Homilies on Jeremiah 12.12–14.7

“Give glory to the Lord our God before it grows dark, before your feet stumble on dark mountains.” There are some dark mountains, and there are some bright mountains; there are both. The bright mountains are the holy angels of God, the prophets, Moses the servant, the apostles of Jesus Christ. All these are bright mountains, and about them I think it is said in the Psalms: “His foundations are on the holy mountains.” And what are the dark mountains? Those who raise up heights against the knowledge of God. The devil is a dark mountain; the rulers of this age, who are being brought to nothing, are dark mountains; and the demon of the moonstruck boy was a mountain, and a dark mountain, about which the Savior said, “You will say to this mountain.” For when the matter of the moonstruck boy was being inquired into, and the disciples were saying, “Why could we not cast it out?”, the Savior answers: “If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain,” the one you brought up, the one you asked about, “you will say to this one, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move”: “from here,” from the man, “there,” to its own proper place. So those who stumble do not stumble on bright mountains, but on dark mountains, when they come to be with the devil and his angels, the dark mountains. “And you will wait for light.” “And you will wait for light” can indeed be joined to “Give glory to the Lord our God.” If you give glory to the Lord our God “before it grows dark, before your feet stumble on dark mountains,” clearly, even if it grows dark, “you will wait for the light,” and the light will succeed for you. But another might say (I do not know whether understanding soundly or not) that even those who stumble “on dark mountains” will wait, waiting beside the dark mountains for the light of mercy; for this will seem to be “and you will wait for light.” But when someone comes to the dark mountains, let us see what is there: “the shadow of death.” Where the dark mountains are, there is the shadow of death, produced by the dark mountains themselves; “and they will be put into darkness.” “But if you do not listen secretly, your soul will weep because of insolence.” Of those who listen, some listen secretly, others, even if they listen, do not listen secretly. What, then, is listening secretly, if not “But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory”? And again it is said elsewhere that “most of God's works are in hidden things.” If I hear the law, I either hear it secretly or do not hear it secretly. The Jew does not hear the law secretly; that is why he is circumcised openly, not knowing that “he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh.” But the one who hears about circumcision secretly will be circumcised in secret. The one who hears the laws about the Passover secretly eats of the lamb, Christ (for “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed”), and, knowing what kind of flesh the Word's flesh is, and knowing that it “is true food,” partakes of it; for he has heard of the Passover secretly. But this Jew, in the main, killed the Lord Jesus for this reason, and even today is guilty of the murder of Jesus, because he heard neither the law nor the prophets secretly. If you read about the unleavened bread, you can hear the commandment secretly, you can hear it openly. All of you (for the Passover is near) who keep unleavened bread, the bodily unleavened bread, do not hear the commandment that says, “If you do not listen secretly, your soul will weep.” And about the sabbath, women who have not heard the prophet do not hear secretly, but hear openly. They do not bathe on the sabbath day; they return “to the poor and weak elements,” as though Christ had not come, who perfects us and brings us over from the elements of the law to the perfection of the gospel. For this reason let us pay attention when we read the law and the prophets, lest we fall under the prophecy that says: “But if you do not listen secretly, your soul will weep because of insolence.” All of you who keep the Jewish fast, not understanding the day of atonement, after the coming of Jesus Christ: you have not heard of the atonement secretly, but only openly; for to hear of the atonement secretly is to hear how God set forth Jesus as “an atonement for our sins,” and that “he is the atonement for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.” Even when the Gospel parables are read, if the hearer is one of those outside, he will not hear them secretly. But if the hearer is an apostle, or one of those who go “into the house” of Jesus, he comes to Jesus, asks about the obscurity of the parable too, and Jesus interprets it, and that hearer of the Gospel becomes one who hears it secretly, so that his soul may not weep; for the soul of those who do not listen secretly weeps. Why, wonderfully, did he not say, “You will weep if you do not listen secretly,” but “your soul will weep”? There is a weeping of the soul alone, weeping, and perhaps the Savior teaches us of that weeping, saying: “There will be weeping.” And when he says, “Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep,” he speaks of that weeping, which the prophet also threatens here, saying: “But if you do not listen secretly, your soul will weep because of insolence.” For when you are insulted, then you will weep, “and your eyes will run down with tears, because the Lord's flock has been crushed.” If anyone now looks at the affairs of the Jews and compares them with those of old, he will see how “the Lord's flock has been crushed.” For this was once the Lord's flock, and since they judged themselves unworthy, the word turned to the nations. If, then, that flock of the Lord was crushed, ought not we, the wild olive, grafted contrary to its nature into the cultivated olive of the fathers, to fear all the more lest this “flock of the Lord” too be crushed? For it is going to be crushed at some time, according to what the Savior said, when “because lawlessness is multiplied, the love of many will grow cold.” About whom is the saying? Is not “the love of many will grow cold” said about those called Christians? About whom is the saying, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” Is it not about us? For this reason let us take heed to ourselves, doing everything so that daily this flock of God may improve, be made sound, be healed, and every crushing may depart from our souls, so that we may be perfected in Christ Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ever. Amen.

