Peter Chrysologus [1° ed.] 1138641820, 9781138641822

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PETER CHRYSOLOGUS

Peter Chrysologus is the first book to offer an introduction to the life of Peter Chrysologus and a selection of his most important sermons in translation, as well as his letter to Eutyches. Bishop Peter of Ravenna preached before the imperial family for nearly two decades (c. 430–450) after the imperial capital was moved to Peter’s See of Ravenna in 402 by Emperor Honorius. With the Empire’s elite directly before him, Peter also had the problems of 5th century Monophysitism behind him. As such, his homilies stress the incarnate Christ’s ability to change lives by reuniting mortal humans with their life-giving God. The thorough introduction explores the figure of Peter, beginning with the obscure biographies telling of his early life, to his becoming Metropolitan of Ravenna, situating his elevation in the wider socio-political context of the powerful court of Valentinian III and the 5th century Roman West. It also looks at the significant influence his legacy had on future generations. Translated into a modern idiom, this collection of sermons makes the preaching and pastoral wisdom of this key figure accessible to modern readers. It is an invaluable tool for anyone working on early Christian theology and the Early Church, as well as students of Late Antiquity and the Western Empire. David Vincent Meconi, S.J. holds the Pontifical License in Patrology (Liz. Theol.) from the University of Innsbruck as well as the D.Phil. in Ecclesiastical History from the University of Oxford. He is Professor of Patristic Theology and the Director of the Catholic Studies Centre at Saint Louis University, USA.

THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS Edited by Carol Harrison University of Oxford, UK

The Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church are central to the creation of Christian doctrine, yet are often unapproachable due to the sheer volume of their writings and the relative paucity of accessible translations. This series makes available translations of key selected texts by the Fathers to all students of the Early Church. GREGORY OF NAZIANZEN Brian E. Daley EVAGRIUS PONTICUS A.M. Casiday THEODORET OF CYRUS István Pásztori Kupán THEOPHILUS OF ALEXANDRIA Norman Russell LEO THE GREAT Bronwen Neil THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA Frederick McLeod BASIL OF CAESAREA Stephen M. Hildebrand PETER CHRYSOLOGUS David Vincent Meconi, S.J. For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ classicalstudies/series/CHCHFATHERS

PETER CHRYSOLOGUS

David Vincent Meconi, S.J.

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 David Vincent Meconi, S.J. The right of David Vincent Meconi, S.J. to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-64182-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-63019-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

FOR STEPHEN M. HILDEBRAND, PATRISTIKER UND PȀDAGOGE

CONTENTS

Preface Acknowledgements

x xii

PART I

Introduction

1

1 Life and times

3

Late Antique Ravenna 3 The imperial family 9 A 5th century bishop 12 Peter the preacher 15 2 Theological themes

23

The divine image and likeness 23 Mary’s “yes” and the incarnation 25 Deification of the human person 28 The sacramental and saintly Church 32 PART II

Sermons

37

3 The incarnate God and Mother Mary Sermon 140: on the Annunciation of the Lord 39 Sermon 140A: on the Nativity of the Lord 40 Sermon 141: on the Incarnation of Christ 42 Sermon 142: the second on the Annunciation of the Lord 43

vii

39

CONTENTS

Sermon 143: the third on the Annunciation of the Lord 46 Sermon 147: the third on the Generation of Christ 49 Sermon 148: the third on the Nativity of Christ 51 Sermon 148A: the fourth on the Nativity of the Lord 54 Sermon 150: on the Lord’s flight into Egypt 55 Sermon 151: the second on the Lord’s flight 57 4 Jesus: tempted, teacher, and thaumaturge

62

Sermon 1: on the father and his two sons 62 Sermon 4: the fourth on the same 64 Sermon 5: the fifth on the same 67 Sermon 11: on Lent and on the Gospel account of Jesus’ being led into the desert 70 Sermon 12: the second on fasting 72 Sermon 14: on Psalm 40 [41] 75 Sermon 15: on the centurion 77 Sermon 18: on the mother-in-law of Simon Peter 80 Sermon 28: Matthew sitting at his customs post 82 Sermon 54: on Zacchaeus the tax collector 85 Sermon 68: the second on the Lord’s prayer 88 Sermon 121: on Lazarus and a rich man 91 Sermon 123: the third on Lazarus and the rich man 95 Sermon 124: the fourth on the same 99 Sermon 137: where John flies to the desert (Lk 3:2–14) 102 Sermon 167: the second on fasting 105 5 Passion, crucifixion, and the victory of Easter

110

Sermon 72A: first on the Lord’s passion 110 Sermon 72B: second on the Lord’s passion 112 Sermon 74: on the resurrection of the Lord 115 Sermon 117: the tenth on the Apostle 118 6 Church, creed, and the communion of saints Sermon 57: the second on the creed 121 Sermon 108: sermon on where the Apostle says, “I urge you” 124 Sermon 120: the third on the Apostle 127 Sermon 132: where it says, “whatever you seek from my father in my name will be done for you” 130 Sermon 133: on the birth of the Apostle St. Andrew 132 viii

121

CONTENTS

Sermon 134: on St. Felicity 133 Sermon 154: on the birth of St. Stephen 134 Sermon 155: on new year’s day 135 Bibliography Index Index of Scriptural Citations

139 142 145

ix

PREFACE

This volume aims to bring together the most noteworthy sermons of Bishop Peter of Ravenna, known since the early Middle Ages as the Golden Word, Peter Chrysologus (c. 380–450). As with any translation project of this sort, I owe Latinists an apology, and I owe English readers an explanation. An apology is due because I have tried to bring Peter of Ravenna’s characteristically Late Italianate Latin into a modern idiom and have surely failed to achieve a perfect fluidity. An explanation is needed because Peter’s style of preaching is not at all common today, and thus the repetition with which he tends to go over a scriptural phrase, or even a single word, can appear rather redundant. The homilies included here attempt to reflect the themes most emphasized by Bishop Peter: the coming of God in human flesh, Christ’s ability to teach and heal, as well as his Church as the means by which Jesus continues and extends his life in the world. As in any academic undertaking, I came to this project already indebted to those who have spent their lives in service of the Word. First, I am indebted to a Jesuit confrère of blessed memory, Fr. George Ganss, S.J. (d. 2000), whose translations were oftentimes rough and incomplete but who nonetheless introduced much of Bishop Peter to English speaking audiences. A much more thorough and accurate job was undertaken by Fr. William Palardy, former professor of Patristics and an obviously industrious priest of the Archdiocese of Boston. Palardy’s two volumes with Catholic University of America Press completed what Fr. Ganss had begun, and whose mastery of Latin helped form my thoughts here more than once. For the most part, Peter’s sermons are lengthy expositions on some scriptural passage or person. Wherever close, I have relied on the New American Bible Revised Edition to make his biblical citations more familiar, and I have captured these main passages clearly with double quotation marks. Yet as Peter tends to stress and repeat particular words or whole phrases from that main passage, I have put these repetitive stresses in italics. I have taken the liberty of being as inclusive as possible in the use of pronouns for human persons, as well as those terms which in Latin may encompass both men and women, but do not necessarily succeed in the 21st century. For example, I have translated fratres as “brothers x

P R E FA C E

and sisters,” and expressions like o homo as “o mortal.” Finally, I have used the customary parentheses to cite all scriptural passages as well as any Latin that may prove illuminating for the reader; I have reserved brackets for words that do not appear in Peter’s actual Latin but are helpful in assuring his meaning is properly understood in the English.

xi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Dr. Terry Papillon who first showed me the beautiful intricacies of Latin, to my Jesuit brothers Fr. Claude Pavur, S.J. and Fr. Bryan Norton, S.J. who have assisted in this project often through late night and early morning calls and emails. I wish to acknowledge the invaluable help received from two of my doctoral students here at Saint Louis University, Charles Kim and Joseph Grone, as well as from Felicity Stephens who painstakingly not only read the English but improved it tremendously. A final word of gratitude to the University of Oxford’s Carol Harrison whose writing has mentored my thoughts on the early Church in many ways, and whose patient presence throughout this particular project has helped get these pages to press. Peter Chrysologus is the first book to offer an introduction to the life of Peter Chrysologus and a selection of his most important sermons in translation, as well as his letter to Eutyches. Bishop Peter of Ravenna preached before the imperial family for nearly two decades (c. 430–450) after the imperial capital was moved to Peter’s See of Ravenna in 402 by Emperor Honorius. With the Empire’s elite directly before him, Peter also had the problems of 5th century Monophysitism behind him. As such, his homilies stress the incarnate Christ’s ability to change lives by reuniting mortal humans with their life-giving God. The thorough introduction explores the figure of Peter, beginning with the obscure biographies telling of his early life, to his becoming Metropolitan of Ravenna, situating his elevation in the wider socio-political context of the powerful court of Valentinian III and the 5th century Roman West. It also looks at the significant influence his legacy had on future generations. Translated into a modern idiom, this collection of sermons makes the preaching and pastoral wisdom of this key figure accessible to modern readers. It is an invaluable tool for anyone working on early Christian theology and the early Church, as well as students of late antiquity and the western Empire. Part I: Introduction; 1. Life and Times; 2. Theological Themes; Part II: Sermons; 3. The incarnate God and Mother Mary: 140, 140A, 141, 142, 143, 147, 148, 148A, 150, 151; 4. Jesus: Tempted, Teacher, and Thaumaturge: 1, 4, 5, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, 28, 54, 68, 121, 123, 124, 137, 167; 5. Passion, Crucifixion, and the Victory of Easter: 72A, 72B, 74, 117; 6. Church, Creed, and the Communion of Saints: 57, 108, 120, 121, 132, 133, 134, 154, 155. xii

Part I INTRODUCTION

1 LIFE AND TIMES

Late Antique Ravenna Any Catholic in Ravenna would have been proud to tell you of the first bishop of this important Christian community, St. Apollinaris. Pious legend recalls how Saint Peter himself ordained Apollinaris and missioned him to Ravenna in order to tend to the few Christians already active not only in that ancient Etruscan settlement, but in Classe as well, its harbor town just a few miles away. Here Apollinaris labored tirelessly to organize ecclesial structures to provide the sacraments, convert the unbeliever, and take care of the marginalized. Widespread success led to resentment and Bishop Apollinaris was exiled a total of three times. Upon his final entry into Ravenna, he was met with such violence from the pagan idolaters that he was murderously beaten at Classe. Whether this martyrdom occurred under Nero (d. 68) or Vespasian (d. 79), sources are unreliable. What we do know for sure is that in the 6th century a group of Benedictine monks erected a small place of prayer where the martyr Apollinaris’ bones had been venerated since, a humble structure which was eventually transformed into the magnificent Basilica of St. Apollinare Nuovo. Any accuracy in the dating of early Ravenna remains unsatisfactory, as historians such as Strabo and Ptolemy disagree in their estimations, and there is not even an answer to the meaning of the name Ravenna itself.1 We do know that the Romans warred with Gallic armies in 390 BC for the first time in northeast Italy, and the earliest archeological evidence we have for a city center in the area around Ravenna comes from the late 3rd century BC. Strabo’s much-studied line that, “Arminium is a settlement of the Ombri, just as Ravenna is, although each of them has received Roman colonists,” suggests that Ravenna began to be an important place not long after Rimini was defeated by the Ombri in 268 BC.2 Archeological evidence testifies to the complexity of a growing city center: sewers and an advanced drainage system, a network of dwellings built on well-secured piles and connected by bridges, ever-widening roads more inland, and some rather elegant private homes as well as public gathering places. But above all, perhaps, Ravenna was best known for its maritime prowess. The Ravennate port, the aptly-named Classe (Latin for fleet), was founded by Caesar

3

INTRODUCTION

Augustus after the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, making Ravenna the northernmost naval base for the upper Adriatic Sea. Its strategic location facilitated trade at an almost unparalleled rate, and with the Empire’s dire need for a naval base in that area of the world, Ravenna brought in not only massive financial investments, but great expectations for nautical power as well. As such, it became a locale relied upon for both mercantile and military endeavors. In fact, numerous epigraphs for the dead bearing the title for Ravennate sailors from this time—classiari rauennati—have been found as far away as the Black Sea. For the imperial family desirous to prolong its reign from raiders from all sides, Ravenna proved to be a more fortifiable place, guarded by mountains to the west and the Tyrrhenian Sea to the east. At the turn of the 5th century AD, therefore, the Emperor Honorius obviously felt that it was more defensible than the sprawling streets of Milan and thus transferred the center of the Western Empire here in 402. But Ravenna attracted not only tradesmen, military strategists, and politicians, it has also captured poets and artists for centuries. Closer to our own time, writers have immortalized their love of Ravenna, but for much different reasons. Oscar Wilde, for instance, penned a paean to Ravenna, acknowledging its ancient allure: But thou, Ravenna, better loved than all,/Thy ruined palaces are but a pall/That hides thy fallen greatness! and thy name/Burns like a grey and flickering candle-flame,/Beneath the noon-day splendour of the sun/Of new Italia! for the night is done,/The night of dark oppression, and the day/Hath dawned in passionate splendour: far away.3 Drawn by the ancient echoes of all its mosaics told, Wilde heard in Ravenna a more primal and pristine form of Christian devotion, pushing him one step closer to the ancient elements of the Roman Church.4 Far from looking back into Christian antiquity, T.S. Eliot espies Ravenna in order to look forward to the possibility of renewed romance, telling of a newly-married couple who leave their mundane Indiana hometown to spend their honeymoon among these ancient sites, “Moins d’une lieue d’ici est Saint Apollinaire/In Classe, basilique connue des amateurs/De chapitaux d’acanthe que tournoie le vent.”5 Here in this “passionate splendour,” and here at that basilica “famous among lovers,” the mosaics of Late Antiquity still draw pilgrims, and the vestiges of a bygone political dominance are even now readily discoverable. It is here that Flavius Odoacer reinstated the Kingship of Italy after defeating Romulus Augustus in 476, thus marking the end of the Roman Empire in the West. Here the greatest of all Italian poets, Dante Alighieri (d. 1321), spent his final days and whose tomb is still venerated in the aptly named city center’s zona dantesca.6 With such a rich history, it is surprising that our knowledge of the beginnings of Ravenna are still as murky as some of its modern waterways. Despite the many stories surrounding Bishop Apollinaris, for example, no evidence for a Ravennate Church is discoverable until the late 2nd century when Christian funerary inscriptions begin to bear the traditional images and terms for that 4

LIFE AND TIMES

time. Furthermore, while legends blossomed as a later Ravenna sought to show ascendency over Rome, the first Bishop of Ravenna for whom we have any concrete evidence is actually Severus (d. c. 348), whose introduction is possible only because his name survives from a bishops’ list after attending the Synod of Serdica in 343 in order to extinguish Arian tendencies in that part of the Empire. This is no doubt why later legends were composed in order to fill in these historical gaps. Among the leaders in this genre is Andreas Agnellus (c. 805-after 846). Agnellus’ 175-chaptered Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis was composed sometime in the middle of the 9th century and was Ravenna’s answer to the much older and more revered Liber Pontificalis, which proudly cataloged all the bishops of Rome beginning with Saint Peter himself. In the 6th century this proudly Roman Liber Pontificalis was amplified to include short biographies of each of the popes, and Ravenna’s historian would not be undone. For Agnellus wrote at a time when Ravenna sought its identity, at a time when the city was a double-dyarchy, a typically medieval arrangement in which the king and the pope shared secular rule but the pope in Rome and the local Archbishop shared ecclesial authority. So, between 830 and the last time we hear from Agnellus (dying sometime after 846), this young Ravennate priest sat down to write the first history of his hometown, full of colorful stories and intriguing sagas.7 Bishops who proved overly Roman or imperially friendly receive dutiful mention; bishops who rebelled against the creeping powers of emperor and pope tend to receive more of Agnellus’ time and certainly more of his devotion. The staunchly Ravennate clergy receive unmatched encomiums and their achievements are more consistently reviewed; the bishops who came from a foreign assignment and appear to have affinities and allegiances outside Ravenna are cast in a subtly suspicious light and described in fairly bland generalities. This is no doubt due to the fact that Andreas Agnellus came from a very proud and well-heeled local family. He was a bit of a town celebrity around Ravenna, known especially for his ability to form study-groups and offer a medieval equivalent of “adult education” programs, a charism which eventually made him titular abbot of a group of vowed male religious at St. Bartholomew Monastery. Historians today, however, have grown quite critical of his work, noting the many ways the presentation of historical facticity of the Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis is quite unreliable. Perhaps this criticism is captured most colorfully by von Simson who, although he set out to discuss Byzantine art as a form of Justinian propaganda a generation ago (focusing on St. Apollinare in Classe, St. Apollinare Nuovo, and San Vitale in Ravenna), could not keep himself from remarking that Agnellus was really “a medieval chronicler, not a historian. In his work historical and biographical facts appear curiously distorted, dissolved into the cloudlike contours of legend, as in the imagination of a child.” Clearly, Agnellus’ overall aim was to rely on the power of hagiography, thaumaturgy, and biography to establish the superiority and therefore independence of the Church over and against the Empire, and especially of Ravenna over Rome.8 5

