Benedictio Cerei (I)

IX. THE BLESSING OF THE CANDLE. It is fitting and just. Truly it is fitting and just that what we receive from you, Lord, we should repay at least with the price of our voice. And although our tongue can in no way respond with worthy speech to the benefits of its author, it nevertheless wishes to have advanced the divine mystery by the fact that it was made. For while in other animals the thickness of their blunted senses is dull, in this arrangement of the Lord the more excellent creation of humans flourishes, in that it alone can more richly perceive its maker: which, however, must rightly be joined to the beasts if, ignorant of the heavenly gift, it confines the benefits of divinity granted as if speechless. For just as it absolves from guilt in mystic sacrifices not to have what you might offer, so it is a thing worthy of punishment to withhold what should be offered. For by a similar judgment is to be considered both he who never speaks by nature and he who does not render to his author what he speaks. Therefore, Lord, maker of this wondrous element, we believe that some small portion is rendered to you by us in humble satisfaction, because we know that we owe the whole. For who else besides you solidified the fabric of the world, exacted by the plumb line of a sudden command, with twofold authority, when first by the miracle of your command the earth was coagulated into a sea, and then, after the impressions of the waters were drawn off, that shipwrecked land thirsted? And whose offspring, moreover, are nourished except by the fostering of your inscrutable command? Who generates heat for the infused, who distills moisture for the parched?

who but our God joins successive times to times, by which the fruits of the earth now grow hot with fire, now are tempered by ice, now are animated by warmth, now rise up with drinking moisture? Who made all these things from nothing and separated them from the gloomy density of perpetual night through the gateway of light, and made them, by a most pious arrangement, ever praiseworthy, so that after the brightness of light the returning darkness is not dreaded through the days of days? Who speaks of you as a worthy or eloquent praiser, whose finite distribution becomes more pleasing by its succeeding variety, by whose command light is sweeter because it sometimes ceases than if it remained forever? Behold, that night which had until now oppressed the world with the yoke of the cruelest surrender frees peoples from the bonds of violent condition, and she who had been the mother of servitude becomes the nurse of freedom. In the ministry of this night, most holy Lord, we offer this candlelight, through which ancient darkness is driven away, in which the threefold species joined by the bond of a nearly mystical fellowship are united: wax, which virginity made fruitful by nectarous births prepared; papyrus, which water sent for the nourishment of flames; and light, which is supplied from heaven. Here human voice has nothing to consecrate, where all is directed by heavenly knowledge. Here the son of the life-giving virgin recognizes his own fragrance, where whatever is offered is born without intercourse.

Not here does Panchaean fire burn on incense-bearing altars, not here is a bellowing ox struck down for a grim sacrificial rite, not here does the sword of a butcher rather than a priest cut through the offspring of sheep: it suffices for the restoration of lost eternity that a lamb was killed not by us but for us. Far from here shall be the Jewish butcher, who counts as many souls acquired for himself through the scars of the groin as he wounds. The offerings of our Christ are fulfilled with unadorned simplicity. The cross, the water, the confession perform the dedication of our body. Therefore we beseech you, Lord, that just as in the ancient type by mystery, so may this column lead the renewed ranks through the floods: may the path prepared through the seas burn for us, and may the dusty path thirst in the waves. There is nothing here in which the ancient differs from the new or the modern from the old. You are always the same Lord and priest equal in merits to the prophet, at whose prayer the streams are dried up, so that the Hebrew may cross, the Egyptian be overwhelmed, and only guilt may feel shipwreck in bodies submerged in water. But this gift, Lord, of the chaste worker and this offspring of the untouched mother we commend to you, through which the earth deserves to have what is of heaven, which through waxen houses store up divine honey in a brief space, for which the cause of numerous offspring is to have known no marriage, lest, while occupied with the bonds of union, the time for labor should flee and they should wait for their swollen womb to discharge their young.

than by the profit of herbs they can more diligently destroy by mouth than by seed. In the body of this candle's light, Lord, we beseech you, that you may bestow the gift of heavenly blessing, and if anyone should take from it against the blasts of winds, against the spirits of storms, acting by your command, let it be for him a singular refuge, let it be a wall for the faithful against the enemy. At the same time we also ask you, because you have fitted the time of your passion and resurrection to the face of the vernal year, when after the clods congealed by winter's torpor and the rivers bridled by ice, the bud splits the new tunics of the leaves, and with the author of the shoots, the Lord, all things revive for us: grant manifold fruits on the earth, make ours what you show, and with the safety of our priest and his entire clergy preserved, grant abundance of seasons without adverse weather.