Opus Paschale

But since divine clemency, with the most gentle patience, has suspended the punishment of judgment, let no hope of impunity from these reprieves dull us; rather, as servants who have long been fugitives, let us at last return to our Lord, even as old men seeking pardon for the slippery faults of youth, although it is fitting for each person sinning to cut away the ulcer of that sin immediately, while the fault is still fresh, with the tools of penance, lest the first growths of a creeping disease, like the roots of a bitter shoot, sunk deeper by the neglectful farmer’s remission, be unable to be entirely uprooted by any later labor. Moreover, the same prophet, lest he seem negligent in pleading too late for youthful offenses, added ignorance, so that before a merciful judge he might more easily merit forgiveness for his error. Thus also the apostle Peter did not strive to deny Christ, but simply and ignorantly fell into a lapse of forgetfulness. For he who had promised with full devotion to be willing to die with the Lord could not bear to appear estranged from his fellowship under any danger. He had indeed set forth, among other things, a magnificent example of his faithfulness, that not even the terror of death could separate him from Christ, toward whom he had long ago hurled himself headlong into the swift waves, hastening through the sea, undeterred by any fear of imminent death.

Meanwhile, the day that was to witness the ninth outrage dawned, more sorrowful than the shadows of night, and, with the darkness of night dispelled, it laid bare the unspeakable plans of the Hebrew assembly to the common view. Then Judas, a serpent of the latest kind and a murderer like the first, a poisoner (for just as the former, by taking away Adam’s life, and this one, by handing Christ over to death, became the persecutor of the human race), seeing the Lord led to Pilate’s praetorium and bound with chains—He who loosens the chains of sinners—grew stiff with misery and shuddered; and returning the money, that funereal reward for innocent blood, to the savage distributors, and refunding the price of the crime, he emptied himself of that, but not of the crime. For what can the fear of death conceived there contribute to security, where no fear of correction follows, according to the content of the psalm which declares: “They trembled with fear where there was no fear”—that is, in the judgment itself, where the time and space for correction have no place for fruitless dread; or, for one already placed in the jaws of hell, what confession can help, when it is read: “But in hell, who will confess to you?

Judas, a public parricide, who dared what he did not fear—having slain not only his own parent but the author of the whole world—sought in vain the remedy of repentance; after the audacity of his betrayal, the penalty of sentence already held him, so that, as an axe applied to the roots of a tree which bore an accursed fruit, it would cut off utterly the useless offshoot of evil stock and consign it to savage fires. Suddenly seized with madness, he was driven into frenzy, contriving a death deadly to himself nonetheless, although he was then saner when he avenged upon himself the disgrace of his nefarious conspiracy, and, constricting the path of his accursed throat—whence the harsh voice had gone forth selling the redeemer of all—with a noose tightened about his neck, he expelled his wretched soul through the beams of a halter. For a small penalty would seem for so great a crime, to which no magnitude of punishments could be equal; yet the very kind of his fatal end and the death of the one hanging from a height denies the sky to be seen by the corpse and forbids the earth to be touched, so that the perpetrator of an unheard-of crime might be expelled from both elements at once, worthy of neither—neither enjoying the air for life nor, as a man composed in the usual manner of men, releasing his breath in death. This species of death also bears another sign of its own abjection. For the fact that the faithless one and deserter met his death on a lofty summit revealed from how great a height he had fallen: recently a disciple, now already a defendant; recently an apostle, now called an apostate.

But when the Lord stood fearless before the tribunal of the governor, like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter, finding nothing worthy of death that the accusing people could charge against him, they cried out that he had called himself king—he who was manifestly king—out of a zeal for sedition. Nor should anyone wonder if the people, lovers of falsehood, dragged truth into a crime and rejected the starry command and divine power, they who, ungrateful for the Creator’s blessings, once worshipped groves and served idols in obedience. For it seems the same madness and equal insanity to have preferred Baal to the Lord then, and Barabbas to Christ now; and while the pious man is killed and the impious man is saved, the erring judgment in each case reversed the path of justice: the author of death was deemed worthy to live, the author of life was deemed worthy to die. Therefore, all of you who have until now remained faithless, believe now that Christ suffered for the salvation of the world—he whose back was furrowed with whips, who was assailed with insults, who embraces all punishments, so that not even a thief worthy of perishing by his own merits should suffer destruction.