Homily 13. On “Who will spare you?” as far as “I have been bereaved.”

We wish to understand the words spoken to Jerusalem with great threatening, which run thus: “Who will spare you, O Jerusalem? Or who will grieve over you? Or who will turn back to ask for your peace? You have turned away from me, says the Lord. You will go backward, and I will stretch out my hand against you and destroy you, and I will no longer let you go. And I will scatter them in a dispersion.” Then, “I have been bereaved.” Perplexity seized me; I take as an example someone declared an enemy of the one reigning on earth: to such a person one may not even give a share of mercy, lest anyone seem to be offending the king who condemned him. And one may not even pity such a man; some go further and do not even grieve over him, lest by grieving they seem to be displeased with the one judged by the king. If you have understood this, see for me the one condemned by God for his many sins, and look at such a one: though there are legions of angels appointed to help human nature, he is pitied by no one. For each of the angels, seeing that the one who condemned is God, that the one who turned away is the Creator, and that the nature of the sins is such that the good God was compelled, so to speak, to bring the sentence against the sinner, each of those who see it does not spare, does not grieve, does not pity, does not return to plead for peace for such a one. So let this Jerusalem (for so it will be spoken of because of the letter) have sinned against my Jesus, and have done such things that Jesus says about her: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those sent to her, how often I wished to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is left to you.” Let this Jerusalem be left as it has been left. Let the angels who always helped Jerusalem, through whom the law of Moses too was ordained, “ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator,” leave Jerusalem and say: “Her sins have become great; they killed Jesus, they laid hands on the Christ. As long as the sins were still smaller, we could still intercede and plead for them, we could spare Jerusalem; who will spare her for this?” “If a man sins against a man, they will pray for him; but if he sins against the Lord, who will pray for him?” “Jerusalem has sinned a sin; therefore she has become a tossing.” And to her first of all it is said: “Who will spare you, O Jerusalem? And who will grieve over you?” We do not grieve over Jerusalem and her calamities and what happened to that whole people; for by their trespass our salvation came, to make them jealous. Since their trespass became so great a sin that it was said by the voice of the Lord, “Who then will spare you?”, I too say to her who killed my Jesus: “Who will spare you, O Jerusalem? And who will grieve over you?”

I pass over from the letter, having in fact the way that the word gave, to each soul already counted worthy to see peace; for after the divine teachings you have become Jerusalem, who were formerly Jebus. The history says that the name of that place was Jebus, and afterward it changed its name to Jerusalem too. The sons of the Hebrews say that Jebus is interpreted “Trodden down.” So Jebus, the soul trodden down by the opposing powers, has been changed and become Jerusalem, “Vision of Peace.” If, then, having changed from Jebus so as to become Jerusalem, you have sinned and, like her, you too have trampled on the Son of God and counted the blood of the new covenant common, and are in grievous sins, it will be said of you too: “Who will spare you, O Jerusalem? And who will grieve over you?”, if you become such as to betray Jesus. Each of us, when he sins, and especially if the sins are greater, sins against Jesus. And if he is also an apostate, he does still more to Jesus spiritually what Jerusalem did to him bodily. That is why: “How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled on the Son of God, and counted as common the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and insulted the Spirit of grace?” If you have trampled on the Son of God and insulted the Spirit of grace, who “will spare you? Who will grieve over you? Who will turn back to ask for the things of your peace?” The soul of the sinner has betrayed the very Son of God who asked for you the things of peace; who can turn back again and plead for peace? Knowing, then, that “it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to renew them again to repentance, since they crucify again for themselves the Son of God and put him to open shame,” let us do everything so that it may not be said of us too: “Who will spare you, O Jerusalem? And who will grieve over you? Or who will turn back to ask for your peace?”

