Sermons to the People 261.1–263.4

The Lord’s resurrection is our hope; the Lord’s ascension is our glorification. For today we celebrate the solemnity of the Ascension. If, then, we celebrate the Lord’s ascension rightly, faithfully, devoutly, holily, piously, let us ascend with him and have our heart lifted up. But in ascending let us not be puffed up, nor presume on our merits as if they were our own. For we ought to have our heart lifted up, but to the Lord. For the heart lifted up not to the Lord is called pride; but the heart lifted up to the Lord is called refuge. For to him who ascended we say: “Lord, you have become our refuge.” For he rose to give us hope, because what dies rises again: lest by dying we should despair and think our whole life ended by death. For we were anxious about the soul itself; and he by rising gave us security about the flesh too. So who ascended? He who descended. He descended to heal you; he ascended to lift you up. You fall if you lift yourself up; you stand firm if he lifts you up. The heart lifted up, then, but to the Lord, is refuge; the heart lifted up, but not to the Lord, is pride. Let us say, then, to him as he rises, “For you, Lord, are my hope”; and to him as he ascends, “You have made the Most High your refuge.” For how shall we be proud, having our heart lifted up to him, who became humble for our sake lest we remain proud?

Christ is God, this always: he will never cease to be this, because he never began. For if through his grace something begins which will never cease, how will he cease who never began? What is it that begins and never ceases? Our immortality will have a beginning; it will not have an end. We do not have it yet; when we have begun to have it, we shall not lose it. Christ, then, is always God. And what kind of God? You ask what kind? Equal to the Father. Do not, then, seek quality in eternity, but happiness. Grasp, if you can, what kind of God Christ is. See, I am telling you; I will not cheat you. You ask what kind of God Christ is? Hear me, or rather hear with me: let us hear together, let us learn together. For it is not because I speak and you hear that I do not hear with you. You ask, then, when you hear that Christ is God, what kind of God Christ is? Hear with me: not, I say, hear me, but with me. For in this school we are all fellow disciples. Heaven is the chair of our teacher. Hear, then, what kind of God Christ is. “In the beginning was the Word.” Where? “And the Word was with God.” But we are used to hearing words every day. Do not think of it the way you are used to hearing: “The Word was God.” I ask what kind. For see, I already believe him God; but what kind of God he is, I ask. “Seek his face always.” Let no one fail in seeking, but make progress. One who seeks makes progress if piety seeks. How does piety seek, how vanity? Piety seeks by believing, vanity by quarreling. For if you want to quarrel with me and say to me, “What God do you worship? What kind of God do you worship? Show me what you worship,” I shall answer: “Even if there is something I might show, there is no one to whom.”

Nor do I dare to say that I have already grasped what you are asking. For I walk, as far as I can, in the footsteps of that great athlete of Christ, the apostle Paul, who says: “Brothers, I do not consider that I myself have laid hold of it.” “I myself”: what is “I,” and “myself”? “I who labored more than all of them.” I know, Apostle, how you say “I.” It is an expression, not an exaltation. For do you want to hear how he says “I”? When he had said, “I labored more than all of them,” and we, as it were, say to him, “Who?” he says to us: “Yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” He, then, with whom there was so great a grace of God that, called later, he labored more than those who went before, still says: “Brothers, I do not consider that I myself have laid hold of it.” There “I,” where he did not lay hold of it. For it belongs to human weakness not to lay hold of it. But where he was lifted up to the third heaven and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter, he did not say “I.” But what did he say? “I know a man fourteen years ago.” “I know a man”: and he himself was the man who was speaking; and what was done in him he made as if another’s, and so he did not fall. Do not, then, contend, do not quarrel, demanding of me what kind of God I worship. For it is not an idol, so that I stretch out my finger and say to you, “See the God whom I worship”; or some heavenly body, or some star, or the sun, or the moon, so that I stretch out my finger toward heaven and say, “See what I worship.” There is nowhere for the finger to be stretched; but there is where the mind may be stretched. See him not grasping, and yet seeking: following, gaping, sighing, desiring; see him, see what he stretches toward his God, whether a finger or the mind. What does he say? “I do not consider that I have laid hold of it. But one thing: forgetting what lies behind, stretched out toward what lies ahead, according to intention I follow toward the prize of God’s upward calling in Christ.” “I follow,” he says: I walk, I am on the way. Follow, if you can: let us come to the homeland together, where you will not ask of me, nor I of you. Let us, then, seek together now by believing, so that afterward we may rejoice together by seeing.

