Sermons to the People 244.1–246.6

From the Gospel according to John the Lord’s resurrection began to be recited today. We heard, and with the eyes of faith we saw, the affection of a devout woman toward the Lord Jesus. She was seeking Jesus, but still she was looking for him as the body of a dead man; and yet she loved him as a good teacher. She did not understand that he had risen from the dead; she did not believe it. And because she saw the stone removed from the tomb, believing that the body she was seeking had been taken from there, she reported to the disciples a thing to be grieved over. Two ran, one of whom was Peter, the other John. For he is the one whom Jesus loved, certainly above the rest; for he loved them all as Lord. They ran to see whether the woman spoke the truth, that the body had been taken from the tomb. They came, they looked, they did not find the body, and they believed. But what did they believe? What they ought not to have believed. When you heard, then, “And they believed,” perhaps you thought they believed what they ought to have believed, that is, that the Lord had risen from the dead. They did not believe this, but what the woman had reported. Finally, so that you may know that they believed this, the evangelist at once added and said: “For they did not yet know the Scriptures, that he must rise from the dead.” Where is faith? Where is the truth so often attested? Did not the Lord Jesus himself tell them several times before his passion that he was to be handed over, killed, and would rise again? He was speaking to the deaf still. Peter had already said to him: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” He had already heard: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it.” Such faith was swallowed up when the Lord was crucified. For Peter believed him the Son of God just so long as until he saw him hanging on the wood, until he saw him fixed with nails, until he saw him dead, until he saw him buried. Then he lost what he held. Where was the rock? Where the firmness of the rock? The rock was Christ himself, while Peter was named from the rock. That is why the rock had risen, to make Peter firm; for Peter would have perished unless the rock lived.

Afterward, however, when the Lord said to the woman, “Mary,” she turned, recognized him, and called him teacher: “Rabboni.” The Lord’s resurrection was made manifest to this woman. What then does it mean: “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father”? It is a question to wonder at in many ways. First, because he forbade himself to be touched, as if he could be harmed by being touched by someone touching him. Next, because, giving the reason why he did not want to be touched and forbade it, he says, “For I have not yet ascended to my Father,” as if he were saying: “You will touch me then, when I have ascended to my Father.” She was forbidden to touch him when he was on earth, and she could touch him when he is seated in heaven? For I had said: What is “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father”? I add more. When he rose, as he himself says and the other evangelists, and as we have already heard when the holy readings were read, he appeared to his disciples; and when they thought him a spirit, he said to them: “Why are you troubled, and why do thoughts rise up in your heart? See my hands and my feet. Handle and see.” Had he already ascended? He had not yet ascended to his Father, and he said to his disciples, “Handle and see.” Where is “Do not touch me”? Here perhaps someone will say: “He was willing to be touched by men, not by women.” If he shrank from woman, he would not have been born of a woman. Yet whatever this is that can create some sort of question, so that it might be said that before he ascended to the Father the Lord was willing to be touched by men but not by women, the evangelist Matthew speaks. For he relates that women met the Lord when he rose, among whom was Mary herself, and that they held his feet. The question has been pressed tight in many ways: what does “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father” mean? Everything I have said, I have said in order to make the difficulty of the question greater: you see it is strong and as if unsolvable. May the Lord help me, that it may be solved. He who deigned to set it, may he deign to expound it. Pray with me for success: your ears to me, your heart to him. What he deigns to suggest to me, I will share with you. Whoever understands better, let him teach me: I am a teacher in such a way as not to be unteachable. But whoever does not understand better, let him hear from me what I understand.

