Homilies and Sermons 15.1–16.1

[1] To remember God continually is pious, and the God-loving soul never has its fill of it; but to set forth in speech the things of God is daring, since the mind falls far short of the dignity of the realities, and speech in turn presents dimly what has been thought. If, then, our mind is left far behind by the greatness of the realities, and speech is less even than the mind itself, how is silence not necessary, lest the wonder of theology seem to be endangered by the poverty of the words? The desire to glorify God is sown by nature in all rational beings; but all alike fall short of speaking of him worthily. In eagerness for piety we differ one from another; but no one is so blind and so deceives himself as to think that he has ascended to the summit of comprehension; rather, the more he seems to advance toward knowledge, the more he will perceive his own weakness. Such was Abraham, such was Moses: when they were able to see God, as far as it is possible for a man to see, then above all each humbled himself, Abraham calling himself earth and ashes, Moses saying that he was weak of voice and slow of tongue. For he saw the weakness of his tongue, unable to serve the greatness of what he had perceived. Nevertheless, since every ear is now open to hear theology, and the Church has no satiety of such hearings, confirming the word of Ecclesiastes that “the ear will not be filled with hearing,” it is necessary to speak as far as we are able. We shall say, not how great God is, but as much as is attainable for us. For neither, because we cannot traverse with our eyes the whole space between heaven and earth, do we refuse to look at as much as we can; so now too let us fulfill our duty of piety with small words, and let us grant the majesty of the nature the victory over all speech. For not even the tongues of angels, whatever they are, nor those of archangels, gathered together with all rational nature, will be able to reach the smallest part of it, much less to equal the whole. But you, if you wish to say or to hear something about God, leave your body, leave the bodily senses; abandon the earth, abandon the sea; make the air beneath you; pass by the seasons, the orderly succession of times, the adornments of the earth; rise above the ether; pass beyond the stars, the wonders about them, their good order, their magnitudes, the uses they provide to the universe, their arrangement, their brightness, their position, their motion, how they stand related to or distant from one another. Having passed through all things in thought, having peered beyond heaven and come to be above it, look around with the mind alone at the beauties there: the heavenly hosts, the choirs of angels, the presiding of the archangels, the glories of the dominions, the seats of honor of the thrones, the powers, the principalities, the authorities. Having run through them all, lifting your thoughts above all creation and raising your mind beyond them, think of the divine nature: stable, unchangeable, unalterable, impassible, simple, uncompounded, indivisible, light unapproachable, power unspeakable, greatness unbounded, glory outshining, goodness to be desired, beauty beyond conception, which grips the wounded soul strongly but cannot be worthily declared in speech.

[2] There are Father and Son and Holy Spirit: the uncreated nature, the lordly dignity, the natural goodness. The Father: the beginning of all, the cause of being for the things that are, the root of the living. From him came forth the spring of life, the wisdom, the power, the image that does not differ from the invisible God: the Son begotten from the Father, the living Word, who is God and is with God; who is, not having come to be; existing before the ages, not acquired later; Son, not possession; Maker, not thing made; Creator, not … as I said, and Father. Keep these distinguishing properties for me. Remaining, then, in his being Son, he is all that the Father is, according to the word of the Lord himself, who said, “All that the Father has is mine.” For truly everything that belongs to the archetypal form belongs to the image. “For we beheld his glory,” says the evangelist, “glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father”: that is, the wonders were not given him as a gift and a favor, but the Son has the dignity of the Father's divinity from natural communion. For to receive is common to creation as well; but to have by nature is proper to the one begotten. As Son, then, he possesses by nature what is the Father's; as Only-begotten, he has all things gathered together in himself, nothing being divided off to another. From the very name of Son, then, we are taught that he shares in the nature: not created by a command, but shining forth from the essence without interval, joined to the Father timelessly, equal in goodness, equal in power, sharing in the glory. And what else is he but a seal and an image, showing the whole Father in himself? Whatever he says to you after this from his bodily constitution, ordering the salvation of mankind, which he showed us when he appeared through the flesh: saying that he was sent, that he can do nothing of himself, that he received a commandment, and the like, let it not give you occasions for belittling the divinity of the Only-begotten. For his condescension to your weakness ought not to become a diminution of the dignity of the Mighty One; rather, think of the nature in a manner worthy of God, and receive the humbler sayings as belonging to the dispensation. If we wished to go through these matters exactly now, we should without noticing it bring a great and endless multitude of words into the subject.

