Homilies and Sermons 22.6–23.4

[6] Since I have mentioned crowns and athletes: those men, having suffered countless things upon countless, and having built up their strength from many sources, sweating much in gymnastic toils, taking many blows in the trainer's school, choosing not the most pleasant diet but the one prescribed by the trainers, and in other respects, not to dwell on it, so living that the life before the contest is a practice for the contest, then strip for the stadium, and labor and risk everything to receive a crown of wild olive or celery or some other such thing, and to be proclaimed victor by the herald. But shall we, for whom prizes of life are set so wonderful in number and greatness that they cannot be told in words, be able to grasp them with one hand while sleeping soundly and living in great license? Then idleness would be worth much to life, and Sardanapalus would carry off the first prize of all for happiness, or Margites too, if you like, whom Homer said was neither a ploughman nor a digger nor anything else useful for life, if indeed these are Homer's. But is not rather the saying of Pittacus true, who said that it is hard to be good? For only after passing through many toils in truth could we barely attain those goods to which, as we said above, nothing human compares. We must not, then, be idle, nor exchange great hopes for brief ease, if we are not to incur reproaches and undergo punishments, not among men here (though even this is no small thing to one who has sense), but in the places of judgment, whether under the earth or wherever in the universe they happen to be. For one who falls short of what is fitting involuntarily may perhaps obtain some pardon from God; but for one who has chosen the worse deliberately there is no excuse that will spare him a punishment many times greater. What then shall we do? What else than care for the soul, keeping all our leisure from other things?

[7] We must not, then, be slaves to the body, except where absolutely necessary; but we must provide the best things for the soul, freeing it through philosophy, as from a prison, from fellowship with the passions of the body, and at the same time making the body superior to the passions: serving the belly with necessities, not the most pleasant things, as do those who think out table-setters and cooks and search every land and sea, bringing tribute as to a harsh master, pitiable in their occupation, suffering nothing more bearable than those punished in Hades, simply carding wool into the fire, carrying water in a sieve, and drawing into a perforated jar, with no end to their toils. And to take pains over haircuts and clothing beyond what is necessary belongs either to the unfortunate, as Diogenes said, or to wrongdoers. So I say such people must consider it as shameful to be a dandy and be called one as to be a prostitute or to plot against others' marriages. For what difference does it make to a man of sense whether he wears a fine robe or some cheap garment, so long as it lacks nothing as a defense against winter and heat? And in the same way the other things should not be provided beyond need, nor should the body be cared for more than is good for the soul. For it is no less a reproach for a man, at least one truly worthy of the name, to be a dandy and a lover of the body than to be ignobly disposed toward any other passion. For to bring all one's zeal to making oneself … is [the mark of one who] does not understand the wise precept that man is not what is seen, but that a higher wisdom is needed by which each of us will know himself, whoever he is. And this is more impossible for those who have not purified the mind than for one with sore eyes to look up at the sun. Purification of the soul, to speak summarily and sufficiently for you, is to disdain the pleasures that come through the senses: not to feast the eyes on the absurd displays of conjurors, or on the sight of bodies that implant the goad of pleasure; not to pour corrupted melody into souls through the ears. For passions born of servility and baseness are by nature produced from this kind of music. But we must pursue the other kind, which is better and leads to the better, which David too used, the poet of the sacred songs, to bring the king out of his madness, as they say. And it is said that Pytha[goras] … the harmony, and play them the Dorian; and they so came to their senses under the melody that they threw off their garlands and went home ashamed. Others are frenzied like Corybants and driven to Bacchic madness by the pipe. So great is the difference between being filled with healthy or with depraved melody. So you must share in the music now prevailing less than in any of the most shameful things. As for mixing all kinds of vapors that bring pleasure to the smell into the air, or anointing oneself with perfumes, I am ashamed even to forbid it. And what could one say about not pursuing the pleasures of touch and taste, except that they compel those who devote themselves to hunting them to live bent toward the belly and what is below it, like beasts? In a word, the whole body must be disregarded by anyone who does not intend to be buried in its pleasures as in mud; or we should hold on to it only so far, as Plato says, as to gain its service for philosophy; speaking somewhat like Paul, who advises that no provision be made for the body for the arousing of desires. Or how do those who care for the body, that it may be in the best state, but disregard as worthless the soul that is to use it, differ from those who take pains over their instruments but neglect the art that works through them? On the contrary, one ought to chastise it and hold it in, like the impulses of a beast, and to lull the disturbances it raises in the soul by striking them with reason as with a whip, instead of letting go every bridle of pleasure and allowing the mind, like a charioteer, to be dragged along by unruly horses rushing on in insolence; and to remember Pythagoras, who, seeing one of his companions fattening himself well with exercises and food, said, “Will you not stop making your prison harsher for yourself?” That is why they say Plato too, foreseeing the harm from the body, deliberately took up the Academy, an unhealthy place in Attica, so as to prune away the excessive well-being of the body, as one prunes the luxuriant growth of a vine. And I have heard physicians say that extreme good condition is even dangerous.

