Orations (other than the Theological Orations) 44.1–45.9

To honour dedications is an ancient law, and a good one; or rather, to honour new things by dedications; and this not once but often, each revolution of the year bringing round the same day, so that good things may not fade with time, nor be swept away and carried off into the depths of forgetfulness. Islands are renewed to God, as we read in Isaiah, whatever these islands are to be understood to be; I think they are the churches from among the gentiles, newly established, rising out of the salt water of unbelief and gaining firmness, so as to be ground on which God may walk. A bronze wall is dedicated, in another prophet; I think it is a firm soul … in piety. We are bidden to sing to the Lord a new song, whether we who were dragged off by sin into Babylon and its evil confusion and then brought back safe to Jerusalem (there we could not sing the divine song, as in a foreign land, but here we establish a new song and a new way of life), or we who have remained in the good and are advancing, having achieved part already and achieving part now, through the holy and renewing Spirit.

The tabernacle of witness is dedicated, and very sumptuously, which God showed, Bezalel completed and Moses set up. The kingdom of David is renewed, and not once but twice: when he was first anointed and when he was proclaimed the second time. “It was the feast of the Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter,” the winter of unbelief; and Jesus was present, God and temple: God eternal, temple new, destroyed in a day and raised on the third, and remaining for ever, that I may be saved and called back from the ancient fall and become a new creation, refashioned by such great love for man. The divine David seeks a pure heart to be created within him, and a right spirit to be renewed in his inward parts; not as though he did not have them (for who had them, if not so great a man as David?), but knowing that what is ever being added is new. And what need have I of more dedications, when I can point to those now present, which we are celebrating today, having drawn near to life after death? A dedication, a dedication is our festival, brothers: let it be said often, for joy. And what is it? You who know, teach; you who do not know, renew your hearing.

God was light, unapproachable and without succession, neither beginning nor ending nor measured, ever-shining, thrice-shining, contemplated as he is by few, or rather, I think, not even by few. And there are second lights, reflections of the first Light: the powers around him and the ministering spirits. But this light of ours not only began later, but is cut by night and cuts the night in equal shares; it is entrusted to sight, poured into the air, and receives what it gives. For it grants the eye the power to see, and is first seen by the eye, and, flowing around visible things, makes them manifest. For when God willed to establish this world, composed of things visible and invisible, the great and wonderful herald of his majesty, for the eternal beings he himself is light and nothing else (for what need of a second light had those who have the greatest?); but for those below and around us he first makes the power of this light shine forth. For it was fitting that the great light of creation should begin from light, by which he dissolves the darkness and the formlessness and disorder that held until then.

And he first showed this light not bound to a body, nor as the sun, as our account has it, but bodiless and without a sun; and afterwards it was also given to the sun, to illumine the whole world. For while in other things he first established the matter and afterwards gave it form, setting order, shape and size for each, here, to work a greater wonder, he established the form before the matter (for light is the form of the sun), and afterwards brings in the matter, creating this sun as the eye of the day. So the first, second and third are numbered in days, and the rest, up to the seventh, the day of rest from works; and by these days the things made are divided, ordered by ineffable principles, and not brought forth all at once by the all-powerful Word, for whom merely to think or to speak is a deed accomplished. And if man was shown forth last, and that honoured by the hand and the image of God, it is no wonder; for the palace had to be prepared first, as for a king, and then the king brought in, escorted already by all things. If, then, we had remained what we were and kept the commandment, we would have become what we were not,

approaching the tree of life after the tree of knowledge. And what would we have become? Made immortal, and drawn near to God. But since through the envy of the evil one death entered the world and overthrew man by deceit, for this reason God suffers our suffering, becoming man, and becomes poor by being fixed in the flesh, that we might become rich through his poverty. Hence death, burial and resurrection; hence the new creation, and the feast after the feast; and I am a celebrant again, renewing my own salvation. [5] “What then?” someone says. “Was not the first Sunday the dedication, the one after the holy night and the lighting of torches? But you give this title to today, you lover of feasts, devising many splendours.” That was the day of salvation; this is the birthday of salvation. That one is the boundary between burial and resurrection; this one belongs purely to the second birth; so that, as the first creation takes its beginning from a Sunday (this is clear, for from it the Sabbath becomes the seventh day, being rest from works), so the second creation also begins again from the same day, being the first of those after it and the eighth from those before it, loftier than the lofty and more wonderful than the wonderful. For it leads to the state above; which the divine Solomon seems to me to hint at, when he lays down that one should give a portion to seven, this life, and to eight, the life to come, from good action here and the restoration there. And the great David seems to sing to this day the psalms “for the eighth”, as to the present day of dedication another psalm, naming a dedication of a house; and that house is we ourselves, who have been counted worthy to be, to be called, and to become the temple of God.