INTRODUCTION

In so doing, Agnellus’ amplified tone is tinged with just a bit of “little brother” complex, forced to live under the shadow of Rome’s beleaguered but ongoing supremacy, the rise of the Carolingians, as well as the waning of the power of the See of Ravenna in the 9th century.9 As Constantinople could boast of its great preacher John (d. 407) to whom they could give the moniker Chrysostom, St. John the Golden-Mouthed Bishop, thanks to Agnellus, Ravenna now had in Peter its own Golden-Worded orator, Chrysologus. Or, consider how “the Great” Bishop of Rome, Leo Magnus, turned Atilla the Hun away from the Eternal City. Agnellus proudly reports how their brave Bishop John did the same thing with equal efficiency, keeping Ravenna forever safe from the Huns. A problem typical with Agnellus here, is that Atilla swept through Italy in 450–51, but John was Bishop of Ravenna 477–94, a good 25 years after Atilla had died in Hungary; furthermore, there is absolutely no historical evidence that Atilla’s army ever went as far east as Ravenna so as to make their way through its streets and seashores.10 So, whereas Antony had his Athanasius, Hilarion his Jerome, and Augustine his Possidius, Ravenna’s Peter had only Agnellus, and it is the modern reader’s responsibility to discern carefully between hard history and hopeful hagiography. Even when we turn to the entry of the pinnacle of the Ravennate episcopal list, Agnellus has actually confused his Chrysologus with the other Bishop Peter of Ravenna who reigned from 494 to 519. This led to centuries of confusion, and today modern-day scholars are finally paying more academic attention to the life and theology of Chrysologus, thus providing more accurate conclusions regarding his life’s pivotal dates and events. A central reason for this confusion is Agnellus’ placing Peter’s episcopal consecration under the pontificate of Sixtus III (432–40), consequently pushing the other major events of his life ahead by at least a decade. But when we understand that Peter was ordained Bishop of Ravenna by Pope Celestine (422–32), a clearer and more accurate portrait comes into view. According to Deliyannis, this mistake has influenced the dating of Chrysologus’ own reign. Given the legendary nature of this entire story (of Peter’s elevation), however, it is most likely that Agnellus names Sixtus because he was the predecessor of Leo the Great, with whom Chrysologus was connected, and not because of any definite source that told the event.11 A quick survey confirms how key this inversion to studies on Peter’s life has proven, as Agnellus’ miscalculations and solecisms have been uncritically incorporated into most studies of Peter hitherto. Only a generation ago, for example, the Jesuit classicist and philosopher George Ganss, S.J. (whose work was acknowledged earlier), followed Agnellus’ dating of Peter’s episcopal consecration “Under Sixtus III” in “probably c. 433,” and therefore placed Peter’s birth as late as 406.12 Yet, more critical scholars like Ruggero Benericetti and Dom Alejandre Olivar, rightly arguing that Peter was elevated to the episcopacy under Pope Celestine sometime between 425 and 429, tend to situate Peter’s birth in or around 380, while all agree that Agnellus was correct 6

LIFE AND TIMES

in reporting that Bishop Peter died in December of 450. Agnellus insists in many felicitous phrases that Peter was a very upright and intelligent Christian leader. We learn that Peter was faithful and highly effective in managing the resources of Ravenna, overseeing many building projects, but he also “wrote many volumes and was very wise.”13 Yet, among all of these great stories included in this collection of Agnellus’ episcopal lists, the most stupendous legend is how Peter came to be selected and ordained bishop of Ravenna. According to Agnellus, upon the death of Bishop Ursus (perhaps in late 425 or early 426), the See of Ravenna waited eagerly for its next bishop. As we saw, Agnellus’ dating is off a couple of decades and his sources have failed him. Yet, despite the rampant historical inaccuracies, the story of Peter’s elevation is worth telling. As Agnellus conveys, it was Pope Sixtus III (432–40) who had to attend to the empty cathedra in Ravenna. After Sixtus’ election, the pope was soon visited in a vision by Saint Peter of Rome and Bishop Apollinaris of Ravenna, once again symbolically tying these two dioceses together. Between these two august figures, Pope Sixtus beheld a young man who was soon revealed as Peter of Imola. All of a sudden, Saint Peter stepped forward and addressed Sixtus directly: “See this man, whom we have chosen, who stands between us; consecrate him, not any other.”14 When Sixtus woke and next appeared publicly before the dignitaries of Ravenna, he dismissed the original candidate whom they had brought for episcopal consecration. For two more days they brought in other candidates, and to allay his consternation in not finding the right candidate, Sixtus again received a vision not to ordain any of these men but to wait for the one in whose reign, “the Church of Ravenna will grow fat and be illuminated by his learning, as the fat of oil in a lamp illuminates when it is lit by fire.”15 Sixtus was then accordingly inspired to turn to the Bishop of Imola and directed him to usher in all his possible candidates for this bishopric. But the Bishop of Imola knew this request to be futile, as he would trust only one man with such a task, the deacon in charge of his eleemosynary affairs. But determined to see all possible candidates, the pope still ordered all clerics of Imola to be brought before him and when the doors opened, Sixtus saw not only a roomful of presbyters, but a young deacon as well. This young man was seen in the pope’s eyes to be holding the left hand of Saint Apollinaris and right hand of Saint Peter himself. When Sixtus announced his decision, half of the crowd began to grumble, “We will not receive a neophyte,” while the other half showed Peter proper deference. To heal this division, Pope Sixtus hushed the crowd and shared his visions in a convincing manner, telling all those gathered that Deacon Peter would be the future assurance that the Church of Ravenna remained in communion with the Church of Rome: Holy Sixtus of the Roman see, seeing the people divided on either side in this dispute, told everyone of his vision, as we said above; of how he ought to consecrate him through apostolic advice. “And if you do not want this father, all of you recede from me and alienate yourselves from the holy catholic Roman Church.” 7

INTRODUCTION

Then as with one voice, they began to shout and say, “Let him be ordained, let him be ordained!” Quickly they wrote a decree, and through the laying on of hands he received the Holy Spirit and was ordained as a bishop, and returned with glory to the see of Ravenna. From that day everyone began to venerate him as an angel.16 While Agnellus’ account of Bishop Peter’s life makes for a wonderful read, no doubt much detail is filled in with devotion. It is clear, however, that the future Chrysologus came from Imola, that he trained as a deacon under the bishop there, and was greatly revered later on as Bishop of Ravenna. In a brief sermon for the consecration of a diocesan see under Peter who is now this outlying area’s Metropolitan Bishop, we are able to confirm that he did in fact come from his beloved Imola, which was a very ancient and proud town along the picturesque Santerno river in the Roman region of Romagna (but is today practically indistinguishable from the sprawling metropolis of modern-day Bologna). Imola was then approximately 50 miles from the seaside city of Ravenna, where the Roman emperor Honorius had moved the imperial see immediately after the Visigoth Alaric’s entry into Italy in 401.17 Under the tutelage of Bishop Cornelius of Imola, for whom nothing but gratitude and filial affection is shown here in sermon 165, it is clear that Peter excelled in the standard Latin and rhetorical training of his day, mastering the writings and style of Cicero, Ovid, Horace, and Virgil. From there we can only surmise that Peter was proven worthy of diaconal service before being elected and consecrated the Bishop of Ravenna, the possibility of papal visions aside. Once in Ravenna, Peter began ardently to address the unique problems and opportunities of a maritime town shared by Catholic and non-Christian, by imperial affluence and generational indigence, between worldly soldiers and simple fishmongers, and all that meant for local culture, city structure, pilgrims and tourism, and the managing of a rapidly-growing city. During these years of Peter’s episcopacy, we are able to glean some historical facts from other sources and piece them together like the mosaics of Ravenna themselves. For instance, we know Bishop Peter wrote to the condemned monk Eutyches after a local council held at Constantinople under Bishop Flavian censured him in 448, and we know that in that same year, Peter was at the bedside of Germanus of Auxerre when he died in Ravenna while traveling for imperial business.18 Soon thereafter, Peter must have fallen ill with a malady he sensed would be his last, a not uncommon premonition in patristic and medieval lives of the saints. He gathered his remaining strength to collect “one gold vessel and also a silver paten and great gold votive crowns decorated with most precious gems” in order to present them to the people back in Imola. He returned to the Basilica of Blessed Cassian in Imola and prayed over his people gathered there: “Send them, Lord God, a true shepherd, who may gather Your sheep, not scattering them, but congregating them in the sheep folds of your Church.” To the priests present, he then turned and prayerfully exhorted them to imitate the Lord and to keep themselves 8

LIFE AND TIMES

and all their people free from error and schism: “Dearest sons, hear me. I am leaving and going into the way of all the earth (cf., Ps 93:14) where is found the Lord of the living. . . . Be perfect sons. Preserve yourselves from all heresy, beware of the Arian dogma, keep to the holy and uncontaminated catholic faith.”19 Then, on December 3, 450, Peter Chrysologus’ earthly life came to an end, a life lived between ecclesia and empire. Let us now then turn to those with whom Bishop Peter lived and to whom he ministered, the people of Ravenna and the imperial family especially.

The imperial family In the spring of 392 in the southeast of France, Emperor Valentinian II (b. 371) was found hanging in his ornate palace, dangling dead with a piece of his own linen cloth wrapped tightly around his neck. While clearly presented to be a suicide, many fingers pointed toward the military leader Arbogast (d. 394), Rome’s Magister Militum, who spent most of his military life jockeying for power, and who ultimately found the emperor in the way of his plans. When Valentinian’s body was moved to Milan for burial, Bishop Ambrose delivered his lengthy De obitu Valentiniani consolatio.20 With superhuman skill and insight into the imperial precariousness young Valentinian’s death meant for so many, Ambrose eulogizes that this death brings insecurity and thus weeping to so many, regardless of creed or political alliance: “Yet the exhortation to weep is not necessary. All are weeping: they weep who did not know him, even they weep who feared him, even they weep who do not wish to weep, even barbarians weep, even they weep who seemed to be his enemies.”21 The weeping Ambrose heard was out of not only a natural sense of loss but also a new fear of political trepidation. With Valentinian II gone, Arbogast originally recognized the rightful heir Arcadius as emperor but later campaigned to have all allegiance transferred to Eugenius who, as rumors knew, promised to help Arbogast restore paganism where Christianity seemingly only disappointed. With his trusted advisor Ambrose in his ear, however, Theodosius grew impatient with Arbogast’s machinations. Theodosius feared Arbogast’s popular influence in Gaul and Spain, especially in those places where the Church was still finding her place in the larger society. Theodosius feared the new pagan consul in Italy, Virius Nicomachus Flavianus, who was like-minded with Arbogast in wanting to see the revival of the Roman deities throughout the empire. In response to this threat, Theodosius chose to go to war and he defeated Arbogast and his troops handily at the Battle of Frigidus in 394, resulting in Flavianus’ taking his own life.22 In the following year, Theodosius proceeded to put his son Arcadius in charge of the eastern half of the empire with residence in Constantinople, and accordingly set Honorius as emperor of the west with residence in Milan; 395 was thus the last year one emperor controlled the whole Roman empire. In 401 the Visigoths entered Italy, alerting the imperial family to how strategically defenseless the sprawling metropolis of Milan had become. In the following 9

INTRODUCTION

year, therefore, Emperor Honorius moved his capital to Ravenna. A town consisting of approximately 50,000 people, the seaside metropolis of Ravenna offered the imperial family the consolation of its natural barriers of marshes, canals, and defendable coastline. The practicality of Ravenna now proved more important than the pomp of Rome and the prominence of Milan. Strategic location did not however mean peace. By the end of the first decade of the 5th century, Alaric and his men had made their way through most of Italy. Whereas Arcadius sent thousands of troops from the east to aid in the protection of Rome, Honorius took the route of negotiation with Alaric. With Ravenna left untouched, Alaric marched southward to sack Rome in 410 (occasioning, of course, Augustine of Hippo’s City of God). Honorius was neither a strong personality nor a feared leader; most of his ruling success was attributed to General Flavius Stilicho (d. 408 in Ravenna), Honorius’ childhood guardian made military strongman once Honorius took the purple. It was under Honorius that enemy soldiers had entered Rome for the first time in 800 years since the Senones’ pillaging of Rome’s splendor and spoils back in c. 390 BC. So little was the emperor’s mettle perceived in antiquity, that the Byzantine historian Procopius (d. 565) looked back and told this unflattering tale of Honorius’ insouciance and lack of political shrewdness: At that time they say that the Emperor Honorius in Ravenna received the message from one of the eunuchs, evidently a keeper of the poultry, that Rome had perished. And he cried out and said, “And yet it has just eaten from my hands!” For he had a very large cock, Rome by name; and the eunuch comprehending his words said that it was the city of Rome which had perished at the hands of Alaric, and the emperor with a sigh of relief answered quickly: “But I, my good fellow, thought that my fowl Rome had perished.” So great, they say, was the folly with which this emperor was possessed.23 It is not surprising, then, that for most of his life, Honorius had been keenly aware and afraid of his sister Galla Placidia’s (c. 388/90–450) keen intellect and political abilities to influence the upper-classes. So, when Alaric took Galla hostage, Honorius initially yet coldly refused to enter into any kind of bargain, seemingly apathetic to his sister’s future, some hinting he even preferred her gone. After Alaric’s death in 410, he was replaced by Ataulf, who wished to marry Galla Placidia, and did so in 414, now making her Queen of the Visigoths. From this union Galla gave birth to a son she named Theodosius, but he died within the year. As part of a peace treaty, Galla was returned to Honorius who, to cement some important military alliances, married her straightaway to the Roman general Constantius. With Constantius, Galla bore her daughter Iusta Grata Honoria (b. 417) and her son Valentinian (b. 419), with whom she fled to Ravenna. After the sickness and eventual death of Honorius on August 15, 423, the young heir was named nobilissimus later that same yaer; and then at only 5 years of age, 10

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Valentinian III was elevated to Caesar of the West in 424, and finally to Emperor in 425, in order to prevent further threats to his rule. As strong as his autonomy was, however, Valentinian’s youth forced him to govern with his mother serving as regent until he was able to rule alone in 437. Galla Placidia was thus clearly a highly effective and fluid figure, moving swiftly and successfully between affairs of both church and state. In fact, she and her husband Constantius were the first imperial rulers to settle a papal schism. A year after their forced marriage, Rome found itself divided between two rival presbyterial parties. When Pope Zosimus died the day after Christmas in 418, a group of Roman clergy elected their Archdeacon Eulalius in the Lateran Palace on December 27, while an opposing faction convened and elected the man who would eventually become Pope Boniface I the following day at the Church of St. Marcellus. With Rome divided, and often violently so, the city prefect petitioned the imperial family in Ravenna to intervene with a decision.24 In early 423 Galla Placidia and members of her family set sail for Constantinople, where she had spent much of her childhood. Eager to show her own son and daughter where she had grown up, all headed east. A typical spring squall arose, and the boat was in grave danger of capsizing. Legend has it that while others cowered, Galla stood upright and called out for John the Evangelist to still the sea, and so he did. To honor the Evangelist’s fidelity, Galla vowed at that very moment to build a place of prayer in his honor. Today, therefore, a pilgrim can visit San Giovanni Evangelista in northeast Ravenna and find in the apse this Latin inscription: “To the holy and most beloved apostle John the Evangelist, the Empress Galla Placidia with her son the Emperor Placidus Valentinian and her daughter the Empress Justa Grata Honoria fulfill the vow of liberation from the dangers of the sea.”25 While rumors of Galla’s political machinations and even assassination attempts on anyone who challenged her dynasty were not unheard of, Peter shows nothing but public admiration for his empress. Dispersed throughout his sermons are found snippets showing just how much he thought of Galla. He calls her the mother of any Christian present (mater christiani), and one whose almsdeeds mirror the work of the Church herself, having been found worthy of bearing the most majestic Trinity within her (possidere augustam meruit trinitatem; s. 130.3). She is unique among rulers, her entire family knowing that they can lead others only if they first bow their heads in worship to God (inclinantes deo capita; s. 85B.3). Even while Valentinian matured and thus grew to reign independently from his mother, Galla never bowed out of the eruptive arena of Roman politics, and it was during these years of the 5th century that Rome began to feel its obvious age, while Ravenna began to grow as a place of learning and culture, symbolizing Christianity’s eclipse over a putrefying paganism. As Valentinian III began to eclipse his mother, the stories surrounding Galla Placidia naturally surface less and less, but we have no reason she did not remain influential until her death in Rome on November 27, 450.26 After only a very short time of entombment in Rome, the empress mother’s mortal remains were 11

INTRODUCTION

translated back to Ravenna and placed in the gilded place of prayer that bears her name still, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. While sympathetic toward the imperial family, Bishop Peter maintained a consecrated distance as well, never forgetting he is their episcopus and thus the one who rules the Rulers in ecclesial and spiritual matters. Unlike the tensions and obvious dislike of John Chrysostom and the Empress Eudoxia in the East in the same century, the relationship between Peter and Galla is based on the offices they held as bishop and empress. There was an obvious intimacy, trust, and enjoyment of one another, evidenced by the kind words spoken and the benefices shown.27 And why not? From his arrival into Ravenna until her death a month before his own, Peter served as Galla Placidia’s bishop for most of her adult life. As we shall see, Chrysologus’ homilies exhibit a gratitude for proper secular government but never reduce human flourishing to well-ordered policy alone. Why not? We are made for heaven and are thus adopted out of our human families, regardless of how regal, into the family of God in which Peter himself is the visible head. Similarly, Peter walks a fine line in Ravenna, never eschewing riches in and of themselves, but nonetheless making sure that those with various levels of material wealth never place their own comfort over the needs of the city’s downtrodden. He is a man who knows how this world works and all that it demands, but never one consumed or defined by it. This is why the Son of God entered history the way he did: fully God and fully human. On the one hand, therefore, Peter has in mind those who stress the humanity of Christ and who stress the horizontality of the incarnation, reminding them that as Christ’s representative, he oversees them as divinely-appointed episcopus. But on the other hand, he too is a man who can relate to the movements and maneuverings of the human condition, always stressing the humanity of Christ at a time when the Church had to develop a magisterial taxonomy in keeping the two natures of her savior in proper tension. So, against these two major loci, we can often hear a sermon predicated upon the understanding that as beautiful as the Ravennate royal family and all this town represents may be, no human family can fulfill the heart’s longings, and as divine as Jesus Christ is, he remains fully human and always and everywhere united with us.