[8] Since, then, this excessive care of the body is both unprofitable to the body itself and a hindrance to the soul, to be subject to it and serve it is plain madness. But if we practiced disregarding this, we would hardly admire any other human thing. For what further use shall we have for wealth, if we disdain the pleasures that come through the body? I see none, unless, like the dragons in the myths, it brings some pleasure to keep watch over buried treasures. One trained to be disposed toward such things as a free man would be far from ever choosing anything low and shameful in deed or word. For what exceeds need, even if it be Lydian gold dust or the work of the gold-digging ants, he will disdain the more, the less he needs it; and he will define need itself by the necessities of nature, not by pleasures. For those who have gone beyond the bounds of necessity, like those carried down a slope, have nothing stable to stand on, and never stop in their forward rush; but the more they acquire, the more they need, as much or more, for the fulfillment of their desire, according to Solon the son of Execestides, who says, “Of wealth no limit is set clear for men.” And we must use Theognis as a teacher in this, who says, “I do not long to be rich, nor pray for it; may I live on little, having no evil.” And I admire Diogenes's disdain for all human things together, who declared himself richer than the great king, by needing fewer things for life than he did. But nothing will suffice for us, it seems, unless we have the talents of Pythius the Mysian, and so many acres of land, and herds of cattle beyond counting. But, I think, one should neither long for wealth when it is absent, nor, when it is present, pride oneself more on possessing it than on knowing how to manage it. For the saying of Socrates is a good one: when a rich man was proud of his money, he said he would not admire him until he had found out that he also knew how to use it. Or if Phidias and Polyclitus had been proud of the gold and ivory from which the one made Zeus for the Eleans and the other Hera for the Argives, they would have been ridiculous, priding themselves on another's wealth and neglecting the art by which even the gold was shown sweeter and more precious; and do we, supposing that human virtue is not sufficient to itself for adornment, think that we are doing things worthy of less shame? But shall we, then, disdain wealth and dishonor the pleasures of the senses, yet pursue flattery and fawning, and the fox of Archilochus … There is nothing that a sensible man must flee more than living for reputation and looking to what seems good to the many, and not making right reason the guide of life, so that, even if he must contradict all men, be in ill repute, and run risks for the sake of the good, he will choose to move nothing of what has been rightly recognized. Or what shall we say the man not so disposed lacks of that Egyptian sophist who became a plant and a beast whenever he wished, and fire and water and all things? If indeed he too will now praise justice among those who honor it, and now utter the opposite words when he perceives injustice in favor, which is the way of flatterers. And as they say the octopus changes its color to match the ground beneath it, so he will change his mind to the opinions of those around him. But these things we shall learn more perfectly in our own writings; let us sketch out, as a kind of shadow outline of virtue, at least for the present, what we can from the outside learning. For to those who carefully gather benefit from every source, as to great rivers, many additions come from many sides. For the poet's saying about laying a little on a little ought to be thought to apply rightly no more to the increase of money than to any knowledge whatever. Bias, then, said to his son, who was setting off for Egypt and asking what he could do to please him most, “Acquire provision for old age,” meaning virtue by provision, but circumscribing it within narrow bounds, since he limited its benefit to human life. But even if someone speaks of the old age of Tithonus, or of Arganthonius, or of our longest-lived Methuselah, who is said to have lived a thousand years less thirty, or measures out all the time since men came to be, I shall laugh at it as at the thoughts of children, looking to the long and ageless age, of which no end can be grasped in thought, any more than one can suppose an end of the immortal soul. For this I would advise you to acquire provisions, leaving no stone unturned, as the proverb says, from which some benefit toward it is going to come to you; and let us not shrink back because these things are hard and need toil, but, remembering the one who advised that each should choose the best life and expect it to become pleasant by habit, let us undertake the best things. For it is shameful to let slip the present opportunity and later to call back the past, when there will be nothing more for those who grieve. What I judge to be best, then, I have told you now, and some of it I will advise you throughout your whole life; but you, since there are three kinds of sickness, do not seem like the incurable, nor show a sickness of mind like that of those unfortunate in their bodies. For those suffering small ailments go to the physicians themselves; those seized by greater ailments call the healers to themselves; but those … incurable … admit. May you not suffer this now, [by shunning] those who rightly …

On the holy martyr Mamas.

