Homilies on Leviticus 12.1–12.7

Every priest among men is small and slight compared with that priest of whom God said, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” He is the great priest who can pass through the heavens and go beyond the whole creation and ascend to him who “dwells in unapproachable light,” God the Father of the universe. That is why the one who among the Jews was called the great priest entered indeed into the holy place, but one made with hands, built of stones; he did not ascend into heaven, nor could he stand before the Father of lights. But because he fulfilled the shadow and image of these things, he therefore also bore the name of great priest by way of shadow and image. Hence the Jews, who for this very reason ought to have been near to faith, because among them a certain foreshadowing and image of the truth had been played out beforehand, rejected the truth itself as a lie, while they took the types for the truth. But we who receive the great priest must understand how he is truly the great priest. He is truly the great priest who forgives sins not through the blood of bulls and goats but through his own blood. Since, then, we have come to know who the great priest is, and confess that the things written in the law were written of the great priest, that is, of the Saviour, whom the preceding treatment showed to be truly the great priest, let us now see what the law writes of him by the prophetic Spirit.

“And the great priest,” it says, “from among his brothers, on whose head the oil of anointing has been poured, and whose hands have been perfected so that he may put on the holy garments, shall not take the turban off his head, shall not tear his garments, and shall not go in to any dead soul; he shall not be defiled for his father or his mother; and he shall not go out of the holy place, and shall not profane the sanctified name of his God which is upon him, because the holy oil of anointing of his God is upon him: I am the Lord. He shall take as wife a virgin of his own race. A widow, and one cast out, and one defiled, and a harlot, these he shall not take; but he shall take a virgin of his own race as wife, and he shall not defile his seed among his people; I am the Lord who sanctifies him.” Granted, the image of this observance existed among the Jews too, and what the law laid down was kept by the high priests of the Jews; but even if all was carefully kept and everything the law commanded was fulfilled, not even so could all this observance make a great priest. For how can one be called a great priest who can sin? And that all, even the great priests, were under sin we easily see from the very fact that the law commands the priest to offer a victim first for his own sins and afterwards for the sins of the people. How, then, is one great who is placed under sin? But my great priest Jesus is great for this reason, that he committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth, and that the ruler of this world came to him and found nothing in him. That is why the archangel Gabriel too announces his birth and says: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.” Sin makes a man small and slight; virtue renders him eminent and great. For as sickness of body makes a man's body thin and slight, while health makes it flourishing and strong, so I understand that the sickness of sin makes the soul low and small, while the health of the inner man and the works of virtue make it great and eminent; and the more it grows in virtues, the greater the magnitude it gives itself. So I understand what is written of Jesus, that he advanced in wisdom and in stature and in grace with God and men. For who among men does not advance in stature in childhood, that this should be written of Jesus as something remarkable? I say this to you who hear in a bodily sense that Jesus advanced in stature. Understand, then, that he advanced in the stature of the soul, and his soul became great because of the great and mighty works he did. Indeed the Apostle too, knowing that this stature is to be understood of the inner man, writes thus: “Until we all attain to the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” For to grow and become great in body is not in our power. The body takes the material of its size from its origin in generation, to become either large or small. But the soul has in us its causes and freedom of choice to be either great or small. If, then, the soul is little and small, it can also be made to stumble. For so it is written in the Gospel, that it is better to be cast into the depth of the sea than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. The one who is great, whatever he sees, whatever he suffers, does not turn aside from the faith. But the one who is little and small in soul seeks occasions to stumble, to seem offended in the faith. For this reason, finally, we must take most care for those who are little in faith; we owe less care to the great and strong than to the little and the unwise. For the strong man bears all things, endures all things, and never falls. But with the little and weak in faith we must take care lest they be offended on our account, and fall away from the faith and fall from salvation. Or show me from the Scriptures where any sinner, or one of small merit, has been called great. Nowhere, I think, will you find it. But hear who they are that are called great. Of Isaac it is said that he advanced greatly until he became very great. Moses was called great, and John the Baptist was called great, and now Jesus has been called great, and after him no one has been called great. For before he came who is truly great, the saints whom we mentioned above were called great in comparison with other men. But when he came who was truly great, not by comparison with others but by his own greatness, of whom it is also written that he “rejoiced like a giant to run his course,” no one any longer has been called great. This, then, is the one of whom it is written: “The great priest from among his brothers.” Which brothers? Those of whom he said when he had risen from the dead: “Go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” And if you wish to learn of the brothers of Jesus from the ancient writings, read the twenty-first psalm, where it is said in the person of Christ: “I will tell your name to my brothers; in the midst of the church I will praise you.” Jesus, then, is great from among his brothers, from those who had previously been called great; and as he is the shepherd of shepherds, and high priest of high priests, and Lord of lords, and King of kings, so also he is the great one of the great; and therefore it adds, “great from among his brothers.”