And what follows will fit either interpretation of Jerusalem: “You have turned away from me, says the Lord. You will go backward.” That you have turned away from the Son of God, and by turning away from the Son of God have turned away from God, what need is there even to say? And since Jerusalem in Judea turned away from Christ, and by her all the Jews must be understood, for this reason “you will go backward.” For there was a time when she did not go backward, but forward; but now she goes backward, “and they turned in their hearts to Egypt,” clearly so as to go backward. And what “you will go backward” is, or what straining forward to what lies ahead is, we will show thus. The righteous man strains forward to what lies ahead, [forgetting] what lies behind. Clearly the one disposed contrary to the righteous remembers what lies behind and does not strain forward to what lies ahead. And remembering what lies behind, he disobeys Jesus, who teaches and says: “Let him not turn back to take his cloak”; he disobeys Jesus, who says: “Remember Lot's wife”; he disobeys Jesus, who says: “No one who puts his hand to the plough and turns back is fit for the kingdom of God.” And in the law too it is written that the angels said to Lot as he came out of Sodom: “Do not look back, nor stop anywhere in the surrounding country; flee to the mountain, lest you be swept away.” And this too has a meaning worthy of an angelic spirit: “Do not look back”: always strain forward to what lies ahead. You have left Sodom; do not turn back to Sodom. You have left wickedness and sin; do not turn back to it, “nor stop anywhere in the surrounding country.” Even if you keep the first commandment, which says, “Do not look back,” it is not enough for your salvation unless you also hear the second commandment, which says, “nor stop anywhere in the surrounding country.” For one who has begun to make progress must not stand in the country around Sodom, even if he has passed through Sodom; but having passed beyond standing in the surrounding country, he must be saved on the mountain, according to “Do not look back, nor stop anywhere in the surrounding country; flee to the mountain, lest you be swept away.” If you wish not to be swept away with the Sodomites, never turn back, nor stop in the country around Sodom, nor be anywhere else than on the mountain; for there alone is it possible to be saved. And the mountain is the Lord Jesus, to whom be the glory and the power for ever. Amen.

Homily 14. On “Woe is me, mother” as far as “Therefore thus says the Lord: If you return, I will also restore you.”

Physicians of bodies, who are with the sick and always give themselves to the care of the sick according to the purpose of the art of medicine, see terrible things and touch unpleasant things, and from others' misfortunes reap griefs of their own, and their life is always in hardship. For they are never with the healthy, but always with the wounded, with those who have spreading sores, with those full of pus, of fevers, of various diseases. And if someone wishes to take up medicine, he will not be vexed nor neglect the purpose of the art he has taken up, when he is with such people as we have described. This introduction has been given because the prophets too are, as it were, physicians of souls, and always spend their time where those who need healing are; for “those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” And what physicians suffer from undisciplined patients, the prophets and teachers too suffer from those who do not wish to be healed. For they are hated by them, as giving orders against the choice of the patients' desire, as preventing those who, even in illness, do not wish to take what befits their illness, from indulging and enjoying themselves. So undisciplined patients flee physicians, often even reviling them, speaking ill of them, and doing anything at all that an enemy would do to an enemy. For they forget that the physicians come to them as friends, looking at the painfulness of the diet, at the painfulness of the physicians' blow with the knife, not at the end that follows the pain; and they hate them as fathers only of pains, not of pains that bring the patients to health.