You have the account of the dedications. But be renewed yourselves: casting off the old man, conduct yourselves in newness of life, putting a bridle on all the things from which death comes, disciplining every member, hating or vomiting up all the evil eating from the tree, and remembering the old things only so as to flee them. “It was beautiful to look at and good to eat,” the fruit that killed me. Let us flee a fine complexion; let us look at ourselves. Let not the desire for beauty conquer you, nor be caught by your eyelids, if possible not even so far as a glance, remembering Eve, the sweet bait, the honoured poison. For how will a strange woman easily save you, when your own destroyed you? Let not your throat become sweet to you, down which everything given is swept away; it is honoured before it is taken, and dishonoured after. Has smell made you effeminate? Flee perfumes. Have you grown soft through touch? Renounce smoothness and softness. Has hearing seduced you? Put a door on deceitful and flattering words. Open your mouth to the word of God, that you may draw in the Spirit, and not draw in death. Whenever something forbidden tempts you, remember who you were and whence you have perished. If you turn aside a little from reason, bring yourself back before you fall out altogether and are carried down to death; and become new instead of old, and keep the dedication of your soul.

Let your anger be against the serpent alone, through whom you fell. Let your desire be wholly stretched out towards God, not towards anything else that is treacherous and dangerous. Let reason preside over all, and let not the better be dragged down by the worse. Do not hate your brother, and that without cause, for whom Christ died and became your brother, though he is God and Master. Do not envy one who succeeds, you who were envied, and persuaded through envy, and cast down for that reason. Do not dishonour a tear, you who suffered things worthy of many tears and then found mercy. Do not turn away a poor man, you who have become rich in Godhead; or, if you must, at least do not grow rich at the poor man's expense; for this too is common among the insatiable. Do not dishonour a stranger, for whom Christ became a stranger, among whom we are all strangers and sojourners, lest you be estranged from paradise as before. Share with one who needs shelter, covering and food, you who luxuriate in these beyond your need. Do not love wealth, unless it helps the poor. Forgive, you who have been forgiven; have mercy, you who have received mercy; win love by love while there is time. Let your whole life be renewed, every way of your conduct.

You who are under the yoke, give something to God too, for you too have been taken up by him. You virgins, give everything to God, for you are free. Do not become stealers of a servile pleasure after fleeing freedom, by living with men who are not husbands, but men nonetheless. I do not accept that you should be constantly troubled by reminders of pleasure; I hate even the familiarity of the eyes. You who are powerful, fear the more powerful; you who sit on high thrones, the one who is higher. Admire nothing that does not remain; do not overlook what remains; do not clutch anything that slips away when held; do not envy things that are not envied but hated; do not be greatly lifted up, lest you be cast down further; do not pride yourself on appearing better than the wicked, but grieve at being surpassed by the good; do not laugh at your neighbour's fall, but walk safely, as far as you can, and also give a hand to one lying on the ground. Neither despair of prosperity when you are downcast, nor of humility when you are faring well. One year brings four seasons, and one turn of the times many changes of fortune. Let care overshadow your pleasure, and the better hope your grief. So man is renewed; so the day of the dedication is honoured, with such luxury and such food. “You shall not appear empty before me,” it says, but bringing something good with you. Now appear new in another way, wholly changed. “The old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” Bring this as your fruit to the feast: be changed with the good change; and do not be proud even so, but say the words of David: “This is the change of the right hand of the Most High,” from whom men have every success. The word does not want you ever to remain the same, but to be ever moving, easily moved, always newly created: turning back if you sin, pressing on if you do well.

Yesterday you had the faith of the demons; today learn that of God. How long will you limp on both your knees? How long will you temporize? Be eager at last to build up. Yesterday you honoured seeming; today prefer being. How long the shadows? Let truth too be pursued by you at last. Yesterday you were a man of the theatre; today show yourself a man of contemplation. Yesterday abusive and bold, today well-spoken and gentle; yesterday a reveller, today a corrector of others. Today a wine-drinker, tomorrow a water-drinker. Today luxuriating on ivory couches and anointed with the finest perfumes, tomorrow lying on the ground and keeping vigil instead of reclining softly; thoughtful instead of adorned; poorly clothed instead of a peacock and a boaster; plain in appearance instead of gold-roofed; humble and bowing down instead of proud-necked. If you think thus and act thus, you will have a new heaven and a new earth, grasping both these things and their meaning.

