Easter Work (prose version of the Easter Song) 3.1–3.26

First, the Lord, deigning to be present at a wedding, displayed the proofs of his power, where, as the chief guest revealing his divine might, he strove not to be fed but to feed. For wine ran short at the feast, and amid the heaps of food gathered on the dishes only the emptied cups lay idle in sheer dryness. The earthly drink had gone, that is, so that the heavenly one might come in. Christ then changed the waters, which passed into the appearance of wine. The waters lost what they were born as, though they themselves needed water for drinking, and the wave, made nobler than it was born, changed its color and its name together. Sweet must, in short, glowed red in everyone's cups, and through all the pleasant tables draughts of a nectar from the stream made the guests, captivated by its sweetness, drunk. The servants at the springs were astonished that the six water jars, which they had filled with water, were darkened with overflowing wine and that all had seethed with Christ's sudden vintage, since he was present who was the vine, fruitful by the tilling of his power, nourishing under the shade of his heavenly foliage clusters of the spiritual vine-shoot that will live forever in loveliness.

Then a certain official tearfully begged the Lord to relieve the sickness of his dying son and to forbid the weak soul to slip from the seat of his anxious body. Then the generous humanity of divine power, which denies nothing to the believer and does not hold back its gift by delay, because it does not depart from the company of faith, granted the boy full health by his voice and bestowed it by his word. For he answered thus: “Go, your son lives.” How commanding is the Lord's power, and how magnificent, which did not promise that he would live but declared that he already lives! For this is the singular mark of divinity, that it sees as past whatever it has decreed to come.

From there, directing his saving steps through various cities and crossroads and through fields, villages and fortresses, he healed all limbs, driving out the faults of disease: when suddenly, from the midst of the crowding throng, a leper, covered with mottled misery and made more wretched by an obscene whiteness, asked the Lord, saying: “Lord, if you will, you can cleanse me.” There was no small faith in this suppliant's word, who believed that the effect of his cleansing lay only in the divine will. For as soon as the Lord touched him with his holy hand, saying, “I will, be clean,” at once the two-colored sickness departed, and, laying aside the horror of spotted skin, the body was free of its foreign foulness. He was seen by the people changed by sudden help, and, showing now a healthy form, he seemed to be recognized more truly in appearance and less in his own color.

A panting fever was pressing hard on Peter's mother-in-law, violently stricken, her inner parts seized by fire, and the torch of strong heat had settled fiercely in her burning marrow. The uncertain lot of her trembling soul hung between death and life, and the approach of cold death was being boiled by the excessive flame of her limbs. But when the Lord visited the sick woman, wrapped in danger, with his saving touch, the deadly fire suddenly fled, quenched as by a living spring, and the woman, rising restored, diligent in eager service, she who had just been languishing becomes the servant of her physician.

Moreover, in his mercy he often drove the madness of diabolical savagery from the limbs of the human frame, so that a spirit not divine might not rage when inserted into the work of the Godhead; and everywhere, in countless crowds, he restored the use of wounded bodies as their diseases fled, and rescued the peoples from various disasters of sickness as the danger failed.

Then, walking along the sandy shores of the coast path, he climbed into the planks of a small boat and with his disciples accompanying him began to cross over; and when the boat, driven by the movement of the swelling sail, was carried far from shore, a harsh and savage storm arises, stirring the whole sea from its depths with gales, now plunging the ship as the wave withdrew, now lifting it up again as the waves swelled. Despair of safety had troubled the sad disciples, and even the sailors were compelled to confess that no remedy lay in their art; all at last believed that they were perishing, and that, either clinging to the timbers of the planks or rolled along by the oaring of their arms, they would be dashed as castaways on rocky shores. But Christ, the true and provident helmsman, resting on a little pillow, lay sleeping in the tossing stern, asleep in body, wakeful in majesty, since, according to David's prophecy, “he who keeps Israel will not slumber nor sleep.” And when the disciples cried with one voice, “Lord, save us, we are perishing,” he rises, awakened, commands the winds to be still and orders the sea to be silent, and at once the unexpected calm of sea and sky alike betrays the divine presence. What, then, are we to think of that storm? Did the sea raise savage gales against the Lord, or did the blasts try to stir up a rebellious struggle against their own Creator? Far be it that the elements attempted what would insult his majesty: but so that we may rather perceive that all things are subject in humble devotion to Christ's powers, the whole strait is believed to have been most joyful at the Lord's voyage, coming in obedience and running forward from the lowest seats of the waves, seething with a whiter swell. So too the winged nature of the light winds, spreading its wings with swift joy, had surrounded the ship in which Christ sat like the royal camp of a commander with an attendant company. For one who has the licence of violent power is not easily compelled to obey an imperious master, as the sea and the winds, bowing to Christ's divine commands, suddenly laid down their headlong courses of rapid motion in languid stillness.