For who shows you what kind of God Christ is? See, what he has deigned to say through his servant, let him say through this servant of his too, to my fellow servants, his servants. It has been said to you: “In the beginning was the Word.” You were asking where he was; the answer is: “The Word was with God.” And so that you would not despise words because of the habit of human speech, you heard: “The Word was God.” Do you still ask what kind of God? “All things were made through him.” Love him: whatever you love comes from him. Let us not love the creature and neglect the Creator; but let us look at the creature and praise the Creator. I cannot show you my God; I show you what he made, I recall what he made. “All things were made through him.” He made new things, not new himself; he made temporal things, being everlasting; he made changeable things, he who cannot change. Look at the things made, praise the maker: believe, so that you may be cleansed. For you want to see? You want a good thing, a great thing: I urge you to want it. You want to see? “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.” First, then, think about cleansing the heart: make this your business, summon yourself to this, press on with this work. What you want to see is clean; that with which you want to see is unclean. You think of God as some immense or manifold light of these eyes; you extend spaces for yourself as much as you like; you set no limit where you do not want one, you set it where you want. These are phantoms of your heart; this is the uncleanness of your heart. Take it away, throw it out. If dirt fell into your eye and you wanted me to show you the light, your eyes would first look for someone to clean them. There is so much uncleanness in your heart; there avarice is no small uncleanness. You heap up what you will not take with you. Do you not know that when you heap up, you are dragging mud to your heart? How then will you see what you seek?

You say to me: “Show me your God.” I say to you: “Look a little at your heart.” “Show me,” you say, “your God.” “Look,” I say, “a little at your heart.” Whatever you see there that displeases God, take it away from there. God wants to come to you; hear the Lord Christ himself: “I and the Father will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” See what God promises. If I promised to come to your house, you would clean it: God wants to come into your heart, and are you too lazy to clean the house for him? He does not love to dwell with avarice, with an unclean and insatiable woman, whom you served at her command while you were seeking to see God. What have you done of what God commanded? What have you not done of what avarice commanded? What have you done of what God commanded? I show what dwells in the heart of you who want to see God. For this is what I had said: “There is something to show, but there is no one to whom.” What have you done of what God commanded? What have you put off of what avarice commanded? God commanded you to clothe the naked: you trembled; avarice commanded you to strip the clothed: you went mad. If you had done what God commanded, what shall I say to you, that you would have this and that? You would have God himself. If you had done what God commanded, you would have God. You did what avarice commanded: what do you have? I know: you will say to me, “I have whatever I took.” So you have by taking away. Do you have anything with you, you who have lost yourself? “I have,” you say. Where, where, I ask you? Surely either in your bedroom, or in your purse, or in your chest: I do not want to say more. Wherever you have it, surely you do not now have it with you. Surely now you think you have it in your chest: perhaps it has perished and you do not know; perhaps when you return you will not find what you left. I am asking about your heart: I ask what you have there. See, you have filled your chest and broken your conscience. Look at a full man; learn to be full. “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it has been done: blessed be the name of the Lord.” Of course, he had lost everything. From where, then, did he bring forth these gems of praise to the Lord?

Clean your heart, then, as far as you can: do this, work at this. And pray, beseech, humble yourself, that he may clean the place where he is to dwell. You do not grasp: “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, and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men: and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.” See why you do not grasp it. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.” What is the darkness, but bad works? What is the darkness, but evil desires, pride, avarice, ambition, envy? All these are darkness: that is why you do not grasp it. For the light shines in the darkness; but give me someone to grasp it.