[1] I am not unaware of the greatness of the praises the festival calls for; but as I know this, so I also feel my own weakness. For the occasion demands that something be said worthy of those assembled, of the hope they have in us, and of the subject. For since today we keep the memory of the greatest of the martyrs, every mind is alert and every ear prepared, expecting something worthy of the martyr to be said; and longing for him brings the congregation together. For grateful children demand great praises of their fathers, and would not consent that the greatness of those praised be put at risk by the smallness of the speaker. So the greater the eagerness, the greater the danger. What then shall we do? How shall we fulfill your desires, and ourselves not go away having contributed nothing to the occasion? We shall urge each soul to renew in thought what it brought with it in memory, and, provisioned from home, to go away having gladdened itself with its own provisions. Remember the martyr for me, all you who have enjoyed his help in dreams; all who, coming to this place, have had him as a fellow worker in prayer; all for whom, when called on by name, he stood by in deeds; all the travelers he brought back home; all he raised from sickness; all to whom he restored children already dead; all for whom he made the term of life longer. Gather all these together and compose an encomium by a common contribution. Pass on to the one who does not know what each of you knows; let the one who does not know receive from the one who knows; and so, feasting one another by your contributions, … our weakness.

[2] For these are the praises of a martyr: the wealth of … We cannot extol him by the law of outside encomia, by speaking of illustrious fathers and ancestors. For it is shameful for one who shines by his own virtue to be decked with the adornments of others. People bring such things into their encomia by the laws of custom; but the law of truth demands each one's own praises. For neither does his sire's success in racing make a horse swift, nor is it a dog's praise to be born of the swiftest. But as the excellence of other animals is seen in each one by itself, so a man's own praise is that attested from the achievements that belong to him. What does a father's distinction matter to his child? So the martyr did not receive his distinction from elsewhere; he himself kindled a lamp of glory for the life that followed. The rest take their name from Mamas, not Mamas from others. Let the children who were taught piety by him take pride in him. For he teems with virtue from his own resources. He is not like a torrent swelled by another's inflow, but a spring pouring out beauty from its own depths. Let us admire the man, not decked with another's adornment, but made august by his own. Do you see the splendid breeders of horses? Do you see their white monuments? How they are stones that men pass by? But at the memory of the martyr every country is moved, every city is turned to festival. Not even the kinsmen run to the tombs of their fathers, but all to the place of piety. They call this man, the leader of truth, their father, rather than their fathers according to the body. Do you see how virtue is honored, and not wealth? So the Church, by the honors it pays to those who have gone before, urges on those present. “Do not, I pray,” it says, “be zealous for wealth, nor for the wisdom of the world that is passing away, nor for the glory that fades; these vanish with this life; but be a worker of piety. For piety will bear you up to heaven; piety will procure for you an immortal memory and a lasting fame.”

[3] So if anyone remembers the shepherd, let him not admire wealth. For we have come together to praise one who was not rich; do not go away admiring a rich man, but poverty with piety. A shepherd: nothing great, nor a learned pursuit. Would you not, when angry, say to one who had provoked you, by way of reproach, “You shepherd!”? A shepherd possesses nothing beyond his daily food, wears a wallet, carries a staff and provisions for the day, having no care for tomorrow; an enemy of wild beasts, a companion of the gentlest animals, fleeing the marketplace, fleeing the courts, not knowing informers, not knowing commerce, not knowing wealth, having no shelter of his own, living under the common roof of the world, looking up to heaven at night, and through the stars reading the wonder of the Maker. A shepherd. Let us not be ashamed of the truth. Let us not imitate the outside myth-makers, nor wrap up the truth in elegant words. The truth is naked, without an advocate, showing itself. In more words it would seem lowly; but you will admire it the more in the praise. A shepherd and poor: these are the Christian's titles of honor. If you seek the founders of the school of piety, they are fishermen and tax collectors; if the disciples, poor leather-workers. No one rich, no distinction anywhere. All these things have been abolished together with the world. See, then, whose day we keep as a feast, in whom we all rejoice, by whom life has been transformed. Since we have been reminded of the shepherd, do not despise the title. You have heard that the first who pleased God, Abel, was a shepherd. Who imitated him? Moses the great lawgiver, who escaped the attempt of Pharaoh and hated the treachery of his fellow countrymen; he tended sheep on Mount Horeb; while he tended sheep he conversed with God. Not while judging did he see an angel in the bush, but while shepherding he was counted worthy of that heavenly converse. Who came after Moses? Jacob the patriarch, who in shepherding showed endurance for the truth, and depicted his whole life in a small image. To whom did he hand on the zeal? To David. David passed from shepherding to kingship. For shepherding and kingship are sisters, insofar as the one was entrusted with the oversight of irrational beings, the other of rational ones. So … the Lord, combining both, is both shepherd and king, shepherding the irrational and bringing the more rational under the oversight of his kingship. Do you wish to learn how great a thing a shepherd is? “The Lord shepherds me.” How is shepherding the sister of kingship? “Who is this King of glory?” The one who is shepherd here is king there. And do not think that he is called so by others but is himself ashamed of this title. But, silencing the … … the testimony of shepherding: “I am the good shepherd.” “I am,” and “I have not been changed.” Just as, when he speaks of great things, “I by my hand established the earth; I alone stretched out the heaven,” and when he says the other things fitting and worthy to be said of God, so he says, “the good shepherd.” He drives off the bastards and draws the truth round to himself. “I am the good shepherd.” Learn who the shepherd is and who the good one is. He himself interprets: “The true shepherd lays down his life for the sheep; but the hireling, who is not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, does not care when he sees the wolf coming.”