Alas, how sad is the point of the sickle that cut down the harvest of Jewish posterity! For those who, demanding the death of the Lord, professed that his blood would remain upon themselves and their children, crying out furiously and shouting, "The blood of this man is upon us and upon our children," condemned every broken branch of their own offspring, until this stain is spiritually washed from them by that water whose blood, once sprinkled, lethally holds sway over them. Alas for the wickedness of your crime, Pilate, which you have perpetrated! You who in a single judgment—or rather, prejudgment—committed so many crimes that, if you were to recognize them with a mind in need of healing, you ought not only to wash your hands but to drench your whole body continually in the sacred bath of spiritual water. You unjustly scourge a just man, you, a governor, examine a king, and you, a mortal man, do not tremble to set yourself above God. Therefore you are already held in the bonds of a penalty to be paid, because through many wounds you crucify the Lord of creation for the sake of the creature, and you fear to offend Caesar more than you fear Caesar's Creator.

And when Christ, handed over to the military for execution, was subjected to the sentence of death, nevertheless in that very mockery which he underwent under the illusion of a royal image, great sacraments of mystery were being enacted. For the fact that he was clothed with the covering of a scarlet cloak displayed the bloody aspect of his future death. A crown of thorns encircled his head, because he alone, with pious humility, bore the thorns of all sins, which had everywhere invaded the human race. He carried in his hand a reed that was given to him, truly like a scepter of an earthly kingdom, which, because of its constant swaying, is seen as fragile, empty, light, and fleeting. And soon, stripped of the alien garments, he was immediately clothed in his own, as if about to put on the garment of his body at the point of death, which he knew he would receive again shortly afterward, about to take up nothing further that was changeable, since after death he would return and rise again in the full majesty of his flesh. Nor does that fact depart from the fellowship of divinity, that the wine given to him, mixed with bitter gall, he touched with his lips and cast from his mouth. It was indeed a wondrous sign, that the Lord tasted bitter death and immediately, with an aversion of his averted face, scorned its horrible poison.

Therefore, fixed on the high beam of the gibbet, he changed the anger of the accursed sentence by pious religion, and with cruelty cast aside, peace ascended the cross, and illuminating the violent instruments of the harsh wood with his own members, he clothed punishment with honor, dedicated the penalty to salvation, and sanctifying the very torments in himself with piety, he made the sign, intended for condemnation, consecrated by blessedness. But so that no one may wander in ignorant mind, the form of the cross should show the cause of veneration, which merited to bear the Lord to be adored, and everyone ought to gather by prudent reasoning that it extends through the four regions of the world. For the head of Christ, with his limbs stretched out on the cross and exposed, received the axis of the East, while the Western boundary smiled upon his feet, the North shone with his right hand, and the middle gleamed with his left. And indeed, every substance of the world, made fruitful by the body of the Creator, demonstrated the line of the cross fulfilled in itself through straight and oblique boundaries, which from the origin of the first light is seen to have followed.

