Opus Paschale

Preface to Sedulius’ Paschal Work. You who share in the Paschal feast, whoever you are, if you have not disdained to recline at our couches, lay aside the lofty arrogance of your raised brow if you come as a dear friend, and do not seek here the work of a skilled craftsman in a codex, but rather, gladly receiving the modest solemnities of a small table, content with what is offered, more willing to feast your mind than your body. Or if you are rather captivated by a great abundance of rich fare and expect choice delicacies and special riches, you ought to be sated by the banquets of noble scholars, whose manifold preparations cannot be recounted. There indeed you will find whatever the sea’s wave nourishes for eating, whatever the earth’s fertility supplies, whatever sustains its winged body in the clouds by the balance of flight. In those very dishes, moreover, with a most precious variety set with gems, their honeys with their waxes grow golden with nectars, and the honeycomb, placed in golden baskets, plays with the color of the metal. But we have plucked cheap vegetables from the seeds of a poor garden, which we are seen to serve in a red earthenware dish more by intention than by splendor.

BOOK ONE. Since the studious custom of the pagan poets commends the trifles of fabulous song with a pomp of words, and whether by the clamors of buskined tragedy or the comic foulness of a ridiculous Geta, or by any metrical measures, they hand down the criminal deeds of ancient times, some even composed with the art of shameful narrative, the reed of the Nile’s whirlwind scratching on papyrus—why should I, who, exercising the songs of Davidic modulation on the ten-stringed psalter among the choirs of blessed doctrine, reverently respond to spiritual utterances, keep silent with a subdued voice about the wonderful and salutary virtues of Christ, when I ought to seize the work of truth and, with the instrument of faithful speech, not be silent about the gifts of heavenly grace? For no one’s service of heart and mind more justly serves than that of the almighty Lord, who established the senses, founded the hearts, so that the devoted material always does not abandon its own creator, to whom it is fitting that the fabric of its own right be neither withdrawn nor perish, to whom, in perpetual dominion in the heavenly citadels, there is one power with the Father, equal clarity of splendor, undivided sublimity of the common summit, equal honor, the same virtue, a shared eminence, a kingdom infinite in time, a beginning always remaining in eternal continuance, a glory sharing in the partnership of the scepter, and a similar majesty. This is the way that directs to the dwelling of salvation; this is the path, opened with firm steps, to the Paschal gifts.

Here we will lay the foundations of our work; therefore, turn your sick minds to this, apply this medicine to deadly diseases—those diseases which the vain intent of harmful disputation creeps in and the incurable discipline of Attic dogma wounds with the poison of Cecropian teaching, so that when you draw in the vital breezes, the fragrant breath of divine law, the scent of sweet grace, you may thereafter leave behind the gluttony of Athenian filth with a purer sense. Why do you wander through the dark labyrinths of errors, Theseids, through twisting turns, and, with your footsteps perishing in the exit, do you traverse caves darkened by blind wanderings? Why do you still prefer the wild vine to the good vine? Why do you set the dwarf rose above the shining rose beds? Why do you trust in stone statues and bronze figures with empty worship, or will profane temples and venerable metal objects profit souls condemned to servitude? Spare, I beg you, spare the squalid clods of sandy dust and the bare dryness of sterile fields, where the land, never heavy with fertile innards, knows how to relieve the labor of the sweating farmer with fruitful reward. Nor should you pluck from the bloody turf the poisonous nourishment of lethal sap, which, always friendly to Tartarean feasts, knows not how to serve life but death.

Rather, enter the joyful meadows of flowering grass and the pleasant approaches of the blessed abode through the clear waters of a pure spring, where the fecundity of vital seeds, quickened by divine waters, nourishes the crop, the roughness of the growing brambles having been torn away—a crop which, by the excessive abundance of its fruit, can already be the manifold harvest of God, and, opening up the hope of future reward, stores up the greatest fruit in hundredfold heaps in the granaries.

Almighty God of indivisible divinity and eternity, who contain the whole world by your sacred will, who established the structure of heaven by the work of your fingers and founded the edifice of your powerful word, who confine the raging madness of the surging sea by forbidding it to overwhelm the boundary of the neighboring land with established limits, who dispense the aspects of the radiant sun and the horned faces of the moon, conterminous with day and night, by the sacred balance of moderation, alternating the changes of each luminary; who alone gather, alone recognize the number, powers, signs, names, places, courses, and times of the stars; who animated the sluggish limbs of the raw earth with living bodies through diverse movements; who, after condemning to death the man who ate the tree-borne fruit in forbidden presumption, revive him with the sacrament of better food and preserve him from the voluptuous deceit of the serpent’s bite by the drink of immaculate blood; who, except for those whom the guardian ark had protected, multiplied the name of the human race, utterly drowned and buried by the sudden rising flood of the deluge, restored again from a single offspring, so that by the demonstration of mystical power, what the sins of the flesh had killed, fortified by the faithful protection of wood, you might open to be washed away through one baptism of the whole world: show me now, placidly, that path, that way for a suppliant, which directs the footsteps of the few by a narrow trail to the walls of the saving city, namely Jerusalem, the Lord’s city, bearing our Passover through Christ’s passion, so that through this

...who perform the duty of hospitality, may we merit to arrive at that homeland of spiritual glory, and let your word, O Lord, be a lamp for my feet, by which the brightness of the straight path may lead me to those places of flowering grass, where the good shepherd preserves the shining fold, where the virgin ewe follows the lamb with snowy brightness, and the whole flock, clothed in white, follows. The way is not difficult, if you deign to offer yourself as guide. All things are subject to your power, all nature yields to your commands and passes into opposite species and forms at your ruling command. If you wish that annual harvests grow golden in icy seasons, sluggish winter produces a reaper swift with sickles; if you command the vine to bear fruit with heavy shoots in the mildness of spring, when the earth, covered with the first cloak of flowers, gleams, the vintner, dancing in the musty river, will gladly drive back the nectarous innards of the happy grape with the welcome injury of the drunken heel; and the changes of all seasons, with their varied fruits, will not refuse to serve the Creator. Indeed, hoary faith reveals the evidence of divine wonders, and the ancient origin of the fathers bears witness, and the immortal signs of heavenly virtues endure through the ages, undiminished by passing time. From these, with the fear of a trembling mind, we scarcely permit our weak hearts and minds to touch upon a few things, at least, with a bold account, as one entering a forest of great density might strive to reach some branches with the tips of his fingers.

For even if a hundred mouths were at once supplied to the human body, and with a hundred movements of tongues an iron voice did not cease to cry out, who could set forth all those things whose numbers neither the densest stars of the sky nor the thirsty sand of the sea could match? First, from the time when the confused matter of things, which is called chaos, rose up into the bright face of the world by the fashioning word, Enoch, most pleasing and beloved to God, having attained living glory, surpassing the measure of human nature through countless courses of years, fulfilled the gift of birth to the earth, but stirred up a miracle of death, from which he was removed. Sarra’s limbs were already languishing with old age, and the blood, extinguished by the aged condition, had condemned the veins of her year-worn body to the sterility of a hopeless offspring, when, with the womb of the elderly man fertilized by marriage, she suddenly extended the cold belly and, with new birth swelling in her pregnant breast, the mother, trembling, suspended at the milky breasts the child born in late happiness, for the hope of a future race and people.

Whom the father offered as a gift to God, whose promise had been made in desperation; the boy stood at the throat and became a ram for the burnt offering. O the pure mind of the holy pontiff! He rejected human things, looked to divine things; by denying life to his son, he gained it. Abraham drew his sword to strike, and the Lord changed the sacrifice for himself in order to spare him. A great mystery was indeed being enacted in this piety: that for the life of the human race, Christ, the gentle lamb, would willingly offer himself as a victim. Lot was fleeing from perishing Sodom; his wife, by the audacity of incautious presumption, while looking back at what she had escaped, was changed into a pillar of salt, not for wisdom, but for punishment. For no one who, having once despised the dangers of the world, turns back again with headlong desire, will enjoy the joy of happy salvation. Nor is that plowman worthy to rejoice in the future fertility of the crops who, by turning his face backward, confuses the straight course of the plowshare and scatters the order of the past labor.

A bush, once enveloped by harmless flames, seemed to burn without burning, whose substance neither provided fuel for the fires nor, seized by the heat of the surrounding blaze, suffered the loss of consumed wood. Thus the touch of the divine tinder was tempered, so that with the branches caressed by the blazing flame, a splendor was seen in the leaves, not a punishment. The nature of the mild rod, easily handled, was changed into a fierce and untamable serpent: which, exerting viperine movements with such a sinuous coiled volution as it darted its forked tongues, swallowed up the twin snakes of hostile deceit and, by a rigid reversal, again assumed its own form as a shoot. Through the midst of the sea, with the hidden depths rolled back into twin walls of water and the sea suspended by divine construction, a pedestrian multitude crossed. The ocean stood everywhere like a wall, and the earth, stripped of the veil of its kindred flood, remained bare, until the people, walking on the sea, with absent footprints, made their way through the sea on a watery path of foreign dryness. Nature changed its course, ordered to relax its constancy a little, and the countless multitude, crossing the fields of slippery salt, beheld the rude mystery of baptism without knowing it, as they had crossed through the healthful straits of water with Christ as their leader. Thus finally the prophet sang, signifying this: "The voice of the Lord over many waters." Who doubts that "voice" is called "word"? Who denies that the Word of the Father is Christ?

The founder of the Old and New Testament revealed the immense abyss of the first law by his coming, so that, with the masses of waves removed, as it were, by a more recent teaching, the following age, fearing no danger, might walk securely along the path of plain freedom. Why should I recount the countless multitudes of that same people, condemned to the barren spaces of the deserts and the sterility of all sustenance, who obtained angelic foods and the bread of heavenly grace, where a nectar-like cloud of ethereal majesty, raining down, poured out for the people banquets from rains and abundant feasts from showers? Again, across fields parched by violent heat, the army thirsted and burned, where, with its familiar heat always present and the springs denied, the prostrate earth languished, where, with hope of drinking and living alike failing, the nature of the waters had withdrawn: when, from the innards of the astonished rock, the imprisoned foam suddenly overflowed from the swelling crag into a liquid, and the veins of the dry, thirsty marble vomited forth drink for all, manifold. Therefore, in these three things, already announcing the great sacraments of his mystery, Christ was in the sea, Christ in the bread, Christ in the rock.

A she-ass, a lowly and stupid beast, terrified by the vision of angelic power, addresses its rider with words, and the inarticulate clamor of a braying tongue is unfolded in the utterances of a human voice. The sun, in the middle of the sky's summit, curbing the swift courses of a panting chariot, against Gabaon, through unaccustomed delays of the day, with evening postponed, held the light fixed, and the moon, moved by its own laws, not exceeding the threshold of its sluggish station, did not perform the order of its customary course, until the sword of the victorious army utterly cut off the enemy's strength, by the conspiracy of heavenly aid. Finally, the stars themselves seemed to serve, through the sacrament of a similar name, that the Lord Jesus would come, with the name preceding. For Elijah, contrary to the arrangement of nature, ravens spent the day's meals, and a bird subject to the rapacity of a greedy beak, which supplies easy prey to its hollow gullet, carried food unharmed with hungry bites. Now a good and faithful raven for Elijah, who once was evil and faithless for Noah, washed away the guilt contracted in the inundation of the waters.

But he, being full of God, after showing many miracles on earth and, as if by hereditary generosity, transferring the gift of his own virtue to his worthy successor through the Spirit, was snatched up by fiery horses and chariots through those passages of bright serenity where the path of the pure track, lighter and preserving its orbit without plunging the furrows of the burning wheel into the ethereal field, sought the right-hand regions of greater space, so that, shining on the axle of the celestial triumph, he might scorn the boundary of the human limit, relying on long-lasting vitality. How well the majesty of the shining path smiled upon the name and merit of Elijah, fittingly and deservedly! If, in the Greek language, a single letter could be changed by an accent, the sun would seem to be expressly named. For Hezekiah, a most just king, placed at the very end of his life, the Lord, by his mercy and right, added fifteen years for his salvation, and, closing the already opened gates of death, recalled life languishing in its setting to its rising origin.

Jonah, tossed about in the anxious tossing of the ship upon the sea's waves and hidden in the belly of a swallowing whale, did not feel the waters while placed in the deep; he entered a life-giving tomb, as it were, so that he might not die, and, safe under the most gentle guard within the voracious belly, he seemed to be a deposit of God, not prey, and, preserved by a more salutary protection from the enemy, he came to land by vomit, not by keel. In this deed, contrary in its diversity, the sailor offered savagery, the savage beast provided passage. When, with God inspiring from heaven, the single intention of the three youths equally despised and denied the sacred things of Babylon and underwent the harsh death-sentence by the atrocity of tyrannical law, whose rage, kindled by the fire of Achaemenian fury, surpassed the burning of its own furnace's torrent, the bound youths are thrust into the midst of the pyres; the fire dares not touch the youths, who, burning only in heart, conquered the punishment, the penalty of the image failing. O how great is the salvation and glory for believers! The force of the furnace, quenched by faith burning more hotly, grew numb.