A 5th century bishop As mentioned earlier, Peter most probably entered the house of Bishop Cornelius of Imola as a young man to learn the ways of prayer, theology and, eventually, pastoral care. As most future clerics in late antiquity, Peter most likely would have first attached himself to the local cathedral in Imola under the direct tutelage of Bishop Cornelius, or at least someone whom the Bishop himself appointed to provide general instruction. These young men would be expected to master the traditional course of Latin and rhetoric, but would also study scripture in depth as well as what we call today constructive theology—basic Trinitarian theology, Christology, ecclesiology, and the moral life. Eventually these students would 12

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undergo various tests determining advancement, and training catechumens for baptism would be among their first official duties. If proven virtuous and capable, they would eventually be ordained deacon and be placed in charge of the many varied ministries of service: looking after the cathedral and other local Church buildings, administrating food and clothing to the needy, and serving at the altar. Whatever we today make of the pope’s visions instructing him to pick Peter as Ravenna’s next bishop, we know that he was selected to replace Bishop Ursus who is credited for having built (and for obviously having named) the first cathedral, the Ursiana.28 The dating for Ursus’ episcopacy and thus the breaking ground for the cathedral is sketchy, but Deliyannis concludes that, “Ursus reigned from 405–31, followed by Peter Chrysologus, and thus that the grand cathedral was a product of Ravenna’s new imperial importance.”29 This corresponds well enough to Agnellus’ description of events, suggesting that the massive building projects undertaken by Ursus brought about his eventual death on Easter of 431, buried in front of the altar of his own cathedral. This is the same year the heresiarch Nestorius is condemned at the Council of Ephesus, accused of separating Jesus Christ’s divine nature so radically from his humanity that, in effect, the Lord was to be understood to be two distinct persons. Although deposed at the Council of Ephesus in 431 and eventually exiled into the desert plains of Northern Egypt by Emperor Theodosius II, his teaching continued to find devoted followers throughout Constantinople and its surroundings. As one of Nestorius’ most vocal opponents at the council, the Archimandrite Eutyches used his position as superior over hundreds of monks just outside Constantinople’s city walls to teach the very contrary position: namely, that Christ’s natures were so seamlessly united that ultimately only the divine nature acted as the agent of all Jesus’ thoughts and actions. By 448, this “single nature” Christology of Eutyches was rivaling more scripturally accurate accounts of the Incarnation and was in serious need of being addressed. Consequently, Bishop Flavian of Constantinople called a local synod and official charges of heresy were brought against Eutyches and his followers. Condemned and cast out, the aged Eutyches had one final effort to reclaim his position as monastic superior: appeal to the ecclesiastics who outranked Flavian and Eusebius, Bishop of Dorylaeum, who brought the initial charges against him, as well as all those at the synod who voted to banish him.30 Therefore, Eutyches mustered his energy and made two appeals after his condemnation in 448: one to the Bishop of Rome, Leo, and the other to the Bishop of Ravenna, Peter. Whereas Rome had the ancient history and the heft of the Apostolic line, the Ravenesse Church now enjoyed the more immediate prestige and power of having the imperial family praying in its pews. Unfortunately, Eutyches’ missive to Peter is no longer extant, but we have no reason to assume it is much different than the condemned man’s letter to Leo, an attempt to explain his position and to clear his name. We do however have Peter’s reply to this letter and shall reproduce it here in full. What is striking throughout Bishop Peter’s response is his paternal tenderness toward Eutyches. This is perhaps softened more than it might have been otherwise, 13

INTRODUCTION

because it appears that Peter does not really understand what has transpired in Constantinople. He is still waiting on a fuller explanation from Bishop Flavius. As such, Peter really does not seem to fathom the intricacies and dangers of Eutyches’ position, with the result that he simply encourages this elderly and frail religious to surrender to the Apostolic See as found in the primal personage of Peter now lived through Leo. Here is the missive in full: To my most beloved son and deservedly honorable priest Eutyches, from Bishop Peter, Sadly I have read your sad letter (Tristis legi tristes litteras), and I have looked through what you have written with a suitable lament. For the peace among our Churches, the fraternity among her priests, as well as the tranquility of God’s people, all brings about a heavenly joy, and so fraternal dissension weighs us down, especially when it comes about through such disagreements. Thirty years ago human decrees settled human questions, but the questions of Christ’s begetting, which the divine law states is ineffable, is still being fiercely debated today.31 What Origen, that searcher into [First] Principles, attacked, and how Nestorius fell when arguing about the natures [of Christ], certainly does not lie hidden from your wisdom.32 With their sacred gifts (mysticis muneribus) the Magi confessed Jesus to be God while still in the cradle. But with their deplorable disputations priests today still search to find who this One might be, this One conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin. When Jesus cried in the cradle, the Heavenly Host cried out as well, “Glory to God in the highest;” and similarly we hear that, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Phil 2:10). But the question of his origin is still swirling about? My brother, let us say along with the Apostle, “even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer” (2 Cor 5:16b). Nor should we repeat this [proud search], doing injury to ourselves. But we are called to honor him, to be in awe of him, and to await his return. What we are not called to do is to judge the very One whom we confess to be our Judge. Admittedly, I have responded too briskly to what you, my brother, have written to me. I would have addressed these matters more at length if our brother and my co-bishop Flavian would have sent something more substantial regarding your case. You have written to me because you are displeased that you were not able to defend yourself. But how are we able to judge your jurors whom we can’t see because they are not here, and what can we know from them now that they are all silent? One is not a mediator who hears one side but leaves no room for the other side. But in all things, honorable brother, we exhort you: attend most obediently to what the most blessed pope of the City of Rome (beatissimo papa Romanae ciuitatis) has written. For it is Blessed Peter who lives and presides in that See, providing the truth of the Faith to those who are searching 14

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for it. As such, with our desire for peace and for faith, we are not able to agree on matters of faith apart from the agreement of the Bishop of the City of Rome. May the Lord vouchsafe to keep your love unharmed for a very long time, my most dear and worthy son.33 The letter reaches us unsigned, but it is one of the more historically traceable moments in Peter’s life. Since it is most likely a missive in response to Eutyches’ cry for reinstatement, it must have been written shortly after the local Council of Constantinople condemned him in 448. It is a most remarkable reply, exuding paternal care for one who has obviously felt misjudged, but addressed clearly to someone who is in need of fatherly correction as well. Peter is humbly honest, admitting that if he perhaps knew more, he might have more to say about the matter at hand. But what is most striking is the deference and devotion paid to the Bishop of Rome. In fact, of all the bishops in Agnellus’ list, this incident presents Peter as one who should be remembered for his fruitful collaboration with the Bishop of Rome, regarded as someone uniquely gifted to assist Pope Leo. Known for his courageous and eloquent presentation of the Catholic Faith, Peter’s letter, Agnellus suggests, solidified Eutyches’ exile and helped to unify all the bishops in attendance. For immediately following the public reading of Peter’s letter, we learn Eutyches fell in this council; and the rest of the bishops, together with all the Christian people, went away joyful and congratulatory after the dissolution of the council, giving great thanks to God and greatest praises to the emperors who observed the catholic and true faith.34 In truth, however, although Peter is portrayed as an able accomplice in fighting for ecclesial unity, his letter really lacks any theological depth, and he even admits that he was not really attuned to the proceedings and implications of those councils where Eutyches was under trial. This singular extant letter from Peter’s hand thus sets the stage for understanding this otherwise relatively unfamiliar figure today. For our best glimpse into the mind and soul of Peter, let us now turn to his many sermons. Here we shall meet a true court preacher at work: one who knows his audience’s penchant for succinct but theologically deep reflections on Scripture; one who consecrates a Ciceronian style to exhort his hearers to both Christian contemplation as well as action. Entering into these sermons we finally begin to appreciate how this Peter emerges as the “Golden Worded,” and how such theological acumen and pastoral care motivated Pope Benedict XIII to declare Peter Chrysologus a Doctor of the Church in 1729.

Peter the preacher Along with this one letter Peter penned to Eutyches, scholars are fairly certain that we now possess 183 sermons, but a most circuitous route had to be traversed to arrive at this final number.35 In the year 524 many of Chrysologus’ sermons 15

INTRODUCTION

were destroyed in a fire in Ravenna. Toil ensued over the decades to find copies and replace these scrolls, and it fell to another great Ravenesse bishop to complete this task. Reflecting the name and tenure of Bishop Felix (707/9–24), the earliest collection of manuscripts is known today as the Collectio Prefeliciana, sermons transcribed mostly in the late 6th and early 7th centuries, and then the later Collectio Feliciana is dated to the mid-11th century. It is clear from the more reliable Codex Vaticanus that Felix did not gather all of Peter’s homilies and 8 of the 176 he did include are in fact now considered spurious (sermons 53, 107, 119, 129, 135, 138, 149, and 159). Of the 168 authentic sermons, 15 extrauagantes from other codices have been concluded to be from Peter himself.36 These short homilies have been critically edited by the Catalonian Benedictine Dom Alejandre Olivar Daydí (d. 2018). Olivar was a specialist in liturgy who attended that session of Vatican II, but who spent most of his academic life in the thought of Peter Chrysologus, immersing himself in editing the critical edition of Peter’s homilies during the years 1975–82, now available in volumes 24, 24A, and 24B of the Corpus Christianorum series, and from where the proceeding English translations come. On average, Bishop Peter would have taken fifteen to twenty minutes to deliver one of these homilies. His scriptural proclamations followed the liturgical year which indubitably shaped the content of each sermon. Bishop Peter would most often begin by explaining the literal meaning of the biblical text, and then would move swiftly to an allegorical or spiritual implication of the verse he chose to focus in on, often repeating the salient scriptural term or even whole verse in order to keep the inspired word always before his congregation’s mind. “His homilies were rich with rhymes, assonance, antithesis, repetition, figurative senses, illustrations taken from ordinary life, descriptions, anaphora, and paronomasia.”37 Reading Chrysologus, it is quickly easy to agree with Olivar, that the one traceable influence on Peter’s preaching was Ambrose of Milan, who also delivered sermons mainly on scriptural scenes in tight and densely packed Latin sentences.38 It is noteworthy to see how many of Chrysologus’ extant 183 sermons do not consider it superfluous to concentrate on the same biblical episode more than once: 5 homilies exploring the dynamics of the Prodigal Son story, 6 commenting line-by-line on the Pater Noster, 4 explicating the implications of Lazarus and the Rich Man’s encounter in the afterlife, and at least 8 explaining the Creed, and so on. It is clear from these how Peter preferred to home in on shorter pericopes and then for his listeners to open them up word by word, character by character, movement by movement, theological theme by theological theme. Our preacher imagined his task as one of opening up the otherwise hidden meaning of Scripture. To do this, he thought slow, thoroughly recondite examination of words and images best. As exegete, he takes his time and focuses on a term; as pastor, he takes note of his flock’s moods and reactions. In fact, he observes when they are not responding with the proper amount of pathos and will stop preaching, promising to return to a particular theme at a later date when he feels his audience will be able to 16

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concentrate better: “while I wish to open the mystery of this reading (lectionis huius aperire mysterium),” Bishop Peter admits in reference to the Prodigal Son Parable, “you are not listening with the needed passion (debito cum dolore), but with wandering minds are passing over this message too hastily” (s. 2.5). This was the entire purpose of his preaching, to help everyone in attendance grasp the mystical meaning of the scriptures and the liturgy in which they are proclaimed: “the duty of the doctor (Doctoris officium) is to explicate the readings and with a comprehensible sermon explain the mystical senses which otherwise remain concealed” (mysticis obscurata sensibus; s. 52.1).39 To do this, Peter displays a loving attentiveness to his people, causing Hughes Oliphant Old to comment that Bishop Peter’s sermons show an awareness of the problems of his day which does not commonly appear in the sermons of the patristic period. His solid knowledge of Scripture makes it possible for him to speak the Word of God to the situation in a way that is prophetic. Peter was above all a pastoral preacher.40 Let us now look at how this “solid knowledge of Scripture” was transmitted to the people of 5th century Ravenna. Bishop Peter puts no real importance on whether he is delivering a sermon or a tractate (s. 72B.6), nor is he always careful in providing the sources from which he preaches. But Peter is expert at making the ancient word of God of immediate concern for the issues and ills that were of concern in the 5th century. The mysteries of Scripture are conveyed not as tokens of a past age, but as living invitations for us to see our own selves in the life of Jesus Christ. The Gospels are our stories too. Peter seeks to draw his congregation into a contemplative meditation of the scriptural verse he has chosen. He prefaces his words by reminding the Christian people that the inspired word of God may not be written to them but it is written for them, and their role in receiving this word is to make real mystically in their own lives what they hear audibly proclaimed from Scripture. While he naturally favors preaching on scenes and stories found in the New Testament, his exegesis is firmly rooted in the people of Israel and the preparatory nature of Judaism. Peter often chooses to take one of these stories or scenes and preach on it more than once. He preached on the Prodigal Son story at least five times (s. 1–5), the Temptations of Christ at least three (s. 11–13), on the “Our Father” on at least six occasions (67–72), and on the major events of Christianity (e.g., the Annunciation, the Nativity, Epiphany, and Pentecost) many, many times. Andrea Bizzozero lays out four reasons why this repetition made sense in Peter’s pastoral approach to preaching: (1) he honored the Church’s annual feasts, (2) he wanted to account for each of the four Gospel authors’ varied account for a major event, like the resurrection, (3) he preferred shorter and multiple sermons over one or two lengthier deliveries, and (4) his exegetical style of preferring to dwell on a single word or phrase inevitably forced him to return to a scriptural text the next 17

INTRODUCTION

day.41 This fourth point, Bizzozero argues, was the influence of “an allegorical exegetical method from the Alexandrian tradition, P.C. preach[ing] first on the literal meaning of the text, and then on the spiritual meaning, and then on the moral application.”42 He will do this in various ways, some quite novel. In fact, in sermon 11, Peter is probably the first Christian preacher who uses homily time to instruct Satan in how he could have been a more effective seducer. While this sermon on the desert temptations makes it clear that Jesus is led there not by the enemy but by the Holy Spirit—for it is a divine journey (cursus) and not a creaturely endeavor (incursus) stemming from the Spirit’s prescience (praescientiae) and not from mortal nescience (inscientia)—the power of God is stressed throughout. So, in what strikes a tone of both mocking ridicule and sagacious advice, Peter surprisingly turns directly to the devil and addresses him in the vocative (Diabole) in order to instruct him that if he is ever going to defeat God, he has to change tactics. As he continues to teach the enemy, Bishop Peter tells him that in offering Christ stones for bread, he erred and would never therefore achieve his aim: You poor wretch (Miser), you want to be malicious but you are not able; you desire to tempt but do not know how. You should have offered this hungry man delicious food, not inedible rocks; you should not have tempted his hunger with things coarse; you should not have tried to whet his appetite with horrid food but with luscious savories. Your plan could not even entice a son of man, let alone the Son of God. (s. 11.6) At other times, Peter will construct an imaginary conversation with Mary, the Mother of God, for his parishioners. He puts before them the remarkable moment of the Annunciation, and takes it upon himself to tell Mary what it is she now needs to know: O Virgin, and do not be so bold as to call him your son, but as soon as he is born, invoke him as your Savior, because your virginity did not bear a son only for yourself, but you have born the child of the Author of all. Your integrity bears not your son but your Lord, as the angel said: “and you shall name him Jesus” (Lk 1:31b), because in Hebrew Jesus means Savior. (s. 142.7) He also imagines an extended dialogue between the Roman centurion and Jesus Christ, which Peter fabricates in order to draw his hearers more intensely into this dramatic exchange. In sermon 15, we hear the centurion confide in Christ that he only calls his servant “my boy” because he is infirm and lying down; if he were well and upright he would then belong to Christ: 18

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My boy. I say my because he is lying down, but if he were yours, Lord, he would not be down. This the Prophet evinces when he writes: “O come, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, you who stand in the house of the Lord” (Ps 134:1). You are the one who stands; you are not the one who lies down. Your servants stand upright; the servants of mortals lie down. Because this servant is mine, he is paralyzed, but he does this so he might now be yours and thus be healed. (s. 15.2) Here the theology assumed is that alone and apart from Christ, one is moribund and paralyzed; yet in Christ one receives a new life, a new posture. Peter knew well the only thing one can call wholly one’s own is sin and sickness; only in graced communion with Christ is there fruit and flourishing. To make this point, the 5th century Christian is invited into an ancient dialogue, devised by Bishop Peter so all persons can see not only themselves as infirmed, but also in dire need for Christ, the Great Physician. In not shying away from such dramatic dialogue, Peter intends to bring his people into a renewed presentation of classical biblical scenes, simultaneously inviting them to make the scenes and smells, the people and the places of the Bible become real in their own lives: “Such examples are given to each of you, O mortal, that you might know who you really are, how much you actually matter, and the quality of life to which you are now being called” (s. 141.2). In so doing, we encounter a Churchman who is not afraid to use whatever is at his disposal to help his people grow in their understanding and assimilation of key scriptural truths. To appreciate how he accomplishes this within his preaching, we shall highlight four pivotal themes found dispersed throughout Peter’s sermons. The first is his use of the imago Dei as found in Genesis. While Peter’s sermons expound texts mainly from the New Testament, he never shies away from incorporating the foundational images from the Old Testament in which the Christian themes are historically rooted. His use of Genesis 1 stands out as a rich font of theological anthropology and typology of how God intended his good creation to be. The second theme to be treated emerges as the fulfillment of the first: the “yes” of Mary and Peter’s subsequent Christology. Here we shall see how the advent of Christ is the unique event which determines and shapes all of Peter’s preaching. The third theme is the effect of the incarnation, the divinization of the human person.43 This is a theme which has not been sufficiently by scholars, but a central soteriological metaphor in Peter’s sermons all the same. He employs various images to explain Christian deification: the great exchange, divine adoption, and becoming Christ on earth for others. The fourth and final section takes up where and how this occurs, Peter’s ecclesiology. The Church which Peter serves is the locus deificandi, the arena where God pours out his life into more and more children, as his only-begotten Son continues and extends his life in his baptized brothers and sisters. Perhaps there is no greater guarantee that this is God’s Church than the life of her members. Peter is insistent that charitable deeds are manifestations of nothing other than God’s goodness and amidst the pomp and wealth of 19

INTRODUCTION

imperial Ravenna, he holds up the poor of Christ’s own time as those still to be met under the arches and in the streets of his own hometown. Social justice therefore becomes an essential part of the Church’s life and identity.

