Sermo in Pervigilio Paschae de Esu Agni

Sermon on the Vigil of Easter concerning the Eating of the Lamb. It is also found among the supposititious works of Jerome. The mystery of Easter is fulfilled in us. When it is to be celebrated. Where. Christ a lamb to some, a goat to others. Why the lamb was killed in the evening, not in the day. What it means to eat bitter herbs in bitterness. What it means not to eat raw or boiled meat. What the head, feet, and intestines of the lamb signify. Why the bones of the lamb are not to be broken. What the girded loins for eating the lamb teach us. What the shoes and staff mean. Today the people of Israel—that is, a man seeing God (for this is what Israel is interpreted as)—are commanded to go out from Egypt. Today the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29), is slaughtered for the salvation of all. Today the doorposts of houses, that is, our foreheads, are painted with his blood. Today the Egyptians are slain, and the people are freed from the slavery of Pharaoh (Exodus 12). Today the firstborn of the Egyptians are struck down; and not only the children of the Israelites, but even the irrational beasts of burden are saved. "Men and beasts you will save, O Lord" (Psalm 35:7). Let us prepare ourselves, dearest brothers, for the sacrifice of the lamb, and let us take hold of it, not when the light is uncertain and the horns of the moon are not yet filled, not when it begins to wax or wane; but on the fourteenth day, that is, with the light completed and perfected, when its whole lamp fills the whole world. Nor should we think that this yearling lamb can be eaten anywhere.

We are commanded to eat it in one house; that is, we are to think that the lamb is sacrificed in one Church. From this it is clear that Jews and heretics, and all conventicles of perverse doctrines, who do not eat the lamb in the Church, do not eat the flesh of the lamb, but of the dragon, which was given, according to the Psalmist, as food to the peoples of Ethiopia (Ps. 73:14). For just as in the flood no one is saved except he who was in Noah’s ark (Gen. 7:24), and when Jericho fell only the house of Rahab the harlot, that is, the Church believing from among the Gentiles, was preserved (Josh. 6:25), so also in the sacrifice of the lamb, the lamb is truly slain when it is slaughtered in one house. “It shall be,” he says, “for you an immaculate lamb. You shall take from the lambs and from the goats” (Exod. 12:5). It is also commanded elsewhere that he who could not celebrate the Passover in the first month should do so in the second; according to which it is now also ordered that he who cannot have a lamb should at least have a goat. For Christ is sacrificed in a twofold manner in the house of the Church: if we are righteous, we feed on the flesh of the lamb; if we are sinners and do penance, a goat is slain for us—not because Christ is from the goats, which he taught to stand on the left, but because, according to the diversity of merits, for each one he becomes either a lamb or a goat.

It is also asked why this lamb is not sacrificed during the day, but at evening. The reason is manifest. For our Lord and Savior suffered at the consummation of the ages. Whence also John speaks in his Epistle, "Little children, it is the last hour" (1 John 2:18): but when it is the last hour, the day having ended, the beginning of night is at hand. But this also is to be understood, that as long as we are in this world, that is, we dwell in Egypt, we are not in clear light, but in darkness and shadow. And although the Church, that is, the moon, shines as if in the night, yet we are not able to have the perfect radiance of the true Sun. "In one house," it says, "you shall eat the flesh roasted with fire; and you shall eat unleavened bread with bitter herbs. You shall not eat of them raw or boiled in water, but only roasted with fire" (Exod. 12:8-10). We are commanded to eat loaves without the old leaven of malice and wickedness (1 Cor. 5:8). Concerning which leaven also the Lord in the Gospel warns his disciples, saying, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees"; and afterwards he interprets the leaven of the perverse Pharisees as doctrine (Matt. 16:6, 12). And we therefore, if we wish to be alien from the doctrine of this world, and to make ourselves as strangers from worldly intercourse, we are subject to persecutions and pressures, and according to the Apostle we eat the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Cor. 5:8). Do you wish, O hearer, to understand what I say?

Say what is true, speak what is sincere, accept no one’s person, neither the rich nor the powerful. However powerful, however noble the one who has sinned, rebuke him: and you have eaten the azyma of sincerity and truth in bitterness. Whence also the Apostle says, “I have become your enemy, speaking the truth” (Gal. 4:16); and the proverb of the rustic, which a pagan poet also expresses, “Flattery,” he says, “makes friends, truth begets hatred” (Terence, *Andria*, act 1, scene 1, verse 41). Now as for what follows, that we should not eat the flesh of the lamb raw or boiled: that is, we should not understand the divine Scriptures, which are truly the flesh of the lamb, either only according to history, like the Jews, and consume them raw as food; or again, according to the heretics, by means of certain allegories and a cloud of interpretation, divert and enervate them into perverse doctrines of every sort, and, with the truth of the juice removed, offer up shadows and images; but we should understand them both according to history, as they are written, and nonetheless cook them with the fire of the Holy Spirit, and whatever in them seems incongruous or closed according to the letter, we should open up by spiritual exposition.