The author of such a nefarious judgment did not escape the fitting punishment for his deed. For because, seized by the madness of a deranged mind, he had spurned the laws of human piety, he lived by a beastly custom through the forests, pursuing the rustic company of cattle, exchanging the luxurious banquets of a court for pasture on hay and drink from a river—whom, under the aspect of this deformity, shaggy and wandering through woods and mountains, seven ages beheld. Nor did Darn, later a king, while imitating the past madness with his own fury, escape any less: Daniel, the greatest glory of the Hebrews, is shut in with beasts goaded by hunger, and the innocent body of a simple soul is consigned to be devoured by savage bites. Yet the beast became gentle and calm, so that it would not tear the holy limbs with its maddened tooth while starving; it began to love hunger itself; and, lowering its terrible countenance with softened rage, and with a gentler anger subsiding in its savage jaws, forgetful of its inborn ferocity, it then taught lions to guard their prey.

Tell me, after such things, where are your laws, stubborn nature, you who so often have withdrawn your rights? Who commanded that a man, once translated, should not know the underworld; granted a fruitful old age to a barren wife; compelled a beast to come willingly to the altar; transformed a woman’s likeness into statues of salt; showed that branches blazing in fires did not burn; loosed a shoot into a serpent; opened up foot-paths across the sea’s waves; poured forth nectar-like manna from raining clouds; cast waters from the dry bowels of a rock; allowed the mouth of a mute four-footed creature to utter human speech; suspended the elements in a long pause with their courses fixed; fed a man by the services of birds and led him into heaven on a chariot of flashing horses; granted three five-year periods of life to a king already dying; gave a harbor for shipwreck to exist in the womb of a savage brigand; washed the limbs of boys in a starry dew within a furnace; made a wandering king a companion of wild beasts and cattle through the thorny pastures; taught lions to spare their prey and not to love plunder? Surely, to the creator of all things, whose every work, whether known or hidden, stands by the fabric of his word, the foundations of his own work are subject; and every creature follows the command of the one who orders, wherever the divine sentence may have drawn it by a nod.

Alas for the wretched, who, bent by vain devotions, pay the foolish service of a misguided heart to images carved by their own hands, and, abandoning their own maker, worship the likenesses of their own handiwork! What madness is this? What so great insanity deludes their minds, that a man, whole in his limbs, adores a foul bird, a most obscene ox, a twisted serpent, and a half-human dog? Some, blinded by clouded minds, wish the sun to be considered the begetter of all things by this opinion, because it floods the tracts of the earth and the spaces of bright serenity with light, and does not cease to traverse the regions of the sky and the fiery stars with swiftness—when, rather, from its own unstable mobility, which a wandering fire exercises in rapid courses, it is evident that its function is that of a servant, not a god; and, preserving the order of a fixed dispensation, it now rises, now sinks toward the west as the hours incline, and shares its shifts with the night. Nor is it always and everywhere present, nor did it see the first beginnings of the nascent world, unless, after a day already completed without the sun, a provident father had established it to shine from the beginning of the third light.

Thus also many pay superfluous vows to the moon, which they observe always waxing and waning at fixed times of the months. Thus they do not cease to offer sacrifice also to the stars, which, driven off by the departure of night, are put to flight by the faces of the morning light. One is a worshiper of waters, another of flames, but they dare not bring together species naturally contrary to each other, lest a nearer discord either cause the more ardent fire to dry up the weaker waters, or the immense flood quench the pyre, suddenly extinguished. Another, setting up altars at the roots of trees, placing feasts, does not cease to beseech branches and oaks tearfully, that they may guard his children, home, fields, marriage, servants, and wealth. O wooden one, why do you entreat wood? You waste your effort shouting at the deaf, you expect answers from the mute, hearing nothing, which things sustain the steadfastness of houses only by that reason, if, cut by axes, they support the hanging roofs of the summits, or, applied to hearths, they serve for preparing feasts, set ablaze.

Some people, even more foolishly, become worshippers of vegetables and, watering the dry gardens with their gods, teach that they themselves are the true devotees of the transplanted deities. But it is already shameful to recount more of such things, lest, while we chastise the numerous errors of folly on the page of holy religion, either the harsh bramble scorch the softest lilies with excessive beauty, or the thistle and the thorn-armed paliurus rise up through the purple violets of the flowering field. Therefore, it is enough now in rebuking that we have derided the monsters worshipped by human errors, or rather, that we have lamented such acts with pity. Now it is helpful to proceed along the path of the journey we have begun and to climb the lofty mountain with a firm step, and to arrive with the effort of all our strength at the city, the author of our freedom. For that city is the home of tranquil peace, the safe dwelling of salvation, the perpetual lodging of liberty. For if, concerning an earthly city of a mortal kingdom, founded by a mortal builder, a secular poet sang thus in his literature: "And what great reason was there for you to see Rome? Liberty..." how much more should we believe that in the city of heavenly kingdoms, which God the Lord, the builder, established, the laws of perpetual liberty exist, concerning which a singer of such songs said: "The Lord, building Jerusalem," and likewise in the following psalm he explained: "Praise Jerusalem, praise your God, O Zion, because he has strengthened the bars of your gates. He has blessed your children within you, who has set your boundaries as peace," and so forth.

Let us also hear the Creator of all things Himself in His Gospels, in the sacred discourse in which He declared this city to be His: “I tell you,” He says, “not to swear at all, neither by heaven, because it is the throne of God, nor by earth, because it is the footstool of His feet, nor by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great King.” As if He were saying “mine,” which He more openly refrained from expressing, so that by the humility of His speech He might lay open the summit of His majesty. For thus, while teaching, He admonished, saying: “Take my yoke upon yourselves and learn from me, that I am meek and humble of heart.” This is the place where the royal hall gleams with its golden vaults, where the petitioner receives, the seeker finds, and the one who knocks is soon admitted. Here is that precious stone which, rejected by the builders, shines placed at the corner’s head: whose burden is felt as too light, whose yoke is found to be very gentle. Therefore, through certain selections we have recounted the miracles of the Old Testament, what the Father performed with the Son and the Holy Spirit established together with Him. Through certain selections likewise we shall recount the miracles of the New Testament, what the Son performed with the Father and the Holy Spirit established together with Him, so that the one power of the Godhead, always conspicuous in inseparable might and simple majesty, may be threefold, and in threefold person may be simple. This is the true faith and firm belief.

This salvation wretched Arius disdained to embrace. For while, through the crooked twists of a devious path, he strove to turn aside the straight way, he slipped down into the foul pit of dark Tartarus, following its shadows, as empty and void in understanding as he was, at the time of his just punishment, also empty in his belly, having expired with his bowels poured out. Madman, to think that the rights of the paternal divinity, which are to be equated by no example of likeness, could be compared to perishable degrees! For among men, born by carnal law, the son is lesser than the father, since the father himself, who now precedes the son, was himself a son a little while before, and he who is now seen to be a son is not held to be unable to become a father. Thus through the whole line of descendants new offspring runs forth, and the ages of grandfathers and great-grandfathers are numbered as immense. The Lord, however, who is the Word, the Power, the Wisdom, and the whole common property of the Father, Christ, light born from light, was born from the Only One alone, who is neither lesser than the Father in any respect, nor is there anything by which he might grow, being higher than all things, since indeed he is begotten, not created, and has the name Beginning as his summit: for thus, according to John, he declared himself to be the Beginning to the Jews who were inquiring.

What, then, is the beginning but the highest summit, above which nothing at all is found, always remaining in the Father, because the Father always remains in him, and the one God of undivided majesty is the head of all things—not that the Son is believed to be who the Father is, but that the Son is believed to be what the Father is, just as he himself spoke through the Gospel teaching, saying: “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.” Then he added accordingly: “I and the Father are one.” Let Arius hear “one” spoken, let Sabellius recognize “are” spoken; one fleeing from the Trinity, the other dissenting from the Unity: both equal in error, though pursuing different paths. How the authors of Gentile doctrines strive to oppose each other’s statements with their own, who, thrusting forth their arms with bare shoulders, are ready not to teach anything by handing down but only to contend in lengthy disputation—whose prudence lies foolish, because it is vain before God, the fragile discipline of worldly wisdom. One speaks more, another is more silent; one disputes while walking, another pronounces while standing; one is always weeping, another never ceases to laugh: thus in diverse ways, equal madness is seen in all.

Meanwhile, as we lighten the burden of the journey’s labor with words, and as hope and faith together accompany my ascent into the heights, we have arrived, with difficulty set aside, more gently at the summit of the highest citadel. Behold, the sacred standards of the cross already shine; behold, the most pious camp of the great king displays a gleaming light, and with a starry blast the trumpet of the Lord’s station sounds forth; access to his gate lies open for the soldiers: let him who serves enter without fear. The door of eternity invites you—that door which is Christ, namely the Father’s voice. You will rejoice in the golden reward of everlasting life, you who manfully wield the heavenly arms of the Lord and display the mark affixed on the forehead, the sacraments of the faithful sign. Behold, I, the heavenly arms and glory, the smallest part of your army, O good king, carry the consecrated emblems. Grant that I may receive my own seat here, that within the walls of this city I may be granted a humble dwelling worthy of me, so that, always your inhabitant and your native, placed in a small corner of the holy abode, I may deserve to be enrolled last among the citizens of the blessed order on the roll of the living page. These are great things I ask, but your greatness supplies great things, for he offends him more who has conceived doubtful hope from such great piety.

Christ, favor my vows, smile upon my vows—you who, hastening to give life to a dying world, sought the heavens from the earth, deigned to take on a human form, receiving what was foreign indeed but not abandoning what was your own. Matthew, first of all, set forth this man in a general way; Mark, like a wondrous lion, roared, crying out through the deserts; Luke began with the priestly starting-point of religion, taking a likeness from the young bull; John, with the rush of a flying eagle, pierced the heaven with the majesty of the Word. These four leaders and heralds, singing of you with one voice, range across the vast image of the whole world like the four seasons. Likewise, the twelvefold peak of apostolic height and honor, always shining in its numbers, imitates the hours and the months, so that, with all things gathered together, the entire year may serve you. Hence, then, recalling the ancient beginnings of old death, I delight to hasten toward new life, so that we who sowed tears in Adam may reap joy in Christ and deserve to sing the Davidic song: those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. They went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming, they shall come in exultation, bearing their sheaves.

BOOK TWO. That most wicked serpent had driven the firstborn man from the blossoming seat of paradise by deceitful arts, and by the allurements of sweet flavor had made him taste the bitter death soon hidden. Nor did the transgressor of the command alone suffer the penalty of life by the sentence of divine indignation, but the human progeny coming from him had succumbed to the condition of a long death. Alas, cruel and harmful wife! Or was that treacherous serpent more the murderer? That treacherous serpent was the murderer, but you, wife, were also cruel and harmful. O grief! Only two had been eternal. After the origin began to increase, then it perished and, giving birth to calamity, suffered losses from the seed. What did that numerous and manifold day in that age, what did the nine hundred years of happy life-spans avail, to exceed the tenth generation of aging progeny and already see the foreign blood of one’s own kind, when the final lot of the human condition, seized by the last courses of the irreparable hour, though late, yet did not avoid destruction, and through a long age of times, a short life, existing as nothing lasting that would be closed by an end, lamented?

next hope promised any remedy for this evil would be forthcoming, but the sepulchral merit of the first earth-born would greedily swallow all the nations of the later offspring as well, indiscriminately, unless that pious creator and founder of things, whose property it is to pour forgiveness upon faults rather than to threaten with punishment, should deign to raise up the fabric of his work, weak from its very foundation, more firmly through the same stone again—lest, indeed, the image which had been made living in the likeness of God should be held unlike through death, and the gift of pardonable indulgence be granted also to the fruits, so that the teeth of the children would be kept from the bitter things which their parents had devoured, and the most gentle and placated one would grant that whence sins had contracted death, from there immense piety would nourish life again; and just as a sweet and very soft rose is born from a thorny bush, harming not at all the mother, which the grace of delight overshadows, so from the stock of guilty Eve, with the holy light coming, the following virgin would wash away the plague of the first virgin, so that because the prior nature, stained by vices, had been subject to the condition of harsh death, with Christ being born through a man, man might also be able to be reborn through Christ, putting aside the foulness of the original stain by the renewal of the old body.

After the prophetic night had often foretold these things, and the archangel Gabriel had announced Mary’s already present reality, soon in the womb of the believing maiden the inspired conception of the faithful word remained, and the starry offspring lay hidden under the law of birth—that offspring which had granted all things to be born by its own nod. The virgin’s womb swelled, and her body, untouched, marveled at the fecundity of its own viscera. The mystery of a female birth without a man promised great aid to the world, when, stained by no blemish of any spot, she nourished her innermost parts with a distended belly, soon to be the mother of the parent. Meanwhile, the ninth month had passed, and the immortal light of the tenth shone forth, and the manifest promise of spiritual grace gleamed through the virgin birth: and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us—that is, dwelt in a man, with whose flesh it deigned to clothe itself. For the infant, both small and great—small in limbs, exalted in divinity—flowing through the pure chastity of the hospitable temple, did not harm the body in departing, which it had not harmed when it came. Truly this is the secret of divine generation: the witness of the virgin’s birth is shown, which, as the guardian of maternal modesty, entered through closed viscera and was both conceived and created. What brightness of that new light then filled the shores of the whole world! What joy in heaven! What splendor shone forth, when Christ, like a bridegroom proceeding from his bridal chamber with starry radiance, came forth from Mary’s womb!

whose divine beauty seemed to shine with such grace that the Davidic psalm itself proclaims: "Beautiful in form among the sons of men, grace is spread upon your lips," and so forth. But it rightly defined him as beautiful in form among the sons of men, because although he took on the likeness of human incarnation and often called himself the son of man in the gospel preaching, nevertheless original sin had defiled us, which he did not have, who cleansed us by the purity of his own birth. O merciful and gracious piety, so ready to bring salvation! Lest the yoke of long servitude oppress us because of the condition of sin, the Lord took on the limbs of a servant. Let us hear the voice of the Apostle Paul saying: "He emptied himself, he took on the form of a servant," and so forth; and he who clothes all things from the beginning of the world allowed his own limbs to be wrapped in swaddling clothes, and he for whom the boundary of the heavens is too small, the earth falls short, the wave of the sea is not enough, remained full in a child's body, a tiny God reclining in a manger.