But let us go now and keep the feast fittingly with the season. For all things join in the festival for good and rejoice with it: see what we behold. The queen of the seasons escorts the queen of days and brings as gifts all that is most beautiful and pleasant. Now the sky is clearer; now the sun is higher and more golden; now the moon's circle is brighter and the choir of stars purer. Now the waves make peace with the shores, the clouds with the sun, the winds with the air, the earth with the plants, the plants with the eyes. Now springs flow more clearly, and rivers more abundantly, released from their winter bonds. The meadow is fragrant, the plant teems, the grass is cut, and lambs skip over the green fields. Now the ship is launched from the harbour with a shout, mostly a God-loving one, and is winged by its sail; and the dolphin leaps around, blowing most sweetly and rising up, and escorts the sailors cheerfully. Now the farmer fixes his plough, looking up and calling on the giver of fruits, puts the ploughing ox under the yoke, cuts the sweet furrow and rejoices in his hopes. Now shepherds and cowherds tune their pipes and breathe out a pastoral song, and spend the spring among plants and rocks. Now the gardener tends his plant … looks up at the branches … and the fisherman looks into the depths, cleans his net and sits on the rocks.

Now the industrious bee, having left the hives, displays its own wisdom, flies over the meadows and plunders the flowers; one forms the combs, joining the hexagonal cells opposite one another and alternating their angles, a work of beauty and security together; another stores the honey in the storehouses for the one who cultivates it, a sweet and ageless fruit. Would that we too, the swarm of Christ, might take such an example of wisdom and industry! Now the bird builds its nest; one returns, another settles in, another flies around, filling the grove with song and chattering around man. All things hymn God and glorify him with unspoken voices; for God is thanked through me for all of them, and so their hymn becomes ours, since from them I take the occasion to hymn. Now we feast every sense on every living thing; now the horse, proud and haughty, impatient of the stable, having broken his bond, gallops over the plain and exults.

Why speak of the rest? Now the martyrs are honoured with processions, and with their bright shrines they fill a Christ-loving people and make their contests public. Among them is also my own Mamas (for he is mine, even if not from my city; let no one envy me for saying so), the renowned Mamas, shepherd and martyr; who formerly milked the does that came to him of their own accord, so that the just man might be nourished on strange milk; and who now shepherds the people of a metropolis, and renews the spring today with the many crowds that come from everywhere, adorned with various beauties, and worthy of shepherds and of festivals. To say it more briefly: a worldly spring, a spiritual spring; a spring for souls, a spring for bodies; a visible spring, an invisible spring; of which may we partake there too, having been well changed here, and may we be sent on, made new, to the new life, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be all glory, honour and might, with the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

“I will stand upon my watch,” says the wonderful Habakkuk; and I with him today, with the authority and vision given me by the Spirit, will look out and learn what will be seen and what will be spoken to me. And I stood and looked out; and behold, a man riding upon the clouds, very lofty, and his appearance as the appearance of an angel, and his garment like the brightness of passing lightning; and he lifted his hand towards the east and cried with a loud voice, his voice like the voice of a trumpet, and round about him as it were a multitude of the heavenly host; and he said: “Today salvation has come to the world, both visible and invisible. Christ is risen from the dead: rise with him. Christ has returned to himself: return. Christ is freed from the tomb: be freed from the bonds of sin. The gates of Hades are opened, death is destroyed, the old Adam is put off, the new is made complete. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: be renewed.” So he spoke; and the others sang, as they did before, when Christ appeared to us through his birth below, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men.” With them I too utter these words among you; and would that I might have a voice worthy of the angels, sounding through all the ends of the earth.

