In sanctum pascha sermo 5

On the Same Subject, Homily 5. 1. Among the Jews are the types, but among us is the truth. For the law, it is said, had a shadow of the good things to come; and, The law, it is said, was given through Moses; for grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. For the things of the Jews are not alien to Christ, but they had a typical and shadowy relationship to Christ; the perfection was reserved for his personal presence, and the clear autopsy of the facts, when also the autopsy of the king occurs. For someone painting a portrait first sketches the outline, then perfects the painting with colors; and the image is different from the shadow in appearance, but the same in the character underlying the colors. Observe for me, then, through the shadows the true things, and contemplate through the types what is signified, and proceed from the small to the great; and do not remain for me on the earth, completing commemorations of the freedom of one nation from a tyrant, and the temporary salvation of children, and a migration from land to land. For you will not find the festivals of the Greeks to be very far removed from such commemorations. For they too celebrate escapes from diseases, liberations from tyrannies, migrations and foundations of cities, and victories in wars, and such things, taking as the subject of their festivals whatever is earthly and temporary.

Now we must recall the great things, the divine gifts truly from God, and they celebrate a great eternal feast: liberation from opposing demons warring against the good, dragging away from the kingdom of God, salvation not for a brief life but for eternal continuance, a migration from earth to heaven according to the present way of life, and into eternal possession according to the future resurrection. Egypt oppressed the Jews, who were free from their fathers, subjecting them to the yoke of slavery, forcing them to make bricks and build cities. This is a symbol of worldly oppression, in which the human race was worn down, having fallen away from the delight and freedom from God, laboring over earthly work and constructing perishable shelters, because nothing among humans is stable or secure, but all are works of human hands that perish and are consumed by time. God wishes to free his own creation from this slavery, taking pity on it as it is worn down, just as he saw the affliction of the sons of Israel, and he frees them through acquisition. For those who have willingly jumped away must willingly return to God. Servants are sent bearing the law, through the law urging toward righteousness, through righteousness leading to God, still inflicting small punishments on the opposing powers, not yet bringing complete destruction in part, not yet entirely erasing the impious. For this was reserved for the presence of the Master, who arrives after the servants.

These are types and symbols: Moses sent to the Jews with Aaron his brother, summoning them to the worship of God, scourging Egypt with partial plagues on behalf of the enslaved and oppressed people. But while these things were happening, Israel was still in Egypt, and the king of the Egyptians still had room to fight against God. Nine plagues, and still no end to the matter. The last had to be inflicted, the destruction of the firstborn, and simultaneously with this, Israel departed. Here a lamb is sacrificed, and the doorposts of Hebrew houses are smeared with its blood, and the firstborn of the Jews escape the plague of death through the symbol of the blood. The Jews eat the lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They depart from Egypt. Pharaoh and the remaining Egyptians pursue. They come to the Red Sea. This sea, divided by the power of God and the staff of Moses, receives the army of the Hebrews, but drowns the Egyptian force that entered after them. For you, Christ is a lamb at the departure from the world, and he transfers you with him as he ascends into heaven; he also raises you to eternal life. Leading the man born from David, he leads along those who follow, the obedient and submissive, those who no longer fear Pharaoh, nor remain manifestly in worldly servitudes and earthly sufferings for the sake of the small and pungent pleasure, of which Israel’s eating of meat, onions, and garlic in Egypt was a type.

For such is worldly pleasure, having the most bitter city of cares intertwined with it, and a fleshly and bestial satiety. But when you depart from worldly life, it becomes the beginning of true life, just as for them the typological Passover was the beginning of months. For now is the beginning of life, when you renounce worldly and earthly life; now you discover what true life is, that which is in the spirit. Christ is sacrificed, so that you may know his sacrifice made on your behalf. Then is fulfilled for you the saying, "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb voiceless before its shearer." And the gentleness in him preserves the prototype of the sheep; but the ascent to the height, and the not being held down in the lower regions, preserves the goat's journey to the heights. For goats leap and climb to the highest and most inaccessible places. But heaven was for high and inaccessible men, from the day it fell, having stumbled from the divine commandment, having served the flesh and been separated from the Holy Spirit. So the divine victim, sacrificed on your behalf, ascends and raises you up. For it died with you, so that you might live in it. And the blood of the lamb is salvific for you, if you approach the blood faithfully, if you anoint your own senses and thoughts, through which death enters by sending in sin, with the faith of the blood, just as Israel anointed the doorways with blood.

If desire does not enter into you through the eyes, through hearing, through smell, through taste, through touch, and after these through thoughts, death does not hold you, but bearing in your body the mortification of Jesus, you have life also manifest in your body, and thus death from the first-formed Adam will be overstepped, as the destruction of the firstborn overstepped the houses of the Hebrews. Hence also the name of the feast, Pascha, signifying a crossing over. The sheep is unblemished for you; for Jesus is unblemished for you, who, it is said, committed no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth. A perfect male. For the perfection of righteousness is with the only true king. And the sheep is a year old, a type of the eternal Christ. For the year is a symbol of eternity, the same in every age, revolving many times, and having all changes in itself, a type of the new man, in whom the oldness of our humanity has been transformed into newness: for it says, "Put on the new man." Having put on the unblemishedness and perfection of the sheep, you will be a sheep of God, and having presented your own body as a living, holy sacrifice, pleasing to God, according to the Apostle, you will be sent on to eternal life. 2. You see that your Pascha has no comparison with the Jewish one, but that one had only a shadowy likeness of it? And Israel was childish in the sacrifice of the sheep, thinking that this was urged by God, and supposing that through this it had received salvation, and not seeing it as a type of the truly saving sacrifice.