Hail, best of mothers, consecrated by the childbearing of so great a king, who so continually rules over the heavenly and the infernal realms that his dominion, power, and name know neither beginning nor end; you, by the conspicuous honor of your blessed womb, are proven to be both mother and virgin. No woman at all is found who is your equal, who has preceded or will follow your beauty in like manner: alone pleasing singularly to Christ, you are compared to no example. Then, with the joyful speech of the angel, the shepherds, first keeping watch over their flock by night, recognized the newborn Lord, so that the shepherd of the world might become known to shepherds, and the lamb born among flocks might appear. Therefore, as the evangelical word testifies, proclaiming thus: and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will." The faithful assertion of the Evangelist shows whose kingdom was here in question, when the multitude of the heavenly host praises God in Christ, so that, although the creation was human by reason of the mother's condition, the one communion of divinity demonstrates that the Father is recognized in the Son. They said, therefore: "Glory to God in the highest." Assuredly, the glory of God remained in the highest, whence Christ, coming, did not depart. "And on earth peace to men of good will." It is to be believed that "earth" names men, from which we are fashioned by the Lord as craftsman, who, rebuking Adam, said: "Because you are earth, and to earth you will go.

Then indeed our land earned peace after that deadly war in which it fell, when Christ took up the land of our flesh. For if by "land" in this passage we mean fields and mountains, what peace can mute and sluggish masses have, or what battles? That peace, therefore, descended especially upon those men whom it found capable of good will, so that wherever it perceived the zeal of a sincere purpose, the examiner of reins and heart, there it might delight in establishing the dwelling place of its abode. For peace is the reason of a better judgment, not to favor the struggle of the spirit against the flesh, but to preserve both materials in harmonious and constant purity under the dominion of the spirit. Nor should we so distrust the weakness of the flesh that we seem to despair of heavenly aid. For the almighty Lord Jesus Christ, who is proven to be the mediator of God and man, in order to remove from us the excuse of bodily frailty, inquires only into the zeal of our will, reserving the perfection of the good work for his own majesty. For apostolic doctrine explains thus, saying: "To will lies within me, but to accomplish the good I do not find," because clearly it is ours to will the good, but God's to accomplish it, who infuses his peace into men of good will. Then the divine word continues, saying:

When therefore Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea, in the days of King Herod, behold, Magi came from the East to Jerusalem, saying: "Where is he who is born king of the Jews? For we have seen his star in the East and have come to worship him." But King Herod, hearing this, was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And gathering all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where Christ was to be born. And they said: "In Bethlehem of Judaea. For thus it is written through the prophet: 'And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means the least among the princes of Judah. For from you shall come forth a leader who shall rule my people Israel.'" Then Herod, secretly summoning the Magi, learned from them the time of the star which had appeared to them. And sending them to Bethlehem, he said: "Go and inquire diligently about the boy. And when you have found him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship him." Fittingly, in harmony with the authority of the Scriptures, the birth of Christ shone from the East, because it fulfills what the prayer of Zechariah designates: "The East has visited us from on high." For the Davidic psalm also contains similar things: "He has placed his tabernacle in the sun," and so forth. By "sun," moreover, he signifies the East, from which region the day always rises. What, therefore, Herod, are you more cunning than a thief? Why do you rave madly? For while you profess Christ with your tongue, you persecute him in your heart, and you conceal a mind dark and condemned to the obscurity of murky gloom with the serenity of a cheerful countenance.

You command that Christ be sought not to be worshipped in the religion you feign, but to be killed by the deceits you contrive. You are greatly mistaken and deceived in believing that he will yield to you, who first holds sway in the royal seat, who neither yields entirely nor departs, but eternally possesses the throne of his majesty, and you, who make and neglect law, threaten your kingdoms against the King of Kings. This guilt lacks words, this perfidy lacks excuse: for you attempt to extinguish him whom you had promised to worship. You would have sinned less if you had sought nothing about Christ, so as to be only a murderer pursuing an unknown man, and not also a sacrilegious person appearing to offend God. Had you not read him warning thus in the Davidic canticle: "Do not touch my anointed ones, and do not malign my prophets"? Since, therefore, it is necessary to obey the divine precept, that neither his anointed ones nor his prophets suffer anything by wicked depravity, because it is a great impiety to treat with contumely those consecrated by spiritual unction: what name will this crime have, when you plot with your deceits to kill the Lord Christ himself, from whom the anointed are named, the true prophet himself, from whom true prophecy descends?

Should you not have followed David, who served the Lord’s commands, when, forced to kill Saul who had entered the cave where he was hiding, he replied: “Far be it from me entirely; may it not befall me from the Lord, if I do this deed to my lord, the anointed of my Lord, that I lay my hand upon him, for he is the anointed of the Lord here.” And that man indeed spared an enemy who wished to destroy him. But you plot against the Lord, who was born for the salvation of the world. Even if you were touched by no ancient examples, you should at least have laid down your murderous arms for this reason, lest you cast down the power of the scepter you bore, you who are acknowledged as anointed while persecuting the author of anointing. Yet, so that the bloody treachery of your name may not depart from the satiety of such a crime, under the honor of the heavenly cross, but under the infernal crime of your race, what you vainly rage to accomplish, another Herod will see later. Therefore, following the Gospel, the chapter says thus: “When they had heard the king, they went. And behold, the star which they had seen in the east went before them, until it came and stood above where the child was. Seeing the star, they rejoiced with very great joy, and entering the house, they found the child with his mother Mary, and prostrating themselves, they adored him, and opening their treasures, they offered him gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” What is this, that the star they had seen went before them, except that, beholding the guidance of a small star, they might find the substance of full light?

they worshipped, because they had truly come to worship, which Herod, by feigning that he would do, did not merit to obtain. For unless they are true worshippers, God does not grant them to worship, just as our Lord Himself spoke to the Samaritan woman, saying: “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews.” But the hour has come and is now, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father seeks such as these, who worship Him. Although the words of the Lord’s teaching are clear and open, that God is not worshipped except by truth, we must nevertheless more diligently examine the force of the utterance: what it means that “the hour has come and is now, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” I therefore think, according to the understanding that the Lord grants to my humble self, that by the signification of the present time, in which He revealed Himself openly to the world, He said that the Father is worshipped in Himself. For He made this clear in the following words, saying: “He gave all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father.” Magnificently, after He said “in spirit,” He added “and truth,” because truth follows those who bear the Spirit of God, while falsehood accompanies the alien. Another mystery is also revealed in the person of these Magi: through them, as Gentiles and foreigners entering to our Lord Jesus Christ, He showed the grace of the future law, that He had already prepared the way of access to Himself for all nations.

For thus He is known to have spoken both through His prophets and through Himself. Through the prophets, indeed, although He foretold these things quite often, He yet explained it by this testimony of David: "The Lord said to me: You are my Son, I have begotten you this day. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession." He said "wondrous inheritance of the nations," because through the grace of the New Testament it was being prepared for the Lord to acquire. Through Himself, however, in the Gospel, like a good shepherd, He promised thus: "And I have other sheep, which are not of this fold. And I must lead them, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one fold and one shepherd." Nor should we believe that the devotion of the gifts lacked divine guidance. For through those species, offered with a fitting variety of meaning, the power of Christ was clearly revealed. For let us inquire more diligently what the gold, when offered, declares. Without doubt, it is a very splendid material and the opulence of metallic brightness, recorded as having been brought to a king. But in this king we acknowledge a twofold substance: for Christ reigns spiritually in the heavens, and was born carnally as king of the Jews. The gift of incense, however, because that incense was once used for religious libation, is given to Christ as to God; myrrh, indeed, because it is suitable for burying bodies, is offered to the honor of the one who, through the flesh, was to die a sepulchral death.

The offering itself, in its triple quantity, proclaimed the worship of catholic dogma by its number, for Almighty God, who sees present, past, and future, and always is, has ever been, and will be, placed the foundation of all things in the course of those times by the triple power of His divinity, although all things always stand present before His eyes, He who has undergone neither the decay of old age nor the growth of youth, but who never ceases to be the same as He always is. For He uttered His exalted name of power to Moses, who was diligently inquiring so that he might announce it to the people of Israel, from the flame of the burning bush: "I am who I am," and He said: "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel: 'He who is has sent me to you.'" In the Gospel, likewise, to the Jews who were setting Abraham before Him in antiquity, He spoke thus: "Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." See the distance between the two natures, distinguishing God and man. He said of Abraham: "before he was"; of Himself He did not say "I was," but "I am," because it belongs to divinity to be, not to have been, since it abides in living eternity. It neither arises from beginnings nor is unfolded by ends. For time is from God, not God from time.

The discourse of the reading thus continues: and having received the answer in dreams, lest they return to Herod, they went back to their own region by another way. We must therefore also imitate the deeds of the Magi, faithful deeds, and just as they believed the dream, let us now believe with the most evident sights, so that we who have merited to adore Christ, found with the cross-sign shining before us, and to offer to him from the treasures of our heart gifts of triple praise, may now by no means return to the prince of this world, the deceiver who had previously led us astray, but, leaving the former path, let us proceed through the secret ways of that path which directs the steps of the faithful to the heavenly homeland. Then such things are narrated in order: then Herod, seeing that he had been mocked by the Magi, became angry, and seeing this, he sent and killed all the boys who were in Bethlehem and in all its territories from two years old and under, according to the time he had ascertained from the Magi.

Therefore the impious king, whom he had believed would be made a fool, having been himself made a fool, published his concealed motions with hasty anger—if it is fitting to call him a king, who neither held to piety nor governed his own passions, but like a most savage and bloodthirsty lion, to whom if a lamb might perhaps be taken away, he exercises his bestial attacks upon the whole flock of little blood and chews, tears, rends, and destroys the most gentle flock; the wretched mothers stand afar off, calling their offspring already lost in vain, and with frequent bleatings they agitate the empty air: thus Herod, goaded by the removal of Christ, did not cease to dash the bands of little ones to the ground with bloody tyranny. By what crime, I ask, does the simple crowd succumb to death? Why are those who have only just been born already worthy of punishment? It is fury in the bloodthirsty king, not reason, who, hostile to first wailings and having set out to accomplish countless evil, slaughtered thousands of infant age and with one grief bereaved so many mothers at once. One, tearing her hair scattered over her face in a pitiful manner, wounded her bare scalp with the ugliness of the damage to her locks; another, with the roughness of her nails, furrowed her cheeks wet with tearful showers; another, with hard blows, beat her bloodstained breast; an unhappy mother, no longer a mother, falling upon the cold corpse of her only child, poured forth a stream of milk with blood through the severed veins of her breasts. No one can set forth the so various and so manifold images of that calamity, where with different kinds of lamentations the grief was present, but not different.

What sense did you have, what intention of mind, not now a tyrant but a butcher? What roars did you belch forth, inflamed, when, looking out from the highest citadel at the wounds of innocent little ones, you saw a vast sea of tears gathered by the flood? Yet among the slain infants, whom it is certain fell but did not perish, however much Christ was absent, he could not be absent, who is always inserted into the dangers of the saints, and himself feels, with a pious motion, the punishments inflicted on others' bodies for his own sake. And when, advancing in age, he was completing two years beyond ten, of which number he had drawn the quantity from the flesh, that is, running through temporal time by human reckoning, he showed himself to be older than elders in wisdom, and a teacher greater than teachers in doctrine, so that, as a manifest interpreter of his own law, he might demonstrate how great he was, and how inferior. Nor after a long delay of time (for what can be time, which, fleeting with swift course, has not yet come and already recedes?), as the evangelist signifies, Jesus himself was about thirty years old, as he was thought to be the son of Joseph. The words "as" and "was thought" very clearly preserved the divinity; for just as he seemed to be about thirty years old, though he is eternal, so he was thought to be the son of Joseph, though he was born of a virgin. Then he approached the waters of the Jordan to be baptized, seeking what he had come to give, about to be washed, he who had come to wash.

John the Baptist, seeing this man whom he had sensed in his mother’s womb while he lay hidden, already aware of the coming Christ, exercising the gift of prophecy—though he could not speak, descending from the temporal silence of a mute father—began to proclaim and say: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” When he says “takes away,” he shows that the Lamb does not possess what he takes away; indeed, he took it not to bear it himself, but to destroy it. Just as we suddenly see the light of a radiant day pour into the darkness of nightly blindness, yet the light does not lose the grace of its splendor by the touch of the darkness it dispels, so the Lord Jesus Christ, taking up the sins of the human race, did not retain them but put them to flight. For as fire purifies metals by consuming their dross, so our good craftsman cleansed us from original contagion with his flame, then, entering the waters immaculate, washed away our filth in himself, having nothing of his own to wash. Indeed, he purified the very waters by the majesty of his sacred body, blessing the renown of the stream, which obtained the honor of the Lord’s baptism. The waves felt the awesome presence of the Godhead; the sea receded from the shore, the river flowed back to its source. The prophet, singing of these things, indicates: “The sea saw and fled, the Jordan turned back.” Why, O sea, did you flee, and you, O Jordan, why did you turn back?

