Funeral Oration on Meletius (complete)

The new apostle has increased the number of the apostles for us, he who has been counted with the apostles. For the saints have drawn to themselves one of their own character: the athletes the athlete, the crowned ones the one who wears the crown, the pure in heart the one pure in soul, the ministers of the word the herald of the word. Blessed indeed is our Father, both for his dwelling with the apostles and for his departure to Christ; but we are to be pitied. For the untimeliness of our orphanhood does not let us call the Father’s good fortune blessed. For him it was better to be with Christ by departing, but for us it is hard to be parted from a father’s protection. For see, it is a time for counsel, and the counselor is silent. War surrounds us, the war of heresy, and the general is not there. The common body of the church is sick with diseases, and we cannot find the physician. You see in what a state our affairs are. I wished, if it were possible, to brace my weakness and rise to the magnitude of the calamity, and to break out with a cry worthy of the grief, as these noble men have done, lamenting aloud the calamity of our Father. But what am I to do? How shall I force into the service of speech a tongue fettered by the calamity as by a heavy shackle? How shall I open a mouth held fast by speechlessness? How shall I utter a voice that by habit slides into grief and lamentation? How shall I look up with the eyes of the soul when I am veiled by the darkness of the calamity? Who will part for me this deep, dark cloud of grief and show again, out of a clear sky, the bright ray of peace? And from where will the ray shine, when our luminary has set? O evil, moonless night, which hopes for no rising of the luminary! How opposite are the speeches made by us in this place now and before! Then we danced as at a wedding; now we groan piteously in mourning. Then we sang a wedding song; now we sing a funeral song. For you remember when we feasted you at the spiritual marriage, bringing the virgin home to the noble bridegroom, and

brought the bridal gifts of speech as far as we were able, giving joy in our turn and receiving it. But now our joy has been turned into lament, and the garment of gladness has become sackcloth. Or perhaps we ought to keep the grief to ourselves and shut the pain within in silence, so that we may not trouble the sons of the bridechamber, since we do not have the bright wedding garment but have clothed our speech in black? For since the noble bridegroom has been taken from us, we have all at once been blackened with mourning, and we cannot brighten our speech as usual, since envy has stripped off the robe that adorned us. Full of good things we came to meet you; naked and poor we return from you. We held the torch upright over our heads, shining with rich light; we carry it back extinguished, its brightness dissolved into smoke and ashes. We had the great treasure in an earthen vessel; but the treasure has vanished, and the earthen vessel, empty of its wealth, is returned to those who gave it. What shall we say, we who sent him? What answer will those give from whom he is required? O wicked shipwreck! How have we been wrecked in the very middle of the harbor of our hope! How has the merchant ship of countless cargo, sinking with its whole load, left us naked who were once rich! Where is that bright sail, always steered by the Holy Spirit? Where is the safe rudder of our souls, by which we sailed unharmed past the heretical breakers? Where is the immovable anchor of his judgment, on which we rested in full safety when we were weary? Where is the noble helmsman who steered the ship toward the goal above? Is what has happened small, and am I grieving for nothing? Or rather, do I not reach the measure of the grief, even if I raise my voice beyond measure? Lend us, brothers, lend us the tear of sympathy. For when you rejoiced, we shared your gladness. Repay us, then, with this sad exchange. “Rejoice with those who rejoice”: this we did. “Weep with those who weep”: this you must repay. A foreign people once wept for the patriarch Jacob and made another’s calamity its own, when his descendants carried their father out of Egypt and the whole people lamented his calamity in a foreign land, prolonging the lament for him thirty days and as many nights. Imitate the foreigners, you who are brothers and of the same race. Then the tear of strangers and natives was shared; let it be shared now too, since the grief is shared. Look at these patriarchs: all of them are children of our Jacob. All are from the free woman; no one is illegitimate or supposititious. For it was not lawful for him to bring a slave kinship into the nobility of the faith. So that man is our father too, since he was the father of [our] Father.