The disciples thought the Lord Jesus a man, as we have heard, as he appeared, and they weighed their faith accordingly: they did not raise it higher. They walked with Christ on earth. What he had been made for our sake they knew; that he made us, they did not know. Christ himself is both maker and made. See the maker: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him.” See the made: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” We, then, see Jesus, but with the faith of the apostles already preached to us. What we know, they did not yet know. I do them no wrong. I do not dare call them ignorant; yet I see them confessing ignorance. They did not know; afterward they learned what we already know. Christ both God and man, Christ both maker of things and made among things, Christ both creator of man and created man: we know this, they not yet. Christ as God is equal to the Father: he is as great as he, such as he; he is what he is; he is not who he is. He is what he is, because the one is God, and the other God; the one almighty, and the other almighty; the one unchangeable, and the other unchangeable: he is what he is. He is not who he is, because the one is Father, this one Son. Whoever knows this, for him he has ascended to the Father; whoever does not know this, for him Christ has not yet ascended to the Father: he is a little one with him, he is on earth with him, for him he is not yet equal to the Almighty. For one who makes progress he ascends; with him who makes progress he ascends. What then is “Do not touch me”? Touch signifies faith. For by touching one draws near to the one touched. Look at that woman who suffered from a flow of blood. She said in her heart: “I shall be healed if I touch the fringe of his garment.” She came near and touched; she was healed. What is “She came near and touched”? She drew near and believed. So that you may know that she touched by believing, the Lord said: “Someone touched me.” What is “Touched me,” except “believed in me”? And so that you may know that “touched me” is the same as “believed in me,” the disciples answered and said to him: “The crowds are pressing you, and do you say, Who touched me?” If you were walking alone, if the crowd had made room for you to walk, if no one were near you, you would rightly say, “Someone touched me.” The crowd presses you, and you mention one person touching? And he repeated: “Someone touched me.” For first he had said, “Who touched me?” and afterward, “Someone touched me.” You know, because you say, “The crowds are pressing you”: someone touched me. This crowd knows how to press; it does not know how to touch. It is clear that by saying “Who touched me? Someone touched me” he willed to signify this: that we should believe that touch to be the faith of the one touching, or rather the approach of the one believing. What then does “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father” mean? What you see me to be, that you think me: I have not yet ascended to the Father. You see me a man, you think me a man: I am indeed a man, but let your faith not stop here. Do not touch me in such a way as to believe me only a man. “For I have not yet ascended to my Father.” I ascend to my Father, and then touch me: that is, make progress, understand me equal to the Father, and then touch, and you will be saved. “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” That I have descended you see; that I have ascended you do not yet see. “For I have not yet ascended to my Father.” “I emptied myself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man.” This was crucified, this buried, this raised again. But that “Being in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal with God,” you do not yet see. That I have ascended you do not yet see. Do not, by touching earth, lose heaven; do not, by staying with the man, fail to believe in God. “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”

Let the Arian come forward; first let the Photinian come forward. We answer the Photinian: “Do not touch.” What is “Do not touch”? Do not believe in this way: for you Christ has not yet ascended to the Father. Let the Arian come forward. “I,” he says, “believe Christ to be God, but lesser.” For you too he has not yet ascended to the Father. When he has ascended to the Father, stretch yourself out to touch: stretch yourself out, touch God. “I too,” he says, “confess him God, but of another nature and another substance; created, not the one through whom all things were created; made, not the Word in the beginning without time.” You are still broken, then; for you he has not yet ascended to the Father. Do you want him to ascend to the Father for you? Believe: “Being in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal with God.” It was not robbery, because it was nature. Robbery is usurped; nature is recognized. “Being in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal with God.” So he was born, and always born; both born, and always born, and born without beginning. What do you say, Arian? “There was a time when the Son was not.” Do you see that for you he has not yet ascended to the Father? Do not touch, do not believe in this way. There is no time between Father and Son. The Father begot, the Son was born: he begot without time, he was born without time, through whom times were made. Touch so, and he ascends to the Father for you. The Word, but coeternal with God; the Wisdom of God, but without whom the Father never was. Your flesh has an answer for you, and will chat with you and tell you in the darkness: “How was he born?” Darkness is speaking with you. “Let it be explained to me,” you shout. I shout: let it be explained to me. What do you want explained to you? Was he born, or not born? For he would not be Son unless born. “If, then, he was born, there was a time when he was not.” This is false: you speak earth, you speak of earth. “Explain to me, then,” he says, “how he was born, if he always was.” I do not explain it, I do not explain it; I cannot. I do not explain it, but in my place I set the prophet against you: “His generation, who will tell it?”