The reading of the Gospel lesson therefore proceeds thus: But when he was baptized, he immediately came up out of the water, and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove coming upon him. And behold, a voice from the heavens saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Let us consider more attentively how great a mystery is revealed even in this passage. For after the Lord, having been baptized, came up from the water, the heavens were immediately opened. How were they immediately opened, when for Christ, whose home is always above the stars, the heaven never seems to be closed? But I think, insofar as his piety deigns to inspire my senses, that the heavens were then opened for this reason: when the Lord, baptized, came up from the water, so that he might teach by his merciful examples to man, whose likeness he assumed, that the kingdoms of heaven are then opened when one has merited to be bathed in the consecration of spiritual water. Moreover, that the Spirit of God descended upon him in the form of a dove shows how great is his goodness, gentleness, and simplicity, through a bird that has no bitterness of gall. And lest God be thought not to be known corporeally, he is affirmed by the voice of the Father saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. This splendid affection of love contains the full firmness of Catholic dogma and declares that the power of the Father and the Son is one. For the love which consists in God does not depart from the spirit of likeness and equality.

For he who said by the command of his own law, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," taught that no distance ought to exist between the one who loves and the one who is loved. For also in the following word which he added, "in whom I have pleased myself," it is understood that he explained the shared power of the one deity. For it is more to have said "I have pleased myself" than "I pleased," because "I have pleased myself" is a word of concord and is seen to adhere to a twofold person. The heavenly voice expressed this so that both the Father in the Son and the Son might be seen to have pleased himself in the Father. For also in that very gathering together of the Father's voice and the Son's baptism and the Spirit flying down, the Trinity shone forth from one God, and he does not deserve to be considered worthy who does not count the unity. Then Jesus was led into the desert by a spirit, to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards he grew hungry. And the tempter, approaching him, said to him: "If you are the Son of God, say that these stones become loaves of bread." Therefore he was being tempted by the devil, the perpetual enemy of faith.

No one examines an obvious matter unless, filled with a deceitful nature, he does not believe the truth he has discovered, just as the devil himself, who after he recognized Jesus as the Son of God through the clarity of his paternal speech and feared his singular power when he ate nothing for forty days and forty nights (although Moses and Elijah likewise endured a fast of the same number of days and nights, but he knew that they, supported by another's aid, had done this by their own merit, while he saw Jesus acting by his own power), suddenly seized upon the most vain hope of foolish temptation because the Lord was hungry. Nor did he dare to attack the divinity unless he saw a man mingled with it. Soon, contriving his ancient snares of foods, he roused his accustomed deceitful tricks and, showing stones—his own feast, rather—the serpent said: "If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread," as if he could not do this, who, continually performing such a work, produces from the rocky bowels of the earth a crop pregnant with frugal sustenance and, with the dense growth of ears of grain and the nourishment increasing from the rocks, bestows the abundant food of bread from the fertility of stones. But singular wisdom chose to scorn the glory of a miraculous deed, lest it admit a repetition of the temptation. For God receives believers, but excludes those who tempt. For the people of Israel are recorded to have offended God most greatly because, forgetful of his benefits, they dared to tempt him, so that they begged for a feast in desperation.

of whose disbelief Moses also did not remain silent in his books, and David briefly explained, recalling: "And they tempted God in their hearts, that they might ask for food for their souls. And they spoke ill of God and said: 'Can God set a table in the desert?'" and so forth. For what can be difficult for Him who, because of His immense capacity for all things, is called omnipotent? Therefore the Lord, answering Satan, spoke thus: "It is written: 'Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'" A very apt and fitting response was given to the enemy. For when he asked whether He was the Son of God, He replied as a man, so that he might rather be conquered by the one he seemed to have attacked. Upon hearing this, broken and weak, he nevertheless does not lay aside the weapons of his audacity. And the devil led him and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to him: "I will give you this entire power and their glory, because they have been handed over to me, and I give them to whomever I wish. Therefore, if you worship before me, all will be yours." What wonder, if the wretch spoke perversely, who, lest he walk straight paths, took on the form of a twisted serpent, thinking that Christ could be touched by the desire for a fragile and transient kingdom, when He had come rather to bestow a strong and eternal one upon His own?

or would he deign to acquire worldly riches, who had come to teach that they should perish, and would he worship a monster cast down from heaven, whose throne is heaven, the earth his footstool, the whole world his retinue, whom no one dares to look upon, and whom all powers praise with bowed voices above the stars? But again the Lord confounds him with this response, saying: "It is written: You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone." He is still seen to respond from a human person, having disdained, of course, to subdue the rebellious weakling by the power of a greater might, although the viperous venom of this word, cast down by the conflict, has not yet laid aside its innate rashness, but trusting in the three-forked vibration of tongues, it raises its wounded head a third time against the victorious hand of the Trinity. Then the devil took him into the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him: "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written: For he commanded his angels concerning you, and they will carry you in their hands, lest you strike your foot against a stone." O how much blindness and darkness always rules in the black breast, and a mind darkened by the shadows of its own wickedness does not know how to guard its undetected deceit! Behold, saying "If you are the Son of God," he shows that he does not know this. When he asks, saying again "He commanded his angels concerning you," he confesses that this is the one whom he sees, but using the double-edged variety of speech, found to be a simulator and dissimulator, he is proven a liar by his own arts.

Not only of deceit, but also of folly is the house of the malignant heart. For what could be found more inept than to believe that he would fear a leap from the lofty pinnacles and high summits of a temple, who, in order to be seen on the level earth, descended from the highest citadel of the heavens, of whom David cries out: “And he bowed the heavens and descended,” at once containing the lowest and not abandoning the highest? Therefore, the divine voice, eloquent, struck down the failing audacity thus: “It is written: You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” Here, already revealing himself as Lord and God, he forbids the tempter from undertaking such attempts any further, teaching us, a pious teacher by his own examples, that the spirit, the artificer of ancient malice, undoubtedly lies subject to human virtues there where God has been infused into the simplicity of a pure heart. Therefore, the instruction of the reading says: “Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and ministered to him.” In this departure of the fleeing devil and the consequent angelic ministry, it seems to me that a certain image of paschal glory is declared by the preceding signs. For just as, with the temptations overcome and the devil repelled, the angels offered ministry to the Savior, so, with the insults of the Jews and the punishments of the blessed cross, with the passion scorned, and with death itself, the devil’s fruit, trampled, he rose from the underworld, was borne to the stars, and is adored in heaven by angels with the accustomed authority of his majesty.

He joined to himself some disciples called from among fishermen, who would thereafter fish for human souls—souls which, pursuing the slippery joy of the world like uncertain paths swimming on a billowing sea, wandered through voluptuous slides in aimless courses. And he won for eternal life those whom neither a noble lineage would puff up with earthly pride of birth, nor the polish of learned eloquence exalt with the glory of vain chatter, but whom the holy discipline of a simple life, conspicuous for its exceedingly humble humility, would make already neighbors of heaven. For almighty God chose rather the foolish and weak things of the world, rejecting those that seem wise and strong, because, as the apostle Paul, that eminent teacher, writes, what is foolish of God is wiser than men, and what is weak of God is stronger than men. And immediately he said again: God chose the foolish things of this world to confound the wise, and the weak things of this world to confound the strong, and the ignoble and contemptible things of this world God chose, and those that are not as though they were, so as to destroy those that are. Moreover, the merciful Savior, eager to apply swift salvation, also established a mode and form of prayer. And the most pious judge wishes to be asked briefly, so that he may more quickly grant the suppliant's request. Thus he taught that we should pray to the Father—his own by nature, but ours by grace—bestowing upon men a share in his own honor, so that what he alone possesses as exceptional he granted to all as a gift.

Our Father, who art in heaven. We who dare to call the perpetual ruler of the heavens by the name of Father must first observe that the gift of such a great benefit is attributed not separately to individuals, but commonly to all. For although someone, withdrawn from others and dwelling secretly in hidden places, may implore the Lord with the words of this prayer, he will not say “my Father,” but “our Father,” because this word is owed to Christ alone, whose Father God is properly. For although this is found written in all the Gospels, yet in that passage the Lord Jesus himself clearly taught the singular power of his own right, distinct from popular mingling, where he comforted the disciples, addressing them thus: “I go to my Father and your Father.” What he says, “my,” he fittingly claimed for himself as a special glory; what he says, “your,” he revealed that the general grace is common to all. And since it is written, “Let earthly things teach you heavenly things,” let us here make some comparison, so that we may grasp divine things from human ones. Let us therefore suppose some noble man, who has one only son and also some servants. Surely, because he is called the father of the household, can the condition of love be equal among him for servants and for the son, when the son himself is also proven to be the master of all? We, therefore, use this prayer, not Christ, since by the petition of this supplication we also entreat him who, with the Father, is one coeternal Lord.

Therefore, saying “Our Father,” we confess that we are all brothers in him. We must not despise the affection of this name by the expulsion of mutual charity, nor follow the monuments of original hatred, by which Cain, the shedder of a brother’s blood, became the beginner of a fratricidal stain; but, burning with the fire of a gentle spirit, let us put aside the wickedness of carnal oldness and rejoice, clothed in the new man, lest when earthly works begin to degenerate from heavenly ones, we seem unworthy of such a Father, who, with Christ as our leader, has received us, born by sacred adoption. “May your name be sanctified.” What sanctification can be esteemed, by which the Lord may be sanctified, who sanctifies all things, unless we prepare a pious, gentle, calm, and chaste heart for his entrance? So that, delighted by such a dwelling, he may work in us the increase of his own sanctification, just as our Lord Jesus Christ himself recalls that he was glorified in the disciples, who always shone with the clear light of divinity. For in the Gospel according to John, he prays to the Father for the disciples; among the various words he pursued, he speaks thus: “And I was glorified in them,” clearly because he found his glory in them. Therefore, where he finds the signs of his sanctification, he says that he sanctifies himself there. For that piety, most gentle without measure, declares that whatever it itself brings forth for its servants is conferred upon itself.

Therefore, a similar sense is shown, and that he commands himself to be blessed, when rather he blesses all things; for the general hymn of the three youths singing in the furnace proclaims that the Lord is to be blessed by every creature in order. ADVENIAT REGNVM TVVM. We ask that the kingdom of the ruler come, who does not cease to reign, so that he may punish the deceitful prince of this world for his presumed tyranny, and that he alone who alone is may demonstrate his own empire, which is neither subject to death nor to be consumed by time. For the day of that light knows no time, being continuous with night, where the bravest soldier, having adored Christ and after various battles of the world, standing as victor, will rejoice in the crown of perpetual nobility that will adorn the hair of his blessed head. FIAT VOLVNTAS TVA SICVT IN CAELO ET IN TERRA. The sense of the preceding passage also seems to be understood here, that we ought to demand with constant prayers day and night that the will of him who wishes wickedness nowhere to be may fill heaven and earth, so that he may not allow the devil, cast down from heaven, to be troublesome even on earth, nor may the savage serpent invade the earthly substance of our body, as if congealed from mud, as the food of his voracity, and embrace and enfold us, entangled in his scaly coils and evil persuasions, until, intoxicating us with deadly poisons, he consumes our miserable life by licking it. Therefore, let us implore the Lord continually, that he may protect both the soul and the flesh in us equally; for we are in part of heaven, and in part we are the seed of earth.

Our daily bread give us today. Bread, the daily sustenance, for those who ask, a threefold sense of understanding is opened, although all divine scriptures ought to be attended to in this way. Therefore, both according to the letter, we seem to ask for bread of the grain harvest specifically for eating, and morally, as servants we beseech the Lord that we may merit to obtain the daily ration, while yet we know that the form of both reasons proceeds from spiritual discipline. For this reason we are commanded to ask for daily victuals, lest, reserving anything for tomorrow, we seem to doubt divine providence. Yet this is proven so difficult and arduous that such a rule can be kept by few and very rare men. For the Lord himself, faithful in all things, who led the sons of Israel out of Egypt through many years in the barrenness of the desert, sparing them with only sabbath food, guided them with daily feasts, and promised in the gospel that he would give this to us as well, if faith does not fail, speaking to his disciples thus among other things he taught: Be not therefore anxious about tomorrow. For tomorrow will be anxious for itself. But if we wish to recognize more fully the spiritual sense of what we are speaking of, we will perceive that this bread is the divine word, from whose substantial teaching if the idle mind remains even a little hungry, it will suffer the scarcity of great famine. For the distance between spiritual and bodily feasts is not small.

For we are never commanded to refuse those [foods], though we are told to eat more sparingly of some. Here abstinence is healthful; there, greed becomes life-giving. Finally, David, while engaged in meditation on the Lord’s law day and night, proclaims that blessedness inheres in these words: “Blessed is the man who has not gone into the counsel of the impious, and has not stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of pestilence, but whose will is in the law of the Lord, and who will meditate on his law day and night.” For this meditation greatly satisfies and delights, like the sweetness of thick honey, which, although it quickly fills the belly of the eater, is never found to revolt against the nectar-like gentleness of nature. Let us also hear what the same prophet says: “How sweet are your words to my palate, O Lord, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb to my mouth!” He has perfectly defined that the words of the law are understood as food, since he says they are sweet to the palate, not to the ears, and that they are served to the mouth, not to the hearing, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. For even the deaf, whom hearing does not at all assist, are likewise filled with the heavenly precepts through the office of the mouth when they read. And the apostle, in his letter to the Corinthians, revealed that spiritual feasts are doctrine, saying: “And I, brothers, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to carnal men, as to infants in Christ, I gave you milk to drink, not solid food. For you were not yet able.