Notes 1 Some scholars have argued that the city name Ravenna is derived from the root rau-, meaning river, and the Tyrrhenian suffix -na, while others have seen in the suffix the Etruscan-enna which denotes a very gravely ground which would fit the more inland terrain. 2 Strabo, Geography, 5.1.11; The Geography of Strabo, ed. Horace Jones (New York: The Loeb Classical Library [1932] 1953), 327. 3 Oscar Wilde, “Ravenna,” lines 213–220, as in Complete Poetry, ed. Isobel Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 37. 4 Traveling with his former professor, John Pentland Mahaffy, and some other companions on their way from Greece to Rome in the spring of 1877, Wilde stopped off in Ravenna to see the sites there and was naturally drawn to the renowned mosaics. Of all the various attractions he took in during those days, Wilde wrote that it was in particular the mosaics of the Madonna that held the most power for him. Why so? These glorious representations of the Mother of God by the Ravenesse Church, in Wilde’s days of thinking about converting to Catholicism, convinced him that such ancient Marian devotion, “completely upset the ordinary Protestant idea that the worship of the Virgin did not come in till late in the history of the Church,” “Letter 45,” as in Rupert HartDavis, ed., More Letters of Oscar Wilde (London: John Murray, 1985), 35. This pivotal trip is well covered in Joseph Pearce, The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 91–109. 5 T.S. Eliot, “Lune de Mel,” lines 8–10, as in Collected Poems, 1909–1962 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1984) 40. 6 For two helpful guides to the city of Ravenna, see edd, Wladimiro Bendazzi and Riccardo Ricci, Ravenna: Guide to the Knowledge of City (Ravenna: Sirri-Ravenna, 1987) and Gianfranco Bustacchini, Ravenna: Mosaics, Monuments and Environment (Ravenna: Cartolibreria, 1984). 7 The best introduction to the life of Andreas Agnellus and the historical context of his composing his history of the Ravennate Church is found in The Books of the Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna, ed. Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 1–90; see especially 11–19 where Deliyannis is able to locate more concrete dating for Agnellus’ composition for various bishops. 8 Otto von Simson, Sacred Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 10. 9 For more on this early history, see Judith Herrin, Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020). 10 For Agnellus’ influences on how he composed this fabrication and why, see Joaquín Martínez Pizarro, Writing Ravenna: The Liber Pontificalis of Andreas Agnellus (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995), 106–19. 11 Deliyannis, The Book of the Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna, op. cit., p. 159, note 5. 12 George E. Ganss, SJ, St. Peter Chrysologus: Sermons & St. Valerian: Homilies, vol. 17 of the Fathers of the Church Series (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, [1953] 1984), 5. 13 Agnellus, Books of the Pontiffs, op. cit., §51, p. 163. 14 Ibid., §49, p. 159. 15 Ibid., §49, p. 160. 16 Ibid., §49, p. 161. We lack a definite year for Peter’s episcopal consecration, dated usually in 433, and Deliyannis carefully points out that Agnellus probably chose Pope

20

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17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24

25

26 27

28 29 30

31

Sixtus’ pontificate in which to date these otherworldly occurrences, “simply because he was the predecessor of Leo I, with whom Chrysologus was connected, and not because of any definite source that told the event,” ibid., p. 159, note 5. For more here, see John Matthews’ chapter, “Alaric, Rome, Ravenna,” in Western Aristocracies and Imperial Courts AD 364–425 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, [1975] 1990), 284–306. A woefully understudied figure, among the best biographies of Germanus is still, E.A. Thompson, Saint Germanus of Auxerre and the End of Roman Britain, Studies in Celtic History 6 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1984). For more on Germanus’ time in Ravenna and Bishop Peter’s interaction with him, see Stewart, Irvin Oost, Galla Placidia Augusta: A Biographical Essay (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 265ff. Agnellus, Books of the Pontiffs, op. cit., §52, pp. 163–5. For more here, see Michele Renee Salzman, “Ambrose and the Usurpation of Arbogastes and Eugenius: Reflections on Pagan-Christian Conflict Narratives,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 18, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 191–223. Ambrose, “On the Death of Valentinian” §3, as in Funeral Homilies by Gregory of Nazianzen and Ambrose, ed. Roy Deferrari et al. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1953), 266. For more on this decisive battle, see P.T. Crawford, “The Battle of Frigidus River,” The Ancient World: A Scholarly Journal for the Study of Antiquity, 43 (2012): 33–52. Procopius of Caeserea, History of the Wars III.2.25–26, trans., H.B. Dewing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, [1914] 1990), 17. With much of the popular support, the Antipope Eulalius seems to have suffered from an over-confidence in the Emperor’s favor, and disregarded the imperial decision that he should stay out of Rome for Easter until this matter was decided. Galla initially preferred Eulalius, but simply because he was chosen first, and so it seems did the Emperor. However, Honorius eventually rescinded his decision for Eulalius due to the latter’s brashness, and had the imperial guard escort Eulalius out of Rome, thereby placing Boniface on the Chair of Peter shortly after Easter in 419. Joyce E. Salisbury, Rome’s Christian Empress: Galla Placidia Rules at the Twilight of the Empire (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 150; for more on this structure, see Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 63–70. Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity, op. cit., p. 40. Contrasting the temperaments of these two golden preachers, Chrysostom and Chrysologus, and how they interacted with the empresses of their day is illuminating. Whereas Peter and Galla showed an obvious mutual respect for one another, Chrysostom denounced Eudoxia (named Augusta in 400) for her courtly excess and undue influence in political matters. She thus supported Chrysostom’s condemnation at the Synod of the Oak (so named after the suburb outside of Constantinople where it was held) in 403 and was surely behind his censure and eventual exile in 404 (after Chrysostom called for the rejection of a silver statue of Eudoxia being erected in her honor). Agnellus, Book of Pontiffs, op. cit., §23, p. 118. Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity, op. cit., 86. For the theology as well as the ecclesial and cultural impact of the Council of Chalcedon, see Richard Price and Mary Whitby, Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils 400–700 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009); see also, Frances Young’s standard, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and Its Background (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2nd edition with Andrew Teal, [1983] 2010). The triginta annis, 30 years, is no doubt in reference to the Council of Ephesus in 431 where the unity of the two natures of Christ was officially taught, dwelling in an equal and unconfused way in this divine person now made flesh, ecclesially sanctioning the title Theotókos, or “Mother of God” in the veneration of Mary.

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INTRODUCTION

32 Origen (d. 254), author of First Principles, was at this time held responsible for any subordinating tendencies when post-Nicene theologians suspected others of errors, especially placing the Father ontologically above the Son; Nestorius (d. 451) of course occasioned the need to hold the Council of Ephesus, wrongly holding that Mary could be invoked only as the Mother of the Christ but not the Mother of God (Theotókos), thus relying on a Christology that divided the natures of the incarnate Word in a confusing and conflicting manner. 33 Patrologia Latina 54.775–780. 34 Agnellus, Book of the Pontiffs, op. cit., §48, p. 159. 35 The well-known Ravenna Scroll, also known as the Rotulus of Ravenna, is a prayer book replete with liturgical antiphons, especially for Advent, once attributed to Peter, but now considered to have originated in the 7th century; for more, see Anthony Ward, “The Perennial Rotulus of Ravenna,” Questions Liturgiques 70, no. 3 (1989): 127–67; Guglielmo Cavallo, Roti dell’Exultet dell’Italia meridionale (Bari: Adriatica Editrice, 1973). 36 William Palardy, St. Peter Chrysologus, Selected Sermons, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), vol. 109 in the Fathers of the Church Series, 28, note 144, showing dependency upon Olivar, Los sermons de san Pedro Crisólogo: Estudio crítico (Montserrat: Abadía de Montserrat, 1962). 37 Andrea Bizzozero, “Peter Chrysologus,” in Preaching in the Patristic Era Sermons: Preachers, and Audiences in the Latin West Series, vol. 6, A New History of the Sermon (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 403–29, 412. 38 Alexandre Olivar, La predicación cristiana Antigua, Sección de teología y filosofía, no. 189 (Barcelona: Biblioteca Herder, 1991), 298–9. 39 For a helpful study on preaching in the early Church Fathers, see edd., Anthony Dupont, Shari Boodts, Gert Partoens, and Johan Leemans, Preaching in the Patristic Era: Sermons, Preachers, and Audiences in the Latin West (Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2018). 40 Hugh Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), vol. 2.423. 41 Andrea Bizzozero, “Peter Chrysologus,” ch. 18 in Preaching in the Patristic Era: Sermons, Preachers, and Audiences in the Latin West, ed. Anthony Dupont et al. (Leiden: Brill Publishing, 2018), 403–29, 419–20. 42 Ibid., p. 420. 43 More and more studies abound on the lost theology of Christian theosis or deification; for the best overview of this central theme in the early Church, see Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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2 THEOLOGICAL THEMES

The divine image and likeness A necessary move in Peter’s theological macrostructure is how he seems to keep the story of Genesis always in the back of his mind. He understands well that we are made for unalloyed joy and the divine image and likeness implanted into every human soul is not only what has necessarily hardwired each of us for holiness, but it is also why each of us finds this fallen world so dissatisfying. It is not as if the Christ-event is an unfortunate afterthought, but God has instead created all of us for that divine-human encounter. As such, divinization is not something adventitious and artificial to the human person but precisely that for which Adam and Eve had been created. This is what gives humans such heavenly dignity and what prepares the incarnation to be a thing of beauty; God’s assuming to himself the very dust of his own creation. In this way, Peter’s theology of the imago Dei allows him to honor human nature as something divinely intended by the Father and elevate it even further through its assumption by the Son: Therefore, since God knows that we mortals are tortured and suffer from our desire to see him, he chose to make himself visible in a way that was a tremendous thing to those on earth and no small thing to those in heaven. For how would anything on earth to which God likened himself not be regarded honorable in heaven? “Let us make,” he said, “the human person after our own image and likeness” (Gen 1:26). If perfect devotion is owed to a king, it is also owed to any image of that king. If God had assumed the angelic substance to himself from heaven, he would now be no less invisible. If he would have assumed something from the earth below our human nature, he would have spoiled his divine nature, and instead of elevating our humanity, he would have dishonored it. For no one, my dear friends, should believe it to be injurious to God if God wishes to come to humans as a human, taking from our nature what he needs to be seen by all. (s. 147.8)

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INTRODUCTION

Bishop Peter here wants his people to see that the reason the Incarnation of God is not an unreasonable or even degrading move on God’s part is because humanity is made in God’s own image in the first place. While below him, it is a sign of love to draw near to the other; this is why even though the King may be absent from his kingdom, those in his service are to be no less honored. Humanity’s imaging and likeness to God serves as a sort of divine lodestone, the attraction for God to leave heaven and unite himself with the human race: And God, who created the human person in his image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26), proves why he seeks us even in our sin. You complain, O mortal, that God pursues us in our sin. What will you do when you see him descend even into Tartarus, into darkness itself, for our sake? Listen to what was gained when Christ went to the house of a sinner. (s. 54.6) The perfect God desires union with sinful humanity, and in his love he searches out (inquirit) those who would rather hide in the shame brought about by their sins. It is this capacity to unite otherwise disparate opposites, divinity and humanity, perfection and brokenness, that makes the imago Dei so important in Peter’s preaching. The human person is a frontier creature straddling heaven and earth, a hybrid existent who shares a bit in the world of animal body but also angelic brilliance: This is why God made you out of earth, so that you might be the lord of earthly things—sharing a common created nature with them, but not so terrestrial that you are only equal to them, for you have also been made like the Heavenly One with whom you share a rational soul. You therefore have reason and are thus like God, but you also have a body and are thus like the animals. God gave you your soul from heaven, and he gave you your body from the earth, so that in you a harmony between heaven and earth might be made manifest. Yet, your Creator was thinking how he might still add to your honor. So in you he places his own image in order that a visible image would express the presence of the invisible Creator on earth, and that image would be from his earth; he gave you his own status (uices) so that the Lord’s delegated possession (uicaria possessio) of the world, a possession so vast, would not be defrauded. (s. 158.2) The human hybrid is the Lord’s special creature, one so dear to God that he endows him with the attributes of both heaven and earth, protecting him by coming to him as one of his own, in our “body from the earth.”1 The human person is the divine’s viceroy on earth: the visible face of a still invisible God. In fact, Chrysologus sees in the imago Dei status of every human creature a divine filiality. For when God the Father says “let us make” man and woman, 24

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Peter depicts him speaking to the Son. This could not be spoken to an angel, for the angelic and divine natures are essentially different (cf. s. 131.12), but this hortatory subjunctive not only creates the human person in the Trinitarian image and likeness, but it also sets the stage for the Son’s descent into humanity. The Father first calls upon the Son’s perfect imaging of himself in the creation of humanity (Col 1:15), and then sends the Son into humanity so as to unite men and women into one by communicating the Trinity’s own divine life. Let us now turn to Peter’s portrayal of this descent into, and divinization of, those made toward God’s own image and likeness.

Mary’s “yes” and the incarnation At the heart of the Christian life is, of course, the Son of God’s becoming human through the free assent of a virgin mother. Peter tends to stress this divine inbreaking as a continued mystery, still something unfathomable even now: You have heard too something unheard of: how God and humanity have now become mingled together, having heard how the fragile nature of our human flesh has been fortified through the message of an angel and is now able to show forth the fullness of divine glory. (s. 142.1) Peter realizes that God’s mingling his own nature with our humanity is an act of divine humility, and so our preacher is very careful to present this moment reverently. He piously selects how and where to describe this, employing nearly a dozen carefully chosen terms to describe Mary’s womb. Depending on the overall theme of the sermon in question, Mary’s fiat mihi is portrayed as occurring in her hospitium, domicilum, domus, habitaculum, templum, mansio, and so on.2 From this womb, salvation springs and Peter’s Mariology stresses Jesus’ Mother as the one whose “yes” allows heaven and earth, divinity and humanity, to be unified forever. For at Mary’s fiat, she effected the perfect communion between God and humanity in her only-begotten Son Jesus. More and more attention was being paid, theologically and poetically, to Mary’s body in the 5th century. In fact, it became a certain commonplace to preach about Mary’s womb as a type of workshop where God welded humanity and divinity together. Mary’s womb was a place of reverence and mystery, and at the Council of Ephesus, Bishop Proclus opened the first session by becoming the first one on record to preach not only about but even to Mary’s womb.3 In this growing Mariology, Peter also stands out as someone who describes the womb of Mary as a place of mercantilism, an abode of barter. However, before he talks about the bodily effects of the divine descent, he first brings to his hearers’ minds the fact that Mary thinks deeply about what is about to happen: “she dwells carefully on what is about to happen” (cogitare uero ponderis), and to do otherwise, we hear, is foolish and the way most of us approach 25

INTRODUCTION

heavenly matters. Leading us intellectually first, then, young Mary (puellula) is now able to offer her very self, thus requesting that for her harboring God in her womb, she may in return receive peace on earth, honor in heaven, salvation for the sick, life for the perishing, and an alliance between the saints in heaven and us on earth, and even more, union between mortal flesh and God himself (cum carne commercium). (s. 140.6) It is Mary’s thoughtful and freely assented fiat that unites heaven and earth, bringing about a new peace and thus a new life for those who join in her “yes.” This is a life-giving conversation between God and the representative of all humanity, the Virgin Mary, who defeats the devil by replacing Eve’s original denial, thus bringing about a new commercium (s. 74.5) between heaven and earth. From this womb a newborn King appears and Bishop Peter relishes in describing how this Messiah must share in all developmental stages of human living (percurrit aetates). This natural human development understands that, although God, Jesus Christ passes through all the experiences of human maturation. In so doing, the Incarnation renovates and consecrates all that humanity had lost in the Fall, a perfect schema in which to show how Mary is also the New Eve who remedies all the first Eve ruined. This is a typology finding its roots in such early thinkers as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus of Lyons,4 and by Peter’s time had become quite standard: whereas a fallen angel first came to Eve, Gabriel the archangel came to Mary, and so what the bad angel had rejected (deiecerat), the good angel raises up (adleuaret); whereas the first Eve promoted infidelity (perfidiam), the Second brings about faith (fidem); Eve put her trust in a tempter (suasori), Mary in the Creator (auctori; s. 148.5). These quickly paralleled couplets held together with adroitly paired Latin contrasts offer both a vivid example of Peter’s style as well as a glimpse into his overall theological approach. What the Old Testament’s terms and persons prepare, the New Testament completes and fulfills. Peter is aware of the Christological heresies of his and past generations. He knows of a late crude form of Docetism (s. 144), he mentions the Arians more than once, is aware (to a limited degree) of the inherent problems of Nestorianism.5 He also appears sensitive to a form of Patripassianism and dismisses the possibility of the Father’s suffering in the passion of Christ (s. 5.6).6 He is clear that Mary’s labor and birth is something wholly divine, perhaps distancing himself from the Nestorian tendencies swirling around the years of his preaching (s. 57.6). But whereas many 5th-century preachers linked the biological body of Christ with his Eucharistic body, in Peter there is unfortunately no discernably sustained eucharistic theology. There is no one homily or highlighting of this sacrament, most likely due to Bishop Peter’s inability to preach much at length during Holy Week, due to the necessary preparation of the catechumens as well as his own fasting (s. 74.1). When it comes to understanding what Peter thinks might have happened on Good Friday, we have only two sermons dealing directly with Christ’s Passion (s. 26

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72A and s. 72B). From these (and from other places the Cross appears), we learn that the Jesus of Calvary for Peter truly is the Victor Christus, the strongman who defeats death by the power of life and love. Here Peter sounds very much like Athanasius of Alexandria (d. 373) in arguing that the spectacle of Calvary was the most fitting way God should redeem the world, as here no one could doubt that he really died; it is a public sacrifice and surely not a death experienced by the common man, like as in sickness or old age (cf. s. 72B.2).7 Yet, in going after the One over whom death had no right, death (dramatically and effectively anthropomorphized throughout this sermon) hesitates on Good Friday because it senses that this man does not belong to it (quia summ ubi esset nil sentit) and, so, a bit later: All the same, death was mingled with the fury of the Jewish leaders and desperately grasps and attacks the Author of life; and here death itself was willing to die as long as it did not have to let go of such spoils. (s. 72B.2) In this struggle, death loses sight of its domain and is propelled by human anger to go after Life’s Author, thereby foregoing its hold on its dead. This theme of Christ’s overpowering death runs throughout any place where Peter chooses to talk about Calvary, and not simply in his few Holy Week sermons. In these moments, the traditional contraries of pride versus humility, life versus death, God versus God’s enemies, make up the central strands of the narrative. Again, presenting death as an actor in this drama, Peter preaches how: He came for the first human, the servant exiled on account of pride. The Lord himself, who had protected heaven, who had blocked off the nether region, descended to earth as well as into hell with all his power so that he might extinguish those fires and right away destroy immediately what was closed off to him. This is the reason why he carries the battering ram of the Cross marching on the netherworld, so that he might break and crush those very doors of Tartarus fortified by iron and copper. From his side he poured out water, so that he might arrange a way to paradise, extinguish the flames of the infernal regions on the side of the holy ones. This is how he completely washed away the ledger of debts, so that he might remit through his suffering all that which was brought about by his command. (s. 123.6) The Son descends to cleanse us of sin and to put out the infernal rage. Yet in explaining Christ’s fortifying our fragility, Peter never stops simply at the forgiveness of sins but brings into his theology of atonement a constant undercurrent of divinization: Who after all is able to draw near to the mystery of God, the Virgin’s conceiving and the cause of all these things—the transaction of the centuries, 27

INTRODUCTION

the exchange of divinity and flesh, that man and God are now one God (hominem deumque unum deum)? (s. 143.1) Let us now turn to that key image in Peter’s preaching, the transformative union present not only as the Christ of God but participatorily available to all who humbly surrender to him.