Today too the Lord’s resurrection was recited from the holy Gospel. The Gospel read was the one according to John. We heard what we had not heard in the other books of the Gospel. The proclamation of the truth is common to all, and all drank from one spring; but in proclaiming the Gospel, as I have often reminded Your Love, all set down some things, three others, two others, and single evangelists others. What we heard just now according to John’s Gospel, then, that Mary saw the Lord and the Lord said to her, “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to the Father,” the evangelist John alone records. From this, then, I must speak to Your Holiness. Even after seeing the linen cloths in the tomb, they had believed not that the Lord had risen but that he had been taken away. John himself (for he means himself by “the one whom Jesus loved”), when he heard the women reporting and saying, “They have taken my Lord from the tomb,” ran with Peter and looked into the tomb, saw only the linen cloths, and believed. What did he believe? Not that he had risen, but that he was gone from the tomb. The following words testify to this. For it is written thus, as we have just heard: “He looked in, saw, and believed; for he did not yet know the Scriptures, that he must rise from the dead.” It is plain, then, what he believed: he believed what was not of faith; he believed, but he believed something false. Afterward the Lord appeared to him, drove out the false, and planted the true.

Yet let us look here, with the Lord’s help, at what usually troubles a reader and hearer who is not incurious or careless: how it was said, “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” For this is troubling: what is “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to the Father”? For when did he ascend to the Father? As the Acts of the Apostles indicate, on the fortieth day after his resurrection, a day we are going to celebrate in his name: then he ascended to the Father; then the disciples who had touched him with their hands escorted him with their eyes. Then the angelic voice sounded: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing into heaven? This Jesus who has been taken up from you will come in the same way as you saw him going into heaven.” If, then, he ascended to the Father then, what do we say, my brothers? Mary could not touch him standing on earth, and could touch him seated in heaven? If she could not here, how much less could she there? What then is “Do not touch me; for I have not ascended to the Father”? For the words sound as though he were saying: “Touch me then, when I have ascended; before I ascend, do not touch me.” O Lord, you are here, and I do not touch you; when you have ascended, shall I touch you? Next, if before he ascended to the Father he shrank from human touch, how did he offer himself to the disciples not only to be seen but even to be handled, when he said: “Why do you think in your hearts? See my hands and my feet; handle and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have”? Even that unbelieving disciple Thomas touched the pierced side and cried out: “My Lord and my God!” When he touched him, Jesus had not yet ascended to the Father. Or will some fool perhaps say: “Before he ascended to the Father men could touch him, but women could not until he ascended to the Father”? That is an absurd thought and a perverse opinion. Indeed, what Mary heard, let the Church hear. Let all hear this, all understand, all do it. What then is “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to the Father”? “What you see me to be, you think me only a man; you do not yet know that I am equal to the Father. Do not touch me as such; do not believe in a man only, but understand the Word equal to the one who begot him.” What then is “Do not touch me”? Do not believe. Do not believe what? That I am only what you see. I shall ascend to the Father, and then touch. I ascend for you when you have understood me as equal. For when you think me lesser, I do not yet ascend for you.

That to touch is to believe, I think we can easily understand from that woman who touched the fringe of Christ’s garment and was made well. Remember the Gospel. The Lord Jesus Christ was going to visit the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, who was first reported sick, afterward dead. As he went, see, a woman came from the side who had suffered from a flow of blood for twelve years; and since the physicians had treated her in vain and not healed her, she had spent all she had. And she said in her heart: “If I touch the fringe of his garment, I shall be made well.” To say this was already to touch. Finally, hear the verdict. When she had been made well according to her faith, the Lord Jesus Christ said: “Someone touched me.” And the disciples: “The crowds are pressing you, and do you say, Who touched me?” And he: “Someone touched me; for I know that power has gone out from me.” Grace went out so that she might be healed, not so that he might be diminished. So the disciples say: “The crowds press you, and you have felt one man or one woman?” And he: “Someone touched me.” They press, she touched. What is “They press, she touched”? The Jews afflict; the Church believed.