After this it says: “on whom the oil of anointing has been poured upon his head.” Do not seek on earth this oil which is poured on the head of the great priest so that he becomes an anointed one; but if you please, learn from the prophet David what kind of oil this is: “You have loved righteousness,” he says, “and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.” This, then, is the oil of gladness which, poured on his head, made him Christ. But he adds yet further to his praises: “Who has perfected hands,” he says. To which of men, I ask, is it fitting to say this? In which of mortals can we find perfected hands? Even if this were Aaron, who seems to be mentioned, how will he be thought to have had perfected hands, with which he fashioned the calf, with which he carved the idol? Even if you put forward Moses himself, how does he seem to have had perfected hands, who did not glorify the Lord at the water of contradiction? For this offence he is even commanded to depart from life. And if you wish to mention any other of the saints, the word of Scripture meets you, which says that there is no man on earth who does good and does not sin. Rightly, then, Jesus alone has perfected hands, he who alone committed no sin, that is, who has perfect and unblemished works of his hands. And therefore it is rightly said of him: “who has perfected hands, so that he may be clothed in the holy things.” For he it is who is truly clothed in the holy things, not those which were in the type, but those which are truly holy. And if you wish to hear of his loftier garments, receive the prophetic words: “Clothed,” it says, “with light as with a garment; the abyss, like a mantle, is his garment.” This is the dress of my great high priest, by which is indicated that he is clothed with deep knowledge and the light of wisdom, which are truly holy garments. “He shall not take,” it says, “the turban off his head.” We said before that a turban is a kind of covering which, placed on the head, gives the high priest adornment. This great high priest of mine, then, never lays aside the adornment of his sacred head. What the head of Christ is, learn from the Apostle, who says: “But the head of Christ is God.” Rightly, then, he never lays aside this adornment of his head, which is God, because the Father is always in the Son, as the Son is always in the Father. “And he shall not tear his garments.” Truly this is he who does not tear his garments, but has always kept them clean, always whole, always chaste. “And he shall not go in to any dead soul.” What is the dead soul? The one which the prophet calls dead: “The soul that sins, it shall die.” Christ does not come upon this dead soul, because he is wisdom, and wisdom does not enter a malevolent soul. For that soul is dead, because in whom there is wickedness there is also sin. “But sin, when it is completed,” it says, “brings forth death.” And for this reason Jesus does not go in to a dead soul. But if the soul is alive, that is, if it does not have mortal sin in itself, then Christ, who is life, comes to the living soul. For as light cannot be with darkness, nor righteousness with iniquity, so neither can life be with death. And therefore, if anyone is conscious that he has a deadly sin within him and has not cast it off from himself through the repentance of the fullest satisfaction, let him not hope that Christ will enter his soul, who does not go in to any dead soul, because he is the great priest.

