Tractates 1–2

On the night of the vigil: on the keeping of Easter. At a fitting time the Lord Jesus [chose to rise, so as to drive away the darkness of the world by his] most blessed light … and to call back into the settled state of their calm beginning all things that had been thrown into confusion under a foul veil by that prince of darkness. For God founded the world in the time of spring. For in the month of March God said through Moses: "This month is for you the beginning of months; it is the first among the months of the year." The truthful God would certainly not call this month the first unless it were the first, just as he would not call the seventh day the Sabbath unless the Lord's day were the first. So the Son of God, through whom all things were made, raises up the fallen world by his own resurrection on the same day and at the same time at which he himself had first created it out of nothing, so that all things might be restored in Christ, those in the heavens and those on earth; since "from him and through him and in him are all things," as the Apostle says; "to him be glory for ever."

Nor should any of us be troubled if at times the reckoning of the moon and the Lord's day compel us to celebrate Easter in the second month, that is, April. For in the divine Scriptures days are counted according to the course of the moon. The Calends, Ides and Nones, and the names of the months and days, were laid down by the Gentiles: for instance, the month that the ancient memory of mankind held to be the first, the pagan called Martius after Mars; and the Sabbath day, which the hearts of rational men kept as the seventh, he decreed should be called Saturn's day. But when the holy Scriptures either report or command anything about times, they speak thus: "On the tenth day of the second month," and "on the tenth of the moon"; or "on the fifth day of the seventh month"; or "on the twentieth day of the ninth month"; or "on the fourteenth day of the first month," as we have also just heard in the book of Exodus, where the keeping of the Passover is described and unleavened bread is commanded to be eaten for the seven days of the same feast. Yet God also commands this: that if anyone was unable to celebrate the Passover in the first month, either being unclean in the soul of a man, that is, defiled by touching a dead body, or being on a long journey outside the place chosen for sacrifice at Jerusalem, he should celebrate it in the second month. For God foresaw the peoples of the Gentiles, still at that time unclean with the images of dead men and set far off outside the holy place of the church, that is, us who were far off and have been brought near by the blood of Christ; and he gives leave that, if in the first month both the Lord's day and the right number of the moon do not fall together for us, we may celebrate in the second month. And therefore we can celebrate neither before the fourteenth moon nor after the twenty-first, because there are only seven days of the paschal unleavened bread, within which we look for the Lord's day. For Christ, who promulgated both the Law and grace, wishes us neither to pass over the lawful days reckoned by the course of the moon, nor to let the day of his resurrection go by in ungrateful idleness. For on the sixth day of the week, on which he had made man, he suffered for that same man; and on the Lord's day, which in the Scriptures is called the first day of the week, on which the world had taken its beginning, he rose again, so that he who on the first day created heaven and earth (from which he afterwards formed man when he made him) might also on the first day restore the whole man, for whose sake he had made the world. Let this be my brief account of the reckoning of Easter.

But now it is time to set out the meaning of what we heard in the book of Exodus. First, let us note what Exodus is. Exodus is called "going out." The going out was from the captivity of Pharaoh and the Egyptians, of the people of Israel at that time, not of us. Why then is it read to you, if it benefited only others? What is it to you, if it was not for you? But learn from the Apostle that what was written was rather all for you than for them. "The Law," he says, "was a shadow of the good things to come," those good things, that is, which have been fulfilled in us. For Christ the Truth, when he came, has now given us in truth the good things he had done for the Jews in shadow, when he says to the disciples: "Amen I say to you, many prophets and just men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. But blessed are your eyes, which see, and your ears, which hear." The exodus, then, is accomplished in us blessedly and perfectly when the true Moses, taken from the water of the Jordan, God by nature and not by appointment, our Lord Jesus Christ, leads us out by the rod of his cross through the water of baptism from the captivity of Pharaoh the devil, and rescues us from all the Egypt of his darkness, calling us out of the darkness of worldly deeds into the works of light. Some who were still in that darkness the most blessed Paul rebukes, saying: "You would have had to go out of this world; but now I have written to you not to associate."

