Homilies on Leviticus 7.1–7.3

Many things were read in the previous reading, of which, constrained by the shortness of time, we said very few. For we are now exercising the ministry not of expounding the Scriptures but of building up the churches; although from what we have treated before, every prudent hearer can find clear paths to understanding. And therefore from what has now been read too, since we cannot do everything, we shall nevertheless gather some little flowers that may build up the hearers, as from a full field which the Lord has blessed. Let us see, then, what it is that has now been read to us. “And the Lord spoke to Aaron, saying: You shall not drink wine or strong drink, you and your sons with you, when you enter the tabernacle of witness or when you approach the altar, and you shall not die. A perpetual ordinance for your generations: to distinguish between the holy and the defiled, and between the unclean and the clean, and to teach the children of Israel all the ordinances which the Lord spoke to them by the hand of Moses.” A clear law is given both to the priests and to the chief of the priests, that when they approach the altar they abstain from wine and from every drink that can intoxicate, which the divine Scriptures, by a native term, are accustomed to call sicera, strong drink. The divine word, then, wishes the priests of the Lord to be sober in all things, as those who, approaching the altar of God, must pray for the people and intercede for the offences of others; who have no portion on earth, but the Lord himself is their portion; for so Scripture says of them: “To the sons of Levi,” it says, “you shall not give a share among their brothers, because I am their portion, the Lord their God.” He wishes, then, those whose portion is the Lord himself to be sober, fasting, watchful at all times, but especially when they stand at the altars to entreat the Lord and to sacrifice in his sight. These commandments keep their force so far, and must be guarded with such observance, that the Apostle too confirms these same things by the laws of the New Testament. In this he too likewise, setting rules of life for priests or the chiefs of priests, says that they ought not to be slaves to much wine, but sober. For sobriety is the mother of all virtues, as, on the contrary, drunkenness is of all vices. For the Apostle declared openly, saying: “Wine, in which is debauchery,” to show that debauchery is begotten from drunkenness as its first-born daughter. Then besides, the Saviour too, establishing with the authority of Lord and King laws and rights for the priests and the people alike, says: “Take heed lest perhaps your hearts be weighed down with drunkenness and carousing and the cares of the world, and sudden destruction come upon you.” You have heard the edict of the eternal King, and have learned the lamentable end of drunkenness and carousing. If some skilled and wise physician gave you orders in these very words and said, “Take heed that no one, for example, takes too greedily of the juice of this or that herb; for if he does, sudden destruction will come upon him,” I do not doubt that each one, with an eye to his own health, would keep the orders of the physician who warned him. But now the physician of souls and bodies, who is at the same time also Lord, commands that the herb of drunkenness and carousing be avoided, and likewise that the cares of the world be guarded against as deadly juices. And I do not know whether any of us is not consumed by these things, not to say wounded. Drunkenness with wine, then, is ruinous in every way; for it alone makes the soul weak together with the body. For in other things it can happen that, according to the Apostle, when the body is weak, then the spirit is more powerful, and when the outer man is corrupted, the inner man is renewed. But in the sickness of drunkenness the body and soul are corrupted together, the spirit is vitiated equally with the flesh. It weakens all the members; it loosens foot, hand, tongue; it darkens the eyes; oblivion veils the mind, so that a man does not know or feel that he is a man. This, then, first of all, is the disgrace of bodily drunkenness; but if we examine in how many ways the human mind is made drunk, we shall find drunk even those who seem to themselves sober. Anger makes the soul drunk, and fury makes it more than drunk, if anything can be more than drunkenness. Greed and avarice make a man not only drunk but rabid. And obscene desires make the soul drunk, as, on the contrary, holy desires also make it drunk, but with that holy drunkenness of which one of the saints said: “And your cup that makes drunk, how excellent it is!” But we shall see later about the different kinds of drunkenness; for now, see how many things there are that make the soul drunk: fear makes it drunk, and vain suspicion. Envy and spite waste it more than any drunkenness. But it is impossible to count how many things there are that entice the unhappy soul into the vice of drunkenness. For now, let us look at the priests, whom the law commands to abstain from wine when they approach the altar. And indeed as far as the historical precept goes, let what has been said suffice. But as regards the mystical understanding, our profession will be held to in what follows, since, on the authority of the apostle Paul, our Lord and Saviour is called the high priest of the good things to come. He, then, is Aaron, and his sons are his apostles, to whom he himself said: “Little children, yet a little while I am with you.” What, then, did the law command Aaron and his sons? That they should not drink wine and strong drink when they approach the altar. Let us see how we can apply this