“He shall not be defiled for his father and his mother.” This passage of Scripture is very difficult to explain; but if by your prayers you entreat God, the Father of the Word, to deign to enlighten us, it may be explained by his gift. Everyone who enters this world is said to be made in a certain defilement. That is why Scripture says: “No one is clean from filth, not even if his life is of one day.” By the very fact, then, that you were placed in your mother's womb, and that you take the matter of your body from the origin of your father's seed, you can be said to be defiled in father and mother. Or do you not know that when a male child is forty days old he is presented at the altar to be purified there, as one who was polluted in the very conception, whether by the father's seed or the mother's womb? Every man, then, is polluted in father and mother; but Jesus my Lord alone entered this birth clean; he was not polluted in his mother. For he entered an undefiled body. For he it was who had long before said through Solomon: “But rather, since I was good, I came into an undefiled body.” He was not, then, defiled in his mother, nor even in his father. For Joseph contributed nothing to his birth except service and affection. Hence, for his faithful service, Scripture grants him the name of father. For so Mary herself says in the Gospel: “See, your father and I have been seeking you in sorrow.” So, then, this is the only great priest who was polluted neither in father nor in mother. But let us see whether we can still find something more sublime and worthy of so great a high priest. God is called the true Father of all. And the Apostle says that the heavenly Jerusalem is the mother. All who sin, then, are defiled in the Father by whom they were created. For whether we have done anything impious, or spoken, or thought against God, when we did not believe God we were defiled in the Father. And would that this had happened only then through unbelief, and had ceased after we believed! So too we are defiled in the mother if, believing God, we either injure the church or defile the freedom of the heavenly mother by the unworthy slavery of sin. Only our Lord Jesus Christ, who knows no sin, was defiled neither in father nor in mother, and did not go out of the holy place. There were indeed several things in the preceding passages to be put to the Jews, to which they could not answer; but leaving those aside, as to this passage, let them tell us, whether they themselves or those who wish the law to be understood according to their sense: if these things are not referred to our high priest and Saviour, how will it be proved according to the letter that the great priest does not go out of the holy place, he who certainly also took a wife, as is said further on, a virgin of his own race? If he does not go out of the holy place, if he goes nowhere, how, or for what uses, is he commanded to take a wife? For it must not be supposed that he could remain with a wife inside the holy place. But let those think these things who are pleased by Jewish fables. We, however, have a great priest according to the order of Melchizedek, Christ Jesus, never going out of the holy place; for he is always in the holy place, and remains always holy in his words, holy in his deeds, holy in all his wishes, and he alone is never found outside the holy place. For whoever sins goes out of the holy place; and as often as anyone sins, so often is he put outside the holy place. But Christ, who never sinned, never went out of the holy place. And you too who follow Christ and are his imitator, if you remain in the word of God, if you meditate on his law day and night, if you are exercised in his commandments, are always in the holy place and never depart from it. For holy things are not to be sought in a place but in deeds, in life and conduct. If these are according to God and held according to God's commandments, even if you are at home, even in the forum (and why do I say in the forum?), even if you are found in the theatre serving the word of God, do not doubt that you are in the holy place. Or does not Paul seem to you to have been in the holy place when he entered the theatre, or when he entered the Areopagus and preached Christ to the Athenians? And also when he had walked about among the altars and idols of the Athenians, where he found written, “To an unknown God,” and from this word took the beginning of his preaching of Christ, even there, surveying the altars of the pagans, he was in the holy place, because he was thinking holy things. And whoever, after receiving the grace of God, guards himself from falling into murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and the like, but remains clean from every contagion of sin, has not gone out of the holy place and has not profaned the sanctification of his God in himself, because the holy oil of anointing of his God is upon him. That oil of which it is written in Exodus: how can it properly, according to the letter, be called God's oil, when it was made by a perfumer by the art of ointment-making? But if you wish to see God's oil, hear whom the prophet says was anointed with God's oil: without doubt him of whom he says: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.” This, then, is the great priest, who alone was anointed with God's oil, and in whom the oil of the divine anointing always remained holy.

But what is added after this? “He shall take a virgin of his own race as wife; but a widow and one cast out and a harlot he shall not take, but a virgin of his own race; and he shall not defile his seed among his people: I am the Lord who sanctifies him.” Since, then, the order of the whole exposition has been brought back to the true great priest, Christ, let us see now what is to be understood of his marriage. The apostle Paul says: “For I wish to present you all as a chaste virgin to one husband, to Christ. But I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so your minds be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” Paul, then, wishes to present all the Corinthians as a chaste virgin to Christ: which he would certainly never wish unless he saw it to be possible. Hence it may perhaps seem wonderful how those who came to the faith of Christ corrupted by various sins can all together be called a chaste virgin, a virgin so holy and so chaste that she deserves to be joined in marriage even to Christ. But since we cannot refer these things to bodily integrity, it is certain that they look to the integrity of the soul, whose virginity, according to the judgment of Paul himself, is called the simplicity of faith that is in Christ. And through this, since Christ, when the sophisms of the philosophers and the superstitions of the Jews had ceased, took the church to himself in simple faith, he took as wife a virgin of his own race. For her faith is not corrupted by philosophical opinion nor by the ambition of circumcision, but she has remained in the simplicity of confession as in virginal integrity. For so he had long before promised through the prophet, saying: “I will betroth you to myself in faith.” Everyone, then, according to the Apostle, who is in Christ is a new creation. And, as the same Apostle says: “that he might present the church to himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she might be holy and without blemish.” How, then, does he make her who is wrinkled to be without wrinkle, unless by renewing her? According to what is written: “For though our outer man is being corrupted, yet the inner man is being renewed day by day.” A widow, indeed, and a harlot and one cast out Christ will not take, nor does such a soul enter the bridegroom's chamber. For whoever enters there not having wedding garments will suffer what you know to be written in the Gospel. He will take, then, a virgin; he will not take a widow, nor a harlot, nor one cast out or defiled. Why Christ does not take in marriage a harlot, a soul cast off and polluted, needs no labour to explain; but why a widow is not received as wife must be looked into more carefully. The apostle Paul, writing to the Romans, says that the law is the husband of the soul, and declares that when the husband has died she is freed from the law of the husband, so that she is no longer an adulteress if she is married to Christ. But if it happens that the law dies to the soul itself, that is, that the soul departs from the law, and yet does not bind itself by the disciplines of a chaster marriage, and, departing from the law, does not take up the yoke of the Gospel teaching, she will not be able to marry Christ, since she has sought the wantonness of freedom, not the cultivation of a virginal and simple faith. This great priest, then, will take a virgin of his own race as wife. It can also seem to be said “of his own race” because the soul of Christ was of the race and substance of all human souls. It can also be said, in accordance with his calling those who believe in him brothers, that the soul which is united to him in faith as in marriage is “of his own race.” Yet I do not want you to be unaware that the Hebrews deny that they have written what we find in the Septuagint translators, “of his own race.” And rightly they do not have it written. For nearness to God has been taken from them, the adoption of sons has been taken away and transferred to the church of Christ. They, then, do not have it written that they are of Christ's race, just as they have not deserved to be. But we who have this written and read it, let us indeed rejoice in God's condescension, but let us take careful and anxious care that our life, deeds, and conduct never make us degenerate, lest this very thing be brought to our condemnation, that though we are the race of Christ we serve unworthy, foul, and devilish deeds. “He who has the bride is the bridegroom.” You hear how Christ is called the bridegroom, and the soul is called the bride, which is proved incorrupt and a virgin by simplicity of faith and purity of deeds. For the Lord says also through the prophet Jeremiah: “Did you not call me Lord and father and guide of your virginity?”

