Sententia Ad Philippenses

To the Philippians. I. He who, when he was in the form of God, emptied himself. II. He became obedient unto death. III. For this reason God exalted him, and gave him a name which is above every name. IV. So that in the name of Jesus every knee is bent. V. And every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. VI. Likewise on the same subject. (From the books Against the Phantom.) When he was in the form of God, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and humbled himself unto death, the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8-9). He is true God who deigns to be bowed; he is true man, who was able to die. For this reason, it says, God the Father exalted him, and gave him a name which is above every name. Between the one who gives and the one who receives honor, every name is threefold. The lowest is man, the middle is angel, the highest is God. This name which is above every name he gave, not to her who bore him, but to him whom he sent, who became obedient unto death. Or what is new, to believe in him the form of a servant, who did not even deign to bear the reproaches of the curse? With the apostle testifying, he who had not known sin was made a curse for us (2 Corinthians 6:21). Because it is written, he says, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (Galatians 3:13).

For this reason he was exalted, so that in the name of Jesus, every knee—that is, not only of man, but also of angel—should bend: namely to him who, according to the same Apostle’s saying, became poor for your sake when he was rich (2 Cor. 8:8-9), rich from eternity, poor from the womb; rich in the heavens, poor in rags. II. (From the books Against the Arians.) The Son of God’s equality is not diminished by this, that he obeyed the sons of men. For how would he not obey the Father, who was subject to his mother? as the Evangelist says of his parents: And he came to Nazareth, and was subject to them (Luke 2:51). For he was made, as the Apostle says, obedient unto death (Phil. 2:8), just as the Lord himself said, My soul is sorrowful unto death (Matt. 26:38). III. (From the books Against the Arians.) Or is the Father alone perhaps to be called Lord? In the Gospel, Christ says to his disciples: You call me Master and Lord, you speak well; for I am (John 13:13). And the Apostle says (Phil. 2:8-9) that after the death of Christ, the death of the cross, the Father exalted him and gave him a name, so that in the name of Jesus every knee should bend—of the heavenly, earthly, and infernal beings—that is, should adore, as the Lord himself says elsewhere: You shall adore your Lord God, and serve him alone (Matt. 4:10).

IV. (From a sermon on Pentecost: That cross on which, with life hanging, death perished, as the evangelist John recounts in the Passion (John 19:20), because it could not contain a multiplicity, was a page in three languages: so that the whole world might believe without hesitation what was written in Hebrew letters, as well as in Latin and Greek, as if confirmed by the mouths of three witnesses; and thereafter every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:11), that is, in unity with the Father. However much the intention of some persists in denying this, even if not every person’s speech, certainly every tongue proclaims it. (From the Books Against the Arians.) I have said that we declare equal glory and honor to the Son with the Father: because we read, “That every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father” (Ibid.). If it had said only “in God,” it might perhaps be thought, “in God,” certainly of a lesser being; but when it says “in the glory of the Father,” what is unequal? what is deficient? what is divided? For it is not in angelic or human glory, but in the glory of God the Father. Moreover, unless this glory is believed to be equal, contrary to the Lord’s own command (John 5:23), not all will honor the Son as they honor the Father. For in no way can a greater be honored as a lesser. But whoever does not honor the Son as he honors the Father, whatever glory he has subtracted, he has accounted as insult.

VI. (From a sermon on the dedication of the church of the Archangel Michael.) Let this be that place, as sweet as it is terrible, in which Jacob (Gen. 28:11), seeing the Lord leaning upon a ladder, and beholding angels ascending and descending through it, understands the house of the Divinity: where, with his head resting upon a stone prepared for mysteries, he applied ointment to the causes of future things; or when, with the hanging hair of the Mediator about to suffer, he poured the wave of a fragrant alabaster vessel upon the service of the justified sinful woman: so that what would flow, as necessarily fitting, from the irrigating fountain of the corner-stone into a spiritual fabric of living stones, might thus, through the bath, the sons of Abraham, raised from stones, escape the aridity of natural contagion, and, by the gift of the fragrant chrismal, be fattened with fecundating grace. That Jacob saw in sleep in spirit, and, awakened, bore in sign. When, for us, the consecrating bishop cries out from there, the dream of the sleeper keeps watch for us there. The ladder which he saw, moreover, is the steps of human supplication, by which each, according to his strength, is sent into the divine ears by the quality of his prayers. Angels ascend through it, when we stretch our prayer into heaven; they descend, when they transmit obtained things from the heavens. They assist our prayers, not by the breath of wings, but by the spirit of gifts, for whom to have flown is to have willed.

Among these, Michael claims for himself the foremost place, as Daniel (10:13), that sublime man of desires, powerful in visions, unraveler of enigmas, expounder of figures, with the fervent fast of a triple week, deemed it insufficient to have a visible being unless he received an assistant. Therefore, even here our Michael, provoked by the sincerity of will, the pleasantness of the place, and the devotion of the people, stands by, conferring great things, obtaining the greatest, and drawing hither the sight of the Divinity by which he is always illumined. To whom, because we have recognized in many places of Scripture that, with the angels bearing us up, we arrive at what is piously sought or rightly done, let us look forward in the pursuit of acceptable works and salutary vows to blessedness, we who have foreseen in the archangel a bearer.