[3] But let us return to the matter at hand. A mind that has been able to be cleansed of material passions and to leave behind all intelligible creation, and, like a fish, to swim up from the depth to the surface above, having come into the purity of creation, will see there the Holy Spirit, where the Son is and where the Father is, having all things himself too, co-essentially, according to the nature: goodness, uprightness, holiness, life. “For your good Spirit,” it says; and again, “an upright Spirit”; and again, “the Holy Spirit.” And the Apostle: “the law of the Spirit of life.” None of these is acquired by him, nor present as added later; but as heating is inseparable from fire, and shining from light, so also sanctifying, giving life, goodness and uprightness are inseparable from the Spirit. There, then, the Spirit stands, there in the blessed nature; not counted with a multitude, but contemplated in the Trinity; proclaimed singly, not included in groupings. For as the Father is one and the Son one, so too the Holy Spirit is one. But the ministering spirits disclose to us, in each order, a multitude hard to number. Do not, then, seek in creation what is above creation; do not drag down the one who sanctifies along with those who are sanctified. He fills angels, fills archangels, sanctifies powers, gives life to all things. Divided among all creation and shared in differently by different ones, he is in no way diminished by those who share in him. To all he gives his own grace, but he is not used up in those who share; those who receive are filled, and he himself lacks nothing. And as the sun, shining on bodies and shared in variously by them, is in no way diminished by those who share it, so too the Spirit, providing his own grace to all, remains undiminished and undivided. He enlightens all for the knowledge of God, inspires the prophets, makes lawgivers wise, perfects priests, strengthens kings, equips the righteous, dignifies the temperate, works gifts of healing, gives life to the dead, frees those in fetters, adopts those who were estranged. These things he works through birth from above. If he takes a tax collector who believes, he makes him an evangelist; if he comes into a fisherman, he makes him a theologian; if he finds a persecutor repenting, he makes him an apostle of the nations, a herald of faith, a chosen vessel. Through him the weak are strong, the poor grow rich, those unskilled in speech are wiser than the wise. Paul was weak, but through the presence of the Spirit the handkerchiefs from his skin brought healing to those who received them. Peter too was clothed in a body of weakness, but through the indwelling grace of the Spirit the shadow falling from his body drove away the diseases of the afflicted. Peter and John were poor, for they had neither silver nor gold; but they bestowed health more precious than much gold. For from many [the lame man] re- … having received the grace from Peter, ceased begging, leaping like a deer and praising God. John did not know the wisdom of the world, but he uttered words by the power of the Spirit which no wisdom can look upon. The Spirit both stands in heaven and has filled the earth; he is present everywhere and contained nowhere. He dwells whole in each, and is whole with God. He does not dispense the gifts as a servant, but distributes the gifts with authority; for “he distributes,” it says, “to each individually as he wills.” He is sent according to the dispensation, but works with sovereign freedom. Let us pray that he may be present in our souls and never at any time leave us, in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ; to whom be the glory and the power to the ages of ages. Amen.

