Homilia ii in sanctum Lazarum

A homily of Hesychius, presbyter of Jerusalem, on the four-days Lazarus. I love the place of the church, this spiritual symposium which she gathers for me; for the assembly of the church is a symposium of God, watered by a mystic mixing-bowl and fed by a life-giving lamb. For since the king of the angels sojourned on earth, symposia and delights have been assembled for the faithful, and the mourning of nature has been turned back against the author of mourning from the times of the Saviour's sojourn which began. For nature, as soon as it perceived the masterly light, was full of joy and leaping from the very beginning. Barren women gave birth to forerunners of grace; in them the embryos, rejoicing, played in their wombs: "For the infant leaped in her womb in exultation." A virgin was blessed for a birth without labor; heaven above, through a star, called the Magi; the earth was full of angels rejoicing with those on earth; the demons released those whom they held; diseases released the bodies. From here a paralytic ran to meet him, from there a blind man arose seeing; here a leper washed away his leprosy; there a lake of a bloody affliction was dried up; this one was made speaking from a stammerer; another reaped a swift restoration of his ears for hearing, for the reception of words previously blocked.

And what need is there to speak of the unplanted wine-drinking at weddings, of the dead leaping forth from tombs? "Young man," he says, "I speak to you, arise"; and he was a swift hearer of the voice, as one who had feigned death and was not truly dead. The tomb also released Lazarus, but he, thus called, hastened as one swaddled to display his running, he who had rotted for four days in the tomb, many of his inward parts ravaged by worms, every joint of his body sundered, and possessing the stench of the tomb as a witness to corruption. But the sweet fragrance of life recast the dissolution of his inward parts, and the tomb became a womb for the one who lay there, and, as if sown in a belly and not in a tomb, Lazarus, the old and new man, sprang forth newly formed. O novel wonderworking! A tomb bore a man for us into life, wrapped in burial cloths as if in swaddling bands; for the master's voice, recognized by the dead man, drew him from the tomb together with the swaddling clothes: "Lazarus," he says, "come forth." And swiftly the dead man went out with the word, the limbs running together with one another in the tomb: the eye returned to its proper place, the nose regained its own position, the cheeks hastened to their former shape, the neck was fastened to the shoulders and head, the pair of hands was prepared for movement, the harmonies of the joints were brought together, the order of the fingers was composed, the bonds of the nerves were reknit, the nature of the bones was clothed, the arteries were stretched together with the veins, the marrow was remolded, the membranes were woven, the hairs were set in order.

They made the course of their limbs slow in speech. Like a horse from a signal, so the dead man, pricked by the master's voice, leaped up, both called and formed and appearing from the tomb. "Lazarus, come outside." Before saying "arise," he commands the exit. He urges the one still lying to run. First raise him, master, then command the risen one to run. Why do you proclaim an exit to the one lying before the resurrection? – "Yes, to the one lying," he says, "I command the run, so that I may not waste time on the exit by occupying the dead man with two things. I say to him: 'Come outside,' so that he may run more swiftly, taking one deadline for both rising and running." Immediately from there, winged Lazarus leaped out of the tomb, as if he were a guard rather than a dead man sitting by the grave. And Hades below, giving back the dead man as it seems, cried out: "Who is this who with a voice wakes the dead from their tombs as if they were sleeping? Who is this who dissolves the ancient laws of the dead? Who is this who provokes my dead to rise up against me? Who is this who has proclaimed a return to the dead? Who is this who accustoms the buried to run back to life? Who is this who so easily releases my prisoners? Who is this who tears all my dead away into a dance? Gone, I see, is the scepter of my tyranny over men. My prison of death is rotten. Elijah came and took a dead man from me for the sake of a woman. After Elijah, Elisha came and was made a double snatcher of dead men from me.

Now this one, more bitter than the dead, has marched against me as a helper, calling the putrefied dead as if they were living, and I am in danger henceforth of no longer having authority even over rotted corpses; for I have been robbed of a dead man whom I had consumed. A four-days-dead body triumphs over me, dancing together with the living in its burial shroud. I shall be trampled upon henceforth by a dead man of mine who has fled from his swaddling bands. For who will fear me from now on, I who have been defeated by a putrid corpse and have become, as it were, a guardian of deposits of the dead? 6. For Lazarus was a kind of deposit of the tomb, like gold given back with the seals with which it was deposited; he was deposited in the tomb bound in graveclothes, and with the same bonds he was given back to life. For the Jewish people, being unbelieving and doubtful concerning the great working of miracles, would have said even now concerning Lazarus, as once concerning the healed blind man, "This is he; this is not he." Just as someone about to return a deposit, foreseeing the suspicion of the depositor, preserves the seals of the deposit, so that the sight of the seals may persuade the depositor, so the Lord Christ, giving back Lazarus to the Jews—the four-days deposit among the dead—brings out with him the signs of the swaddling bands as if they were seals, so that when they untie them they may see that it was not simply another but the very one whom they had buried.