Deification of the human person After 40 days of Lenten ascesis, the sun rises over the waters of Ravenna and in this new light the Bishop asks of his congregation, along with those who he will soon baptize, what is more amazing, “Whether God lowered himself to our oppression, or that he has snatched us up to the glory of his own divinity?” In this, the sixth homily he gave on the Our Father, Peter stresses the new agency granted to the baptized by the Incarnation of God’s only Son. Our preacher is wonderfully aware that the Pater Noster is spoken only supernaturally. That is, no human can call God “Father” on the natural level; no individual speaks or prays “our” on the natural level. As humans, our fathers are other human mortals, but as members of Christ’s family, our “Father” is also the first divine person of the Holy Trinity; as humans, we constantly begin requests and sentences with “I” or “my,” but as members of Christ’s family, we are instructed to pray “Our.” For Peter this elevation is made possible only by the Son’s descent, for in his becoming human, we humans are called to become “god,” and he thus teaches his flock that this is a new life in Christ which no heavenly or earthly creature could ever conceive: that such an exchange (tantum commercium) could have ever come about so unexpectedly between heaven and earth, between mortal flesh and God, that God could be turned (uerteretur) into a human, and that humans would be turned into God, the Lord into a servant, and servants into sons and daughters. (s. 72.3) The Incarnation of God brings about a double “turn,” a term which could be taken heretically but used by Peter simply to teach that as God becomes human, we become godly, once only creatures who have been in Christ made into children of the same Father. In Christ’s kenosis is our theosis. Language of exchange was given biblical authority when St. Paul described the incarnation as God’s becoming poor, so we could become rich (2 Cor 8:9), and a few centuries later, St. Athanasius gave it its most legendary and lapidary expression: “God became a man so that men and women could become god.”8 In the next century, Peter Chrysologus followed suit: Venit ad humanitatem diuinitas, ut ad diuinitatem ueniret humanitas—“Divinity came to humanity, so that humanity 28

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could come to divinity” (s. 30.3). While not always so succinct, here and throughout his sermons, Bishop Peter employs this language of “exchange,” commercium, the soteriological imagery that stresses God’s humanity for our divinity. Take, for instance, the fourth sermon on the events of Epiphany, when the Magi are able to behold “heaven on earth, earth in heaven, humanity in God and God in humanity.” This is the mystery of the incarnation, these Wise Men finding themselves marveling at the “exchange between divinity and flesh (commercium diuinitas et carnis) which has come together in this one and the same body” (s. 160.2). This exchange is ultimately the entire purpose of God’s carnal condescension, and must therefore be the prayer of every Christian, not only that God unite himself to us through the kenotic descent of the Son, but that he also unites us back to God through our transformative, deified ascent as well: “Let Christ come, let him come, that he may renew our mortal flesh and rejuvenate our soul, converting our nature into something heavenly. May he come to take away sin, to wipe away death, destroy hell, return us to life and grant us heaven, so that the ruin of the fall is no longer able to find anything in us which could be lost” (s. 45.5). Notice Peter’s progression: it was not enough that God created us, not enough that he saves us, not enough to destroy death and ravish hell, but so much more— to transform our shackled mortality into a divine humanity. This is why Christ did all he did and how he fulfilled the Old Law. Preaching on the scene where Jesus’ disciples are challenged on why their Master does not fast (cf. Mt 9:14–17), Peter uses this encounter to explain that the entire reason Jesus did what he did, why he founded a Church, why he ate with sinners, and why he even took on the personality and character traits he did, wholly captivating and loveable (totus blandus, totus amabilis), was “to join all that is human to the divine and thus establish a consortium between heaven and earth” (s. 31.3). At times this consortium is presented in nuptial terms, as when Bishop Peter is preaching on the dignity of marriage. For instance, at Rom 7:1–6, Peter avers that Paul is ultimately speaking about the union between Christ and his Church. Any affection apart from Christ is therefore a spiritual form of adultery, and this is why Christ risks all misunderstanding and social opprobrium to seek out the adulteress and call her back ad Christi consortium, to union with himself (s. 115.3). In this consortium, union between Christ and the soul is achieved, and this spiritual espousal exalts men and women out of slavishly following the old Law and places within them a new life, “partaking of the heavenly nature” (consortes caelestis naturae) which will inevitably bring forth “a fruitfulness which is not temporal but godly, not mortal but eternal, not fleshy but unto God” (s. 115.4). Deifying union with the eternal Bridegroom effects a new agency in the life of those who were once mere mortals, enabling them now to reap a new fruit, an elevated life empowering them to act as no natural human can—e.g., to live out the beatitudes, to pray for one’s persecutors, to love one’s enemies, and so on. The scriptural locus classicus for divinization has traditionally been 2 Pet 1:4, diuinae consortes naturae—partakers of the divine nature—which fits well with one of Peter’s preferred terms for the incarnation, this exchange, this consortium, 29

INTRODUCTION

which captures God’s descent so as to raise us mortals into the divine life. But as close as some taxonomy appears, Peter never directly cites 2 Pet 1:4. He in fact alters the language so as to express the same reality of God’s “fitting (aptat) men and women into his children, elevating our earthly beings into his own heavenly nature” (s. 10.2). In the incarnation, God calibrates his greatness to our smallness, making us “apt” for his divinity by assuming to himself our humanity. In so doing, our nature is exalted (subleuat) into a new life, a new agency. Peter also draws from the more explicit language of Platonic participation. When the Son of God became also the Son of Man, He transformed the nature of our flesh into divinity when he lowered his divine nature into our human nature; he thus bestowed upon men and women co-heredity with himself among the heavens, when he made himself a participant (participem) in terrestrial things. (s. 70.2) But, again, where 2 Pet 1:4 would be so illuminating, it is avoided. I argue that while Peter never shies away from the reality of becoming partakers of divinity, he avoids quoting it because, at the time he is writing, the verse had already been co-opted by a heretical sect. I have argued elsewhere that around this same time St. Augustine too turned to such language so as to avoid relying on 2 Pet 1:4, our being participants in the divine nature, because this verse had been notoriously used by the Pelagians who saw in it the human possibility of taking on godliness without divine initiative and perseverance.9 Another possible image of deification available to Chrysologus is also intentionally avoided: “becoming gods.” A phrase with biblical sanction, Ps 81 [82]:6 and repeated by Christ himself at Jn 10:34— and you are gods—a verse used profitably in the Christian East, and employed well by many of the Latin Fathers as well, Peter finds unhelpful if not dangerous. In fact, in all of the 23 times he refers to in the plural (deos) while preaching, every instance is critical and a warning not to take up with the idols of paganism. We saw above how deferential Peter was to the Empress Mother Galla Placidia, but such affection for Valentinian is not as apparent. According to scholars, the emperor’s being raised to the purple at such an early age, Caesar at 4 years old and Emperor at 6, inevitably brought about inordinate hubris and self-reliance as well. Although we know that he graced the Church with financial support and even expelled Jewish soldiers from a Roman army that was becoming increasingly Christian, Valentinian also invited pagan astrologers and soothsayers into the imperial court. His sybaritic lifestyle, widespread rumors of his raping of his rivals’ wives, and various assassination attempts surely kept a wedge between emperor and episcopus. Or, as Edward Gibbon saw it so many generations ago: He faithfully imitated the hereditary weakness of his cousin and his two uncles, without inheriting the gentleness, the purity, the innocence, which alleviate in their characters the want of spirit and ability. Valentinian was 30

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less excusable, since he had passions without virtues: even his religion was questionable; and though he never deviated into the paths of heresy, he scandalized the pious Christians by his attachment to the profane arts of magic and divination.10 It is very likely that Peter looked suspiciously upon the emperor’s fascination with sorcery and feared that he might very well restore imperial apotheosis to the emperor’s cult. This is very likely why, as strong as Peter’s language of deification is, he refuses to exhort anyone to become a deus or a dominus, as we can see in other Latin preachers at this time.11 Ravenna’s Catholic leader instead stresses becoming the adopted children of God, a safer metaphor with wider biblical precedence and one that innately carries with it a certain humble dependence upon God’s gracious Fatherhood. For in stressing the Christian life as a matter of being adopted into God’s family, Peter is able to stress the gratuitousness of the Father as well as teach his flock that regardless of how regal Ravenna may be, their true home is some place, some one, considerably grander. Preaching on Psalm 28 [29], for instance, Peter begins naturally enough with the first line exhorting the filii Dei: Do you believe that this phrase is calling upon the powers of heaven, or upon the men and women fit (aptat) to be the children of God, those whose earthly flesh God has been elevated to his own heavenly nature? Give to the Lord, you children of God (Ps 28[29]:1). The ones whom the prophet calls out to here are men and women, brothers and sisters, those about whom he in another place sings: I declare: “Gods though you be, offspring of the Most High all of you (Ps 81[82]:6). We have already heard, brothers and sisters, to where divine dignity has brought us and to what heights heavenly Fatherhood (superna paternitas) has exalted us. Let us then trust that we are the children of God, and let us therefore respond truly to such an inheritance, living for heaven and representing our Father by becoming like him, so that we might never lose through our sins what we have received through his grace. (s. 10.2) God’s heavenly Fatherhood (this well-crafted phrase of God’s superna paternitas is wholly unique to Peter) is to replace the Roman paterfamilias and transfer our dignity from a biological clan and a heredity based on power, to one of spiritual communion and a life based on representing God the Father by becoming evermore his children in deed. This new life may cause fear and trembling (expauit; s. 68.1), but only if one sees it contingent on human effort. This transformation is entirely a matter of divine graciousness. True, the sign and the reinforcing of such divine similitude is effected through our lives of charity (s. 68.4), but the trust that initiates a baptized soul’s divine filiality is always in God’s goodness and not in human endeavor. 31

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In Peter’s cathedral, the Christians of Ravenna never need wonder to which sovereignty they belong. He continually stresses the Fatherhood of God over the comforts of this world, emphasizing the freedom of God over and against the inevitable slavery of identifying oneself with any temporal power. This is no doubt why so many of Peter’s lines relying on the “great exchange” also bring forth the image of enslavement and the new possibility of true freedom. This is a stress running throughout the whole of the Christian narrative, of course, but it is provocative to think it plays out even more pointedly in the diocese of the imperial court, precisely because it was the seat of temporal power. Preaching on the audacity it takes to call God “Our Father” (audemus dicere . . .), Peter teaches his parishioners that, “The moment you confess God to be your Father, the Father of his only Son, you too are then adopted as God’s son or daughter, you too are made into heirs of heaven” (s. 68.3). Baptism effects this injection of the heavenly nature into the mortal soul, now redeemed and made filii in Filio (s. 74.6). It is not a stretch to imagine Bishop Peter standing in the heart of Ravenna and urging those who have come to worship to surrender to a new way of life, a new family, an eternal family and henceforth live “in accord with such a lineage, and that your way of life (mores) here on earth may never dishonor the heavenly nature which has been given and is now bestowed upon you” (s. 69.3). This new lineage is a family, an adoption into a new set of supernatural relations. Here God is one’s Father and the Church one’s Mother: In the womb (in utero) God adopts you as a son or daughter desirous that you be born free . . . how blessed to have such dominion even before being born, to reign before living, to come to God’s glory even before becoming conscious of your own emptiness. How blessed is your Mother the Church who while remaining a Virgin brings you forth so. (s. 72.3) Given this inseparability in the economy of salvation between the Christian’s heavenly Father and Mother Church, our final section in parsing Peter’s sermons will be to look at his ecclesiology, his presentation of the Catholic Church as the locus where saints are not only encountered but made.

The sacramental and saintly Church Once Ravenna had attained the same ecclesial status as Rome, Milan, and Aquileia— raised to a Metropolitan See—Peter assumed juridical responsibilities for smaller dioceses under him. We know this must have happened before November 1, 431, because on that particular Sunday morning Peter gleefully and gratefully mounts the pulpit to preach in honor of the first diocese the holy Church of Ravenna has now brought forth (Santa ecclesia Ravenna, ut primum pareret); the newly created Diocese of Voghenza, about 60 kilometers northwest of Ravenna’s cathedral. In 32

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sermon 175 we can hear Peter use this occasion to stress the nuptiality which is the Church, the bride with whom God has achieved a fruitful union (coniunctio), and this coming together is consummated on the marriage bed of the one who is virgin and mother both (Ipsa quoque genetrix sponsa, mater et uirgo in ipso sponsi suo thalamo, in ipso coniunctionis suae cubiculo geniuses; s. 175.4). In rather erotic imagery, then, Peter presents himself as a representative of the Great Bridegroom who has come to ravish his otherwise unfaithful lover into an eternal embrace. This is not to turn a blind eye to the shortcomings of the Christian people. The Father has two sons, the Jews and the Gentiles, and both are in need of grace and mercy, and both are called into the unity of the Church. To bring them home, the Father gave the younger son the gifts of eloquence and wisdom, as evidenced in the Socratic and various Greek traditions; to the older son he gave the Law, as known through the gift of Moses. Yet both of these gifts were misused, worldliness leading to a proud and puffed-up idolatry and the Law leading to legalism. But whereas the Greeks were enabled to see in wisdom a perennial invite to recognize, and thus return, to their true Father’s house, the Jewish people—the older brother—remain obstinately outside and out of jealousy refuse to enter the Church (s. 5.7). Peter stresses the power of the Church to intercede, arguing that the prayers of many holy ones may at times transform the stubbornness of one sinner (s. 123.8). The Church is presented allegorically in the sermons on the Prodigal Son, but the Church also emerges in the homilies on Lazarus’ rejection by the rich. For as “high” as Peter’s ecclesiology at times may be, the Church is also the place where the poor are to be fed and the naked are to be clothed. Peter Brown argues that Peter Chrysologus (Peter of the Golden Words) lingered with pathos on the destitute. He wished to shock. He spoke of Lazarus lying at the door of Dives, with every sore on his body and open mouth crying out to touch the heart of the rich. Peter may well have had to face a higher incidence of conjunctural poverty than did Leo. He preached in a region that had been exposed to frequent dislocations, such as Attila’s terrible raid into northern Italy in 452.12 As Brown points to the poverty of certain parts of mid-5th century Ravenna, it is illuminating to imagine Bishop Peter’s having to preach before the wealthy Ravenesse court up front with these “frequently dislocated” in the back and mulling out in the Church’s courtyard. Perhaps this commingling of social classes is the reason that one amazing thread woven throughout these sermons is how Peter Chrysologus keeps the theological and the pastoral always in tension, never letting the mystical move apart from the need for charitable works. This dual-call to translate one’s interiority into action is nowhere as highlighted, as well as dramatically presented, than in Peter’s sermons on the story of Dives and Lazarus, two (of four sermons in total) being presented below. It is this convergence between contemplation and action that makes Peter 33

INTRODUCTION

such a worthwhile figure of Christian study, and in the sermons where the theme is the Church’s duty to serve the destitute, Peter relies on the fact that the rich man, Dives, suffers eternal torment not because he had possessed riches while on earth; he suffered not because he wore purple (certainly a relief to the emperor) but, rather, he damned himself because he refused to share the largesse which was ultimately the Lord’s with the Lord’s littlest (cf. s. 121.3). Dives fails in his duty (inpius) because he refused kindness to the poor, not because he possessed the riches to give them (s. 123.4). Here the exchange language of Peter’s Christology is reworked to impact his preaching on social issues as well. He is apparently not at all nervous to offend the rich of Ravenna by reminding them that those who were once covered in purple may one day be covered with smoke and flame, and may be forced to trade their fine victuals and wines for punishments and torments. But Peter puts the blame directly on the miserly rich who have inverted the order God intends (taliter tu mutasti): while Christ may have exchanged his poverty for our riches, in remaining selfishly comfortable and unwilling to share God’s gifts to them, the rich who fail to act on the word of God will one day find themselves eternally poor (s. 66.4). This is a most beautiful aspect of Bishop Peter’s ecclesiology, the Church being a place not for the powerful and pristine, but the haven of healing for stumbling sinners. In sermon 36, our preacher treats Mk 5:22–34 and the hemorrhaging woman’s encounter with Jesus. Peter emphasizes how the incarnate God has a special affection for the broken and in Christ searches out the means by which he can take on their infirmity, in exchange for their wholeness. To accomplish this, the humble Christ draws ever closer in silence (ad secretum) in order to effect a grande commercium, offering his weakness not only for her physical healing but her spiritual salvation as well. This is the task of the Church’s sacraments, where there is not only corporeal contact but spiritual strengthening as well. This ability to feed the poor and to heal the sick is the Church’s for no other reason than that she is united to the Great Bridegroom. In all his sermons treating the Creed, given to the newly-baptized catechumens, Peter stresses this nuptial union. In sermons 56–62A, the Creed is treated, and under the line “We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church,” Peter highlights how this Church is one in heaven and on earth because she is united to the one Christ who reigns everywhere. None of these creedal commentaries are very extensive, but in the one or two lines the catechumens hear, they are assured that the Church is not a simple human institution but is the place where God’s own divine life is made possible, the place where the saints in the making can live out of a new life not naturally their own. “We believe in the holy Church which Christ assumed to himself (suscepit in se), so that he could make her a partaker in his divinity,” and then we hear the effect of this union in the next line: “We believe in the remission of sins, because through Christ and his Church, the new man is born, leaving nothing (nil) behind of the old one” (s. 60.14–15). The incarnate Son cannot work apart from his Body and the Church cannot 34

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have any divine life and therefore work apart from the Christ. This is the great union achieved first in the womb of Mary but continued throughout all space and time through the holy sancta ecclesia, of which Peter is a most proud and effective preacher. The commentary under this same section of the creed at sermon 57 is the most extensive; nothing too profound but worth quoting in full all the same. It simply begins with the heading, “The Holy Church.” Thereafter Peter goes on to comment, Because neither are the members ever separated from the Head, nor the bride separate from her Bridegroom, but in such a union (tali coniunctione) they become one spirit, and God becomes All in all things (cf., 1 Cor 15:28). Consequently, the one who believes in God is also the one who confesses the holy Church to be one with God. (s. 57.13) This union between Christ as Head and Christians as his body does not absorb the creatures into the Creator, the bride into the Bridegroom; instead, this union both vivifies the Church and enables her divine Spouse to be encountered in every facet and experience of the human condition. This Church is united but never nullified by her union with God: the Lord remains “All” but now through his sanctified body on earth, he can remain “All” while being able to be encountered in all things (omnia et in omnibus). It is unfortunate that Peter is a woefully understudied figure of late antiquity, because he not only played a pivotal role in bolstering Ravenna’s importance as both an imperial and an ecclesiastical center, but also bequeathed to the Latin West wonderfully rich and theologically dense sermons which provide insight into a people growing in understanding and acceptance of their new life in Christ. Throughout his many sermons, we inevitably meet a loving and inviting God who sends his Son into our human condition so that we who were once servants could be turned into sons and daughters. It is Christ’s “exchange,” continued in and through his Church on earth, that results in our own divine filiality, our adoption as his own brothers and sisters. It is here we can call God “Father,” and it is here we all are commanded to love one another. The Church today recognizes this inseparable union of loving God by loving neighbor in the sermons of Peter, evidenced by the opening prayer of his feast celebrated each year on July 30: O God, who made the Bishop Saint Peter Chrysologus an outstanding preacher of your incarnate Word, grant, through his intercession, that we may constantly ponder in our hearts the mysteries of your salvation and faithfully express them in what we do. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.13 35

INTRODUCTION

Let us now turn to the sermons that made him so respected and followed; let us now turn to those words by which Peter of Ravenna was found worthy to be christened Chrysologus, the Golden-Worded.