“But a widow and one cast out and one defiled he shall not take.” If any of us has sinned, he is cast out, even if he is not cast out by the bishop, whether because his sin is hidden or because sometimes a judgment is made out of favour; yet he is cast out by the very consciousness of sin. Nor does human favour help, since Christ does not receive such a soul in marriage, as one cast out. He will take, then, neither a widow, as we said above, nor one cast out, nor one polluted. That soul is called polluted which, even if it has not wholly completed the sin, yet by the very fact that it thought it, that it desired it, even if it did not commit it, is polluted, and is not chosen by the great high priest. For he seeks a very pure, very clean and sincere soul to join to himself, because “he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit.” Hence it is also shown that there are differences of sins, and that the one who has sinned a sin unto death is cast out, while the one who does not sin unto death but something lesser is polluted. But the bride of Christ can be neither cast out nor polluted; she is a virgin undefiled, incorrupt, and clean. For remember the apostolic word which we set out a little before: “that he might present the church to himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she might be holy and without blemish.”

“And he shall not take a harlot.” Which soul is a harlot? The one that has received lovers to itself, of whom the prophet says: “You have played the harlot after your lovers.” Who are these lovers who go in to the harlot soul, if not the opposing powers and demons, who conceive desire for her beauty? For the soul was created beautiful by God, and very comely. Hear how God himself says: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” See of what comeliness, of what beauty, is the soul which has the image and likeness of God. When the opposing powers, that is, the devil and his angels, look on this beauty, they covet her loveliness; and since they cannot become her bridegrooms, they long to play the harlot with her. If, then, O man, you have received the adulterer, the devil, into the bed of your soul, your soul has played the harlot with the devil. If you have received his angels, the various spirits that persuade you to sin, your soul has played the harlot with them. If the spirit of anger, of envy, of pride, of unchastity has entered your soul, and you have received him and consented to him as he speaks in your heart and taken delight in what he suggests to you according to his mind, you have played the harlot with him. The great priest, then, will not take a harlot, “and he shall not defile his seed among his people.” What is this seed which he does not want defiled? In the Gospels it is written: “He who sows sows the word.” He does not want the word of God, then, to be defiled by those who sow. Who, then, are those who sow? Those who bring forth the word of God in the church. Let the teachers hear, then, lest perhaps they entrust the words of God to a defiled soul, a harlot soul, an unfaithful soul, lest perhaps they give what is holy to dogs and pearls before swine; but let them choose clean souls, virgins in the simplicity of faith that is in Christ, entrust the secret mysteries to them, and to them speak out the word of God and the hidden things of faith, that Christ may be formed in them through faith. Or do you not know that from this seed of the word of God that is sown, Christ is born in the hearts of the hearers? For the Apostle says this: “Until Christ is formed in you.” The soul, then, conceives from this seed of the word, and forms within itself the word it has conceived, until it gives birth to the spirit of the fear of God. For so the souls of the saints say through the prophet: “From your fear, O Lord, we have conceived in the womb, and been in labour, and given birth to the spirit of your salvation, which we have made upon the earth.” This is the offspring of holy souls, this their conception; these are the holy marriages which befit and suit the great Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.