Therefore it is said by God to them through Jeremiah, that "I did not command you concerning sacrifices." And there is no falsehood with God, that having commanded he should say he had not commanded. But the power of the matter is revealed, that the sacrifice was performed prophetically and as a prefiguration toward Christ. And God, in commanding to sacrifice a sheep, indicated Christ who would be sacrificed, and all the details concerning the sheep prefigured Christ; of these you have already observed some, and observe the rest as you are able. In every Hebrew household there was one whole sheep, and no part of the meat is carried out of the house in which it is sacrificed. In every Church and soul Christ is whole everywhere, and nowhere partial. Therefore there were many sheep there in each household; but one and the same Christ in every soul. The sheep is kept in the house for five days, from the tenth to the fourteenth; then it is sacrificed on the fourteenth toward evening by the Jewish synagogue. Five intervals of time are indicated by these five days: from Adam until the consummation: first, that until Noah; second, from there until Abraham; third, that until Moses; fourth, from Moses until the coming of Christ; fifth, the present time of the coming. It is sacrificed toward evening, because at the end of the age the whole synagogue of Israel conspired against Christ. The sacrifice of Christ was rehearsed from the beginning in the ever-recurring sufferings of the righteous from Abel the righteous, and Christ was in all the one suffering; it was accomplished when the divine lamb himself, being present, suffered through himself.

And indeed, on the fourteenth of the same month he suffered, and gave up the spirit toward evening, and according to this pattern it was that the sheep was taken from the tenth for the sacrifice, and was sacrificed on the fourteenth toward evening, because the preparation for the passion was from the beginning, and the passion at the end. Then consider for me a new and paradoxical command of God concerning the eating of the sheep: not to eat the raw flesh of the sheep. For who would eat it raw? Let it be said, "Nor boiled," so that they might not delay; for the time was pressing. What is "not even raw," but "roasted by fire"? For no one forbids what does not happen. But the realities are signified through the types, as I said. The one who has faith idle offers the holy food raw; the pleasure-lover offers it boiled, softening the firm work of faith in the indolence of life through water; [roasted, the one] who accomplishes it in a spirit that is hot and boiling. They are commanded to eat the head together with the feet and the entrails. Know that Christ is from the head, because he is God existing before the ages, head of the invisible and spiritual Church; from the feet, because he is also a man who at the end of the ages set foot on earth; from the entrails, because he has hidden in the flesh power and righteousness, and is not only beneficial and salvific to those who partake according to the external and visible, but also according to the internal and hidden. The flesh is eaten at night, and nothing is left over for the day. For it is a remembrance of Christ's passion at the time of cosmic night, after which the day will shine forth, and the life of Christ will appear. According to the saying, "But the day has drawn near.

No one breaks a bone. For the executioners did not break Christ’s legs, though they broke those of the men crucified with him, as the evangelist testified. The bitter herbs eaten with the lamb signified the bitterness of afflictions; the unleavened bread signified simplicity and sincerity, as Paul says, that is, the unmixed quality with respect to old wickedness and new virtue. It remains for you to take up the posture of those who eat the Passover and to contemplate it spiritually, and to imitate it; for the bodily posture will be present in the spiritual. It is not an empty posture, but a saving work: to gird your loins, not the body’s with a belt, but the soul’s with readiness. Bind your feet likewise in readiness for the Gospel, according to the Apostle. Have a staff in your hands, not of wood, but of supporting faith. That whole posture, being that of travelers, as of those hastening toward the exodus from Egypt, imitate you more nobly, as one hastening toward the exodus from the world and corruption. Let there be zeal, and by no means indolence, in the spiritual eating of the Passover. And here the zealous is good, not revealing gluttony of those eating the meat hastily, but love of God of those hastening from the world to God. For seven days the unleavened food, that is, sincerity throughout all of life. For through the seven days the whole of time is multiplied. And he who has leaven is destroyed. For the wickedness of the old man is destructive and in no way able to be mingled with the righteousness and holiness of the new man. And you see that the destruction for such leaven is just.

Because of the common leavening of the bread, God would not justly seem to be offended. For justice does not appear in the types, but shines forth and is known in the truth; just as the very matter of the anointing with blood, which seems unseemly for God, is removed when the type is understood according to the truth. For it is unseemly that God should seem to need the sign of blood for the recognition of Hebrew houses; but it is most seemly that we are known to God and saved by God through faith in the blood of Christ. Therefore, is it not also the case that the matter of circumcision, if heard simply in this way, is unseemly, as if God commanded that one who was about to eat the Passover, if he were not circumcised, should be circumcised with haste and thus come to the eating? But if you understand the power of circumcision spiritually, you will see a mystery and glorify God. The circumcision was of the generative member. From birth, O man, you had a covering, which you needed to remove, so that with an unveiled face you might behold the truth, and not, covered by the body and an earthly covering, look up toward the truth. For when you become naked of the fleshly body, approach Christ as spirit, and, cleaving to the Lord, become one spirit, partaking of the sacred and saving participation which the eating of the flesh signified. Therefore circumcise and strip off the body after Christ, according to Paul who says, "You were circumcised by a circumcision not made with hands, in the stripping off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ.

And thus, by circumcising all love of money, love of glory, love of pleasure, be filled with the food that leads to God, which ascends to heaven, frees you from wicked rulers, releases you from grievous toils, and grants you a glorious and blessed return to God, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom is glory for ever and ever. Amen.