Notes 1 For a wonderful survey on this concept, see W. Norris Clarke, S.J., “Living on the Edge: The Human Person as ‘Frontier Being’ and Microcosm,” International Philosophical Quarterly, 142 (June 1996): 183–99. 2 Ruggero Benericetti, Il Cristo nei sermoni di s. Pier Crisologo “Studia Ravennatensia” 6, (Cesena: Centro Studi e Ricerche sulfa antica Provincia Ecclesiastica Ravennate, 1995), 53; the Council of Ephesus in 431 brought a renewed Marian piety to the Church and Peter’s Mariology is quite rich, teaching that because of her motherhood, all people have finally come to find life through this woman (“omnes homines uitam inuenisse per feminam”; s. 142.4; CCL 24B.864). 3 Proclus of Constantinople, Sermon 1.3: “O womb, in which the document of liberation, shared in common, was drawn up!” appears to be the first time in Christian literature in which the Virgin’s womb was invoked in the vocative; see, Proclus of Constantinople: Homilies on the Life of Christ, ed. Jan Harm Barkhuizen (Brisbane: Australian Catholic University, 2001), 65. 4 What is scripturally rooted at Gen 3:15, finds development in Justin’s Dialogue With Trypho §100, and fuller expression in Irenaeus’ Aduerses Haereses 3.22.4, 5.19.1. 5 Palardy cites sermones 23, 24, 60, 84 and 88 as anti-Arian, and s. 142 as referring possibly to either the Arian or the Nestorian heresy; Palardy, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 19, n. 98. I would also alert us to the Christology in s. 57 which defends the eternal filiality of the Son. 6 It seems there were various forms of Patripassianism still floating around the mid 5th century. The teaching that it was actually the Father who was suffering in this man Jesus Christ was first seemingly the position first of those 3rd century Monarchian Modalists (whose founder is traditionally Noetus of Smyrna, fl., 230), condemned by early theologians like Tertullian in Africa and Hippolytus and Pope Callistus in Rome. 7 Athanasius, On the Incarnation, §19–25. 8 On the Incarnation, §54.3 (Patrologia Graeca 25.192B); my translation. 9 See my The One Christ: Augustine’s Theology of Deification (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 129–32. 10 Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, David Womersley (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, [1781] 1994), vol. 2, ch. 35, 355. 11 See Russell, The Doctrine of Deification, op. cit., pp. 16–52. 12 Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 467. 13 “Collect for the Feast of St. Peter Chrysologus” (July 30), as in the Roman Missal, English Translation According to the Third Typical Edition (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2011), 910.

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3 THE INCARNATE GOD AND MOTHER MARY

Sermon 140: on the Annunciation of the Lord Let it suffice for now to have our eyes purified, so that we might be able to gaze upon the brilliance of such a divine beginning. For even when our eyes are wholly healthy and pure, they can hardly bear to behold the bright early sun. How much more, then, must our internal vision be readied so as to be able to behold the splendor of its rising and radiant Creator! “In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph” (Lk 1:26–27a). The place, the time, and the main person, are all singled out by the Holy Evangelist here in order that the veracity of this scene can be confirmed from the details provided. The angel Gabriel was sent to a virgin betrothed. To this virgin God sends a winged herald, who first offers her a pledge and then enters into an engagement with her. For the angel who endows with grace receives her faith in return. To this virgin God sends a winged suitor, who gives a pledge and takes up a dowry. God, who brings the grace also shows his trustworthiness, accordingly bestows gifts of virtue on the virgin, and will soon redeem the promise of her consent. This divine messenger thus flies quickly to the brideto-be, dispensing her from her human marriage in order to free her to become the spouse of God. The angel thus puts the affection Mary had for her husband-to-be on hold (suspendat affectum), not in order to take the virgin away from Joseph, but to hand her over to Christ to whom she was already pledged while she herself was in the womb of her mother.1 Christ neither brings about alienation between lovers nor does he snatch one spouse from another, but he does receive his own bride when he unites her to himself in one body. And coming to her, he said, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you” (Lk 1:28). In this message there is more than some simple duty of greeting another; there is an offering, an offering of a great gift. Hail, Ave, here means: “Receive grace, do not be afraid, do not be anxious about your creatureliness.” Full, Plena: because while there is grace in other people, the completeness (plenitudo) of grace comes into you fully. The Lord is with you: Why is the Lord now in you? Because he is not coming simply to pay a visit, but he is coming down into you in a new and mysterious way so as to be born. And then fittingly, “Most blessed are you among

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women” (Lk 1:42), because whereas Eve inflicted pain on women’s wombs, there is now rejoicing since Mary is so honored and hence exalted. In this way, through grace, she has been made the Mother of all the living (cf. Gen 3:20), where earlier on the natural plane, the first Eve had become the mother of all the dying. “But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be” (Lk 1:29). Why is it that when she sees a person, she is troubled at what was said? It is because the angel came to her so beautiful in appearance, mighty in battle but gentle in demeanor, and awesome in speech, since he was speaking in human words while promising divine realities. So while his appearance initially troubled the virgin only a little, what he said next stirred her much more; the presence of the one sent from heaven moved her a bit, but the authority of the one by whom he was sent rattled her completely. And what else remains? Thereafter, she soon sensed that she was receiving the Judge from the heavens inside her body, where she had earlier encountered that celestial Orchestrator in her mind. With such a mild movement, with such sweet affection, God made this virgin into his own mother; the woman who was once his servant the Lord now converts into his own mother. In so doing, her womb was roused, her mind tried to make sense of things, and her whole state trembled when God—whom all of creation cannot contain—was received into her womb and thereby made himself human. And the virgin pondered what sort of greeting this might be. Let your charity pay attention here: as we have said, the virgin freely assented to no mere words of salutation, but to the reality of that welcoming. For this greeting was no common courtesy, but instead carried with it the whole force of supernatural power. At this moment, the virgin realized that to make a swift reply is the normal course of human interaction, but to think deeply and ponder what words really mean is a sign of great discernment and maturity. So, whoever does not understand how great God is, in fact, in turn wonders why the mind of the virgin proceeds cautiously here, unable to marvel at her spirit. But at this moment the heavens quake, the angels tremble, creatures are unable to bear God, nature fails, and one young girl takes this God into her very self. She receives him, she grants him hospitality, and now there is peace on earth, glory in heaven, salvation for sinners, there is life for the dying, as she now weds earth with heaven and effects an exchange between God’s very self with our flesh. She does all of this by offering God a home in exchange for herself, seeking a reward for her very womb, so that what the prophet said might be fulfilled: “Certainly sons are a gift from the Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward” (Ps 127:3). But let us bring this homily to a close now, so through the gift of God and with his indulgence, we may ponder further how one was born of a virgin.

Sermon 140A: on the Nativity of the Lord In giving ourselves to a slow and steady study of the mystery of the virgin birth and to the Nativity of Christ, we shall be made worthy to draw near to the sacred crib of his birth. So today the eloquence of the Gospel is again addressed to us: “In 40

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those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment” (Lk 2:1–2a). When Christ was born, a census of the whole world might have been decreed by Caesar, but a profession of loyalty was owed to the Author of all. On a coin one finds an image of Caesar, but the image of God is found in the human person. The world is thus formed so that an image of an earthly ruler is found on a coin, but the image of God has been re-formed in the human person. Similarly, just as the coin is rendered to Caesar, all human beings are to be rendered to God. In this way, that which was said by our Lord is being fulfilled: “Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Mt 22:21). This was the first enrollment, a mystery which might appear here first but not in time; first in merit but not in order, first not in the narrative but in order of faith. So it is curious that even though the Roman world had been subject to a census for a long time before now, how can it be said in the Gospel that this is the first, unless divine realities are really being mystically announced by means of human actions? “And Joseph too went up . . . to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child” (Lk 2:4, 5b). We hear that Joseph went up because the road to divine mysteries necessarily involves an elevating ascent. He went up so as to be recognized as one betrothed but not yet married, a guardian but not yet a husband, one given for the sake of his unborn child, but not for sexual union with this child’s mother, one who was to attest that this unborn child was divine and not merely human. We also hear how Mary went up in order to be registered as a lowly maid more than a mother, to profess that while she may have been showing the outward signs of pregnancy, her conscience was free (from the concupiscence of intercourse).2 She comes carrying not a human burden but a divine gift, because when the virginity of a mother remains, her unborn baby is no doubt proven to be the Author of life’s own child. While they were there, “the time came for her to have her child” (Lk 2:6); that is, the times of this world were being fulfilled and these were not just ordinary days. Hear the Apostle Paul on this: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son” (Gal 4:4a), so that God himself might take to himself the infancy of this world. Remember how the first man fell under the weight of a divine mandate (cf. Gen 3:5), and how Noah’s offspring also fell down while reaching for the heights of heaven, and were thus woefully divided by the multiplicity of languages (cf. Gen 11:1–9). Moreover, the whole Jewish people, unable to bear the load of the Law, also fell to the lowly ground, and actually preferred to be likened to dumb farm animals, thereby becoming like the unchosen races in their ignorance of God’s law. No wonder, then, that the Author of these days is so patient, permitting this present age to be taught over a long period of time so that the world might be more mature when receiving the One who will restore her, since in her immaturity she was then incapable of welcoming her Creator. “While they were there, the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger” (Lk 2:6–7b). The One who confines the world is now confined within a 41

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womb; the Author of nature is born, the Firstborn of humanity, and the Creator of all times has become a man; the Treasure of heaven is now swaddled in the clothes of a pauper; the One who makes lightning flash now cries as an infant; the One to whom all of creation is subject is found lying in a manger. Listen, all of you, do you not understand who this is, the One who is pursuing you, how it is Christ calling you back to himself? He has entered the womb in order to reshape you in the womb; he is born so that he might regenerate you into immortality; he becomes the firstborn amongst humans, so that he might give you a share in the divine family. This is why Christ is laid in the manger and placed at the bowed heads of brute beasts, so that even they can identify their Creator by his scent. In the manger he is thus placed, so that what the prophet said might be confirmed, “An ox knows its owner, and an ass, its master’s manger” (Is 1:3), and that which the Psalmist wrote could be fulfilled, “human being and beast you sustain, Lord” (Ps 36:7). For this is what Christ meant when he referred to human beings as beasts: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Mt 11:29–30).

Sermon 141: on the Incarnation of Christ How secret are the inner chambers of a royal palace where the very power of the great prince rests, a place thus to be regarded with reverence and awe. No stranger is granted entrance herein, no one unclean, no one unfaithful, can ever enter. Instead, how pure, how chaste, how faithful are the interactions there, made clear and evident through the royal accoutrements throughout. Who dares to approach the doors of such a palace? Certainly no one but a close friend, an intimate companion, one of moral excellence, of clear conscience, and only to one of shining reputation is access allowed. And so into his own bridal chamber, God takes only the virgin, receiving her with her integrity wholly intact. Such examples are given to each of you, O mortal, that you might know who you really are, how much you actually matter, and the quality of life to which you are now being called. So, be honest: are you able to penetrate the mystery of our Lord’s nativity? Will you be found worthy to come into that chamber of the heart where all the majesty of this celestial Ruler, all the majesty of his divinity, now slumbers? Are you, with your human eyes and fleshy senses, able to gaze upon the virgin’s birth? Impudent and curious as you now are, do you think you are worthy to peer into how God uses his very own hands to make for himself a temple deep within the womb of his own mother? Relying on your own powers, are you able to uncover this mystery hidden for all ages, and thus able to reveal for yourself a mystery concealed even to angels? Are you able to direct the divine Designer? Can you understand clearly how God himself has penetrated inviolate flesh, or how he has fashioned his own sacred body in that venerable womb without the Virgin’s comprehension of everything that was happening? Are you able to understand how, without any flesh stirring, he solidified his own human bones which now last forever? For himself he produced the exactness of human beauty without having 42

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to rely on the normal way of conceiving a human. To himself he assumed true and total human flesh without the usual ways of human carnality. He has taken on the entire condition of human living without the usual concupiscence of the flesh. Even if you did not enjoy access to these mysteries, do you not know that God is able to fashion flesh as he did in the beginning out of the earth? Because for God, nothing is impossible. But since you are unable to arrive at even the smallest truths concerning the works of God, do not seek to understand fully the virgin birth, but believe and realize deeply how God himself wanted to be born. If you require proof here, you will displease him. Perceive by faith the great mystery of our Lord’s nativity, because without faith you will never understand even the slightest activities of God. This is why Scripture says, “All his works are known by faith” (Ps 32 [33]:4, Vulgate). But you want to understand this event wholly by human reason when it is something understood only by faith. It is of course reasonable that this would happen, but it is the reasoning of God and not of you, O mortal. For what is more reasonable than God’s being able to achieve whatever he wants? For the one who cannot do whatever he wants is surely not God. These things, therefore, God mandates and his angel executes, the Spirit fulfills and his Power achieves.3 The virgin believes, nature receives, the heavens tell the story, the firmament announces the good news, the stars show forth, the wise men prophesy, shepherds adore, and wild beasts understand, attesting to what the prophet said: “An ox knows its owner, and an ass, its master’s manger” (Is 1:3a). But if you, O mortal, did not understand more quickly with the angels, at least acknowledge him more sluggardly with the beasts. Because if you delay any further, you might fall even lower than those beasts to which you were likened earlier. Instead, behold how these animals adore him with their wagging tails, how they fawn over him with bent ear, and how they nuzzle him with their mouths. These animals use such actions (which are in their nature) to confess their Author.4 But out of what is not in his nature he has descended into yours, and you are still critical? Are you like those Jewish innkeepers, still closing your doors, even though all these animals are welcoming him into their mangers? Just the same, if you will grant this message of the angels a dutiful hearing, receive my message too, and if not out of fidelity, at least out of courtesy. My holy brothers and sisters, it is clear to me that you still need to hear more about this, and so we shall continue it in our next sermon.