But the incurable blindness of unbelief remained; for recognizing the dead man, they begrudged the miracle and devised blind plans. "For they planned," it says, "to kill Lazarus also, because many of the Jews were being led by him and were believing in Jesus." O the wickedness of that plan. Is what happened true, O priests, or false? For if it is true, you plan in vain to slay one who can rise again. But if the miracle is a fabrication, you are meddling with the height of the miracle. If the event is a rumor, let the one falsely reported to have been raised live rather, so that all who approach may learn from a living man that he was not raised from the dead. But if you slay him, you aid the rumor by destroying the refutation of the rumor, so that the plan is doubly harmful in both respects. O the much-lamented sickness. The healing of the envied is a wound to the envious; the benefactor is as odious as the one who harms; the savior is as much an enemy as the murderer. One ought to rejoice, not grieve, at the raising of the dead. A dead man has risen; you have acquired an occasion for joy, having found a physician who applies a plaster to the dead. You have at hand, O man, the remedy for your sorrows. Is your child ill? Call upon the one who raised the dead against the disease. Does a demon trouble your child? The remedy for the affliction is at hand for you. Is a servant of yours at the point of death? You have near you the one who

led by the signs to faith, but the rulers of the synagogue, envious of the Lord, stirred up the crowd against him." But you, O death, why do you rage against the living, snatching the dead from death? How many gifts did you bestow, seeking to find a helper in sorrows? You found this one without payment, and you close your eyes to the finding. Therefore, since you are fond of loss, leave the gain to those who wish it, allow Lazarus to live, lest you become more bitter to men than the death from which he released them, driving them away to himself, lest you make living with you more hopeless than the tomb. The dead man had hope of life in the tomb, and without even losing his swaddling clothes, he came back to life; but living with you, he risks losing the gift he had in the tomb. 9 Why do I waste my discourse on the wickedness of the Jews, when the raising of Lazarus directs my memory to the resurrection? When tombs are shaken, demanding back their dead, the earth is disturbed, quaking with fear, and trumpets from heaven sound their blasts to men: "For the trumpet will sound," it says, "and the dead will rise incorruptible." From there, the judge descends from heaven, flashing like lightning, and the armies of the judge's angels run before him, disturbed by the fear of what is happening: "For the powers of the heavens," it says, "will be shaken.

the meeting of the righteous in the clouds aloft, the lament of demons dragged to judgment, the devil in mourning brought in chains, tyrants hauled to a fearful accounting, the plunderings of the rich punished, the endurance of the poor crowned, the confederacies of kings confessed, the lives of priests scrutinized, the orders of virgins honored, hidden fornications paraded, the chastity of the temperate honored, the licentiousness of adulterers punished, the goodness of the patient crowned, the secret exposure of slanderers, the multitudes of the genuinely repentant blessed, the irony of hypocrites scourged. 10 The word is not mine; you have all heard Paul crying out to all: "We shall all stand before the judgment seat" "of Christ, so that each may receive through the body what he has done, whether good or evil." Therefore, all of you, regulated by the memory of these things, wither pleasure, O pleasure-lover; for it is fuel for the fire of Gehenna. Chastise the belly, O voluptuary; for gluttony is a combustible burden, and the prophet, reproaching the Sodomites, cried out concerning this: "But," he says, "this was the lawlessness of Sodom, that they reveled in abundance and satiety of bread." Hate covetousness, O rich man, as the straw of the inextinguishable flame. Be strengthened for endurance, O poor man; for pious patience is a cooling of Gehenna. Unlearn impiety, O Greek; for thorns serve only for fire. Come to life again from heretical doctrines as from tombs, O heretic, before that voice comes which cries to the dead: "Behold, the bridegroom comes, go out to meet him," Christ our God, "who is about to judge the living and the dead.

Let us glorify Him together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and always and unto the ages of ages. Amen.