In venerandum crucem

On the Venerable Cross. 1. Today a feast of the Cross is set before us; let the chorus of angels leap for joy. The spectacle of the Cross approaches; let the multitude of mortals do reverence. The divine power of the Cross is raised up; let the host of demons be put to flight. But, O divine Cross, the ineffable vision of the angels, the boast of mortals, the royal scepter! For I shall address you as if you were animate, bearing both the joyful and victorious tidings of our salvation. Through you the gates of paradise, once closed, are opened again; through you the power of death has been shattered; through you Hades has been plundered; through you the dead have been deemed worthy of life; through you the thief dances and rejoices in paradise; through you the heavenly is joined to the earthly; through you the knowledge of truth has been granted; through you the baptism of regeneration has been bestowed; through you remission of sins has been granted to men; through you the gift of the Holy Spirit has been sealed; through you churches, being marked, are called houses of God; through you we partake of the body and blood of Christ; through we are deemed worthy to become sons of God and heirs of the kingdom of heaven; through you festivals and feasts are adorned and illuminated. And what tongue could recount how many and what great things Christ God has bestowed upon the human race through you?

Since we have learned these things, O sanctified and feast-loving multitude, through discourse, let us embrace with white hearts and pure mouths the venerable and life-giving wood, on which Christ our God was fastened, and divine palms were pierced with nails, on which the Lord-slayers drove the spear through the side, and gave him to drink the taste of vinegar mixed with gall; and passing by and going past, they shook their heads, mocking and saying, "Woe! He saved others, but cannot save himself; if he is the Son of God, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in him." These things the assembly of the Hebrews, the ungrateful and hardened, who enjoyed the benefit of divine wonders, said; but let us faithfully worship the life-giving passions of Christ: the crucifixion, the burial, the three-day resurrection from the dead; so that we may also rise together and be glorified together, if we suffer together, as the vessel of election, the divine Paul, foretold. In these things and besides these things, the all-holy cross being celebrated today summons us, and these incorruptible and ever-living feasts it permits equally to all: to homes, to marketplaces, to nights, to days, to cities, to deserts. Therefore, let us joyfully receive that which through so many things bestows upon us its own good, according to the Lord's word, not frowning like hypocrites, but artlessly displaying the cheerfulness of the soul. And do not consider the exhortation about fasting to require such great effort from me as much as not falling today into the evils of drunkenness.

For fasting, many accept it both out of habit and out of mutual respect; but I fear the drunkenness which lovers of wine claim as a kind of paternal inheritance. For just as those setting out on long journeys, so today some of the foolish drink wine in preparation for the five days of fasting. Who is so foolish as to rave like drunkards before even beginning to drink? Do you not know that the stomach does not preserve a deposit? The stomach is a faithless changer, an unguarded treasury of many things deposited, retaining the harm but not preserving what has been entrusted. Take care, lest tomorrow, when you come from drunkenness, what has now been read be said to you: "I did not choose this fast," says the Lord. Why do you mix the unmixable? What share has fasting with drunkenness? What communion has wine-bibbing with self-control? What agreement has a temple of God with idols? For those in whom the Spirit of God dwells are a temple of God; but a temple of idols are those who through drunkenness receive the filth, the surfeit of licentiousness. Today is the vestibule of the fast; but one who has been profaned in the forecourts is surely not worthy to enter the sanctuary. No servant wishing to appease his own master has used his enemy as patron and mediator. Drunkenness is enmity toward God; fasting is the beginning of repentance. If, then, you wish to return to God through confession, flee drunkenness, lest it make your alienation more severe.

Yet it is not enough by itself that abstinence from foods constitutes praiseworthy fasting; rather, let us fast with an acceptable fast, one pleasing to God. True fasting is estrangement from evils, restraint of the tongue, abstinence from anger, separation from desires, from slander, falsehood, and perjury; the lack of these is true fasting. In these things, then, fasting is good. But let us revel in the Lord through the study of the words of the Spirit and through the reception of the saving laws, and in all the doctrines that correct our souls. Let us, however, beware of fasting in secret, concerning which the prophet also prays, saying: "The Lord will not starve the soul of a righteous man," and, "I have not seen a righteous man abandoned, nor his offspring seeking bread." For he would not have spoken of perceptible bread, knowing that the sons of the patriarch Jacob went down to Egypt for the sake of bread, but he speaks of spiritual food, by which the inner man is perfected. Let not the fast threatened to the Jews come upon us: "For behold, days are coming," says the Lord, "and I will bring upon this land a famine, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord." This the righteous judge brought about because he saw that their mind was starving from lack of the teachings of truth, while their outer man was overfed and fattened. Therefore, in all the days to come, the Holy Spirit will feast you with morning and evening delights.

Let no one willingly absent himself from the spiritual feast; let us all partake of the sober fare of observances. Let the house at last be still from the countless disturbances, from the smoke and the savor, from those running up and down, and from those serving the belly as if to an inexorable mistress. After all, even tax collectors sometimes grant a little freedom to their subjects. Let the belly give some opportunity to the mouth; let it give it; let the ever-demanding and never-ceasing one, which receives today and forgets tomorrow, make a five-day truce with us. When it is filled, it philosophizes about continence; when it is emptied, it forgets its doctrines. Fasting knows not the nature of a loan; the table of the faster does not reek of interest; paternal creditors do not strangle the faster’s orphan, coiling around him like snakes. And besides, fasting is an occasion for joy. For just as thirst makes drink pleasant, and preceding hunger makes the table sweet, so fasting brightens the enjoyment of foods.