The Pascha of the Lord, the Pascha, and again I will say the Pascha, in honour of the Trinity. This is for us the feast of feasts and the festival of festivals, surpassing all others, not only human and earthly ones but even those of Christ himself and celebrated in his honour, as far as the sun surpasses the stars. Fine too was yesterday's splendid array and procession of lights, which we held both privately and publicly, almost every race of men and every rank, lighting up the night with abundant fire, an image of the great light: both of that with which the heaven above lights its beacons, illumining the whole world with its own beauties, and of that above the heavens, among the angels, the first luminous nature after the first, since it springs from it, and of that in the Trinity, from which all light comes, divided from the undivided light and honoured. But today's is finer and more illustrious. For yesterday's light was the forerunner of the great Light rising, a kind of joy before the feast; but today we celebrate the resurrection itself, no longer hoped for but already accomplished, and gathering the whole world to itself. Let each, then, bring some fruit to the season and offer a festal gift, small or great, of the spiritual things that are dear to God, according to his ability. For the gift that is worthy even the angels could hardly attain, the first, intelligent and pure beings, beholders and witnesses of the glory above, if even to them the whole of the hymn is attainable. We will bring a discourse, the finest and most precious thing we have, especially as we hymn the Word for his benefaction to rational nature. I will begin from here. For I cannot bear that words about the great sacrifice and the greatest of days should not run up to God and make their beginning from there. Purify for me your mind and hearing and thought, all you who delight in such things (since the discourse is about God, and divine), that you may go away having truly enjoyed what does not pass away. And it will be at once very full and very concise, so as neither to grieve you by its deficiency nor to be unpleasant through satiety.

God always was, and is, and will be; or rather, always is. For “was” and “will be” are segments of our time and of a nature that flows; but he is ever “He who is”, and this is the name he gives himself when giving his oracle to Moses on the mountain. For, gathering all being into himself, he possesses it, neither beginning nor ending, like a sea of essence, infinite and unbounded, surpassing every conception of time and nature; sketched in outline by the mind alone, and that very dimly and in measure, not from what he is in himself but from what is around him, one image being gathered from another into one likeness of the truth, which flees before it is held and escapes before it is conceived, shining upon our ruling faculty, even when it is purified, as swiftly as the flash of lightning that does not stay before the eyes; in order, I think, that by what can be grasped it may draw us to itself (for what is wholly beyond grasp is beyond hope and beyond attempt), and by what cannot be grasped it may be admired, and being admired may be longed for the more, and being longed for may purify, and purifying may make us godlike; and that, when we have become such, he may converse with us as with his own (my words dare something bold), God united with gods and known by them, perhaps as much as he already knows those who are known by him. The divine, then, is infinite and hard to contemplate, and this alone of him is wholly comprehensible: his infinity; even if someone should think that because he is of a simple nature he must be either wholly incomprehensible or perfectly comprehensible. For let us inquire what “of a simple nature” means. For simplicity is certainly not his nature, just as composition alone is not the nature of composite things.

The infinite is considered in two ways, with respect to beginning and to end (for what is beyond these and not within them is infinite). When the mind looks into the depth above, having nowhere to stand and rest in its imaginings about God, it calls the infinite and unapproachable there “without beginning”; when it looks into what is below and what follows, “immortal” and “imperishable”; and when it gathers the whole together, “eternal”. For eternity is neither time nor any part of time, since it is not measurable; but what time is for us, measured by the course of the sun, that eternity is for everlasting beings: something extended together with the things that are, like a kind of temporal motion and interval. Let this be enough of my philosophy about God for now. There is no occasion for more, since our subject is not theology but the economy. When I say God, I mean Father, Son and Holy Spirit: the Godhead neither spreading beyond these, lest we bring in a mob of gods, nor confined within less than these, lest we be condemned for a poverty of Godhead, either Judaizing because of the monarchy or Hellenizing because of the abundance. For the evil is alike in both, though found in opposites. Such, then, is the Holy of Holies, which is veiled even by the seraphim and glorified with three “holies”, meeting in one lordship and Godhead; this has been expounded most beautifully and loftily by another before us.

But since it was not enough for goodness to be moved only in the contemplation of itself, but the good had to be poured out and go forth, so that the objects of its benefaction might be more (for this belonged to the highest goodness), he first conceives the angelic and heavenly powers; and the conception was a deed, fulfilled by the Word and perfected by the Spirit. And so second splendours came to be, ministers of the first splendour: whether we should think of them as intelligent spirits, or as a kind of immaterial and bodiless fire, or as some other nature as near as possible to those named. I would like to say that they are immovable towards evil and have only the movement of the good, being around God and the first to be illumined from God (for things here have a second illumination); but I am persuaded to suppose and say that they are not immovable but hard to move, because of him who for his splendour was called Lucifer, but who through his pride both became and is called darkness, and the apostate powers under him, makers of evil by their flight from the good, and its promoters for us.

