his age begins to be capable of the Law.

And hence is that saying of the apostle Paul, born of Jewish parents, indeed a Hebrew of Hebrews, who says: But I lived without the Law at one time, to show that only the age of infancy lives without the Law, which does not yet grasp the Law; but soon when the Law came, he says, sin revived: but I died; that is to say, sin, which was dead to one ignorant, began to live to one who understands: and I, who before lived without the Law, became liable to death, unless I turn aside from sin, which now, to me understanding, generates death: and the commandment which was given to me unto life, begins to be unto death.

That seven-thousandth year, then (to return to the proposed head), will itself be truly the most blessed day, when the struggle of this contest which we now suffer having ceased, the victors will take the rest they longed for, and will enjoy happy leisure, doing no servile work there, that is, no work of sin; because he who commits sin is the slave of sin, as the Savior says; but they will plainly do only this, which must be done for every holy soul, namely that, joined to the ranks of the Angels, they may render perpetual hymns and thanksgivings to our Lord forever.

Indeed, according to the reasoning of the history, it had been commanded to the Jews, that on the sabbath days they should rest from every work of sin, and should do only those things which befitted the soul: but since, this salutary observance having been neglected, they had turned the whole law of the sabbath to leisure and luxury, it is plain why God testifies that he hates sabbaths that are now not his own, but theirs. In the Gospel readings I have frequently expounded to your brotherhood, where the foolish Jews accuse the Savior of violating the sabbath, whom we have shown by clear proof rather to have fulfilled the law of the sabbath, by the very works which he performed on sabbaths, instructed not from elsewhere, but from the very Law which we read together with the Jews. For it is written: There shall be one Law for the native and the sojourner.

The natives, without doubt, were the Jews, citizens of the patriarchs and prophets: but the sojourners, who in the Greek tongue are called προσήλυτοι; we, indeed, were the Gentiles, as the Apostle says, strangers and guests of the Testaments, and of their promise, having no hope, and without God in this world. But after we believed, the same blessed Paul says to us: Now you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God. One Law, therefore, is ours together with the Jews; but they receive it with a carnal sense, seeking no spiritual understanding therein; but we find in it Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and heavenly knowledge. Finally, in this very reading of Exodus which arranges the order of celebrating the passover, we find the true Lamb of God with all the mysteries of our life, recognizing him as the true God, and man, the Lord of the flock, and the sheep, at once shepherd and pastures.

For the merciful and compassionate Lord has given himself as food to those who fear him. For we know that the whole law of the old observance has been completed, through the grace of the Son of God, in the truth of the new Testament, proving how the law of the passover, which had been given through Moses, became grace and truth through Jesus Christ; to whom be all honor, power, and glory with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, through all ages. Amen.

I remember, brethren, that in the previous discourse I promised your holy charity that, with the Lord's help, I would explain more fully for what reason the Lord testified that he had done one work: whence the most slothful people of the Jews, having suffered a scruple, and inflamed with most wicked fury, assailed the giver of blessing with curses and blasphemies, saying: Thou hast a devil: who seeketh to kill thee? And moreover contemplated handing over the Lord of life to the punishment of death. We have indeed proved by the testimony of this Evangelist, that not one, but many, and innumerable works were performed by Christ. For thus he writes at the end of the book: And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.

But perhaps a studious hearer may say: In the earlier parts of the Gospel the Lord says, I have done one work, and you all marvel: in the following parts that abundance of virtues is celebrated, and therefore no question seems to remain upon this point. But I, reviewing the earlier statements of this book from this discourse, find that Christ our God had wrought many wondrous works up to this point of the Gospel. Already he had seen Nathanael, before he was called by Philip while sitting under the fig tree: already by his own power he had converted the most simple liquid of clear water into the color and taste of wine: already the heavenly physician, before he visited him, while being asked, had by a word healed the dying son of the ruler.

Already he had disclosed the hidden sins of that Samaritan woman, and, upon her confession, had cleansed her by a spiritual fountain: already he had healed—or rather reformed—by the command of a single word the limbs of the paralytic that had been dead for thirty-eight years. Already he had satisfied the hunger of five thousand men with five barley loaves and two fishes, resolving the banquet with an even greater miracle. For a greater heap of leftovers is found than the quantity of food set out, though so many starving crowds of people were satisfied. Already he had walked upon the sea with his feet, so that the swelling wave did not touch the soles of him walking. But in this catalogue of miracles, he had done one more work, by which he seemed to have given the raging, ignorant people of the Jews a plausible occasion for savagery against him—namely, that he had healed a paralytic on the sabbath, when the Law had commanded rest on the sabbath.

And so Christ, who had come not to destroy the old Law but to fulfil it, was assailed by the persecution of the Jews as though guilty of having violated the sabbath. I am compelled at this point, dearest brethren, setting aside the present order of the reading, to explain the rationale of the sabbath, lest the persecution of the wicked against the just be believed to have been just. For that paralytic who is recorded to have been healed by Christ on the sabbath day suffers calumny from the Jews for this reason, that on the very day on which he had been healed he was seen carrying his bed. It is the sabbath, they say, and it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed. The healed man answered: He who made me whole, he said to me: Take up thy bed, and walk. And in what follows he says: It is Jesus who made me whole.

Still unlettered from Jewish infirmity, but now grateful for the health he had received, since he is not able to give an account of the deed to those calumniating him, he shows the author of the precept and of the work. He who made me whole, he said to me: Take up thy bed, and walk; and he added: It is Jesus, he says, who made me whole: or, it is the son of David who made me whole: or, the son of Joseph who made me whole. For these were the names customarily used among the people of the Jews at that time concerning Christ the Lord Savior. But what? He says, It is Jesus who made me whole; for he knew, being a Hebrew, that the name of Jesus descends from the power of healing. For Savior is Jesus called, as the Angel declares, when speaking in a dream to Joseph about Christ: Thou shalt call, he says, his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.

He therefore, he says, made me whole, whose very name is salvation. And how can salvation be forbidden by the prescribed Law from saving, or be changed by the condition of the sabbaths so as not to be salvation? Let us see, however, dearest brethren, whether even the Law itself excluded the work of salvation from the rest of the sabbath. Six days, it says, thou shalt do thy works, but on the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt do no work of thine therein, except what is done for the sake of any soul. The human race is prone by its own will, and especially the Jews, to carnal works rather than divine ones; and therefore one day in the week, the sabbath, was appointed, on which they were compelled to cease from carnal things, and to be free for divine things alone. For neither to cook food nor to make a journey was permitted on the sabbath, lest anyone, under the pretext of human necessity, should prefer earthly things to divine.

But after the Jews, neglecting the spiritual matters which the Lord had commanded to be done for the soul's salvation, had turned all the sabbath observances toward idleness and luxury, the Lord cries out to them continually through the Prophet: Your new moons, and your sabbaths, and the great day I cannot bear: the fast, and your feasts, and your festival days my soul hateth. Your sabbaths, he says, not mine; for what you observe is not mine. My fast, and my sabbaths, which I commanded to be kept, bid you fast from vices, cease from evil works, and cleave to good actions. But on the contrary your sabbaths and your fasts are full of restless quarrels, and of allurements and luxuries.

He therefore, the giver of the Law, coming in man, when he worked for the sake of every soul the works of salvation (for on the sabbath he was teaching what by provident reason he had commanded), neither destroyed the Law but rather fulfilled the Law: for it is written, Thou shalt do no work of thine on the sabbath: thy work, he says, that is, human work. And it is added, except what is done for the sake of any soul, that is, for saving a soul. And therefore we read that the righteous of old under the Law worked on sabbaths for the salvation of souls. For seven days Jesus the son of Nave, at the Lord's command, went around the city of Jericho, with the Levites and priests carrying the Ark of the Testament; and on it the hostile walls fell by divine nod, that the souls of the Jews might be freed from the peril of war.

And you will find that the sabbath too is numbered among the seven days, beginning to count from whatever day. And so when it is said, It is Jesus who made me whole, the Jews are admonished, from communion with the Lord, not to condemn similar works. And therefore Christ the Lord, when he healed a withered hand, or dropsy, or paralysis on the sabbaths, as truly Lord of the sabbath, defended his own cause by the testimonies of his own Law, saying to the Jews: Is it lawful on the sabbaths to do good to a soul; to save a soul, or to destroy it? Wishing, as I think, to lead them into this sense of the Law which we have explained above; and at the same time reproaching them for not understanding what his work was, and, except what is done for the sake of any soul.

Christ therefore works for the salvation of the soul on the sabbath; and he works on the sabbath, and fulfills the Law, while he interprets the condition of the Law, while he illuminates the differences of works, while he does what the Law excepted from the sabbath observances, while he makes the sabbath day itself, sanctified by his blessing, more holy still by his benefits. For, bestowing divine aid on the sabbath upon every believing soul, he rendered to the sabbath its due works. But to show the Jews that he had always worked the same as the Father, who was then also working in the flesh, he says to them: My Father worketh until now, and I work. And for this reason the Jews persecuted him the more unjustly, because he not only broke the sabbath, but also because he called God his own Father, making himself equal with God. The blessed Evangelist clearly taught that he who is truly his Son by property of nature is equal to God the Father.

Although therefore the testimonies of the ancients had gone before, yet the Lord did not care to set forth any assertion of this kind: lest, because such things are rare and ancient, or uncertain to some, they might be believed either uncertain or accidental: but he wished rather to strike them with daily and customary examples, from which they could by no means most justly deny that they were refuted. I have done one work, he says, and you all marvel. What work is that? That I healed a paralytic on the sabbath. And he added: Therefore Moses gave you circumcision, not because it is from Moses, he says, is circumcision, but from the Fathers: that is, from Abraham, who was first circumcised, and from the other Patriarchs. And on the sabbath, he says, you circumcise a man. If a man receives circumcision on the sabbath day, he says, so that the law of Moses is not broken, are you indignant at me because I made a whole man well on the sabbath?

Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment; as if he were saying: The Law commanded only this—that a work for the sake of a soul be done on the sabbath. And concerning circumcision the same Law commands, that whosoever shall not circumcise every male on the eighth day of his birth, that soul shall be cut off from his people. Therefore it is for the sake of a soul that you circumcise a man on the sabbaths: it is likewise for the sake of a soul that I too healed a whole man on the sabbath: therefore it is lawful for a good work to be done for the sake of a soul on the sabbath. But if you judge that I violated the sabbath in this work, you decree yourselves to be continually guilty of violating the sabbath. Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. With such reasonable patience our Lord Jesus Christ conquers his enemies, who indeed had descended into this world from the Father in order to conquer by suffering.

But let us briefly consider the force of this last saying. Judge not, he says, according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. This, I think, is a general sentence, teacher of maintaining equity, set before all, known to many, loved by few.

For it is commanded that we should not, flattering the persons of the wealthy of this world, favor unbelievers by a most iniquitous judgment; and that we should not only nourish by timid silence the impious, cruel, rapacious, luxurious, and dishonest, but even that we should praise with unjust praises those worthy of all reprehension, or, what is more deformed than all foulness, seeking base gains, notably serve another's money, forgetful of Christian liberty: nor should we, enticed by the beauty of anyone's carnal form, be moved by a sinister judgment from the region of truth and right opinion, since it is written concerning riches to be despised: If riches abound, set not your heart upon them; and concerning the neglect of the beauty of the flesh, God speaks to Samuel the priest, about to choose a king from the sons of Jesse: Look not, he says, upon the height of his stature, or the beauty of his face, for man seeth in the face, but God seeth in the heart.

And therefore blessed David, the least and despised, is raised to the kingdom by the sanctified oil, and glories in a particular song that he grew from humility through the grace of God to the highest pinnacle of dignity, saying: I was the smallest among my brethren, and so forth. Usefully, therefore, in all things Christ says: Judge not according to appearance, but judge righteous judgment. And which of us, dearest brethren, is found capable of keeping each of the things I have said above? Blessed are they that keep judgment, and do justice at all times. Therefore, since this sentence is general, as I said above, it is nevertheless specially directed at the Jews, who judged Christ working wonders only as a man from his appearance, not seeing God in his powers. It strikes also, not lightly, the heretics who blaspheme the Son of God, in that, having looked upon the humility of the flesh he assumed, they attempt to measure the substance of his immense divinity.

But let us, brethren, saved by his grace through faith, judge righteous judgment, keeping equity in every action of our conduct. For it is the righteous judgment of a rational soul, that it should choose to serve God rather than the world; that it should determine to obey the commandments of Christ, not to be corrupted by the counsels of the devil; that it should decide to cleave to spiritual pursuits, not to be entangled in carnal vices; and that it should judge eternal blessedness of things to come to be preferred to the most brief pleasures of the world. Let us therefore walk with upright heart and equitable judgment in all the precepts and justifications of the Lord, that we may be able to merit the fellowship of eternal life from the everlasting Son of God himself, whose omnipotence, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, endures throughout all ages. Amen.

After that voice of God the Father by which he had said that the Son, glorified, was again to be glorified, when the Savior spoke to the surrounding crowds—which we have just discussed, namely that the testimony of this voice was brought forth not for the sake of his own honor, but for the instruction of our faith—what the same Lord immediately added next, the text of the Gospel reading which has just been read through indicates. Now, he says, is the judgment of this world. I think it must be considered, dearest brethren, what sort of judgment he then said was imminent. If he had wished it to be understood of the future judgment, by which this world will be judged through fire, he would not have said "now is," but would have said "then will be"; but because he was speaking of a present judgment, it is fitting to look into what that present judgment of the world was.

Is Christ to be thought to have judged the world at his first coming, whom he is rather known to have saved, as he himself testified, saying: For God did not send his Son to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. And in the Gospel of blessed Luke it is read that, when a certain village of Samaria had refused to receive the Savior, the Apostles James and John, taking it ill, said to him: Lord, do you wish that we bid fire come down from heaven upon them, and consume them, as Elijah did? But he, indignant, forbade it. O merciful wrath! What then does he mean by saying: Now is the judgment of this world? Judgment, brethren, can be understood in a twofold way. For both the sentence of the one deciding is called judgment, and the punishment of the one suffering is called penalty: one judgment is of the one acting, the other of the one suffering.

The judge makes the judgment, the accused undergoes it; and there is a judgment of each. But when Scripture says that the world either makes or suffers judgment, it does not indicate the natures of irrational elements, but signifies the inhabitants of the world: just as when the "house of Israel" is spoken of, it is not the walls or roofs that are shown, but the men of Israel.