That people, then, was sick; there were various diseases in the people that bore God's name. God sent them physicians, the prophets. One of the physicians was Jeremiah; he rebuked those who sinned, wishing to turn back those who did evil. But they, instead of listening to what was said, accused the prophet, and accused him before judges like themselves. And the prophet was always in lawsuits at the hands of those who, as far as his prophecy went, had been healed, but through their own disobedience were not healed. In these circumstances at one time he says: “And I said, I will not speak, nor name the name of the Lord. And it became like a burning fire flaming in my bones, and I am weakened on every side and cannot bear it.” At another time, seeing himself always taken to court, reviled, accused, the object of false witness, he says: “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me?”, “a man” not judging but “judged,” and not deciding disputes but “disputed with by all the earth.” And since the sick did not listen to him when he gave good and healing counsel, he says: “I did not profit.” And since, when he lent the spiritual silver, those to whom he spoke would not listen so as to profit from what they heard, he says: “Nor did anyone owe me, nor did I owe.”

But I have said these things in anticipation, before explaining “I did not owe, nor did anyone owe me.” For the text is twofold: in most copies it is “I did not profit, nor did anyone profit me,” but in the most accurate, which agree with the Hebrew, “I did not owe, nor did anyone owe me.” So we must both explain the reading that is well worn and current in the churches and not leave unexplained the one from the Hebrew Scriptures. He was preaching the word; no one accepted what was said. It was as if a physician spent his medicines in vain, while the patients were undisciplined and fulfilling their own desires; as if he too said, “I did not profit, nor did anyone profit me.” Perhaps there is a return of benefit, through the kindness of the one benefited toward the one who benefited him, so that the speaker too comes to be benefited, since “blessed is he who speaks into the ears of those who listen.” This benefit, then, a teacher might receive from hearers who make progress and improve; he might be benefited by having fruits in them. Not having this from the Jews, Jeremiah says: “No one profited me.” For if the speaker ought to have fruit in his hearers, but the hearer misunderstands and remains outside what is said, it is said, “Not one profited me”; since he did not have this benefit, which he would have had from the hearer, benefited, becoming the cause of progress and blessedness for the one who benefited him. And in another way too, everyone who teaches, by the very act of teaching, is benefited in what he teaches and learns, in proportion as the learner is more intelligent. And those who speak become better in the lessons they hand on when the hearers are intelligent and do not simply accept, but test in return, ask, and examine the meaning of what is said. So: “I did not profit, nor did anyone profit me.”

But since another explanation is necessary because of the more accurate copies, which run thus, “I did not owe, nor did anyone owe me,” we will also explain the text as it reads so. The one who pays everyone their dues, fear to whom fear, tax to whom tax, tribute to whom tribute, honor to whom honor, and pays everyone what is fitting, so as not to owe what is fitting to anyone, honoring parents, so to speak, as parents, brothers as brothers, sons as sons, bishops as bishops, presbyters as presbyters, deacons as deacons, the faithful as the faithful, catechumens as catechumens: if he pays all that is fitting, he has not owed. But if he ought to do something fitting and has not done it, he cannot say, “I did not owe”; for owing, he has not paid. How, then, shall I explain “nor did anyone owe me”? I was lending and wanted to give the spiritual money, but they turned away from what was said and did not make themselves receptive, so as to owe; that is why not one owed me. For who accepted what was said, so as by accepting to become a debtor of what he heard, and be asked, as a debtor, for the interest on what was said? So in this respect it is better for the hearer to take rational silver from the speaker and owe, than not to accept, not to take, and not to owe. For “not one owed me” stands among the charges.

