Oratio funebris in Meletium episcopum

Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, Funeral Oration for Meletius, Bishop of Antioch. The new apostle has increased for us the number of the apostles, he who has been counted among the apostles. For the saints have drawn to themselves the one of like character, the athletes the athlete, the crown-bearers the crown-bearer, the pure in heart the one pure in soul, the servants of the Word the herald of the Word. But blessed is our father, both for his apostolic companionship and for his departure to Christ, while we are pitiable; for the untimeliness of our orphanhood does not permit us to bless our father’s good fortune. For him it was better to be with Christ through his departure, but for us it is grievous to be separated from our father’s protection. For behold, it is a time for counsel, and the counselor is silent; war surrounds us, heretical war, and there is no general; the common body of the church is sick with infirmities, and we cannot find the physician. You see in what state our affairs are. I wished, if it were somehow possible, to strengthen my weakness and rise to the height of the calamity, and to utter some cry worthy of the suffering, as these noble men have done, lamenting loudly the calamity concerning our father. But what am I to suffer? How shall I force my tongue into the service of speech, bound as it is by the calamity as if by a heavy fetter?

How shall I open my mouth, held fast by speechlessness? How shall I utter a voice that, from habit, slips into lamentations and dirges? How shall I lift up the eyes of my soul, veiled as they are by the darkness of the calamity? Who will part this deep and gloomy cloud of grief and again show forth from a clear sky the bright ray of peace? And from where shall the ray of our luminary shine forth, now that he has set? O evil night of darkness that does not hope for the rising of a luminary! How contrary to us are the words now and formerly in this same place! Then we danced in a wedding feast; now we groan piteously in mourning. Then we sang an epithalamium; now we sing a funeral dirge. For you remember when we feasted you at the spiritual marriage, joining the virgin to the good bridegroom—you—and we brought in the dowry of words according to our ability, rejoicing in our part and being rejoiced. But now our joy has been transformed into lamentation, and the garment of gladness has become sackcloth. Or perhaps I ought to be silent about the passion and shut up the pain within by silence, so as not to disturb the sons of the bridal chamber, since we do not have the bright garment of the wedding but are clad in black with our speech? For since the good bridegroom has been taken from us, we have suddenly been blackened by mourning, and it is not possible, as is customary, to brighten our speech, for envy has stripped away the garment that adorned us. We came to you full of good things; we return from you naked and poor. We held upright above our head the lamp shining with rich light; we carry it back extinguished, its radiance dissolved into smoke and ash.

We had the great treasure in an earthen vessel; but the treasure is invisible, while the earthen vessel, empty of its wealth, is preserved for those who gave it. What will the senders say? What will those who are asked answer? O evil shipwreck! How did we suffer shipwreck in the very harbor of our hope? How did the ship carrying countless cargo sink with its entire freight, leaving us, once wealthy, naked? Where is that bright sail, always guided by the Holy Spirit? Where is the sure rudder of our souls, by which we sailed unharmed through the heretical storm-waves? Where is the immovable anchor of our resolve, on which we rested with full confidence? Where is the good helmsman who steered the vessel toward the heavenly goal? Are these events trivial, and do I grieve in vain? Or rather, do I not reach the depth of the suffering, even if I cry out with my voice? Lend us, brothers, lend us the tear of sympathy. For when you rejoiced, we shared in your joy. So now repay us with this bitter exchange.

Rejoice with those who rejoice—this we did; weep with those who weep—this you now render in return. Once a foreign people wept for the patriarch Jacob and made another’s calamity their own, when those who were his descendants conveyed the father from Egypt and, with the whole people, bewailed the calamity that befell him in a foreign land, extending the lament for him over thirty days and as many nights. Imitate the foreigners, you who are brothers and of the same race. Then the tear was common to strangers and natives; let it be common now as well, since the suffering too is common. Behold these patriarchs: all of them are children of our Jacob. All are from a free woman; no one is bastard or supposititious. For it was not lawful for him to introduce servile baseness into the nobility of the faith. Therefore that man is also your father, because he was the father of your father. You have just heard from Ephraim and Manasseh what and how many things they related about their father—how the wonders surpass speech. Grant me also to say something about these matters; for it is now safe to pronounce blessed—I no longer fear envy; what worse can it do me? So know who the man was: noble, from the rising of the sun; blameless, just, truthful, god-fearing, abstaining from every evil deed (for great Job will not be jealous if the one who imitates him also prides himself on the testimonies concerning him). But envy, which beholds all good things, saw our good with a bitter eye, and he who walks the inhabited world also walked through us, planting the broad footprint of affliction upon our prosperity.