Therefore Christ, ruler of all, after the unwonted childbirth of the sacred Virgin, after the cradle adored with the lavish homage of the Magi, after the manifold teaching of heavenly eloquence, after the healings of various cures effected by the command of his powerful word, after this present testimony of the Father, when he was now near to his Passion, says thus: Now is the judgment of this world; as if he were saying: Now, now is the judgment of this world, whether it chooses to believe in him who, after his voluntary Passion, rises again by his own power, so that it may be saved by faith, or whether, with the Jews, it judges that he must be denied who is that Judge who will deny his own deniers, saying to them: I know you not: depart from me into eternal fire, workers of iniquity.

Or rather (and we approve this understanding as more useful, on the authority of the coherent discourse), Now is the judgment of this world; that is, the hour has drawn near that the world, itself to be judged, may judge the Creator and Judge of the world. For likewise in the Gospel of Luke he speaks to the priests, and elders, and captains of the temple guard, who had come to seize him: You have come out as against a robber with swords and clubs; when I was daily with you in the temple, and you did not stretch out your hands against me; but this, he says, is your hour, and the power of darkness. For the power of darkness belongs to this world, or to worldly men, who, established in the darkness of unbelief, do not wish to behold the light of truth; and because God has permitted men free choice to do whatever they will, they exercise a sacrilegious power against Christ.

Hence, when Pilate said: I have power to crucify you, and I have power to release you; the Lord answered thus: You would have no power, unless it had been given you from above. Finally, that the Lord might show that this "judgment of the world" which he had spoken of was his Passion, he joined it thus, saying: Now is the judgment of this world, now the prince of this world will be cast down, or expelled outside, as we read in the Greek copies. For the Passion of Christ was to be the future overthrow of the devil. Hence the holy prophet David speaks in his person: That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged. Although this verse can also be understood in another sense, it fits well enough here too; for the Lord Jesus in his Passion is judged and conquers, dies and triumphs. But why the devil is called the prince of this world, take notice. The devil is called the prince of this world by usurpation, not by nature.

For, seducing the human race, so that, forsaking God, it might worship Satan himself through man-made images, he violently held dominion, and exercised tyranny, to such an extent that the world, blinded indeed by the devil's own deceptions, did not recognize its true Prince when he came. For Christ was in this world, as the Evangelist testifies, and the world was made through him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. The Lord therefore suffered himself to be judged by the judgment of this world, in order to cast down, or expel, this enemy of the human race—since both are known to be one and the same; and understand in what way they are one. The devil did not dwell in flat and lowly places, from which, if driven out, he might be believed able to pass to another place without falling; but when he is expelled from celestial sublimity, he is indeed cast headlong downward.

Significantly indeed in Greek it is written ἐκβληθήσεται ἔξω, that is, he shall be cast out, or expelled outside; so that he might also be known to be driven out from the souls of believers, now heavenly, as it were from the heavens; so that, with him expelled, Christ the Lord might reign in us. Wherefore he added: And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself. And that he indicated he was to be lifted up from the earth undoubtedly by the gibbet of the cross, the evangelist's interjecting word declares thus: But this he said, signifying by what death he was to die. When I shall be lifted up from the earth, he says, I will draw all things to myself; namely, that, lifted up on the cross, he would call the whole age to his faith.

But as to what he says, I will draw all things to myself, and not "all men"; I think this is signified: that all the kinds of creatures which were either sacrificed to idols, or dedicated to them, Christ promised to call back to his blessing, and to consecrate to his own name. For it is necessary, according to the sentence of the apostle Paul, that every tongue confess to him, and that the whole world become subject to God. To him indeed who ascended above the heaven of heavens toward the east, as the Psalmist says; to this God who, when he ascended on high, led captivity captive.

We must indeed take care, dearest brethren, lest we make void by our own fault the victory of Christ, by which he triumphed over the devil, redeeming us from his captivity by his own precious blood, and taking away from him the dominion over the human race: subjecting ourselves again, through the enticements of the flesh, to that tyrant's cruel reign, to the reproach of the Redeemer; whence he might justly complain, rebuking and reproaching us: What profit is there in my blood? My blood was shed for you in vain, if you so conduct and comport yourselves, that the devil, author of evil desires, should again reign in you—the proud plunderer boasting that he has stripped the spoils from so great a victor. For he said: Pursuing I will overtake, I will divide the spoils, I will satisfy my soul: I will slay with my sword, my hand shall have dominion.

For this reason the most blessed apostle Paul exhorts us, saying: Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal flesh, neither yield your members as weapons of iniquity unto sin, but yield yourselves to God, as those alive from the dead. And elsewhere again: For to this end Christ both lived, and died, and rose again; that he might be Lord both of the living and of the dead, so that indeed those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them, and also rose again. Instructed, therefore, brethren, by such teachings, let us devote our whole life to the service of Christ, whose kingdom, with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, endures forever and ever. Amen.

Throughout all the books of divine eloquence the Son of God is proclaimed not only as God, but also as man, and Son of man. And indeed in the Old Testament he is foretold and promised, but in the New he is shown forth and believed; since the old Law, as the Apostle says, was a shadow of the good things to come: namely, of those good things which are known to be fulfilled in Christ, by whom man of the human race, born today through the most blessed Virgin, restored the image which had been corrupted by the poisoned bite of the serpent: so that he who had been its maker from the beginning of the world, might be its restorer at the consummation of the age. Who can worthily marvel at this loving-kindness? Who can be a fit preacher of such great goodness?

Who is able to declare that the immense and inestimable God willed, for the sake of our life, to become what man is, and that the Creator of all the heavenly powers descended to the lowly estate of this earthly flesh? Yet he was made man for us in such a way that he did not cease to be what God is. For although the Word was made flesh, as the evangelist testifies, yet because he remains what he was before he became man, it is added immediately, and dwelt among us; by which saying both the inhabitant is shown, and the dwelling is likewise pointed out.

Thus therefore that which before was not began to be, so that it might not cease to be that which it was. This omnipotence of the Son of God and of man the Virgin Mother also attests; who, conceiving of the Holy Spirit, brought forth God and man, whom she had carried in her chaste womb, in such a way that, after the divine birth, a more glorious integrity remained in the incorrupt mother of so great a name. We have rightly called it a divine birth, because he who was born in the flesh through the Virgin is God; as the archangel Gabriel said to her: That which shall be born of thee holy, shall be called the Son of God. For from the time he assumed the flesh of our frailty, the same is the Son of man who is also the Son of God; because no other was born of Mary than he who, having entered through her maternal ears, filled the womb of the Virgin.

It was the Holy Spirit himself, forming his own man, since wisdom built for herself a house: for the dwelling of our body was already his own, with which dwelling he was clothed, and he went forth without any loss of maternal integrity. For most blessed Mary, bringing forth the incorruptible one, is both mother and virgin. These things I have said briefly to demonstrate the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God: now I come to explaining that part of the Gospel reading which had for a long time been passed over by others who undertook it before.

For we have discussed (as you remember) the entire text of that reading which describes the Lord dining at Bethany, explaining the reclining of Lazarus, the reason of the place and time, the ministry of Martha, the service of her sister, the power of the ointment, and the reason for the hair with which Mary wiped the feet of Christ anointed with precious ointment; and how Judas, an adversary to this pious and due service, while wishing to appear a patron of the poor, is convicted as guilty of theft: but we omitted, or rather reserved, what the Lord Jesus said in the midst of this. Sine, he says, eam, or sinite: for both readings are found, both in the Greek and in the Latin copies; but it seems more fitting to the sense when we read sinite, on account of what follows in the plural: for the poor you always have with you.

It must be asked, therefore, dearly beloved, why the Lord answered in the plural to the words of Judas alone, Let her alone, that she may keep this for the day of my burial: For the poor you always have with you, but me you have not always. Truly admirable, and exceedingly provident, is the patience of Christ! He speaks to all the disciples in common, so as to restrain the insult of the opposing Judas; nor does he sharply inveigh against the deceiver, but, concealing his crime—which the Evangelist knew him to be a thief—with a gentle admonition he instructs all alike; teaching meanwhile that what Mary had done had of necessity been performed in honor of him for the mystery of his burial.

As for the rest, there would be opportunity at all times for those who wished to be generous to the poor, since they are always with us: but he himself in the flesh would not much longer be ministered to by anyone, because after the imminent Passion, rising again, he would presently lead the body he had taken up to heaven. And for this reason, by the above-mentioned gentleness and shared admonition, Christ empties the words of Judas of effect, lest he give to Judas himself an occasion for excusing his fraud, or give to any of the Apostles any scruple, perhaps suspecting a pious suggestion from Judas; or certainly lest he leave behind any stumbling block for anyone who should afterward read this. For Judas, though out of zeal for deceit and hatred of the Savior, nevertheless under the pretext of piety brought forth those very words of deception: Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred denarii, and given to the poor?

An utterly irreligious and quite unseemly steward, while trying to cover, under the appearance of religion, the affection of a greedy deceiver—that is, his own crime—he only exposed it. Plainly irreligious and unseemly; because what had been done in honor of Christ he not only accounted superfluous, but even reproved with a most wicked speech. A deceiver too; because, holding the money box, he carried off what was put in for the use of the needy, as the Evangelist complains. Greedy also; since he was not satisfied by daily withdrawing the stipend of the poor, but was even burning to convert the price of Christ's burial to his own gain: yet he converted it not into momentary gains for his greed, but into perpetual losses of salvation. For not long after, all that either the impious thief had gathered from frauds committed, or that the sacrilegious betrayer of Christ had received as the wage of iniquity, he lost together with his life.

For, strangled by the awareness of his aforesaid crimes, he brought upon himself the death he deserved by a noose he had prepared, to be snatched away at once to the punishments of hell. But that this ointment served for the honor of the Lord's burial, the Savior himself declared more plainly in the Gospel of Matthew: In pouring, he says, this ointment upon my body, she has done it for my burial. Although therefore the Lord Jesus was the judge of conscience, he did not wish to rebuke Judas more sharply concerning his hidden things, lest, because he seemed to have spoken with a plausible reason, he might perhaps be thought unjustly reproved; and thence conceive a just cause of anger, so as to hand over to his enemies to be killed one whom he would have held as an enemy without any fault. Christ therefore wished to say nothing harsh in return for the merit of his wicked mind, lest Judas should seem to have betrayed him out of anger.

For the Lord, being truly a just judge, wills that each one be the cause of his own merit: he wills also that the just suffer for justice alone: he wills also that the wicked, if he has persisted in malice, be judged guilty of death by his own choice. For God fashioned man, as Scripture testifies, and made him according to the image of his likeness, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He set before him fire and water, saying: Stretch forth your hand to whichever you wish. He set, it says, before man, God set water and fire, that is, refreshment and punishment; remission and torment; life and death. Who, I ask, would not flee from torment, punishment, and death; and choose refreshment, remission, and life? But he flees death who walks along the paths of the commandments of life; he receives the gift of life who, through the labor of spiritual pursuits, avoids mortal deeds.

And therefore it is said: Behold water and fire: stretch forth your hand to whichever you wish; that is, to your own work. For works are shown in the hand, since we cannot be subjected to torments without guilt, nor merit a reward without a contest; as the Apostle says: Is God unjust, who inflicts wrath? And again: For no one is crowned in the contest, unless he has striven lawfully. Our contest is against the vices of the flesh, against greed for money, against wrath of soul: these are the weapons of the devil, against which we must resist with the helmet of faith, the breastplate of continence, the shield of mercy, with which, as the Apostle says, we may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one.

For just as water extinguishes fire, so almsgiving resists sin, that is, just as the water of saving baptism extinguishes the flame of hell through grace, so by the flood of alms all that fire of sins accumulated after receiving the faith is extinguished; provided, however, that after conversion it does not blaze up again with renewed crimes. For he who, repenting, seeks by alms a remedy for sins ought now to cease doing things deserving repentance, lest what is extinguished on one side be kindled on the other. We have called it a flood of alms, that you might perceive the largesse of giving: but rare is anyone who even sprinkles a dew of alms that will profit him by its refreshment. The Christian goes out from the church, and passes by the beseeching poor man with deaf ears. Thus will God hear us when we beseech him, thus amid the dangers of the impending barbarians shall we deserve to be protected by divine aid; for it is written that fasting with almsgiving is good.

Both ought to be done to mitigate the indignation of the Lord. But perhaps you cannot fast, and you cannot because you do not wish to: at least give food to the hungry. You who cannot go without food for three hours beyond your custom will surely be able to understand what that man suffers who fasts unwillingly through want, whom your cruelty makes to fast, you who, gorged with lavish feasts, do not even think of soothing with a little food the hunger of the needy. You allege barrenness of harvest, you plead necessities, you complain of the straits of the times: more shamefully than that needy man do you beg; rather you show yourself ungrateful to God, while you falsely complain. But granted: if there has been barrenness, do you alone feel it, I ask, and does not that poor man feel it too? What of the fact that you strive daily to gain new silver? That you build houses of marble? That you buy silken garments? That you purchase necklaces precious with gold and gems?

It is shameful to say, it grieves one to recall, how great a number of country people, living off the estates of those given to the aforesaid pomp, have either died of hunger, or been sustained by the alms of the Church. O dire wickedness! Men have died in whom all the wealth of the possessor consists: so little do they take counsel even for the advantages of the present time, blinded as they are by excessive greed. Beginning therefore with our own people, dearest ones, let us do good to the needy and the wretched; let us minister food, drink, clothing to those in want, because the Lord is a just rewarder of such works; who, when he shall come in his majesty, will grant the kingdom of heaven on the right hand to those established as nurturers of the needy according to their merit: but on the contrary he will decree that the inhuman and impious be burned in eternal fires, saying that he himself was either cherished in the poor through piety, or neglected through cruelty.

So great is the affection of our Savior toward his poor. Let us strive, therefore, to love Christ also in the poor, who has loved us in all things; and who, as the good shepherd, laid down his life for his sheep. But if I begin to explain by what duties you may prove your love toward the Lord, I do not know whether you will love me who speaks these things, I do not know whether you will hear me gladly: unless perhaps you are so devout that, just as you rejoiced a little while ago in the divine benefits, so also you desire to obey his precepts, and you embrace learning what duties of love toward God are to be exercised. The Lord himself speaks, what sort of love each believer ought to have toward him. He who has my commandments, he says, and keeps them, he it is who loves me. For he loves God perfectly who either has his commandments in his heart, or keeps them in deed.