Who, I ask, would doubt or hesitate that all these things are spiritually figured? For not even a fool could suppose that those infants actually drank milk from the apostle’s nourishment. But we ought to understand that, as they began to drink in the words of the law and gradually to be imbued with divine institutions, they drank, as it were, the milky beginnings of infancy. For just as good teaching is healthful food, so evil teaching is harmful. Therefore the Lord warned the disciples to be especially on their guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, knowing that the poison of a sour doctrine corrupts the abundance of all sweetness with a small touch, since, as the same apostle Paul says, a little leaven spoils the whole lump. For even if we believe that this bread is rather the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is by no means known to depart from spiritual reason, especially because such a feast or such a prayer is handed down to no gentiles, to no Jews, but only to Christians by divine authority.

And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. If we more carefully measure the desires of our petition, we discern by our own examples whether pardon is to be granted or denied to us. For we are bidden to hope from the Lord what we see we have forgiven a fellow servant, since we are bound by the same condition of an equal pledge, so that we neither wish to be debtors nor desire to have them. For in the persons of others we are either absolved or bound. But if it is thought uncertain which debtors are here in question, the material of a weak excuse is to be set aside, and if perhaps a brother has been guilty toward you in fault or money or in anything whatsoever, release this. For both the frequent presumption of offenses and the dishonorable handling of monetary sums show us entangled in many bonds before God. For whoever, as the capacity of his means is weighed, has been inhuman to the needy, denies and abjures what is God’s, whose infinite piety so protects the distress of the wretched that whatever a kindly dispensation bestows on the poor, it testifies to have profited itself. Also in the vows which we promise, having obtained divine benefits, we are debtors until we discharge them with a faithful mind.

Therefore, what has been said about monetary debts, we must understand also applies to other kinds and diverse types of sins, by which we are held bound before the eternal judgment, knowing that the treasury-like comparison has been made to crimes for this reason: because avarice is the root of all evils, without whose vicious seed almost no crimes are generated in the world. One man commits homicide to seize from an innocent person what he has coveted; another, solicited by a bribe, becomes a perjurer through false testimony. Some are driven to pimping by a base ransom's foul commerce; others defile themselves with theft; others deny a deposit. There are these and many similar things, with which the ever-friendly hunger for gold always allies itself. Yet no crime is easily committed that is not supported by the service of money. Therefore, having obtained the gift of divine mercy and having gained impunity through heavenly indulgence, let us not deny to one another what we have received, lest, absolved of greater debts, when we do not forgive small ones, we become entangled again in the greatest chains, and soon that merciful Lord, the giver, not the exactor of debt, who has released us from ten thousand talents, if he perceives us strangling a fellow servant over a hundred denarii, may order us to be handed over to cruel torturers for full exaction, and, thrust into prison custody, we may not be allowed to leave at all until we have paid everything, down to the last penny, that was forfeited.

And do not lead us into temptation. Not that the Lord, who is the way of light, the path of peace, leads anyone into the snares of temptation, but, abhorring those who do not obey divine warnings, when he abandons them, he permits them to enter. For all who, pursuing the slippery contagions of the world, enclosed in the nets of delights, seek after the seductive ruin of luxury, abandoned by the Lord, who is the lover of pure virtue, proceed to enter where seductive temptation has drawn them. Therefore, let us strive to draw our foot back from this, rather wearing down the narrow path, which by a slender track, unknown to many, secretly approaches the steep gate of the heavenly kingdoms. And deliver us from evil. When we pray to be delivered from evil, we confess that the one we entreat to deliver us is good. And not undeservedly is the one who delivers to be followed, the one who slaughters to be fled. For in the former, through good fruits, is the tree of life; in the latter, through evil fruits, the root of ancient transgression. For the reading of the Gospel declared that action is understood as fruit, where the Lord, opening the various minds of different people, commanded that each be recognized from his own fruits, that is, from his works, saying: "You will know them by their fruits." Indeed, as great as the distance by which heaven is separated from earth, fire from water, light from darkness, peace from wars, and life no less from tombs, so by the withdrawal of a great removal are good things discerned from evil.

the choice is always twofold, serving the judgment of our deliberation, whereby we may hold either the right path or the left, not unaware or uncertain that the right path is that of the just rejoicing in the bosom of the Patriarch Abraham, while the left is assigned to the deep punishments of the impious, whence no one can cross over to the other through so great a chaos and the immense peril of a broken mass. This, therefore, is the desirable freedom for us: that if we are deemed worthy to be counted as sheep and lambs of the supreme shepherd, we may deserve to escape the savage bites of the wolf and, in the most pleasant charm of abundant flowers through Christ's pastures, to pluck a life already secure. BOOK THREE. The Lord first deigned to attend a wedding, revealing the proofs of his power, where, as the chief guest, he did not seek to be fed, but to feed. For wines were lacking at the solemn feast, and among the heaped-up dishes and gathered courses, only the already emptied cups were parched with pure dryness. The earthly drink had withdrawn, so that the heavenly might enter. Christ therefore then turned the waters into a form of wine. The waters lost what they were born as, needing waters for drink, and the wave, made nobler than it was born, changed both its color and its name. Finally, sweet must blushed in all the cups, and, with the guests captivated by the delight of all the tables, draughts of riverine nectar intoxicated them.

The six water jars, which the servants of the springs had filled with water, were astonished to become clouded with overflowing wine and to have seethed entirely with Christ’s sudden vintage, since he who was present as the fruitful cultivator of the vine’s virtue was nourishing clusters ever to live in the charm of spiritual foliage beneath the shade of an ethereal branch. Then a certain petty ruler was tearfully beseeching the Lord to relieve the grievous illness of his dying son and to prevent his weak soul from slipping from the anxious seat of the body. Then the generous humanity of divine power, which denies nothing to the believer and does not suspend its gift by delay, because it does not withdraw from the company of faith, granted full health to the boy by his voice, bestowed it by his word. For thus he replied: “Go, your son lives.” How imperious is the Lord’s power, and how magnificent, which does not promise that he will live, but has already designated that he lives! For this is peculiar to divinity, that it sees as past whatever it has decreed will be future.

Then, making his way through various cities and crossroads, and across fields, villages, and forts, he applied his healing steps, curing all limbs by driving away the diseases of their afflictions. Suddenly, from the midst of the pressing crowd, a leper, covered in varied misery and made more wretched by a foul whiteness, approached the Lord with this plea: "Lord, if you wish, you can cleanse me." The suppliant’s faith in that word was not small, for he believed the effect of his cleansing was placed solely in the divine will. For when the Lord touched him with his holy hand, saying, "I wish to cleanse you," the two-colored sickness immediately departed, and, putting aside the horror of his spotted skin, his body lost its alien foulness. The people saw him suddenly changed by this aid, now bearing a healthy form, more truly in his own appearance, yet seeming less recognizable in his color. Peter’s mother-in-law was violently seized; a panting fever pressed her, her innards seized by fire, and the strong flame of heat had settled fiercely in her burning marrow. The fate of her trembling soul hung in the balance between death and life, and the approach of icy death was cooked by the excessive fire of her limbs. But when the Lord visited the woman, enveloped in dangers, with his healing touch, the deadly fire suddenly fled, quenched by a living spring, and the woman, rising up healed, devoted in her attentive service, became the servant of her own physician, she who had just been ill.

Moreover, he often drove the madness of diabolical savagery from the limbs of human misery by a merciful collision, so that a spirit not divine, inserted into the work of divinity, would not rage; and everywhere he restored the use of the body to countless throngs, as the diseases of their afflictions fled, and he rescued peoples from various plagues of weakness as the danger subsided. Then, walking along the shores of the sandy path, he boarded the planks of a small skiff and, with his disciples accompanying him, began to cross over; and when the keel, driven by the swelling canvas, was already being carried far from the shore, a harsh and fierce storm arose, stirring up the entire sea from its depths with gales, and as the wave receded, it submerged the ship, then lifted it again with the swelling waters. The despair of safety had troubled the sorrowful disciples, and even the sailors were forced to admit that no remedy lay in their own skill at all; finally, all believed they were perishing and would be dashed, either clinging to the timbers of the planks or rolling with the oars of their arms, as shipwrecked men, against the rocky shores.

But Christ, the true and provident helmsman, supported by a small pillow, slept resting in the stern as the ship tossed, his body slumbering but his majesty ever watchful, since according to the Davidic prophecy: "He who guards Israel will not doze nor sleep." And when the disciples cried out with one voice, "Lord, save us, we perish," he rose, roused from sleep, commanded the winds to be calm, ordered the sea to be still, and suddenly an unlooked-for mildness of both sea and air became the betrayer of the divine presence. What, then, is fitting to be thought of that storm? Did the sea, perhaps, raise its savage gales against the Lord, or did the contentious struggle of the winds attempt to move against their own creator? Far be it that these elements should have attempted what would bring injury to the majesty; rather, let us perceive that all things, humbly subject to Christ's powers with devotion, the entire sea is believed to have been most joyful at the Lord's voyage, coming obediently and running forth from the deepest seats of the waves, swelling with a whiter tide. So also the light and swift nature of the winds, with joyful wings spread out, had surrounded the stern where Christ sat like a royal commander's camp with a retinue of attendants. For he whom the license of violent power supports is not easily compelled to obey an imperious master, as the sea and winds, bowed to Christ's divine commands, suddenly laid aside their headlong course with rapid commotion in a languid torpor.

Meanwhile, the Lord, now carried across the calm of the deep with gentle passage, having left the ship, was walking along the shore of the nearby coast, when suddenly two exceedingly savage men, possessed by a grim legion of demons, burst forth from the tombs with a terrible roar, and for this reason were bound with iron chains. Alas, how grievous is the condition of madness! He who endures the force of a tearing insanity must also submit to penal bonds. Yet fittingly, that most wicked spirit dwelt rather among tombs and ashes, having nothing in common with life. Then, terrified at the Lord's approach and driven from the seats of a purified mind, and fearing to ask for permission to enter the human form again, which he saw Christ bearing, he obtained, through his own merits, a filthy beast, most joyful in the obscenity of squalor and always wrapped in the friendships of stinking mire. Indeed, black, shaggy, and hideous, he sought to choose a dwelling similar to his own ugliness, and with a sudden attack of his sad company, he invaded, drove, and drowned a swine in the sea's waters headlong. Nor is it undeserved that the devil is generally called the enemy, who is so harmful to all that he both attacks those he hates and destroys those he loves.

Hence the Lord, again conveyed by the service of the ship, entered the borders of his native land, where, because the creator of all things wished to be born, he called the town of that region his own fatherland. Then four men, with their necks placed under a bed, brought to him a certain languishing man, scarcely still a man, already a corpse. His life, lacking bodily motion, prefigured a funereal image. His limbs lay thus, with the bonds of the nerves loosened and released, and through the slack joints, both injured by disease and wasted by decay, they were unable to perform their proper functions. When the Lord saw that he lacked the restoration of strength by divine power, he first took care to absolve him from his sins, which are the roots of all evils, so that, with the filth of squalor driven out of the man and cleansed, salvation might enter into the house prepared for itself. Therefore he says to the man lying there, then wretched but soon to be happy: "Rise, take up your bed and go into your house." Without delay, the man obeys the commands, rises up, from weak becomes strong, from despairing becomes confident, from dying becomes about to live, and lifting the little bed on which he lay motionless, made drier than the very wood of the parched timber, finally walking on his own feet, he rejoices to have lacked the alien footprints, and by the mutual repayment of due gratitude, he soon carried back his own carrier on his serving shoulders.

While the Lord was performing these miracles, the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, seized by the boundaries of life, had lost the breath of the highest light, and her body lay motionless, already owed only to burial. Then her father, wounded by the calamity of his lost child, rushed forth—he to whom the final end had already taken away the hope of his lineage while it was still flourishing—and, weeping and groaning, rolled himself at the Lord’s feet. Scarcely confirming his pleading words, shaken by sobbing, he said: “Have mercy on a bereaved father, have mercy on a destitute old man. I have—or rather, I had—an only daughter, who, now failing in years not yet of age, is seen to have taken away the titles of my fatherhood. Bring help and assistance, and restore her departed soul to her already cold limbs—you to whom all power is available, you whom nothing opposes in all power.” Scarcely had he completed such prayers when the Lord, surrounded by disciples and crowds, proceeded to the girl’s funeral, to raise her up.

He was going, however, mingled with the crowds, when a woman afflicted for twelve years by an excessive flow of blood, who had given much to physicians and gained nothing, and was being ruined equally in her resources and her blood, suddenly, when a faithful presumption began to abound in the already believing secret of a sound heart, thrust herself vehemently into the midst of the throng and, desiring at least to touch the hem of the Lord's garment, and hiding behind, from the edge of the hanging border she snatched a furtive health. O how much more it is to trust than to ask in obtaining difficult things! For confidence comes from the heart, prayers from the tongue, and prayers are often poured forth without the heart, but confidence is not born without the heart. Behold now the woman, desperate from the punishment of a long passion, came to the physician, not beseeching, not groaning, not lamenting, but in silence she carried off what she sought. Silence stood in her mute mouth, and her soul cried out to God. Soon the rivers of bloody flow were dried up by the greater flood of faith, and, though all were ignorant of the woman's grace, Christ was not unaware of the gift of his own bounty, from whose fountains flowed what the hope of the trusting one fulfilled, and, making public the theft, he rewarded such faithful plunder with saving gifts.