And when his soldiers divided his garments among themselves, they cast lots for the tunic, to see who would have it, because it had not been sewn, but woven from the top throughout, and they considered it a wicked thing to violate the appearance of so great a miracle. Let the schismatic teachers indeed read these things and know what impiety they practice by tearing apart Catholic concord. For if it seemed harsh even to the sacrilegious and accursed soldiers to tear Christ’s garment, what wickedness do those admit who, having disturbed ecclesiastical peace, do not cease to divide the Lord Christ himself by schisms? Also the title, written with a threefold meaning of languages, having Hebrew, Greek, and Latin letters—"This is the King of the Jews"—was read placed above the Lord. It does not seem absurd to inquire what the rationale of this sacrament is. For nothing that is revealed as having been done in Christ escapes from a great mystery. Why then was this title read inscribed in three languages, when the magnitude of the apostolic acts testifies that many and various nations of multitudes were by no means absent from Jerusalem, and either one language of an interpreter could suffice for the diverse peoples, or, if Pilate wished to expose this to the eyes of all, he would have rendered the knowledge of the common people instructed in many linguistic exchanges? But because it was not perfected by human arrangement, let us understand it as spiritually fulfilled.

The true faith, indeed, and the catholic confession, which was signified in Christ, taught that one king for the peoples was to be set forth in a threefold expression; but that it pronounces him specifically as king of the Jews by the word, who rules over the whole creation, is fitting both for the secular cause and for divine reason. First, because Pilate, either from fear of Caesar or from the admission of his own credulity, defined of whom he had spoken when he said "king," lest by designating the name of king generally he might seem to express him as king without qualification and to preach against Caesar, and, as if having become a sacrilegious man by the decreed death even against his own ruler. Next, because Christ is piously named king of the Jews, and every pagan people, occupied with the cults of idols, when it has merited to receive the sacraments of Christian teaching, will begin, among the sons of Abraham, to call the Son of God that one to whom he is read to have promised that he would make him, as indeed he did, the father of all nations. Therefore Jesus is called King of the Jews, not only of those present, but also of those future, because, naturally leaving behind the useless horror of the shoot, they are soon to be grafted, by the unguent of fruitful sweetness of holy chrism, into the fertile olive, losing the bitterness of the sterile wild olive.

Moreover, the savage and guilty mob, its appetite for punishment insatiable, decreed that men stained with blood on both sides of the Lord should be fixed to the same condemnation, so that the inflicted wounds might be compounded by the injury of such persons, even though the similarity of the sentence did not correspond to a similarity of merit. For when the just man hangs between thieves, the punishment of the three appears equal, but the cause of the two is different. Those men are guilty of crime before the world; the world itself is guilty before this man, whose blood has freed it from sin. Yet the Lord, placed on that cross, did not lose the rights of his power; from the lofty tribunal of the cross, as from a royal throne, he, a just judge, looking upon both, weighing the merits of each in the balance of his divine heart, chose one and rejected the other, not examining past deeds for which they were paying, but considering the present differences of their minds. For one, from whom the ferocity of a savage nature did not depart even at the point of death, tore at the Lord with cruel insults, with biting and execrable words, like a shaggy goat hostile to the vine of the most fruitful stock by the touch of its venomous tooth, so he spoke in mockery: "If you are Christ, save yourself and us." The other, however, more modest with better hope, who, by sparing his tongue, also spared himself punishment, addressed the Lord with suppliant words, turning his eyes, the only free part he bore, to the ground, since the stretched bonds of his wounds prevented his unwilling palms from bending in the office of humility.

After he had rebuked with the reproach of a just word the companion who had already deserved to be disassociated, and had acknowledged his own fault of insolence, he thus prays to the Lord: "Remember me when you come into your kingdom." The pious Lord immediately, as a shepherd gathering back a straying sheep through the pathless desert with joy, spoke to him, saying: "Amen, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise." O marvelous and divine promise! He says he is entering paradise who was hastening to descend to the underworld, so that he might more clearly teach that no time exists in which God is not everywhere present. For, to empty the mind of the thief, already blessed, of the fear of death, he did not merely say, "Today you will be with me," lest he be thought to be pronouncing burial, but he added, "in paradise," where with perpetual flower, pleasant loveliness smiles through the fields, and delight, nourished by flowing springs and softly poured through the gardens, gladdens everything with grateful sweetness, and among the blessed branches and fruits, with no further deceiving snares, that Tartarean serpent groans, the ancient colonist now living without a fall. Therefore, both running with various motions, as thieves invade a path by different routes and, threatening from more remote places, they perpetrate violence with distinct deeds. He entered the infernal gates, the other burst into the celestial ones; he, submerged in deep darkness, penetrated the bars of Gehenna, the other, entering the threshold of bright light, seized the kingdoms of the heavens.