Let us now consider what those who are led out of Egypt hear from God: "This month is for you the beginning of months," he says; "it is the first for you among the months of the year." We read in the book of Numbers that whoever has made a vow to abstain either from conjugal relations or from any delights of food or drink until a set time, and has broken it by any lapse, is not credited with the days that have passed, but returns to the beginning. In the same way, those days that Israel spent in Egypt were not credited to them; but when they groaned to the Lord, turning from their hard labours, and the Lord struck the firstborn of the Egyptians, who would not let them serve the Lord, then they heard: "This month is for you the beginning of months; it is the first for you among the months of the year." For there are certain days and months and years of superstitions, which the Apostle abolishes when he rebukes them. There are others which God has commanded and which he credits. We too were once in Egypt, not knowing God and ignorant of light and truth, and unclean spirits, the true Egyptians, pressed us to make brick, that is, to serve earthly idols; but when we turned to God and cried out against our hard labours, the Egyptians were beaten with many plagues and their firstborn were struck. For our salvation is the punishment of demons. We, however, breathed again and were made alive; for we were not alive before, in those days when we, the dead, worshipped the dead. Then, therefore, we fittingly heard: "This month is for you the beginning of months; it is the first among the months of the year," when that new day which the Lord has made dawned for us, when we came to know the holy month of new things, the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of retribution.

This explanation, however, fits the faithful more aptly; for with catechumens only the firstborn of the demons have so far been killed, but for those who are counted worthy to come to the grace of heavenly baptism, the whole army of the devil is drowned and slain, so that, reborn in Christ, they may truly and rightly hear: "This month is for you the beginning of months; it is the first among the months of the year." This explanation also fits penitents, whom the darkness of crimes and the gloom of this Egypt had again possessed. For if they come to their senses and groan to the Lord, fleeing from the most wicked works of darkness, they will obtain the light of heavenly pardon and will return to eternal light and salvation. For it is written: "When you turn and groan, then you will be saved, and you will know where you were when you trusted in them." "You will know," he says, "where you were." For a man understands that he was in the errors of the Egypt of darkness when he returns to the light of truth and righteousness.

This same saying can also be taken, in a devout sense, of that perpetual light which will be given to the just and faithful after the consummation of the age, when the night of death has been utterly conquered by the Sun of righteousness, so that they may then hear: "This month is for you the beginning of months; it is the first among the months of the year": then, that is, when the whole power of the Egyptians will perish, and, freed from this Egypt, we shall eat the true manna and drink from the rock, Christ himself, cleaving to the footsteps of the spotless Lamb, saying: "My soul has clung to you; your right hand has upheld me." And therefore every saint still placed in this world sighs for that future light, which the world cannot now contain, saying: "My soul has thirsted for the living Lord; when shall I come and appear before the face of the Lord?" "For now we see through a mirror in an enigma," says the holy Apostle, "but then face to face." And now indeed, compared with the Jews and Gentiles, who are known to be sunk in the deep night of unbelief, and compared with those who linger in the gloom of heresies and the night of luxury, we seem to be, and plainly are, in the light; but our very days are veiled by certain clouds and do not have the joy of a clear sky, as the prophet says: "My days have declined like a shadow." But there the Lord himself will be our eternal light, so that we shall no longer only be saved in his shadow, but shall live for ever in the splendour of his brightness; to whom be all honour, power and glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, before all ages, and now, and always, and for all ages of ages. Amen.

To the newly baptized on coming out of the font: on the meaning of the sacraments, which it is not fitting for catechumens to hear, even though the same things, written in the Gospels, seem to lie open to all.

When Christ rose from the dead, vengeance on the Egyptians was carried out through the sacrament of baptism; the underworld trembled as he returned to raise up his body; the enemies of God, the foes of his people, were destroyed. For the prophetic Spirit cries out: "Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered, and let those who hate him flee from his face; as smoke vanishes, let them vanish; as wax melts before the fire, so let sinners perish before the face of God, and let the just feast." The loving Father has sent redemption to his people, mindful of his holy covenant, which he ordained for our fathers, for Abraham and his seed for ever. For God is able, and he has raised up from these stones (the Gentiles), once so very hard, children to Abraham. "Now let all say who are redeemed by the Lord, whom he redeemed from the hand of the enemies and gathered from the lands, from the rising and the setting of the sun, from the north and the sea, that he is good, that his mercy is for ever." For at the going out of that Israel from Egypt, of the house of Jacob from a barbarous people, Judea alone became his sanctuary; but now "blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in his ways." "Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered." "For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is rich toward all who call upon him," since, as it is written, "everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved."

All of us, then, who by calling upon the Lord receive salvation now that the Egyptians are destroyed, let us learn to eat the Passover, not like the foolish Jews, who after the coming of the Truth still follow the shadow, each of them killing and eating a sheep in each house on the fourteenth day of the first month. For since he has come whose shadow that sheep had been, the true Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus, who takes away the sins of the world and said, "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will not have life in yourselves," the Jews now carry out in vain in a fleshly way what, unless they do it spiritually with us, will not let them have life in themselves. "For the Law is spiritual," as the Apostle says, and "Christ our Passover has been sacrificed." What spiritual powers were prefigured in the very history of Exodus, where the celebration of the Passover is narrated (what the tenth day is, what the fourteenth, what is the sacrifice at evening of a perfect, male, year-old lamb, what the blood to be smeared on the doorposts, what the calling together of neighbours, what the shoes, what the staffs, what the leaven, what the unleavened bread), we must, with the Lord's help, begin to expound from tomorrow. For now we must pluck from the reading only those things which cannot be explained in the presence of catechumens, but which must necessarily be opened to the newly baptized.