According to this understanding, then, by which we see that the woman touched, that is, believed, it was said to Mary: “Do not touch me; I shall ascend, and then touch.” For touch then, when you have come to know: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word indeed became flesh; the Word remains uncontaminated, unstained, unchangeable, and whole. But because you see only a man and do not see the Word, I do not want you to believe in the flesh and leave the Word aside. Let the whole Christ appear to you, for he is equal to the Father in the Word. “Do not, then,” he says, “touch me now, because you do not yet see who I am.” Let the Church, then, whose figure Mary bore, hear what Mary heard. Let us all touch, if we believe. He has now ascended to the Father; he sits at the right hand of the Father. The whole Church confesses this today: “He ascended into heaven, he sits at the right hand of the Father.” Those who are baptized hear this; they believe it before they are baptized. When, then, they believe, Mary touches Christ. The meaning is obscure, but sound: closed to unbelievers, opened to faith that knocks. So the Lord Jesus Christ himself is both there and with us; he is both with the Father and in us; he neither withdraws from him nor abandons us; he teaches us to pray, as teacher, and with the Father he hears us, as Son.

The Lord Jesus appeared to his faithful in many ways after the resurrection: all the evangelists had material to write, as the Spirit supplied them with remembrance of the things they were to write. One told one thing, another another. One could pass over something true; none could say something false. Count all these as said by one: for truly one said them, because one Spirit was in all. What did we hear today? That the disciples did not believe Jesus had risen. And they did not believe him, though he had foretold this very thing beforehand. The matter is plain, and it was written down so that we may give God great thanks that we have believed in him whom we did not see on earth: what we believe was barely got into them by their eyes and hands.

You heard that his disciple went into the tomb and saw the linen cloths lying there, and believed; “for he did not yet know the Scriptures, that he must rise from the dead.” So you heard, so it was read: “He saw and believed; for he did not yet know the Scriptures.” Then it ought to have said: “He saw and did not believe; for he did not yet know the Scriptures.” What then is “He saw the linen cloths and believed”? What did he believe? What the woman had said: “They have taken the Lord from the tomb.” For if you listened, or rather because you listened: that woman had said, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Hearing this they ran; and he went into the tomb, saw the linen cloths, and believed what the woman had said, that Christ had been taken from the tomb. Why did he believe that Christ had been taken away and stolen from the tomb? Why? “For he did not yet know the Scriptures, that he must rise from the dead.” He had gone in; he had not found him. He ought to have believed that he had risen, not that he had been stolen.

What then does it mean? We usually speak to you about it every year. But the reading itself is read according to the feast, and let the sermon too be given according to the feast. Why did the Lord Christ say this to the woman who now recognized him? For first he had said, “Whom are you seeking? Why are you weeping?” But she thought he was the gardener. And indeed, if you consider how we are his plants, Christ is a gardener. Is he not a gardener who put the mustard seed in his garden, that is, a very small and fiery seed, and it grew and rose up and made so great a tree that even the birds of heaven rested in its branches? “If you have faith,” he says himself, “like a grain of mustard seed.” A grain of mustard seed looks slight, nothing more contemptible in appearance, nothing stronger in taste. What else is this but the very great ardor and inward force of faith in the Church? Rightly, then, she thought him the gardener; and she said to him, “Sir,” as a mark of respect: because she was asking a favor, she called him “sir.” “If you have taken him away,” she says, “show me where you have laid him, and I will take him.” As if to say: “I need him; you do not.” O woman, you think you need a dead Christ: recognize him alive. You seek him dead; but he himself, alive, is speaking with you. A dead Christ would profit us nothing, had he not risen from the dead. And he who was sought dead showed himself alive. How alive? He called her by her own name: “Mary.” And at once, hearing her own name, she answered: “Rabboni.” A gardener could have said, “Whom are you seeking? Why are you weeping?” “Mary” only the Lord could say. He who called her to the kingdom of heaven called her by name. He said the name which he himself had written in his book: “Mary.” And she: “Rabboni,” which means teacher. She had recognized him by whom she was being enlightened so that she might recognize him: he who was at first thought the gardener was now seen as Christ. And the Lord said to her: “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father.”