[1] Every utterance of the Gospels is grander than the other teachings of the Spirit, inasmuch as in those he spoke to us through his servants the prophets, but in the Gospels the Master conversed with us in person. And of the gospel proclamation itself, the one with the grandest voice, who uttered things greater than all hearing and loftier than all thought, is John, the son of thunder, the prelude of whose gospel writing we heard read just now: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” I know that many even of those outside the word of truth, who pride themselves on worldly wisdom, have admired these words and dared to mix them into their own writings. For the devil is a thief, and carries off our things to his own spokesmen. If, then, fleshly wisdom so admired the power of the words, what shall we do, we disciples of the Spirit, if we hear them carelessly and reckon the power in them to be something small? And who is so sick with insensibility as not to be struck with amazement at such beauty of thought and such unattainable depth of doctrine, and not to desire to comprehend them truly? But it is not admiring fine things that is hard; it is … that is difficult and hard to attain. For there is no one who does not … this sensible sun, its size and its beauty, the proportion of its rays, and does not welcome its glittering light; but if one [fixes] the gaze of the eyes on it more forcibly, not only will he not see what he longs for, but he will go away having damaged the sharpness of his sight besides. Something like this, I think, [happens to] the mind in the examination of the words before us. “In the beginning was the Word.” Who will worthily conceive what concerns the beginning? What power of words will be found able to present equally what has been conceived? About to hand down to us the theology of the Son of God, he gave his account no other beginning than the beginning of all things. The Holy Spirit knew those who would rise up against the glory of the Only-begotten; he foresaw those who would put before us the sophisms devised by them for the overthrow of their hearers: that “If he was begotten, he was not”; and, “Before he was begotten, he was not”; and, “He received his subsistence from things that are not.” Such things are uttered by tongues sharpened by plausibility beyond any two-edged sword. So that no one may be able to say such things, the Holy Spirit anticipates them through the Gospel: “In the beginning,” it says, “was the Word.” If you hold fast to this saying, you will suffer no harm from the malicious artificers. For if he says, “If he was begotten, he was not,” you say, “In the beginning he was.” “But,” he says, “how was he before he was begotten?” Do not let go of “was”; do not abandon “in the beginning.” The summit of the beginning is not grasped; what lies beyond the beginning is not found. Let no one mislead you by the many meanings of the word. For there are many beginnings of many things in this life, but one beginning over all, the one beyond. “The beginning of a good road,” says Proverbs. But the beginning of a road is the first movement from which we begin the journey, and it is possible to find something behind it. And: “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.” There is something set before this beginning too; for the beginning of taking up the arts is elementary instruction. The fear of the Lord, then, is the elementary instruction of wisdom; but there is something older than this beginning: the condition of the soul of one not yet made wise and not yet having taken up the fear of God. Political powers too are called beginnings, the pre-eminences of dignities. But these beginnings are … beginnings, and each is relative to something. For the beginning of a line is … and the beginning of a body is the surface, and the beginnings of a composed speech are the letters.

[2] That beginning, however, is not of this kind. For it is tied to nothing, it serves nothing, it is not contemplated together with anything; it is free, without a master, released from relation to another; it cannot be surpassed by thought; it cannot be passed beyond by reasonings; what lies beyond it cannot be found. For if you strive to run past the beginning in the imagination of the mind, you will find it running ahead of you and meeting your reasonings first. Let your mind run as far as it wishes and stretch itself upward: then you will find it, after wandering endlessly and treading much empty air, returning to itself, because it cannot make the beginning lower than itself. For the beginning is always found beyond and greater than whatever is conceived. “In the beginning,” then, “was the Word.” O the wonder! How all the words are yoked together in equal rank! “Was” has the same force as “in the beginning.” Where is the blasphemer? Where is the Christ-fighting tongue that says, “There was once when he was not”? Hear the Gospel: “In the beginning was.” If he was in the beginning, when was he not? Shall I groan at their impiety, or loathe their ignorance? “But before he was begotten, he was not.” Do you know when he was begotten, so that you can apply “before” to time? For “before” is a temporal word, placing one thing before another in antiquity. But how is it reasonable [to subject] the maker of time to … words? “In the beginning,” then, “was.” If you do not depart from “was,” you will give no entrance to the wicked blasphemy. For as seafarers, when … two … so you too will laugh at this wicked disturbance that arises in life from the spirits of wickedness and shakes the faith of many, if … in the security of these words.