In the shadow of that Passover of the Law not one lamb was killed but many; for one was killed in each house, since one could not suffice for all, because it was a figure, not the reality, of the Lord's passion. For a figure is not the truth but an imitation of the truth; for man too was made in the image of God, and yet he is not on that account God, although by the reasoning by which he is called the image of God he may also be called god, just as by nature God is one, by appointment there are many. In this truth, then, in which we stand, one has died for all; and the same one, in each of the houses of the churches, in the mystery of the bread and wine, being sacrificed refreshes, being believed gives life, being consecrated sanctifies those who consecrate. This is the flesh of the Lamb, this is the blood. For the bread which came down from heaven says: "The bread which I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world." His blood too is rightly expressed under the appearance of wine, because when he himself says in the Gospel, "I am the true vine," he declares clearly enough that every wine which is offered as a figure of his passion is his blood. Hence the most blessed patriarch Jacob had prophesied of Christ, saying: "He will wash his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape." For he was going to wash with his own blood the robe of our body, his clothing. He himself, then, the creator and Lord of natures, who brings forth bread from the earth, from bread in turn (because he both can and has promised) makes his own body; and he who made wine from water makes his blood from wine.

How, then, this Lamb ought to be eaten we must observe from the reading itself: "You shall not eat any of it raw, nor boiled in water, but roasted with fire: the head with the feet and the entrails." There are two spiritual meanings in these words; if you follow one, you will know both. The whole body of the divine Scripture, both of the Old and of the New Testament, contains the Son of God, either promising that he will come in human form or declaring that he has already come. Hence blessed Philip, found by Christ, found Nathanael and said to him: "We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and the prophets wrote, Jesus, the son of Joseph, from Nazareth." And what more need I say, beloved? In him the whole Law, old and new, is contained; and, if I may put it so, he is the soul of the Law. For he spoke through Moses, when he said to him: "I will open your mouth and inspire what you ought to say." He also spoke through the prophets, when he says: "I who spoke in the prophets, behold, I am here." He also spoke through the apostles, when the apostle Paul says: "Or do you seek a proof of him who speaks in me, Christ?" These meats of the spotless Lamb, then, that is, the inward parts of his teaching, must not be taken raw, without interpretation, nor boiled in water, that is, dissolved and boiled down by the discourse of those who, like water, flow downward, perceiving nothing on high; but "roasted with fire," he says, that is, made firm and baked by the divine Spirit. For fire tends upward. Hence the Lord said to the Jews: "You are from below, I am from above."

Since, then, we have said that the limbs of the Lamb of God are his Scriptures, let us see what "the head with the feet and the entrails" is: namely, that in the head you should take his divinity, in the testimony of the four evangelists; the feet we take for the incarnation, accomplished toward the end of the age, for the feet are the extreme parts of the body; and in the entrails you should perceive the hidden mysteries. "And you shall not leave any of it until morning," he says, "and you shall not break a bone of it. What remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire": that is, if any of the mysteries remain over, to be made plain in the morning of that future resurrection, which we cannot now grasp. "For now I know in part," says the Apostle, "but then I shall know even as I am known." These must be burned with fire, that is, handed over to the divine Spirit, so that the things whose meaning we do not now grasp may be consumed by the spirit of a burning faith. And when he said, "You shall not break a bone of it," he commands that everything in the Scriptures that is stronger and firmer should not be broken in pieces or shattered, but should remain solid. Those who do not keep this command rightly receive a woe from him whose bones they break: "Woe to you," he says, "scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have left the weightier matters of the Law, judgment and mercy and faith." These are the bones of the Lamb. And elsewhere, to the same men: "You make void the word of God," he says, "so as to establish your traditions."