For he who, with a perfunctory confession, recites the divine commands only with his mouth, and neither retains them in mind, nor keeps them in deeds, can by no means say: I will confess to thee, O Lord, with my whole heart, in the council of the just, and in the congregation; but he must, along with the synagogue of the contemptuous people, hear God rebuking through the prophet: This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Be not deceived; God is not mocked.

Or do you think that a lukewarm and negligent Christian loves God, who permits idols to be worshiped on his estates; who allows a shrine of a demon, and an altar of the devil to stand to the insult of God; who does not cease to commit adulteries and fornications; who daily seizes what belongs to another, daily lusts after it; eager to kill his neighbor by whatever means, so that he may more freely fulfill either his lust or his greed, even though he may not be able to fulfill it? For the constancy of fornication does not restrain the lust of the flesh, but kindles it; as the Prophet says: All who commit fornication, their hearts are like a burning oven. Likewise the rapacity of the plunderer does not restrain avarice, but provokes it; for it is written: He who loves money will not be satisfied with money. Nor does he love God who does not pity the poor, in whom Christ testifies that he himself is either cherished or neglected.

For that which you did not do, he says, to one of the least of these, you did not do to me either. And John the Apostle says in his epistle: He who sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, the love of God is not in him. He therefore lies who says he loves Christ, if he does not love him in the needy, who denies in deeds the love he promises in words. Let each one strive therefore to prove by deeds of mercy that he loves God, so that the love of God may cleanse him from every sin. But do you wish to know how much alms lighten the burdens of sins? Hear the counsel which the prophet Daniel presses upon a sinful king: Now, O king, he says, let my counsel please you; redeem your iniquities with alms, and your sins with mercy toward the poor. But perhaps you think that what you deny to the poor is kept safe for you, or for your children.

Do not be so dangerously anxious; for you do not know what the following day may bring forth. Our God is able to give to them, just as to you; nay rather, whatever you have bestowed upon the poor, you have conferred upon yourself and upon your own children as well. Nothing can be lacking to those to whom you have made Christ a partaker. He knows how to repay, who testifies that he himself receives in the poor. Give confidently; for he is a fit rewarder who promises the kingdoms of heaven. The divine Scripture says: Shut up alms in the heart of the poor man, and it shall pray for you to God; that is to say: sell your patrimony, and buy patronage; by whose intercession, being certain of the pardon obtained, you may deserve to look upon the coming Judge in freedom. But in the Gospel: If you wish to be perfect, he says, sell all that you have, and give to the poor; and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.

If we are commanded to give away everything, let us consider what guilt awaits those who make use of silken, and purple, and gilded garments, if they do not clothe the naked with some kind of covering. Certain women load with gold and pearls either their own limbs or those of their daughters; and with dry hands pass by crowds of the needy who beseech them. For dumb animals too, horses and mules, they fashion delicate ornaments of silver and gold; and to man, made in the image of God, they give not even the most worthless clothing or food. And do they think they will find any rest on the day of judgment, unless they seize upon the works of piety for the future? I beseech you, let us be merciful to the poor, that we too, according to the word of the Lord, may obtain mercy.

And let both the rich and those of moderate means vie in giving alms according to their strength: For we have brought nothing into this world, and neither can we take anything out. Naked I came forth, says holy Job, from my mother's womb, naked shall I return again to the earth. This alone does each one carry with him from the resources he received, namely, what he has spent on works of religion, what he has done for the love of God, obeying his commandments; for on the day of judgment it will be said: Behold the man, and his works; it will not be said: Behold the man, and his power, and his riches, and his heirs. He who entrusted the commandments requires the works; he is the repayer of mercy who taught piety, who determined that love of himself should be proven in the keeping of the commandments. For he reckons as done to himself whatever shall have been done to the needy.

Whence elsewhere we read: He who has mercy on the poor lends to God. And truly he lends; for he shall receive great things in return for small, and heavenly things for earthly, from the eternal Son of God himself, whose kingdom, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, endures forever and ever.

The ineffable providence of the only-begotten Son of God deigns to open to his disciples, little by little, the truth of saving faith, which human hearts cannot receive all at once. Already, in what was said above, he had taught many things about the unity of his divinity with the Father, as I set forth in the last Tractate: showing that there is so little division between the Father and the Son, that he says even the discourse which he speaks is not his own, unless it be the Father's. For he had said: And the word which you have heard is not mine, but his who sent me, the Father's. By this saying it became sufficiently clear, that all who despise the teaching of the only-begotten Son are despisers of the Father; since that which the Son calls his own word, he denies to be his own unless it is the Father's.

For then is it the word of the Son, if it is the word of the Father; because, he says, all things whatsoever the Father has are mine. And in another place he says to the Father: For all that is thine is mine, and mine is thine; namely through the unity of the divine substance, which knows nothing to have as its own that is not of its nature. Now, however, he adds immediately what follows, that the same unity of the Holy Spirit also must be believed, while he foretells that the fullness of his teaching will be completed through the Paraclete himself, saying: These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you. But that Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom my Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and remind you of all things which I have said to you.

By this utterance he deigned to foretell to the blessed Apostles both his own return to the heavens after the Passion which was impending, and the coming of the Holy Spirit upon them from the heavens, when he says: These things I have spoken to you while remaining with you. But that Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom my Father will send. But neither was the Holy Spirit in heaven alone, and not on earth; nor was the Son about to ascend to the heavens in such a way as to leave the earth; nor does the Father possess only a heavenly throne, whither the Son is said to return, and whence the Holy Spirit is said to come. For the most blessed prophet reports this confession to the Father: Whither shall I go, he says, from your Spirit? And whither shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there: if I descend into hell, you are present: if I take my wings straight onward, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea.

If I take, he says, my wings. Well does he have wings, which, once taken up, penetrate wherever he desires. But how could the prophet, established in the body, either ascend into heaven, or descend into hell, or pass beyond the farthest seas? What wings, then, what wings does he have? The believing mind takes up the wings of faith, that being raised higher above earthly things, and wholly established in the spirit, it may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the length, and breadth, and height, and depth of the knowledge of God. Heretics, not having these wings of faith, dispute about God, and are rolled about through earthly things; and from the sublimity of divine understanding are drawn down to fallen and carnal things, weighed down by the burden of earthly thoughts.

Nor can they come to the knowledge of that immense divinity, where only the faithful mind has access, which perceives, believes, confesses, and preaches the unity of the adorable Trinity; and because it cannot express it worthily, it glories in this very fact above all. Whither then shall I go, he says, from your Spirit? If I ascend into heaven, you are there: if I descend into hell, you are present: if I take my wings straight onward and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea: for even there your hand shall hold me, and your right hand shall lead me. This confession has marked the undivided nature of the Trinity. Whither shall I go, he says, from your Spirit? That is, from the Paraclete himself, whose fullness the Apostles receiving, confess the promise of God to have been fulfilled, with Peter's mouth as witness: This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: In the last days (says the Lord) I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.

That is, from the Son, who is the face of the Father; since the Father is seen in the Son, according to the very statement of the Lord Savior, who, when Philip besought him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us, answered thus: Have I been so long a time with you, and you have not known me? Philip, he who sees me sees also my Father. How do you say: show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? But lest either the Holy Spirit be thought divided from the Father, whose Spirit he is, or the Son be believed separated from him, whose face, and right hand, and wisdom, and power he is, he does not say: If I ascend into heaven, your Spirit is there; or, your face and your Spirit are there: but, you, he says, are there: with the Son certainly, and with the Holy Spirit; since the one and the same divinity of the adorable Trinity is always everywhere.

But that one and the same faith, and a distinct confession, of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, might be delivered to believers, therefore it is written that the Father sends the Son, and the Holy Spirit, since neither he who sends, nor he who is sent, could be believed to be God, if he is in a certain place and is not in a certain place. Let us believe the Son himself speaking, who is the truth: I am not alone, he says, because the Father is with me. And again concerning the Holy Spirit: If I, he says, cast out demons by the Spirit of God. And the Evangelist Luke: But Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan. Since, then, the divinity of the Trinity is nowhere lacking, it is the dispensation of our salvation that one is proclaimed as sending, and another as sent.

For otherwise the human mind would not be able to believe that the Father is the Father, and the Son is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit, unless it learned the distinction from the naming of the one sending and the one sent. And again it would not acknowledge the one divinity of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, unless it read that the one sent is in no way separated from the one sending. For neither did the Father (as has been said before) abandon the Son when sent; nor is the Holy Spirit, who was to be directed to the Apostles, ever shown to have been absent from the Father and the Son: yet in such a way that only the Son of God was incarnate. For the Word was made flesh, as we read, not the Father, not the Spirit.

But how the Son of God fulfilled this mystery of the Incarnation while the unity of the Trinity remained intact, that omnipotence is witness by which the same Son of God, having taken up the body of the man assumed, so ascended to the heavens that he might remain with his disciples even to the end of the age. For behold, he says, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the age. Even to the consummation of the age, he says, I am with you: not only with the Apostles, but also with all disciples who truly believe. We ought therefore to believe God to be none other than as he himself revealed by his own word that he must be believed. Nor ought we to examine his deeds with a rebellious spirit, but to admire them with faithful zeal, since the word of the Lord is right, and all his works are in faith. If all his works are in faith, how much more this work of his most sacred incarnation!

Let us cease, then, having neglected faith, to assail the divine mystery with insulting questions. For the scrupulousness of one who hesitates does not find the understanding of the works of God through superfluous curiosity, but loses faith, which is agreed to be the guide of salvation and of life. That excessive scrupulousness destroys faith can easily be understood from one kind of divine operation: God said: Let there be light, and light was made. Since I cannot grasp how its Creator made it out of nothing, unless I nevertheless believe, and confess that it was made, I pronounce God a liar by sacrilegious hesitation. Therefore all his works, and especially the divine work of the Incarnation of the Son of God (as the Holy Scriptures proclaim), the mind of each believer ought to receive with faithful affection, and what it has believed with a steadfast heart, it ought to confess with the faithful service of the mouth; for with the heart one believes unto justice, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

But as to the fact that he promises the fullness of his teaching to be repaid through the Holy Spirit, he wished him to be believed of such omnipotence as his own. For in the Trinity there is not Lord and servant; God and Angel; Creator and creature: but there is another who is the same; another person, the same nature; and accordingly not gods, but God, because the unity of the Godhead admits no division. Christ says further there concerning the Holy Spirit: Whom the Father will send in my name; that is, in the name of God, namely to be professed as God, just as the Son is. And therefore the Son of God says of himself: I have come in the name of my Father; which the Prophet had also foretold of him, and the children in the Gospel proved by praising, when they cried out: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Rightly, in the name of the Lord; not in the name of a servant, because he is God: not in his own, because he is the Son: for the name of the Father is in the Son. Of himself, then, I say, the Son speaks: I have come in the name of my Father. But of the Holy Spirit he says: Whom my Father will send in my name. And when he decreed that the work of Baptism should be celebrated in the Trinity, he did not say in the names, but in the name. For the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, as I have often proved to your charity by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures; and therefore there is one name of the Trinity, whose one power and divinity remains forever and ever. Amen.

If any of you, most beloved brethren, perhaps wonders that Jewish men who endured torments for the precept of the Law are now honored by the Christian people among the holy Martyrs, he indeed, if he shall come to know the whole cause and reason of holy religion, will understand that this was established by our forefathers with commendable and the highest judgment. These were Jews before the coming of the Lord Savior, living only under the old Law; and they derived the surname of the Machabees from their family, just as today the offspring of the Anicii, or if there are any other names of this kind which claim a stock of nobility descending from a heap of earthly riches, whereas true nobility does not subsist from riches, but is recognized in character. For how much nobler were these seven boys than king Antiochus! Nay rather, how illustrious was the nobility of faith in these, and how ignoble and marked with the penal stigma of perfidy in him!

These worship God the Father, he the devil: these venerate the law of their fathers, he, rebelling against God, confesses himself the son of the devil. For he was compelling them, against the precept of the divine Law, to eat swine's flesh; no doubt polluted by profane sacrifice, for to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is clean. But granting (as some would have it) that that flesh had not been sacrificed to the devil, because the history itself in writing did not more clearly set this forth; nevertheless it was a most grievous and extreme offense to violate a divine precept, whether by flattering rewards or by tormenting punishments. God had commanded the Jews not to eat swine and other similar things; and this was for a twofold reason, most beloved brethren: either that the luxurious people should not nourish the flame of carnal vices with hot flesh-meats, for they are said to furnish excessive heat to bodies; or that they should not live after the manner of swine.

For swine are always unclean, and coming out of a spring or a river, they roll again in the mire; nor do they ever look at heaven, but with head always bent to the earth they are given over to the belly. And for this reason the Lord permitted the legion of demons to go into the herd of swine; that is, into the herd of those who are but animals of the belly, who never look toward heavenly things, but, ever given to uncleanness, are covered in the mire of vices. Salutarily, therefore, God commanded either abstinence from gluttony, or continence from unclean acts; for the Law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. Indeed the divine commandments are salutary; for the man who shall do them shall live in them.

But suppose that there is no harm at all in swine's flesh, nor any fuel to inflame the enticements of the body; nay, that today all things are clean to the clean, sanctified by the word of God and prayer: still the power and authority of God commanding must be considered, who had ordered that this be observed at that time. For no one either examines the commanding Lord without the penalty of his own sacrilege, or contemns him with impunity. For neither could there be evil in that tree which the good Creator had planted among the other trees of Paradise; whose fruit was so beautiful and sweet that it afforded delight to the eyes, and allured the palate with enticement. For it is written: And the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was pleasant to behold, and sweet to eat: and she took, and did eat, and gave to her husband.

But if perhaps you should say that not everything that appears pleasant and sweet is also good, since there are some evil things too which appear pleasant and sweet; I grant it, I agree, I consent. For honey drips, as Scripture says, from the lips of a harlot woman, who for a time smooth her throat; but in the end you will find it more bitter than gall, and sharper than a two-edged sword. And certainly there is no evil either in the appearance or in the sex of the woman; but the evil is assuredly in the will of the one sinning, and in the one transgressing, through the intemperance of concupiscence, from the lawful right of marriage. For even though the nature of wine is good, yet drunkenness is rightly condemned. Hear now the general sentence of divine Scripture concerning all created things: And God saw all the things that he had made, and behold, they were very good.