Meanwhile, they had come to the roof of the wretched, mourning house, where the untimely corpse of a virgin lay exposed amid the tears of all, and a tearful gathering and general uproar had filled everything with the voices of bitter lamentation. Pipers wailed with a rhythmic groan, coaxing the infernal shades with their songs, and the joyless crowd, rushing about, noisy with repeated grief, had thrown the unhappy halls into confusion. The Lord forbade weeping for the one composed in sleep; He forbade mourning her as dead, for she would live. For to all, the body seemed extinct; only to Christ, who had come to bestow life, did the sleep appear to have been poured in. And this indeed pertained to His singular glory, that He called the deceased one sleeping, so that, while about to show the parents the deeds of His wondrous powers, He might declare that He gave less than He gave, and thus avoid the injury of human praise. Then, the immobile corpse and the body already cold and constricted by the stiffness of frigid death, the fire of the spirit softening it at the command of His imperious voice, He roused the virgin from Tartarus, and granted that the girl, once born, should live twice. The parents were amazed at their daughter, hesitating to believe what they saw, and, moved by the delight of the sudden event, they changed the kind of lamentation, their tears more drenched with joy.

Then, having completed the work of restored light, he departed and saw two men who had lost their eyes, afflicted, beseeching him with words almost like these: "Have mercy, Son of David." They were asking for that mercy, namely, that he remove the darkening night and restore the day to their extinguished faces. How safe it is to believe, how sound to trust zealously in God! For they already saw with their heart, who, as Christ walked, perceived the path of light. Then their eyes, oppressed by the mournful blindness of suppliants, like a fire sluggish from poured oil, gleamed at the touch of the Lord, and with the right hand of serenity applied, their faces shone with their own light, now seeing. With these thus barely dismissed, another man was presented, afflicted with threefold diseases: deprived of voice, emptied of hearing, his limbs snatched away for useless purposes, he seemed to be full only of a demon. Him, with the causes turned to the contrary, the Lord immediately cured in such a way that he emptied him of the expelled demon, and at the same time filled him with voice and hearing, once infused.

He does not delay, but also commands that the same power be given to the twelve disciples, bidding them to be able to accomplish everything they see him having done, and sends them, enriched with all virtues, to the search for the lost sheep, that is, the house of Israel, because he had not yet spread the dignity of this name continuously through all nations. Therefore, as they go, he admonishes them, among other things he was commanding, "Preach, saying: 'The kingdom of heaven has drawn near. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons; you have received freely, give freely.'" As if the Lord, with solicitous pastoral care, were saying: "I, as a good shepherd, entrust the flocks more carefully to you, my diligent workers, for whose sustenance I grant fields of my own right; therefore, let no one sell the pastures subject to my power to my lambs and sheep." He first handed this down to apostolic discipline so that, from their teaching, it might flow forth, propagated to posterity, as the doctrine of the following age, just as four rivers are read to burst forth from one fountain of paradise, from whose channels innumerable streams, derived throughout the whole world, wander.

Whoever therefore performs a work of divinity, which he does not carry out on his own but has received by worthy spiritual tradition, having obtained the grace of a pure gift, let him be devoted to the grace of a pure gift, so that he may seem to be a steward rather than a merchant, and, having fulfilled the song of Davidic joy, may thus declare to himself the hope of the future life: because I have not known commerce, I shall enter into the power of the Lord. For no one without the Lord’s bounty can have what he administers or the means from which he distributes gifts, if he has not received what he pays out. Let us hear the apostle Paul similarly saying these things: let man so regard us as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Hence it is now sought among stewards that someone be found faithful. And again the same teacher warns and says: what indeed do you have that you have not received? But if you have received, why do you boast as if you had not received? Then, when the Lord had entered the Synagogue, he sees a man disabled by a stupor of the measured body, maimed, with limbs half-dead and wounded, altogether neither living nor dying, whose withered right hand the ice of sluggish numbness had cut off, already placed beyond desperate uses. Then with commanding power he did not provide by art, but granted by commanding, saying: stretch out your hand, and he stretched out his hand, and it was restored to him just like the other.

Truly this is the singular gift of God, which he who takes nothing away from human salvation and always restores everything exercises unceasingly. Behold again the slippery chelydrus is present, that harmful restorer of the wiles of ancient arts, who, most abundant with the livid venom of gall, rejoices to grow fat on human gore, and what he often poured out through many occupied by alternating passions, he has gathered into one, raging through all the limbs, from whom he snatched the mind, closed the voice, extinguished the light, and, weaving together triple calamities, drove the mute and blind man to madness. To this man the merciful Saviour of the whole world, our light, the Word of the Father, having driven out the foul spirit, restored strength, changed his speech; through the Word words prosper, through the light lights revive. A woman also had come to be healed, more contracted by an old disease than by age, trembling in gesture, panting with groans, bent in the shoulders, with face inclined, always looking down at the lowly earth with a humble stoop. She, lifted up by the Lord's powers after eight continuous years and ten, with limbs suspended and erect, beholds the sky and the stars and the burning globe of the sun, and remembers that she once saw it. Observe what difference there is between those worshipping idols, between the God whom you flee and the demon whom you appease, if indeed he can be appeased who does not cease to harm. For all whom he possesses are oppressed; those whom Christ burdens with the yoke of the gentlest lightness are lifted up.

Then, when the typical Moses and true prophet saw the people who had followed him into the desert failing from ancient sterility, he restored ancient comforts with especially wondrous increases. For at that time he made the flesh of many birds suddenly abound to the quantity of only two fish; at that time he poured out most abundant manna from the sky, and with five loaves distributed he granted feasts to abound for as many thousands of men. The rest of the crowd, the multitude of women and children having no number, lay hidden. And what you might admire more, whoever you are who read these things, if you have not yet learned them, after the satiated people’s hunger was driven out, the collected twelve baskets of fragments filled the removed mass. Nor was the abundance as great when it was given as it was in the leftovers, already loathed when taken away. Meanwhile, beneath the dark blue seething of the burning wave, as the ocean received the headlong day, and pale evening announced the approach of starry night, with the master residing on land, the disciples alone sought a sea voyage, and the sea raged against the exposed keel with opposing winds. Then, around the fourth watch of the shadowy night, the Lord walked upon the trodden waves, compressing the swollen billows of the foaming whirlpool with a calm step, and the gentle sea licked the sacred footsteps of Christ with its flood. The endangered ones marvel at the sudden sight of the ninth hour, that ship-bearing paths had opened under a pedestrian route.

all were wavering, uncertain whether the Lord truly appeared, or whether the specters of uncertain darkness, overshadowing their eyes with fear of danger, were deceiving them, Peter, the companion and friend of faith, to whom familiar grace allowed always to recognize Christ, asked that he might go to him. And when called, he did not tremble as he descended into the sea, not submerged by any rapacity of the receding wave, he who, supported by the help of the Lord's hand, had fled to the safest harbor of the mighty right hand, and through the glassy fields of the salty sea he cut a path, existing as a traveler against the mind of the sea. O the increase of growing faith! He had formerly scorned the nets of a poor man, the comfort of life; now he renounces life itself, so that he might come to Christ. Therefore, leaving the land of Gennesaret with a crowd of disciples accompanying him, the Lord trod upon the ship, whose inhabitants, receiving his welcome arrival, gathered those hindered by various ailments to be healed by the divine presence, so that even the fringe of his garment, when touched, might cure the harshest diseases. And whoever deserved to obtain this was soon made whole. How precious was this garment! Or rather, it had no price, which, sold by no commerce, with the gifts of a small thread itself redeemed all.

Hence, as He was passing through the region of Tyre and Sidon, a Canaanite woman, distressed for her daughter afflicted by a dark spirit, humbly begged to be deemed equal to the dogs, which sagaciously do not leave their masters' tables, feeding on the scraps licked up, the scantiness of fallen crumbs. A most humble voice, but a lofty faith, which, with her daughter safe, soon transformed the dog into a sheep, and made the Hebrew grass, sprung up among the briars of her own people, enter into the pastures. Then, ascending the high mountain peaks, accompanied by an innumerable multitude, He restored to their former use thousands of the lame and the blind alike, also the deaf and the leprous assembly, and those weak in hands, and whatever sick of the common folk had flocked together, and He set the organs of the weak limbs tempered in their own sinews and movements. And while with the operation of wondrous power He refreshed the wounded throng, the third day was passing, and in places barren with dry drought the weary people had touched no substance of food, and languishing famine was nurturing a discomfort to be roused by twin labors, if the exhausted people were to bear the long burden of scarcity on the return journey with redoubled steps.

Moved by such compassion, the Almighty, who is always the bountiful bread of the needy and distributes food where the barrenness of necessity has denied crops, with very few and small fish and seven loaves broken into pieces, satisfied four thousand men, besides an immense throng of women and a swarm of children equal to bees. And that you might marvel the more at another thing, the feast increased while it was being devoured, and the food nourished by bites generated fruitful losses from the table. Famine, put to flight, was astounded at its own remnants gathered into heaps of seven baskets, where it saw, from the abundance of such fragments collected, a manifold harvest overflowing from a small seed. Although Christ bore mortal limbs from the setting of his maternal generation, yet he could not conceal that he was God, just as a city placed on a mountain peak is not hidden, nor is a burning lamp placed under a bushel, but raised higher, the substance of the living flame administers light to all. For, having led three disciples with him as witnesses onto a high mountain, he showed them the appearance of his glory, transfigured, and like a fiery sun he radiated his aspect, imitating the whiteness of snow in his garments. But why the most prudent evangelist attributed the most splendid brightness of divine majesty, which the keenness of no gaze can behold, to the visible figures of the sun and snow, a clearer reason will teach.

Nothing in this world is brighter than the sun, nothing whiter than snow, and for this reason that spectacle was deemed worthy of being attributed to the highest divinity, because nothing beyond that is proven to be granted to mortal eyes. For that preeminent radiance of the Lord so far surpassed both the sun and the snows that, while anyone’s gaze can easily perceive the sun and the snows, the apostles, unable to behold Christ shining with the brightness of his own light, fell prostrate with their faces to the ground. Such is the great summit of sublime merits, to whom it was given to recognize in this world those things which the world did not deserve to perceive! What of the fact that they also recognized Elijah and Moses, unknown to bodily sight, with their inner eyes, but as the truth of greater faith became known, would it not show that he is the beginning and the end? To him such prophets were seen to have come together, of whom one still enjoys a living old age, while the other’s final boundary of light no course of human lot exceeds, and by the oracle of a starry utterance, divinely extended, when it says: “This is my beloved son, in whom I have well pleased,” the paternal voice taught that Christ was begotten by the Word.

After the Lord had resumed his bodily appearance and, with the veil of flesh, once again covered his ethereal form, and had shown himself openly to the peoples, suddenly a humble man, on bended knee, cast down with grief, began to pray as follows: "I have, O Lord, one only son—if he can be said to survive, suspended as he is on the border of death and life—whom an unclean spirit grievously assails and, tearing him apart, strives either to consume him with flames or to drown him repeatedly in troubled waters, and, after many dangers have worn him out, plots his final end. I beg you, drive away the madness of his mind and restore him to me, or to himself, lest the hostile power, dark and blind, snatch away from the wretch his desperate life." While he was still pouring forth these words with tears and groans, the Lord, with a merciful heart, was already keeping the boy safe. Then the raging and turbulent plunderer, who had long harassed the ill-treated fabric of another's right, about to depart from the dwelling of the house he had invaded, was goaded into blazing anger and, though he seized the limbs to tear them apart, he could not prevail against the Lord's prohibition, and flew off into the underworld, the boy unharmed.

The king who alone is king and lord is proven to be the ruler of rulers, not disdaining to pay the imperial tribute, and orders Peter, who is fishing from the sea waves, to raise up a swimmer bearing a didrachm of gold. Then the swift inhabitant of the moving waves swallowed the trembling snares of the deceiving hook, and, suspended from the genuine waters by the lashing rod, the most worthless fish, bringing a rich payment, was worth more by the honor of another’s weight than by its own. By this deed, nonetheless, Christ wished us to be imitators of his own teaching, for although he could have refused the unworthy injury of this offering (since he had nothing in common with the common people, except to aid all with saving benefits), he preferred to pay the superfluous gift rather than deny anything to anyone who asked, so that the founder and teacher of justice, who said: “Give to everyone who asks of you,” might first fulfill the precepts of his own law.

And when the apostles, as was their custom, simply inquired of him who might be considered greater in the kingdom of the heavens, the wonderful God and teacher replied that the humble one is superior to all, and that all excel who have set themselves as the very last before all, like a little child, whom he held placed in their midst for the sake of a spiritual example—of a small or tender age, of course—enjoining that one should imitate the character, not the years, since infantile years are of meager smallness and neither care for worldly pomp, nor are touched by ambition for honor, nor are puffed up with the swelling of proud arrogance. Therefore, the simplicity of a life that is bowed down, the nearer it is to the ground, the nearer it is to heaven: for a mind that bends is raised up, while one that is erect is diverted; and the lower the step of the heart, the more it is exalted as it strives to descend. For God raises up the humble and the poor man from the dunghills and joins him to the company of the powerful: but the neck of diabolical pride he cast headlong from heavenly dignity into the depths of squalid Tartarus. For thus divine Scripture declares: God gives grace to the humble, but resists the proud. And again, similarly recalling, it says: raising the needy from the earth and lifting the poor from the dung, so that he may place him with the princes of his people. For all poverty is the companion of humility. Hear Solomon saying: poverty humbles a man. But we are reporting things too small and meager, if we go through each one.