Meanwhile the Lord, carried across the now quiet flood, left the boat and was walking along the edge of the nearby shore, when suddenly two most savage men, possessed by a grim legion of demons, leapt out from the tombs with a terrible roar and were for this reason bound with iron chains. Alas, how heavy is the lot of madness! He who suffers the violence of a tearing insanity must also lie under penal chains. Fittingly, however, that most wicked spirit dwelt rather among tombs and ashes, for he has nothing in common with life. Then, terrified as the Lord came, and shut out from the seats of the cleansed mind, fearing to ask leave to enter again the human form which he saw Christ bearing, he obtained, as he deserved, to enter the beast that most delights in the obscenity of filth and is always wrapped in the friendship of stinking mud. For, black, bristling and horrid, he was eager to choose a dwelling like his own deformity, and at once the sad assault of the troop invaded the herd of swine, drove it and killed it headlong in the waters of the sea. Not without reason is the devil called the enemy of all, who is so harmful to all that he attacks those he hates and destroys those he loves.

From there the Lord, carried again by the serving boat, entered the borders of his native soil, where, because the creator of all willed to be born, he called a town of that region his homeland. Then four men, with their necks under a bed, brought him a certain sick man, scarcely still a man, already a corpse, whose life, lacking bodily motion, was rehearsing the image of a funeral. His limbs lay so, the bonds of the sinews loosened and slack, that through limbs that were flowing, wounded and estranged by the wasting of disease they could not perform their own functions. When the Lord saw that he needed the restoration of his strength by heavenly power, he first took care to absolve him from his sins, which are the roots of all evils, so that salvation might enter into the man, cleansed by the removal of the squalor of his filth, as into a house prepared for itself. He says, then, to the man lying there, then wretched but soon to be happy: “Rise, take up your pallet, and go into your house.” Without delay in obeying the commands he rises, strong from weak, confident from despairing, living from dying, and, taking up the little bed on which he had lain motionless, made more dry than the very wood of the dry frame, walking at last on his own feet he rejoices to be rid of others' footsteps, and by a grateful mutual return of payment soon carried back his own carrier on his serving shoulders.

While the Lord was doing these miracles, the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, seized by the end of life, had lost the breath of the light above and lay a motionless body, owed now only to burial. Then her father, wounded by the loss of his child, ran out, he from whom the last end had taken the hope of his line as it flowered, and, weeping and groaning, rolled at the Lord's feet. Scarcely able to steady the words of his prayer as his sobs shook him, he said: “Have mercy on a bereaved father, have mercy on a forsaken old man. I have, or rather I had, an only daughter, who, dying just now in years not yet grown, is seen to have taken from me the name of father. Bring help and come to our aid and restore the departed soul to the limbs already growing cold, you whose power is enough for everything, whose power nothing can withstand.” He had scarcely finished such prayers, and already the Lord, crowded by disciples and throngs, was going to the funeral of the girl to raise her.

Now there went, mingled with the crowds, a woman wounded for twelve years by a great flow of blood, who, giving much to physicians and gaining nothing, was being drained of her means and her blood alike. But when faithful confidence began to abound in the believing secret of a now sound heart, she pushed herself forcefully into the midst of the crowds, and, desiring to touch even the small edge of the Lord's garment and hiding behind, she suddenly snatched a stolen healing from the very edge of his hanging fringe. O how much more it is to trust than to ask when hard things are to be obtained! For confidence comes from the heart, prayers from the tongue, and prayers are often poured out without the heart, but confidence is not born without the heart. See now, a woman despairing after the torment of long suffering comes to the physician, not beseeching, not groaning, not lamenting, but silently she carried off what she sought. Silence stood on her mute lips, and her soul cried out to God. Soon the greater flood of faith dried up the rivers of her streaming blood, and, though all were unaware of the woman's grace, the gift of his favor did not escape Christ, from whose springs flowed what fulfilled the trusting woman's hope; and, making public so faithful a theft, he rewarded the force of her robbery with saving gifts.