Yet because the reason of truth demanded that the servile condition of man should receive the law of the ruling God; being left to the liberty of its own judgment, God chose one tree out of all the trees of paradise, not indeed an evil one, but one in which there might seem to be the knowledge of good and evil; in which he might test the obedience of his servants, so that the liberty of the will, if obedient, might possess the reward of immortality, or, if contemptuous, might receive the sentence of unending death. Man ate, because he willed; he did not keep the commandment, because he was unwilling; he is punished with death, because he was able to keep the commandment and did not care to. The tree indeed was good, and the fruit indeed good; but the transgression of the commandment was evil, and the contempt of God evil: and so the evil is not in the fruit of the tree, but in the will of the transgressing man.

Therefore if the fruit of one little tree, rashly tasted against God's commandment by the first-formed pair, procured death for the human race, so also the transgression of the divine commandment could have prepared destruction for the Machabees then placed under the Law; whereas now the keeping of his commandment has procured for them honor and glory, they manfully and steadfastly keeping God's faith in it. For he keeps the faith of God who does not violate the rights of his commandment; since it was not because they suffered horror at the appearance of the food that they were unwilling to eat the forbidden things, but because they most justly feared to do injury to God who forbade it. He who is faithful in a little thing, says the Lord, is faithful also in a great thing.

These were faithful in a great thing, when amid torments they rejected foods offered to idols: they were faithful in a small thing, when, merely so as not to eat the forbidden meats, they gave their own flesh rather to be devoured by torments. It is a more remarkable faith which is not violated even in small matters. These most blessed brothers furnished a form of endurance to the future martyrs after the Passion of Christ, that they might understand with how great greatness of soul and constancy they ought to strive for the name of the Redeemer, for whose commandment these had themselves striven so persistently. Let it seem absurd to no one that I compared them a little before to the Anicii.

For the Anicii are named by us, from the Greek word, "unconquered." For the cruelty of a most cruel tyrant exercised various kinds of torments upon their bodies: and when the crafty persecutor had not been able to overcome the constancy of faith in six brothers by the atrocity of torment, he turned, in the seventh, because he was younger, to the torments of blandishments; torturing the boy with rewards of riches and promises of honors, whom nevertheless he could not turn aside. For he was the brother of his brothers; and the son of that mother who, while she gladly both watches and exhorts each of her sons being punished for the name of God, endured as many martyrdoms as she consecrated pledges: suffering seven times in her own vitals, she herself also came as an eighth to the number, destined to meet on the eighth day of Christ's resurrection with her dear pledges.

Whence it is not without reason presumed that this most blessed mother prefigured the image of holy Church, who is accustomed to bear spiritual sons to God, thinking nothing of flesh and blood. Now indeed if anyone should demand of me the remainder of the discussion above, asking why those foods which had been forbidden in the Law for the sake of continence are not now also, for the same reason, kept away, I will answer briefly, as I think. I believe that the manifold observances of the legal precepts were thus taken away from the midst, so that the general precepts might continue in their pristine state.

We have said that, for the sake of preserving chastity, abstinence from swine's flesh, or from similar quadrupeds, and also from certain fowls and fish, was enjoined upon the Jewish people: though there adhered to it the types of reasonable figures, which the spiritual teacher ought to expound one by one in their own proper places: but because the minds of earthly men seemed rather to be burdened by the perplexity of manifold commandments than instructed, the untiring divine providence, in this respect also toward the human race, is promised through the Prophet Isaiah: "Because the Lord," he says, "will make a shortened word upon the earth". And for this reason blessed James, with the other Apostles, established such a decree to be observed in the Churches: "That you abstain," he says, "from things sacrificed to idols, and from fornication, and from blood," that is, from things strangled.

They passed over homicide, adultery, sorceries; since it was not fitting that these things be even named in the Churches, which are punished even by the laws of the Gentiles: they also passed over all those minutiae of legal observances, and sanctioned only these which we mentioned above as to be kept, lest we be defiled either by foods sacrificed to the devil as unclean, or be polluted by the blood, dead within the flesh, of strangled animals, or lest we violate by the uncleanness of fornications our bodies, which are temples of God. Thus, then, they permitted all things to be eaten, so as to command fornication to be fled from.

It ought now to be a matter of our own moderation only to loosen the reins of license, lest we be borne headlong into excess, but so that chastity may be able to be safe, which blessed Paul, knowing that it cannot be preserved without a circumcision of the appetite, thus speaks: "All things indeed are clean: and nothing is to be rejected which is received with thanksgiving: but it is evil for the man who eats with offense"; that is, who suffers offense when he eats. And he immediately adds this salutary counsel: "It is good," he says, "not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby your brother is offended, or scandalized, or made weak." Who is that brother more closely joined than our own outer man? To whom, lest our license produce either offense, or weakness, or scandal, the license of foods is to be used, not abused; that we may know that we were not born for the sake of eating, but for living well.

Wherefore let the condition of the flesh obey the command of the soul, lest, with unbridled license, as Solomon says, "the servant reign, and the fool be filled, and the handmaid cast out her mistress," when the Law commands: "Cast out the handmaid and her son; for the son of the handmaid shall not be heir with my son Isaac." Let us therefore cast out the handmaid, concupiscence, and her son, sin, that we may be made heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, who, by carrying on his own shoulders the wood of his cross, fulfilled in the truth of the man he had assumed the image of the Passion which he had foreshown under the shadow of the Law in holy Isaac, redeeming our life by his precious blood from the destruction of eternal death. For he himself is our redemption, to whom be all honor, power, and glory, with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, through all ages. Amen.

Conscious of my incapacity, and deterred by shame at the immaturity of my very age for the dignity of the priesthood, I rightly asked leave from the chief priests to remain silent. For I fear, first, lest the power of heavenly words be weakened by the discourse of my insignificance; then I blush, because I am not able to furnish the desired fruit of teaching to so great an expectation. Wherefore, feeling myself in every way unequal to your desire, I strove with all my strength to decline this burden. But the blessed Father Ambrose, and the other venerable bishops, bound by the oath by which you yourselves rashly bound yourselves, sent me such letters together with your delegation, that I could no longer resist further without harm to my soul; since even by the Eastern bishops the salutary communion would be denied me unless I promised my return to you.

Enclosed, therefore, in such a strait, and subdued by the authority of the Saints present, I took up this office of the high priesthood, neither worthy by merit, nor fit by age, nor mature in doctrine. Consider, then, what I suffer, who, though I know not how to speak, cannot be silent. For I am compelled to obey the command of my elders beyond my strength, having neither the power of keeping silence nor the eloquence of speaking. But perceiving, by the authority of the divine Law, that the precepts of spiritual Fathers are salutary, I dare to break forth into words, and to bring a slender discourse to your ears; which perhaps you receive patiently for this reason, that it seems useful for the people of Christ to learn, by the example of the one preaching, obedience, which is preferred even before the divine sacrifice, and set before all the commandments of God.

For when the Hebrew people, after those Egyptian portents, were called to the knowledge of the one God, they learned obedience first, as the leader for the keeping of the heavenly commandments. For thus Scripture testifies: Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is one. And again: Hear, O Israel, the precepts of life. This word "Hear," I think, does not signify mere hearing, but proclaims the obedience of observing the Law, the Lord again testifying and saying: If you be willing, and will hearken to me, you shall eat the good things of the land. But if, according to the sentence of the blessed apostle Paul, not the hearers but the doers of the Law shall be justified before God; then that hearing will no longer seem to be a perfunctory one, which is honored with the rewards of the good things of the land—and not of just any land, but of that once promised land, that land flowing with milk and honey.

For the land of promise is the flesh of Christ, taken up from the mass of the human race formed from the earth, and overflowing with the sweet juices of divine grace; by whose most pure milk of doctrine we are fed and nourished; by whose heavenly charisms' sweetness we are refreshed; by whose abundance the hearts of believers grow fat; by whose good things the minds of the obedient, and the souls of the faithful, both in this age and in the age to come, are fattened. To what, then, does this discourse look? Surely that your love may clearly understand what great force compelled my littleness to comply with arduous commands, and to open my mouth in the presence of so many priests; and especially after that most learned voice of my father Philaster of venerable memory, which, flowing abundantly through the grace of the Holy Spirit, founded this Church in the faith of the adorable Trinity, established it in true hope and perfect charity, raised it up to virtues, and left it in peace.

Let this suffice, briefly said, in excuse of that boldness which might have been blamed in me. But now the well of the holy readings is deep, and I, having no vessel to draw the word with, cannot for the present minister living water to you who thirst. I beseech our common father Ambrose, that after the scanty dew of my discourse, he himself may water your hearts with the mysteries of the divine letters. For he will speak by the Holy Spirit, with which he is filled, and rivers of living water shall flow from his belly, and, as it were successor of the apostle Peter, he himself will be the mouth of all the priests standing around. For when the Lord Jesus asked the apostles: But whom do you say that I am? Peter alone, by the mouth of all believers, answered: Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. What office did this confession at once receive? Namely, blessedness, and the most glorious power of the heavenly kingdom.

Therefore, when Peter alone speaks, the faith of the rest of the believers is by no means excluded. But a fitting order is observed, while the first place of speaking is by right granted to the prince of the Apostles; lest it should seem rather a tumult than an answer, if then all had answered at once and together, vying with one another. Someone may perhaps say that, just as those three faithful children in the furnace, so in this trial all the Apostles ought to have professed the same thing with one accord. But it must be considered that Judas Iscariot, because he had not believed in his heart, could not confess with his mouth; and, being unbelieving, he neither deserved blessedness, nor, before the perpetration of that dire crime, could he be pre-condemned by the sentence of the just Judge.

But afterward, when Judas had already been condemned for the crime committed, all the Apostles, with Christ rising, receive the keys in Peter; nay rather, together with Peter, they receive the keys of the heavenly kingdom from the Lord Himself, when He says to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them. And again: Going, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. For the gate of the kingdom of heaven is opened by no other key than this of the spiritual Sacraments.

Let all these apostolic priests now pray for the mercy of God the Father, who raised up the needy from the earth, and lifted the poor out of the dunghill, that he might set him with the princes of his people; that he may deign to grant also to me, least of all, the power of the Holy Spirit for holding the helm of his Church, through his only-begotten Son, our Redeemer, with whom he lives and reigns, ever God, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, before all things, and now, and always, and unto all ages of ages. Amen.

Our smallness is not able to render worthy thanks for divine gifts and heavenly benefits, dearest brethren. For that we might have the venerable relics of the Saints, our God granted; then that we might be able to found this basilica to their honor, he himself bestowed it; and today, that having obtained the presence of the chief priests, we might merit to celebrate the dedication, he himself has granted. For the holy bishops and apostolic men have come together, to pay the debt of devotion owed to their most blessed fathers and teachers, so that with fullest abundance we might be enriched with spiritual blessing; although the importunity of the barbarians has withdrawn the greater part of today's celebration, preventing the other holy bishops, whom we believed would be present, from coming. Now let me begin to number those whose blessed relics illumine us.

In the first place is John the Baptist, last indeed, but greatest of the Prophets: latest in time, because all the Law and the Prophets were until John; but by merit first, and more excellent in dignity, because thus Christ speaks of him to the Jews: What went you out into the desert to see? A prophet? I tell you, and more than a prophet. For this is he of whom it is written: Behold, I send my angel before thy face, who shall prepare thy way. By one testimony of the Savior, the most blessed John the Baptist is declared to be both angel, and apostle, and prophet foremost. For truly he is an angel of God, who is the forerunner and messenger of Christ: truly he is an apostle, who was sent by God, for one who is dispatched is called an apostle.

There was, it says, a man sent from God, whose name was John. And he is called holy prophet himself, and more than a prophet, because he deserved to point out with his finger Christ, foretold both by his own voice and by that of all the prophets; saying: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. After him we have the most blessed Andrew, first a disciple of John himself, then of the Savior; whom Christ is recorded to have chosen as the first apostle. There was, it says, Andrew, brother of Simon Peter, one of the two who had heard from John, Behold the Lamb of God, and had followed him. He first found his brother Simon, and said to him: We have found the Messiah (which is interpreted, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus. Third is the blessed Thomas, who after Christ's resurrection alone desired, and alone obtained, to handle the members of Christ with hands indeed curious, but assuredly worthy.

For that was the mark of ardent desire, not of unbelief, when he said to his fellow disciples, who in his absence had seen the Lord: Unless I shall see, and shall touch, I will not believe. For he was greatly anxious lest he should not also enjoy with his eyes that which he believed with his heart; lest he be deprived of the sight of that light in which the other apostles gloried that they had been enlightened. The Lord satisfied the hungry one, whose promise remains: Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice, for they shall be filled. He appeared a second time to the Apostles, that he might fulfill Thomas's desire: his longing profited the others as well; nor does he himself have any the less, because he saw Christ later.

For he compensates for the losses of his former blindness equally by sight and by touch; who indeed, if according to the opinion of certain persons he had been unbelieving, Christ would not have deigned to appear to him after his resurrection. For it is written: Because he is found by those who do not tempt him: but he appears to those who have faith in him. And what the Saviour said to him: Be not unbelieving, but believing; and: because thou hast seen, thou hast believed: blessed are they who have not seen, and have believed; by this he wished to instruct all who would afterward believe, that our people, like Thomas who was absent when Christ appeared to the apostles, might grant unhesitating faith to their report; and not require to see in the flesh him whom, by the testimony of the apostles, he has learned rose again after the passion of the cross, and was seen.

For neither, after he returned to the heavens, present in this world only by his powers, ought he daily, according to the will of each one, to appear in the body to every single believer and to all believers together. Let it suffice for us, that the curiosity of holy Thomas has satisfied the scruple of future ambiguity. For that he was absent, that he sought more eagerly both to see and to touch the Lord, all this was procured for our salvation; that we might more clearly know the truth of the Lord's resurrection, which blessed Thomas, though providently rebuked for his necessary curiosity, affirms, saying to him: My Lord, and my God. The fourth evangelist is Luke, who, following the blessed Apostles with equal merit, wrote both the book of the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles with wondrous care.