See, then, whether perhaps you can somehow receive this: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Through Christ the man you reach toward Christ God. God is a long way from you; but God became man. What was far from you has, through the man, been made near you. Where you are going, he is God; by which way you are going, he is man. The same Christ is both the way you go and where you go. He himself, then, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” He took what he was not; he did not lose what he was. The man appeared, and God lay hidden. The man was killed, and God was offended; but the man rose, and God was found. Think, then, how great things he did as God, how great things he suffered as man. He was killed, but not in the divinity; yet Christ himself was killed. For they are not two, God and man, so that we would now make or know not a Trinity but a quaternity. The man is indeed man, and God is God; but the whole Christ is man and God: Christ himself, then, is man and God. As you, a man, are body and soul, so the whole Christ is man and God. So the whole Christ is flesh, soul, and God. The same one says something that belongs to God; says something that belongs to the soul; says something that belongs to the flesh: all belongs to Christ. What does he say as God? “As the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself.” “Whatever the Father does, the Son also does likewise.” “I and the Father are one.” What does Christ say according to his soul? “My soul is sorrowful even unto death.” What does Christ say according to the flesh? “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” “Handle and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.” These are the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang the whole Law and the Prophets.” In Christ you have the whole. Do you want to love your God? You have him in Christ: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Do you want to love your neighbor? You have him in Christ: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

May his grace cleanse us; may he cleanse us by his aids and consolations. My brothers, through him and in him I beseech you: abound in good works, in mercy, kindness, goodness. Quickly forgive what is sinned against you. Let no one hold anger against another, lest he shut off his own prayer to God. For all these things are needed because we are in this world, because even if we make progress, even if we live justly, we do not live here without sin. For the only sins are not those called crimes: adulteries, acts of sexual immorality, sacrileges, thefts, robberies, false testimonies; these alone are not sins. To look at something you ought not to have looked at is sin; to listen gladly to something that should not have been heard is sin; to think something that should not have been thought is sin.

But after that bath of regeneration our Lord has given other daily remedies. Our daily cleansing is the Lord’s Prayer. Let us say it, and say it truly, because it too is an alms: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” “Give alms, and all things are clean for you.” Remember, brothers, what he will say to those who will stand on the right. He will not say, “You did this and that great thing,” but, “I was hungry, and you gave me to eat.” To those who will stand on the left he will not say, “You did this and that evil,” but, “I was hungry, and you did not give me to eat.” The former, for alms, into eternal life; the latter, for barrenness, into eternal fire. Now choose either the right or the left. For I ask you, what hope of salvation can a man have who is lazy about remedies and frequent in diseases? “But they are small diseases.” They weigh down by their heap. “The sins I have are minor.” Are they not many? For how are they minor which weigh down, which overwhelm? What is tinier than drops of rain? They fill rivers. What is tinier than grains of wheat? They fill barns. You note that they are minor, and you do not note that they are many. You know how to note them: count them, if you can. But plainly God has given a daily remedy.

Great is the mercy of him who ascended on high and led captivity captive. What is “led captivity captive”? He killed death. Captivity is captive: death is dead. What then? Did he who ascended on high and led captivity captive do this only? Did he then leave us? “See, I am with you until the end of the age.” So note this: “He gave gifts to men.” Open the lap of piety; receive the gift of happiness.

The Lord Jesus, only-begotten of the Father and coeternal with the one who begot him, equally invisible, equally unchangeable, equally almighty, equally God, for our sake, as you know and have received and hold, became man, taking the human form, not losing the divine: hidden in power, manifest in weakness. As you know, he was born so that we might be reborn; he died so that we would not die forever. At once, that is, on the third day, he rose: he promised us the resurrection of the flesh at the end. He showed himself to his disciples’ eyes to be seen and to their hands to be handled, convincing them of what he had become, not taking away what he always was. He lived with them for forty days, as you have heard, going in and out, eating and drinking, no longer from want but wholly by power; and showing them the truth of the flesh, weakness on the cross, immortality from the tomb. [2] Today, then, we celebrate the day of his ascension. But another feast belonging to this church falls on the same day. Today is the burial day of Saint Leontius, founder of this basilica. But let the star deign to be outshone by the sun. So let us speak rather of the Lord, as we had begun. The good servant rejoices when the Lord is praised.