Meanwhile, the whole world was suddenly darkened, overwhelmed by the shadows of sudden blindness and drenched with a mournful mass of clouds, celebrating the funeral rites of a deathly day; the sun, with its rays withdrawn and hidden, veiled in a dark cloak, lay concealed and infected the orb with the grief of an alien night. For such a countenance of the father, bereft of its comforts, the elements deserved to receive, so that they, who had rejoiced at his birth, would grieve at his setting. For just as light shone forth when the Lord was born, so it departed when he died. Then a star shone by day; now it did not appear even by night. But although the fugitive light withdrew from sky and earth, it did not remain long in this removal, suspended through the intervals of time itself, seeming to agree with a great mystery. For just as the face of the world lay oppressed by darkness for three hours, so the Lord, enclosed for three days, was covered by the burial of the tomb. Nor did the earth stand without ruin then, trembling in all its foundations, because it sensed that such things were being admitted, and the world, with its end now come, hung in doubt at the boundary of nature, lest the highest peak, descending to the depths, should immediately incline the whole mass with it perpetually into death, and the world, accompanying its own author headlong, should flow into chaos. But that immense piety of divinity hastened mercifully to Tartarus, to restore what was lost, not to destroy what was established.

And when those who had affixed the Lord to the cross of wood saw such dangers befalling them, they were in no way terrified by so many signs, so many unheard-of portents of present fear. Moreover, when He was thirsty and asked for a drink, one from that most wicked crowd fastened a sponge to a reed and offered Him vinegar. O how fitting that liquor was for the most wicked mind of the Jews, who, following worse or baser things on account of the guilt of their faithlessness, are called bastards! For just as sweet wines, when they have been turned into sour vinegar, are cast out, rejected from all the cups of tables, so that deadly and impious race, which in ancient times had pleased God, is now hateful and utterly accursed. Therefore, when the blessed Lord had fulfilled all the events of the Passion, He immediately laid down His own soul from His holy body, of His own will, intending to take it up again voluntarily, as He did, since He was indeed dead but lived, having perished in His limbs but not in His divinity. Let us hear from the person of John the Evangelist what he reports; for the Lord says to His disciples: "For this reason my Father loves me, because I lay down my soul and will take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down from myself: I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again. I received this command from my Father.

Who, then, can doubt or dare to, when he was permitted to lay down his soul whenever he wished, that he could also take it up again when it pleased him, and work this power within himself more fully than he deigned to demonstrate in very many? Behold, the gates of Tartarus are thrown open, cast down at Christ’s coming; the path behind hell lies open; rocks are shattered, the earth is split, tombs are emptied of bodies, a multitude of saints revives; and lest faith should fail in the believer, the throng of the resurrected is recognized. Then also that wondrous temple, full of ancient religion, seeing that the summits of a greater temple had fallen, like a sad disciple weeping for its own founder, immediately with its veil rent showed its breast naked to all, clearly signifying that the inner secrets were to be revealed to the nations and to the peoples who would faithfully come, because the law, which under Moses long remained hidden by a veil, shone forth clearly when Christ came to us. Come, tell me, sad and impious death, where now is your deadly victory, where now the accursed goad serving you at the tombs, which from the destruction of the first generation, never sated with any funerals, invading the human race, you are accustomed to rule over wretched frailty with penal dominion always? Behold, now you, worst one, did not come to Christ, but Christ descended to you of his own accord, he who was permitted to die without death, who, generating all things, establishing all things, did not create you alone, envious one.