Let us now run through in particular those works of divinity which, though they cannot be explained by any words, are generally known. BOOK FOUR. When he was again crossing the streams of the Jordan and passing along the path of Judaea, the immense crowd everywhere, and the throngs from every variety of sickness, he healed countless numbers without naming them, receiving the sick and allowing them to return home healthy. Nothing, therefore, is difficult for the highest God to bestow on those who hope in him, to whom the power readily supplies the means to level steep places, to straighten crooked ones—that is, to bring down the proud to humbler states, and to show a path to those who wander. For the magnificent prophet Isaiah is known to have spoken thus when he announced the coming of Christ: “And the crooked,” he says, “shall become straight, and the rough places smooth roads.” Did he prophesy about rocks or briars or winding turns of roads, when Christ came to save the world, which is established not in forests and mountains but among human peoples? This is also that which the voice crying in the wilderness admonishes: “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight his paths”—that is, the way of thoughts and the paths of wills, by which the Lord may enter with a straight course into the dwelling of a pure heart. For thoughts and wills are the ways of works, which seem to precede the good or bad outcome of any action. Whatever, therefore, natural strength denies, is most easily subject to divine power.

For the huge beast the camel, just as through the tiny eye of a needle it cannot pass because of the mass of its body, so the wealthy rich man, puffed up, could not enter the narrow gate of the narrow path into the heavenly kingdom, had not the provident helmsman, who contains all by law and is himself not held under law, whom no face ever sees, but who himself always beholds all things, moved by this condition, cherished his disciples with such consoling words: among men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible; for not all rich men find their patrimony a burden, but only he who is a bad steward of his own abundance. For when the Lord says through the prophet: gold and silver are mine, he shows that what is his is not evil, if a good worker holds it; for it makes no difference whether a man spends nothing on good works, or pours out much on evil ones. For he safely keeps and invests his wealth, and hides and stores his treasures in heaven, where neither the bite of the voracious moth nor of corroding rust consumes anything, nor is an entrance opened for thieves to steal by digging, who gives food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, hospitality to strangers, comforts the sad in prison, tends the sick in body, and is most generous to all, but to himself alone is poor and needy.

Nor should one doubt that the substance which is proven to have been spent on Christ under the most worthless form of a poor man must surely reach heaven—that substance which is increased by losses, preserved by scattering, perishes in order to endure, and, though dead, represents life. Meanwhile, as the Lord, surrounded by the accompanying crowd, had gone out of Jericho, he saw two blind men sitting on a mound, begging that their sight be restored to them. They were sitting, therefore, because the darkness opposed to them prevented them from trusting in the mobility of their steps. Nor did that power, which denies nothing to piety and is accustomed to bring salvation where it feels faith burning, delay even a little; with a sudden touch it roused the eyes, long pressed down by sleep, from their vigil, and, unsealing the hidden windows beneath the forehead, as daylight immediately entered, it drove back the darkening night. Then, walking again through the sacred walls of the temple, he gave sight to the blind and restored movement to the lame.

After these monuments of noble virtues, leaving the city of David, He had come to the places of Bethany, and on the following day, returning, He again made His way to the roofs of that city. Not far from the path stood a fig tree, shady with the interwoven coverings of its leaves, in whose trunk, when the Lord, hungering carnally, found no fruit at all, He does not wound the tree’s barren branches with a curse, but condemns them with a command, rebuking it thus: “May fruit never grow from you forever.” And immediately the fig tree, deprived of its withdrawn juices, withered, barren at once and, having lost the dignity of its foliage, dried up. Yet we should not take these things literally, although they are believed to have been manifestly fulfilled, because divine law accords with spiritual causes. For what matter without sense had sinned? Especially since, as the evangelist Mark records, it did not have fruit due to the unsuitability of the season—unless the Lord did this for the instruction of our benefit, who, through parables of deeds and words, shows us the path of life. Therefore, every industry of human conduct that strives to nurture nothing pleasing to God, like a useless tree of sluggish trunk, full of leaf, not of fruit, will be equal to wood to be burned, just as that fruitless fig tree stood, which the master of the vineyard who had planted it, ordering it to be cut down, granted a reprieve of one year, so that if it should yield fruit even late, it would remain; otherwise, it would justly perish.

But according to the song of the psalm which says: "The just man will flourish like a palm tree and like a cedar, which is in Lebanon, he will be multiplied." Then a certain man was brought to him, afflicted with a disorder of madness and also suffering from a loss of speech, whose throat passages were blocked, so that no voice sounded from the cymbals of his lips, and uttering nothing at all with his mouth, by his silence he proclaimed his mute insanity. But that starry Creator, accustomed to strengthen the weak, shaking off the robber threatening from the gasping narrows of the throat, by the opened pathways of the voice, with the tongue freed from its bonds, fully restored the commerce of speech in loquacious liberty. Moreover, while the Lord was exalting a banquet with his humility at the request of a certain Pharisee, a sinful and notorious woman, wounded by many wounds of transgressions and living an obscene life, entered hastily. Falling prostrate at the Lord's feet, she did not cease to wash them with tears, to wipe them with her hair, and to bathe them with precious ointment, kissing them, until the divine sentence, which does not repent of giving a hand to those who fall, if we repent of the slipperiness of our ancient ruin, released indulgence with these words: "Your faith has saved you; go in peace." O how much does that confession help the wretched and the weak, to reveal what, when hidden, becomes deadly! For he nourishes his own wounds who conceals them, and neglects to bare the wound inserted with the goad of pain to the physician.

Behold now a woman, polluted by the contagion of a long-standing disease, is cleansed by the affliction of a slight groan, and is washed in her own flood of tears, and drenched with weeping, dried with her hair, she departs clean who had come befouled. Also, when the Lord had come to the city named Capharnaum and was teaching the heavenly people in a great assembly of the synagogue, suddenly through the ministry of a human voice, that most wicked devil roared out in a clamor: "What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." And soon, with the Lord speaking threateningly, terrified and cast down: "Be silent and come out of the man, unclean spirit," with a great bellowing roar, by which he confessed himself beaten by divine command, he left the human breast, fleeing into the unseen dark airs. Similarly, the Lord provided healing aid to many suffering from various ailments and vexed by the calamity of diverse plagues, and many demons, excluded by the word of his power, he did not allow to speak at all, disdaining to have the faith of heavenly majesty vulgarized by such a witness. Indeed, that ancient serpent of Tartarus, the destroyer of life, the inventor of death, with all the madness of his social pomp and the foul retinue of his condemned soldiery, cast down from the heavenly summit, marveled that Christ, whom he knew as a starry being in that citadel, was on earth clothed in the humility of flesh, and he groaned the more bitterly from envy, because he saw that man was so beloved by the Lord of virtue.

And while the Lord was passing by the Tyrian places, proceeding on the Sidonian shore, he healed a most wretched man offered to him, afflicted with a double calamity, who, deprived of the functions of voice and ears, could neither give his own words nor receive those of others. But by the touch of the heavenly hand, all the inner chambers which a violent ruin had closed were suddenly broken open, the doors burst forth, and the guards of the veins were immediately relaxed; he who had seemed mute and deaf both deserved to speak himself and heard others speaking. You too have felt the gifts of the Lord's power, you in whose eyes, compressed by Tartarean blindness, Christ spat, and immediately wiped away the appearance of feigned death. And while he taught the peoples to have the supports of eternal life through sacred institutions, revealing himself more clearly as God, he avoided for a little while the crowds rushing headlong, came to the pool of the sea's whirlpool, and sitting in Simon's little boat, he instructed the people remaining on the shore with divine oracles. And finally, defining his words, never abundant in desires, he orders the fishing nets to be let down into the deep as the little boat goes out further, which, after the course of the whole night had passed, were able to draw nothing from the depths, frustrated. Simon obeys the sacred command joyfully, and, learned in the art of blockade, enclosing the wave-wandering multitudes, he captures the peoples of the watery sea, surrounded by a wall-like siege, and such a multitude of fish filled the extended nets that both Simon's boat and the one standing nearby as a companion, occupied by scaly masses, were barely rescued from the dangers.

Thus we too are often disturbed by the unexpected success of a great achievement, and the joy which we welcome as a fulfillment of our vows, if it has exceeded measure and limit, we then fear like an unbearable burden; because men are afraid to concede even to wish for what is readily granted by the divine power. With such distinguished and brilliant miracles, the Lord, surrounded by disciples and crowds, was hastening to enter the city called Naim, when suddenly a young man sees a corpse being carried out, elevated by the vain gifts of a funeral and the sad ministry of a mournful procession, whose mother, already twice widowed by a jealous fate—first by her husband, now by her son—had been left in the misery of a double urn. And without any delay, pity, the enemy of grief, immediately lent vital aid, and with the hand of redemption touching the bier, the Lord said to the deceased: "Young man, I say to you, arise." And he who was dead sat up and began to speak, and gave him back to his mother. For although the young man, deprived of light, had been oppressed by the sluggishness of lazy death and the corpse was being carried away, yet the servant could not remain silent when the Lord called him, nor could the spirit fail to return in the presence of life. Soon the whole gathering, which had been gloomy with weeping, was restored to a serene face, and turning his steps back onto the path of life, with sorrow set aside, the young man, with a bright procession, joyfully recalled his mother to her home.

Nor for you, Mary, was the salvation slight that was conferred by the healing Lord, who cured the hidden wound of your breast, lacerated by many blows of injury, which a sevenfold madness, wedged into a demonic globe, possessed with seven movements of arms. But the scaly, spotted serpent of honor, fleeing the dread commands of the Almighty, driven from your heart, sought the chaos of Tartarean hell, twisting seven coils of its limbs and vanishing in sevenfold spirals at once. Then, lest the abundant harvest of a most fertile crop languish for want of the rare cultivator's labor, he also sent forth seventy-two other disciples, simple in mind, shining in purity, who by number and merit are conspicuous, worthy to be called the golden scale, like innocent and gentle lambs ordered to go among the harsh minds of men as among ravening wolves. He exhorts them with these words, saying: Go, behold I send you, as lambs among wolves. And again, when they returned cheerfully, because even demons were subject to them, he said this in warning: Behold, I give you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon every power of the enemy, and they will harm you not at all. Yet do not rejoice because spirits are subject to you. Rejoice, however, because your names are written in heaven. For this is the rule of divine judgment: to set life before deeds, not to prefer deeds to life.

For if the merit of a holy institution should cease, miracles have no weight, which are also proven and frequently displayed by evil men, to whom He, the witness and arbiter of hidden deeds, foretold in the Gospel that He would say in judgment: "I do not know you; depart from me, all you who work iniquity." Such were once, under the Egyptian tyranny of Pharaoh, two craftsmen of a wicked partnership, who, trusting in the vanities of Memphis, strove to rival Moses' heavenly miracles, and with magical tricks they opposed, by human efforts, the images and figures of the rival women. Meanwhile, when a certain chief of the Pharisees came begging him to a feast, hastening not so much for the sake of eating as to glorify his house, he saw a man swollen with a false tumor of obesity, whose belly, transparent with excess water, was thought to be a wineskin, not a womb, and the monstrous pregnant skin was giving birth to a death enclosed within, and the immoderate cavity increased to the detriment of the wasting limbs. Thus leanness, dominant everywhere, had gathered the whole dropsical man into a swollen paunch. The father of the world did not bear that this sight should exist in his presence, and on his own Sabbath, which was then at hand, he did not hasten to cure the man, whom he desired more to be his own. For God did not institute man for the sake of the Sabbath, as the Lord Himself taught in another chapter of the holy Gospel, but He created the Sabbath for the sake of man.

Then, bestowing the work of salvation, He ordered the moist filth of the bowels to be dried up: suddenly the diseased wave of the bodily swamp departed, and the lake of now glassy flesh, drained, was emptied by the sudden withdrawal of the raging pestilence. And when the Lord, heading to Jerusalem, passed through Samaria and Galilee and Jericho, He mercifully entered a certain town. As soon as ten wretched lepers saw Him from afar, foul with the loathsome ugliness of their spotted bodies—whom a discolored punishment, scattered over their faces, had made into hideous portents of deformity—they all cried out together in a tearful voice: "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." Then that singular power, which is never empty of compassion, answered mercifully and said: "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And suddenly, as they hurried, all the iniquity fled from their limbs, and looking at each other with mutual glances, they rejoiced equally in their shared cleansing, because nothing of the horrible variety remained in any of them. One of them, as if about to offer tithes for all for the received gift, returning with grateful haste, prostrated himself on his face before the Lord. Great was the man's faith and great his prudence, who, under the effect of a single quality, fulfilled the duty of a twofold devotion: faith, because he believed himself cleansed by the one he had begged; prudence, because, ordered to show himself to the priests, he preferred to adore Jesus. For who but the Lord Christ is the pontiff of pontiffs, the priest of priests?