So, then, the intelligible world came to be for him, and for these reasons, so far as I at least can philosophize about these things, weighing great things with a small word. And since his first works were good, he conceives a second world, material and visible: this is the system and compound of heaven and earth and what lies between, praiseworthy for the fine nature of each part, still more praiseworthy for the harmony and concord of the whole, each part fitting well with another and all with all, to complete one world; that he might show that he was able to give being not only to a nature akin to himself but also to one wholly alien. For the intelligent natures, grasped by mind alone, are akin to the Godhead; wholly alien are those that fall under sense, and, still further removed among these, those that are wholly soulless and motionless.

Mind, then, and sense, thus distinguished from one another, stood within their own bounds and bore in themselves the magnificence of the Creator Word, silent praisers and loud heralds of his mighty work. But there was not yet a mixture of both, nor any blending of opposites, a token of greater wisdom and of lavishness about the natures; nor was the whole wealth of his goodness yet known. Wishing to display this, the Word, the artist, creates man, one living being out of both, I mean the invisible and the visible nature. Taking the body from the matter that already existed, and placing in it breath from himself, which the word knows as the intelligent soul and the image of God, he sets him on the earth as a kind of second world, great in little, another angel, a worshipper of mixed nature, fully initiated into the visible creation, partly initiated into the intelligible, king of all on earth but ruled from above, earthly and heavenly, temporary and immortal, visible and intelligible, midway between greatness and lowliness; the same being spirit and flesh: spirit because of grace, flesh because of the elevation; the one that he may remain and glorify his Benefactor, the other that he may suffer, and by suffering be reminded and disciplined when he is ambitious about his greatness; a living being cared for here and transferred elsewhere, and, as the end of the mystery, deified by his inclination towards God. For to this, I think, the moderate light of truth here leads me: to see and to experience the splendour of God, worthy of him who both bound us together and will loose us, and will bind us again in a loftier way.

He placed him in paradise, whatever this paradise was, honouring him with free will, so that the good might belong to the one who chose it no less than to the one who provided its seeds: a cultivator of immortal plants, perhaps of divine thoughts, both the simpler and the more perfect; naked in his simplicity and artless life, without any covering or screen; for such it was fitting that he should be who was from the beginning. And he gives him a law, as material for his free will. The law was a commandment, which plants he might partake of and which he might not touch. This was the tree of knowledge, neither planted evilly from the beginning nor forbidden out of envy (let the enemies of God not wag their tongues in that direction, nor imitate the serpent), but good when partaken of at the right time; for the tree was, in my view, contemplation, which it is safe to undertake only for those of more perfect habit, but not good for those still simple and greedy in their desire, just as solid food is not profitable for those still tender and in need of milk. But when, through the envy of the devil and the injury done by the woman, which she suffered as the more tender and brought upon him as the more persuasive (alas for my weakness! for my forefather's weakness is mine), he forgot the commandment that had been given and was overcome by the little tasting, he became at once, through his wickedness, an exile from the tree of life, from paradise and from God; and he puts on the coats of skin, perhaps the coarser flesh, mortal and resistant; and now for the first time he knows his own shame and hides from God. Yet he gains something even here: death, and the cutting short of sin, so that evil might not be immortal; and the punishment becomes an act of love for man. For this, I am persuaded, is how God punishes.

He was first disciplined in many ways, because of the many sins which the root of evil put forth for various causes and at various times: by word, by law, by prophets, by benefits, by threats, by plagues, by floods, by fires, by wars, by victories, by defeats, by signs from heaven, signs from the air, from the earth, from the sea, by unexpected changes in men, cities and nations, by which the aim was to wipe out evil. At last he needs a stronger remedy for more terrible diseases: mutual slaughter, adulteries, perjuries, lust for males, and that last and first of all evils, idolatry, and the transfer of worship from the Maker to the creatures. Since these needed a greater help, they also obtain a greater. This was the very Word of God, the pre-eternal, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the bodiless, the beginning from the beginning, the light from light, the source of life and immortality, the impress of the archetypal beauty, the unmoved seal, the unchanging image, the Father's definition and word: he comes to his own image, and bears flesh for the sake of flesh, and is mingled with an intelligent soul for the sake of my soul, cleansing like by like; and he becomes man in all things except sin. He was conceived of the Virgin, who had first been cleansed in soul and flesh by the Spirit (for birth had to be honoured, and virginity honoured more), …