Of these four we have at present blessed relics, who, preaching the kingdom of God and justice, having been slain by unbelievers and the wicked, are shown to live forever with God through the powers of their works. John is recorded to have been perfected in the city of Sebaste in the province of Palestine, Thomas among the Indians, Andrew and Luke at Patras, a city of Achaia. After these we have Gervasius, Protasius, and Nazarius, most blessed martyrs, who a few years ago deigned to reveal themselves at the city of Milan to the holy priest Ambrose, whose blood we possess gathered up in plaster, seeking nothing more; for we possess the blood, which is a witness of the passion.

We have also received the holy ashes of Sisinnius, Martyrius, and Alexander, whom lately, at Anaunia, a sacrilegious people, while they clung more earnestly to the worship of venerable religion, slew, and, fire being applied, burned, that they might become a holocaust to that very God who had, with most just rebuke, forbidden that his Christians should offer victims to demons. Now after these ten, what worthy thing shall I say concerning the Forty Martyrs, who deigned to offer themselves as faithful companions to my journey, when I was going through the cities of Cappadocia to Jerusalem? For in that very great city of Cappadocia, which is called Caesarea, where these same most blessed ones have their notable martyr-shrine, we found certain handmaids of God, most worthy mothers of a monastery of holy virgins, altogether like Mary and Martha, whom Jesus might rightly love; sisters in nature, in faith, in zeal, and in integrity of chastity.

To them these venerable relics of these martyrs had once been entrusted by their uncle, the high priest and blessed confessor Basil, which they granted to our desire without delay, and faithfully; approving us as fit venerators of the gift, and at the same time confessing under the testimony of the Lord, that they had always prayed our God, that this so precious possession might be transferred to such heirs as would honor it with like faith and diligence; who might become both successors and increasers of their zeal and veneration; since they themselves were established in years of old age, and daily expected their own passing from this world. Behold, their faithful prayer has been heard. We today set forth these venerable relics of the forty Martyrs for the believing peoples to venerate, although it is known that the due celebration of them has never been lacking on the part of our office from that time onward, having been salutarily devoted to their illustrious benefits.

But now I shall briefly relate in what order these most blessed ones attained to the glory of martyrdom; although I confess myself unequal to pursuing their praises fully. Clearly they have, fitted to their merits, and a most worthy herald, the man of blessed memory, the confessor Basil, bishop of the Church of Caesarea, whose singular eloquence, and speech seasoned with apostolic salt, dulls the poverty of my own talent. For what new thing can I bring forth which he has not already poured out abundantly in the richness of his eloquence, adorned copiously, and expressed pointedly in praising them? For it is a matter of great difficulty to preach the same virtues in different sermons. Nevertheless I shall attempt, for the sake of instructing your love, at least to retrace the history of the deeds.

These men were soldiers stationed in the region of Lesser Armenia, flourishing in age, tall in stature of body, praiseworthy in experience of warfare, honored with military pay according to the merit of their virtues, and—what surpasses all these things—Christians; and adorned with every uprightness of character by the good of venerable religion, and equipped with the spiritual arms of heavenly doctrine. As soon, then, as the trumpet of persecution sounded, love of the faith girded the most valiant soldiers of Christ for battle. For when the deadly edicts of the sacrilegious king began to be published by the judge, by which it was commanded that no one, whether private person or soldier, should dare to profess the Christian name, but that all the people should be compelled to sacrifice to demons; they spontaneously came forward into the midst, testified with the clearest voice that they were Christians, and declared that they could be torn away from this saving worship by no terrors.

The terrible persecutor, beholding the constancy of the young men, laying aside authority, exhorts them with soothing words, that they should not wish to use this obstinacy, that they should not become contemptuous toward their emperor, that they should not despise his commands, that, being otherwise most devoted, they should not by this act provoke the greatest offense of the king, from whom rather they ought to hope for benefits and honors, especially for this obedience. It was certainly unbecoming for warrior men, that they should perish among cowards and criminals by a most shameful death. They ought to consider the flower of their youth, and the pleasantness of this light and of this life, which, without regard to any reason, they were being imprudently persuaded to lose. Hearing such things, the Christian men, deservedly admirable, not only rejected with steadfast minds the poisoned blandishments of the pernicious exhorter, but even refuted them with the sharpest reply.

What, they say, thou most wicked of all, having dared to rebel against God, dost thou try to trip up his servants with deceitful words? Why dost thou strive to bend us away from the worship of the true and living God, to the dead images of demons? Why dost thou strain, by the fleeting promises of earthly honors and the deceptions of empty things, to corrupt our minds from the vigor of heavenly faith? We curse gifts which bring loss of salvation; we reject honors which take away that eternal glory; we spurn the friendship of the king, which desires to separate us from the love of God; we spurn also this temporal life of our body, which, if preserved at the peril of the faith, procures the death of the soul; finally, we are not deterred by present punishments. We hand over our flesh to whatever pains thou wilt inflict, lest, by denying Christ God, we be plunged into perpetual torments, which have been prepared from the beginning for the devil and for you his ministers.

Then that judge of iniquity, inflamed by such words, doubled his fury, which a little before he had wished to satisfy more subtly, by devising a new kind of punishment. For observing that the nature of the region was excessively stiff with cold, and also the season, in which the greatest harshness of winter pressed more violently with the blowing of the north wind; the mountains were covered with snow, the fields with frost; liquids were forced by the fires of the sun to acknowledge their own nature; the courses of the torrential rivers were stiffened with vast ice; a lake also, lying beneath the city in which these things were taking place, spread far and wide, with the strongest frost enduring, afforded a solid path for groaning wagons.

Having observed, therefore, this force of the place, or the severity of the season, the exactor of Gentile sacrilege commands that this kind of punishment be applied to the saints, that, their bodies stripped bare and bound, they should pass the night in the open air's frosty hardness, with baths smoking far off within their sight; where the cunning persecutor, more eager to kill their souls than their bodies, promised a swift remedy to those who were conquered. But the most blessed martyrs, burning with the Holy Spirit, having cast off their garments far away, hasten quickly to the stadium, beholding with heavenly gaze the crown set forth for so great a contest.

Then, kindling one another's endurance with mutual exhortations, they preferred the glory of the heavenly kingdom to present pains, and repeated among other things this: that we who scorned to fear hostile swords for the safety of an earthly king, why should we not, for the faith of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal king, endure with equal mind all the torments inflicted on our body, about to pass more swiftly, by the brief compass of a glorious death, to the blessedness of eternal light and everlasting life? Amid the frosts Faith burned, and heavenly souls glowed with desire of Christ. The bitterness of excessive cold scorched the shining skins of their stiffening bodies: but their religious minds, occupied with the love of God, meditated on the pleasantness of paradise.

The inward parts of their entrails were bored through with the ice, so that a certain inward icy tormentor pressed the marrow of their bones with most grievous torments: yet the unmoved virtue of their souls, beholding the goal of its course, rejoiced at its approaching consummation, awaiting with faithful endurance the promised gift of God. But one of their number, unable to endure even so brief and already final a suffering, wretchedly began to beg that he might be led to the baths. Meanwhile a soldier, to whom the care had been enjoined of opening that bath of death to any who were overcome, while with curious eyes he watched from a high place the struggle of these distinguished men, seeking to know the outcome of the matter, sees the leader of the heavenly army descending with a multitude of angels, and bestowing, one by one, upon the most valiant warriors bright garments and rich rewards, which that one wretched man alone, whose faith the devil had broken, did not receive.

The unhappy man is led to the baths; and there, immediately, by the breath of heat by which he had believed he would be revived, he was made lifeless, and lost both his life and his crown. A sorrowful deed is followed by an unexpected rejoicing. Suddenly, an admirer of the aforesaid vision takes his place; he strips his limbs for the desired punishment; with a great cry he repeats again and again that he is a Christian—he whom the wondrous power of that spectacle had suddenly made, from a Gentile, a true Christian. He is at once seized as guilty of his own profession; he binds himself willingly, and is cruelly bound with cutting bonds; he perseveres, bound fast, glories in his punishment, is exalted by the hope of divine reward. Faith in Christ grows amid tortures: love increases amid torments. For with apostolic sense he testified: No power of torments, no cruelty of punishments shall be able to separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In the midst of torments the new martyr, instructed by the Holy Spirit, is taught and makes progress; he dies and triumphs. The adorable Trinity, his witness remaining faithful amid punishments, more gloriously washes and cleanses him through martyrdom itself in place of baptism, and leads him to the kingdoms of the heavens. This fortieth saint, then, dies together with the saints, so that the sacred number, which the Saviour had honored by his fast, might be completed; as those same blessed martyrs are remembered to have prayed. After this he ordered the executioners to carry the bodies of the dead further off and burn them with fire. They left behind one who was still thought to be alive, in case, perhaps, in that very solitude he might change his will for the worse.

There his venerable mother, who had nourished such a son with the good milk of heavenly wisdom, ran to the corpse of her still-breathing son, and with her own hands placed him upon the cart on which the bodies of the others, heaped together, were being dragged to the pyre. Go, she said, my son, on that good road, safe with your fellows, and glorious, to the Lord. O admirable, and truly worthy mother of a martyr! Nay rather, she herself already a martyr; who spared not her own flesh and blood, while she rejoices that her own members are punished for the name of Christ in her son. Now indeed let us not pass over in silence, in this last part, that when the ashes of the burned bodies, by order of the persecutor, were being cast into the river, there were not lacking devout hands, which snatched away part of the ashes either by theft, or purchased them at a price.

Hence both the Church of Caesarea exults, and our brotherhood not undeservedly glories, understanding that a saving gift has been reserved for it by the providence of God. We have received a portion of the relics, and we trust that we possess nothing less, since, in honoring them in their ashes, we embrace all forty together: just as that faithful woman in the Gospel who was healed through the hem of Christ's garment, held the border of the garment, and drew forth the power of divinity: by the touch of the hem, faith drew healing for the believer, and obtained the salvation which she had ventured to hope for. And so the very portion which we have merited, is the fullness; for these forty martyrs can in no way be divided from one another, whose relics are inseparable and undistinguished.

For just as that fiery Spirit of God joined their souls together in the unity of saving faith (for the heart of all the believers was one, and their soul one), so also the fire, consuming their limbs, reduced them into one body of ashes. We have therefore both these forty, and the aforesaid ten saints, gathered together from different parts of the earth; wherefore we decree that this very basilica, dedicated by their merits, ought to be called the Council of the saints. For it is fitting, that as we go forward to the venerable relics of so many Martyrs, we should confess that we go forward to the Council of the saints.

Let us then, aided by the patronage of so many righteous ones, run as suppliants with all faith and all desire, in their footsteps; that, by their intercession, we may deserve to obtain all that we ask, magnifying Christ the Lord, the bestower of so great a gift; to whom be all honor, power, and glory, with the Father, and with the Holy Spirit, before all things, and now, and always, and unto all ages of ages. Amen.

To Serminius, servant of Christ, Gaudentius, bishop. It befits a wise man always to ponder the sayings of wisdom, and to bend to their understanding all the keenness of his mind, all the vigor of his intellect. And therefore you, who are both learned in the letters of worldly wisdom and have learned the true wisdom of God through the sacred writings, do not cease to labor at searching out the inner meanings of the words of Christ, whom you know, on the Apostle's teaching, to be the power of God and the wisdom of God. For among the other sayings of the divine Law, whose exposition you frequently require, you have also specifically requested this: that I explain in writing the parable of the unjust steward, which is exceedingly difficult, and for which none of us seemed to you a fit interpreter. And perhaps you wish this explanation to be committed to writing so that you may keep a signed record of my answer concerning a chapter which, as you yourself confess, is most obscure.

But I shall not fear either to speak when asked, or even to write, according to the smallness of my understanding, what I think—while preserving the rule of faith. And first, dearest one, the words of the reading itself must be set down, and only then must the meaning of the sayings be unfolded. Blessed Luke relates in the book of his Gospel: The Lord, he says, spoke this parable to his disciples: There was a certain rich man, who had a steward: and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him: How is it that I hear this of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship: for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself: What shall I do, for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship? I cannot dig, to beg I am ashamed. I know what I will do, that, when I shall be put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.

So calling every one of his lord's debtors, he said to the first: How much dost thou owe my lord? But he said: A hundred barrels of oil. And he said to him: Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then he said to another: And how much dost thou owe? Who said: A hundred quarters of wheat. He said to him: Take thy bill, and write eighty. And the lord commended the unjust steward, forasmuch as he had done wisely: for the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. And I say to you: Make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity; that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings. He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in that which is greater: and he that is unjust in that which is little, is unjust also in that which is greater.

If then you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon, who will trust you with that which is the true? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

It is the mark of a perfect teacher, for the instruction of his disciples, to propose similitudes of those things which are common in the intercourse of the human race, so that a fit hearer may be trained by the teaching of comparison to the zeal of doing; nor should he doubt to undertake that work which the image of the parable has shown to be possible and necessary.

And therefore the Lord Jesus, the true master of saving commandments, wishing to incite his disciples—then the apostles, now all believers—to the faithful practice of almsgiving, set forth the similitude of the Steward, that by the example of this person he might signify that nothing in this world is ours, but that the dispensation of the goods of our Lord has been entrusted to us, either to use them sufficiently with thanksgiving, or to distribute to fellow-servants, according to each one's need; and that it is not lawful for us to abuse at random the resources committed to us, or to squander them upon superfluous expenses, since an account of the outlay must be rendered to the Lord at his coming.

Finally, after the end of the parable, he added thus: "And I say unto you: make to yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity, that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations"; that is, make for yourselves friends, the poor, out of the earthly goods which the iniquity of human avarice claims for itself, lest it should impart anything of its substance to the men of God. For "mammon," in the Syrian tongue, is the name for money, or riches. Make for yourselves, therefore, he says, friends, the poor, of the mammon of iniquity, that when you shall fail, that same substance, having been spent and consumed upon the necessities of the poor, may receive you into everlasting habitations; namely, those same poor friends who procure our salvation, in whom Christ the eternal Rewarder will confess that he has received the services of this kindness.

Therefore it is not the poor themselves who will receive us by their own power, but he who is refreshed in them by the fruit of our obedience and faith, who will take up the ministers of this piety into the everlasting habitations of the heavenly kingdom.