He did not ravage herds of cattle and sheep—unless one should take the flock in a mystical sense for the church. Yet the harm from envy did not lie in these things for us, nor did it work damage on asses and camels, nor did it sting the senses with a wound of the flesh, but it stripped us of the head itself. And with the head departed our precious organs of perception. No longer is there the eye that beholds the heavens, nor the hearing that attends to the divine voice, nor that tongue, the pure offering of truth. Where is the sweet serenity of the eyes? Where the bright smile upon the lip? Where the welcoming right hand, shaking the fingers together with the blessing of the mouth? I am led on, as on a stage, to cry out the calamity. I pity you, O church; I speak to you, the city of Antiochus; I pity you for this sudden change. How was the beauty disadorned? How was the ornament stripped away? How did the flower suddenly fall off? Truly, the grass withered, and the flower dropped. What evil eye, what malicious envy reveled against that church? What things have been exchanged for what! The spring has failed. The river has dried up. The water has again been turned into blood. O that unhappy message which announced the passion to the church! Who will tell the children that they have been orphaned? Who will announce to the bride that she has been widowed? O the evils! What did they send out? And what do they receive? They sent forth an ark and receive a coffin. For that man of God was an ark, brothers—an ark, containing within himself the divine mysteries. There was the golden jar, full of the divine manna, full of the heavenly food.

in that one the tablets of the covenant were inscribed on the tablets of the heart by the spirit of the living God, not by ink; for no dark and black thought had been burnt into the purity of the heart. In that one the rod of the priesthood, which had sprouted in his hands, was present. And whatever else we hear the ark contained, all was encompassed by the man’s soul. But instead of those things, what? Let the speech be silent. Pure linen cloths and fabrics woven from silk, an abundance of perfumes and spices, the ambition of a woman both modest and seemly—for it shall be said, so that these things too might become a testimony for her—what she did for the priest, lavishly pouring the alabaster of myrrh over the priest’s head. But what is preserved in these things? Dead bones, which had practiced mortification even before death, the grievous memorials of our misfortunes. Oh, what a voice will again be heard in Ramah! Rachel weeping not for her own children but for her husband, and not accepting consolation. Leave off, those who console, leave off. Do not prevail by consoling. Let the widow mourn heavily. Let her perceive the loss she has suffered. Yet she is not unpracticed in separation, having been trained in the contests of the athlete to bear solitude. You surely remember how the discourse before ours recounted the man’s contests, that through all things he honored the holy Trinity and preserved the honor in the number of his contests by contending in three assaults of trials. You have heard the sequence of his labors: what he was in the first, what in the middle, what in the last.

I consider it superfluous to repeat what has been well said, but perhaps it is not untimely to say only this: when that chaste church first saw the man, she saw a face truly formed in the image of God, she saw love flowing forth, she saw grace poured around the lips, the utmost limit of humility, beyond which it is not possible to conceive more: according to David, gentleness; according to Solomon, wisdom; according to Moses, goodness; according to Samuel, exactness; according to Joseph, chastity; according to Daniel, prudence; according to the great Elijah, in the zeal of faith; according to the lofty John, in the incorruptibility of the body; she saw such a convergence of goods around one soul; she was wounded with blessed love, having loved her bridegroom in pure and good affection. But before satisfying the desire, before giving rest to the longing, while still burning with love, she was left alone when the trials summoned the athlete to the contests. And he was training in the sweats for the truth, while she remained in chastity, preserving the marriage. There was much time in between, and someone adulterously assailed the undefiled bridal chamber. But the bride was not defiled. And again return, and again flight, and a third time likewise, until the Lord, having dispersed the heretical darkness and cast the ray of peace, gave hope of some rest from the long labors. But when they saw each other again and spiritual joys and delights were renewed, and the longing was rekindled, this final departure immediately cuts short the enjoyment.