Scripture, indeed, venerable, says: God did not make death. Therefore, if you wish to know the material of your origin, you are conceived with the serpent as father and born with guilt as mother, but now, with mercy reigning, you are consumed. Meanwhile, the Lord’s spirit had already departed from the body for a time, and Christ’s cold limbs were hanging on the wood of the cross, and still fury, not abandoning its weapons, supplied a lance to the hostile hand and with a nefarious blow violated the Lord’s side with an inflicted wound, opening a deep and buried gash, through which both blood and water flowed. O how this cause is joined to catholic dogma! O how these sacraments agree with the faith of the Trinity! For body, blood, and water are three gifts of our life. For all of us who entrust ourselves to Christ as leader are reborn in the font of waters and, taking up his body and blood, we eat and drink, so that we may merit being a temple of the Holy Spirit. For the apostle Paul also speaks thus, saying: Do you not know that you are temples of God and the Spirit of God dwells in us? Let us beseech that the Lord command us to bear an immaculate temple, so that such a great dweller may make us, narrow and thin, suitable and capacious for himself.

After the sacred place received that precious treasure of the body deposited there, which, with the Lord lying there, became noble, and with him rising, triumphed more nobly, the generation of deceit, already condemned, devising its usual wickedness under a wicked heart, began to boast that Christ was to be stolen away by his disciples in the silence of night, so that, as he himself had foretold, it might be spread abroad that he had risen on the third day. Terrified by this suspicion of theft, the Jews therefore demand that a very large guard be more diligently posted and that the doors and gate of the tomb be fortified with a most faithful blockade. If, after the bitter torments of the cross, after the blows and wounds of iron, after the mortal burial of the body, you have not yet fulfilled your bloody, murderous office, nor sated your unjust hatred after the death of the innocent, and you do not prove that the Lord of singular power, who so often led souls out of the underworld, would rather recall his own: then carry out your plans for the worse part, foster the deceits of treachery in your minds, arm yourselves with the nourishment of malice, seal the barriers of the tomb, post military vigils, close the monument with stone, and, arranging everything with evil dispositions as you do, say: who will be able to guard God, for whom all things are laid open, nothing is obstructed? He reigns in the heavens, commands the seas, and rules the underworld. Why, then, do you, ill-ordered uproar, waste your work on vigils and toil? Why do you strive to test faith, which you are unwilling to admit even when you have proven it?

Meanwhile, after the Sabbath, that festive day had begun to shine, a day most welcome to the Lord who rules, taking its name from his majesty, called by this honor the Lord’s Day, since it attained such dignity that it first merited to behold the origin of the nascent world and the power of the resurrected Christ. For the book of Genesis, the manifest witness of things, says that on the seventh day of the Sabbaths God rested from his works. Therefore it appears clearly that this day is the head of the world, from which the seventh of the Sabbaths is primarily numbered in a defined order, a day which the glory of the eternal king, also illuminating with the trophy of his resurrection, deemed to retain the primacy of all days, granted with religion. At the conspicuous rising of this light, the virgin mother, together with the other women faithfully gathered, who, bearing the gift of spices equally, came to the Lord’s tomb, furrowed their faces with tears, stirred their breasts with groans. And soon they see the place of burial empty of the body, lying open, but overflowing with wondrous power. For an angel had descended from the heavens and, after the stone was rolled away from the tomb’s entrance, was sitting wondrously on the rock, his face fiery, his garments white, so that, shining with a twofold diversity, he might show both terror and joy: terror indeed threatened to the guards by his fiery face, joy coaxed to those seeking Christ by the pleasantness of his snowy garment.