The author and founder of the double offering, to whom, according to the order of Melchisedech, the gifts which the crucified one offered for us—his own body and blood—are presented: the sweet food of the wheat harvest and the lovable drink of the pleasant vine. But when the son of Timaeus, cheated of his light, was sitting by the road where he knew Christ would pass, and, crying out repeatedly with a shout, and not falling silent even though the people forbade him, demanded more and more that the abundance of sight be granted to him, he was ordered to come to the Lord, went led by another’s hand, and, having obtained his wish, returned supported by no guide. O the power of unbroken confidence! How violently you obtain what you desire, and, as if demanding a debt with constant prayers gathered from the heart, you so deserve what you ask! For whatever a harder matter denies because of its difficult nature, frequent prayer with simple and honest vows alone obtains from the suppliant, not because anything is difficult for God, but because the magnitude of the cause is humanly despaired of. Just as that man who, in the silence of night, asking for loaves long denied him from a friend, because he could not merit them by the law of charity, extorted them with the help of importunity.

The Lord also, passing through Samaritan places, with the heat of the day burning, had gathered the fire of human thirst, and the ever-living and perennial spring, always irrigated with water, was longing for a small draught, to be drunk, by which he bore the material of his body. Here a woman, a native of that region, who was drawing deep waters from a well, while she hesitated to grant the gift of a modest amount of water, recognizing by a prophetic voice the life of her own crime from a numerous or alien husband, begs the Lord to grant her such streams, by whose never-failing substance thirst would cease, abolished, utterly ignorant and not knowing that no one would partake of such a gift except one who, submerged in the whirlpool of Jesus Christ, has been satisfied in soul by spiritual waves, not in body. And while the Savior, thundering with his fatherly voice, was residing within the walls of the sacred temple, pitying the erring people and turning them to the right path with a friendly admonition of life, behold, a deformed adulteress was being dragged, torn from the assembly of a great multitude, headlong to him, to be overwhelmed by the blows of stones according to the established custom of legitimate law. When the savage fury of her accusers thrust her before the pious judge, desiring to condemn her, he freed her, for on the condition proposed that the author of the punishable crime, who had nothing of the crime, should come forward, no one was found pure in his own judgment to strike the impure. For no one dared to pluck a speck from another's eye, when he knew a beam remained in his own.

Soon, therefore, the entire blaze of the raging sedition was extinguished, drowned by the flood of conscience, and every accuser was found to be the guilty one, silently confessing. Then the merciful and gentle judgment of the Lord, not condemning the adulteress of a manifest crime, absolved her, but pitying her, did not punish her, destined to return to punishment, of course, if she returned to guilt. For whoever seeks and relicks the filth of a dog-like ritual that it has vomited, and strives to have neither old pardon nor future, losing the gain of this one which it vainly acquired, feeling the loss of that one which it did not merit to attain. Departing from this region, the Lord also sees a man blind from birth, who, having fallen from the womb of his wretched mother, more wretched himself, came into the light without light. Then that sower of human origin and founder and perfecter of the world, not allowing the work of his own making to remain less complete with the observing material failing, smearing clay, the natural instrument, on the barriers of the cheeks, which he had seen to be lacking in the man, the good craftsman supplied from the old mortar. Nor did that man receive sight before, warned by the Lord's commands, he came to the health-giving water of Siloam and, safe with the remedy of the already applied clay, the water washed his eyes. Soon, therefore, from healthy faces, twin pupils shone forth, at last worthy to see the day which they had previously known not at all. Therefore, all who read these things spiritually must note what the mystical miracles of this deed teach.

We are, after all, the blind offspring of wretched Eve, born of her, advancing through the darkness of our inborn gloom in long errors. But after God deigned to take on the form of human flesh, a saving land was given to us from the Virgin, which, washed by the fonts of sacred baptism, opened the lights of rekindled clarity. Then the Saviour, with healing steps, mercifully arrived at Bethany, where Lazarus, having met the human condition of death, lay already putrid under the sepulchral stone on the fourth day of the sun's course. At whose tomb, as the Lord came, the sisters gathered wept with pious grief, the assembled crowd wept, and the Almighty Himself wept as well, not in His divinity but in His body, grieving in that part by which He was to die for the cold, lifeless limbs. For He shed tears as a friend, and showed the glory of His majesty as God. Why, Martha, do you still not believe? And you, Mary, why do you groan? Do you hesitate with trembling doubt whether Christ can raise one man from the underworld, He who will cause the countless throngs of the whole world to rise again by a renewed animation? Therefore the Lord, with the wondrous command of His imperious voice, cried out: "Lazarus, come forth!" Suddenly, the underworlds, struck with great terror, lay open, the depths of hell trembled, deadly chaos was terrified, and the law of deep death withdrew; and the soul, infused again into the fibers of its body, with the tomb's protection broken, the living corpse is seen to stand forth.

and after the just solemnities, after the completion of the funeral burial, as if he had been born and created anew, he himself, dying, both became his own posthumous child and departed as a survivor. And in order that the Lord, despising the fleeting things of the worldly sphere, might show himself most high through humility, he did not, borne aloft on high chariots (by which the love of mortal pomp is displayed), traverse the road with four-horse speed, the furrow ploughing the dusty ground, nor did he press the high back of a snorting horse, conspicuous with trappings and purple, shaking its restless mouth, champing a bloody weight of gold; but rather, the slow burden of a most lowly little donkey was sufficient honor for the Lord. Its hoof shone not with great price, but with the merit of so great a rider, more noble under that light, not unlike that ancient one, who, though he saw Christ in a humble manger, yet recognized him as God. By this grace the beast of burden was resplendent, to which, as it went along the middle of the path, all the people laid down their garments. Say now, all you peoples who until now have been subject to pagan errors, what glory was ever like this for any ruler? What crowd, ever, with palms and branches, met any king in full festivity, singing celestial hymns, except the Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father governs the starry empire, prince in the eternal Prince?

BOOK FIVE. Amid these countless and unceasing powers, Easter was already near, the time when the glorious power of Christ would lay aside his mortal body, about to take up his flesh, now ever-living, not a different one but the same, which, filled with the reward of light, he would raise from the dead and lift to the stars. And, troubled a little, as a man fearing the nearness of death, he cried out to his Father with words of pious trust, showing himself to be the Son of God: "Father, save me from this hour; but for this reason I have come into this hour. Father, glorify your name." He spoke most divinely and powerfully, for when he demanded to be glorified himself, he indicated that the Father's name was to be glorified. For God is the name which the Father and the Son possess equally and undividedly in their shared majesty. Then a voice came from heaven: "I have glorified and I will glorify again." What is more clear than this testimony of the Father's profession fulfilled? What is more evident than this oracle of heavenly assertion? Yet the faithless Jewish people, who had heard the weight of such great truth, were in no way moved by such manifest signs to believe in the proven divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. For some claimed it was the noise of thunder, others argued that an angel of his had spoken. O people truly blind in eyes and hardest in heart, of whom Isaiah spoke prophetically: "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, so that they neither see with their eyes nor understand with their heart nor turn back, and I heal them.

For neither did thunder or an angel generate its own creator as a creature, to whom, crying out confidently to the Father, He would have immediately responded as Father; but from the mouth of God, specifically the Father, who truly knew the Son, a voice answering proceeded, so that at least by this reasoning the too-incredulous crowd, stung, might be led late to heavenly faith. This, then, is for the Father to answer the Son, to sound in harmony with His own voice, since Christ, begotten by the Word, is the Word of the Father, and by a similar conjecture of speech, the Father is revealed in the Son, the Son is revealed in the Father. Then, at the annual sacrament of the banquet, when He was celebrating the Paschal feast according to custom, in order rather to teach by His own example that humility is to be loved, He rose and girded Himself with a linen cloth, and the Lord, the teacher for the disciples, stooped to wash the feet of His servants, and laid aside so much of the height of His power that He excluded even Judas from the dignity of this service, whom He knew to be the author of unspeakable treachery. But you, accursed traitor, were to gain no glory from this, that the world might seem to be at your feet, you who were polluted in your soul like a whitened tomb outside, which, filled with the foul filth of corpses, shudders within. Nor did the Lord's designs lie hidden, but He marked out the one who was to be the head of future crime, to whom He gave bread, the Bread Himself about to be handed over to death. Then the saying of David was made manifest: "He who ate my bread, magnified treachery against me.

Afterwards, indeed, when the Lord Jesus Christ had consecrated the two gifts of life, namely His own body and blood, and had offered to His own disciples the spiritual food and drink, by which the faithful souls, fattened on these celestial feasts, can feel neither hunger nor thirst: soon, into the heart of Judas, the most wicked seat where envy had found a place, the savagery of a dark spirit entered, and, seizing accursed weapons against the Lord, it stirred up the madness of a servile war, having bargained for a great crime of business at whatever amount of payment; for guilt does not remain in the price, but the crime grows strong in the deed. The blind man admitted as much sacrilege for thirty silver coins, taking a small bribe, as he would have perpetrated of wickedness if he had gained all the kingdoms of the earth and the riches of the sea and every shore of the wandering clouds together. For not even the goods of the whole world would suffice to be compared with the blood of Christ, who is the Father of the entire universe, who also permitted this unspeakable one to be born. And would that he, condemned by the barren sterility of his mother, had never seen his birthday nor the pleasant light of the ethereal sky, remaining in eternal torpor; and that lot would have been better for the wretch, to be ignorant of life given than to feel it taken away, or that he had immediately, as he deserved to be created, also deserved to die, and had become an example of the principal psalm, so that he would utterly perish from the world like dust which the wind casts from the face of the earth, and the unhappy one would have left no memory of his name.

Then, therefore, O bold, bloodstained, fierce, rebellious, mad one, then O treacherous, cruel, unjust, venal, and faithless one, then O traitor, brigand, almost betrayer, harsh and impious one, do you, as a leader and standard-bearer, accompany the dreadful enemies, and, as you menacingly move the sacrilegious battle line violently armed with swords and clubs, do you join a pact with deceitful kisses, mix honey with poisons, and fawn upon the Lord with a savage betrayal? Why do you falsely profess yourself a comrade and perform the greeting of friendly deceit? Never do peace conspire with guilty swords, nor does the wolf offer fierce kisses to the most gentle lamb. Therefore, the holy worker, handed over to the accursed ones, does not abandon his customary aid, but immediately restores and heals the boy's ear violently cut off, which Peter's sword had severed, lest at any time the pious one suspend himself from piety. For it was not fitting that human vengeance should assist God, who could have demanded for his own defense more than twelve thousand angelic legions to be sent to him, if he had preferred to exact punishments from the wicked rather than to forgive the injury of his own slaughter.

He then orders the edge of the drawn blade to be sheathed in its scabbard, since he had come to lay down his own life for all, not to snatch away anyone else's. For then, with a voice full of confidence, Peter promised that he wished to die together with the Lord, and said: "Amen, amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow today until you have denied me three times," not accusing him of faithlessness, but revealing the fear of future trembling. Soon he was led to the house of Caiaphas, who at that time was the prince of the priests according to the rite of the Jewish religion; but as he sat in the chair of pestilence and stood in the path of sins, he seemed to hold the principate of crimes. For the council had been violently kindled and began to be stirred up by false witnesses. A thousand lies flew against the Lord, dead sparks of the accusers' vanities, not living by the heat of faith, and all were soon exhausted and perished by the motion of their own gentleness, just as a raging fire running through the stubble of dry dryness, for which weak material does not supply the strength to burn high treetops, but, immediately rolled back into ash, the empty flame loses its victory.

After no path by deceit smiled upon them, fraud, yielding to force, turned into madness, and the impatient mob armed itself to raise hands against the Lord. Alas, how hindered by such torrents of tears, how wounded by such groans of the soul—I shudder to recall the sacrilegious hands of the raging tumult raised against the Lord! Finally, the accursed mob did not cease to strike his head with fists, to bespatter his face with spittle, to beat him with blows of the palms. Yet he, receiving all patiently, delivered himself for our salvation and devoted his holy body to torments for us. For through those fists we have the safety of the head; those spittle-washings are the cleansing of our faces; by these slaps we have obtained perpetual freedom. But the old man, to whom the author of truth had foretold everything, because what Christ had signified would come to pass could not remain undone, followed the Lord's footsteps all the way to the high priest's palace, where, though he was thrice recognized by the disciples as being one of them, he thrice denied. And the cock, the herald of day, crowed, and when the oracle of divine sanction was fulfilled, Peter's former senses also returned; he, recollecting the fault, chastised in himself the error of forgetfulness; and with continuous groaning accompanying, sins flee, offenses depart, and the outpoured showers of tears conferred sweet pardon through most bitter weeping.

Therefore, instructed by apostolic examples, we must discern the power and merit of penance, so that, striving with such remedies, we may deserve to banish deadly diseases from the weariness of our souls. For if we have been wounded by the noxious poisons of thoughts or by the deeds or even the contagions of shameful words, let us soon hasten to take refuge in the most healthful medicine of penance, so that, grieving from guilt, we may not grieve from punishment, weeping from a wound, we may not weep from death. Yet let us not prepare penance for future errors, but apply it to past offenses. For those who sin trusting in indulgence rarely obtain the desirable forgiveness which many, with assumed security, promise themselves in order to sin. Indeed, the wondrous prophet David, when seeking indulgence for a past error, in order to obtain it more easily, indicated by such a prayer that he had sinned through ignorance: "Remember not, Lord, the sins of my youth and my ignorance." What then? Should every crime that youthful age has committed be kept to be relaxed in old age? Far be it that vices should remain in us and grow old.