[3] Our mind asks further: who was in the beginning? “The Word,” it says. What word? The human word? Or the word of angels? For the Apostle hinted to us that angels too have their own tongue, when he said, “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels.” But “word” too has a twofold meaning. One word is uttered by the voice, and once uttered it perishes in the air; the other is the inward word, present in our hearts, the word of thought. And there is another, the word of art. See that the ambiguity of the term never misleads you. For how was the human word in the beginning, when man received the beginning of his coming to be somewhere far down? Before man, wild beasts; before man, cattle, all the creeping things, all that live on land and in water, the birds of heaven, stars, sun, moon, plants, seeds, earth, sea, heaven. So the human word was not in the beginning, nor that of the angels either. For all creation is lower than the ages, having received the beginning of its being from the Creator. And the word in the heart is itself younger than each of the things conceived. But hear of the Word in a manner worthy of God. For speaking to you about the Only-begotten, he called him Word. As, then, he will shortly say light, and life, and resurrection, and neither, hearing light, are you carried down to this sensible light visible to the eyes, nor, hearing life, do you think of this common life by which the irrational animals too live; so also, hearing Word, take care not to be carried down by the weakness of your thought to earthbound and low notions. Rather, search out the meaning of the word. Why Word? To show that he came forth from the mind. Why Word? Because he was begotten without passion. Why Word? Because he is an image of the one who begot him, showing the whole begetter in himself, dividing off nothing from him, and being perfect in himself; as our word too reproduces the whole of our thought. For what we have conceived in the heart, that we bring out in speech, and what is spoken is a reproduction of the thought in the heart. “For out of the abundance of the heart” the word is brought forth. And our heart is like a spring, and the word brought forth is like a stream flowing from this spring. As much, then, flows out as was first drawn up, and as is what is hidden, so much is what appears. He said Word, then, to present to you the passionless begetting from the Father, to teach you the perfect existence of the Son, and through these to show the timeless conjunction of the Son with the Father. For our word too is the offspring of the mind, begotten without passion; for [the mind] is neither cut … but the mind, remaining in its own constitution, brings into being the whole and complete word; and the word, having come forth, contains in itself the whole power of the mind that begot it. Take, then, from the term “word” as much as is pious for the theology of the Only-begotten; and whatever you find incongruous and seemingly unfitting, reject it and pass over it by every means. “In the beginning was the Word.” If he had said, “In the beginning was the Son,” the notion of passion would have come in for you along with the name Son. For since among us what begets begets in time and with passion, he therefore said Word first, correcting unfitting suppositions beforehand, so as to keep your soul unwounded … because of those who blaspheme that “he was not.” Where was the Word? Not in a place; for the uncircumscribed is not contained in a place. But where was he? “With God.” Neither is the Father in a place, nor is the Son held fast in some enclosure and acknowledged circumscription; the Father is infinite, and the Son is infinite. Whatever you conceive, and wherever you go in your spirit, you will find it filled with God; you will find the hypostasis of the Son extended everywhere along with it. “And the Word was with God.” Admire the exactness of each word. He did not say, “The Word was in God,” but “with God,” to present the distinctness of the hypostasis. He did not say “in God,” so as not to give a pretext for confusing the hypostasis. For wicked too is the blasphemy of those who try to mix everything together and say that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one subject, and that different names are applied to the one thing. Wicked is this impiety, and to be shunned no less than that of those who blaspheme that the Son of God is unlike God the Father in essence. “And the Word was with God.” Then, having used the term “Word” to present the passionlessness of the begetting, he at once removed the harm that might arise for us from “Word.” And as if snatching him away from the slander of the blasphemers, “What,” he says, “is the Word? The Word was God.” Do not artfully devise for me distinctions of words, nor from … the teaching of the Spirit. You have the declaration; submit to the Lord. “The Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” Again he sums up in a few words all the theology that the evangelist handed down to us concerning the Only-begotten. Who is “he”? He, the Word, God. For since he has articulated for you the notion of him, as if imprinting on your soul through the teaching what was unknown, and making the Word, Christ, dwell in your heart, he says, “He.” What “he”? Do not look outside, searching about for the one pointed out to you by the demonstrative word; but go into the hidden places of your own soul, and the one whom you were taught to be God, who was in the beginning, who came forth as Word, who was with God, recognizing him and being struck with amazement and worshiping your own Master, who has been established in you through the teaching, know that “he was in the beginning,” that is, always with God his own Father. Keep safe for me these few words, as a seal on your memories, a wall against the attacks of those who plot against you; they are a saving safeguard for the souls of those who hold them up as a shield. If anyone comes to you and says, “Not being, he was begotten; for if he was, how was he begotten?”, turn away from the blasphemy against the glory of the Only-begotten as from the voice of demons, and come back yourself to the words of the Gospels: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” Say “was” for the fourth time, and you will abolish their “was not.” Let these foundations of the faith remain unshaken. On them, God granting, we shall build the rest as well. For it is not possible to discuss everything with you at once, lest by immoderate length of speech we make useless what you have gathered with diligence. For the mind, unable to grasp everything together, suffers like a stomach that cannot digest what has been sent down because of excessive fullness. I pray, then, that you may be sweetened in the tasting and benefited in the digesting. And I stand ready for you for the service of what remains, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory and the power to the ages of ages. Amen.