Therefore, the women, strengthened by angelic revelation, rejoice that the Lord has come back to life after death. But the soldiers, terrified by such a vision, cannot maintain their lives, placed as they are in a critical danger, and immediately abandoning their post, they rush headlong back to the city, reporting the miracles and freely declaring what is manifest. After they sold their faith for a price, they are changed into a cowardly deceit, and soon they fabricate that Christ’s disciples, caught by the snares of nightly rest, carried him off. Speak, wicked guard and shameless one, speak, accursed legion, what do you intend to construct, you who, in your zeal for acquiring money, do not see the pit of your own fall and danger, and do not know how much punishment you deserve, since you prefer to seem negligent rather than truthful. For it is established that you were watchful, diligent, sharp-eyed, never closing your eyes in sleep, unless a colleague, relieving you in turn for the work, duly took over, so that you fortified the post in such a way that it appeared no one could approach by any deceit. Was Christ, as you dare to assert with false words, carried off from the tomb by the hands of his followers during the time of night work while you were at rest? Where are his linens, where are the coverings that lie nearby, around which angelic power remains? As for the spoils or the blessed body, did he who carried him off first strip and bare him, thinking it quicker to remove him uncovered than bound, as he remained, since delay is hostile to rapacious thefts, and he could have more cautiously and secretly carried off the Lord’s coverings along with his own? Iniquity has lied to itself.

Yet this matter possesses an excellent grace of figurative meaning. For it is evident that Christ has been spiritually taken away from the Jews, while we carry Him with the whole devotion of mind and heart. Weep, therefore, O Judea, for your priests, weep for your ministers and your people, who, abandoned for so many crimes, will no longer rejoice in the trumpet, will not be strengthened by anointing, will not enjoy sacrifices. For by what hope of strength will the trumpet be blown for you, when you see your king slain? What anointed one will henceforth be given, when you have lost the primacy of the anointed one himself? What victim will be struck, when the shepherd himself has been slain as a victim? Let the synagogue depart, already darkened by its own color: Christ has joined to himself the church, beautiful with snowy splendor. This presents the honor and glory of Mary, who, always seen as the mother of the Lord with clear brightness, is yet always beheld as a virgin. The Lord showed himself to her immediately after the triumph of the resurrection, so that the pious mother and kind one, who was the door of the one being born when He came into the world, might also be the announcer of the one leaving the underworld, spreading the testimony of such a miracle.

Soon after, at a meal, he was present like a passing traveler, and by the breaking of bread he revealed himself to their senses and eyes, because, since he himself is the true bread, he becomes known to those eyes which inner faith, opening and uncovering, leads to the recognition of the Lord by the brightness of grace. Frequently also, at various times and moments, he showed himself manifestly to the disciples: now appearing unexpectedly to them while they were eating, now receiving as food a piece of roasted fish and a honeycomb, so that he might teach more clearly that these were bodily feasts, which by eating he proved to those watching that he now bore those members which he had recently borne before. Again, the same, when the apostles, fearing the violent savagery of the people who had often denied the Lord, remained with the doors of the house shut, he stood unexpectedly before the barred doors, gave peace to all by the greeting of his speech, so that, bestowing gladness in return upon the afflicted, he might confirm what he had signified by the prophetic voice, that the Lord will not abandon a heart crushed and bruised. And soon he opened his pierced hands, and bared the wound fixed in his side, lest they believe it a phantom if they did not see the signs of the wounds.

Since Thomas, the equally venerable apostle, whom they called by the name Didymus, was not present there, and did not believe his companions when they reported such things, behold, the Lord later presents himself again, while he was sitting with the brothers, the doors still unmoved, he who had never spiritually departed from them, and, seen in their midst before all, he does not disdain to adopt a manner toward his trembling disciple, and again, with his palms and side shown, he allows himself to be tested by the touch of his wounds, being recognized all the more from this, that he is Christ, because he soothed the mind of the doubter, received with gentle leniency. For whoever practices deceitful tricks under a blind image of fraud and devises empty clouds and shapes to deceive unwary minds does not wish to be investigated, does not wish his deeds to be known, so that he may lie hidden under the covering of a deceitful cloud, and, mocking wretched eyes with composed phantoms, hates those who are diligent, if he begins to be detected, and even his friends. But the Lord Christ, truthful in all things and most gentle even toward a doubter, does not become angry at one who is uncertain, but grants with gentle ease that he may even plunge his fingers into the wounds, knowing that the example of this proof pertains not only to Thomas, who was already blessed, but to the faith of many thereafter.