to the true high priest, Jesus Christ our Lord, and to his priests and sons, our apostles. And first it must be observed how, before he approaches the altar, this true high priest drinks wine with his priests, but when he begins to approach the altar and to enter the tabernacle of witness, he abstains from wine. Do you think we can find anything of the kind done by him? Do you think we can fit the forms of the Old Instrument to the deeds and words of the New Testament? We can, if the Word of God himself deigns to help and inspire us. We are asking, then, how our Lord and Saviour, who is the true high priest, drinks wine with his disciples, who are the true priests, before he approaches the altar of God, but does not drink when he has begun to approach. The Saviour had come into this world to offer his flesh as a victim to God for our sins. Before he offered it, during the delays of his dispensation, he drank wine. Indeed he was called a glutton and a wine-drinker, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. But when the time of his cross came, and he was about to approach the altar where he would sacrifice the victim of his flesh, “taking,” it says, “the cup, he blessed it and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take and drink of this.” You, he says, drink, who are not now about to approach the altar. But he himself, as one about to approach the altar, says of himself: “Truly I say to you, I will not drink of this produce of the vine until I drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father.” If any of you approaches with ears purified for hearing, let him behold the secret of an unspeakable mystery. What does it mean that he says, “I will not drink of this produce of the vine until I drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father”? We said earlier that the promise of this good drunkenness was given to the saints, when they say, “And your cup that makes drunk, how excellent it is!” And in many other places of Scripture we read similar things, as there: “They shall be made drunk with the abundance of your house, and you will give them to drink of the torrent of your delight.” In Jeremiah too the Lord says: “And I will make my people drunk.” And Isaiah says: “Behold, those who serve me shall drink, but you shall be thirsty.” And you will find much mentioned in the divine Scriptures about drunkenness of this kind. This drunkenness is no doubt taken for the joy of the soul and gladness of the mind, as we remember having distinguished elsewhere too: that it is one thing to be drunk by night and another to be drunk by day.

If, then, we have understood what the drunkenness of the saints is, and how it is given to the saints in the promises for gladness, let us see now how our Saviour does not drink wine until he drinks it new with the saints in the kingdom of God. My Saviour mourns even now for my sins. My Saviour cannot rejoice as long as I remain in iniquity. Why can he not? Because he himself is the advocate for our sins with the Father, as John, his fellow initiate, proclaims, saying that “if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins.” How, then, can he who is the advocate for my sins drink the wine of gladness, when I sadden him by sinning? How can he who approaches the altar to make propitiation for me, a sinner, be in gladness, when the grief of my sins always rises up to him? “With you,” he says, “I will drink it in the kingdom of my Father.” As long as we do not act so as to ascend to the kingdom, he cannot drink alone that wine which he promised to drink with us. He is, then, in grief as long as we persist in error. For if his Apostle mourns certain ones who sinned before and did not repent of what they had done, what shall I say of him who is called the Son of love, who emptied himself because of the love he had for us, and did not seek his own, although he was equal to God, but sought what is ours, and for this reason emptied himself? Since, then, he has sought what is ours, he now stands before the face of God, interceding for us; he stands at the altar to offer propitiation to God for us; and therefore he said, as one about to approach that altar, “I will no longer drink of this produce of the vine until I drink it new with you.” He waits, then, for us to be converted, to imitate his example, to follow in his footsteps, so that he may rejoice with us and drink wine with us in the kingdom of his Father. For now, because the Lord is merciful and compassionate, he himself weeps with those who weep with greater affection than his Apostle, and desires to rejoice with those who rejoice. And much more does he himself mourn those who sinned before and did not repent. For we must not think that Paul mourns for sinners and weeps for those who transgress, while my Lord Jesus abstains from weeping when he approaches the Father, when he stands at the altar and offers propitiation for us. And this is not to drink the wine of gladness when he approaches the altar: because he still suffers the bitterness of our sins. He does not wish, then, to drink wine alone in the kingdom of God; he waits for us. For so he said: “Until I drink it with you.” We, then, are the ones who, neglecting our life, delay his gladness. He waits for us so that he may drink of this produce of the vine. Of what vine? Of that, surely, of which he himself was the figure, saying: “I am the vine, you are the branches.” Hence again he says that “my blood is truly drink, and my flesh is truly food.” For truly he washed his robe in the blood of the grape. What, then, does this mean? He waits for gladness. When does he wait? “When I have finished,” he says, “my work.” When does he finish this work? When he has