You eat the head with the feet and the intestines (Exod. 12:9). The head of the lamb seems to me to be that which is written in the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; this was in the beginning with God (John 1:1-2): the feet, however, are the man whom He deigned to assume for our salvation. But it can also be understood otherwise: the head is spiritual understanding; the feet, the simple narrative according to the letter; the intestines, however, are whatever lies hidden within the letter, whatever is not seen on the surface, but when ground up and ruminated upon by diligent examination is brought forth into the open by the doctors: and what was thought to be foul and unbecoming is found to be vital. For example, what more shameful can be said in the Scriptures, than that Hosea is ordered to take a harlot as a wife (Hos. 1:2), and that Judah lies with his daughter-in-law Tamar (Gen. 38:16), and that David is defiled by the adultery of Bathsheba (2 Sam. 11:4), and that Onan, the son of Judah, spills his seed on the ground, lest he beget a child for his brother (Gen. 38:9)? If these are understood according to the letter, are they not condemned and ridiculed by the pagans and by any unbelievers as, so to speak, the excrement of the Scriptures? But if you shake them out, if you wash them, if you cook them with the fire of the Holy Spirit, they are turned into food; and what was thought useless is found to be a mystery.

You shall not leave any of it until morning, and you shall not break any bone of it, and whatever is left over from it until morning, you shall burn with fire (Exod. 12:10). Let us reserve nothing of the flesh of the lamb for the future age: let us eat as much as we can. But if there are any strong parts in it, namely ecclesiastical doctrines concerning the Trinity, the resurrection, the soul, the angels, and other such matters, let us not discuss these according to our own opinion with perverse interpretations, and let us not break them, but let us proclaim them as they are, strong. But if anything, as it were, escapes men, and we have not been able to eat of the flesh of the lamb, we ought to know that in the future age it is to be opened to us by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, and we shall eat it. Thus, however, shall you eat it: Let your loins be girded, and your shoes on your feet, and staffs in your hands, and you shall eat it with haste, for it is the Passover of your Lord God (Exod. 12:11). Up to this point, it has been commanded what kind of flesh of the lamb we ought to eat: now it is ordered in what attire it is to be eaten. Let your loins, it says, be girded. And it is said to the Apostles, Let your loins be girded, and lamps burning in your hands (Luke 12:35). And John is girded with a leather belt (Matt. 3:4), and Elijah, having in himself nothing soft or womanish, but everything manly and rigid (for the man was hairy), is described as having had a girdle (4 Kings 1:8).

And we, therefore, if we wish to eat the flesh of the lamb, let us mortify our loins, let us mortify the works of the flesh, and let that which is said of the devil in Job—"His strength is in his loins, and his might is in the navel of his belly" (Job 40:16)—be slain in us: so that the flesh may not lust against the spirit, but that we, by the spirit, may mortify the works of the flesh; and, purified, we may eat the flesh of the lamb. But that you may know, dearest brothers, that whoever renders the debt to his wife cannot be free for prayer, nor eat of the flesh of the lamb, Moses is commanded that the people who were to ascend Mount Horeb be purified three days before (Exod. 19:10), and David, when he had come to the priest Ahimelech, being asked whether the young men were clean, replied that they had been purified from the day before yesterday and yesterday (1 Sam. 21:4-5). But if the loaves of proposition could not be eaten by those who had touched their wives, how much more that bread which came down from heaven cannot be violated and defiled by those who have shortly before clung to conjugal embraces? Not that we condemn marriage in saying this, but that at that time when we are about to eat the flesh of the lamb, we ought to abstain from the works of the flesh.

What follows, "and shoes on your feet, and a staff in your hands," is commanded so that, as long as we journey through the desert of this world, we may be shod with the shoes of peace, lest somewhere in the wilderness a scorpion or a serpent creep up, lest a snake attack the foot of the traveler. But if it should happen to rise up against us, let us have a rod in our hands, and let us strike it and say, "Your rod and your staff, they have consoled me" (Psalm 22:4). See the mystery of the Scriptures. As long as we walk through the solitudes, it is necessary that we have shoes with which our feet are bound; but when we enter the land of promise, it is said to us, with Joshua, "Untie the strap of your shoe; for the place on which you stand is holy" (Joshua 5:16). And so, when we have entered the kingdoms of heaven, we will have no need of shoes; not of those aids by which we are guarded in the world; but, to say something new, we will follow that lamb which was slain for us. But see that John says of us, "These are those who have not defiled their garments; for they have remained virgins, who follow the lamb wherever it goes" (Revelation 14:4), Christ Jesus, to whom is honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.