Further fragments and homilies

Contents

Staged from OCR with many flagged misreadings; check against the printed edition.

Reading pages: 1.1–3.15 · 4.1–8.3 · 9.1–12.2

1. 1.1On 1 Sam 28: Samuel did not truly come up at Endor; a demon showed his likeness and, guessing from God's anger, foretold Saul's defeat and death.
2. 2.1The Psalms are the second book of teaching after Moses, in which David introduced a new worship by hymns that goes beyond the sacrificial law.
3. 3.1Three Psalm fragments run together: Christ's manhood and divinity shown in the Gospel events (Ps 2); the Lord as the ark of incorruptible wood overlaid with gold (Ps 23); and the plagues of Egypt as figures of the punishment that does not touch the sinless (Ps 78).
4. 3.2On Ps 55:15: those instructed in divine teaching but dead to the words of life go down alive into Hades.
5. 3.3On Ps 58:11: there is a God who judges on earth, vindicating the righteous and punishing those who, though they studied the prophecies, would not hear Christ.
6. 3.4On Ps 59:6: to this day they go round the borders and stand far off.
7. 3.5On Ps 59:11: the Jewish people no longer has king, high priest, prophet, scribes, Pharisees or Sadducees.
8. 3.6On Ps 59:11: the Jews were not destroyed but scattered among the nations, so that seeing the church they might be moved to zeal for godliness.
9. 3.7Believers, once exiled by the demons, are no longer migrants from their true homeland, the Jerusalem above.
10. 3.8On Ps 68:18: God draws even the disobedient through illness, misfortune, and visions.
11. 3.9The Greek wise men around us scoff at Christians as believing without examination.
12. 3.10On Ps 96:11: the sea and its fullness foretell the gospel reaching the islands, now full of churches.
13. 3.11On Ps 119:30: the truthful man can say he has chosen the way of truth, and the mindful man that he has not forgotten God's judgments.
14. 3.12On Ps 119:32: trials enlarge the heart by cutting away the thorns of thought, so that we run the way of God's commandments.
15. 3.13On Ps 138:7: God's power both saves the psalmist in danger and restrains his raging enemies.
16. 3.14On Ps 139:15: naturalists say the change of blood into bone in the womb cannot be seen or understood.
17. 3.15Continuing on Ps 139:15: Ecclesiastes too says the forming of bones in the womb is hidden, as the psalm says it is not hidden from God.
18. 4.1On Prov 1:11: the plot to hide the righteous man in the earth refers to the Jews' killing of Christ.
19. 4.2On Prov 3:35: the wise inherit glory, while God exalts the ungodly only to make their disgrace plain, as with Pharaoh.
20. 4.3On Prov 4:2: the law is called a good gift in contrast to bribes, and he who transgresses it forsakes it.
21. 4.5On Prov 4:8: wisdom is fortified by the virtues, and the reward is to be embraced by her in the heavenly bridal chamber.
22. 4.6On Prov 4:10–11: wisdom's ways are open and secure, the ways of life are good deeds leading to the knowledge of God, and the reward is incorruptible life.
23. 4.7On Prov 4:14: the ways of the ungodly and lawless are those of heretics and transgressors, or the evil thoughts that kill the soul.
24. 4.8On Prov 4:25: looking straight means the soul's passionless sight; honey is divine teaching, and the soul embraced by wisdom is filled with holiness.
25. 4.9On Prov 4:27: virtue is a mean; the ‘right’ to be shunned is apparent good through pleasure, and Boreas, the harsh wind called ‘right-hand,’ is the devil, called an angel.
26. 4.10On Prov 4:27b: if you turn from evil, God goes before you and takes care of the end.
27. 4.11On Prov 5:19: the hind and foal show the purity of married love and the wife's charm, bound by an unbreakable bond; another reading applies them to wisdom.
28. 4.13On Prov 6:27–28: desire is fire and the flesh a garment, so the eyes must be guarded, as Job and Paul did.
29. 4.14On Prov 7:22: the man who follows the harlot is like the lustful, foolish kepphos bird that is easily caught.
30. 4.15On Prov 7:26–27: the harlot's desire ends in death, and many forms of wickedness lead the foolish to Hades.
31. 4.16On Prov 9:1: Wisdom's house is the new Jerusalem and Christ's holy flesh, and its seven pillars the sevenfold Spirit resting on him.
32. 4.17On Prov 9:12: the wise must benefit many, while the wicked harm only themselves.
33. 4.18On Prov 11:30: Christ is the fruit of righteousness and tree of life whose fruit gives eternal life, while the souls of the lawless are cut off in torment.
34. 4.19On Prov 17:28: one who asks about God's will and then keeps silent to learn is wiser than one who refuses wisdom and hinders others.
35. 4.20On Prov 30:15–16: sin is never satisfied; like Hades, Tartarus, parched earth and fire, the slave of sin never comes to confession and the washing of regeneration.
36. 4.21On Prov 30:19: as a serpent leaves no track on rock, the devil found no sin in Christ.
37. 4.22On Prov 30:19: as a ship leaves no track, the church passes through the world with its hope and life laid up in heaven.
38. 4.23On Prov 30:19: the ship is the church, and ‘the way of a man in youth’ is Christ, born of the Spirit and the Virgin, who began his works at thirty.
39. 4.24On Prov 30:21–23: the earth's shaking is the change wrought by sin, seen at the flood, in Sodom and in Egypt; the maid who casts out her mistress is the Gentile church that replaced the synagogue.