made me, who am the last and worst of all sinners, finished and perfect, then he finishes his work. For now his work is still unfinished, as long as I remain unfinished. Indeed, as long as I am not subject to the Father, he himself is not said to be subject to the Father. Not that he himself needs subjection before the Father, but for my sake, in whom he has not yet finished his work, he himself is said not to be subject. For so we read, that we are the body of Christ and members in part. And let us see what he means by “in part”. I now, for example, am subject to God according to purpose and will; but as long as in me the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and I have not yet been able to subject the flesh to the spirit, I am indeed subject to God, but not wholly, only in part. But if I am able to bring even my flesh and all my members into harmony with the spirit, then I shall be seen to be perfectly subject. If you have understood what it is to be subject in part and what it is to be subject wholly, return now to what we set forth about the subjection of the Lord, and see that, since we are all said to be his body and members, as long as there are some among us who are not yet subject with perfect subjection, he himself is said not to be subject. But when he has finished his work and brought his whole creation to the summit of perfection, then he himself will be said to be subject in those whom he has subjected to the Father, and in whom he has finished the work which the Father had given him, so that God may be all in all. But to what do these things look? That we may understand what we treated above: how he does not drink wine, or how he drank before he entered the tabernacle, before he approached the altar. He does not drink now, because he stands at the altar and mourns my sins; and again he will drink afterwards, when all things have been subjected to him, and, all having been saved and the death of sin destroyed, it will no longer be necessary to offer victims for sin. For then there will be joy and gladness, and then “the humbled bones will exult,” and what is written will be fulfilled: “Pain and sorrow and groaning will flee away.” But let us not omit this either: that it is said not only of Aaron that he should not drink wine, but also of his sons when they enter the holy place. For not even the apostles have yet received their gladness, but they too wait, so that I too may become a partaker of their gladness. For the saints, departing from here, do not at once obtain the full rewards of their merits; but they wait also for us, though we delay, though we are idle. For they do not have perfect gladness as long as they grieve for our errors and mourn our sins. Perhaps you do not believe me when I say this. For who am I to dare to confirm the opinion of so great a doctrine? But I have a witness to these things of whom you cannot doubt. For the apostle Paul is the teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. He, then, writing to the Hebrews, when he had enumerated all the holy fathers who were justified through faith, added after all this too: “But these,” he says, “all having obtained a testimony through faith, have not yet received the promise, God providing something better for us, so that they should not attain perfection without us.” You see, then, that Abraham is still waiting to attain the things that are perfect. Isaac too is waiting, and Jacob, and all the prophets are waiting for us, so that they may receive perfect blessedness with us. For this reason, then, that mystery too of judgment deferred to the last day is kept. For it is one body which is waiting to be justified, one body which is said to rise at the judgment. “For though there are many members, yet one body; the eye cannot say to the hand: I have no need of you,” even if the eye is healthy and not disturbed. As far as seeing goes, if the other members are lacking to it, what gladness will the eye have? Or what perfection will it seem to have if it has no hands, if the feet are lacking, or the other members are not present? For even if there is some surpassing glory of the eye, it lies chiefly in this, that it is the guide of the body, or that it is not deprived of the services of the other members. This, I think, we are taught by that vision of the prophet Ezekiel, when he says that bone was gathered to bone, and joint to joint, and that sinews and veins and skin, and each thing, were to be restored to its place. Then see what the prophet adds: “These bones,” he says (he did not say “are all men”, but said), “these bones are the house of Israel.” You will have gladness, then, on departing from this life, if you are holy. But then the gladness will be full when no member of the body is lacking to you. For you will wait for others, as you too have been waited for. But if to you, who are a member, gladness does not seem perfect if another member is lacking, how much more does our Lord and Saviour, who is the head and author of the whole body, say that his gladness is not perfect as long as he sees any of the members lacking to his body? And for this reason perhaps he poured out his prayer to the Father, saying: “Holy Father, glorify me with that glory which I had with you before the world was.” He does not wish, then, to receive his perfect glory without you, that is, without his people, who are his body and who are his members. For he wishes to dwell, like a soul, in this body of his church and in these members of his people, so that he may have all its movements and all its works according to his will; so that the saying of the prophet may truly be fulfilled in us: “I will dwell in them and walk among them.” But as long as we are not all perfect, but are still in sins, he is in us in part; and therefore we know in part and prophesy in part, until one deserves to reach that measure which the Apostle speaks of: “But I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.” In part, then, as the Apostle says, we are now his members, and in part his bones. But when bone has been joined to bone, and joint to joint, according to what we said above, then he himself will also say of us that prophetic word: “All my bones shall say: Lord, who is like you?” For all these bones speak, and sing a hymn, and give thanks to God. For they remember his kindness, and therefore “all my bones shall say: Lord, who is like you? You rescue the poor from the hand of one stronger than he.” Of these bones, while they were still scattered, before he came who would gather them and bring them together into one, that prophetic word too was spoken: “Our bones are scattered beside Hades.” Because, then, they were scattered, therefore he says through another prophet: “Let bone be gathered to bone, and joint to joint, and sinews and veins and skins.” For when this has been done, then “all these will say: Lord, who is like you? Rescuing the poor from the hand of those stronger than he.” For each bone of these bones was poor and was being crushed by the hand of the stronger. For it did not have the joint of love, nor the sinews of patience, nor the veins of a living spirit and the vigour of faith. But when he came who would gather the scattered and join the dispersed, uniting bone to bone and joint to joint, he began to build the holy body of the church. These things came up as a digression from this discussion, but they had to be explained, so that the entrance of my high priest into the holy place, not drinking wine until he should perform the priesthood, might become more manifest. After this, however, he will drink wine, but new wine, and new wine in a new heaven and in a new earth, and in a new man, with new men, and with those who sing to him a new song. You see, then, that it is impossible for the new cup from the new vine to be drunk by one who is still clothed with the old man with his deeds. “For no one,” he says, “puts new wine into old wineskins.” If, then, you too wish to drink of this new wine, be renewed, and say that “even if our outer man is corrupted, yet the inner man is renewed day by day.” And of these things enough has been said.

There are many other things which were read. But since we cannot do everything, we must choose what we ought to speak about. And since we have said, as best we could, what it is to drink and not to drink wine, let us now see what it is also to eat the breast of segregation and the shoulder of taking-away. After this we shall discuss clean and unclean foods or animals, as far as the Lord grants and time allows. Scripture says, then: “The breast of segregation and the shoulder of taking-away you shall eat in a holy place, you and your sons and your household with you; for it is given as an ordinance to you and an ordinance to your sons from the peace offerings of the children of Israel, the shoulder of taking-away and the breast of segregation.” Not every breast is the breast of segregation; nor is every shoulder the shoulder of taking-away and separation. But since we have referred the person of the high priest to my Lord Jesus, and his sons to the holy apostles, let us see how he himself eats the breast of segregation, and his sons, while not all others can eat the breast of segregation. What, then, is it that is segregated from all things and has nothing in common with the rest, if not the substance of the Trinity alone? If, then, I understand the reason of the world, but cannot understand about God as is worthy, and the knowledge of God has not been revealed to me, I eat a breast indeed, but not the breast of segregation. Even if I can say, “For he gave me true knowledge of the things that are, to know the reason of the world and the power of the elements, the beginning and end and middle of times, the alternations of changes and the turnings of seasons, the cycles of the year and the arrangements of the stars,” the knowledge of all these things, because it is rational, is food from the breast, but not from the breast of segregation. But if I can think about God things that are great, holy, true, and secret, then I shall eat the breast of segregation, when I have come to know that which surpasses and is segregated from every creature. My true high priest, then, first eats this breast. How does he eat it? “No one,” he says, “knows the Father except the Son.” In the second place his sons also eat. “For no one knows the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” And to whom else does he reveal him than to his apostles? And the shoulder of separation, or of taking-away, as we said above too, is actions and works more eminent than the rest, which surely my Saviour and Lord himself first fulfilled. How did he fulfil them? “My food,” he says, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” When, then, he does the will of him who sent him, in this he eats not the breast but the shoulder of separation. And likewise his apostles, when they do the work of an evangelist and become workmen who need not be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth, eat the shoulder of separation or of taking-away. Do you wish to see still more plainly how the Saviour eats the shoulder of separation? Hear what he says to the Jews: “If I have done works among you which no one else has done, for which of these do you wish to kill me?” You see how he truly eats the shoulder of separation, who did works so set apart and so sublime as no one else has done.