Opusculum III Sive Homilia In Dominica II Adventus

Third Little Work, or a Homily for the Second Sunday of Advent. We are taught from the Gospel reading from which tribe Christ was to be born. But that he was to be from the stock of David according to the flesh is foretold in the Psalms in this way: The Lord swore to David in truth, and he will not disappoint him: I will set the fruit of your womb upon your throne. And again: I have sworn once in my holy one: if I lie to David, his seed will remain forever, and his throne like the sun in my sight, and like the perfect moon forever, and a faithful witness in heaven. And likewise in the book of Chronicles: And the word of the Lord came to Nathan the prophet, saying: Go and say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord: I announce to you that the Lord is about to build a house for himself; when you have completed your days so that you go to your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you, which will be from your sons, and I will establish his kingdom.

You will build me a house, and I will make his foundation firm for eternity. I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me, and I will not withdraw my mercy from him, as I withdrew it from the one who was before you. And I will set him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and my throne most firmly for perpetuity. Whoever thinks that all these things were fulfilled in Solomon seems to err greatly; for how is what was said to be understood in Solomon: "After you sleep with your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you, which will be from your sons, and I will establish his kingdom"? Is it believed that this was prophesied about that Solomon? Not at all; for he began to reign while his father was still alive. But here it is said: "When your days are fulfilled and you sleep with your fathers, I will raise up your seed," from which it is understood that another was promised, who was foretold to be raised up not before David's death, but after his death, who would build the house of the Lord not from walls made by hand, but from living and precious stones, that is, from saints and the faithful. For also that which he subjoined: "His house and his kingdom will be faithful before me forever," let anyone attend and see that it was not foretold about Solomon; for Solomon's house was full of foreign women worshipping idols, and he himself was seduced and cast down by them as king of idolatry, who, though he was good in the beginning, had a bad end.

Therefore, who is this one whose house is faithful forever, and who was promised to be raised up after the death of David? He is undoubtedly the one about whom David himself, burning and proclaiming in the eighty-eighth Psalm, says: But you have put off your Christ. Therefore, it is not Solomon, nor is it this David, but Christ has been extended. Behold, it has certainly appeared that the aforementioned promises were fulfilled not in Solomon, but in our Lord Christ, who was born from the line of David, concerning whom the Lord himself says through Jeremiah: Behold, the days are coming, and I will raise up a righteous shoot of David, and he will reign as king, and he will be wise, and he will execute judgment and justice upon the earth. In those days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell confidently, and this is the name by which they will call him: Our Righteous Lord. And Isaiah, concerning Christ, because he was born from the seed of David according to the flesh, says in the following parts of his prophecy: In that day the root of Jesse, which stands as a sign for the peoples, the nations themselves will entreat, and his sepulcher will be glorious. The root of Jesse stands as a sign for the peoples, because Christ imprints the sign of the cross on their foreheads. The nations themselves will entreat him, which is seen to have been already fulfilled. Moreover, his sepulcher is so glorious that, besides the fact that we, redeemed by his death, exhibit glory, even the place itself, gleaming with its miracles of glory, draws the whole world to itself for that reason.

This passage in the Hebrew has: "And his rest will be glorious," assuredly because his flesh, when dying, did not see corruption, according to the saying of the psalm, because his soul was not left in the underworld, nor was his holy one given to see corruption. This is the one who is promised through Nathan from the seed of David, who is also foretold by the prophet Isaiah in this way: "A rod shall go forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower from its root shall ascend." This rod from the root of Jesse is the Virgin Mary, sprung from the root of David, who gave birth to the flower, the Lord Savior, of whom it also follows: "And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and the spirit of the fear of the Lord shall fill him." Now, such great gifts of the Spirit are proclaimed over him because in him the Spirit does not dwell by measure as in us, but the whole fullness of divinity and graces.

This is he who does not judge according to the vision of the eyes and the hearing of the ears, but justice is the girdle of his loins and faith the cincture of his reins; in whose church the wolf dwells with the lamb—that wolf, indeed, which used to snatch prey from him, and while it is turned toward him, abides with the innocent; in whose sheepfold the leopard lies down with the kid, the deceitful, that is, mingled with sinners; there even the calf from the circumcision, the lion from the power of the world, the sheep from the common order dwell together, because in faith there is a common mingling of all. The little child driving them is assuredly he who humbled himself for us in little ones. The ox and the lion eat straw together, because princes with subject peoples share a common teaching. The infant also delights at the breast over the hole of the asp, while the nations which used to preach poisons, once converted, delight to hear even the faith of the little child Christ; for the cavern of the basilisk is the hearts of the unbelievers, in which that twisted serpent rested, which the weaned child, having seized, dragged forth captive from there, so that in his holy mountain, which is the Church, it might do no harm. Now, because testimony is borne by the prophetic mouth to Christ born of Moab, the same Isaiah testifies: "For I will set," he says, "a lion over those who have fled from Moab, and over the remnants of the land: send forth the lamb, O Lord, the ruler of the land, from the rock of the desert to the mountain of the daughter of Zion.

For from this people of the Moabites came forth the immaculate lamb who takes away the sin of the world, who rules over the orb of the earth. Moreover, the rock of the desert signifies Ruth, who, left destitute by the death of her husband, bore Obed from Boaz, and Obed begot Jesse, and from Jesse came David, and from the Davidic stock Christ was born. But the mountain of the daughter of Zion he calls either historically the city of Jerusalem itself, or, according to tropology, the Church placed on a watchtower, that is, in the sublimity of the virtues.