Easter Work (prose version of the Easter Song)

Preface of Sedulius's Paschal Work. Whoever you are, guest, who share in the Easter feast, not disdaining to recline on our couches, put down the raised height of your brow if you come as a dear friend, and do not look here for the work of an artful book; but, gladly receiving the slender solemnities of a small table and taking them with contentment, be readier to satisfy your spirit than your appetite. Or if you are taken rather with a great abundance of rich things and, a lover of luxuries, expect choice riches, you ought to be filled at the dinners of noble learned men, whose manifold provisions cannot be told. There you will surely find whatever the sea's wave nourishes for eating, whatever the fertility of the earth supplies, whatever holds up its body in the clouds by the balance of its wings. On the very dishes, jeweled with exceedingly precious variety, honey grows golden with its nectar-filled wax, and the honeycomb, set in golden baskets, plays against the metal with its color. But we have picked a cheap vegetable grown from the seeds of a poor garden, which we are seen to serve in a dish of red earthenware, more with goodwill than with splendor.

Since the zealous custom of the pagan poets commends the trifles of fabulous song by the pomp of noble words, and, whether with the shouts of buskined tragedy, or with the comic foulness of laughable Geta, or with any of the numbers of the metrical art, they hand down the criminal deeds of ancient times, some even composed by the art of shameful narration, the pen ploughing the papyrus of the Nile's flood: why should I, who, practicing the songs of David's melody on the ten-stringed psaltery among the choirs of blessed doctrine, reverently answer with spiritual words, keep silent in a muted voice about the wonderful and saving mighty works of Christ, when I ought to take up the work of truth and not keep silent about the gifts of heavenly grace with the instrument of faithful speech? For the service of the human heart and sense ministers to no one more justly than to the almighty Lord, who instituted the senses and founded hearts, so that the material ever devoted to its Creator may not abandon its own author; from whom it is not fitting that the handiwork that is his by right should be withdrawn or perish; to whom, by everlasting rule in the citadels of heaven, there is one power with the Father, equal brightness of splendor, the undivided sublimity of a common summit, equal honor, the same might, a shared height, a kingdom without end in time, a beginning ever abiding in unbroken eternity, a glory sharing the fellowship of the scepter, and like majesty. This is the way that leads to the home of salvation; this path is opened to firm steps toward the Easter gifts. Here we will lay the foundations of our work; here, then, all of you, turn your sick minds; apply this medicine to the deadly diseases of those into whom the vain purpose of harmful disputation creeps and whom the incurable discipline of Attic dogma wounds with the poison of Cecropian doctrine, so that, when you have drunk in the life-giving breezes, the breath of the divine law, the fragrance of the sweetness of burning grace, you may thereafter with purer sense leave the gluttony of Athenian filth. Why, sons of Theseus, do you go round the labyrinth's windings in dark errors and, your footsteps entangled with no way out, roam the gloomy caves in blind mazes? Why do you still prefer the wild vine to the good vine? Why do you put wild nard before the shining rose beds? What good will it do to trust with empty worship in images of stone and figures of bronze, or to condemn souls to the slavery of profane shrines and venerated metals? Spare yourselves, I beg, spare yourselves now the squalid clods of sandy dust and the enjoyment of the bare dryness of sterile fields, where the ploughed land has never known how to relieve the labor of the sweating farmer with a fruitful reward from its pregnant depths. Nor pluck from the shoots of a bloody turf the poisonous nourishment of deadly juice, which, ever friendly to the food of Tartarus, knows how to serve not life but death. Rather enter, through the flowing waters of a pure spring, the pleasant meadows of flowering grass and the lovely approaches of the blessed seat, where the fruitfulness of life-giving seeds, quickened by divine waters, nourishes a crop that grows once the roughness of the thorns is torn out; a crop that, by the great abundance of manifold fruit, can now be God's harvest and, opening the hope of future reward, can store its fruit in hundredfold heaps in the greatest granaries.

Almighty God of undivided and eternal Godhead, who hold the whole world by your sacred nod, who made firm the frame of heaven by the work of your fingers and founded the fabric of your mighty word, who forbid the rushing madness of the surging sea to overwhelm the boundary of the neighboring land beyond the limits you have set, who, setting the appearance of the radiant sun and the horned face of the moon next to day and night, dispense the alternations of both lights by the sacred balance of your moderation, who alone gather together and alone know the number of the stars, their powers, signs, names, places, courses and times; who quickened the inert limbs of the raw earth with living bodies through diverse motions; who, after condemning to death the man who ate the fruit of the tree in forbidden presumption, raise him again by the sacrament of better food, and preserve him from the voluptuous deceit of the viper's bite by the drink of spotless blood; who, when the name of the human race, except those whom the guardian ark had protected, was wholly submerged and buried by the sudden flood of the rising deluge, restored it and multiplied it again from one stock, so that, by the demonstration of a mystic power, you might show that what the sins of the flesh had killed, fenced in by the faithful protection of the wood, was to be washed by the one baptism of the whole world: show me now graciously that way, show your suppliant that path which directs the footsteps of a few by a narrow road to the walls of the saving city, that is, Jerusalem, the city of the Lord, which bears our Pasch through the passion of Christ, so that through this city, which performs the hospitality of bodily grace, we may deserve to come to that fatherland of spiritual glory; and let your word, Lord, be a lamp to my feet, so that the brightness of the right road may lead me to those places of flowering grass where the good Shepherd keeps his shining fold, where the whole white-robed flock follows the Lamb of the virgin ewe, most pure in snowy brightness. The way is not hard if you deign to offer yourself as leader. All things lie under your power, all nature yields to your commands and passes into opposite kinds and shapes at your sovereign bidding. If you wish the yearly crops to grow golden in icy seasons, sluggish winter produces the nimble reaper for the sickles; if, in the mildness of the spring season, when the earth shines covered with its first robe of flowers, you bid the vineyard bring forth with laden shoots, the vintner, dancing in a river of new wine, will force out the nectar-filled heart of the happy grape by the welcome injury of his drunken heel; and the turns of all the seasons, their fruits changed, will not refuse to serve the Creator. Indeed, hoary faith gives proof of the divine wonders, and the ancient origin of the early fathers bears witness, and the immortal signs of heavenly powers endure, not to be abolished as the ages pass and time grows old. Of these, with the fear of a trembling talent, I scarcely allow my mind and feeble heart to touch on even a few by bold narration, so that, entering a very dense forest, I may strive to touch a few branches with the tips of my fingers. For even if a hundred mouths at once were given to a human body, and an iron voice did not cease to cry out with the motions of a hundred tongues, who could set out all those things which neither the densest stars of heaven nor the thirsty sand of the sea could equal in number?

First, from the time when the confused matter of things, which is called chaos, rose into the bright face of the world by the fashioning Word, Enoch, most pleasing and beloved to God, obtaining a living glory and passing beyond the measure of human nature through countless courses of years, fulfilled by his birth what was owed to the earth, but stirred the wonder of death, from which he was withdrawn.

Sarah's languid limbs were already withering with old age, and her blood, extinguished by long decay, had condemned the veins of her aged body to the barrenness of offspring despaired of, when, made fruitful by her union with an older husband, she suddenly expanded the bosom of her cold womb, and, her heart swelling with a new birth, the trembling mother held the son born by a late happiness, the hope of a future nation and people, to the breasts that give milk to drink.

Him his father offered as a gift to God, he who had been promised when all hope was gone; the boy stood at the knife, and a ram was made the burnt offering. O spotless mind of a holy high priest! He rejected the human and looked to the divine; by denying life to his son he gained it for him. Abraham drew the sword to strike, and the Lord changed the sacrifice for himself so as to spare. A great mystery was indeed being enacted in this devotion: that for the life of the human race Christ, the gentle Lamb, would offer himself of his own accord as a victim.

Lot was fleeing from Sodom, which was about to perish, and his wife, by the boldness of incautious presumption, looking back at what she had escaped, was changed and remained as a statue of salt, not as a token of wisdom but of punishment. For no one who has turned back again with headlong desire to the dangers of the world once despised will enjoy the gladness of pleasant salvation. Nor is that ploughman worthy to rejoice in the coming abundance of the crops who, confusing by turning his face backwards the furrow of the plough which he ought to keep on a straight course, scatters the order of his earlier labor.

The bush, once wrapped in harmless fires, was seen burning without burning; its matter neither supplied fuel to the flames nor, seized by the fire of the heat around it, suffered the loss of burnt wood. So the touch of the divine tinder was tempered that, as the flame caressed the glowing branches, a splendor, not a punishment, was seen in the leaves.

The tractable nature of the gentle rod was changed into a savage and intractable serpent: bending in a sinuous coil as it practiced a viper's movements and brandished its triple-forked tongues, it swallowed the twin serpents of hostile fraud and, by a stiffening change again, took back the proper appearance of a rod.

Through the depths that lie hidden beneath the sea's waves, the waters rolled back to either side and held up by divine construction of the sea, a crowd on foot passed over. The sea stood on every side like a wall, and the land, stripped of the covering of its kindred flood, remained bare, until the people, walking in the sea while the sea was absent, took with strangers' footsteps a hospitable road of watery dryness. Nature changed its path, commanded to relax its constancy for a little, and the countless multitude, crossing the plains of the slippery salt, beheld without knowing it the rudimentary mystery of baptism, having passed through the saving straits of the waters with Christ as their leader. So, indeed, the prophet sang, signifying these things: “The voice of the Lord is over many waters.” Who, then, doubts that the voice means the Word? And who would deny that the Word of the Father is Christ? He, the founder of the old and new testaments, by his coming opened the immense abyss of the first law, so that by the newer teaching, as if the masses of the waves had been removed from its inmost depths, the following age, fearing no danger, might now walk securely along the path of level freedom.

Why should I tell how the countless troops of the same people, in desert stretches of land condemned to the barrenness of all food, obtained the food of angels and the bread of heavenly grace, when a nectar-filled cloud of heavenly majesty, bedewing them, poured out for the people feasts from the rains and abundant food from the showers?

Again, through fields squalid with violent heat a thirsty army was burning, where the land lay languishing, its springs always denied it by the familiar heat, where the failing nature of the waters had taken away the hope of drinking and likewise of living: when the stillness shut up in the bowels of the astonished rock suddenly overflowed from the surging crag into foaming water, and the veins of the dry and fasting stone poured out abundant drink for all. In these three things, then, already announcing the great sacraments of his mystery, Christ was in the sea, Christ in the bread, Christ in the rock.

A she-ass, a cheap and stupid beast, terrified by the sight of the angelic power, addresses her rider with words, and the crude cry of a braying tongue unfolds into the speech of a human voice.

The sun, at the summit of mid-heaven, reining in the rapid courses of its panting flame, stood fixed over Gibeon and held back its light through unaccustomed delays of the day, the evening postponed; nor did the moon, moved by its own laws, go beyond the threshold of its sluggish station and keep the order of its accustomed step, until the sword of the victorious army had utterly cut down the strength of the enemy, with heaven's help conspiring. In short, the very stars, serving, already saw the Lord Jesus who was to come, his name going before through the sacrament of a like name.

Contrary to the order of nature, ravens kept Elijah alive with daily meals, and the bird given to the rapacity of a voracious beak, which supplies easy prey to its hollow throat, brought him food untouched by hungry bites. Now good and faithful to Elijah, the bird that was once bad and faithless to Noah washed away on land the guilt it had contracted in the flood of waters. But Elijah, being full of God, after he had shown many miracles to the world and passed on, through the spirit, as by a hereditary bounty, the gift of his own power to the friend worthy to succeed him, was snatched up by fiery horses and chariots through those heights of clear calm, where the lighter road of a pure path keeps no furrows in the heavenly field from the track of the glowing wheel sinking in; he sought the regions on the right of a greater space in such a way that, shining in the chariot of heavenly triumph and relying on a long life, he scorned the goal of the human limit. How well the majesty of the shining path smiled on the brightness of Elijah, fittingly and deservedly, in his name! For if in the Greek tongue one letter could be changed by its accent, the word would be seen to express specifically “sun.”

To Hezekiah, a most just king, set at the last limits of life, the Lord by his kindness and his right added fifteen years for his safety, and, closing the doors of death that already lay open, called back his life, fading in its setting, to the origin of its rising.

Jonah, thrown into the sea's waves in the trembling of an anxious ship and hidden in the belly of the swallowing sea-monster, did not feel the waters though he was set in the sea, having entered, that is, a life-giving tomb so as not to die; and, safe in a most gentle custody beneath the voracious belly, he was seen to be God's deposit, not prey; and, preserved more healthfully by the protection of an enemy, he came to land by vomiting, not by keel. In this event, by a contrary exchange, the sailor showed savagery and the beast provided the ship.

When, by God's inspiration from heaven, the single resolve of heart of the three young men despised and refused the Babylonian rites alike, and underwent the harsh destruction of death by the atrocity of a tyrant's law (whose rage, kindled by the fire of Persian fury, surpassed the scorching heat of his own furnace), the young men are thrust bound into the midst of the pyres, the pyre not daring to touch them, and, burning so in heart, they overcame the punishment for the image as the penalty failed. O how great is the salvation and glory of believers! By the flames of a hotter faith the force of the furnace was quenched and grew dull.

So the author of so wicked a judgment did not escape the punishment his deed deserved. For because, seized by insane madness, he had despised the laws of human kindness, he lived like a beast in the woods, and, following the rustic company of cattle, he exchanged the delights of the court banquet, fed on hay and drinking from the river; and seven seasons saw him in this deformed shape wandering shaggy through woods and mountains.

No less afterwards, while the fury of Darius, then reigning, imitated the earlier madness, Daniel, the greatest glory of the Hebrews, is shut in with beasts goaded by fasting, and the innocent body of a simple soul is assigned to be devoured by savage bites. Yet the beast, made gentle and calm, so as not to tear the holy limbs with insane tooth in its hunger, now began to love its hunger; and rage, softened, lowering its terrible looks, and wrath, resting more gently in the savage jaws, then taught lions, forgetful of their native fierceness, to keep their prey safe.

Tell me, after such things, stubborn Nature, where are your laws? Who is it that so often took away your rights? Who commanded the underworld not to know the man carried away, granted a fruitful old age to a barren wife, compelled a beast to come of its own accord to the altar, turned a woman's form into an image of salt, showed branches blazing with fire without burning, turned a rod into a snake, opened paths for feet through the sea's waves, poured out nectar-sweet manna from raining clouds, cast out waters from the dry bowels of the rock, allowed the mouth of a dumb beast to speak human words, held the elements in a long halt, their courses fixed, fed a man by the service of birds and brought him to heaven in a chariot of flashing horses, granted three lustra of life to a king already dying, made a harbor for shipwreck in the belly of a savage robber, bathed the boys' limbs in the furnace with starry dew, made a wandering king the fellow-guest of wild beasts and cattle in brambly pastures, and taught lions to spare their prey and not to love plunder? Surely it was the creator of all things, whose works, all fashioned by the machinery of his word, whether known or hidden, are the foundations of his work and lie subject to him; and the creature follows the command of the one who orders it, wherever the divine sentence draws it by its nod.

Alas, wretched are those who, bowed down to empty worship, spend the foolish service of a perverse heart on images they have carved, and, leaving their own maker, venerate the likenesses made by their own hands! What madness is this? What so great insanity mocks their minds, that a man sound in his limbs should adore a foul bird, a most obscene cow, a twisted serpent and a half-human dog?

Some, blinded in clouded minds, would have the sun reckoned the begetter of things, on the ground that, flooding the tracts and spaces of the lands with the light of clear calm, it does not cease to traverse the regions of the sky and the stars with flaming speed: whereas from that very unstable mobility, which the wandering fire practices in its rapid courses, it is plain that it is a servant, not God; it keeps the order of a fixed arrangement, now rising, now, sinking toward its setting as the hours decline, sharing its turns with night. Nor is it always present everywhere, and it saw none of the beginnings of the world being born, until, two days having passed without a sun, the provident Begetter appointed it to shine from the beginning of the third light.

So too many pay needless vows to the moon, which they see always growing and waning at the appointed times of the months.

So too they do not cease to sacrifice to the stars, which are put to flight before the face of the morning light when night is driven away.

This one is a worshipper of waters, that one of flames, but they do not dare to make kinds contrary in nature neighbors to each other, lest, in closer discord, either the hotter fire dry up the weaker waters, or the pyre, unequal to the huge waves, suddenly die out.

Another, setting up altars at the roots of trees and setting out feasts, does not cease tearfully to beg branches and oaks to guard his children, house, fields, marriage, servants and property. Man of wood, why do you beseech wood? You waste your effort crying out to the deaf; you expect answers from the mute and will hear nothing; these uphold the stability of houses only in this way: if, cut down with axes, they support the overhanging roofs, or, put on the hearth and set alight, they serve in cooking the meals to be eaten.

Some, more madly still, are worshippers of vegetables, and, watering dry deities in gardens, show themselves to be true worshippers of transplanted gods. But I am ashamed to tell more of such things, lest, while we chastise the numerous errors of folly on the page of holy religion, the rough bramble should burn the lilies, softest in their great beauty, or the thistle and the thorn, armed with spiny points, should rise up through the purple violet beds of the flowering field. Enough of rebuke, then: we have laughed at the monsters that human errors worship, or rather wept over such acts in pity. Now it pleases me to go on with the plan of the path begun, to climb the lofty mountain with firm step, and to come with all the zeal of our strength to the city, the author of our freedom. It is, in short, the house of tranquil peace, the safe dwelling of salvation, the everlasting lodging of freedom. For if the poet of secular letters sang thus of the city of an earthly and mortal kingdom, founded by a mortal builder: “And what so great cause had you for seeing Rome? Freedom…”, how much more should we believe that the rights of everlasting freedom belong to the city of the heavenly kingdom, which God the Lord founded as its builder, of which the prophet of such songs says: “The Lord builds Jerusalem,” and in the following psalm likewise explained: “Praise the Lord, Jerusalem, praise your God, Zion, for he has strengthened the bars of your gates; he has blessed your sons within you, he who has made your borders peace,” and so on. Let us hear also the creator of all things himself in his gospels, saying in his most holy speech whose city this is: “I say to you,” he says, “do not swear at all, neither by heaven, for it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet, nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King,” as if he were saying “mine,” which he refrained from saying more plainly, so as to reveal the height of his majesty by the humility of his speech. For so, when he was teaching, he admonished, saying: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.” This is where the royal hall shines with tawny domes, where the one who asks receives, the one who seeks finds, and the door is soon opened to the one who knocks.

This is that precious stone which, rejected by the builders, shines set at the head of the corner: whose burden is felt to be very light, whose yoke is proved most sweet. So, through certain miracles of the old testament set out in order, we have told what the Father did in fellowship with the Son, the Holy Spirit being present with him. In the same way, through certain miracles of the new testament set out in order, we will tell what the Son did in fellowship with the Father, the Holy Spirit being present with him, so that the one power of the Godhead, ever visible in inseparable might, may be threefold in simple majesty and simple in threefold person. This is the true faith and firm belief.

Unhappy Arius scorned to hold this salvation. Striving to turn the straight road aside through the out-of-the-way windings of a crooked path, he slipped into the foul pit of dark Tartarus and followed the shadows, as empty and void of sense as, at the time of his just punishment, he was also emptied in belly, his bowels poured out, when he died. Madman, who thought that the rights of the Father's divinity, which can be matched by no example of likeness, could be compared to perishable degrees! For among men born by the law of the flesh the son is less than the father, since the father himself, who now goes before his son, was a little before a son, and there is no doubt that he who is now seen to be a son can become a father. So through every succession of descendants a new offspring runs on, and the forefathers of grandfathers are counted in great age. But the Lord Christ, who is the Word, the Power, the Wisdom and all that the Father has in common, risen as light from light, was born the Only from the Only; he is in nothing less than the Father, nor is there anything in which he could grow, higher than all things, since, begotten and not created, he has the name Beginning for his supremacy: for so, according to John, when the Jews questioned him, he said that he was the Beginning. What, then, is the Beginning but the lofty summit above which nothing at all is found, ever abiding in the Father, because the Father ever abides in him, and the one God of undivided majesty is the head of all things? Not that the Son is believed to be the one who is the Father, but that the Son is believed to be what the Father is, as he himself said in the teaching of the Gospel: “I in the Father and the Father in me.” And then he added: “I and the Father are one.” Let Arius hear that “one” is said, let Sabellius learn that “are” is said; the one fleeing from the Trinity, the other dissenting from the unity: both equal in error though following different ways. So the founders of the pagan doctrines try to oppose one another's sayings, men who, putting out their arms from bare shoulders, are ready to hand down nothing by teaching but only to contend in long disputation, whose prudence lies foolish, because the frail discipline of worldly wisdom is vain before God. This one talks more, that one is more silent; this one argues while walking, that one pronounces standing; one is always weeping, another never stops laughing: so in different ways an equal madness is seen in all.

Meanwhile, as we lighten the burden of the road's labor with talk, and hope and faith together accompany my steps toward the heights, we come more pleasantly, the difficulty laid aside, to the top of the highest citadel. See, the hallowed banners of the cross already shine; see, the most holy camp of the great King displays a flashing light, and with starry breath the trumpet of the Lord's post cries out: the approach of his gate lies open to his soldiers; let whoever serves enter fearlessly. The door of eternity invites you, and that door is Christ, that is, the Father's voice. You will rejoice in the golden reward of everlasting life, you who handle manfully the heavenly arms of the Lord and show on your foreheads the fixed glory, the sacrament of the faithful sign. Look, I, the least part of your army, good King, carry the consecrated glory and heavenly arms. Grant that I may receive a home of my own here, that I may be worthy of a small dwelling within the walls of this city, so that, ever your resident and your house-born servant, placed in a little corner of the holy mansion, I may deserve to be enrolled last as a citizen on the white page of life among the citizens of the blessed order. I ask great things indeed, but your greatness can give great things, and he offends you more who has conceived a doubtful hope of so great a kindness.

Christ, grant my prayers, smile on my prayers, you who, hastening to give life to a dying world, came from heaven to seek earthly things, deigning to take human form, taking up indeed what was another's but not leaving what was your own. Matthew, undertaking this first, set forth the man in general terms; Mark, like a wonderful lion roaring through the deserts, cried aloud; Luke took the likeness of the bullock from the priestly beginning of religion; John, with the swoop of a flying eagle, penetrated heaven by the majesty of the Word. These four chiefs and heralds, singing you with one voice, range like as many seasons over the widest figure of the whole world. So too the twelvefold summit of apostolic height and honor, ever shining, imitates in its number the hours and the months, so that, all things gathered together, the whole year may serve you. From here, then, remembering the ancient beginnings of the old death, I delight to hasten to new life, so that we who sowed tears in Adam may reap joy in Christ and may deserve to say the song of David: “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.”

That most wicked serpent had driven the first-born man by deceitful arts from the flowering home of paradise and, by the allurements of a sweet taste, had made him taste a hidden death that soon proved bitter. Nor did the violator of the command alone receive the sentence of divine indignation with the loss of life, but the human race coming from him had succumbed to the condition of a long death. Alas, cruel and harmful wife! Or is that treacherous, murderous serpent the more harmful? That serpent is a treacherous murderer, but you too are a cruel and harmful wife. O grief! The two only had been eternal. After the race began to grow, then it perished, and, bringing forth ruin, received its loss from its seed. What good, in that age, were the many days and the manifold, what good was it to exceed nine hundred years in happy spans of life, and, as the tenth generation of descendants grew old, to see now blood foreign to one's own race, when the last lot of the human condition, seized in its final courses by the irreparable hour, could by no means avoid death, however late, and a life that is short through a long age of times would groan that nothing is long that is closed by an end.

Nor would any hope promise that a remedy for this evil would come, but the sentence of the tomb deserved by the first earth-born man would swallow with greedy jaws all the nations of the last offspring as well, had not that kindly creator and founder of things, whose nature it is rather to pour pardon on sins than to threaten them with punishment, deigned to raise up more firmly, through the same stone, the fabric of his work that was weak from its very foundation, lest the image which, living, had been made in God's likeness should be held unlike him through death; and had he not bestowed the gift of forgiving indulgence and kept the teeth of the children from being set on edge by the sour fruit their parents had devoured, and, most gentle and appeased, granted that whence sins had brought death, thence immense kindness might nourish life again; and as the sweet and very soft rose is born from a thorny turf without harming its mother, whom it outshines in its charm, so, as Mary came from the stock of guilty Eve with holy light, the virgin following might wash away the stain of the first virgin, so that, since our former nature, defiled by vices, had been subjected to the condition of a hard death, when Christ was born man might be reborn through Christ, as Christ was born through man, laying aside the foulness of the original stain by the renewal of the old body.

After the prophetic voice had often foretold these things and the archangel Gabriel had announced them to Mary in person, at once the conception, breathed in by the faithful word, remained in the womb of the believing girl, and the starry offspring who granted all things to be born at his nod lay hidden under the law of birth. The virgin's womb swelled, and her untouched body marveled at the fruitfulness of her inner parts. The mystery of a woman's childbearing without a man promised great help to the world, when, darkened by the blemish of no stain, she nourished her heart in her swelling womb, soon to be the mother of her own Begetter.

Meanwhile the ninth month had passed and the immortal light of the tenth was shining, and the manifest promise of spiritual grace shone out in the virgin's child: and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, that is, he dwelt in the man with whose flesh he deigned to clothe himself. For the infant, both small and greatest, small in limbs, supreme in Godhead, coming forth through the pure chastity of the temple that gave him lodging, did not harm the body when he left it, which he had not harmed when he came. Truly this is the secret of the divine birth: the birth itself is shown to be the witness of the virgin, since he who entered as guardian of his mother's chastity was both conceived and born with her womb closed. What brightness of new light then filled the borders of the whole world! What joy in heaven! What radiance shone out when Christ, with starry splendor, came forth from Mary's womb like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber! His beauty was seen to shine so with divine grace that David's psalm speaks of him thus: “Beautiful in form above the sons of men; grace is poured on your lips,” and so on. And well did it define him as beautiful in form above the sons of men, because, although he took on the likeness of human incarnation and often called himself the Son of Man in the preaching of the Gospel, yet original sin had defiled us, which he did not have, who cleansed us by the purity of his own birth. O merciful kindness, ready to save! Lest the yoke of long slavery should press us because of our sinful condition, the Lord took on the limbs of a servant. Let us hear the voice of the apostle Paul saying: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,” and so on; and he who clothes all things born from the beginning of the world allowed his own limbs to be wrapped in swaddling cloths, and he for whom the bounds of heaven are small, for whom the earth is not enough, whom the sea's wave cannot contain, remained full in a boy's body, God lying in a small manger.

Hail, best of parents, consecrated by giving birth to so great a King, who so rules unceasingly above and below that his rule, power and name know neither beginning nor end; you who, by the conspicuous honor of a blessed womb, are proved to be at once mother and virgin. No woman at all is found equal to you, who either went before or follows your glory in like manner: alone pleasing Christ in a singular way, you are compared with no example.

Then, by the joyful message of the angel, the shepherds keeping their flock in the night watches were the first to know that the Lord was born, so that the Shepherd of the world might shine out to shepherds and the Lamb might appear, born among the flocks. For, as the word of the Gospel testifies, it says: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” The faithful assertion of the evangelist shows whose kingdom was in question here, when the multitude of the heavenly army praises God in Christ, so that, although the birth was human by reason of his mother's condition, the one communion of the Godhead shows that the Father is known in the Son. They said, then: “Glory to God in the highest.” Surely the glory of God remained in the highest, from which Christ, in coming, did not withdraw. “And on earth peace to men of good will.” We must believe that men are called earth, from which we were formed when the Lord fashioned us, who rebuked Adam saying: “For you are earth, and to earth you shall go.” For then our earth won peace after that deadly war in which it fell, when Christ took the earth of our flesh. For if we think that in this place the fields and mountains are called earth, what peace or battles can a dumb and sluggish mass have? That peace, then, came down especially on men whom it found capable of good will, so that wherever he who searches the reins and the heart sees the zeal of a sincere intention, there he delights to prepare the home of his dwelling. For peace is also the reasoning of the better will not to favor the contest of the flesh against the spirit, but to keep both natures always in harmonious purity under the rule of the spirit. Nor should we distrust the weakness of the flesh so much as to seem to despair of heavenly help. For the almighty Lord Jesus Christ, who is shown to be the mediator of God and man, so as to take away from us the excuse of bodily frailty, asking only for the zeal of our will, kept for his majesty the perfecting of the good work. For the apostle's teaching explains it thus, saying: “To will is present with me, but to accomplish the good I do not find,” because to will the good is ours, to accomplish it is God's, who pours his peace on men of good will. The divine word then continues, saying:

“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, magi came from the East to Jerusalem, saying: Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East and have come to adore him. Hearing this, King Herod was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And gathering all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. And they said: In Bethlehem of Judea. For so it is written by the prophet: And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the princes of Judah; for from you shall come a leader who shall rule my people Israel. Then Herod, secretly calling the magi, learned from them the time of the star that appeared to them. And sending them to Bethlehem he said: Go and inquire diligently about the child, and when you have found him, report to me, that I too may come and adore him.” Fittingly, in agreement with the decree of the Scriptures, Christ's birth shone from the East, because it fulfills what Zechariah's prayer signifies: “The Dayspring from on high has visited us.” For David's psalm too contains the like: “In the sun he has set his tabernacle,” and so on; by the sun it signifies the East, the region from which the day always rises. Why, then, Herod, do you rage so cunningly? Why are you madly insane? You profess Christ with your tongue, you persecute him with your heart, and you hide a foul mind, condemned to the darkness of cloudy gloom, under the calm of a pleasant face. For you order Christ to be sought not to be adored with the devotion you feign, but to be killed by the frauds you plot. You err greatly and are deceived in believing that he will succeed you, he who rules first on the royal throne, who neither succeeds at all nor departs, but eternally possesses the throne of his majesty; and you read the law and neglect it, you who threaten the King of kings with your kingdom. This guilt has no words, this treachery has no excuse: for you are trying to destroy him whom you had promised to adore. Perhaps you would have sinned less if you had asked nothing about Christ, so that, persecuting him only as an unknown man, you would be seen as a murderer only, and not also as sacrilegious, having offended God. Had you not read him warning in David's song: “Do not touch my anointed ones, and do my prophets no harm”? Since, then, it is necessary to obey the divine command, that neither his anointed nor his prophets should suffer anything from malicious wickedness, because it is a great sin to treat insultingly those consecrated with spiritual ointment, what name will this crime have, that you plot by your deceits to kill the Lord Christ himself, from whom the anointed are named, the true Prophet himself, from whom true prophecy comes down? Ought you not to have followed David, obedient to the Lord's commands, who, when Saul entered the cave in which he lay hidden and he was urged to kill him, said: “Far be it from me entirely, may it not happen to me from the Lord, if I do this thing to my lord, the Lord's anointed, to lay my hand on him, for he is the Lord's anointed.” And he indeed spared the enemy who wished to kill him. But you lie in wait for the Lord, who was born for the salvation of the world. And if, forgetful of the ancients, you were moved by no examples, for this reason at least you ought to have laid down the arms of your parricidal attempt, so as not to cast down the power of the scepter you bore, you who are known to be anointed and persecute the author of anointing. Yet lest the bloody treachery of your name should withdraw from its fill of so great a crime, what you plot in vain fury another Herod will see afterwards, under the heavenly honor of the cross but by the hellish crime of your nation.

The Gospel passage then continues thus: “When they had heard the king, they departed. And behold, the star which they had seen in the East went before them, until it came and stood over where the child was. Seeing the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy, and entering the house they found the child with Mary his mother, and falling down they adored him, and opening their treasures they offered him gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh.” What does it mean that the star they had seen went before them, except that, looking to the guidance of a small star, they might find the substance of full light? And they adored him because they had truly come to adore, which Herod, saying falsely that he would do it, did not deserve to obtain. For it is granted to adore God only to true adorers, as our Lord himself said to the Samaritan woman: “You adore what you do not know; we adore what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour comes, and now is, when the true adorers will adore the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father seeks such to adore him.” Although the words of the Lord's teaching are clear and open, that only truth adores God, we must yet examine more carefully the force of the saying: “the hour comes, and now is, when the true adorers will adore the Father in spirit and truth.” I think, then, according to the understanding the Lord grants to my littleness, that by signifying the present time, in which he showed himself openly to the world, he said that the Father is adored in him. For so he made clear in the words that follow, saying: “He has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father.” And magnificently, after he said “in spirit,” he added “and truth,” since truth follows those who bear the Spirit of God, and falsehood accompanies one who bears a foreign spirit. Another mystery too is declared in the persons of these magi: for by them, Gentiles and strangers who came to him, our Lord Jesus Christ showed the grace of the law to come, that he had now prepared for all nations a way of coming to him. So he is known to have spoken both through his prophets and through himself. Through the prophets indeed, though he foretold this often, he explained it by David's testimony thus: “The Lord said to me: You are my Son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession.” He called the nations a wonderful inheritance, because it was being prepared to be acquired for the Lord through the grace of the new testament. And through himself, in the Gospel, as a good shepherd he promised thus: “And I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them too, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one fold and one shepherd.” Nor let us believe that the devotion of the gifts lacked a divine purpose. For through those kinds of gifts, offered with fittingly different meanings, Christ's power was clearly declared. Let us inquire carefully what the gift of gold proclaims. Without doubt so splendid a substance, shining with the wealth of metallic splendor, is said to have been offered as to a king. But in this king too we confess a twofold substance: for Christ both reigns spiritually in heaven and was born in the flesh king of the Jews. The gift of incense, because that incense was once used for a religious offering, is given to Christ as God; myrrh, because it is suited to the burial of bodies, is presented to him who was to die in human flesh, for the honor of the tomb. The very offering, threefold in quantity, proclaimed by its number the worship of the catholic faith, since almighty God, who sees present, past and future and who always is, was always and will always be, in the threefold power of his Godhead set the foundation of all things in the course of those times, although all things are always present before his eyes, who has received neither the age of antiquity nor the growth of youth, but who never ceases to be the same as he always is. For to Moses, carefully asking the lofty name of his power so as to tell it to the people of Israel, he uttered from the flame of the bush that did not burn: “I am who am,” and said: “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel: He who is has sent me to you.” Likewise in the Gospel he said to the Jews who put Abraham before him in antiquity: “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I am.” See the difference of the two substances, distinguishing God and man. Of Abraham he said “before he came to be”; of himself he did not say “I was,” but “I am,” because the being of the Godhead is not to have been, since it stands in ever-living eternity, neither rising from beginnings nor unfolding to ends. For time is from God, not God from time.

The reading continues thus: “And having received an answer in sleep not to return to Herod, they went back to their country by another way.” We too, then, ought to imitate the faithful deeds of the magi, and as they believed a dream, let us now believe the most evident sights, so that we who have deserved to adore Christ, found by the shining sign of the cross, and to offer him from the treasures of our heart gifts of threefold praise, may no longer return to the prince of this world, the deceiver who had once led us astray, but, leaving our former path, may go by the secret ways of that road which directs the steps of those who trust to the heavenly fatherland.

Then such deeds are told in order: “Then Herod, seeing that he had been mocked by the magi, was very angry, and sending he killed all the boys who were in Bethlehem and in all its borders, from two years old and under, according to the time he had learned from the magi.” So, mocked by the magi whom he had believed he would mock, the impious king made public with headlong anger the emotions he had concealed, if it is fitting to call him a king who neither held to kindness nor tempered his own spirit by ruling it, but, like a most savage and bloody lion from which a tender lamb may perhaps be taken away, exercises his bestial onslaught on the whole flock of little blood, and chews, tears, plucks and kills the softest cattle; the most wretched mothers stand far off calling in vain their young, now lost, and stir the empty air with constant bleating: so Herod, goaded by Christ's escape, did not cease to dash the troops of little ones in bloody tyranny. For what crime, I ask, does an innocent crowd succumb to death? Why are those who have scarcely just been born already worthy to be punished? There is fury in the bloody king, not reason; enemy of the first cries of infants and setting out to commit a countless crime, he slaughtered thousands of boyish age and bereaved so many mothers together in one grief. One, pitiable, tearing the hair loosened over her face, wounded her bare head with the disfigurement of her lost hair; another furrowed her cheeks, wet with showers of tears, with the violence of her nails; another bloodied her breast with hard blows; an unhappy mother, no longer a mother, falling over the cold corpse of her only son, killed, poured out the abundance of milk with blood through the torn veins of her breasts. No one can set out the images of that calamity, so varied and so manifold, where there was one grief in different kinds of lament. What feeling had you, what was the intention of your mind, no longer a tyrant but a butcher? What roars did you belch out, inflamed, when, looking out from the highest citadel on the wounds of innocent little ones, you saw a vast sea of tears gathered in flood? Yet among the slain infants, who certainly fell but did not perish, though Christ was away, he could not be absent, he who, always inserted into the dangers of his saints, feels in his kindness the punishments inflicted on others' bodies for his sake.

And when, advancing in age, he was twelve years old (a number he had drawn from the flesh, running, that is, through temporal life by human reckoning), he showed himself older than the elders in prudence and a master to the masters in teaching, so that, as the manifest interpreter of his own law, he, though lesser, showed how great he was.

And after no long delay of time (what delay can there be in times, which in their swift and fleeting course recede before they have come?), as the evangelist indicates, “Jesus himself was about thirty years old, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph.” Most splendidly he kept both words, “about” and “was supposed,” for the divinity; for as he was seen to be about thirty years old though he is eternal, so he was supposed to be the son of Joseph though he was born of a virgin. Then he came to the streams of the Jordan to be baptized, seeking what he had come to give, to be washed who had come to wash. John the Baptist, seeing him (John, who had perceived him in his mother's womb, when, while still hidden, he was already aware of Christ's coming, and exercised the gift of prophecy though he could not speak, as if coming down from the temporary silence of his mute father), began to proclaim and say: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” When he says “takes away,” he shows that he did not have what he takes away, which he indeed bore not to carry it himself but to destroy it himself. As we see the rising of the radiant day suddenly poured into the darkness of night's blindness, and yet the light does not lose the grace of its splendor by the touch of the gloom it shakes off, so the Lord Jesus Christ, taking up the sins of the human race, did not keep them but put them to flight. For as fire makes metals bright by consuming their dross, so the good craftsman cleansed us of original contagion by his flame; then, spotless, entering the waters, he washed our filth in himself, having nothing of his own to wash. In short, purifying the very waters by the majesty of his holy body, he blessed the fame of the stream, which received the honor of the Lord's baptism. The waves felt the dread presence of the Godhead: the sea withdrew from the shore, the river went back to its source. Of these things the prophet sings, signifying: “The sea saw and fled, the Jordan turned back. What is it, O sea, that you fled, and you, Jordan, that you turned back?”

The text of the Gospel reading then continues thus: “And when he had been baptized he came up at once from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And behold, a voice from the heavens saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Let us consider more attentively how great a mystery is revealed in this place too. For after the Lord, baptized, came up from the water, at once the heavens were opened. How opened at once, when heaven is never seen to be shut to Christ, whose home is always above the stars? But I think, as far as his kindness deigns to inspire my senses, that the heavens were opened at that moment, when the Lord, baptized, came up from the water, so that in his mercy he might teach by his own example that the kingdoms of heaven are opened to man, whose likeness he took, when he has deserved to be bathed in the consecration of spiritual water. And that the Spirit of God came down upon him in the form of a dove shows how great is his goodness, gentleness and simplicity, through a bird that has no bitterness of gall. And lest it be unknown that God had been seen in bodily form, it is affirmed by the voice of the Father saying: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” This splendid affection of love contains the full firmness of catholic doctrine and proclaims that the power of the Father and the Son is one. For love, which has its being in God, does not depart from the spirit of likeness and equality. For he who said in the law of his command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” taught that there ought to be no distance between the one who loves and the one beloved. And in the following word which he added, “in whom I am well pleased,” he is understood to have set forth the common power of one Godhead. For it is more to have said “I am well pleased” (complacui) than “I am pleased” (placui), because complacui is a word of agreement and is seen to belong to two persons. The heavenly voice expressed it so that the Father might be seen to be well pleased in the Son and the Son in the Father. For in this very gathering together of the Father's voice, the Son's baptism and the Spirit flying down, the Trinity shone out from one God, of whom he does not deserve to be worthy who has not counted the unity.

“Then Jesus was led into the desert by the Spirit, to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards he was hungry. And the tempter came to him and said to him: If you are the Son of God, say that these stones become bread.” He was tempted, then, by the devil, always the enemy of faith. For no one questions what is plain to him except one who, full of a deceitful mind, does not believe the truth he has found, like the devil himself, who, after he knew from the clear word of the Father that Jesus was the Son of God, and dreaded his singular power in eating nothing for forty days and forty nights (for although Moses and Elijah likewise endured a fast of as many days and nights, he knew that they did so upheld by another's help, though by their own merit, while he saw that Jesus worked by his own power), suddenly seized on a most vain hope of foolish temptation because the Lord was hungry. Nor did he dare to attack the Godhead except because he saw the man joined to it. Soon, contriving the ancient snares of food, he stirred up wicked tricks with his accustomed deceit, and, pointing to stones, which were rather his own food, the serpent said: “If you are the Son of God, say that these stones become bread,” as if he could not do this who, constantly performing such a work, brings forth from the stony bowels of the earth a crop pregnant with frugal food and, as nourishment grows from the rock in the dense ears of the harvest, bestows the rich food of bread from the fruitfulness of stones. But singular Wisdom preferred to scorn the glory of a wonderful deed, lest he admit a repetition of the temptation. For God receives those who believe and shuts out those who tempt. For the people of Israel is read to have offended God most of all in this, that, forgetful of his benefits, it dared to tempt him by asking for a feast in despair. Moses in his books did not keep silent about their unbelief, and David briefly explained it, recalling: “And they tempted God in their hearts, asking food for their souls. And they spoke ill of God and said: Can God prepare a table in the desert?” and so on. For what can be difficult for him who, for his boundless power over all things, is called almighty? The Lord, then, answering Satan, said thus: “It is written: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” A most apt and fitting answer was given to the enemy. For to him who asked whether he was the Son of God he answered as man, so that he might be defeated rather by the one whom he seemed to attack. Hearing this, broken and weakened, he still does not lay down the arms of his boldness. “And the devil led him and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to him: To you I will give all this power and their glory, for they have been handed over to me, and I give them to whom I will. If you, then, will adore before me, all will be yours.” What wonder if the wretch spoke perversely, who took the shape of a twisted serpent so as not to walk straight paths, thinking that Christ could be touched by desire for a fragile and fleeting kingdom, Christ who had come rather to bestow a strong and eternal one on his own? Or that he who had come to teach that worldly riches perish would deign to acquire them, and would adore a monster cast down from heaven, he whose throne is heaven, whose footstool is the earth, whose service is the whole world, whom no one dares to look upon and whom all the powers above the stars praise with lowered voices? But again the Lord confounds him with this answer, saying: “It is written: You shall adore the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve.” He is still seen to answer in the person of a man, disdaining, that is, to subdue the weak rebel by the might of greater power; although that viperous envy, cast down in the encounter of this word too, did not yet lay aside its rash temper, but, trusting in the triple-forked flicker of its tongues, it raises its wounded head a third time against the victorious hand of the Trinity. “Then the devil took him into the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him: If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written that he has commanded his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands.” O how much blindness and gloom always reigns in a black breast, and how the mind, darkened by the shadows of its own malice, does not know how to keep its deceit undetected! See, by saying “If you are the Son of God,” he shows that he does not know it. When he goes on to say, “He has commanded his angels concerning you,” he confesses that this is the one he sees; but, found to be a pretender and a dissembler by his use of double-edged speech, he is proved a liar by his own arts. The malignant heart is the home not only of deceit but also of folly. For what more foolish thing could be found than to believe that he would fear the leap down from the lofty heights of the high temple and the top of the lofty pinnacle, he who came down from the highest citadel of heaven to be seen on the level earth, of whom David cries out: “And he bowed the heavens and came down,” at once holding the lowest and not leaving the highest? So the divine voice struck down the boldness of the failing one, saying: “It is written: You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” Here, now revealing himself as Lord and God, he forbids the tempter to make such attempts any further, the kindly teacher warning us by his example that the spirit who is the craftsman of ancient malice is without doubt subject to human virtues wherever God has been poured into the simplicity of a pure heart.

The instruction of the reading says, then: “Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him.” In this departure of the fleeing devil and the angels' ministry that followed, I think, an image of the Easter glory is declared by signs going before. For as, the temptations overcome and the devil driven away, the angels gave their service to the Savior, so, having scorned the insults of the Jews and the punishments by the blessed passion of the cross, and having trodden down death itself, the devil's fruit, Christ rose from the underworld, was carried to the stars, and in the accustomed rule of his majesty is adored by the angels in heaven.

Then he called certain men from among the fishermen and joined them to himself as disciples, to fish thereafter for human souls, which, following the slippery joy of the world, as if swimming the uncertain ways of the surging sea, had wandered with roving courses through voluptuous slips; and he won for eternal life such men as no noble lineage puffed up with the birth of earthly nobility, nor the brilliance of learned eloquence exalted with the glory of vain chatter, but whom the holy rule of a simple life, conspicuous for a lofty humility, made already neighbors of heaven. For almighty God chose rather the foolish and weak things of the world, refusing those that seem wise and strong, because, as the apostle Paul, the excellent teacher, writes: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” And at once he said again: “God chose the foolish things of this world to confound the wise, and God chose the weak things of the world to confound the strong, and God chose the ignoble and despised things of the world, and the things that are not as the things that are, to destroy the things that are.” Moreover the merciful Savior, wishing to apply swift salvation, also established the manner of praying and its petitions. And the most kindly judge wishes to be asked briefly, so as to grant the suppliant's request more quickly. So he taught us to pray to the Father, his by nature, ours by grace, bestowing his own honor on men, so as to grant to all as a favor the excellence that he alone has.

OUR FATHER, WHO ART IN HEAVEN. We who dare to call the everlasting ruler of heaven by the name of Father must first notice that the gift of so great a favor is granted not to each separately but to all in common. For although anyone, set apart from the rest and dwelling secretly in more hidden places, implores the Lord in the words of this prayer, he will not say “My Father,” but “Our Father,” since that word is owed to Christ alone, whose Father God properly is. For although this is recorded in all the gospels, yet in that passage the Lord Jesus himself plainly taught the singular power of his own right, set apart from mingling with the people, where he comforted the disciples, saying: “I go to my Father and your Father.” In saying “my,” he fittingly claimed for himself this special glory; in saying “your,” he showed that the general grace was common to all. And since it is written, “Let earthly things teach you what heavenly things are,” let us make some comparison here, so that we may grasp divine things from human. Let us suppose, then, a noble man who has an only son and some servants. Surely, because he is called father of the household, the condition of love toward the servants and toward the son cannot be equal with him, since the son himself is shown to be master of all? We, then, use this prayer, not Christ, since by the petition of this prayer we also ask him, who is one coeternal Lord with the Father. Saying, then, “Our Father,” we confess that we are all brothers in him. We must not despise the affection of this name by driving out mutual love, nor follow the monuments of the original hatred by which Cain, who shed his brother's blood, became the beginner of the stain of kin-murder; but, burning with the fire of a gentle spirit, let us lay aside the wickedness of our fleshly old self and rejoice to be clothed with the new man, lest, when earthly works begin to fall away from heavenly ones, we seem unworthy of so great a Father, who, with Christ as our leader, has received us as sons born by holy adoption. HALLOWED BE THY NAME. What hallowing can be thought of by which the Lord, who hallows all things, may be hallowed, except that we prepare a pious, gentle, calm and chaste heart for his entry? So that, delighted by such a dwelling, he may work in us the increase of his hallowing, just as our Lord Jesus Christ himself says that he was glorified in his disciples, he who always shone with the bright light of divinity. For in the gospel according to John he prays to the Father for his disciples; among the various words he went on to say, he says this: “And I am glorified in them,” that is, because he found his brightness in them. Where, then, he finds the signs of his hallowing, there he says he is hallowed. For that kindness, gentle beyond measure, declares that whatever it makes fruitful in its servants is conferred on itself. A like sense is shown in his commanding that he be blessed, though he rather blesses all things; for the general hymn of the three young men singing in the furnace cries out that the Lord is to be blessed by every creature in turn. THY KINGDOM COME. We ask that the kingdom of the Ruler who never ceases to reign may come, that he may punish the deceitful prince of this world for his presumptuous tyranny, and that he alone, who alone is, may show his rule, which knows no death and is not consumed by time. For the day of that light, continuous without night, does not know time, where the bravest soldier, having adored Christ and coming out victor after the various battles of the world, will rejoice in the crown of everlasting nobility that will adorn the hair of his blessed head. THY WILL BE DONE, AS IN HEAVEN SO ON EARTH. Here too the sense of the preceding context seems to be understood: that we ought to ask with unceasing prayers day and night that the will of him may fill heaven and earth who wills that wickedness be nowhere, so that he may not suffer the devil, cast down from heaven, to be hostile on earth either, nor let the cruel serpent attack the earthly substance of our body, as if compacted of mud, as food for his voracity, and, wrapping us in his worst persuasions, embrace and encircle us with his scaly coils, until, intoxicating us with deadly poisons, he consumes our wretched life by licking it; and therefore let us pray to the Lord constantly that he may protect in us both soul and flesh alike; for in one part we are of heaven, in the other we are the seed of earth. GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD. To those who ask for the nourishment of daily bread a threefold sense of understanding is opened, as indeed all the divine Scriptures ought to be read. So according to the letter we seem to ask specifically for bread from the grain crop for the sake of eating, and morally, as servants, we pray to the Lord that we may deserve to obtain our daily ration, provided that we know that the form of both reasons proceeds from spiritual discipline. For we are bidden to ask for our food daily lest, keeping anything for tomorrow, we be seen to doubt God's kindness. This, however, proves so laborious and difficult that such a rule can be kept by few and very rare men. For the Lord himself, faithful in all things, who for very many years in the barrenness of the desert governed the sons of Israel, brought out of Egypt, with daily food, sparing them only on the Sabbath, promised in the words of the gospel that he would give this to us too, if faith does not fail, speaking thus to his disciples among the other things he taught: “Do not be anxious, then, for tomorrow; for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.” But if we wish to understand the words we are speaking of more fully in the spiritual sense, we will perceive that this bread is the divine word, from whose substantial teaching, if the soul remains empty or fasting even a little, it will suffer the want of great hunger. For there is no small difference between spiritual and bodily meals. We are commanded to eat the latter sparingly, never to refuse the former. Here abstinence is healthy, there eagerness gives life. In short, David proclaims in these words that blessedness belongs to those who practice meditation on the Lord's law day and night: “Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence, but his will is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he will meditate day and night.” For this meditation satisfies and delights exceedingly, like the sweetness of thick honey, which, though it quickly fills the belly of the one eating, is yet never found to cause disgust, by the nectar-like sweetness of its nature. Let us hear also what the same prophet says on this: “How sweet are your words to my throat, Lord, more than honey and the honeycomb to my mouth!” He defined perfectly that the words of the law are to be understood as food, when he says that they are sweet to the throat, not to the ears, and are supplied to the mouth more than honey and the honeycomb, not to the hearing. For the deaf too, whom hearing does not help at all, are likewise filled with the heavenly precepts by reading with their mouths; and the apostle, writing to the Corinthians, showed that spiritual meals are teaching, saying: “And I, brothers, could not speak to you as to spiritual men but as to carnal, as to infants in Christ; I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able.” Who, I ask, would doubt or question that all these things are figurative and spiritual? For no one, not even a fool, could think that they were infants or took the nourishment of milk from the apostle. But it is fitting for us to know that those who are beginning to drink in the words of the law and gradually to be steeped in the divine instructions drink milky first principles like infants, because as good teaching is healthful food, so wicked teaching is harmful. Therefore the Lord warned his disciples to beware especially of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, knowing that the venom of sour doctrine corrupts the richness of all sweetness by a small touch, since, as the same apostle Paul says, “a little leaven corrupts the whole lump.” For even if we believe rather that this bread is the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is by no means known to depart from the spiritual meaning, especially because such a feast, or such a prayer, is handed down by God to none of the Gentiles, none of the Jews, but only to Christians. AND FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS, AS WE ALSO FORGIVE OUR DEBTORS. If we weigh the vows of our petition more carefully, we recognize from our own examples whether pardon is to be granted or denied to us. For we are bidden to hope from the Lord for what we are seen to have forgiven our fellow servant, since the same pledge of an equal condition binds us, so that, as we do not wish to be debtors, so we do not desire to have them. For in the persons of others we are either loosed or bound. And if it is thought uncertain which debtors are meant here, the material for a weak excuse must be set aside: whether in a fault, or in money, or in anything at all your brother is guilty toward you, forgive it. For both the frequent presumption of offenses and the dishonest handling of sums of money show that we are entangled in many bonds before God. For whoever, as far as his means can be weighed, has been inhuman to the needy, disowns to God what belongs to God, whose infinite kindness so protects the straits of the wretched that he declares that whatever kindly bounty bestows on the poor has benefited himself. In the vows too which we promise, having obtained divine benefits, we are debtors until we pay them with a faithful mind. These things, then, which have been said of money debts, we ought to understand also of the other and various kinds of sins by which we are bound before the eternal judgment, knowing that money has been used as the likeness for crimes because avarice is the root of all evils, without whose vicious seed almost no crimes are produced in the world. One commits murder to snatch from an innocent man what he coveted; another, bribed by a reward received, becomes a swearer of false testimony. Some are driven by gatherings for foul purchase to the pandering of adulterous trade; others stain themselves with theft, others deny a deposit. There are many other such things, in which the hunger for gold, ever their friend, fights alongside them. Indeed hardly any crime is committed that the service of money does not support. So, having obtained the gift of divine kindness and the impunity of heavenly pardon, let us not deny one another what we have received, lest, absolved from the greater, when we do not release the small, we be entangled again in the greatest bonds; and lest that merciful Lord, a giver and not an exactor of debt, who released us ten thousand talents, if he perceives that we are strangling a fellow servant for a hundred denarii, command us to be handed over to cruel torturers to exact everything, and, thrust into prison custody, we not be allowed to come out at all until we pay everything we lost, down to the measure of the last quadrans. AND LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. Not that the Lord, who is the way of light and the path of peace, leads anyone into the snares of temptation, but, abhorring those who do not obey the divine warnings, when he deserts them he allows them to enter. For all who, following the slippery contagions of the world and shut in by its delightful nets, aim at the luxuries of alluring perdition, abandoned by the Lord, who is the lover of pure virtue, go on to enter where voluptuous temptation has drawn them. From this, then, let us strive to draw our foot back, treading instead the narrow path which, by a slender road unknown to many, climbs hiddenly to the steep gate of the heavenly kingdom. BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL. When we pray to be delivered from evil, we confess that he whom we ask to deliver us is good. And not undeservedly is the one who delivers to be followed and the one who slaughters to be fled. For in the one, through good fruits, is the tree of life; in the other, through bad ones, the root of the ancient transgression. For the gospel reading declared that deeds are to be understood as fruits, where the Lord, laying open the varied minds of different men, bade each be known by his fruits, that is, by his works, saying: “By their fruits you will know them.” For as great as is the distance by which heaven is separated from earth, fire from water, light from darkness, peace from war, and life likewise from the grave, by so great a remove are good things set apart from evil. For a twofold choice always serves the judgment of our deliberation, whether we hold to the right-hand path or the left, not ignorant or doubtful that the right-hand path belongs to the just who rejoice in the bosom of the patriarch Abraham, while the left is assigned to the deep punishments of the impious, from which no one can cross to the other side through so great a chasm and the immense danger of a sheer abyss. This, then, is the freedom to be desired for us: that, if we are worthy to be counted among the sheep and lambs of the supreme Shepherd, we may deserve to escape the grim bites of the wolf and, in the most sweet pastures of Christ, most welcome with the loveliness of abundant flowers, gather a life now secure.

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.

Now, when, crossing the streams of the Jordan again, he was passing along the road of Judea, he healed everywhere an immense crowd and countless throngs of every kind of nameless sickness, receiving the sick and allowing them to go back healthy. Nothing, then, is hard for God most high to grant to those who hope in him, whose ready power is able to level the steep and straighten the crooked, that is, to bring the proud down to lowlier things and show the path to those who stray. For the great prophet Isaiah is known to have spoken thus when he announced the coming of Christ: “And the crooked,” he says, “will become straight, and the rough ways level.” Did he prophesy of rocks or briars or the bending turns of roads, when Christ came to save not the world set in woods and mountains, but in the human race? This too is what the voice of one crying in the desert urges: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”: the way, that is, of thoughts and the paths of wills, by which the Lord may come with straight step into the dwelling of a clean heart. For thoughts and wills are the ways of works, which are seen to go before the good or evil outcome of each one. Whatever, then, natural force denies is very easily subject to divine power.

For as the huge beast, the camel, cannot pass through the tiny eye of a needle because of the bulk of so great a body, so the wealthy, rich and swollen, could not enter the heavenly kingdom by the slender gate of the narrow path, had not the provident governor of things, who holds the whole by law and is himself held under no law, whom no face ever sees but who himself always watches over all things, comforted the disciples, troubled by this condition, with such words: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” For the patrimony of one's wealth is not a burden to all the rich, but to the one who is a bad manager of his own abundance. For when the Lord says through the prophet, “The gold and the silver are mine,” he shows that what is his is not evil if a good worker has it; for it makes no difference whether someone spends nothing on good works or pours out a great deal on wicked ones. That man indeed keeps his wealth safe and invests it, and hides and stores his treasures in heaven, where the bite of no devouring moth or scaly rust consumes anything, nor is entry opened by digging through to thieves for stealing, who gives food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, hospitality to strangers, comforts the sad in prison, cares for the sick in body, and, most generous to all, is poor and needy only toward himself. Nor should anyone doubt that the wealth which is shown to have been spent on Christ in the most humble form of the poor man reaches heaven altogether, wealth which grows by losses, is kept by scattering, perishes so as to remain, and, dead, brings back life.

Meanwhile, when the Lord, surrounded by the accompanying people, had gone out of Jericho, he sees two men deprived of their eyes sitting by the roadside, asking that their sight be restored. They asked sitting, because hostile darkness resists trusting in the motion of their steps. Nor did that power, which refuses nothing to kindness and is accustomed to bring healing where it feels faith burning, delay even a little; it suddenly roused with a wakeful touch the eyes pressed down by a long sleep, and, unlocking the bars of the windows hidden under their brows, at once drove back the gloomy night as the day came in.

Then, walking again within the sacred walls of the temple, he gave sight to the blind and restored walking to the lame.

After these memorials of noble mighty works, leaving the city of David, he had come to the region of Bethany, and, returning the next day, was going back to the roofs of that city. Not far from the road was a fig tree, shady with the interwoven coverings of its leaves, on whose wood the Lord, hungry in the flesh, found no fruit at all; he did not wound the inhuman branches of the tree with a curse, but condemned them by a command, rebuking it thus: “May no fruit ever be born from you for ever.” And at once the fig tree, widowed of its sap withdrawn, barren and unsightly, its glory of leaves laid down, withered away. Yet let us not take this according to the letter, although it is believed to have been plainly fulfilled, since the divine law suits spiritual causes. For what sin had matter without sense committed? Especially since, as the evangelist Mark records, it did not have fruit because the season was not suitable: unless the Lord did this for the instruction of our profit, he who shows us the way of life by parables of deeds and words. Every effort of human life, then, that cares to nourish nothing pleasing to God, like a useless tree with a sluggish trunk, full of leaves, not of fruit, will be counted with the wood to be burned, like that fig tree that remained unfruitful, which the lord of the vineyard who had planted it ordered to be cut down but left it under a year's truce, so that, if it bore fruit even late, it might remain; otherwise it would deservedly perish. But, according to the song of the psalm that says: “The righteous will flourish like the palm, and like the cedar that is in Lebanon he will be multiplied.”

Then there was brought to him a man who, along with the affliction of madness, also suffered the loss of speech, whose throat's passages being closed, no voice sounded from the cymbals of his lips, and, uttering nothing at all with his mouth, by his silence he made his mute madness known. But that starry Creator, accustomed to strengthen the weak, struck off from the siege of his throat the robber who hung over his panting straits, and, the bonds of his tongue loosed, restored full exchange with fluent freedom through the opened paths of the voice.

Moreover, while the Lord was ennobling by his humility the banquet of a certain Pharisee who had invited him, a sinful and notorious woman came in hastily, who, wounded by the many wounds of her offenses, was leading a shameful life. And, throwing herself down at the Lord's feet, she did not cease to wash them with weeping, to wipe them with her hair, and to anoint them with precious ointment as she kissed them, until the sentence of God was pronounced, who does not regret giving his hand to the fallen, if we regret the slippery path of our old ruin, granting pardon in these words: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” O how much it helps the wretched and the weak to uncover by confession what becomes deadly when hidden! For he nourishes his wounds who hides them and neglects to bare to the physician the wound inflicted by the goad of pain. See now, a woman defiled by the contagion of a long disease is purged by the affliction of a little groaning, is washed in the flood of her own weeping, and, drenched with tears and wiped with her hair, she who had come filthy departs clean.

And when the Lord had come to the city named Capernaum and was teaching the peoples heavenly things in a crowded gathering of the synagogue, suddenly, through the bodily service of a human voice, that most wicked devil roared out in this cry: “What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” And soon, terrified and cast down as the Lord said threateningly, “Be silent, and come out of the man, unclean spirit,” bellowing with a great roar by which he confessed that he had been beaten by the divine command, he left the human heart, fleeing invisible into the dark air. Likewise the Lord gave saving help to many who were sick in various ways and harassed by the calamity of various disasters, and, driving out many demons by the word of his power, he did not allow them to speak at all, disdaining such a common witness to the faith in his heavenly majesty. For that ancient serpent of Tartarus, destroyer of life, inventor of death, cast down from the heavenly summit with all the madness of his allied pomp and the whole foul retinue of his damned army, was astonished to see on earth, clothed in the humility of the flesh, the Christ whom he had known shining in that citadel, and he groaned the more from envy, because he saw man so beloved by the Lord of power.

And while, passing from there through the region of Tyre, the Lord was walking on the shore of Sidon, he healed a man brought to him, most wretched with a twofold calamity, who, deprived of the functions of voice and ears, could neither give his own words nor receive those of others. But at the touch of the heavenly hand all the inner chambers which violent ruin had closed were broken open, the doors suddenly burst wide, and, the guards of the passages at once relaxed, he who just before was seen to be mute and deaf both deserved to speak himself and heard others speaking.

You too felt the gifts of the Lord's power, on whose eyes, pressed down by a hellish blindness, Christ spat, and at once

wiped away the appearance of a feigned death. And when, teaching the peoples to have the support of everlasting life through sacred instructions, he revealed himself more plainly as God, avoiding for a little the crowds that pressed headlong upon him, he came to the lake of the sea, and, sitting in Simon's small boat, had instructed with divine oracles the people remaining on the shore. And at last, ending his words, which were never too many for their desires, he bids the boat go farther out to sea and the fishing nets be let down, which, the whole night's course having run, had been able to draw nothing from the depths, their labor frustrated. Simon, glad at the sacred command, obeys, and, skilled in enclosing the wave-wandering throngs with a siege of linen, he captures the nations of the watery marble surrounded by a walled siege, and so great a multitude of fish heaped the stretched folds that both Simon's boat and the partner boat that stood by, filled with scaly masses, were scarcely rescued from danger. So too the unexpected happiness of the greatest success often troubles us, and the joy we receive as we wished, if it goes beyond measure and limit, we now fear like an unbearable burden; for men are afraid even to wish for what is ready to be granted by the Godhead.

Distinguished and renowned for such mighty works, the Lord was hastening to enter the city called Nain, surrounded by disciples and peoples, when suddenly he sees the corpse of a young man being carried out, raised on the sad service of the empty gifts of a funeral, whose mother an envious lot had formerly widowed of her second husband and now of her son by the misery of a twin urn. And kindness, the enemy of grief, delaying not at all, at once lent life-giving help, and, touching the bier with the hand of redemption, the Lord said to the dead man: “Young man, I say to you, arise. And he who was dead sat up and began to speak, and he gave him to his mother.” For although the young man, deprived of light, had been overwhelmed by the numbness of sluggish death and was being carried as a lifeless corpse, the servant could not keep silent when the Lord called him, nor could the spirit fail to return when Life was present. Soon, then, the whole gathering that had been clouded with weeping is given back with serene faces, and, turning its steps onto the road back with grief laid aside, the white procession brought the rejoicing mother back to her home.

Nor was it a small healing, Mary, that the Lord bestowed on you as physician; he cured the secret place of your heart, hurt by many blows and wounds, which a sevenfold rage, wedged in a demonic mass, possessed with sevenfold movements of arms. But the serpent, spotted with scaly glory, fleeing the dread commands of the Almighty, driven from your heart, went to the chaos of hellish Tartarus, twisting the coils of his seven members and vanishing with his seven folds together.

Then, lest the very rich growth of an abundant harvest should languish for lack of the work of scarce laborers, he commands seventy-two other disciples, simple in mind, shining in purity, who, conspicuous in number and merit, deserve to be called a golden balance, to go like innocent and gentle lambs to the harsh minds of men as among ravening wolves. He exhorts them in such words, addressing them: “Go; behold, I send you like lambs among wolves.” And again, when they returned eagerly because even the demons were subject to them, he said this in warning: “Behold, I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will harm you. Yet do not rejoice that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” For this is the rule of the divine judgment: to put life before deeds, not to place deeds above life. For if the merit of a holy way of life is lacking, miracles have no weight, since they are shown to be often displayed even by the wicked, to whom that witness of secrets and judge of deeds foretold in the words of the gospel that he will say at the reward: “I do not know you; depart from me, all you who work iniquity.” Such were the two craftsmen of a wicked partnership present once under the Egyptian tyranny of Pharaoh, who, trusting in the vanities of Memphis, tried to rival the heavenly miracles of Moses, and opposed to them rival images and shapes fabricated by magic tricks and human efforts.

Meanwhile, coming at the entreaty of a certain ruler of the Pharisees to a meal, hastening not so much to eat as to honor his house, he saw a man distended with the swelling of a false stoutness, whose belly, transparent with overflowing water, was thought to be a wineskin, not a womb, and the huge pregnancy of the skin was in labor with an enclosed death, and the immoderate bosom was increased by the wasting of the limbs. So, emaciation ruling everywhere, the whole dropsy had gathered in the swollen belly. The Father of the world did not suffer this sight to remain in his presence, and did not care for his Sabbath, which was then at hand, hastening to care for the man whom he desires rather to be his own. For God did not make man for the Sabbath, as the Lord himself taught by his own words in another chapter of the holy gospel, but brought the Sabbath into being for man. Then, bestowing the work of healing, he commanded the watery filth of the inner parts to be dried up: when suddenly the diseased wave of the bodily marsh departed, and the lake of the now glassy flesh is emptied by the sudden departure of the watery plague.

And when the Lord, going to Jerusalem, was passing through Samaria and Galilee and Jericho, he mercifully entered a certain village. When ten wretched lepers saw him from afar, most foul with the spotted obscenity of their bodies, whom a discolored punishment scattered over their faces had made portents of shameful deformity, they cried out together tearfully with one voice: “Jesus, master, have mercy on us.” Then that singular power, which is never empty of kindness, answered with pity and said: “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And suddenly, as they hurried, all the foulness fled from their limbs, and, looking at one another, they rejoiced together in their mutual cleansing, because nothing of the horrible mottling remained in any of them. Of these, one, as though to offer a tithe for all of the gift received, returning with grateful haste, prostrated himself on his face before the Lord. Great was the man's faith and great his prudence, who, in the effect of a single act, performed the duty of a twofold devotion: faith, in that he believed he had been cleansed by the one he had asked; prudence, in that, though ordered to show himself to the priests, he preferred to adore Jesus. For who but the Lord Christ is the pontiff of pontiffs and the priest of priests? The author and founder of the twofold offering, to whom, after the order of Melchizedek, are offered the gifts of his own body and blood which he, crucified, offered for us: the sweet food of the wheat harvest and the lovely drink of the pleasant vine.

When the son of Timaeus, deprived of light, was sitting by the road by which he had learned that Christ was passing, and, shouting often with a cry and not falling silent when the people forbade him, asked more and more that he be granted the abundance of seeing brightness, he was told to come to the Lord and went by another's hand, and, having obtained his wish, came back supported by no guide. O power of unbroken confidence! How forcefully you obtain what you wish, and, gathering constant prayers from the heart, demand it as though owed; and so you deserve what you ask! For whatever a harder situation has denied because of its difficulty, the frequent prayer of a suppliant alone obtains by simple and honest wishes; not that anything is difficult for God, but that the greatness of the matter is humanly despaired of. Like the man who, in the silence of the night, asking his friend for loaves which he long refused him, because he could not earn them by the right of love, extorted them with the help of importunity.

The Lord too, passing through the region of Samaria, had taken on the heat of human thirst on a blazing day, and the ever-living spring, always flowing with everlasting water, desired a little water to drink, inasmuch as he bore the matter of a body. Here a woman native to that region, who was drawing water from a deep well, while she hesitates to give the gift of a little water, recognizing by his prophetic voice the life of her sin with many or rather other people's husbands, begs the Lord to bestow on her such streams, whose substance never failing, her thirst would fail, to be abolished; not knowing at all, and ignorant, that no one will obtain so great a gift except one who has been plunged into the flood of Jesus Christ and filled with spiritual waters in his soul, not in his body.

And while the Savior, thundering with his Father's voice, sat within the walls of the sacred temple, in pity turning the wandering people to the right path with friendly admonitions of life, see, an ugly adulteress, dragged headlong to him by the gathering of a great multitude, was being brought to be overwhelmed by blows of stones according to the rule of the lawful custom. When the savage fury of her accusers thrust her on the kindly judge, wishing to condemn her, it set her free; for, the condition being laid down that he should be the author of punishing the crime who had nothing of crime, no one was found pure by his own judgment to strike the impure woman. For no one dared to pluck the speck out of another's eye when he knew that a beam remained in his own. Soon, then, the whole blaze of the raging tumult fled, quenched by the flood of conscience, and every accuser was found guilty by silently confessing. Then the merciful and gentle sentence of the Lord did not acquit the adulteress of a manifest crime by judging, but in pity did not punish her, she who would indeed return to punishment if she returned to guilt. For whoever, in the way of dogs, seeks and licks again the filth he vomited neither cares to keep the old pardon nor to have a future one, losing the gain of the one which he acquired in vain, and feeling the loss of the other which he did not deserve to reach.

Departing also from this region, the Lord sees a man blind from birth, who, slipping from the womb of a wretched mother, more wretched himself, came into the light without light. Then that Sower of the human beginning, the founder and perfecter of the world, not suffering the fabric of his work to remain less complete for lack of the matter of seeing, smearing clay, that is, the natural instrument, on the enclosures of his eyelids, the good craftsman supplied from the old cement what he had seen to be lacking in the man. Yet he did not receive his sight until, admonished by the Lord's commands, he had come to the healthful water of Siloam and, now safe with the medicine of the clay that was his kin, had washed his eyes with the water poured on them. Soon, then, from his healthy face shone twin eyes, worthy at last to behold the day which they had at first wholly not known. All who read these things spiritually, then, ought to note what the mystic miracles of this deed teach. For we are the blind offspring, created from the brood of most wretched Eve, walking through the darkness of native gloom in long errors. But after God deigned to have the form of human flesh, there was given us from the virgin a saving earth, which, washed in the springs of sacred baptism, opened the eyes of reborn brightness.

Then, anxious, he had come mercifully with saving steps to Bethany, where Lazarus, having met his end by the human condition, lay under the stone of the tomb, already stinking in the course of the fourth day. When the Lord came to his tomb, the sisters, gathered, were weeping with dutiful grief, the crowd standing by was weeping, and the Almighty himself wept too, not in his Godhead but in his body, grieving over the cold limbs of the lifeless man in that part in which he himself was to die. For he shed tears as a friend, he showed the glory of his majesty as God. Why, Martha, do you not yet believe? And you, Mary, why do you groan? Why do you hesitate in doubtful trembling whether he can raise one man from the underworld, he who will make the countless crowds of the whole world rise again with renewed life? So when the Lord, by the wonderful command of his commanding voice, cried out, “Lazarus, come out,” suddenly Tartarus lay open, shaken with great fear, the inner chamber of hell trembled, deadly chaos dreaded, and the law of deep death departed; and, the soul poured back into the fibers of its body, the corpse is seen standing alive, the protection of the tomb broken. And after the due rites, after the burial of the funeral was completed, as though he had been born and created anew, having died for himself he stood out as both posthumous son and survivor and went away.

And so that the Lord, despising the fleeting things of worldly display, might show himself the more to be the most high God by humility, he did not make his journey borne in lofty chariots, which are shown to be the love of mortal pomp, drawn at four-horse speed, with the wheel furrowing a dusty track, nor did he press the high back of a snorting horse, which, conspicuous with trappings and purple, shakes its restless mouth, champing the foaming weight of bloody gold: but rather the slow carriage of a very humble donkey was honor enough for the Lord. Its hoof, great not in price but in the merit of so great a rider, shone nobler under its burden, not unequal to that ancient one, which, though it saw Christ in a small manger, yet knew him to be God. By his grace the beast of burden shone, for which, as it walked along the middle of the road, all the people spread their garments. Say now, all you peoples, who have until now lain subject to pagan errors, to what reigning king was there ever glory like this? To whom did a great crowd in full festivity ever come to meet with palms and branches, chanting a song in heavenly hymns, except the Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father governs the starry empire, everlasting Prince in Prince?

Amid these riches of mighty works without end the Pasch had now begun to draw near, at which the glorious power of Christ wished to lay down his mortal flesh, to take it up again, now living forever, not another flesh but the same, which, raising it from the underworld filled with the reward of light, he lifted to the stars. And, troubled a little, fearing the nearness of death as a man, he cries out to the Father in these words with the confidence of holy devotion, showing himself to be the Son of God: “Father, save me from this hour; but for this I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” He spoke most divinely and powerfully, who, when he asked to be glorified himself, indicated that the Father's name was to be glorified. For his name is God, which the Father and the Son possess undivided in a common majesty. And a voice came from heaven: “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” What is plainer than the testimony of the Father's declaration fulfilled? What is clearer than the oracle of heavenly assertion? Yet the faithless Jewish nation, which had heard the weight of so great a truth, was by no means moved by such manifest signs to believe that the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ had been proved. For some maintained that it had been the crash of thunder, others argued that an angel had spoken to him. O people truly blind of eye and hardest of heart, of whom Isaiah prophesying spoke thus: “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, so that they may not see with their eyes and understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them.” For neither thunder nor an angel, a creature, begot Christ its author, so as to answer him at once as a Father when he cried out confidently to the Father; but the answering voice came forth from the mouth of God, specifically the Father, who truly knew the Son, so that at least by this reason the too unbelieving crowd, pricked, might be led late to heavenly faith. This, then, is the Father answering the Son, and likewise agreeing with his own voice, since Christ, begotten by the Word, is the Word of the Father, and the like interpretation of the speech revealed the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father.

Then, when by the sacrament of the yearly banquet he was celebrating the Passover meal according to custom, to teach by his own example rather that humility is to be loved, he rose and girded himself with a towel, and the Lord, the teacher, bowed himself down to his disciples, washing his servants' feet, and laid aside so much of the summit of his power that he did not exclude from the dignity of this service even Judas, whom he knew to be the author of an unspeakable betrayal. But you would gain no glory from this, accursed traitor, so that you might seem clean in your feet, you who were defiled in your soul, like a tomb whitewashed outside which is full within of the foul filth of corpses. Nor did the arranged plots escape the Lord, but he marked him out as the head of the coming crime, to whom he, the bread to be handed over to death, would hand the bread. Then the word of David was made plain, saying: “He who ate my bread has enlarged his treachery against me.”

But after the Lord Jesus Christ consecrated the two gifts of life of his body and blood and offered his own disciples the spiritual food and drink, by which faithful souls, fattened with heavenly feasts, can no longer feel hunger and thirst: at once the savagery of the foul spirit entered into the heart of Judas, the most wicked seat where envy had found its home, and, seizing weapons against the Lord, stirred up the madness of an accursed servile war, having bargained the great crime of the business for any amount of reward; for the guilt does not lie in the price, but the crime grows strong in the deed. Taking blindly a small gift of thirty pieces of silver, he committed as great a sacrilege as he would have perpetrated if he had gained at once all the kingdoms of the earth, the riches of the sea, and the whole region of the sky with its wandering clouds. For the goods of the whole world would not be enough to compare with the shed blood of Christ, who is the father of the whole world*, who allowed even this abominable man to be born. And would that, condemned by the dry barrenness of his mother, he had never seen his birthday nor beheld the pleasant things of heavenly light, remaining nothing in eternal torpor; and that would have been a better lot for the wretch, not to know the life handed to him than to feel it taken away; or else that, as soon as he deserved to be begotten, he had deserved also to die and become an example of the first psalm, so that he might perish wholly from the world like dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth, and the unhappy man might have left no memory of his name. Then, bold, bloody, fierce, rebellious, insane, then deceitful, cruel, unjust, venal and treacherous, then traitor, robber, savage betrayer, merciless and impious, do you go before as leader and standard-bearer and escort the horrible enemies, and, when you lead on threateningly the sacrilegious band, violently armed with swords and clubs, do you violate the covenant with lying kisses, join honey to poisons, and flatter the Lord with a cruel betrayal? Why do you falsely profess yourself a comrade and perform the greeting of a friendly fraud? Never does peace conspire with harmful swords, nor does a savage wolf offer kisses to the gentlest lamb.

So the holy worker, handed over to accursed men, does not leave off his accustomed help, but at once restored and healed the servant's ear, violently cut off, which Peter's sword had struck off, so that the merciful one might at no time withhold himself from mercy. For it would not have accorded with reason for human vengeance to support God, who could have asked that more than twelve thousand legions of angels be sent for his defense by the Father, if he had preferred to exact punishment from the criminals rather than forgive the injury of his own slaughter.

So he then commands the edge of the bare blade to be hidden in its guardian sheath, since he had come, that is, to lay down his own life for all, not to snatch anyone's. For to Peter himself, who had then promised with confident voice that he was willing to die with the Lord, he said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow today until you deny me three times,” not accusing him of unfaithfulness, but disclosing the fear of the trembling to come.

Soon he was led to the house of Caiaphas, who at that time was indeed the chief of the priests by the rite of the Jewish religion; but since he sat in the chair of pestilence and stood in the way of sinners, he seemed to possess the leadership of crimes. For the council had begun to be violently inflamed and stirred up by false witnesses. A thousand lies flew against the Lord, dead in the empty embers of the accusers, not living with the warmth of faith, and all soon perished, spent by the movement of their own lightness, like a raging fire running through stubble of arid dryness, to which weak material does not supply the strength to burn the high tops, but, turned at once to ash, the flame loses its empty victory.

After no path smiled on their deceits, fraud, yielding to force, is turned into fury, and the impatient crowd arms itself to raise its hands against the Lord. Alas for me, hindered by such dews of tears, wounded by such groans of soul, I shudder to recall the sacrilegious hands raised against the Lord by the madness of the raging tumult! In short, the accursed crowd did not cease to strike his head with blows, to spatter his face with spittle, and to beat him with the strokes of their palms. Yet he, receiving all patiently, gave himself up for our salvation and assigned his holy body to punishments for us. For through those blows we have the healing of our head, that spittle is the washing of our faces, and by these slaps we have obtained everlasting freedom.

But the elder, to whom the author of truth had foretold everything, because what Christ had marked as to come could not remain unfulfilled, having followed the Lord's footsteps right into the house of the chief of the priests, was three times recognized as being one of his disciples, and three times denied it. And the cock, the herald of day, crowed, and, the oracle of the divine decree fulfilled, Peter's former senses also returned; recalling the memory of his guilt, he punished in himself the error of forgetfulness; and as unceasing groaning followed, the sins flee, the offenses depart, and the showers of tears he poured out brought sweet pardon through the bitterest weeping. Taught, then, by the apostolic example, we ought to recognize the force and merit of repentance, so that, relying on such remedies, we may deserve to shut out deadly diseases from the weariness of our souls. For if we have been wounded by the harmful poisons of thoughts, or of deeds, or even by the contagion of shameful words, let us at once strive to take refuge in the most healthful medicine of repentance, so that, grieving from guilt, we may not grieve from punishment, and weeping from the wound, we may not weep from death. Yet let us not prepare repentance for future errors, but apply it to past offenses. For those who sin trusting in pardon obtain with difficulty the desired pardon which many, presuming it, promise themselves in security in order to sin. For David too, the wonderful prophet, when he asked pardon for past error, in order to obtain it more easily, indicated by this prayer that he had sinned through ignorance: “Do not remember the sins of my youth and of my ignorance, Lord.” What then, should whatever outrages youth has committed be kept to be forgiven in old age? Far be it that vices should remain and grow old in us. But since the divine clemency, in its most gentle and patient long-suffering, has suspended the vengeance of judgment, let no hope of impunity dull us because of this truce; but like servants who have long been runaways, let us at least late return to our Lord, asking pardon from him for a slippery youth, even if we are old; although it is fitting that each sinner, at once, while the guilt is still fresh, should cut out its ulcer with the knives of repentance, lest the first shoots of a creeping disease, like the roots of a bitter growth sunk deeper by the neglect of a careless farmer, can no longer be torn out by any labor. The same prophet, in short, lest he should seem negligent in asking too late for the sins of his youth, added ignorance, so that he might more easily deserve to have his error forgiven by the kindly judge.

So the apostle Peter did not intend to deny Christ, but fell simply and ignorantly into a lapse of forgetfulness. For he who had promised with full devotion that he was willing to die with the Lord could not bear to be seen as a stranger to his company in any danger. For among other things he had shown a magnificent example of his belief, that not even the fear of death could separate him from Christ, to whom, hastening through the midst of the sea, he had once thrown himself into the rushing waves, deterred by no trembling at the nearness of death.

Meanwhile the day dawned, sadder than the shadows of night, about to see a new outrage, which, the gloom of darkness removed, was laying open to the people the unspeakable plans of the Hebrew assembly. Then Judas, the newest dragon and a poisonous murderer like the first (for as the one became the persecutor of the human race by taking life from Adam, so did this one by handing Christ over to death), seeing the Lord being led to Pilate's praetorium and bound in chains, he who looses the chains of sins, the wretch stiffened and shuddered, and, returning and paying back the money, the funeral wage of innocent blood, to the cruel stewards, he emptied himself of the price of the crime, not of the crime. For what can fear of death conceived there contribute to security, where no fear now obtains healing, according to the sense of the psalm that says: “There they trembled with fear, where there was no fear,” that is, at the judgment itself, where unfruitful fear has no time or space for correction? Or what confession can help one already placed in the jaws of hell, since we read: “But in hell who will confess to you?” For Judas, a public parricide, who, what he did not fear to dare, cut the throat not only of his own parent but of the author of the whole world, sought in vain the remedy of repentance; after the boldness of the betrayal the punishment of the sentence already held him, so that the axe laid at the roots of the tree, which bore accursed fruit, cutting off utterly the useless shoot of the evil wood, consigned it to cruel fires. He was suddenly seized with a mad fury, plotting nonetheless a deadly destruction for himself, although he was then saner, when he avenged on himself the crime of the unspeakable conspiracy; and, tightening with knotted throat the path of the accursed throat, through which the merciless voice had gone forth selling the redeemer of all, he drove out his unhappy soul with a noose from a beam. A small punishment indeed it would seem for so great an outrage, which no greatness of punishments could equal; yet the very kind of deadly end and the death of a corpse hanging on high denies the sky to be seen and forbids the earth to be touched, so that the culprit of an unheard-of crime, worthy to be expelled by both elements at once, should neither enjoy the air for life nor, as a man made in the common way, breathe out his soul as a man does. This kind of death also has another sign of his own downfall. For that the faithless deserter met his death on a lofty height showed from how great a summit he had fallen: lately a disciple, now a culprit; lately called an apostle, now an apostate.

When the Lord stood unafraid before the governor's tribunal, like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter, the accusing people, finding nothing worthy of death to charge him with, cry out in a zeal for sedition that he had said he was a king, he who was plainly present as king. Nor should anyone wonder if a people that is a friend of deceit dragged the truth into a crime and rejected the heavenly rule and the divine power, a people that, ungrateful for the Creator's support, once worshipped groves and served idols in obedience to them. For it seems one madness and an equal insanity to have preferred Baal to the Lord then, and to have preferred Barabbas to Christ now; and while the righteous is killed and the impious is saved, the sentence, erring in both, changed the way of justice: the author of death was appointed to live, the author of life appointed to die. From this, then, all of you who have so far remained unbelieving, believe now that Christ suffered for the salvation of the world, who, his back furrowed by scourges, harassed by insults, embraces all punishments, so that not even a robber, worthy by his deserts to perish, should suffer destruction. Alas, how sad is the edge of the sickle that cut down the harvest of the Jewish posterity! For those who, demanding the Lord's death, professed that his blood should remain on themselves and their sons, saying and shouting furiously, “His blood be on us and on our children,” condemned the whole fruit of their stock, until this stain is washed spiritually from them by the water of the one whose blood, sprinkled, rules in them unto death. Alas, the wickedness of your deed, Pilate, which you committed! You committed so many crimes in one judgment, or rather prejudgment, that if, needing healing, you had recognized them with a provident mind, you ought to have washed not your hands alone, but to have bathed your whole body continually in the sacred bath of spiritual water. You beat the just unjustly, you, a governor, examine a king, you, a mortal man, do not tremble to put yourself before God. You are held, then, in the bonds of a punishment to be paid, because by many wounds you fasten to the cross the Lord of creation, and you fear more to offend Caesar than Caesar's maker.

And when Christ, handed over to military execution, was subject to the sentence of death, even in the attire which he received in the mockery of a royal image, the sacraments of a great mystery were being enacted. For his being clothed in the covering of a scarlet cloak showed the bloody appearance of his coming death. A crown of thorns encircled his head, because he alone, in his kindly humility, bore the thorns of all the sins that had everywhere invaded the human race. He carried a reed given into his hand, a scepter truly like the worldly kingdom, which, because of its very frequent change, is seen to be fragile, empty, light and fleeting.

And soon, stripped of the garments of others, he was at once clothed in his own, as one who would lay down in death the clothing of the body, which he knew he would receive back a little later, taking on nothing changeable any more, since after death he would return and rise again in his flesh with full majesty.

Nor is it foreign to the fellowship of divinity that he touched with his lips the wine mixed with bitter gall that was given him and put it away from his mouth. For it was a wonderful sign that the Lord tasted bitter death and at once scorned its horrible venom by turning away his returning face.

So, fixed on the high wood of the gibbet, he changed the anger of the accursed ordeal by holy devotion, and, cruelty cast aside, peace mounted the cross, and, making glorious with his limbs the violent instruments of the cruel wood, he clothed the punishment with honor, dedicated the torture to salvation, and, kindly sanctifying the torments in himself, made the sign set up for condemnation hallowed with blessedness. And so that no one may be ignorant in mind, each should gather by prudent reasoning that the form of the cross, which deserved to bear the Lord and is to be adored, is extended through the four regions of the world, to show the cause of its veneration. For the axis of the East received the head of Christ, stretched out on the cross with his limbs extended; the western boundary smiled on his feet, the North shone with his right hand, the middle gleamed with his left. And the whole substance of the world, made fruitful by the body of the Creator, showed in itself the line of the cross filled out with straight and crosswise bounds, which it is seen to have obtained from the origin of the first light.

And when the soldiers divided his garments among themselves, they cast lots for the tunic, who should have it, since it was not sewn but woven from the top throughout, and they thought it wicked to violate the appearance of so great a wonder. Let the teachers of schism read this, indeed, and know what impiety they commit in tearing apart catholic concord. For if it seemed hard to sacrilegious and deadly soldiers to tear Christ's garment, what wickedness do they commit who, disturbing the peace of the church, do not cease to divide the Lord Christ himself by schisms!

The title too, written with the threefold meaning of tongues, in Hebrew, Greek and Latin letters, “This is the King of the Jews,” was read placed above the Lord. What is the reason of this sacrament also does not seem absurd to ask. For whatever is shown to have been done in Christ does not escape a great mystery. Why, then, was this title read written in three languages, when the greatness of the Acts of the Apostles testifies that many and various nations of peoples were by no means absent from Jerusalem, and either one language of an interpreter could suffice for the various peoples, or, if Pilate wished to set this before the eyes of all, he would have made it known to the crowd by more exchanges of languages? But since it was not accomplished by human arrangement, let us understand it as fulfilled spiritually. For the true faith and catholic confession, which was signified in Christ, taught that one King is set forth to the peoples in threefold speech; and that he declares him by word specifically King of the Jews, he who rules over all creation, fits both the worldly cause and the divine reason. First, because Pilate, either from fear of Caesar or because of the offense of his own credulity, defined whose king he said he was, lest, by the bare name of king designated, he should seem to declare him king generally and to proclaim him against Caesar, and to have appeared sacrilegious as though against his own ruler by decreeing his death. Next, because Christ is religiously named King of the Jews, and all the Gentiles occupied in the worship of idols, when they deserve to obtain the sacraments of Christian doctrine, will begin to call the Son of God among the sons of Abraham, to whom we read he promised that he would make him, as indeed he did, the father of all nations. Jesus, then, was called King of the Jews, not only of those then present but also of those to come, because, leaving the useless roughness of their native stock, they will soon lose the bitterness of the barren wild olive, to be grafted into the olive of fruitful sweetness with the ointment of holy chrism.

Moreover, the deadly and harmful people, its mind sated by no punishments, set bloody men on either side of the Lord, fixed by the same condemnation, so that it might heap up the blows of the wounds inflicted by the insult of such persons, although the likeness of the sentence did not have a likeness of merit. For, the just one hanging between robbers as executioners, the punishment of the three seems equal, but the cause of two is unequal. For they are guilty before the world for their crime; but to this one the world itself is guilty, which was freed from sin by his blood. Yet the Lord, placed on that gibbet, did not lose the rights of his power, who, from the lofty judgment seat of the cross as from a royal throne, as a just judge looking on both and weighing the merits of both in the balance of his divine heart, chose the one and left the other, not examining the past deeds for which they were paying, but attending to the present differences of their minds. For one, from whom the atrocity of his fierce way of life did not depart even in the danger of death, was tearing the Lord with cruel insults and accursed biting words, like a shaggy goat, enemy of the shoot of the sweetest vine by the touch of his venomous tooth, and he spoke thus mocking: “If you are the Christ, save yourself and us.” But the other, more modest with a better hope, who, sparing his tongue, also spared his punishment, addresses the Lord with suppliant words, bending to the ground his eyes, which alone he had free, because the stretched bonds of the wounds held back his palms, which were unwilling to be bowed from the duty of humility. For after he had refuted his companion, who had already deserved to be separated from his company, with the rebuke of a just speech, and acknowledged the guilt of his own wantonness, he prays to the Lord thus: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Him the kindly Lord at once, like a shepherd gathering with rejoicing a sheep straying through pathless deserts, addressed, saying: “Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” O wonderful and divine promise! He says that he is entering paradise who was hastening to descend to the underworld, so as to teach more plainly that there is no time at which God is not present everywhere. For, to empty the soul of the now blessed robber of the fear of death, he did not say only, “Today you will be with me,” lest he be thought to declare burial, but added “in paradise,” where with everlasting flower a charming loveliness smiles through the fields, and pleasure, nourished by watering springs and poured softly and beautifully through the gardens, gladdens all with pleasing sweetness, and among the blessed boughs with their leaves, and fruits no longer deceiving with any snares, that serpent of Tartarus groans that the ancient settler now lives without falling. So both, running like robbers with different motions, take the way of different paths, and, intent on far-removed places, performed a violence distinguished by their deeds. The one entered the gates of hell, the other broke into those above; the one, sunk in deep darkness, penetrated the bars of Gehenna, the other, entering the threshold of clear light, plundered the kingdom of heaven.

Meanwhile the whole world was suddenly darkened, overwhelmed by the shadows of a sudden blindness, and, covered with a sad mass of clouds, the day celebrated funeral rites; the sun, withdrawn, its rays hidden, veiled in a foul pall, lay hidden and stained the world with the mourning of a strange night. Such a face the elements, bereft of their Father's comforts, deserved to have, that they should be sad at the setting of him at whose rising they rejoiced. For as light shone at the Lord's birth, so it departed at his death. Then a star shone by day; now not even in the night did one appear. But although the light fled from heaven and earth, it did not remain long in this withdrawal; in the very intervals of the suspended time it was seen to accord with a great mystery. For as for three hours the face of the world lay overwhelmed by darkness, so the burial of the tomb covered the Lord, shut in for three days.

Nor did the earth then stand without disaster, trembling in all its foundations, as it perceived such things being committed, and nature, thinking that the end of the world had now come, hung at an uncertain boundary, lest the highest summit, descending to the underworld, should at once bend the whole mass with it into death, and the world, accompanying its own author, should flow headlong into chaos. But that immense kindness of the Godhead was hastening mercifully to Tartarus, to restore what was lost, not to destroy what had been established.

And when those who had fastened the Lord to the wood of the cross saw such perils taking place, they were by no means terrified by so many signs, so many unheard-of portents of present fear. Moreover, when, thirsting, he asked for a drink, one of the most wicked crowd tied a sponge to a reed and held out vinegar to his mouth. O how fitting that liquid was to the most wicked mind of the Jews, who, following worse and lowest things, were for the guilt of unbelief called bastards! For as sweet wines, when they have been turned into sad vinegar, are rejected from the cups of all the tables and thrown out, so this deadly and impious nation, which in ancient times had pleased God, is now hateful and greatly to be cursed.

So when the Lord had fulfilled all things of his blessed passion, he himself at once willingly laid down his soul from his holy body, himself to take it up again willingly, as he did, since he had indeed died but was living, dead in his perishing limbs, not in his Godhead. Let us hear what the evangelist John reports in his person; for the Lord says to his disciples: “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my soul and will take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again. This command I received from the Father.” Who, then, could doubt, or would dare to, that he who was able to lay down his soul when he pleased was also able to take it up again when it pleased him, and to work in himself rather this power which he deigned to show in very many? See, the doors of Tartarus are unlocked and cast down as Christ comes, the path from the underworld now lies open backwards, the rocks are split, the earth is cleft, the tombs are emptied of bodies, the crowd of the saints revives; and lest faith should fail in the believer, the multitude of those rising is recognized.

Then that wonderful temple too, full of ancient religion, seeing that the summit of a greater temple had fallen, as if a sad and groaning foster-child were mourning its own author, at once tore its veil and showed its bare breast to all, signifying that its inner secrets were plainly to be opened to the nations and to the peoples who would faithfully come, since the law, which long remained covered by the veil under Moses, has shone out as Christ comes to us. Come, tell me, sad and impious Death, where now is that deadly victory of yours, where now the accursed sting that serves you to the tomb, you who, never sated by any funerals since the destruction of the first generation, invading the human race, are wont always to lord it over wretched frailty with penal rule? See, most wicked one, you did not come to Christ, but Christ came down of his own accord to you, he who could die without death, who, begetting all things and establishing all things, did not create you alone, livid as you are. For venerable Scripture says: “God did not make death.” If, then, you wish to know the matter of your origin, you were conceived with the serpent as father and born with guilt as mother, but now, as pardon reigns, you are consumed.

Meanwhile the Lord's spirit had already left the body for a time, and Christ's cold limbs hung on the wood of the cross, and still fury, not abandoning its arms, supplies a lance to a hostile hand, and with a wicked blow violated the Lord's side with a fixed wound, opening a deep and dug-in wound, through which blood and water flowed together. O how this event accords with catholic doctrine! O how well these sacraments suit the faith of the Trinity! For body, blood and water are the three gifts of our life. For all of us who give ourselves to Christ as leader are reborn in the font of waters and, receiving his body and blood, eat and drink, so that we may deserve to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. For the apostle Paul also speaks thus, saying: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you?” Let us pray that the Lord may bid us keep this temple unstained, so that so great a dweller may make us, narrow and slight as we are, fit and able to hold him.

After, then, that holy place received the treasure of the precious body laid in it, which shone noble when the Lord lay there and triumphed nobler when he rose, the generation devoted to deceit, devising its accustomed wickedness in an impious heart, keeps saying that Christ will be carried off by his disciples, stealing him in the silence of the night, so that, as he himself had foretold, it might be spread abroad that he had risen after the third day. So the Jews, terrified by this suspicion of theft, ask that a very large guard be applied more carefully, and that the doors and entrance of the tomb be fenced with a most faithful siege. If not yet, after the bitter punishments of the cross, after the blows and wounds of iron, after the mortal burial of the body, have you, bloody executioners, fulfilled your office, nor sated your unjust hatred after the death of the innocent, and do not prove that the Lord of singular power, who so often brought souls out of the underworld, will rather call back his own: then carry out the counsels fitting for you toward the worse, nurse in your minds the deceits now armed by the nourishment of treachery, seal the bars of the tomb, post military watches, shut the monument with a stone, and, arranging all things with malicious dispositions, as you do, tell me: who will be able to guard God, to whom all things are open and nothing is shut? He reigns in heaven, commands the seas, and rules the underworld too. Why, then, disorderly mob, do you waste your work in watches and labor? Why do you strive to test the faith which you will not admit even when it is proved?

Meanwhile, after that sad Sabbath, the festive day had begun to shine, which, most welcome to the ruling Lord, takes its name from his majesty, called for this honor the Lord's Day, since it obtained so great dignity that it first deserved to behold the origin of the world being born and the power of Christ rising again. For so the book of Genesis, the clear witness of things, says that God rested from his works on the seventh day, the Sabbath. It appears plainly, then, that this day is the head of the world, from which, as the first, the seventh, the Sabbath, is counted in fixed order; and the glory of the eternal King, making it illustrious also by the trophy of his resurrection, decreed that it should keep, with religious honor, the primacy granted it over all days.

At the conspicuous rising of this light the virgin mother, with the other women faithfully gathered, who had come to the Lord's tomb bearing together the gift of spices, furrowed their faces with tears and shook their breasts with groans. And soon they see the place of burial lie open, empty of the body, but overflowing full of wonderful power. For an angel had come down from heaven and sat wonderfully on the stone rolled away from the doors of the tomb, flaming in face, white in his garments, so that, shining with a twofold difference, he might show terror and joy alike: terror indeed to the guards, threatening with fiery face, joy to those seeking Christ, comforting them with the gladness of his snowy garment. So the women, strengthened by the angel's revelation, rejoice that the Lord has come back to life after death.

But the soldiers, terrified by such a sight, could not keep hold of life, set in a perilous danger, and, at once deserting their post, they rush back headlong to the city, reporting the miracles, and announce the plain truth for nothing. After they sold their faith for a price, they change into cowardly deceit, and soon invent that Christ's disciples, lying in wait to ambush their nightly rest, stole him away. Speak, accursed and wicked guard; say, criminal legion, what you mean to maintain, you who, in your eagerness to get money, do not see the pit of your fall and danger, and do not know how much punishment you deserve, since you prefer to seem negligent rather than truthful. For it is agreed that you were wakeful, anxious, sharp-eyed, that you never bent your eyes in sleep unless a comrade duly succeeded you in turn to relieve the labor, and that you fortified the place with watches so that it seemed it could be reached by no deceits. Was Christ, as you dare to compose with false voice, snatched from the tomb by the hands of his own while you rested in the time of night's work? Then whose linen cloths lie there, whose wrappings lie beside, around whose discarded garments does the angelic power sit? Or did the one who snatched away the blessed body first strip and bare it, thinking it could be removed more quickly uncovered than carried off bound, as it remained, since delay is the enemy of thieving robbers, and it could more safely and secretly have been carried off together with the Lord's wrappings? Iniquity has lied to itself. Yet this event has the excellent grace of a figurative sense. For it is agreed that Christ has been spiritually taken away from the Jews, he whom we carry with the whole devotion of mind and breast. Mourn, Judea, then, for your priests, mourn for your ministers and your people, you who, abandoned for such great crimes, will no longer rejoice in the trumpet, will not be strengthened by an anointed one, will not enjoy sacrifices. For in hope of what power will the trumpet be blown for you, when you see your king slain? What anointed one will be given further, when you have lost the rule of the Anointed himself? What victim will be struck, when the shepherd himself has been slaughtered as the victim? Let the synagogue depart, now darkened by its own color: Christ has joined to himself the church, beautiful with snowy glory.

She presents the honor and glory of Mary, who, though she is seen to be always mother with the evident brightness of the Lord, is yet seen always virgin. To her the Lord showed himself at once after the triumph of the resurrection, so that the holy and kindly mother, who was the gate of his birth when he came into the world, might, as the one to spread abroad the testimony of such a miracle, be also the messenger of his leaving the underworld.

Soon after, like a traveler passing by, he took part in a meal with certain men, and in the breaking of bread made himself known to their senses and eyes, because, since he himself is the true bread, he becomes known to those eyes which inner faith unlocks and uncovers and leads by the brightness of grace to the recognition of the Lord.

Often too, at different times and moments, he showed himself plainly to his disciples: now appearing unexpectedly as they were eating, now taking food of broiled fish and honeycomb, so as to teach more evidently that the food was bodily, and that by eating he proved to those who saw him that he now bore the same limbs which he had borne a little before.

Again, when the apostles, fearing to endure the violent savagery of the people that had often denied the Lord, remained with the doors of the house shut, standing suddenly within the barred doors, he gave peace to all with the greeting of his word, so that, granting joy in return to the afflicted, he might prove what he had marked by the prophetic voice, that the Lord will not abandon a contrite and humbled heart. And soon he opened his pierced hands and bared the wound fixed in his side, lest they believe him a phantom if they did not see the marks of the wounds.

But since Thomas, an equally venerable apostle, whom they called by the name Didymus, was not present and did not believe when his companions told such things, see, the Lord afterwards, when Thomas was sitting with the brothers, presents himself again with the doors unmoved, he who had never departed from them in spirit, and, seen by all in the midst, he does not disdain to humor the trembling disciple: showing again his palms and side, he allows himself to be tested by the touch of the wounds, recognized the more from this as being the Christ, because he cherished with calm gentleness the mind of the doubter he had received. For whoever practices artful deceits under the blind image of fraud and arranges empty mists and shapes to deceive incautious minds does not want to be examined, does not want his deeds to be known, so that he may lurk under the veil of a deceitful cloud, and, mocking wretched eyes with composed phantoms, he hates anxious friends if he begins to be detected. But the Lord Christ, true in all things, most gentle even to the one who doubts to believe, is not angry with the waverer, but with mild readiness allows him even to plunge his fingers into the wounds, knowing that the example of this proof belongs not only to Thomas, who was already blessed, but thereafter to the faith of many.

After a few days the Lord showed himself again on the seashore to Peter, fishing with his companions, and, seeing that, weary after the wakeful labor of the whole night, they had made no catch, he commands the nets to be let down on the right into the sea, and at once, the salt of the deep enclosed, the creaking folds brought out an immense gathering of fish as prey, which they joyfully threw down before the Lord's feet. Such a kind of miracle, then, ought not to be perceived as a common event, but weighed with figurative understanding. For let us believe that the nets are the very clear and plain commands of God, by which all who follow the right hand are enclosed, to be rescued from the waves of the world, bowed down at Christ's feet.

For the fish too, set on the coals, and the bread found by them in the same place, are seen not to lack catholic meaning. For the fish is seen to be understood as the water, by which it is certain that we are washed and reborn; the bread signifies Christ the Savior, by whose same body we are fed unto salvation; the fire bears the image of the Holy Spirit, by whom, devoted, we are consecrated to the faith. For in the same appearance he was shown and shone out when, as the book of their Acts testifies, he bathed the blessed apostles with the brightness of his divinity. Then he invites them to take the meal with the gentle bidding of solemn words, and they, gathered at once with one mind at the Lord's table, receive the food of holy blessing and recognize Christ in the full truth of faith.

And when they had risen from the modest meal, fittingly satisfied, the Lord gently asks Peter whether he loves him. And to him, at once assenting, wishing as a good shepherd to increase his flocks, he entrusts his sheep and lambs as to a most faithful and approved worker. And this he repeats and goes over a third time, so that the threefold denial of the recent fault might be purged by an equal number of professions of love. And that he gave to Peter specially the dignity of feeding the flock, though he is shown to love all equally, does not pertain to the loss of the others, but is seen to be joined to reason. For this most gentle animal, by the simplicity of its nature, is compared to the just, whom, when the King of all comes in his majesty, standing on his right, he will address otherwise, as he himself taught: “Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” and so on. Fittingly, then, he entrusts the just who will enter the kingdom to him to whom he had promised to give the keys of that kingdom.

Then, instructing them with blessed admonitions and strengthening them by the handing on of the teaching of peace, he commands them to scatter the precepts of the religious faith through all lands and to grant to all nations the one Trinity of holy baptism, saying and decreeing thus: “All power has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go now, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all things whatsoever I have commanded you,” and so on.

And when he had commanded all things of the Godhead to be fulfilled, soon, going out to Bethany with them led out together, before the blessed men who deserved to obtain the sight of so great a triumph, carried up through the regions of the air, he ascended to the citadel of starry dominion and sits at the right hand of the Father's majesty, and rules and governs all by his own will, he who, possessing continually all things high and deep, after heaven descended to Tartarus, after Tartarus returned to heaven. For this reason, then, he willed to go up to the stars in their presence (as far as he deigns to open it to the senses of my littleness), so as to show them the way by which they should follow; for when, before the passion, they said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”, he answered plainly and said: “I am the way and the truth and the life.” The way, since through him one comes to the Father's grace; the truth, because he grants to believers what he promises; the life, since those whom he adopts are not subject to death. So the disciples, most joyfully watching the Lord high above the clouds, having conquered the world, tread with his own footsteps the flashing tracts of the stars, venerate and adore him as suppliants, and, on their most welcome return, turn over in their hearts and carry back the regions of the airy path which served his steps and which they had seen with their eyes, about to warn all nations to believe. For they are proved to be faithful and very great witnesses of the divine power, who, seeing the countless deeds of the Lord Jesus Christ, wrote a few of his noble acts. For if all the miracles of our Savior could have been bound in religious pages, perhaps not even the world itself, as the evangelist John testifies, would contain all the volumes of books that would be written.