What does this mean: “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father”? If she could not touch him standing on earth, could she touch him seated in heaven? As if he were saying: “Do not touch me now; you will touch me then, when I have ascended to the Father.” Let Your Love recall yesterday’s reading, when the Lord appeared to the disciples and they thought they were seeing a spirit; and he, wishing to take this error from them, offered himself to be touched. What did he say? It was read yesterday; the sermon was on it: “Why are you troubled,” he says, “and why do thoughts rise up in your heart? See my hands and my feet: handle and see.” Had he already ascended to the Father when he said, “Handle and see”? He offers himself to his disciples to be touched, not only touched but handled, so that there might be faith in true flesh, a true body, so that the solidity of the truth might be shown even to human touch. So he offers himself to be handled by the disciples’ hands; and to the woman he says, “Do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” What does it mean? Men could touch him only on earth, and women were to touch him in heaven? What then is to touch, except to believe? For by faith we touch Christ; and it is better not to touch with the hand and to touch by faith than to handle with the hand and not touch by faith. It was no great thing to touch Christ with the hand. The Jews touched him when they seized him, they touched him when they bound him, they touched him when they hung him up: they touched him, and by touching badly they lost what they touched. By touching in faith, O Catholic Church, faith makes you well. Only touch by faith, that is, draw near faithfully and believe firmly. If you think Christ only a man, you have touched him on earth. If you believe Christ God, equal to the Father, then you have touched him when he ascended to the Father. So he ascends for us when we understand him rightly. Once, at that time, he ascended; but now he ascends daily. O for how many has he not yet ascended, and for how many does he still lie on earth! How many say, “He was a great man”! How many say, “He was a prophet”! How many antichrists have arisen to say, like Photinus: “He was a man, he had nothing more; but he surpassed all pious and holy men by the excellence of his wisdom and justice; for he was not God.” O Photinus, you touched on earth, you hurried to touch, you threw yourself headlong; and so you did not reach the homeland, because you went astray on the way.

Then let us hear his words: “I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.” Why not “to our Father and our God,” but with a distinction, “my Father and your Father”? “My Father,” because I am the only Son; “your Father,” by grace, not by nature. “My Father,” because I have always been this; “your Father,” because I chose you. “My God and your God.” How is the Father the God of Christ? He is his Father because he begot him. How is he his God? Because he also created him. He begot him as the only-begotten Word; he created him from the seed of David according to the flesh. So he is both Christ’s Father and Christ’s God: Christ’s Father according to the divinity, Christ’s God according to the weakness. Hear how he is Christ’s God; let us ask the Psalm: “From my mother’s womb,” it says, “you are my God.” Before my mother’s womb, my Father; from my mother’s womb, my God. Why then is there a distinction there too, I mean in “my Father and your Father”? There is a distinction, because the Father of the only-begotten Son is Father in one way, our Father in another: his Father by nature, ours by grace. He might then have said, “to my Father and your Father,” and “our God”; for God is God of the creature, and therefore of Christ, since Christ too is a creature according to the man. Christ’s Father, distinctly, because Christ is creator; but Christ’s God, why distinctly, since according to the man Christ is a creature, and we are creatures too? According to the man Christ is certainly a servant, “taking the form of a servant,” as the Apostle says. Why then “my God and your God” distinctly there? Distinctly indeed. For our God formed all of us through the transmission of sin; he, even as man, was made otherwise. He was born of a virgin: a woman conceived him not by desiring but by believing. He did not draw the transmission of sin from Adam. We were all born through sin; he who cleansed sins was born without sin. So there is a distinction there too: “my God and your God.” For you were created from seed, from male and female; you came from the concupiscence of the flesh with the transmission of sin, all of you to whom Scripture says: “Who is clean in your sight? Not even an infant whose life on earth is one day.” Finally, people hurry with infants so that there may be loosed for them not what they added by living but what they drew by being born. Not so Christ. “My God and your God”: my God, because of the likeness of sinful flesh; your God, because of sinful flesh.

So far it will be enough to have preached on the Gospel reading about the Lord’s resurrection written by John the evangelist, because other readings of John’s Gospel itself about the Lord’s resurrection are still to be read. For no one has told of his resurrection more fully than Saint John, so that it cannot be read in one day; it is read on another day, and read on a third, until all that Saint John wrote about the Lord’s resurrection is finished.