Homilia De Passione Domini

A Homily of Saint Faustinus on the Passion of the Lord. (Edited by Martène from a manuscript of Saint Illidius of Clermont.) The benefits of our God, though great and wondrous, are nevertheless shown to be neither new nor sudden; but from the beginning of the world they were both foretold by oracles and prefigured by mysteries. The sacred Passion of the Lord, from the very beginnings of the world as it was coming into being, the responses of the Old Testament sang; and therefore we assert that Christ the Lord was openly proclaimed and announced to the Jews from their own books and volumes. He who pleads his case from the instruments of his adversaries undoubtedly relies upon strong privileges. A splendid victory it is to entangle the opposing party in their own documents as if in their own snares, to refute them by the voices of their own testimonies, and to overcome the enemy with his own weapons, so that the arguments of your adversary are proven to serve your own interests. Thus, in the person of our Lord, while from the rib of the first man Adam, Eve, the mother of all the living, is produced, so from His sacred side and saving wound, the Church, the parent of all the faithful, is shown to be restored. In His type, the just Abel is killed, and the innocent brother is slain by a fraternal impiety, as if by Jewish impiety. This same Lord, in the last age of a world growing old, is offered through the figure of the blessed Abraham, the long-lived father.

At that time, while the pious parricide rose up with a new sacrifice against the throat of his only son, a ram suddenly appeared before his eyes, as the divine word says: "And Abraham saw a ram caught by its horns among the brambles" (Gen. 22:13). "Among the brambles," it says; let us inquire what this novelty is, that is, among the multitude of surrounding sinners, caught by the horns, that is, hanging by the fixing of nails at the horns of the cross, as we read in another place: "The horns are in his hands" (Hab. 3:4). This is because the venerable hands of him were received by the arms of the gibbet. Moreover, he was assigned among the thorns when the author of innocence and justice was mocked with a crown of thorns. But we must look more deeply into what it is that Isaac is brought by his father to the altars, and suddenly a ram is substituted for him, not with a changed but a doubled offering. Here the twofold adorable substance of the Redeemer is shown: for the only-begotten of God is offered, and the firstborn of the Virgin is sacrificed. This also prefigured the insignia of the Lord's passion, that we read the blessed Elisha, buried in a tomb, with a corpse brought in by thieves, within his tomb, by the touch of his sacred body, raised the body of the dead man: Who else was prefigured here, except our Lord Jesus Christ, who grants resurrection from death and works life while buried? In the thief, recognize the guilty world; in the virtues of the prophet, recognize Christ the Lord.

Even more famously, through the Holy Scriptures, the passion and resurrection of Christ are prefigured in the labors and hardships of the prophet Jonah. This Jonah, as we believe is not unknown to our faith, is prescribed to have borne the type of the Lord. For the Lord Himself says: "As Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:40). This Jonah, I say, is sent to preach to the Ninevites, incurring heavenly offense at the Lord's command; but foreknowing that the sad prophecy would be rendered void by the people's conversion, and fleeing to Tarshish, he boards a ship, but when a storm arises among the sailors, he is given to the waves by lot, and is received, swallowed by the jaws of a whale; but the whale, vomiting forth the deposit unharmed, on the third day he is restored to the lands. See how the Lord even in the Old Testament appears wondrously in the form of a servant. See how in ages past He judged that He would come according to the humility of a servant's form. Jonah, about to preach the Lord's wrath to the great city of Nineveh, about to say: "Yet forty days, and Nineveh will be overthrown" (Jonah 3:4); and Christ is sent to the city of the world, to announce the day of salvation and the preordained time of judgment. Jonah seeks a ship; Christ, the Church. Jonah is tossed by the waves; Christ is exercised by the whirlwinds of the world.

Unless Jonah is given up to be lost, the danger of the shipwrecked vessel is not allayed. Thus the Church is not freed unless it is saved by the death of Christ. The sailors who are about to cast Jonah overboard nevertheless fear and say: "Lord, do not give up innocent blood" (Jonah 1:14). Does it not seem to you that the sailors' imprecation is the confession of Pilate, who handed over Christ and yet washes his hands and says: "I am clean of the blood of this just man" (Matthew 27:24)? How fittingly the faith of the Gentiles is proclaimed through a Gentile person! So Jonah says in his prayer: "Take then, Lord, my soul, because death is better for me than life" (Jonah 4:3). That is: living, I could not save one nation of the Jews; let me die, and the whole world will be saved by my death. A whale received Jonah as he was plunged in, but he did not touch him devoured; and whom the malice of men destroyed, a hungry beast guarded. With full entrails it suffers hunger, and it marvels that it is allowed nothing for itself in the prey it has swallowed. Who is this who can be taken within greedy jaws but cannot be consumed? He is food, but not corruption; he is handed over to the depth of perdition, and is preserved by the service of death itself. Who is this who enters wholly into the vast depths of dangers, and, confined beneath an immense and deadly height, is nourished by vital air, and, sent forth into a foreign nature of things, into an exile of life, sojourns with life, and, surviving death, announces the coming salvation of the world?

I think that this is our Lord Jesus Christ, whom a savage death, an insatiable beast, snatched as its prey, and whose captive prey it trembled to hold. It trembled, I say, for although it knew him crucified, yet it could not hold him condemned, whom it did not remember as guilty, because punishment does not make guilt, but the cause does. It devoured man, a lost customary morsel, at the world's origin; but choked, it recognized the great dignity of that morsel itself, and therefore the divine word records: "And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land" (Jonah 2:11). We must understand this to mean that from the deepest bowels of death, victorious life returned, and that from the deepest depths of hell, wounded perdition gave it back. We see, therefore, in the prophet's afflictions, death and resurrection most clearly prefigured. Wherefore, what you see fulfilled in the servant, you should not hesitate to believe in the Lord. Since this is so, consider, O man, how much you are worth, and weigh what you owe. Consider how much you are worth, so that you may finally cease to be worthless to yourself, so that you may even blush to be subject to base vices, while you measure your nobility from the dignity of our Creator and Restorer. He has reasons to be confounded, why he should subject his conquered heart to unworthy masters, to whom eternal glory is promised, and thus by a twofold privilege, you who were once made precious by participation in the divine image, are also made precious by the nobility of exchange.

See how strong you can be against your enemy; examine your own condition, what free capacity the Lord has granted you in your limbs to overcome the prince of this world and to conquer spiritual wickednesses; and thus do not think it impossible that you may obtain a transfer into angelic beatitudes, when in this age you have overcome angelic powers. Therefore, do not let life make you base and contemptible, whom either birth is proven to have produced illustrious or grace, but let the faithful of Christ confidently raise their course toward the heavens. For those who see themselves redeemed at a heavenly price do not doubt that they are prepared for heavenly things. Here ends the homily of Saint Faustinus.