Meanwhile they had come to the grieving roof of the pitiable house, where the untimely corpse of the maiden lay exposed to the tears of all, and a weeping throng and tumult had filled everything with the cries of bitter wailing. Flute-players were sounding with measured groans songs that flatter the dead, and a joyless crowd running about, loud with repeated grief, had thrown the unhappy house into confusion. The Lord forbids them to weep for one laid in sleep, forbids them to mourn as dead one who was to live. For to all the body seemed lifeless; to Christ alone, who had come to give life, sleep appeared to have fallen on her. And this indeed belonged to his singular glory, that he called the dead girl sleeping, so that, about to show the parents the deeds of wonderful power, declaring that he gave less than he was giving, he might avoid the injury of human praise. Then, softening with the fire of the Spirit the motionless corpse, the body already cold and bound by the stiffness of cold death, by the decision of his commanding voice he raised the maiden from the underworld and granted the girl, born once, to live twice. The parents were astonished at their daughter, hesitating to believe what they saw, and, moved by the joy of the sudden event, more bathed in tears from joy, they changed the kind of their lament.

Then, departing after accomplishing this work of restored light, he sees two men wounded by the loss of their sight, praying in words like these: “Have mercy on us, Son of David.” They were asking, that is, for that mercy which would remove the gloomy night and restore day to their darkened faces. How safe it is to believe, how sound to trust eagerly in God! For already they saw in heart who perceived the path of light as Christ walked. Then their eyes, pressed down by the sad blindness of the suppliants, like a dull fire when oil is poured in, flashed at the Lord's touch, and, as his right hand of brightness was applied, their seeing faces shone with their own lamps.

These scarcely dismissed, another man was brought, weak with a threefold sickness, who, deserted by his voice, emptied of hearing, the use of his limbs snatched away and void, seemed full only of a demon. The Lord at once cured him by turning the causes to their contraries, so that, the demon cast out, he emptied him, and, voice and hearing poured in, he filled him again.

Without delay he hands over as much power to the twelve disciples too, and bids them be able to accomplish all that they see that he has done, and sends them, rich with all powers, to search out the lost sheep, that is, of the house of Israel, because he had not yet spread the dignity of this name continually through all nations. Going, then, he admonishes them thus among other things he commanded: “Preach, saying: The kingdom of heaven has come near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons; you have received freely, give freely.” As if the Lord, anxious with pastoral care, were saying: “I, being the good shepherd, commend the flocks more carefully to you as diligent workers, and for their nourishment I share fields that are mine by right: let no one, then, sell to my lambs and sheep the pastures subject to my power.” He handed this down first to the apostolic teaching so that, propagated from their teaching to later generations, it might flow down as the doctrine of the following age, as four rivers are read to burst forth from the one spring of paradise, from whose courses countless streams, drawn off, wander to the bounds of the whole world. Whoever, then, performs the work of the Godhead, which he does not bear as his own but has received, worthy, by spiritual handing on, having obtained the grace of a pure gift, let him be devoted to the grace of the pure gift, so that he may seem a steward rather than a merchant, and, fulfilling the song of David's joy, may thus declare his hope of the life to come: “Because I have not known trade, I will enter into the power of the Lord.” For no one without the Lord's bounty can have what he ministers, or whence he distributes gifts, unless he has received what he pays out. Let us hear the apostle Paul saying the same: “Let a man so regard us, as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Here it is required among stewards that one be found faithful.” And again the same teacher warns and says: “What have you that you did not receive? And if

you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” Then the Lord, having entered a synagogue, sees a weak man, maimed by the numbness of his divided body, half-dead in his wounded limbs, neither wholly living nor dying, whose withered right hand the ice of sluggish numbness had cut off, its use now despaired of. Then by powerful and commanding help he made the palm, estranged by its idle sinews, come alive into the warmth of blood with the movement of the veins, granting it not by art but by command, saying: “Stretch out your hand; and he stretched out his hand, and it was restored to him like the other.” Truly this is the singular gift of God, which he who takes nothing from human salvation and always restores all things practices unceasingly.

See, that slippery water-snake is here again, the harmful renewer of the tricks of his old arts, who, rich with the livid poison of gall, rejoices to grow fat on human gore, and the venom which he had often poured out on many who were seized by different afflictions he heaped, raging, all into the limbs of one man, whose mind he snatched, whose voice he shut, whose light he put out, and, binding three disasters together, he drove him to madness, mute and blind. To him the merciful Savior of the whole world, our light, the Word of the Father, drove out the foul spirit and gave back sight and changed his mouth; and through the Word words come forth, through the Light the eyes revive.