And “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with in all the earth?” I do not think it fits the other prophets to say as it fits Jeremiah. For most of the prophets began to prophesy after some time, after wickedness, after sins, having changed; but Jeremiah prophesies from childhood. And one can give an example from what is written. Isaiah did not hear, “Before I formed you in the womb I know you, and before you came out of the womb I have sanctified you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations”; nor did he say, “I do not know how to speak, for I am too young”; but when he saw the vision recorded in his prophecy, he saw and said: “Woe is me, wretched man, for having unclean lips I dwell in the midst of a people having unclean lips, and I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of hosts”; “and one of the seraphim,” he says, “was sent to me, and touched my lips and said: Behold, I have taken away your iniquities, and this will cleanse your sins.” So after the sins he had committed before, Isaiah later became worthy of the Holy Spirit and prophesied. And you might find something similar in another's case. But not so Jeremiah; for, adorned with the prophetic Spirit still from his swaddling clothes, he prophesied from childhood; that is why he said (for I explain the common sense first): “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with by all the earth?” But one of those before me took up the passage, saying that he said this not to his bodily mother, but to the mother who gives birth to prophets. And who gives birth to prophets but the wisdom of God? So he said, “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me,” O Wisdom? And the children of Wisdom are recorded in the Gospel too: “And Wisdom sends her children.” So it is said: “Woe is me, mother,” my Wisdom, “as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged”; who am I, that I have been born for so much, to be judged, to be disputed with because of my rebukes, my reproofs, my teaching, by all who are on the earth? If Jeremiah says this, “as what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with by all the earth,” I cannot explain “by all the earth”; for Jeremiah was not disputed with by all the earth. Or shall we force it and say “all the earth” instead of “all Judea”? For his prophecy, when he prophesied then, did not reach all the earth. But perhaps, as we have shown in ten thousand other cases that Jeremiah speaks in place of our Lord Jesus Christ, so we shall say here too. At the beginning I noted, “Behold, I have appointed you over nations and kingdoms, to root out and to pull down and to destroy and to build and to plant.” Jeremiah did not do this; but Jesus Christ rooted out the kingdoms of sin and pulled down the buildings of wickedness, and in place of those kingdoms made righteousness and truth reign in our souls. As, then, those words fitted better to be referred to Christ than to Jeremiah, so I think do many others, and these too.

First we must speak about “woe is me,” whether, because of its ill-omened sound, the Savior, who also pronounces others wretched, can say “woe is me.” We will show from acknowledged sayings, which fit no one but the Savior, how he also wept over Jerusalem; and “woe is me” is the cry of one weeping. And it stands in the Gospel that, seeing Jerusalem, he wept over it and said: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those sent to her, how often I wished to gather your children,” and the rest. And these words too are clearly spoken by the Savior in “Woe is me, for I have become like one gathering straw at harvest, and like a gleaning at the vintage, when there is no cluster to eat the firstfruits. Woe is me, O soul, for the godly man has perished from the earth, and there is none among men who does right. All go to law for blood.” For he came to the harvest to reap, and finds many sinners, and says, “Woe is me, for I have become like one gathering straw at harvest.” He came to gather the fruit of life among human beings, finds many sins in us, and so says, “and like a gleaning at the vintage, when there is no cluster to eat the firstfruits.” He says something similar to these elsewhere too, speaking to the Father: “What profit is there in my blood, in my going down to corruption?” What have I profited men so greatly? What have they done worthy of the blood I poured out for them? “What profit is there in my blood, in my going down” from heaven? I came down, I came to earth, I gave myself up to corruption, I wore a human body: what worthy of these has been achieved by men? “What profit is there in my blood, in my going down to corruption? Will the dust confess to you, or declare your truth?” Of this kind, then, is what is said here first by the Savior: “Woe is me, mother; as what kind of man did you bear me?” The Savior says “Woe is me, mother” not as God, but as man, as in the prophet: “Woe is me, O soul, for the godly man has perished from the earth.” And the soul was human; that is why it was also troubled, why it was also very sorrowful. But the Word who was in the beginning with God is not troubled; he would not say “woe is me.” For the Word does not admit death either; it is the human element that admitted it, as we have often shown.

“As what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with in all the earth?” If you see for me the martyrs everywhere being judged and in each church standing before the judges, you will see how Jesus Christ is judged in each of the martyrs; for he himself is the one judged in those who bear witness to the truth. And you will be persuaded to accept this when you see that he says it is not you who are in prison when you are in prison, but himself; not you who are hungry when you are hungry, but himself; not you who are thirsty, but himself: “I was in prison and you came to me; I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink.” So when a Christian is judged for nothing else, not for his own sins, but because he is a Christian, it is Christ who is judged. So Christ Jesus is judged in all the earth; and as often as a Christian is judged, it is Christ who is judged: not only in these courts, but suppose a Christian is falsely accused, charged with something, then too Christ is unjustly judged. “As what kind of man did you bear me, a man judged and disputed with in all the earth?”