A few days later, the Lord again shows himself on the seashore to Peter fishing with his companions, and, seeing that they, exhausted by the whole night’s sleepless toil, had made no catch, he orders the right-hand nets to be cast into the deep, and immediately, with the enclosed waters of the gulf, the nets, swelling with an immense catch of fish, brought up their prey, which, rejoicing, they cast before the Lord’s feet. This kind of miracle, therefore, ought not to be understood as a common event, but must be weighed with a typical understanding. For let us believe that the nets are the precepts of God, very bright and clear, by which all who follow the right hand are enclosed, drawn from the waves of the world, and bowed at Christ’s feet. For the fish placed on the coals, and the bread found in the same place by them at the same time, is seen not to lack Catholic religion. For the fish is understood to be water, by which we are certainly washed and reborn; the bread signifies Christ the Savior, by whose same body we are nourished for salvation. The fire bears the image of the Holy Spirit, by which we, the devout, are consecrated to the faith. For it shone forth, demonstrated in the same form, when it filled the blessed apostles, as the book of their Acts attests, with its clear divinity. Then he invites them to partake of a feast with the calm solemn command of words, and they, gathered together at the Lord’s table, soon receive the foods of holy blessing and recognize Christ with the full truth of faith.

When they had risen from a modest meal sufficiently satisfied, the Lord gently asks her whether she loves him. And when she immediately assents, he, desiring to increase his flocks as a good shepherd, entrusts his sheep and lambs to her as to a most faithful and proven worker. And this he repeats and turns over three times, so that the threefold denial of a more recent fault might be purged by an equal number of expressions of love. But that the dignity of specially feeding the flock is granted to Peter, although he is shown to love all equally, does not pertain to the detriment of others, but seems to be joined to reason. For this most gentle animal, because of the simplicity of its nature, is compared to the just, whom, when the king of all comes in his majesty, he will address, standing otherwise at his right hand, as he himself taught: "Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world," and so forth. Therefore, he fittingly entrusts the just who are about to enter the kingdom to the one to whom he had promised he would give the keys of that same kingdom.

Then, instructing them with blessed teachings and strengthening them with peaceful tradition of doctrine, he commands that the precepts of religious faith be spread throughout all lands and that the unique Trinity of sacred baptism be bestowed upon all peoples, speaking and decreeing thus: "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go now and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you," and so forth. And when he had commanded that all things of divinity be fulfilled, he soon went out with the same disciples into Bethany, and before the blessed men who had merited to obtain the vision of such a triumph, he was carried up through the ethereal regions, ascended to the citadel of starry dominion, and sits at the right hand of the majesty of the Father, ruling and governing all things by his own will—he who, ever possessing all things both high and deep, after heaven descended to Tartarus, and after Tartarus returned to heaven. For this reason, therefore, he wished to migrate to the stars in their presence (as far as my littleness deigns to reveal to my senses), in order to show them the path they were to follow—those to whom, before his passion, when they said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?" he clearly replied and said: "I am the way and the truth and the life." The way, because through him one arrives at the grace of the Father. The truth, because he grants to believers what he promises. The life, because those whom he adopts are not subject to death.

The most joyful disciples, therefore, gazing upon the Lord exalted above the clouds, treading with his own footsteps the gleaming tracts of the stars, the world subdued beneath him, venerate and adore him in supplication, and with most grateful return they revolve in their hearts the regions of the aerial path, subservient to his steps, which they had seen with their eyes, and carry them back, about to warn all nations to believe. For faithful and most eminent witnesses of divine power are proven to be those who, seeing the countless deeds of the Lord Jesus Christ, wrote down but few of the noble acts. For if all the miracles of our Savior could have been woven into pious pages, perhaps not even the world itself, as the evangelist John testifies, could contain the entire volumes of books that would be written.