A woman too had come to be healed, bent by an old disease rather than by age, trembling in her bearing, panting with groans, stooped in her shoulders, bowed in her face, always looking down, bent over, at the low ground. Lifted by the Lord's power after eighteen continuous years, her limbs raised upright, she beholds the sky and the stars and remembers that she once saw the burning globe of the sun. Consider, you who worship idols, what difference there is between God, whom you flee, and the demon, whom you appease, if he can be appeased who does not cease to harm. For all whom he possesses are crushed, while those whom Christ burdens with the yoke of his most sweet lightness are lifted up.

Then, when, as the Moses of the figure and the true prophet, he saw the people that had followed him into the desert failing in the ancient barrenness of food, he restored the ancient comforts with most wonderful increase. For then he made a sudden flesh of many birds abound, now the quantity of two fish; then he poured out the richest manna from heaven, now with five loaves distributed he made food abound for as many thousands of men. The measure of the rest of the crowd remained hidden, the multitude of women and little children having no number. And what you may wonder at still more, whoever reads these things, if you have not yet learned them, after the hunger of the satisfied people was driven out, the heap of fragments taken up filled twelve baskets. Nor was the plenty as great when it was given as it was in the leftovers when it was taken up, now disdained.

Meanwhile, as the ocean received the headlong day beneath the blue heat of the seething wave, when pale evening announced the near arrival of starry night, the master remaining on land, the disciples set out alone on a ship of the sea, and the sea raged with contrary winds against the exposed keel. Then, about the fourth watch of the shadowy night, the Lord, walking on the waves he trod, was pressing down the swollen billows of the foaming flood with calm steps, and the sea licked Christ's holy footprints with gentle flow. Those in danger suddenly marvel at the new sight, that ways for ships lay open to a path for feet. And as all wavered whether the Lord truly appeared, or whether uncertain phantoms of the darkness deceived eyes clouded by fear of danger, Peter, companion and friend of faith, to whom familiar grace granted always to recognize Christ, asked that he might go to him. And, called, he went down into the sea without trembling, swallowed by no rapacity of the flowing wave, since, lifted by the help of the Lord's hand, he had fled to the safest harbor of the mighty right hand, and through the glassy plains of the salt marble he cut a path, a traveler against the mind of the sea. O growth of increasing faith! Long ago he despised the nets of a poor man, the support of his life; now he refuses life itself, so as to come to Christ.

The Lord, then, having left the boat, was treading the land of Gennesaret with the company of disciples accompanying him, and its inhabitants, welcoming his arrival, gathered their sick, hindered by various illnesses, to be healed in the divine presence, so that, if even the fringe of his garment were touched, the harshest diseases might be cured. And whoever was able to obtain this was soon made whole. How precious was this garment! Or rather it had no price, for it was sold in no trade, and by the gift of a little thread it redeemed all.

From there, as he was passing through the region of Tyre and Sidon, a Canaanite woman, anxious over the affliction of her daughter, whom a black spirit had possessed, begged him humbly, asking to be counted equal to the dogs, which shrewdly do not leave their masters' tables, so that, licking up the leftovers shaken off, they may feed on the scraps of falling crumbs. A most humble voice, but lofty faith, which, saving her daughter, soon turned a dog into a sheep, and made one born among the briars of her nation enter the pastures of the Hebrew grass.

Then, climbing the high ridges of a mountain, accompanied by a countless people, he restored thousands of the lame and the blind alike, and gatherings of the deaf and the lepers, and those weak in their hands, and whatever of the sick had flocked together from the crowd, to their former use, and fitted the organs of the weak limbs to their sinews and motions.

And while by the working of wonderful power he refreshes the wounded throng, the third day was passing, and in places fasting with arid dryness the weary people had touched no substance of food, and weakness from lack of food was feeding a trouble that would be doubled by toil, if the exhausted people should bear the long burden of want, redoubled on the road as they returned. Moved by this pity, the Almighty, who is always the generous bread of the needy and gives food where barren necessity has denied crops, with a very few small fish and seven loaves broken satisfied four thousand men, besides an immense column of women and a swarm of little ones like bees. And what you may marvel at even more, the food increased while it was being eaten, and the fruitful losses of the tables produced food nourished by the bites. Fleeing hunger dreaded its own leftovers, gathered into seven heaped baskets, when, the abundance of so many fragments collected, it saw a manifold harvest overflow from a small seed.