40. 4.25On Prov 30:21–23: the earth is shaken by the threefold coming through law, prophets and gospel, and cannot bear the fourth, the coming of the judge.
41. 4.26On Prov 30:26: the rock-badgers are believers, once like swine, who now build their houses on Christ the rock.
42. 4.27On Prov 27:22: the fool pounded in a mortar is the one hardened in wickedness, to be rebuked publicly.
43. 4.29On Prov 30:18: the things the writer cannot understand are not wholly beyond understanding.
44. 4.30‘Parable’ has many senses; a parable compares spiritual things with sensible ones and presents the invisible through the visible.
45. 4.31On Prov 1:2–3: those who know God's wisdom receive instruction in the mysteries of the Word and understand its words.
46. 4.33On Prov 1:10–11: the wise teacher deters the young from murder before mentioning its gains, warning them against the fellowship of the ungodly who shed righteous blood.
47. 4.34On Prov 8:17 and 8:8–9: love is greater than fondness, and Wisdom's words are straight, unlike outside teaching that has words without deeds.
48. 4.35On Prov 9:2–4, 12a: Wisdom mixed divine things with human speech for us; the one who relies on lies shepherds the wind and chases the birds that are the evil one.
49. 4.36Nothing we give God equals his gifts; no one living is justified before him, so we are saved by his love for mankind.
50. 4.37A brief gloss on the one who judges rightly and has no envious eye.
51. 4.38On Prov 14:28: the king's glory in a multitude of people is Christ glorified in the growth of the church.
52. 4.39On Prov 24:13: honey is the allegorical sense, the honeycomb the historical sense, and the throat the soul's power of nourishment.
53. 4.40On Prov 30:19: ‘the way of a man in youth’ is that of one living in the regeneration, or of one reborn in baptism.
54. 4.41On Prov 30:19–20: the fourth way, a youth's, is unknowable because unstable, like the hidden ways of the adulteress.
55. 4.42On Prov 25:13: cold in harvest-time dispels the heat that ruins the grain.
56. 4.44On Prov 25:16: enjoy the things of life without excess.
57. 4.45On Prov 25:25a: the cold water for a thirsty soul is the water from the springs of salvation, to be taken spiritually.
58. 4.46On Prov 25:25b: the good news from afar is the message of the resurrection and the promises.
59. 4.47On Prov 26:6: whoever sends a fool brings insult on himself.
60. 4.48A running interpretation of Prov 30:17–31 (LXX 24:52–66): the ways of the man in youth, the adulteress, the four things the earth cannot bear, the lizard, the locust, and the four stately things all point to Christ, the church, and the nations.
61. 5.1On Eccl 2:10: the toiler's reward is joy, and those who labor for virtue are initiated by visions and angels into what is to come.
62. 6.1On Isa 19:1: Egypt is the world, its idols are idolatry, and the light cloud on which the Lord rides is Christ's pure body, by which he came to shake error.
63. 7.1From the discourse on the talents: heretics who deny either Christ's divinity or his real flesh, like Marcion and Valentinus, bury one of the talents.
64. 8.1Christ's pierced body gave the world both sacred blood and holy water.
65. 8.2The blood and water from Christ's dead body show the life-giving power that dwelt in it.
66. 8.3The unbroken bones of the lamb show that Christ's suffering did not touch his power.
67. 9.1The first part of a homily on the raising of Lazarus: the preacher apologizes for yesterday's lapse of memory, praises the illness and death of Lazarus as occasions of faith, and shows Christ both man and God.
68. 9.2The second part of the Lazarus homily: Christ's tears teach ordered sympathy, the Jews roll away the stone as witnesses, and the voice that created the world raises Lazarus, a mirror of our own resurrection.
69. 10.1In the resurrection men will be like angels, incorruptible and free from all bodily needs and sufferings.
70. 11.1The homily on the Theophany opens by praising the goodness of creation and the necessity of water, then marvels that Christ was baptized in the Jordan, and gives John the Baptist's confession of his own lowliness before Christ.
71. 11.4Christ comes to John in humility; John protests that he needs Christ's baptism, but Christ insists on fulfilling all righteousness, and at his baptism the heavens open and the Father bears witness.
72. 11.6Christ's baptism opened heaven and reconciled earth with heaven; the Father's voice and the dove reveal the Son, and through water and Spirit man is regenerated to immortality as co-heir with Christ.
73. 11.9The Spirit who moved over the waters at creation, inspired the prophets, came on Christ and the apostles, and established the church is sent to make the believer a child of God.
74. 11.10The homily ends by calling the hearer to regeneration in baptism, foretold by Isaiah, in which one renounces the devil, confesses Christ as God, and rises a son of God.
75. 12.1Mary bore the firstborn Word of God joined to a firstborn man formed in her womb.
76. 12.2Fragments on the Pascha: Christ was presented in the temple under the law to redeem those under it; with his own soul he went down to Hades; he ate the supper before the Passover and suffered rather than ate it; and he showed his manhood in Gethsemane.