You heard just now Ephraim and Manasseh, what things and how many they related about our Father, so that the wonders surpass speech. Let me too speak of them. For now there is no danger in calling him blessed, nor do I fear envy. For what worse can it do to me? Know, then, who the man was: noble among those of the sunrising, blameless, righteous, true, God-fearing, keeping away from every evil thing. For the great Job will surely not be jealous if his imitator, too, takes pride in the testimonies given about him. But envy, which looks on all good things, looked on our good thing too with a bitter eye; and he who walks about the world walked through us as well, pressing the broad print of affliction into our prosperity. He did not ravage herds of oxen and sheep, unless one takes the flock, in the mystical sense, to mean the church. But not in these did envy harm us; nor did it work its damage on asses and camels, nor torment the senses with a wound of the flesh; it robbed us of our head. And with the head our precious organs of sense went too. There is no longer the eye that saw heavenly things, nor the hearing that listened to the divine voice, nor that tongue, the pure offering of truth. Where is the sweet calm of the eyes? Where the bright smile on the lips? Where the kindly right hand, its fingers moving with the blessing of the mouth? I am moved to cry out the calamity as on a stage: I pity you, O church; to you I speak, city of Antiochus. I pity you for this sudden change. How has your beauty been stripped from you? How has your adornment been carried off? How has the flower suddenly fallen away? Truly the grass has withered and the flower has fallen. What evil eye, what wicked envy has run riot against that church? What things it has received in exchange for what! The spring has failed, the river has dried up. Again the water has been turned into blood. O that unhappy message that will announce the grief to the church! Who will tell the children that they have been orphaned? Who will announce to the bride that she has been widowed? O the evils! What did they send out, and what do they receive back? They sent out an ark, and they receive a coffin. An ark, brothers, was the man of God, an ark that held within itself the divine mysteries. There was the golden jar full of the divine manna, full of heavenly food. In it were the tablets of the covenant, written on the tablets of the heart by the Spirit of the living God, not with ink. For no dark and black thought had been burned into the purity of his heart. In it were the pillars, the bases, the capitals, the censer, the lampstand, the mercy seat, the basins, the veils of the entrances; in it was the rod of the priesthood, which budded in his hands. And whatever else we hear that the ark held, the soul of the man contained it all.

But in place of those things, what? Let speech be silent. Clean linen cloths and fabrics of silk; an abundance of myrrh and spices, the generosity of a modest and decorous woman. For it shall be told, so that this too may become a memorial of her, what she did for the priest, lavishly pouring the alabaster jar of myrrh over the priest’s head. But what is kept safe in all this? Dead bones, which even before death had practised dying: sad memorials of our calamities. O what a voice will be heard again in Ramah! Rachel weeping, not for her children but for her husband, and refusing comfort. Let her be, you who comfort her, let her be. Do not insist on comforting her. Let the widow mourn deeply. Let her feel the loss she has suffered. And yet she is not unpractised in separation, having been trained beforehand, during the athlete’s contests, to bear being alone. You surely remember how the speech before ours related the man’s contests to you: that, honoring the Holy Trinity in everything, he kept that honor even in the number of his contests, having contended against three assaults of trials. You heard the sequence of his labors, what he was in the first, what in the middle ones, what in the last. I judge it superfluous to repeat what was well said. But perhaps it is not out of season to say this much: when that chaste church first saw the man, it saw a face truly formed in the image of God; it saw love welling up; it saw grace poured on his lips; the highest bound of humility, beyond which nothing more can be conceived; meekness like David’s, understanding like Solomon’s, goodness like Moses’, exactness like Samuel’s, chastity like Joseph’s, wisdom like Daniel’s; like the great Elijah in zeal for the faith; like the lofty John in purity of body; like Paul in unsurpassed love. It saw so many good things meeting in one soul; it was wounded with a blessed love, and loved its bridegroom with pure and good affection. But before it had satisfied its desire, before it had rested its longing, while it was still burning with love, it was left alone, as trials called the athlete away to his contests. And he contended in sweat for godliness, while she waited, keeping her marriage in chastity. A long time passed between, and someone adulterously made an attempt on the undefiled bridal chamber. But the bride was not defiled; and again a return, and again flight; and a third time likewise, until the Lord parted the darkness of heresy and, casting in the ray of peace, gave hope of some rest from the long labors. But when they had seen each other again, and the bonds of chastity were renewed, and spiritual joys, and longing was kindled again, at once this last departure cuts short the enjoyment.