Although Christ was seen to bear the mortal limbs of a human body from his mother's giving birth, yet it could not be hidden that he was God, because neither is a city set on the top of a mountain hidden, nor is a burning lamp put under a hollow bushel, but the substance of living flame, raised higher, supplies light to all. For, taking three disciples with him as witnesses up a high mountain, he was transfigured and showed the form of his glory and shone like the fiery face of the sun, his garments imitating the whiteness of snow. Why the most prudent evangelist compared the most splendid brightness of the divine majesty, which the gaze of no sight can behold, to the visible figure of the sun and snow, a clearer reason will teach. For there is nothing in this world brighter than the sun or whiter than snow, and for this reason he thought that this example should be compared with the supreme divinity, because nothing beyond it is shown to be granted to mortal eyes. For that singular brightness of the Lord so far surpassed both the sun and the snow that, while anyone's gaze is easily able to look at the sun and snow, the apostles, not able to look at Christ shining with the brightness of his own light, fell with their faces to the ground. O lofty summit of sublime merits, to whom it was given to know in the world what the world did not deserve to perceive! What of this, that they likewise recognized Elijah and Moses, unknown to bodily sight, with inner eyes, so that the truth of greater faith, becoming known, might show him to be A and Ω, that is, the beginning and the end? To him such prophets were seen to come, one of whom still enjoys a living old age, while the other was such that no course of human lot goes beyond the goal of his final light; and when the oracle of a starry word was sent forth from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” the Father's voice taught by his word that Christ was his begotten.

But after the Lord took back his bodily appearance and covered his heavenly form again with the veil of flesh and showed himself openly to the peoples, suddenly a humble man, bent on his knees and cast down with grief, prayed thus in supplication: “Lord, I have one son left, if he can be said to be left, hanging on the border between death and life, whom an unclean spirit fiercely overpowers, and, tearing him, tries to burn him in flames or often to destroy him in troublesome waters, and plots the last end for him, worn out by many dangers. Him, I beg, give back to me, or to himself, driving out the madness of his mind, lest the power hostile to light and blind take away the despaired-of life of the wretched boy.” He was still pouring out these words with tears and groans, and the Lord with kindly heart was already healing the boy. Then the raging and turbulent robber, who had long harassed a building belonging by right to another that he had wickedly handled, about to move out of the dwelling of the house he had invaded, is goaded into blazing anger, and, unable to tear apart the limbs he had seized, since the Lord forbade it, flew off to the underworld, the boy unharmed.

The King too, who alone is King of kings and is shown to be Lord of lords, not disdaining to pay Caesar's tribute, commands Peter, fishing, to raise from the sea's waves a swimming carrier of a golden didrachma. Then the swift inhabitant of the moving waves swallowed the trembling snare of the deceiving hook, and, hung from its native waters as the rod lashed, the cheapest fish, bringing a rich payment, was worth more for the honor of another's weight than for its own. How much, too, by this deed Christ wished us to imitate his teaching, who, though he could refuse the unworthy injury of this payment (since he had nothing in common with the people except to help all with saving benefits), preferred to pay an unnecessary gift rather than deny anyone who asked anything, so that the founder and teacher of justice, who said, “Give to everyone who asks you,” might be the first to fulfill the precepts of his own law. And when the apostles asked him simply, as they used to, who could be reckoned greater in the kingdom of heaven, as God and wonderful teacher he answered that the humble is better than all, and that he surpasses all who has made himself the last of all, like a little child, whom he kept standing in the middle for the sake of a spiritual example, commanding that the disposition, not the age, of a small and tender age be followed, since the years of infancy, in their tiny littleness, neither love anything of worldly pomp, nor are touched by ambition for honor, nor are puffed up with the swelling of proud disdain. And therefore the simplicity of a lowly life, the nearer it comes to the ground, the nearer it comes to heaven: for the mind that bends down is raised up, and the mind raised up is bent down; and the lower step of the heart is lifted up where it strives to descend. For God raises the humble and poor man from the dung and joins him to the company of the mighty, but cast the neck of diabolical pride headlong from heavenly dignity into the depths of the squalor of Tartarus. For so the divine reading declares: “God gives grace to the humble, but resists the proud.” And again, recalling the like, it says: “Raising the needy from the earth and lifting the poor man from the dung, to set him with the princes of his people.” For all poverty is the companion of humility. Hear Solomon saying: “Poverty humbles a man.” But we would be telling things too small and slight if, running through the deeds of the Godhead one by one, we were to unroll them in particular, deeds which, though no words can unfold them, become known in general.