For she, placing herself in the middle and interrupting the continuity of indulgence, will make the partaking appear desirable to you, as if from a sojourn abroad. 2. So if you wish to make the table desirable to yourself, accept the change brought by fasting. You, by being excessively immersed in indulgence, have unwittingly obscured indulgence for yourself, and by love of pleasure, you annihilate pleasure. For nothing is so desirable as not to become contemptible through the continuity of enjoyment; but what is rarely possessed, its enjoyment is eagerly sought. Thus also the one who created us, through the alternation in life, contrived for us the enduring grace of the gifts given. Do you not see that the sun is brighter after the night, and wakefulness sweeter after sleep, and health more longed for after experience of its opposites? So too the table is more pleasant after fasting, alike for the rich and the sumptuous, and alike for those of simple and makeshift diet. Fear the example of the rich man; his lifelong indulgence consigned him to the fire. For he was accused not of injustice, but of luxurious living, and was fried in the flame of the furnace. Therefore, to extinguish that fire, water is needed. And fasting is beneficial not only for future things, but is also more advantageous for the flesh itself; for excessive good health has relapses and reversals, as nature falters and is unable to bear the weight of such well-being. See then, that you do not now spurn water, only later to desire a drop, like the rich man. No one has ever suffered a hangover from water; no one’s head has ever ached from being burdened by water.

No one living on a water diet ever needed another's feet; no one's hands were rendered useless by being watered with water. For the fault concerning digestion necessarily follows those who live luxuriously; this produces violent diseases in the body. The color of the faster is dignified, not blooming into shameless redness, but adorned with a sober paleness; the eye is gentle, the gait restrained, the face thoughtful, not insulted by licentious laughter, there is moderation of speech, purity of heart. Remember the saints from ages past, whom the world was not worthy of, who went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, lacking, oppressed, maltreated; imitate their way of life, if you seek their portion. What gave Lazarus rest in the bosom of Abraham? Was it not fasting? And the whole life of John was one fast; he had no bed, no table, no arable land, no plow ox, no grain, no baker, nor anything else of worldly things. Because of this, there is none greater among the born of women than John the Baptist. And Paul, along with other things, fasting also, which he enumerated among his boasts concerning affliction, brought him up to the third heaven. And as a capstone to what has been said, our Lord, having fortified the flesh which he assumed for us with fasting, thus received in it the assaults of the devil, teaching us also to anoint and train ourselves with fasts for the contests in temptations, and giving the adversary a kind of hold through his deprivation. For he was inaccessible to him because of the height of his divinity, had he not descended to the human level through deprivation.

Returning to heaven, he partook of food, confirming the nature of the risen body. But you, fattening yourself and never ceasing to grow fleshy, while wasting away your mind in the starvation of saving and life-giving teachings, pay no heed. Or are you ignorant that, just as in a battle line the alliance of one side causes the defeat of the other, so he who adds to the flesh overcomes the spirit, and he who transfers to the spirit enslaves the flesh? For these are opposed to each other. So if you wish to make the mind strong, tame the flesh through fasting. For this is what the Apostle says: "As much as our outer man is corrupted, so much is our inner man renewed," and, "When I am weak, then I am strong." Will you not despise corruptible foods? Will you not take a desire for the table in the kingdom, which fasting here will certainly prepare? Or are you ignorant that by the excess of satiety you are fashioning for yourself a thick torturing worm? For who, in abundant food and constant luxury, has ever received any share of a spiritual gift? Moses, receiving the second legislation, needed a second fast; the Ninevites, unless even the animals had fasted with them, would not have escaped the threat of destruction. Whose limbs fell in the desert? Was it not those who desired meat-eating? Those, until

They were content with manna and water from the rock, and they conquered the Egyptians, and marched through the sea; there was no one sick among their tribes. But when they remembered the meat and the pots, and turned back to Egypt in their desires, they did not see the land of promise. Do you not fear the example? Do you not shudder at gluttony, lest it shut you out from the hoped-for goods? But the wise Daniel would not have seen the visions, had not fasting made his soul more translucent. For from thick food, sooty exhalations, as it were, are sent up, which, like a dense cloud, cut off the illuminations arising from the Holy Spirit upon the mind. And if there is any food of angels, it is bread (as the Prophet says, "A man ate the bread of angels"), not meat, not wine, not all that is eagerly sought by the slaves of the belly. Fasting is a weapon for the campaign against demons; for this kind does not go forth except in prayer and fasting. Such are the goods from fasting. But satiety is the beginning of insolence. For immediately, together with luxury and drunkenness and all kinds of seasoned dishes, every form of bestial licentiousness rushes in. Hence men become like mares in heat, because of the sting arising from luxury in the soul from those who are drunk; there are reversals of nature, seeking the female in the male and the male in the female. Fasting also recognizes the measure of marital works, and chastises the excess of those permitted by law. You, to find a man who must go to law with another before the king, and not to find him at all.

For many it destroyed among those who chose to do wrong. Because of this, the benevolent God did not overlook the tears and groans of his own priests and holy ones who were beseeching him on his behalf—he who said through the prophet Isaiah, "Judge for the orphan, and do justice for the widow, and come, and let us reason together." But having heard these prayers as well, he forgave even those transgressions of that man which were beyond human measure, and restored to the Church its proper adornment and the comeliness of the holy and venerable icons, and to us who sincerely venerate and embrace them, and who keep his divine commandments, he grants stable peace and forgiveness of offenses committed each day—because to him belong the glory, the power, the honor, and the worship, unto the ages of ages. Amen.