For he says: "Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry, and you gave me to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink: I was a stranger, and you took me in: naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me." To which they, modestly and reverently excusing themselves, say: "Lord, when did we see you in these necessities, and ministered unto you?" He will answer, saying: "Amen I say unto you, when you did it to one of the least of these, you did it unto me." Let it seem absurd to no one, then, that those are said to receive us for whose sake we are received; since even our own Receiver, the Lord Jesus, who is not subject to human necessities, testifies that he was hungry and thirsty in them, and a stranger, and naked, and sick, and imprisoned.

"Make for yourselves, therefore," he says, "friends of the mammon of iniquity, that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." And a little afterward: "If you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon"—which is true—"who will trust you?" Truly, dearest one, who would think that the true riches of heavenly things—things which a faithful and just distributor rightly and deservedly enjoys—should be entrusted to one who does not know how to dispense faithfully the earthly goods that most often furnish material for iniquity?

"For glory and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever and ever." At once, then, that saying of the Lord is joined thus: "And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own?" For indeed, whatever is in this world is not ours; we who, hoping for future recompense, are bidden to conduct ourselves in this world as guests and pilgrims, that each of us may dare to confess to the Lord in security: "I am a sojourner and a pilgrim, as were all my fathers." But the proper and eternal possession of believers is that heavenly one, where we know our heart and our treasure to be; where already, with the whole affection of the mind, through faith we presume to dwell; since, according to the teaching of blessed Paul, "our conversation is in heaven." Ours, therefore, is the kingdom of heaven, if we serve the Lord who promises it, in humility of heart and meekness of spirit.

For "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." This kingdom, indeed, no one can attain who has not been a fit and faithful dispenser of another's patrimony in this world, temporarily entrusted to him; whence in another place the Lord said: "How difficult it is for those who have riches to enter into the kingdom of God!" And at the end of this reading he says: "You cannot serve God and mammon." For the servants and disciples of God, of Christ, ought to command money, not serve it; lest, while we obey its desire, we be separated from the love of its service by the dominance of money. Money must therefore be distributed to the needy, according to the precept of God, the Creator of all things; since it is neither ours, nor does any covetous man retain it without iniquity and his own destruction.

For, according to the sentence of the Savior, riches shut off the entrance of the kingdom of heaven from their retainers, and it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God—that rich man, indeed, who is, on account of the horror of base avarice, weaker than a camel. Heavy is the burden of money, which presses down to the earth, by the weight of avarice, the minds of those who cling to it, and does not allow them at all to rise to the things above, and to look toward heaven, where our life is; since the blessed Apostle teaches: "If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God: mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth. For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then you also shall appear with him in glory." Since, indeed, the way that leads to life is strait and narrow, it does not permit those who are laden with the bundles of earthly riches to enter through it. It seeks the unencumbered and the slender, chastened by every continence, and (if I may so speak) resembling a slender thread, who, having been made spiritual, may pass easily even through the eye of that mystical needle. This is the reason and usefulness of this parable, which must first be obeyed as it is commanded; and thus a more hidden meaning, if it can be found, is to be sought; because the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. And not the hearers only, but the doers of the Law shall be justified before God; nor can anyone clearly grasp the inner knowledge of the divine word, the Apostle attesting: "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" And in another place, when concerning Adam and Eve he perceived that the mystery of the divine word was exceedingly great, and could not speak worthily of it, he says: "This mystery is great; but I speak in Christ and in the Church." Do you wish to know that eternal life is attained not through knowledge of secrets, but through the accomplishment of good works? The Lord in the Gospel answered thus to a certain rich man who asked: "If you wish to come to life, keep the commandments." And when he boasted that he had kept all these, yet one commandment could not be wrung from him for the present—that he should be merciful to the poor, and transfer his treasure to heaven; for as soon as he heard this word he went away sorrowful.

And not undeservedly sorrowful; because, possessed by the evil of avarice, he could not possess the joy of the heavenly treasure. Indeed, "the love of money is the root of all evils," as the Apostle groans: "which some coveting have erred from the faith, and have entangled themselves in many sorrows." For he suffers a pernicious error of faith, and entangles himself in many sorrows, who, through love of earthly things, like this young man, departs from Christ; while he shuns his commandment; while, sorrowful and mourning, he is led away from the sight of the Lord, by voluntary blindness, to the punishments prepared for the covetous and the scornful.

For to those set on the left side, on account of their fruitlessness, it will be said: "Depart from me into everlasting fire, which my Father has prepared for the devil and his angels: because when you did not show mercy to the needy, you did it not to me." I come now to that which you have so earnestly demanded of me, and what I think about it I shall relate with what brevity I can; prejudging no one as to how he may wish to interpret it, provided that his explanation does not violate the tradition of the apostolic faith.

I think the steward of iniquity is the devil, who for this reason has been let loose upon this world for the correction of the human race, that, fleeing the savagery of this most cruel steward, we may run in supplication to the mercy of God, by whose mercy and power we may be defended against all his assaults; since even the steward himself has been placed under the power of the Lord God—of that truly rich One who, as the Apostle teaches, "is rich unto all, and above all who call upon him.

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." But the devil squanders the goods of his Lord when he rages for the destruction of the human race; that is, for our death, we who are the possession of God, as the Son of God himself testifies, reporting the words of his Father through the Prophet: "Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession." And again: "For the Lord has chosen Jacob unto himself, Israel for his own possession." Seeing, therefore, that the devil's audacity had burst forth to such a degree that he usurped and slew those whom he had been permitted only to tempt for their correction, God threatens him with expulsion, that his savagery may be broken by the fear of unending vengeance.

But that most wicked one, reckoning the death of men as his own gain, is anxiously troubled, because the Lord was about to take from him the power of dominion; and since he neither wishes to do good, nor is ashamed, in penitence, to seek mercy, he devises a scheme how he may prevail—not only by open battle to pursue the debtors of his Lord (that is, those entangled in the debts of sin), but even, under the pretext of a deceitful benevolence, to deceive them with flattering fraud, so that, deceived by his false kindness, they may receive him the more into their houses, to be judged along with him forever. For the devil considers it a great remedy for his own punishments if he acquires many companions in punishment. For the crafty enemy, disturbed by the coming and threatening of Christ, devised by poisonous counsel how those who fled him while he pursued might follow him as he retreated.

For he hastens, by new arts and various kinds of temptations, to supplant men, from whose dominion he knows he is to be entirely removed at the end of the age. For after the coming of Christ, his fury against the human race is redoubled, since he knows that he has but a short time, as it is written of him. He falsely promises to release the debts of his fellow-servants, which are in the power of the Lord, while he promises a vain indulgence to those who sin either in faith or in work; while he persuades them that those crimes are not imputed as sin, which even those who commit them do not fail to know are grave offenses. For they confess the amount of their debt, since they cannot deny that they are wholly liable to God, both for faith despised and for work neglected. But those who render to God what is God's are no longer debtors to God.

Nor should you wonder if he thus lies to men about the remission of debts, whom by this subtlety he strives the more to kill—he who dared to promise the kingdoms of the world to Christ, the maker of all things, shamelessly asserting them to be his own. "All these things are mine," he says, "and to whomsoever I will, I give them. If you, therefore, falling down, will worship me, all shall be yours." O ineffable patience of Christ, who for this reason permitted the tempter to speak, that he might show in himself, in the manhood he had taken, the art of fighting and of conquering! O unbridled audacity of the lying devil! He perceives God, and tempts him; he knows the Lord of all creation, to whom he falsely claims the kingdoms of the world are his own; and he promises to bestow the possession of created things upon him through whom he does not deny that all things were created.

For "from the beginning," as it is written, "the devil was a murderer, and stood not in the truth, because the truth is not in him." But let us now come to the very kinds of goods concerning which the question is asked. The wheat, as we touched on above, is the faith of Christ, the beginning of human life. For "he is the living bread, which came down from heaven, and gives life to this world." And again he himself says: "He who believes in me, even though he be dead, shall live." But the oil is good works, which those foolish virgins, not having, with the lamps of their souls extinguished, remained in darkness, shut out from the bridal chamber of the heavenly kingdom. For our souls ought not only to be virgins in faith, and whole, but also always to carry with them in their vessels the oil of every good work; lest the very lamps of faith within us be extinguished for lack of works.

For as the body without the soul, so faith without works is dead, according to the sentence of blessed James. The light of faith, indeed, will then be continuous and perpetual, if it is abundantly nourished by the fatness of good works. The devil, therefore, ensnares the human race with false promises, that they may not recognize the debt of faith and of works; until, by the sentence of the Lord Judge, they are thrust into the prison of hell, to be exacted by punishments even to the last farthing.

But that he persuades the hundred measures of oil—that is, of work—to be written down as fifty, and forces the hundred measures of wheat—that is, of faith—to be transferred to eighty, this is a more hidden fraud, and a most subtle circumvention of the enemy: while he involves men, drawn back from idolatry, in various errors of pernicious doctrines, diminishing the sum of saving faith; and, having removed them from wicked acts, and desiring them to persist in good works, he supplants them by the pestilent love of vainglory. For he strives to corrupt our faith and our works from the perfect number of a hundred, set indeed on the right side, into the deceitful abridgments of the left side; perverting the apostolic faith by the sinister sense of heretical persuasion, and drawing down the merits of good works and of right-hand deeds most often to left-hand ways. For how many has the devil, by sinister counsels, relaxed from the vigor of the right side into the vices of carnal pleasures!

How many, eager to pay their spiritual debts by works of religion, has he deprived of heavenly reward, by injecting into them the desire of human glory; so that they do not receive the promised rewards of the right side, while in those very good works they hasten to please, not God, but men! Whence Christ the Lord, warning his disciples, the sons of God, that they should not strive to celebrate their righteousness, and almsgiving, and fasting, and prayers before men, lest through the vice of vainglory, which is assigned to the left side, they should lose the reward of the right side, says: "Let not your left hand know what your right hand does." It is clear, then, with what poisoned prudence that steward of iniquity changes the due offices of religion from the right side to the left. Nor is it without significance that a greater number is lost to the Lord, to whom we are debtors, out of the works figured by oil, than out of the wheat compared to the token of living faith.

For the crowd that is withdrawn by the devil's fraud from right faith is smaller than that which is withdrawn from fitting works, the Savior attesting: "Why do you say to me, Lord, Lord, and do not do the things which I say to you?" But the Lord praises, not the goodness, not the piety, not the equity, but the astuteness and the cunning prudence of the steward of iniquity, because he had contrived his deceit with subtle wickedness. He praises, however, both threateningly and prudently at once. Threateningly indeed, while by the very word "iniquity" he condemns the devil's worst prudence; prudently, however, while, against the counsels of his schemes, he instructs the disciples who hear him, that with all caution and prudence they may resist so cunning, so wickedly prudent an enemy. For that serpent in paradise was more subtle than all the beasts, who slew the first-formed men by the poisoned bite of seduction.

Detecting the twisted cunning of this serpent, the blessed Apostle says: "For we are not ignorant of his devices." Whence also the Savior says: "Be ye prudent as serpents, and simple as doves"; which the apostle Paul explains in other words, when he says: "In malice be children, but in understanding be perfect." Christ commands us to be prudent, not venomous; wise, not harmful; but that, laying aside, like the serpent, the old tunic of sin, we may be reformed into the new man; guarding with all diligence our head, which is Christ, and giving over for his sake all our members to be torn by persecutors, so that the faith of God, which is the head of our salvation and life, may remain whole and unwounded. Wherefore, dearest one, let us imitate the prudence of this steward, not his perfidy; let us emulate his cunning, not follow his wickedness.

As much as he is skilled in the work of his iniquity to do harm, so much ought we, trained in saving pursuits, and instructed and armed with all prudence, to be equipped: "putting on ourselves the breastplate of faith and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, and the impregnable shield of equity," in which we may be able, as the Apostle exhorts, to extinguish all the fiery darts of the wicked one; lest he transfix us, unwary, with the darts of his suggestions wherever he may, lest he oppress the unarmed, lest he slay the sleeping; lest he destroy even the watchful and armed, if we do not know the practice of warfare. For the unclean spirits, whom the Lord calls sons of this world, that is, sons of darkness, are sometimes found more prudent than the sons of light, whom God, who is light, deigns to call into the adoption of sons, reborn through the sacraments of the heavenly font. Farewell, in Christ, dearest son.

Before that passage of the holy Gospel, of which you demand of me an understanding through your letters with faithful zeal, brother Paul, dearest to me by kinship of flesh and of spirit, Christ the Son of the living God is known to have spoken very many things concerning the one and perfect substance of his divinity with the Father, when he said to the Jews: I and the Father are one; when he answered holy Philip: He who sees me sees also the Father; when he spoke commonly to the blessed Apostles: Believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me.

After these things, then, and many such sayings, by which he proved himself to be homoousion with the Father, and of the same essence, he was now about to bring forward something which would heap up the fullness of knowledge for minds strong in the faith, yet would furnish a stumbling-block to the doubtful, and fuel for blasphemy to the faithless (since the word of God is set for the fall and the rising again of many); he forewarned the eleven blessed Apostles, and likewise those who would follow the footsteps of their faith, lest at the hearing of the saying about to be uttered the mind of anyone should suffer disturbance. Let not your heart, he says, be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You have heard that I said to you: I go, and I come to you. If you loved me, you would indeed rejoice, because I go to the Father: for the Father is greater than I.

The Arian heretics have this most notorious question, by which with sacrilegious mouth they contend that the Son of God is less than his Father, bringing forward his own testimony, since he says: For the Father is greater than I. The wickedness of their heart has blinded them, lest from the words spoken before they should recognize the reason of this saying; or rather lest, having known the truth, they should follow it. There is a twofold substance in Christ; one his own, the other now made his own from us: that is, one of God, the other of man. For the Son of God, from the moment the undefiled Virgin brought him forth, conceived of the Holy Spirit, and by this manner of being born the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; the same began also to be the Son of man, who in the beginning was with the Father, the Son of God, indeed God the Word.

Thereafter, through the increases of age, the Creator of times advances into a perfect man, the evangelist bearing witness: And the child grew, and waxed strong, and was filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon him. The Apostle Paul, understanding that this advancement had advanced along with our advancement, said: Until we all attain, he says, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: although his perfect divinity, which was what it always will be, and without end, needed no increase. Therefore all things whatsoever, being constituted in this twofold substance, Christ either spoke, or did, or endured; now they showed the omnipotent nature of God, now the weak nature of the man he had taken up. The birth of the flesh shows the man; the unaccustomed childbearing of the Virgin proves the God. The narrow cradle of the manger, and the customary wrapping of swaddling clothes, mark the human infancy: but the voices of Angels announce to the shepherds that he who is born is God.