He came to crown you as a bride, and he did not fail in his endeavor. He placed the crowns of blessing upon the fair union. He imitated his own Master. As the Lord in Cana of Galilee, so here the imitator of the Lord. For the Jewish water-jars filled with heretical water he made full of undefiled wine, transforming their nature by the power of faith. He often set before you a sober mixing-bowl, lavishly pouring out grace with his sweet voice. He often set before you the rational banquet. The one who blessed led the way, and these good disciples served the crowds, refining the word. And we rejoiced, making the glory of your race our own. How fair the narratives are up to this point. How blessed it would have been to end the discourse with these. But after this, what? "Summon the mourning women," Jeremiah says. For it is not possible for a heart inflamed and swollen with passion to be subdued otherwise, unless it is lightened by groans and tears. Then the hope of return consoled us for the separation; now, however, the final separation has been sundered. A great chasm has been fixed between him and the church in the middle. He rests in the bosom of Abraham; the one who carried the drop of water to cool the tongue of the afflicted is no more. That beauty is gone, the voice is silent, the lips are closed, the grace has flown away, the good fortune has become a tale. Elijah, ascending from earth to God, once grieved the Israelite people as well. But Elisha, adorned with the teacher's mantle, consoled them for the separation.

But now the wound is beyond healing, because Elijah has been taken up and Elisha has not been left behind. You have heard certain gloomy and mournful utterances of Jeremiah, with which he lamented the desolated city of the Jerusalemites; and among other things he passionately declared, "The ways of Zion mourn." These things were said then, but now they are fulfilled. For when the report announces the calamity, then the roads will be full of mourners, and those shepherded by him will pour forth, imitating the cry of the Ninevites at the calamity, or rather grieving more painfully than they. For in their case, the lament dissolved the fear; for these, no relief from evils is hoped for from the lamentations. I know another utterance of Jeremiah, which is counted among the books of the Psalms, which he made over the captivity of Israel, when, sitting by the rivers of Babylon, they bewailed the memory of their own blessings. And the word says, "On willows we hung our instruments," condemning ourselves and our instruments to silence. I make this song my own. For if I see the heretical confusion (and Babylon is confusion), and if I see the trials that flow through the confusion, I say these are those Babylonian streams, by which we sit and weep, because we do not have the one who leads us through them. And if you speak of the willows and the instruments upon them, this riddle is also mine. For truly, life is on willows. For the willow is a fruitless tree. The sweet fruit of our life has flowed away. Therefore, we have become fruitless willows, hanging the idle and motionless instruments of love upon the trees.

If I forget you, he says, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. Allow me to alter the text a little: it is not that we have forgotten the right hand, but that our right hand has been forgotten, and the tongue, glued to its own throat, has blocked the passages of the voice, so that we may no longer hear that sweet voice again. But wipe away my tears. For I perceive that I am acting more womanishly than is proper in my grief. The bridegroom has not been taken away from us; he stands in our midst, even if we do not see him. The priest is in the inner sanctuary, within the veil, where Christ has entered as a forerunner on our behalf. He has left behind the curtain of the flesh. No longer does he serve by example and shadow of the heavenly things, but he looks upon the very image of realities. No longer through a mirror and through a riddle, but face to face he meets with God, and he meets on behalf of us and the ignorances of the people. He has put off the leathern tunics; for there is no need of such tunics for those dwelling in paradise; but he has garments which he wove for himself from the purity of his life and brought with him. The death of the holy man is honorable before the Lord, or rather it is not death but a breaking of bonds. For you have broken my bonds, he says. Symeon has been released, freed from the bonds of the body. The snare has been shattered, and the little bird has flown away. He has left Egypt, the muddy life. He has crossed not that Red Sea, but this black and murky sea of life. He has entered the promised land, upon the mountain.

He philosophizes with God. He untied the sandal of the soul, so that with the pure step of his mind he might tread upon the holy land, where God is beheld. Having this consolation, brothers, you who are transporting the bones of Joseph to the land of blessing, listen to Paul exhorting: Do not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. Tell the people there, relate the good tales. Tell of the incredible wonder, how the myriad-headed multitude, condensed into the appearance of a sea, was all one continuous body, like some water surging around the procession of the shrine; how the noble David, dividing himself in many ways and many forms into countless ranks, danced around the shrine in different tongues and the same tongue; how on both sides the rivers of fire, like some stream of waters, flowed unbrokenly with the continuity of torches, extending as far as the eye could reach. Tell of the zeal of the whole people, the cohabitation of the apostles; how the cloths from his flesh were torn into amulets for the faithful. Let the king be added to the narrative, gloomy at the passion and rising from his thrones, and the whole city moving together with the procession of the saint, and encourage one another with these words. Well does Solomon heal grief. For he commands giving wine to those in grief, saying this to you, the workers of the vineyard. Give, then, your wine to the grieving, not the wine that works drunkenness, but that which gladdens the heart.

body of the blessed one to the grave, you are now being entertained with a more potent mixture and more abundant cups of the word, so that our mourning may again be turned into joy in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.