Today, then, that is, on the fortieth day after his resurrection, the Lord ascended into heaven. We did not see it; but let us believe. Those who saw it preached it, and filled the world. You know who saw it, and who told us of it: of whom it was foretold, “There are no speeches or words in which their voices are not heard. Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” So they came to us too, and woke us from sleep. See, this day is celebrated throughout the whole world.

Recall the Psalm. To whom was it said, “Be exalted above the heavens, O God”? To whom was it said? Would it be said to God the Father, “Be exalted,” who was never humbled? Be exalted, you: you who were enclosed in your mother’s womb; you who were made in her whom you made; you who lay in a manger; you who as a little child sucked the breasts in the vein of the flesh; you who, carrying the world, were carried by your mother; you whom old Simeon recognized as a little one and praised as great; you whom the widow Anna saw sucking and recognized as almighty; you who hungered for us, thirsted for us, were wearied on the road for us (does bread hunger, or a spring thirst, or the way grow tired?); you who bore all these things for us; you who slept, and yet do not sleep, guarding Israel; finally, you whom Judas sold, whom the Jews bought and did not possess: you, seized, bound, scourged, crowned with thorns, hung on the wood, pierced by a lance, you, dead, you, buried: “Be exalted above the heavens, O God.” “Be exalted,” he says, “be exalted above the heavens,” because you are God. Sit in heaven, you who hung on the wood. You are awaited to come as judge, you who were awaited to be judged. Who would believe this, except by the work of him who “raises the needy from the earth, and lifts up the poor from the dunghill”? He himself raises up his needy flesh and sets it with the princes of his people, with whom he will judge the living and the dead. He has set this needy flesh with those to whom he says: “You will sit on twelve seats, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”

“Be exalted, then, above the heavens, O God.” It has already been done, already fulfilled. But we say: as it was foretold as future, “Be exalted above the heavens, O God,” we have not seen it, but we believe; see, before our eyes is what follows: “Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and your glory above all the earth.” Let him not believe that, who does not see this. For what is “and your glory above all the earth,” if not: your Church above all the earth, your matron above all the earth, your bride above all the earth, your beloved, your dove, your wife? She is your glory. “A man indeed,” says the Apostle, “ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man.” If the woman is the glory of the man, the Church is the glory of Christ.

The glorification of our Lord Jesus Christ was completed by rising and ascending. We celebrated his resurrection on Easter Sunday; we celebrate his ascension today. Both are feast days for us. For he rose to show us an example of resurrection; and he ascended to protect us from above. So we have our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, first hanging on the wood, now seated in heaven. He paid our price when he hung on the wood; he gathers what he bought while he sits in heaven. For when he has gathered all, whom he will certainly gather through the course of time, at the end of time he will come, and, as it is written, “God will come manifestly”: not as he came at first, hidden, but, as was said, manifestly. For he had to come hidden in order to be judged; but he will come manifestly in order to judge. For if he had come manifestly at first, who would have dared to judge one manifest? Since indeed the apostle Paul says: “For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.” But if he had not been killed, death would not have died. The devil was conquered by his own trophy. For the devil exulted when by seducing the first man he cast him down into death. By seducing the first man, he killed; by killing the last man, he lost the first from his snares. So the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ came about when he rose and ascended into heaven; and what you heard when the Apocalypse was read was fulfilled: “The Lion of the tribe of Judah has conquered.” He was called lion who was slain as a lamb: lion for strength, lamb for innocence; lion because unconquered, lamb because gentle. And the slain Lamb himself by his death conquered the lion who goes about seeking whom he may devour. For the devil is called a lion for ferocity, not for virtue. For the apostle Peter says: “You must be watchful against temptations, because your adversary the devil goes about seeking whom he may devour.” But how he goes about, he said: “Like a roaring lion he goes about, seeking whom he may devour.” Who would not run into the teeth of this lion, had not the Lion of the tribe of Judah conquered? Lion against lion, lamb against wolf. The devil exulted when Christ died, and by that very death of Christ the devil was conquered: he took the bait as in a mousetrap. He rejoiced at the death, as if he were the overseer of death. What he rejoiced at, there the trap was set for him. The Lord’s cross was the devil’s mousetrap; the bait by which he was to be caught, the Lord’s death. And see, our Lord Jesus Christ rose. Where is the death that hung on the wood? Where is the mockery of the Jews? Where is the arrogance and pride of those wagging their heads before the cross and saying, “If he is the Son of God, let him come down from the cross”? And he did more than they demanded by mocking. For it is more to rise from the tomb than to come down from the wood.