For when the Angel said: Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people; for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you: you shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger. Suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will. Then Herod persecutes the little one: but the brightness of the obedient star declares him to be the great God; whom the magi, ambassadors of all the Gentiles, adoring in suppliance, brought the honor due to the heavenly King, in the offering of mystical gifts. The twelve-year-old boy Jesus is found in the temple by his anxious parents; but the crowd of teachers sitting around marvel at him in his words as the Wisdom of God.

And he who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth, approaches the baptism of John as though a sinful man, about to wash away our crimes in his own body; but even there straightway the voice of his Father thunders from heaven the property of his divine nature, saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear him. As the devil the tempter approaches him as a man: but the devil having been triumphed over, immediately there follow to Christ, as to God, the ministries of serving angels. He frequently avoids the seditions of raging Jews as a man: but as God, by the command of his word, he puts to flight the legions of demons as though servants. He sits above the well wearied from the journey as a man; but he lays bare the hidden things of the Samaritan woman as God, the searcher of human minds; and not only lays them bare, but also cleanses her by the washing of water leaping up into eternal life.

He cleanses indeed one faithfully entreating: Cleanse me from my hidden faults: for the woman says to him: Lord, give me this water, that I thirst not any more; the ardor of sins, evidently, being extinguished. To hunger, to thirst, to be wearied, to sleep, belongs to man: but to satisfy five thousand men with five loaves belongs to God. And to bestow living water, of which one draught given to the drinker ensures that he no more thirst, but that there be in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life, belongs to none but God. And he who is worn out by the labor of an earthly journey as though a man, again the same walks upon the waters as God. For when the Lord had bidden his disciples to sail across the strait, until he himself should dismiss the crowds; the crowds departing, he went up and prayed on the mountain.

But in the evening, when now the little boat was tossed in the midst of the sea by waves stirred up by a contrary wind, he himself, borne up by the power of his majesty, was walking upon the surface of the sea, nor did the swelling wave touch the soles of him as he walked. The Apostles, in peril, in the fourth watch of the night, see Christ coming from afar. Peter asks: Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you upon the waters. And he, that he might deny nothing to a faithful desire, says: Come. And Peter, descending, he says, from the boat, was walking upon the waters that he might come to Jesus. But seeing the wind strong, he was afraid: and when he began to sink, he cried out, saying: Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched out his hand, and caught him, saying to him: O you of little faith, why did you doubt?

While walking upon the land he feels weariness, he is man: but while the same one, walking upon the waves with untroubled power, lifts up the sinking Peter, he is God. And let the Arians consider in this same place also this, that for those in doubt concerning the faith of Christ, a certain deadly submersion is prepared, unless through true confession they turn as suppliants to his omnipotence. Elsewhere too, Christ the Lord, sailing, is described by the holy evangelist as having slept, when the disciples, set in the extreme peril of the storm, roused him, saying: Lord, save us, we perish; when, rising, he commanded the wind and the sea, and there was made a great calm. He sleeps as a man, and rising he commands the elements as God. For he calmed the swelling waves with a word, and the storm, having been rebuked, was straightway still, and at the voice of its Creator the mass of the swollen deep at once lay smooth.

But lest, by recounting each such thing, I seem to wander too far from my proposed discourse, I will add still a few things from the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, from which you may perceive in him both the condition of human nature and the divine power. He says to the Jews: Why do you seek to kill me? A man. And elsewhere, when Peter confesses, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, he pronounces him blessed, because he was worthy to whom God the Father should instill this faith; confirming by this utterance that he is truly the Son of God. And he who had said: I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again, again says: My soul is sorrowful even unto death. And the same who says: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up, again says: Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.

By that reasoning, therefore, he who had spoken from the person of God: I and the Father are one; speaks from the person of the man he had taken up: For the Father is greater than I. Now indeed, to one understanding what has been said, the following explanation will declare more covertly for what reason that is said which is written, and what is meant by his saying: For the Father is greater than I; although it is evidently clear from the testimonies said above, that the Son of God, begotten of the Father without any beginning, after he deigned to be born of the blessed Mary, is both God and man; and now has either done, or spoken, or suffered lowly things according to the flesh: now has both taught by words and approved by wondrous deeds the immense sublimity of the nature of God.

Yet the most wicked Arians do not follow the rule of this distinction, but with the fraud of Jewish tavern-keepers they mix water with wine, that is, human things with divine; and thus they confound that pure and apostolic faith with an adulterous mixture, ascribing to God ignorance, weakness, fear, impossibility, doubt, sorrow, hunger, thirst, weariness, and the other passions of man; which the Son of God, without detriment to his divinity, so assumed and bore along with man, that he indeed reckoned as his own the injuries which he suffered in the flesh, but nevertheless his divinity, retaining the force of its own nature, remained impassible. Whence the holy Apostle, the state of divine incorruptibility being preserved, records the Lord of majesty as crucified. For indeed his Passion, celebrated not in his divinity, which is impassible, but in his manhood, came to the aid of a perishing world; for by his wound we have been made whole.

Not that his divinity could be wounded, but because he himself took upon himself our infirmities, and bore our sins, and grieved for us, according to the teaching of the Prophet: for he himself was neither made weak, nor did he sin, nor did he himself feel the pains of the cruel wounds. For how could it be, that he who by the power of his command had cured the manifold diseases of the sick, and by his command had given renewed life to the dead, should himself, according to his divine nature, be subjected to Passion? He endured, therefore, as man, the injuries of the Passion in the flesh, and worked, as God, mighty deeds by his own authority. Whence the Apostle says: He was crucified through weakness, but he lives by the power of God.

And hence it is that when he is led to the Passion, by the touch of his right hand he forms a new ear for Malchus, contrary to the purpose of his patience, cut off by the avenging sword of Peter: and that, hanging on the cross, he grants paradise to the confessing thief: and that, placed in the sepulcher, he raises up the bodies of the saints: and that, rising again, he is seen in the same arrangement of members in which he had suffered, and enters to the Apostles gathered together within one dwelling, the doors being shut: and that, ascending into the heavens, he does not abandon his faithful disciples, promising that he will remain with them even to the consummation of the age.

If the Arian heretics followed this distinction, they would never turn the mystery of our life into an injury to the Son of God, asserting with blasphemous voices that he is less than God the Father, whom the vessel of election testifies to be equal to the Father; disclosing the whole reason for which the Son of God, who is also man, said: For the Father is greater than I. Let this, he says, be in you which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being constituted in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. The Apostle testifies to his equality: Arius strives to assert his inferiority.

It is left to the judgment of the hearers to decide whom they think should be believed: whether Paul the apostle, who, chosen by Christ as teacher of the Gentiles, laid the foundation of faith as a wise architect; who, caught up even to the third heaven, heard heavenly secrets: or the accursed Arius, who, in the times of the emperor Constantine, when with a poisoned heart he feigned the confession of the catholic faith; seeking the friendship of the king, and to be recalled to the rank of the presbyterate from which he had deservedly been expelled; after the likeness of Judas the betrayer, burst asunder in the middle, and all his bowels gushed out, lest under the clothing of a sheep a wolf should enter to devour the flock of the Lord. The Arians, following the assertion of this wicked man, likewise follow also the example of his death. But we who follow the apostolic faith and teaching, let us lend the ears of our minds with faithful affection to the aforesaid explanation of the most blessed Paul.

For it follows: but he emptied himself (by voluntary goodness, namely) humbling himself. And it is added: taking the form of a servant, not indeed made a servant: made, he says, in the likeness of men. For that which was made, in him is life: namely that which was made in him according to the flesh is our life, he himself testifying: I came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly. Then he added: and being found in fashion as a man; for the fashion of God, how great it is, that is, God himself properly, no one has ever seen. Then he humbled himself, made, he says, obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; for by voluntary humility, with the Father's will, willingly he endured the cross, that his death might become the life of believers. Wherefore, he says, God exalted him. Exalted whom? Him, namely, who underwent the punishment of the cross and death; not God simply, who is always exalted by nature.

And gave him a name which is above every name. The name above every name is God; and it is not indeed given to God, that he might become God. For in the beginning, with the Father, the Son, God, was the Word: but the man assumed by the Son is promoted into God, that the Son of God, who had always been, might be God equally also with that substance which he assumed from the Virgin, wholly God again. So that in the name of Jesus, God and man indeed, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth; and every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father.

That is, that after the mystery of the Passion, and the triumph of the Ascension, now the whole Son of God, together with that which he deigned to assume for us, in the glory of God the Father (remaining, that is, in the divinity of his nature) should be adored by all the powers of heaven, earth, and the underworld. Before, therefore, he suffered; before, having triumphed over death, he ascended victoriously into the heavens; before he returned into the bosom of the paternal divinity with the whole substance which had been born of the Virgin; before he was recognized and adored as Lord Jesus in the glory of God the Father by every rational creature of heaven, earth, and the underworld—deservedly he said to his disciples: If you loved me, you would indeed rejoice, that I go to the Father: for the Father is greater than I. For the Son of God, born as yet in the flesh, was still less, until he should place in his ancient glory the nature of the man he had assumed.

And therefore elsewhere, from his person, he says to the Father: Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you before this world was. That is, so that he might possess, together with the whole substance of his bodily birth, the glory of divinity which, as Son, God with God the Father, he had always had before the constitution of the world. On account of this, even after his resurrection, he thus speaks to certain ones hesitating concerning this dispensation. O foolish, he says, and slow of heart to believe in all that the Prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into his glory? Not without reason did he testify himself to be less, but in that place where he was disclosing to his own Apostles the reason of his Passion, and Resurrection, and Ascension.

Do not you, Arian, suppose that his sayings, which he spoke concerning the perfect substance of his divinity before the Passion, can be voided by the argument of your servile unbelief, by which with pernicious cunning you destroy the salvation of your own soul. The speech of Christ, whether when he teaches concerning his divinity, or when he speaks concerning the incarnation, is distinguished with complete clarity. For through the Prophets he announces the sublimity of his Godhead in one way, when he says: Hear, my people, and I will speak: Israel, and I will testify unto you, that I the Lord your God am he: in another way he designates the humility of his future incorporation, when he says: But I am a worm, and no man: a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

And after much else, that you may not doubt that the whole text of the prophecy is his own: They parted, he says, my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots; which the evangelists testify was done by the crucifiers concerning the garments of Christ. Let no one of the faithful be troubled, then, that the Son, set in this world according to the flesh, called himself less than his Father, who also deigned already then, through the Prophet, to compare himself to a worm: and this indeed not without the reasoning of a great mystery. For it is established that, without the copulation of a begetter, the worm of the future bee is born, whose labors bring kings and common people to health; as it is written.

For the labors of the Passion of Christ, whom the Virgin mother brought forth as a virgin bee about to remain, we—both kings, from ruling (namely the high priests), and common people, whoever follow, whether of the Levitical order or the faithful people—bring, in the figure of his body and blood, for the health of the common life, and we testify, from a conscious mouth, to the recognized sweetness of the mysteries: Taste, and see, that the Lord is sweet. But woe to the heretics, who strive to assert that what is sweet is bitter, wishing to withdraw equality from the Son precisely there where he is known to remain wholly in the glory of God the Father, the mystery of the Passion having been consummated.

For thus he says to the blessed Apostles, hearing with desire of mind the glory of the majesty of his Ascension: If you loved me, you would indeed rejoice, that I go to the Father: for the Father is greater than I. Declaring, namely, that for this reason he, in both substances, of God and of man, would ascend into the heavens after his Passion and Resurrection, so that he who, on account of the humility of the incarnation, seemed less than himself, and therefore seemed less than his Father on earth, having trodden underfoot the sting of death, ascending victorious into the heavens, might remain equal to the Father, as he had always been; and that the same who was always God, and now also man, being now established, as God, in the eternal glory of the Father, might reign without end. For he who first, in a figure, made wine out of water, when he said to the most blessed Mary: What is it to me and to you, woman?

My hour has not yet come; the same, after the hour of his Passion, so consummated the truth of the enigma foretold, that indeed the water of the incarnation became the wine of the Godhead; which the heretics, adulterating the word of God, still mix as it were water with wine, whereas the whole Lord Jesus, both that which is of God the Father, and that which is of the Virgin mother, is the only-begotten God in the glory of God the Father: because indeed God is not diminished in man, but man advances into God; so that just as the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, so flesh might become God, and dwell in the heavens.

Whence he consequently added: And now, he says, I have told you before it comes to pass, that when it comes to pass, you may believe: that is, I said this for this reason, that if you loved me, you ought to rejoice that I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I, so that when it has come to pass you may believe him equal. When it has come to pass: what, namely? This, surely; when after my Passion I shall have ascended into the heavens, to remain in that glory which I always had with the Father, and with the Father. Therefore, after he rose from the dead, certain ones doubting are rebuked by him; and they hear that it behooved Christ to suffer all these things, and so to enter into his glory, which he testified he had always possessed before the constitution of the world. Wherefore the Apostle says: Even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no more.

For he is God and man, both now constituted as God at the right hand of God the Father, since the cup in the hand of the Lord is full of mixed pure wine. And he has poured out of this into that: nevertheless the dregs thereof are not emptied out. And although I know, dearest one, that the text of this psalm has been explained by earlier writers in another sense, and indeed a reasonable one, yet I, for the liberty of faith, following the fitness of the words, have drawn it toward the sacrament of the Lord's incarnation. For thus God either bowed himself down, or humbled himself, in man, that, remaining God, he might be what he had been, and might exalt the man on whose account he had humbled himself; because thus the Word was made flesh, that it might dwell among us; and thus again man was turned into God, that though promoted indeed into God, he might still retain the substance of his own nature.

And therefore the Prophet says: For the cup in the hand of the Lord is full of mixed pure wine: and he has poured out of this into that: nevertheless the dregs thereof are not emptied out. It is full, he says, of mixed pure wine. And he represents the wine as mixed, and testifies that this same is pure, that we may believe him to be the same God whom we confess also to be man for our sake. For he whom he announces as bowed down, he likewise calls full; that he who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, might not cease to be full God. For in Christ dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and of his fullness we all have received, grace for grace. But this cup, he says, even the sinners of the earth shall drink.