To what was said above God adds in Exodus: "And thus you shall eat it" (the lamb, that is): "your loins girded, and your shoes on your feet, and your staffs in your hands, and you shall eat it in haste; for it is the Passover of the Lord." About the shoes and staffs there is a long explanation, which will be set out at another time. About the girding of the loins, which I have often spoken of more fully, I shall now speak briefly. It is written in Jeremiah: "And you, gird up your loins, and speak to the people." And to holy Job: "Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I founded the earth?" and so on. The apostles too hear: "Let your loins be girded"; and why this is so insistently commanded is learned from John the Baptist, who was girded with a leather belt about his loins. What the loins mean, the Apostle shows to the Hebrews: "Levi," he says, that is, the priestly race, "was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him." Met whom? Holy Abraham, of course. The leather belt about the loins, then, signifies the mortifying of vices; for a hide that is fitted for use comes only from a dead animal. We must therefore, by God's command, first mortify the desires of the flesh, and so receive the body of Christ, who was sacrificed for us while we were slaves in the Egypt of this world. "Therefore let a man examine himself," as the Apostle says, "and so eat of this bread and drink of the cup." And when he says that it must be eaten in haste, he commands that we should not receive the sacrament of the Lord's body and blood with a slow heart and a languid mouth, but with all eagerness of soul, as those who truly hunger and thirst for righteousness. "For blessed," says the Lord Jesus, "are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied."

The reading set before us, concluding the splendid things it had said with a most worthy ending, says: "For it is the Passover of the Lord." "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" "It is the Passover of the Lord," he says, that is, the passing over of the Lord, so that you should not think earthly what has been made heavenly by him who passes over into it and has made it his body and blood. For what we explained above in general about eating the flesh of the lamb must be kept in particular in tasting these same mysteries of the Lord's passion: so that you neither think it to be raw flesh and raw blood, like the Jew, and reject it, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"; nor boil down the sacrament itself in the pot of a fleshly heart, always subject by nature to its humours, thinking it common and earthly; but that you believe that what has been announced has been accomplished through the fire of the divine Spirit: that what you receive is the body of that heavenly bread and the blood of that sacred vine. For when he offered the consecrated bread and wine to his disciples, he said thus: "This is my body; this is my blood." Let us, I beg you, believe him in whom we have believed. Truth does not know how to lie. Therefore, when he spoke of eating his body and drinking his blood to crowds who were astonished and muttering, "This is a hard saying, and who can hear it?", in order to wipe away by the heavenly fire those thoughts which I said must be avoided, he added: "It is the Spirit that gives life, for the flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life." And therefore we are commanded to eat the head of his divinity together with the feet of his incarnation and with the inward mysteries, so that we may believe all things alike, as they have been handed down, not breaking that most solid bone of his: "This is my body; this is my blood." And if anything still remains over in anyone's understanding that this explanation has not grasped, let it be burned up by the ardour of faith, since our God is a consuming fire, purging, instructing and enlightening our hearts for the understanding of divine things, so that we may know the cause and meaning of the heavenly sacrifice instituted by Christ himself, and give thanks without end for his unspeakable gift.

For this truly is the inheritance and gift of his new covenant, which he left us, on the night on which he was handed over to be crucified, as a pledge of his presence. This is the provision for our journey, by which we are fed and nourished on this road of life until, departing from this world, we go on to him. Hence the same Lord said: "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you do not have life in yourselves." For he willed that his benefits should remain with us; he willed that souls should be sanctified by his precious blood through the image of his own passion. And therefore he commands his faithful disciples, whom he made the first priests of his church, to celebrate these mysteries of eternal life without ceasing; and they must be celebrated by all priests in each of the churches of the whole world until Christ comes again from heaven, so that we, both the priests themselves and all the peoples of the faithful together, having the pattern of Christ's passion daily before our eyes, holding it in our hands, receiving it also in our mouths and in our breasts, may keep an indelible memory of our redemption, and obtain against the poisons of the devil the sweet medicine of an everlasting protection, as the Holy Spirit urges: "Taste and see that the Lord is sweet."

That he appointed the sacraments of his body and blood to be offered under the appearance of bread and wine has a twofold reason. First, so that the spotless Lamb of God might hand over to a cleansed people a clean victim to be celebrated, without burning, without blood, without broth (that is, the juice of meat), and one that would be ready and easy for all to offer. Second, because bread must be made from many grains of wheat ground to flour, through water, and must be completed by fire, the figure of the body of Christ is reasonably taken in it, since we know that he became one body out of the multitude of the whole human race, completed through the fire of the Holy Spirit. For he was born of the Holy Spirit; and since it was fitting for him so to fulfil all righteousness, he goes down into the waters of baptism to consecrate them, and from there, full of the Holy Spirit, who had descended upon him in the form of a dove, he returns from the Jordan, as the evangelist testifies: "And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan." In the same way the wine of his blood, gathered from many grapes, that is, from the clusters of the vine planted by him, is pressed out in the winepress of the cross, and by its own power ferments in the capacious vessels of those who receive it with a faithful heart. All of you who are coming out from the power of Egypt and of Pharaoh the devil, receive this sacrifice of the saving Passover with us with the whole eagerness of a devout heart, so that the inmost parts of our being may be sanctified by our Lord Jesus Christ himself, whom we believe to be present in his sacraments; whose inestimable power remains for all ages.