Sermon 142: the second on the Annunciation of the Lord Today, brothers and sisters, you have heard how a divine messenger has been discussing the renewal (reparatione) of the human race with a woman. You have heard that this exchange was being undertaken so that humanity might return to life by the same means it had fallen into death. This exchange happens when the angel speaks to Mary about our salvation, just as before when an angel approached Eve about our damnation. You have heard how an angel with ineffable artistry constructed out of the mire of human flesh a temple of divine majesty. You have 43

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also heard that through this unfathomable mystery, God has come to earth and humans have accordingly been placed in the heavens. You have also heard something unheard of: how God and humanity have now become mingled (misceri) together, hearing how the fragile nature of our human flesh has been fortified through the message of an angel and is now able to show forth the fullness of divine glory.5 Indeed, so that the theatre of the delicate human body might not be crushed under such a great weight of the celestial Crafter’s arrival, so that the tender stalk (uirga) might not snap in the virgin (in uirgine) who is to bring forth fruit for the human race, the voice of the angel led the way by putting fear to flight, saying, “Do not be afraid, Mary” (Lk 1:30a). This is why the dignity of the virgin is acknowledged by name, for Mary is the Hebrew word for Lady (domina).6 The angel thus calls her Lady so that any anxiety about being simply a servant might fall away by being the Mother of the Lord, since it is the very supremacy of her baby that accounts for her being brought into the world as a Lady, and thus recognized as such. “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God” (Lk 1:30). This is true: whoever knows grace does not know fear. You have found favor. With whom? With God! Blessed is she who alone merits, among all other humans, to hear that she is the first to have found favor. But how much grace? What else do we hear in the passage above: “Full of grace” (Lk 1:28)? She finds truly the totality of grace, with a gushing spray showering and flooding all of creation. “For you have found favor with God” (Lk 1:30b): even as the angel says this, he himself seems amazed that either just one woman has found such favor, or that all of men and women have found it through her. The angel is stupefied that the fullness of God—the one for whom the whole of creation would be confining—is coming into the confines of a virginal womb. This is why the angel tarries, this is why he calls the Virgin by means of her merit, calling out to her referring to the grace she has received. He can barely explain as she listens: for surely as the angel reveals to her what is happening, he trembles and can scarcely compose his message. Judge for yourself, brothers and sisters, how fitting it is for us to approach so great a mystery with devotion and awe, since even the angel himself could not get rid of his own fear as he tried to banish the fear of one listening to him. “Behold, you will conceive in your womb” (Lk 1:31a). You receive well what flesh cannot know, what your state in life does not have, and what nature cannot admit. Behold, you will conceive in your womb. Who gathers fruit before toiling and sweating over the earth? Who gathers fruit before devoting and expending his labors? Who arrives at a dwelling without first traveling some road? Who undergoes the growth of nature apart from nature? The blessed, that’s who: the truly blessed Mary, who conceived a glorious offspring without the trouble of intercourse or the normal weariness of motherhood. Blessed is she who received this divine pledge and held him close to her breast in such a way that she was not showing on the outside to others. This woman was blessed because she believed the angel’s message conceived in her mind, and thus she received her child from 44

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heaven. For within this house of the Virgin, a heavenly transaction is occurring without anyone else noticing, since the house itself remains locked with its fences secure.7 “You will conceive and bear a son” (Lk 1:31). The one who enters and exits, who leaves not a trace of his coming and going, is not a human but a divine dweller. And this is he who preserves his own mother’s virginity, both when conceived and when born—no earthly male but a heavenly one. Accordingly, since this heavenly way of doing things is performed in our nature for the sake of this divine child, let the way of our own flesh step aside, and let our nature boast nothing in itself. So don’t grow tired of this sermon on conception and birth, but may it instead spark your Christian sensibilities so that you may see in this heavenly child how the divine decrees of God are being accomplished. You will conceive and bear a son (Lk 1:31). A son? Why did the angel not say your son? “Because the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk 1:35b). For it is not nature but grace, O Virgin, that has made you a mother. God’s reverence for you wanted you to be called a bearer of life, but your virginity would not allow it; and so in your conceiving as well as in your giving birth, modesty actually grew, chastity increased, integrity was strengthened, virginity was established, and all of the virtues progressed. O Virgin, if all these things have been reserved for you, what did you yourself offer? If you are a virgin, how are you also a mother? If you are his spouse, how did you also become his descendent? All of this was accomplished by the one who gives everything and takes nothing away. O Virgin, your Author takes his beginning from you, his origin originates from within you, your Father is found in your Son, in your flesh is found your God, and through you, the One who gives light to all the world himself becomes the Light of the world. So heed the angel, O Virgin, and do not be so bold as to call him your son, but as soon as he is born, invoke him as your Savior, because your virginity did not bear a son only for yourself, but you have born the child of the Author of all. Your integrity bears not your son but your Lord, as the angel said: “and you shall name him Jesus” (Lk 1:31b), because in Hebrew Jesus means Savior. But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be?” (Lk 1:34a). Behold, hear for yourselves: Mary asks a question, and if she asks, she must have some doubt. So why is Zechariah alone in being condemned as a querulous inquisitor? Because the Knower of all hearts weighs not the words but the heart, judging not what Mary and Zechariah said but what they were feeling. In each case, the reason for their asking was quite different, and the way they conducted themselves was quite different, one from the other. For she believed all these things against nature, while he doubted because of nature. She inquires into how God’s plan will come to be, while he details how the very thing God commands, God cannot do. Zechariah will not believe in God’s plan, despite previous instances, while Mary comes quickly to believe, even though she knows of no other example. She marvels that a virgin can conceive a child, while he doubts it can happen even though he is married. Rightly, then, Mary speaks, knowing her God and confessing him now 45

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in her body; Zechariah, however, is silent until he is convicted by John, whom he here denies, but who originates from his own body as well. How can this be (Lk 1:34a)? How, “Since I have no relations with a man” (Lk 1:34b)? Woman, which man are you asking after? Are you seeking him whom you lost in paradise? Save the man, save the one whom God entrusted to you. Out of your very own body, you must save him who was lost through you.8 Turn now away from the order of mere nature and welcome the order of your Creator. He himself will take from you what he needs to form a man, who in the beginning made you by taking you from a man. So, don’t look for a man, and let human effort cease, because divine skillfulness will prove sufficient for the restoration of humanity. Bemoaning that humanity had not yet reached him, God himself came to you, and so it is not flesh coming to flesh, but “the Holy Spirit will come upon you” (Lk 1:35a), for “What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit” (Jn 3:6) because “God is Spirit” (Jn 4:24). Therefore, whoever is born of the Spirit is unquestionably God. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Lk 1:35a). The power of God overshadows Mary lest mortal frailty crumple in the one about to bear God. And the power of the Most High will overshadow you: Mary is shielded from knowing the heat of our bodies because the power of this divine overshadowing protects her. Neither must she slink off to find a merely mundane dwelling since she senses how she is now wholly hedged in by such heavenly splendor. “Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God” (Lk 1:35b). No one should understand here the term holy in an everyday sense but rather in that singular way that is cried out in the heavens, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Sabaoth” (Is 6:3). Mary is then sent to Elizabeth, the Virgin sent to one barren, one so young to one so aged, so that both of these women may profit through their dutiful surrender, and that each may seize something: Mary, faith through something wholly new, and Elizabeth, power through something now unavoidable. And with all of these things now heard, Mary responds: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). She might be addressed as Lady by the angel, but she understands and confesses that she is just a handmaid. She knows that when a devoted soul is filled with favor it grows in obedience and expands with grace; it does not burst with arrogance or swell with pride. May it be done to me according to your word: she believed in God’s word and so was found worthy to conceive the Word—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1). Because of this, she realizes everything through hearing, consenting to this mystery of faith. What a great sin the heretic commits who still does not believe all of this after the event, when she conceived believing even before the event.

Sermon 143: the third on the Annunciation of the Lord While you are owed a sermon on the Nativity, it is even more desirable that you believe in the sacrament of our Lord’s birth, rather than our simply speaking 46

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about it. A virgin bears life. This is what nature does not have, what custom does not know, what reason cannot understand, what the human mind cannot capture; this is what makes the heavens quake, the earth shake, and makes all of creation marvel. So how can a homily in human words narrate such an event? For once the evangelist uses human words to open up both the virgin’s conceiving and bearing her child, just as quickly with a divine mystery he closes them up again; and he does this so that the human hearer may not presume to scrutinize what he or she has been directed to accept on belief. Who after all is able to draw near to the mystery of God, the virgin’s conceiving, and the cause of all these things: the transaction of the centuries, the exchange of divinity and flesh, now that man and God are one God (hominem deumque unum deum)? The evangelist therefore states: “The angel Gabriel was sent from the Lord to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary” (Lk 1:26–27). The angel was sent from the Lord. When an angel is the mediator, human opinion should surrender. When the messenger is heavenly, let all earthly interpretation be banished. Let human curiosity be still when the go-between (interpres) is from the heavens. The angel was sent by the Lord. And whoever has been sent by the Lord hears more attentively, shrinking from scrutinizing the mystery of the deity. The one who is found worthy to know what God has commissioned through his angel is also the one who is fearful to know. Listen to what God is saying: “On whom shall I rest? Upon the humble and unresisting one who trembles at my words” (cf. Is 66:2). Humble and unresisting—how unresisting is the one who accomplishes what God commands, just as the insolent take umbrage against what he commands. The angel was sent to the virgin, because an angel is always analogous to a virgin. A virgin may live in the flesh but she lives apart from the flesh, and this is not an earthly life but a heavenly one. And if you really want to know: acquiring angelic glory is a better thing than already having it.9 Being an angel is a matter of a very fortunate circumstance, being a virgin is a matter of virtue. Virginity obtains through strength what an angel has through nature. So being both an angel as well as a virgin is not a human function (officium) but a divine one. The angel, it says, came to her and said: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women” (Lk 1:28). Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you: you see with what sort of marriage settlement the virgin has been promised. Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Hail here really means receive. Receive what? Receive the gifts of virtue, not of shame. Hail, full of grace. This is the grace which bestows glory to the heavens and brings God to earth, this is the grace which grants faith to the gentiles, which reins in vices, brings purpose to one’s life, and disciplines our actions. The angel carried this grace down; the virgin accepted it and returned salvation to the rest of the world. Hail, full of grace. While grace usually comes to individuals gradually and by degrees, the fullness of grace bestowed itself upon Mary all at once. “We have all,” the Evangelist says, “received from his fullness” (Jn 1:16). David similarly says that, “May he be like rain coming down upon the fleece” (Ps 72:6a). As a 47

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fleece is separated from a body and is therefore unaware of the misery of the body, virginity may be in the flesh but is likewise unaware of the vices of the flesh. Accordingly, as the heavenly rain fell softly and smoothly onto the virgin, the fullness of divinity concealed itself in the thirsty fleece of our flesh until, from the wood of the cross, it was wrung dry and poured out the rain of salvation on all of the earth—“like showers watering the earth” (Ps 72:6b)—so that with life-giving water, measured out just right, the tender sprouts of salvation may be watered and not forgotten. Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you. The angel was sent to the virgin, but why does Scripture say that the Lord is with you? Because the one who was with the virgin was the same one who sent his messenger to the virgin. God went ahead of his messenger without ever departing from the Godhead: for the one who is not able to be bound to any one place is the one who inhabits all places and is thus found everywhere, without whom there would be nothing. Blessed are you among women. She is truly blessed who has held on to the beauty of her virginity while also bringing forth the dignity of motherhood. Truly blessed is she who has been entitled with both the grace of a supernatural pregnancy as well with the wearing of the crown of chastity. Blessed truly is she who receives the glory of a divine child while standing as the queen of all modesty. Blessed indeed is she who was mightier than the heavens and stronger than the earth, greater than the entire world: for the God whom the cosmos cannot capture, she alone has borne. She held the one who holds up the world, and brought forth her own creator, fed the one who feeds us all. But let us now see what the evangelist has to say on this. “Mary,” he says, “upon seeing the angel, was greatly troubled” at his arrival (Lk 1:29). As the angel appeared, the virgin knew that the divine had broken in, and her body became agitated, she was unsettled deep within, her mind trembled, and deeply in her heart she became bewildered. The temple which is the human body was unnerved, and what was once restricting was stretched when the greatness of God was plunged into the breast of the virgin, and into the confining limits of her breast such majesty squeezed itself. But, if it is allowed, before we penetrate the mystery of the Christian faith, let us first address those who wrongly believe that this bringing-forth from the virgin, this great sacrament of salvation, this repairing of human salvation actually did injury to God’s divinity. God came to a virgin, that is the Artisan to his work, the Creator to his creature. But when does the restoration of a piece of art not shine favorably back to the honor of the Artist? Is it not always an honor for a builder to keep in repair what he first built? So as not to neglect his work, a great Builder rejuvenates what has grown old, he straightens what has begun to wobble, and he repurposes what has fallen into disuse in a new and even better way. Accordingly, what is occurring in the virgin’s giving birth to God is in no way an injury to her creator but a salvation to the creature. If God created the human person, who are we to disagree with how God wants to repair us? And if it is held rightly that he formed us from the muddy ground, why do we now judge it unworthy of him to remake us from human flesh? For what is more precious, dirt or flesh? So, the more precious material for our salvation, the greater the glory. 48

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Has there ever been a time when God was not the Fashioner of humanity in the womb? Listen to Job: “Did your hands not make and fashion me?” And then, “Like cheese you thickened me, with skin and flesh you clothed me, with bones and sinews knit me together, life and mercy you granted me” (Job 10:10–12). And David wrote: “You formed me and placed your hand upon me” (Ps 139:5). And yet again our God says to the Prophet Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you” (Jer 1:5). If he pieced together the members of Job’s body in the womb of his mother, if he sanctified Jeremiah while still in the womb, and if he filled John with the Holy Spirit while he was alive in the womb of one considered barren (cf. Lk 1:41–44), why should we marvel if he himself is begotten in the womb of a virgin? He who fashioned women from the side of the man (cf. Gen 2:21–22) is he himself who refashions all men and women from the womb of a woman, the same who recreates the man from the body of a woman. Notice, then, that what may seem new to you now, O mortal, is actually quite old to God. But you say: Why was it necessary for God, the One who is able to do all things, to be born in this way? Why? Because he wanted to recreate our nature by being born into our nature, seeing that what was intended to bring about life was now in fact bringing about death. Through the sin of the first human, our nature had received a deadly wound; what should be the beginning of life had in truth become the origin of death. This is the true business of God’s nativity, this is why it was necessary that the Christ be born, so that the birth of the Creator might bring a cure to our nature and that the cure of our nature would mean the vivification of many sons and daughters.

Sermon 147: the third on the Generation of Christ Since we have already started to listen to how the Lord Christ entered into a transaction (commercium) with an earthly body, brothers and sisters, how he came into the constraints of human flesh, and how he took up a virginal womb as his dwelling, today we shall further our hearing on all of this. You, brothers and sisters, really are my life, my well-being, and my glory, so I cannot stand leaving you ignorant of what the Lord has given me to know. The angel knew God, a human heard God, the world sensed him, but no one saw him as the Evangelist acknowledges when he says, “No one has ever seen God” (Jn 1:18). The creature was seeking to know and to acknowledge God, to get a sense for God, because no creature can see God. But since creatures cannot clearly behold God, they can be dragged into drudgery and manifest a sad life far from God’s invisible sovereignty. Accordingly, fear now haunts all things, temerity tears the universe asunder, and terror shakes all things apart. But in heaven divine splendor brings angels to their knees, while on earth thunder and lightning make mortal hearts quiver in fear. While such fear forced angels to flee to earth, drawing men and women to idols, filling the world with empty errors, and forcing all to flee their Creator and worship creatures instead, this fear was never enough to blot out the love of the Lord. For whoever has fear is unable to love (cf. 1 Jn 4:18). This 49

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is why the world preferred to die rather than to remain in fear: for death is itself more pardonable (leuior) than fear. When Cain began to be vexed violently from having murdered his brother, he believed he would find rest if only he would perish. But why do I now bring up Cain? When Elijah sensed that he was being totally overwhelmed by fear, seeking the very death that he had once fled, he surmised that it was better to die than succumb to fear. Peter, daunted by the Lord’s power, was also overcome with fear and asked Christ to depart from him: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Lk 5:8). He came to say this because whatever faith and charity were in him were erased by the burdensomeness of fear. This shows us that fear—however devout—must be tempered by love, or else it warps discipleship (seruitutem) into contempt (contumacem). Seeing the world being destroyed through incessant fear, God thus goes to work: he calls the world back through love, he invites us back through grace, embraces us with charity, binds us fast with affection. This is why he uses an avenging deluge to cleanse the earth from its deep-rooted evils, calling Noah to be the father of a new age. With tender speech God compels him and provides him with a fatherly faith. God dutifully instructs him about the present situation while consoling him about the future. By way of collaboration and not commands, God closes into one ark the beginning of a new age so that the love of companionship may banish the fear of servitude; and in so doing, God expels that type of fear which is more fitting for slaves.10 By means of a shared love God guards what a shared labor saved. This is also why God calls Abraham from the nations. He lengthens his name (Abram to Abraham). God makes him the father of faith, goes with him along the way, saves him from strangers, provides him with what he needs, honors him with military victories, and with promises God pledges himself to Abraham. God snatches Abraham from all harm, wheedles him with warmth, and amazes him with the children he thought he would never have. In this way, filled with so many good things and wooed by the sweetness of divine love, Abraham might learn to love God and not fear him, to worship him by loving him, and not by quaking in fear before him. This is why God consoled Jacob in his dreams when he fled (Genesis 28), readying him for battle upon his return. God embraces him with the clutch of a warrior, so that he may love and no longer fear his partner in the fight. This is why God summons Moses with a fatherly call, speaking to him with the love of a parent, so that he can persuade him to be the liberator of his chosen people. But even more, God makes Moses a god—“I have made you a god to Pharaoh” (Ex 7:1)—he makes him a god, he arms him with signs, equips him with powers. Moses wins military battles throughout the whole world, God grants him victory and yields triumphs to him by his mere commands.11 God reveals to him all the crowns of virtue and offers him his own friendship. God makes him a partaker of his own heavenly realm, and even makes Moses the giver of the Law. All of this is accomplished so that Moses might accept God by loving him, and so that Moses himself would become so ardently inflamed with the love of God, that he could show those around him how to love God as well: “you shall love the 50

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Lord, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole strength” (Deut 6:5). Moses thus wanted whatever was in the human heart, in the soul, in human strength, to be seized by the love of God, so that our earthly cares would never be able to displace this affection. But in all of these things we have just recalled, when human hearts burn with the flames of divine charity, and when men and women are intoxicated with the love of God pouring into their human senses, they first begin to want to behold God with the eyes of their bodies. But how could the God whom the world cannot contain be able to be seen in any human sense? The force of love (uis amoris) has no regard for what it desires, what is fitting, and what is possible. Such love ignores any sound judgment, cares nothing for reason, knows no limit. This kind of love does not experience consolation just because its object of desire is unattainable, it has no remedy just because it is difficult. Such love, if it does not obtain its desires, slays its beloved.12 It goes not where it should but where it is being led. Love begets desire, desire bursts with passion, and passion can reach out to what it should not. What else needs to be said? Love is unable to see what it cannot love. This is why all the saints, if they were unable to see the Lord, esteemed everything else as almost nothing. In truth, brothers and sisters, how can one return any gratitude for benefits received if one cannot behold the bestower of those benefits? And how do we believe that we are loved by God if we are not even worthy to behold him? This is why the love which desires to see God, even if it lacks proper judgment, still has the zeal to adore him. This is why Moses dares to say: “Now, if I have found favor with you, please let me see your face” (Ex 33:13). This is why Elijah says: “Show me your face.” Likewise, this is precisely why the heathens made idols: so that they could worship that which they could finally see with their eyes. Therefore, since God knows that we mortals are tortured and suffer from our desire to see him, he chose to make himself visible in a way that was a tremendous thing to those on earth and no small thing to those in heaven. For how would anything on earth to which God likened himself not be regarded honorable in heaven? “Let us make,” he said, “the human person after our own image and likeness” (Gen 1:26). If perfect devotion is owed to a king, it is also owed to any image of that king. If God had assumed the angelic substance to himself from heaven, he would now be no less invisible. If he had assumed something from the earth below our human nature, he would have spoiled his divine nature, and instead of elevating our humanity, he would have dishonored it. For no one, my dear friends, should believe it to be injurious to God if God wishes to come to humans as a human, taking from our nature what he needs to be seen by all.