[4] Here the Church asks: if the Lord is the shepherd, who is the hireling shepherd? The devil? And if the devil is the hireling shepherd, who is the wolf? But the devil is the wolf, the untamed beast, rapacious, treacherous, the common enemy of all. Let the hireling shepherd, then, have his own name. The Lord spoke of hireling shepherds then, turning to the people of that time. But there are those now too, would that there were not, who take the name of hirelings upon themselves. Then the high priests showed themselves such, and the Pharisees, and all that Jewish coinage. Those he called hireling shepherds who received the authority to shepherd not for the sake of the truth but for their own profit. Those who for a pretense make long prayers so as to devour the bread of widows and orphans, these are hirelings. Those who serve their own needs, who pursue the present and do not look to the future, are hirelings and not shepherds. And now there are many hirelings, who give up their own life for a wretched bit of glory, who even now make a schism over the sound words of the Lord. For when the Lord had said these things, a schism arose among them. Some said, “He has a demon”; others, “A demon cannot make blind eyes see.” Do you see how old is the disease of schism? At once the winnowing fan separates the chaff from the wheat; the light and unstable is split off from what nourishes, and what is fit for spiritual food remains with the farmers. That is why a schism arose, and some differed in this way, others in that. Schism befits Jews; but the Church of God, which received the seamless tunic, woven from above, kept unsplit by the soldiers, the Church that has put on Christ, let her not split the garment. “And I know my own, and my own know me.” The heretic seized this for his own construction of blasphemy. “See,” he says, “it is said, ‘My own know me, and I know my own.’” What then does “to know” mean? To comprehend the essence? … to measure out the greatness? To understand those things of the God[head] … from what follows, do you not perceive the measure of knowledge? What do we know of God? “My sheep hear my voice.” See how God is known: from our hearing his commandments, and from our doing them when we have heard. This is knowledge of God: keeping the commandments of God. Why not prying into the essence of God? Not searching into what is above the world? Not speculating about things invisible? “My own know me, and I know my own.” It is enough for you to know that he is the good shepherd, that he laid down his life for the sheep. This is the boundary of the knowledge of God. How great God is, what his measure is, and of what sort his essence, such questions are dangerous to the one who asks and impossible for the one asked; silence is the cure for such things. “My sheep hear my voice,” he said, not “dispute.” That is, they do not disobey, they do not contend. When you have heard “Son,” do not, I pray, yourself devise ways of begetting, nor bring under a cause what has no cause, nor divide by a split what is joined. That is why the evangelist secured you beforehand. You heard it lately, and you hear it now: “In the beginning was the Word,” so that you may not think the Son a human offspring brought into being from what is not. He said “Word” to you because of the passionlessness; he said “was” because of the timelessness; he said “beginning” so as to join the one begotten to the Father. You have seen how the obedient sheep hears its Master's voice: “in the beginning,” and “was,” and “Word.” Do not say, “How was he?” and “If he was, he was not begotten,” and “If he was begotten, he was not.” The one who says such things is not a sheep; he wears a sheep's skin, but within he is a wolf. Let the plotter be recognized. “My sheep hear my voice.” Have you heard “Son”? Conceive the likeness to the Father. I say “likeness” because of the weakness of … For in truth (for I am not afraid to approach the truth; I am no ready slanderer), I say identity, while preserving the distinctive property of Son and Father. In the hypostasis of the Son conceive the Father's form, so that you may keep for me the exact meaning of “image,” so that you may understand piously, “I in the Father and the Father in me”: not a confusion of essences, but an identity of characters. But it seems to be the most contrary thing, beloved, that the obedience of your hearing has forced even our weakness to say something in your midst and to speak, so that the power … For perhaps our weakness abounded for this reason, that the one who strengthens the weak might be the more glorified. And may he who has brought round this festival of ours, and given fulfillment to last year's prayers and a beginning to the coming time (for the same day marks the end of the past cycle for us and becomes again the beginning of the one to come), may he, then, who gathered us and granted us the work of the time to come, keep us in himself unharmed, unmolested, not snatched away by the wolf; may he keep this Church unshaken, guarded by the great towers of the martyrs; every plot … and grant us in quiet to be taught the divine oracles and to teach the grace supplied by the Spirit; for to him be the glory and the power, with the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen.