Homilies on Leviticus 9.10–10.2

The divine word says, then: “And he shall put the incense on the fire before the Lord, and the smoke of the incense shall cover the mercy seat that is over the testimonies, and he will not die; and he shall take some of the blood of the calf and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat toward the east.” It taught how the rite of atonement for men, made to God among the ancients, was to be celebrated. But you who have come to Christ, the true high priest, who by his blood has made God propitious to you and reconciled you to the Father, do not linger over the blood of flesh; learn rather the blood of the Word, and hear him saying to you: “This is my blood, which will be poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.” He who has been initiated into the mysteries knows both the flesh and the blood of the Word of God. Let us not, then, linger over things which are known to those who know and cannot be laid open to those who do not. But do not take idly that he sprinkles toward the east. Atonement comes to you from the east. For from there is the man whose name is the East, who has been made mediator between God and men. You are invited by this, then, always to look toward the east, from where the sun of righteousness rises for you, from where light is always born for you, so that you may never walk in darkness, nor that last day overtake you in darkness, nor the night and gloom of ignorance creep upon you, but that you may always dwell in the light of knowledge, always have the day of faith, always holding the light of love and peace.

After this Scripture adds: “And there shall be no man,” it says, “when the high priest enters within the inner veil into the tabernacle of testimony.” How will there be no man? I take it thus: whoever has been able to follow Christ, and to pass with him into the inner tabernacle and ascend to the heights of the heavens, will no longer be a man but, according to his own word, will be like an angel of God. Or perhaps that word will also be fulfilled upon him which the Lord himself spoke: “I said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.” Whether, then, having become spiritual, he becomes one spirit with the Lord, or through the glory of the resurrection passes into the order of the angels, he will rightly no longer be a man; but each one achieves this for himself, either to go beyond the name of man or to be reckoned within the condition of this word. For if man, when made in the beginning, had kept what Scripture says to him, “See, I have set before your eyes death and life; choose life for yourself,” the mortal condition would surely never have held the human race. But since, abandoning life, he followed death, he was made a man; and not only a man but also earth, which is why he is said to return to the earth. Yet I ask what this death is of which he says, “I have set it before your eyes.” For of life there is no doubt that God points to himself, who says, “I am the truth and the life.” What, then, is this death, contrary to life, which God has set before our eyes? I think it is said of the one of whom Paul says, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” This enemy, then, is the devil, who was indeed set before our eyes at the first but will be destroyed last. And he had been set before our eyes not that we might follow him but that we might avoid him. Hence I also think that the human soul in itself can be called neither mortal nor immortal; but if it touches life and partakes of life, it will be immortal, for death does not fall upon life; but if, turning away from life, it draws a share of death, it makes itself mortal. And therefore the prophet says: “The soul that sins, it shall die”; although we do not understand its death as the destruction of its substance, but this very thing, that it is estranged and exiled from God, who is the true life, is to be believed to be death for it. There is, then, no partnership of righteousness with iniquity, no fellowship of light with darkness, no accord of Christ with Belial. If we choose life, we shall live forever, death will not have dominion over us, and the word of the Lord will be fulfilled in us, who said: “He who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.” Let us therefore choose life, let us choose light, that we may walk honestly as in the day, so that, following Jesus within the veil of the inner tabernacle, we may no longer be as mortal men but as immortal angels, when the Lord Jesus Christ himself has destroyed the last enemy, death, he who is the way and the truth and the life, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

We who are of the church rightly receive Moses and read his writings, holding of him that as a prophet, with God revealing it to him, he wrote down in symbols and figures and allegorical forms the mysteries to come, which we teach have been fulfilled in their time. But whoever does not receive such a sense in him, whether one of the Jews or even one of our own, cannot even show that he was a prophet. For how will he prove to be a prophet one whose writings he asserts are ordinary, aware of nothing future, and containing nothing of hidden mystery? The divine word therefore rebukes the one who thinks thus when he reads these things, and says: “Do you think you understand what you are reading?” The law, then, and all that is in the law, was imposed, according to the Apostle's judgment, until the time of reformation. And just as those whose craft it is to make figures of bronze and to cast statues first form a model of clay in the likeness of the future image before they produce the true work of bronze or silver or gold, a model which is indeed necessary, but only until the principal work is completed, and when the work for whose sake the clay model was formed has been finished, its use is no longer sought: understand something of this kind also in the things that were written or done in the law and the prophets as a type and figure of things to come. For the craftsman and author of all things himself came, and transferred the law, which had a shadow of the good things to come, to the very image of the realities. But lest perhaps what we say should seem hard for you to prove, consider it point by point. Formerly there was Jerusalem, that great royal city, where a most famous temple had been built for God. But after he came who was the true temple of God, and said of the temple of his body, “Destroy this temple,” and since the heavenly Jerusalem began to open its mysteries, that earthly one was destroyed when the heavenly appeared: in that temple not one stone remained upon a stone, from the time when the flesh of Christ became the true temple of God. Formerly there was a high priest purifying the people with the blood of bulls and goats; but since the true high priest came, who sanctifies believers with his own blood, that former high priest is nowhere, nor is any place left to him. Formerly there was an altar, and sacrifices were celebrated; but when the true Lamb came, who offered himself as a victim to God, all those things ceased, as having been instituted for a time. Does it not seem to you, then, according to the figure that we set out above, that they were like certain forms fashioned of clay through which the images of the truth were expressed? For this reason, finally, the divine dispensation arranged that the city itself and the temple and all those things should be overthrown together, lest anyone still a little child and fed on milk in the faith, if he saw them standing, should be carried away by the very sight of their various forms while he gazed in astonishment at the rite of the sacrifices and the order of the ministries. But God, providing for our weakness and wishing his church to be multiplied, caused all those things to be overthrown and utterly taken away, so that, once they had ceased, we might believe without any hesitation that these things are true for which the type had gone before in those.

Hence we must now also say something to those who think that by the command of the law they too should fast the fast of the Jews. And first of all I will use the words of Paul, who says that if anyone wishes to keep any one of the observances of the law, he is bound to do the whole law. Let him, then, who observes these fasts go up three times a year to Jerusalem, to appear before the temple of the Lord, to present himself to the priest; let him look for the altar that has been turned to dust; let him offer victims with no high priest standing by. For it is written that the people, while fasting, should offer as a sacrifice two goats, over which lots must be cast, so that one of them may become the Lord's lot and be offered as a victim to the Lord, while the lot of the other is to be sent alive into the wilderness, bearing in itself the sins of the people. All these things must be carried out by you in consequence, if you wish to keep the fast according to the precept of the law. We have discussed these things, as far as we could, in the preceding discourse. Yet since the word of God is rich, and, according to the judgment of Solomon, is to be written in the heart not simply but doubly and triply, let us try now also to add something to what was said a while ago according to our strength, to show how, as a type of things to come, here too one goat was offered to the Lord as a victim and the other was sent away alive. Hear Pilate in the Gospels saying to the priests and the people of the Jews: “Which of the two do you want me to release to you, Jesus who is called Christ, or Barabbas?” Then all the people cried out that he should release Barabbas and hand Jesus over to death. See, you have the goat that was sent away alive into the wilderness, bearing with him the sins of the people who cried out and said, “Crucify, crucify.” This, then, is the live goat sent away into the wilderness; and that one is the goat which was offered to the Lord as a victim to atone for sins, and made true atonement for the peoples who believe in him. And if you ask this too, who it was that led this goat into the wilderness, so that it may be shown in him also that he was washed and made clean, Pilate himself can be taken as the ready man. For he was the judge of that nation, and he sent him out into the wilderness by his sentence. But hear how he was washed and made clean. When he said to the people, “Do you want me to release to you Jesus who is called Christ?” and all the people shouted, saying, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend,” then, it says, Pilate asked for water and washed his hands before the people, saying, “I am clean of his blood; see to it yourselves.” Thus he will seem to have been made clean by washing his hands. For us, then, that is, for us who serve not a shadow and a copy but the truth, this is the Day of Atonement, on which the forgiveness of sins was given to us, when Christ our Passover was sacrificed. How, then, having known the truth, do we turn back again to the weak and beggarly elements of this world, which you want to serve again from the beginning, observing days and months and seasons and years? Hear how the prophet too rejects such a fast and says: “I have not chosen this fast, says the Lord, nor a day for a man to humble his soul.” If you wish to fast according to Christ and humble your soul, every season of the whole year is fit for you; indeed, hold all the days of your whole life for humbling your soul, if indeed you have learned from our Lord and Saviour that he is gentle and humble of heart. When, then, is it not a day of humiliation for you who follow Christ, who is humble of heart and the teacher of humility? If, then, you wish to fast, fast according to the precept of the Gospel, and in your fasts observe the laws of the Gospel, in which the Saviour gives this command about fasting: “But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face.” And if you ask how you are to wash your face, the apostle Paul teaches how with unveiled face you may behold the glory of the Lord, being formed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. Anoint your head too, but take care that it is not with the oil of sin, for “let not the oil of the sinner fatten your head.” Rather anoint your head with the oil of exultation, the oil of gladness, the oil of mercy, so that, according to the command of Wisdom, mercy and faith may not forsake you. For this is why the Apostle too, wishing to draw us away from these visible and earthly things and to raise our minds and senses to heavenly things, cries out and says: “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, not those that are on earth.” Does he not plainly say to you: Do not seek Jerusalem on earth, nor the observances of the law, nor the fast of the Jews, but the fast of Christ? For when you fast you must go to your high priest Christ, who is certainly to be sought not on earth but in the heavens, and through him you must offer a victim to God. Do you want me to show you further what kind of fast you ought to fast? Fast from every sin; take no food of wickedness, partake of no banquets of pleasure, grow hot with no wine of luxury. Fast from evil deeds, abstain from evil words, restrain yourself from the worst thoughts. Do not touch the stolen bread of perverse teaching. Do not covet the deceitful foods of philosophy, which may lead you away from the truth. Such a fast pleases God. But to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful, and to do this together with those who crucified Christ, cannot be acceptable to God. The Pharisees were once indignant with the Lord because his disciples did not fast. He answered them that the sons of the bridegroom cannot fast as long as the bridegroom is with them. Let them fast, then, who have lost the bridegroom; we who have the bridegroom with us cannot fast. Yet we do not say this in order to slacken the reins of Christian abstinence. For we have the forty days consecrated to fasting; we have the fourth and sixth days of the week, on which we fast solemnly. Certainly the Christian is free to fast at all times, not from the superstition of observance but from the virtue of self-control. For how is chastity kept uncorrupted among them unless it is supported by the stricter aids of self-control? How will they give attention to the Scriptures? How will they pursue knowledge and wisdom? Is it not through control of the belly and the gullet? How does anyone make himself a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven unless he cuts back the abundance of food, unless he uses abstinence as his servant? This, then, is the Christian reason for fasting. But there is yet another, religious one, whose praise is proclaimed in the writings of certain apostles. For we find it said by the apostles in a certain little book: “Blessed is he who even fasts in order to feed the poor.” His fast is highly acceptable to God, and indeed worthily so. For he imitates him who laid down his life for his brothers. Why, then, do we mix new garments with old rags? Why do we put new wine into old wineskins? The old things have passed away; see, all things have become new, through Christ our Lord, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever.