In Mamantem martyrem

Homily 23. On the Holy Martyr Mamas. I am not unaware of the magnitude of the praises expected by this festival; but just as I know this, so too am I conscious of my own weakness. For the subject demands that something worthy be said of those who have assembled, of the hope they place in us, and of the theme itself. Since today we are celebrating the memory of the greatest of martyrs, every mind is attentive and every ear prepared, expecting something worthy of the martyr to be spoken, and drawing the church together with longing for him. For well-disposed children demand the praises of their fathers as milk, and would not allow the greatness of those praised to be endangered by the insignificance of the speaker. Thus, the greater the eagerness, the greater the danger. What then shall we do? How shall we both fulfill your desires and not ourselves depart without accomplishing what is present? We shall exhort each soul to renew in thought what it brought to this commemoration, to supply itself from within, and to depart rejoicing in its own provisions. Remember the martyr, all of you who have enjoyed him through dreams; all of you who, encountering this place, have had him as a helper in prayer; all of you for whom, called by name, he has stood by in your works; all travelers he has brought back; all whom he has raised from sickness; all to whom he has restored children already dead; all for whom he has extended the terms of life. Gather all these things together, and fashion a praise from a common contribution. Share with one another what each knows, with the one who does not know.

hat which he does not know, let him receive from one who knows, and thus having feasted one another by common contribution, pardon our weakness. For these are the encomia of a martyr, the wealth of spiritual gifts. For we do not have him to exalt according to the law of external encomia; we do not have to speak of illustrious fathers and ancestors. For it is shameful for one who is conspicuous by his own virtue to be adorned with borrowed ornaments. For by the laws of custom such things are taken up in encomia. Since the encomia of truth require what is proper to each. For neither does the father's good fortune in the race make a horse swift, nor is the encomium of a dog that it is born from the swiftest. But just as the virtue of other animals is observed in each one itself, so too a man's own praise is that which is witnessed from the achievements that belong to him. What is the father's renown to the son? Thus the martyr did not receive his renown from elsewhere; but he himself kindled a torch of glory by his subsequent life. From Mamas the rest, not from others Mamas. Children are those who learned piety from him; let them be proud of him. For he himself pours forth virtue from within. He is not like a winter torrent proud of an alien confluence, but he is a spring pouring forth beauty from his own depths. Let us admire the man not adorned with borrowed ornament, but made illustrious by his own. Do you see the splendid horse-breeders? Do you see their white monuments? How they are stones that pass by? But by the memory of the martyr every land has been stirred, every city has been transformed into a festival.

Not even the relatives of the fathers run to their tombs, but all go to the place of piety. They call this one father, the leader of truth, but not fathers and leaders of bodies. Do you see how virtue is honored, and not wealth? Thus the Church, by the honors it pays to those who have gone before, exhorts those who are present. Do not, it says, be eager for wealth; do not be eager for the wisdom of the world that is passing away; do not be eager for glory that fades; these things vanish with life; but be a worker of piety. For this will raise you to heaven, this will make your memory immortal and your good fame enduring among men. So, if anyone remembers the shepherd, let him not marvel at wealth. For we have come together to praise not a rich man; do not depart marveling at wealth, but at poverty with piety. A shepherd is nothing great, no wise pursuit. You would not, if angered, say as an insult to one who provoked you: Are you a shepherd? A shepherd possesses nothing more than his daily food, carries a wallet and a staff, and provisions for the day, having no care for the morrow. An enemy of wild beasts, a companion of the gentlest animals, shunning the marketplace, shunning the courts, not knowing sycophants, not knowing commerce, not knowing wealth, having no shelter of his own, living under the common roof of the world, at night looking up to the sky and reading through the stars the wonder of the Creator. A shepherd. Let us not be ashamed of the truth. Let us not imitate the myth-makers outside, let not us clothe the truth with elegance of words.

Truth is naked, without an advocate, showing itself. With more reason the humble is praised; but you will admire it even more in the encomium. Shepherd and poor man—these are the proud titles for the Christian. If you seek the leaders of the school of piety, they are fishermen and tax collectors; if the disciples, they are poor shoemakers. No one is rich, nowhere is there splendor. All these things have been abolished along with the world. Behold, then, whose day we celebrate, for what reason we are all joyful, for what reason life has been transformed. Since we have been reminded of the shepherd, do not despise the title. You have heard that the first to please God, Abel, was a shepherd. Who was his imitator? Moses, the great lawgiver, who fled the experience of Pharaoh, who hated the treachery of his fellow tribesmen—this man shepherded on Mount Horeb; through his shepherding he conversed with God. He did not see the angel in the bush while judging, but while shepherding he was deemed worthy of that heavenly communion. Who after Moses? Jacob the patriarch, while shepherding displaying endurance concerning the truth, characterizing his whole life in a small image. To whom did he pass on the zeal? To David. David passed from shepherding to kingship. For shepherding and kingship are sisters, inasmuch as the one was entrusted with the oversight of irrational beings, the other with that of rational beings. Thus this is the foundation of the greater knowledge. For this reason the Lord, encompassing both, is both shepherd and king, shepherding the irrational, leading the more rational under the oversight of kingship. Do you wish to learn how great a shepherd is? The Lord shepherds me.

How is shepherding a sister of kingship? Who is this king of glory? He who is here a shepherd is there a king. And do not think that while others bear witness to him, he himself is ashamed of this title. But silencing the false shepherds, he draws to himself the true testimony of shepherding: "I am the good shepherd. I am, and I have not changed." How is it that when he speaks the great things—"I with my hand fixed the earth; I alone stretched out the sky"—just as when he says the other things that are dignified and worthy to be said about God, he also says, "The good shepherd"? He drives away the false ones and draws the truth to himself. "I am the good shepherd." Learn who the shepherd is and who the good one is. He himself explains. The true shepherd lays down his life for the sheep; but the hireling, who is not a shepherd, to whom the sheep do not belong, does not care when he sees a wolf coming. Here the Church asks: if the Lord is a shepherd, who is the hireling shepherd? Is it not the devil? And if the devil is a hireling shepherd, who is the wolf? But the wolf is the devil, the wild beast, the rapacious one, the treacherous one, the common enemy of all. Let him then have his own title: hireling shepherd. The Lord spoke of hireling shepherds then, turning away from those of that time. And there are also now, as there should not be, those who appropriate the title of hirelings. Then the high priests and Pharisees and that whole Jewish faction were pointed out. He called those hireling shepherds who took the authority of shepherding not for the truth but for their own advantage.

Those who pray on a vain pretext in order to consume the bread of widows and orphans are hirelings. Those who serve the need, who pursue the present, not gazing toward the future, are hirelings and not shepherds. And now many hirelings give their lives for a wretched little reputation, who even now create division over the healthy words of the Lord. For when the Lord spoke these things, division arose among them. Some said, "He has a demon"; others, "A demon cannot make blind eyes see." Do you see how ancient the passion of division is? For immediately the winnowing fan separates the chaff from the wheat; and the light and unstable is separated from the nourishing, while that which is suitable for spiritual nourishment remains with the farmers. For this reason division arose, and some were thus at variance, others thus. Division befits Jews; but the Church of God, having received the seamless tunic, woven from above, preserved unsplit by soldiers, having put on Christ, let it not split the garment. And I know my own, and my own know me. The heretic has seized this for his own construction of blasphemy. "Behold," he says, "it is said that 'My own know me, and I know my own.' Does 'to know' then mean to understand the essence? To measure the magnitude? Are those things of the divinity to be comprehended which you with your own boldness of speech proclaim? Or do you not understand from what follows the measure of knowledge?

What do we know of God? "My sheep hear my voice." See how God is understood: from our hearing his commandments, from hearing and doing. This is knowledge of God: observance of God's commandments. Is it not meddlesome curiosity about the essence of God? Not a search for things beyond the cosmos? Not a speculation about the invisible? "My own know me, and I know my own." It is enough for you to know that he is a good shepherd, that he laid down his life for the sheep. This is the definition of the knowledge of God. But how great God is, and what his measure is, and what his essence is like—such things are dangerous for the one who asks, and perplexing for the one who is asked; silence is the remedy for such matters. "My sheep hear my voice," he said; they do not dispute. That is, they do not disobey, they do not quarrel. You have heard "Son"; do not for your part fabricate modes of generation, nor reduce what is not subject to causation to causation, nor divide the united by a schism. For this reason the evangelist anticipated and secured you. You heard earlier, and indeed you hear now: "In the beginning was the Word," so that you might not think the Son is a human offspring that has come from non-being. He said "Word" to you because of impassibility. He said "was" to you because of timelessness. He said "beginning" to you in order to connect the begotten with the Father. You see how an obedient sheep hears the voice of the Master. "In the beginning," and "was," and "Word." Do not say, "How was he?" and "If he was, he was not begotten," and "If he was begotten, he was not." That which says such things is not a sheep. It is a sheep's skin; but inside is a wolf that speaks. Let the treacherous one be recognized. "My sheep hear my voice." You have heard "Son"? Understand the likeness to the Father.

I say "likeness" because of the weakness of the more powerful bodies. Since the truth (for I am not afraid to approach the truth), I am not a ready slanderer. I say "identity," preserving the distinct property of Son and Father. In the hypostasis of the Son, conceive a paternal form, so that you may preserve for me the precise meaning of the image, so that you may think piously: "I am in the Father, and the Father is in me"—not a confusion of essences, but an identity of characters. But it seems, beloved, to be the very opposite of things, since even our weakness has been compelled by the obedience of your hearing to say something in public and to speak, so that the power of God might be especially manifest in the weakness of the instrument. For perhaps our weakness has been made so abundant for this reason, that the one who strengthens the weak might be glorified all the more. May the one who has brought this festival of ours to its conclusion, and given an end to last year's prayers, and given a beginning to the coming year (for the same day marks for us the end of the past cycle and becomes again the beginning of the one approaching), the one, then, who has gathered us together and granted the activity of the future, may he preserve us in him unharmed, unassailed, not snatched away by the wolf; may he keep this Church unshaken, guarded by the great towers of the martyrs. May he turn away every plot and attack of heretical corruptions; and may he grant us to learn the divine oracles in peace, and to teach the grace of the Spirit that is supplied; for to him is the glory and the power, together with the Holy Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.