He came to adorn you as a bride, and he did not fail in his effort; he set the crowns of blessing on the noble union; he imitated the Master: as the Lord did in Cana of Galilee, so here too did the imitator of Christ. For the Jewish water jars, filled with heretical water, he made full of pure wine, changing their nature by the power of faith. Often he set up a sober mixing bowl among you, pouring out grace abundantly with his sweet voice; often he spread the feast of the word before you. He led the way by blessing, and these noble disciples served the crowds, [distributing] the word. And we rejoiced, making the glory of your family our own. How beautiful the story is up to this point; how blessed it would have been to end the speech here. But after this, what? “Call the mourning women,” says Jeremiah. For a burning heart, swollen with grief, cannot be calmed in any other way than by being relieved with groans and tears. Then the hope of his return consoled the separation; but now he has been torn from us by the final separation. A great chasm is fixed in the middle between him and the church; he rests in the bosom of Abraham, but the one who would bring the drop of water to cool the tongue of those in anguish is not there. That beauty is gone, the voice is silent; the lips are closed, the grace has flown away. Our good fortune has become a story. Elijah once grieved the people of Israel too, when he flew up from the earth to God. But Elisha consoled them for the separation, adorned with his teacher’s mantle. Now, however, the wound is beyond healing, since Elijah has been taken up and Elisha has not been left behind. You have heard certain gloomy and mournful words of Jeremiah, with which he lamented the city of the people of Jerusalem as deserted; among other things he went through with deep feeling, he also says this: “The roads of Zion mourn.” This was said then, but now it is fulfilled. For when the report of the grief is spread abroad, then the roads will be full of mourners, and those he shepherded will pour out, imitating the cry of the Ninevites in their distress, or rather lamenting more painfully than they. For the lament freed them from their fear; but these hope for no release from their evils by lamenting. I know another saying of Jeremiah, counted among the book of the Psalms, which he made over the captivity of Israel. The text says, “On the willows we hung our instruments,” condemning themselves and their instruments to silence. I make this song my own. For if I see the confusion of heresy (and Babylon is confusion), and if I see the trials that flow through the confusion, these, I say, are those streams of Babylon by which we sit and weep, because we have no one to lead us across them. And if you speak of the willows and the instruments on them, mine

too is this riddle. For truly our life is among willows. For the willow is a fruitless tree, and the sweet fruit of our life has fallen away. We have become fruitless willows, then, hanging the instruments of love idle and motionless on the trees. “If I forget you, Jerusalem,” he says, “may my right hand be forgotten.” Allow me to change the text a little: it is not we who have forgotten the right hand, but the right hand has forgotten us; and the tongue, cleaving to its own throat, has blocked the passages of the voice, so that we shall never again hear that sweet voice. But wipe away my tears; for I feel that I am growing womanish in grief beyond what is fitting. The bridegroom has not been taken from us; he stands in our midst, even if we do not see him. The priest is in the inner sanctuary, within the veil, where Christ entered as forerunner on our behalf; he has left behind the curtain of the flesh. No longer does he serve a copy and shadow of heavenly things; he looks on the very image of the realities. No longer through a mirror and in a riddle, but face to face he intercedes with God, and he intercedes for us and for the sins of ignorance of the people. He has laid aside the garments of skin; for those who live in paradise have no need of such garments. Instead he is adorned with garments he wove from the purity of his life. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of such a one; or rather, it is not death but a breaking of bonds. “You have broken my bonds,” it says. Simeon has been released; he has been freed from the bonds of the body. The snare has been broken, and the sparrow has flown away. He has left Egypt; he has crossed the material life, not this Red Sea but that black and gloomy sea of life; he has entered the land of promise; on the mountain he converses with God as one philosopher with another; he has loosed the sandal of the soul, so that with the pure footstep of the mind he may tread the holy ground on which God is seen. With this consolation, brothers, you who carry the bones of Joseph to the land of blessing, hear Paul’s charge: “Do not grieve as the rest do, who have no hope.” Tell the people there, relate the good stories. Tell the wonder that will not be believed: how the people, numbering countless thousands, packed together into the appearance of a sea, were all one continuous body, flooding like water around the procession of his remains. How the noble David, divided in many parts and many ways into countless choirs, danced around the body, among people of other tongues and of the same tongue. How on both sides rivers of fire, flowing as an unbroken stream through the continuous line of torches, stretched as far as the eye could reach. Tell of the eagerness of all the people, his dwelling with the apostles. How the cloths from his face were torn into pieces as amulets for the faithful. Let there be added to the story the emperor

grieving at the loss and rising from his throne, and a whole city moving along with the saint’s procession. And comfort one another with these words. Solomon heals grief well: he commands that wine be given to those in grief, saying this to us, the workers of the vineyard. Give, then, your wine to those who grieve: not the wine that produces drunkenness, plots against the mind and ruins the body, but the wine that gladdens the heart, which the Prophet pointed out to us when he said, “Wine gladdens the heart of man.” Greet us with a stronger mixture and more generous cups of the spiritual word, so that our mourning may be turned again into gladness and exultation, by the grace of the only-begotten Son of God, through whom be glory to God the Father to the ages of ages. Amen.