And now, how great a glory it is that he ascended into heaven, that he sits at the right hand of the Father! But we do not see this with our eyes, just as we did not see him hanging on the wood. All this we hold by faith; we gaze on it with the eyes of the heart. For today, as you have heard, brothers, our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven: let our heart ascend with him. Let us hear the Apostle saying: “If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; savor the things that are above, not the things on earth.” For as he ascended and did not withdraw from us, so we too are already there with him, although what is promised us has not yet been done in our body. He has already been exalted above the heavens. Nor must we despair of the perfect, angelic, heavenly dwelling because he said: “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven.” But this was said because of the unity by which he is our head and we his body. When he ascended into heaven, we are not separated from him. He who descended from heaven does not begrudge us heaven, but in a way cries out: “Be my members, if you want to ascend into heaven.” In this, then, let us meanwhile be strengthened; in this let us burn with all our longings. Let us meditate on earth on what we are counted in heaven. Then we shall put off the flesh of mortality; now let us put off the oldness of the mind. The body will easily be lifted into the heights of heaven if the burden of sins does not weigh down the spirit.

For this too troubles some, with heretics raising false charges: how the Lord descended without a body and ascended with a body, as if this contradicted those words of his in which he says: “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven.” “The body,” they say, “which did not descend from heaven, how could it ascend into heaven?” As if he had said, “Nothing ascends into heaven except what descended from heaven”; but he says, “No one ascends except he who descended.” For he referred this to the person, not to the clothing of the person. He descended without the clothing of a body; he ascended with the clothing of a body. Yet no one ascended except he who descended. For if he has so fitted us to himself as his members that even with us joined to him he is the same one, how much more can that body which he took from the virgin not have another person in him? For who would say that it was not the same one who descended who ascended a mountain, or a wall, or some higher place, if, having descended unclothed, he ascends clothed; or having descended unarmed, he ascends armed? As, then, it is said of such a one, “No one ascends except he who descended,” although he ascended with something with which he did not descend: so no one ascended into heaven but Christ, because no one descended from heaven but Christ; although he descended without a body and ascended with a body; we too being about to ascend, not by our own power, but by our unity with him. For “the two are in one flesh: this is a great sacrament in Christ and in the Church.” Hence he himself also says: “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.”

And so he fasted when he was tempted before his death, still needing food; but he ate and drank when he was glorified after the resurrection, no longer needing food. For there he showed in himself our labor, here in us his consolation, setting forty days for each. For he fasted forty days when he was tempted in the desert, as it is written in the Gospel, before the death of his flesh; and again he was with his disciples forty days, as Peter says in the Acts of the Apostles, going in and out, eating and drinking, after the resurrection of his flesh. By this number forty he seems to signify the course of this age in those who are called to grace through him who came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. For the commandments of the law are ten. Now the grace of Christ has been spread through the world, and the world is fourfold, and ten times four makes forty: since those who have been redeemed by the Lord he has gathered from the lands, from the East and the West and the North and the Sea. So fasting forty days before the death of his flesh, he was as it were crying out: “Abstain from the desires of this world.” But eating and drinking forty days after the resurrection of his flesh, he was as it were crying out: “See, I am with you until the end of the age.” For fasting belongs to the tribulation of the contest, since “whoever strives in the games abstains from everything”; but food belongs to the hope of peace, which will not be perfect until our body, whose redemption we await, has put on immortality. In it we do not yet glory by attaining, but already we are fed by hoping. The Apostle shows that we do both together, saying: “Rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”: as though the one were in food, the other in fasting. For as we take the Lord’s way, let us both fast from the vanity of the present world and be refreshed by the promise of the world to come; not setting our heart here, feeding the lifted-up heart there.