Rightly, according to this understanding, he says: even the sinners of the earth shall drink; because the sinners of heaven, made demons from among the Angels, do not merit to drink the cup of salvation: but the sinners of the earth, against the poisons of demons and the diseases of vices, shall receive the cup of salvation, and shall call upon the name of the Lord. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. This cup, then, is rightly given to sinners to drink, because they that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. I came, he says, not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance: for the Wisdom of God invites such to this bowl of the salutary mixture, when with a lofty voice it exhorts, and says: Whoever is foolish, let him turn aside to me. And to those lacking sense it says: Come, eat of my bread, and drink the wine which I have mixed for you.

For this reason the foolish one is invited by the Wisdom of God, that he may become wise; and the sinner, that he may be converted and live. To this cup of divine mercy all are generally summoned together: For all have sinned, as the Apostle says, and lack the glory of God. But if all have sinned, and lack the glory of God (the remedy, that is, of his majesty), whom then shall we call whole, for whom the office of physician is unnecessary, unless perhaps those who, having already been healed by him, no longer need his medicine? Yet no saint has failed to need the medicine of Christ, since it is faith in him alone that has made them saints, as Scripture testifies in the epistle of the most blessed Paul to the Hebrews. And therefore the same Apostle, giving thanks, preached: Faithful, he says, is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.

Nor let anyone flatter himself concerning his own salvation apart from the gift of Christ God, when the Vessel of election confesses himself to be the first of all sinners. As many of us, then, as, gathered from among sinners, have merited to drink the faith of Christ, made partakers of the altar, and having obtained the gift of grace, with a voice of exultation and confession, let us proclaim the gifts of God, saying: You have prepared a table in my sight against them that afflict me. You have anointed my head with oil: and how excellent is your inebriating cup! That we may be able, by the mercy of the Lord ensuing, to merit the perpetual dwelling of his house, from that same eternal Son of God himself, whose kingdom shall have no end, since he has conquered death, and reigns perpetually forever and ever. Amen.

Venerable prelate of Christ, and moreover our common father, the affection with which you detained me as I was setting out has now also compelled me, though I make excuses, to address your beloved company once more with a treatise of my discourse. And therefore I shall touch upon something concerning the praises of the most blessed Apostles, according to the smallness of my understanding, yet emboldened by the very protection of those whose birthday this is. We understand three births granted to the human race by the eternal Trinity. One is carnal, common to all; two are spiritual, according to the merit of each one's faith. The first, whereby we are created out of nothing into the substance of worldly life; the second, whereby we are regenerated in Baptism out of iniquity and errors into the truth of justice; the third, whereby the most blessed martyrs, for the confession of Christ's name, are born through torments into the kingdom.

Such a pattern went before in Christ, who, born of the Virgin, is reborn in the Jordan, and is baptized on the gibbet of the cross with the blood of his precious gore. For after that baptism which he had received for us in the Jordan, he says to the Apostles concerning his Passion: I have a baptism to be baptized with. For he rose from that very baptism of the Passion unto a life now to be closed by no end; he returned to a kingdom of which there shall be no end. In the footsteps of this Master walk the faithful disciples Peter and Paul, whose birthday of passion all the Churches throughout the whole world celebrate today with due honor. For on this day, in the city of Rome, the cruelty of Nero killed both of them for the name of Christ, and the justice of the Lord crowned them.

Peter is crucified with his head turned toward the earth, and his feet lifted on high, declaring himself unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Lord. Paul is beheaded with the sword. Both are noble, both are distinguished; indeed two lights of the world, pillars of the faith, founders of the Church, masters of innocence, authors of all sanctity and truth. We can worthily praise them if we proclaim them by those divine testimonies with which the Truth itself praised them. To Peter confessing, the Lord says: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And, I say to thee, Peter, thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And to thee I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and so forth. What shall I say of Paul?

Because he is a vessel of election, he says, for me, that he should carry my name before the whole world. Upon one is the Church founded; the other carries the precious myrrh of faith in his teaching among the people, having himself been made a vessel of election. Peter shines in signs and wonders; Paul glories in doctrine and persecutions. Peter was formerly a fisherman; Paul a persecutor; but both were afterward made fishers of men. For indeed, throughout the whole sea of this age, they cast the nets of saving doctrine. Peter is bidden to walk upon the waves; Paul, upon the clouds, while he is carried up even to the third heaven; both walk upon an element of pathless journey, exalted by the power of faith.

Which of them I might dare to prefer, I know not; since the Lord has shown them equal under one confession, joined them in true brotherhood in their passion, bound them by the bond of oneness of mind; so that we may most rightly presume that it was foretold of them by the prophetic spirit: Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity. There are indeed Moses and Aaron, of whom it is said they are brothers. There are the Prophets and Apostles, brothers in one doctrine, one spirit. There are in us the inner and outer man, brothers if they savor one thing. There are also Peter and Paul, truly kindred brothers, whom one faith made brothers by the fellowship of their own blood. I shall even dare to call them twin brothers, whom their mother, by one confession, from a blessed womb, poured forth together into the kingdom. For blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice's sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Let us therefore, brethren, share in the memories of the holy Apostles; let us share in the memories of the saints by faith, by work, by conduct, by speech; that we may deserve, by their prayers, to be aided in all things that we ask, by the bestowing grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. To whom be all honor for ages of ages.

Or, An Oration of Blessed Bishop Gaudentius on the life and death of Blessed Bishop Philastrius, his predecessor.

Beloved, today, mindful of the promises of Christ, we pay the honor due to our blessed father Philastrius, as to one truly living. For he is a son of the Patriarchs, and a partner in faith, and an emulator of their manner of life; he is most similar to their sincerity, and such a one as Christ pronounces to live unto God, refuting the disbelief of the Sadducees by a powerful argument, when he says that he who is called the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, is not the God of the dead, but of the living. For all those, he says, live. And certainly divine Scripture had foretold that they had died according to the condition of the flesh, though in a good old age, and had been buried, as the still-existing tombs demonstrate.

Therefore, what blessed Peter was permitted boldly to say of the patriarch David, that he had died and been buried—though he knew that by prophetic faith David had assumed life after death, since he had said, My soul shall live, and shall praise thee, and other such things—let it also be permitted to us to say boldly to you of the legitimate son of the patriarch, and high priest, Philastrius: that he indeed has died, and been buried, and his tomb is among us, but his life in Christ is with God. And so, when Christ our life shall appear, then he too shall appear with him in glory. That he is truly the legitimate son of the most blessed Abraham, the examples of his faith and works testify. For believing God with the fullest faith, he too went out from his land, and from his kindred, and from his father's house; and he followed the word of God, stripped of all the impediments of this age.

And therefore he quickly deserved to attain what, unencumbered, he strove to follow. For practicing singular continence, ever watchful in the holy Scriptures, he desired the wisdom of God, reckoning Christ the Lord as his portion, in whom are hidden all the treasures of heavenly wisdom. When he had satisfied his desire with these things—a man of heavenly desires—and had been chosen, through the laying on of hands of the presbytery, as a steward of the divine word, he by no means suffered the grace of God to be neglected. But going about almost the whole compass of the Roman world, he preached the word of the Lord, showing himself a fit imitator of the apostle Paul. For being full of the Holy Spirit, he fought not only against the Gentiles and the Jews, but also against all heresies, and especially against the then-raging Arian perfidy, with such vigor of faith that he was even subjected to scourgings, and bore in his body the stigmata of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For in the city of Milan too he was formerly a fit guardian of the Lord's flock, resisting the Arian Auxentius, before the blessed Ambrose was chosen. Having stayed a considerable time at Rome as well, he won many to the faith by both public and private disputation. But neither, passing through the towns and strongholds of various regions, did he, a faithful disciple of Christ, ever cease to preach the word of God. After those journeys, salutary for very many souls, Brixia, then indeed unformed but eager for doctrine, was deemed worthy of him—ignorant indeed of spiritual knowledge, yet praiseworthy in its zeal for learning. As a good farmer, he at once cut down from the deepest roots the bristling forest of diverse error, and, bending diligently over the plough of doctrine, turned over the raw earth with all his strength, and by unceasing furrows converted the squalid soil into fruitful new-broken land, plentifully sowing the seeds of the life-giving commandments into its bosom.

He also planted a vineyard, that he might rejoice in its fruit, since wine gladdens the heart of man. He also grafted the olives of peace onto the wild olive-shoots, and inserted into the harshness of wild fruits the shoots of richness and sweetness; that the apostolic man might have some fruit also among you, as among other nations. And he indeed now rejoices with God in the fruits of his completed work; for the laborer is worthy of his reward, and it is fitting that the laboring farmer be the first to partake of the fruits. But I, the least part of him, wish with all my prayers that I may in some way be able to guard the field well planted by the father, though received by a not sufficiently fit successor. We touched a little while ago upon the zeal of his faith, and the greatness of his labors.

Now let us recall, beloved, how much gentleness in holy conduct that vehement ardor of soul possessed; how much humility exalted that loftiness of knowledge; how ignorant of earthly things was that skill in heavenly matters. For he was unacquainted with human glory, and a keen exactor of the divine honor: not seeking the things that were his own, but the things of Jesus Christ. Despising the friendships of the world and worldly offices, clinging continually to the service of God, he was continually occupied even amid human conversations; for surely his heart was there where his treasure was. This too is remarkable, that although he despised all the laborious and precious things of this age, he, poured out in merciful eagerness, would increase, as a buyer, the poorest sellers of worthless things—counting it a small matter, of course, what he might bestow upon the professedly needy.

This same saint was quick to anger but easily indulgent, surpassing in patience, overcoming by kindness; strict in reproving, unreserved in relaxing, free in his actions: to every age, condition, and sex common with astonishing benevolence, and yet closer still to the humble, whoever they were. He himself too, in that dress of his garments, was, in the midst of all its plainness, most clean; pleasing without effort, unremarkable without artifice; and plainly one who, while he himself took no care for it, revealed the purity of his mind. These few things concerning the virtues of the man of God I have recalled in a very brief discourse, lest this day, on which blessed Philastrius our patron passed to the realms above—whose feast we celebrate today—should pass by inglorious in sad silence. For though I have brought to your hearing many praises of his merits, renewing the observance of this solemnity now for fourteen years, I perceive that many things which can still be told remain untouched.

On the fifteenth day before the Kalends of August he put off the man, and passed to him whom he loved. Let us therefore venerate the memory of so worthy a priest with due affection, that by his intercession also we may more easily obtain the good things we ask, through the bestowing of the eternal Son of God, to whom is all honor, power, and glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for ages of ages. Amen.

Let every dweller of the fertile song,

Where the Cleosa flows, and the Mella flows,

Where the winding Ollius runs its circling course,

Sing along with me.

Let the singer of this song be present,

Dwelling in our shores of the Benacus:

Free man and slave; and let them sing again with all

Their voices, odes.

Let all the joyful people of the throng resound;

Whoever was born in Brixia, or is a guest there,

Clergy, and the ranks of the lay people,

Every sex, and age,

Let us be roused to the song of so great a father,

Whose bones we enjoy forever;

And whoever was bishop in this city

In former time.

The SEVENTH sat upon the throne of the see,

This good and blessed man of Brixia,

Noble, and prudent, PHILASTRIUS

Called by name.

Of what towers he was born,

None of us remembers, nor knows:

But this we know, that he followed

Blessed Abraham.

Leaving behind the things and marks of his homeland,

With faith ever accompanying him,

He sought the heavenly doctrine unceasingly

With the depths of his understanding.

He, wakeful, by re-reading the sacred books,

Continent, as if he had been alone,

Instructed himself, wise, with love

Exceedingly heavenly.

A good man, simple, filled full with goodness,

Who believed the Lord and God

To be his own peculiar portion,

By an everlasting lot.

By divine lot he is a sacred priest

Consecrated; then thereafter he strove

To teach the peoples, to the bounds of the world,

With holy doctrine.

The barbarous nations bent toward idols,

And the Jews, unjust men,

Perfidious, against them, by heavenly warnings,

He himself resisted,

A minister beloved of the eternal King;

But against the warnings of the perfidious sect

Of the Arians, he called them well-nigh false,

Always and everywhere

With inmost feeling, as it were, resisting.

By assiduous scourges his own members pour forth,

Struck, the running blood of rosy color,

Often shed.

While he, ever careful, kept admonishing,

It was allowed to the impious only against him,

That in his own members he should too greatly bear

The marks of Christ.

But against thee, Auxentius, wretched, unskilled,

He stood firm in the strength of faith,

Refuting the people against your ever bloody

Bites.

In the faith he himself established many companies

Of peoples throughout the world of the city;

Until he came to Brescia, by the will

Of the King of the heavens;

And a people rude, but then desirous to be taught,

Though ignorant, yet firmly ready

For being instructed, by keen zeal

And native wit.

For the rude people, bearing many

Old stains, he stripped away, and with new ones

Clothing them, restoring them unto Christ,

With nourishing morals.

This holy seer was of this age,

Unknowing of pomp, of the Lord's honor

A lofty cultivator, seeking not his own;

Well done, faithful one!

The empty honors of this age

He believed to be of vile price,

He who meditated under the law of Christ

By night and by day.

The great and precious things of the age

He spurned as small, and reckoned as nothing;

But of the sellers of lesser price

He had become a buyer of increase.

With a father's affection, patient, to anger

Both slow and quick to yield;

Sweet, humane, sober, kind,

All things to all.

An upright judge, and a prudent physician,

Who had a taste for spiritual healing:

He mixed the liquid of oil with wine,

Curing wounds.

And though a father, he had always been

Bound most closely to the least, yet he himself was bound

Beyond sex, age, servitude, and

Nobility.

Well done, one to be admired and imitated!

He was held both cheap and gracious:

His cheapness lacked foul gesture,

His grace, arrogance.

Six times three days did the month

Of July snatch him away, the clergy weeping;

And the crowd of the people weeping much

With loud voices.

Whence we always, by his blessed merits,

Believe that we may be relieved

Of the burden of sin, and may find

A place of pardon,

If the grace of the Father, the Begotten,

And the Holy Spirit, in mercy toward us,

Be perpetual, with unceasing remedies

Through all the years. Amen.