Sermon 148: the third on the Nativity of Christ Today, brothers and sisters, we ought to return to yesterday’s homily, and today revisit the joy of our Lord’s birth. When a virgin conceives and gives birth and remains a virgin, this is not an everyday occurrence (consuetudo) but a sign. No 51

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human rationale can account for this, but a miraculous power: the author of this act is not nature, it is not common but wholly unique, it is not human but divine. As such, let the inane work of the philosopher cease. It was not necessary that the Christ be born, but a matter of power, brought about on account of dignity, not disfigurement. This birth is the sacrament of compassion, and so not detrimental to the deity. It was brought about for the purpose of restoring human salvation and not a lessening of the divine substance. For he who made the human race by fashioning virgin earth, also made himself into a man by being born from a virginal body. The very hand that worthily elevated dirt into our form (plasma), also worthily assumed our flesh for our salvation. So, now that the Creator is found in the flesh, he is among his creatures, and this is not an insult to the Creator but an honor to his creation. But whoever would find this offensive is someone who believes dirt to be more precious than our flesh. Would such a person weep over the injuries done to the dirt in the honor of its becoming flesh, or cry over dirt’s glory in being changed into something human? O mortal, why are you so loathsome to yourself when you are so precious to God? When you are so honored by God, why are you intent on dishonoring yourself?13 Why do you seek how you were made, but fail to inquire why (ad quod) you were made? Has not this entire world which you see been created for you as your home? For you the light arises and surrounds the darkness. For you the nighttime has been won over, and the daytime has been measured out. For you the sky is radiant with the various brightnesses of the sun, the moon, and all the stars. For you the earth has been painted with flowers, with woods, and with lush vegetation. For you a phenomenal diversity of living things has been created in the air, throughout the fields, and even in the waters so that no tragic loneliness anywhere might dispel the joy of this new age. This is why God made you out of earth, so that you might be the lord of earthly things—sharing a common created nature with them, but not so terrestrial that you are only equal to them, for you have also been made like the Heavenly One with whom you share a rational soul. You therefore have reason and are thus like God, but you also have a body and are thus like the animals. God gave you your soul from heaven, and he gave you your body from the earth, so that in you a harmony between heaven and earth might be made manifest. Yet, your Creator was thinking how he might still add to your honor. So in you he places his own image (cf. Gen 1:26) in order that such a visible image would express the presence of the invisible Creator on earth, and that such an image would be from his earth. The Lord gave you his own regal position (uices) so that his own great vicarious possession (uicaria possessio) of the world might never be taken away from him. But if this is the way it is, why is it thought to be an insult when God so mercifully took to himself the very thing he had made through himself (quod per se fecit), desiring to be seen truly as a man, in whom he earlier wanted to be seen only in an image? Why is it an insult when God himself wants to take to himself the humanity which he earlier accepted only as his image? A virgin conceived! A virgin gives birth! Hearing about this conception of life should not upset you, this 52

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birth should not confuse you. Her virginity excuses her from any human dishonor. For how is chastity defiled when the Godhead (deitas) enters into a marriage with that bodily integrity which is always dear to him? Where is the shame when an angel is the go-between, when faith is the maid of honor, when chastity is the espousal, when the dowry is virtue, the magistrate is conscience, God the agent, when integrity is conceived, virginity brought forth, and when a virgin becomes a mother? Let no one, therefore, judge in a normal human manner what was brought about through a divine sacrament, let no one analyze a heavenly mystery with human reason, let no one debate this singular secret by means of an everyday affair. No one should rely on a common example to explain that which is unexampled, let no one construct something offensive out of that which is pious, and let no one suffer any danger to their salvation. On the contrary, the one who desires to know loftier realities should run to the Law. Let him seek the knowledge of the Law through the Law, understanding the deeds of the Author through the authority of the Author. The Law shows how God created the human person for eternal life. It shows how God ordered the earth to bear fruit and thus serve the human person, and how the beasts and the cattle and all the animals are to be subject to human mastery, not to human strength, so that humans might not know drudgery but be free from physical pain, and become holy in possessing blessed pleasures. But the one who was considered the first among all the creatures grew jealous that the humanity would have all these things, and so he preferred to be changed into the devil.14 Inflamed thus with envy, the devil drew near to the woman with his trickery. He seduces this virgin into eating the forbidden fruit. Led so, the virgin (uirgo) then leads the virginal man (uirginem), the one who would soon become her husband, astray. She deprived them both of their intended state of life with the food of death, thereby handing out a sinful sustenance (peccati pabulum). She who was made to be the man’s singular source of consolation had in fact become the origin of his entire ruin. Here is the beginning of sin, the font of death, toil, pain, lamentation. Here is the font from where comes the woeful condition of our lives of enslavement. For the human person who was earlier the lord of all, is now cast down as a slave to all, fearing all things which were once in awe of him. He who once was reigning over creation, can now barely even keep his own life together with all its new tricks. This is why, sisters and brothers, a proper ordering is discernible in Christ’s birth: the devil came to a virgin, and the angel came to Mary. What the fallen angel had rejected, the good angel restored. That former exhorted the first woman to faithlessness, the latter to fidelity; the first woman put her trust in that seducer, the second believed in her Creator. Christ was thus born so that he could renew this fallen nature. He took up infancy and allowed himself to need nourishment. He aged through all the stages of life so that he could rejuvenate that unified, perfect, and unending age which he himself had made. He bolsters humanity so that the human person is no longer able to fall. He has made the one who was earthly into one now heavenly, for those once animated by a human spirit, he now vivifies them into divinity (uiuificat in diuinum), thereby elevating the entire human 53

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person up to God. In this one Christ allows no sin, no death, no toil, no pain, and anything that is merely earthly to remain.

Sermon 148A: the fourth on the Nativity of the Lord Neither our public praise (praeconia) nor even our dutiful service will ever suffice to plumb the depths of such a great mystery as our Lord’s birth and our salvation. How would our fickle devotion ever respond to such an awesome gift and to such a great grace? What could we possibly say when the Only-Begotten Son, supreme as the Father and co-eternal with the Father, desired to enter into our condition and to assume a human body for the salvation of the human race—fearsome in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth? How is a mortal tongue able to narrate such a story? What relatable tale can be used to investigate such matters? Who among mortals will try to determine the truths when God alone is his creator as well as his confidant (auctor et conscius)? “No one knows the Son except the Father” (Mt 11:27b). How is the corrupt fragility of sinful humanity able to assess the mystery of a virgin giving birth? But thus is he born, the Christ born not out of the need to live but out of his desire to save.15 He who gives life to mortals is born among mortals. Let us never doubt that what the greatest of the prophets, Isaiah, had in ancient days predicted by the authority of the Holy Spirit would in fact come true: “Behold, the virgin will conceive in her womb and bear a son” (Is 7:14). That a woman gives birth is the proof of a true human incarnation; a virgin giving birth is the eternal glory of the Son who is born. Christ is born from an undefiled woman because it would otherwise violate the divine decree that virtue might arise from sensuality, chastity through indulgence, incorruption through corruption. If so, the Son would have been unable to have come down from heaven in a new way in order to defeat the ancient dominion of death. Unless the handmaid (ancilla) had given him birth, the Lord of the universe was not able to assume “the form of a slave” (Phil 2:7) by which he longed to redeem us. If not, how would the Son of God have suffered the spitting, the scourges, and the Cross for us, unless he had shown himself to be the Son of Man? Judea is truly miserable. It is a people which obscures the light offered it through spreading dark and suspicious rumors of adultery, refusing to believe that a virgin has conceived a son. With the dulling darkness of such envy, they henceforth consider the eminence of God to be nothing other than the crime of some man. But believe, O miserable mortal, that your salvation is the entire reason for his being born in this way. Weigh carefully, brothers and sisters, the type and the depth of the blindness from which these unbelievers suffer. They deny that the Christ could be born from a virgin and instead require that the act of normal human intercourse account for a heavenly birth. By the laws of creatures, the creature inevitably judges God. But since he was born for us humans out of filial duty, let no mortal impiety dare to challenge his birth. That the Son of Man and the Son of God humbled himself in our flesh, that a virgin conceived him, a virgin gave him birth, 54

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and that she remained a virgin after the birth, is the power of a heavenly mystery, not the process of mortal nature.

Sermon 150: on the Lord’s flight into Egypt If a sermon cannot explain how a virgin can conceive and how she can give birth, if our ability to understand all this fails to comprehend, if the human mind cannot conceive of it, who is able to speak about God as man in flight? “The angel of the Lord appeared, it says, and said to Joseph in a dream: ‘Take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt’” (Mt 2:13). If we said earlier that the Christ was born out of compassion, why do we now have to say that Scripture reads, he must flee?16 Perhaps we should say that just as he was born (natum) in order to restore our nature (naturam), he fled in order to call back those now in flight. In reality, if he himself wanders in order to call back the lost sheep among the mountains, would he not also flee in order to lead back all fleeing people? Take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt. Why is it that when someone hears discussion of a heavenly event like this, he or she is confounded, the soul becomes perplexed, the intellect struggles, the understanding is numbed, faith staggers, hope wavers, and even the very gift of believing fails? Take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt. With a man starting out after him, God takes flight. With this world thrashing about, heaven trembles. With the ground stirred, the angels are shaken. The fear of the Father is made real with the flight of his Son. Take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt. When Saul was pursuing David, he fled into Judea, and this neighboring land took him in. Even a widow’s home was offered as a hiding place for Elijah. But no place was offered to Christ as he took flight: his native place forsook him and he could enjoy no homeland as respite. As he moves about, no neighboring folk, no borders, no regions receive him. He thus goes mercilessly into exile in a ruthless land, as Egypt is a place distant and alien with a strange language and foreign to anything Jesus had ever known. Take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt. If the refuge of all things has to become a refugee, if the helper of all things has to go into hiding, if the strength of all peoples is scared, and if the defender of the entire universe refuses to defend himself, why is a mere mortal blamed for fleeing? Why is our trepidation denounced? Why are we blamed for our fears? Why do we condemn St. Peter, one so afraid, for his crime of denial (cf. Mt 26:33–35, Mk 14:29–31, Lk 22:33–34, Jn 13:36–38)? Or John who quakes and thus flees (cf. Mt 26:56)? Why do we blame all the disciples who scatter and run away out of fright? But if there is no doubt that these events truly occurred, brothers and sisters, why do we commit them to writing? Why do we refer to these things, proclaimed in every age, in our scriptures? Why are they made known in our daily readings, made public to anyone anywhere? Is the purpose so that people of every tongue, place, age, and time throughout the universe might know that even the divine himself was afraid? This is why we publicly proclaim the virtues, in order that 55

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souls might reach perfection, or that our souls might shake off the mortal weaknesses which they hear being recited. But what did the gospel writer want to achieve when he committed all of these things to eternal memory? One of the marks of a devoted military man is to keep quiet about his own king’s fleeing. He should rather spread word of the king’s constancy and strengths, while keeping silent about his fears. A loyal servant should proclaim only his king’s virtues, but stay silent about his foibles and banish any outside knowledge of the king’s weaknesses. A faithful soldier proclaims his king’s victories, and with such proclamation he is able to break the enemy’s determination as well as to incite the loyalties of his allies. But in highlighting our Lord’s fleeing, the Evangelist appears only to have aroused the heretics and to have demolished the faithful’s defenses. “Take,” Scripture says, “the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt.” The command here is to flee, not simply to depart. Such a necessity is placed involuntarily upon them. The angel orders this journey shrouded in secret, a traveling not freely undertaken. For the road is always difficult, but it is made even more difficult when one is afraid. But now we have come to the time to understand why these things have been written down for our sake. “Take,” it says, “the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt.” When a real fighter flees in battle, it is a matter of military strategy and not cowardice. When God flees from humans, it is a matter of mystery (sacramenti) not timidity. When a powerful man escapes from a weaker man, he does not fear the one who is now chasing him, but he is instead leading him out into the open. He thus desires to win the battle in full public view, desirous of scoring a clear victory over his enemy in broad daylight. He does not want this conflict to be waged in secret but in the open. Then the public record can detail that his enemy has been defeated for all to know. A secret victory and a hidden strength pass no example on to those who come after. This is why Christ flees: in order to yield to time, not to Herod. For the one who has come to bring back a victory over the enemy will not flee from death. He certainly does not fear the conspiracies of men, as he is the one who has come to reveal the snares and deceits of the devil; even as an infant he had no idea how to fear yet as a man, and was even then unable to be afraid as God.17 If Christ, my brothers and sisters, had been murdered while still nursing at the breast along with the rest of his flock (viz., the Holy Innocents), it would have been a tragedy, but not an event willfully accomplished: it would not have been a matter of power, but of indigence; it would have been something necessary, but not out of Christ’s own virtue; he may have retained the gift of youthful innocence, but would not have had the glory of his majesty. Also, what would have become of that precept pronounced by God: “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk” (Ex 23:19)? “Herod is going to search for the child” (Mt 2:13). It was Herod who seemed to be doing the searching, but it was really the devil searching through Herod. The devil has seen how these three Magi, whom he had once used as his foremost malefactors, had come to abandon him. While Christ was still wrapped in swaddling clothes and nursing at his mother’s breasts, he stayed silent and allowed his 56

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works to remain hidden. But if he who is unable even to walk, is able to change the devil’s standard-bearers, the Magi, into his own most faithful followers, Christ was letting the devil see what he would accomplish in his full stature as a man. This is why he incited the Jewish people and incited Herod, so this cunning conniver might seek to cut Christ down while still an infant (as he was already a threat to him), and thereby halt any future signs of power, especially the sign of his Cross which would stand most victoriously for us but is a sign only of destruction for the devil. The devil knew—he certainly knew—that Christ would in the near future renew human life and the whole world by means of his doctrine and his power. Since he who was still crying in the creche had already occupied the loftiest region of this world, as the prophet himself writes, “Before the child learns to say, ‘My father, my mother,’ he shall carry off the wealth of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria” (cf. Is 8:4), and as the Jewish people themselves bear witness when they say, “You see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the whole world has gone after him” (Jn 12:19). Christ would come in the flesh, he would mature through the natural stages of life, he would proclaim the glory of his heavenly kingdom and teach us with the doctrine of faith, so that he could exorcise demons simply by the force of one word. He promised to give sight to the blind, the power to walk to the lame, speech to the mute, hearing to the deaf, forgiveness to sinners, and life to the dead, as promised through the Law and the Prophets. All of this was accomplished once Christ became a man, only postponing death as an infant, but never having run away from it. And this is why Christ’s fleeing is not out of his fear of danger, but it stems from the prophetic mystery the Evangelist puts forward when he says: “Take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt” (Mt 2:13), and again, “So that the Scripture might be fulfilled: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’” (Mt 12:15, quoting Hos 11:1). Christ thus flees so that the veracity of the Law, the trustworthiness of the prophets, and the witness of the psalms might stand, as the Lord himself attests: “that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled” (Lk 24:44). Christ fled for our sake, not for himself, and he fled so that these mysteries might be realized at their proper times. Christ fled so that by means of his future feats, he would nullify any excuse for unbelief while also proffering sure lessons of faith to those who do believe. So, to sum up: Christ fled in order to give to us the capacity to flee, because in times of persecution it is better to run than to recant. We thus see how Peter was too stubborn to flee and so he denied Christ, while John fled so as to avoid denying.

Sermon 151: the second on the Lord’s flight Today’s reading moved our hearts, it shook our inmost being, and it challenged our hearing of the Gospel. “Behold,” it said, “the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt’” (Mt 2:13). Virginity did not stop this child from being born, no reason stood in his way, nature did not contradict him. So, which power, which force, what crisis 57

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could so overcome him that he is now forced to flee? Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt. A more reverential reading would have been, “Go into Egypt, it’s a departure, not a fleeing. You are doing this voluntarily, not out of necessity; it is to be done not out of fear but as your decision. It is to be at least a free human action if not a divine one.” Now, however, a flight is decreed, decreed by heaven, decreed through an angel, making it apparent that fear first gripped heaven even before earth. Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt. Flee into Egypt, go from your own folk to foreigners, from these holy ones to the sacrilegious, from the temple to the sanctuaries of the demons. The far expanse of Judea does not suffice, the extensive possessions of this age are so limited, the hidden vault of the temple is not big enough, the throngs of their priests cannot suffice, the countless number of kinsmen cannot cover it up. Only unconsecrated Egypt is able to conceal the Godhead. This matter is so pressing that there is no time to safeguard the virgin’s decorum, the mother’s labor, or her feminine modesty; there is no time to pay attention to the danger Joseph is in, the anguish of going so far away and leaving their entire household. But what is even more difficult is being Jewish and having to live as foreigners among the Gentiles with whom there is nothing in common, or rather with whom it will be a total shipwreck (naufragium) because of the Gentiles’ transgressing of the Law. Oh what hardship! Leaving home is hard enough, even if it is with fellow citizens and one’s own family members, as being mindful of one’s own home only makes one realize what is foreign. And what about where it says: “Lord, you have been our refuge” (Ps 89:1a) and “God is our refuge and our strength” (Ps 46:2a)? If one’s safekeeping flees, if virtue becomes afraid, if one’s protection migrates, what becomes of life, of hope, of security, of defense? For Elijah against the snares of a freewheeling king, one widow sufficed; but the whole of Judea was not enough for Christ against the threats of Herod, an enslaved king. With heavenly fire Elijah smote those sent to him; Christ was rescued only by fleeing. So, let these comments suffice to answer our grumblings about why Christ fled. Brothers and sisters, Christ fled out of mystery, not timidity; it was for a creature’s liberation, not from his fear; it was out of divine power and not human fragility; done not on account of the death of the Creator, but out of the life of ages. For what sense does it make that the one who came into the world to die should now flee death? Christ would have destroyed the entire plan of our salvation if he had allowed himself to be killed as a baby. Christ had come so that he could instruct us by his teachings, strengthen us by his example, to do himself what he commissioned should be done by us, and so the things that we heard which seemed impossible we could see were in fact possible. Christ came to make known his divinity to the world through signs, and to take away that ignorance of a human race still unaware of him. With authority he came to stir up the sluggish hearts of the fallen to faith. He came to conquer the devil in open combat so that the devil would be defeated by both divine decree and human efforts, thus trounced by a human example. He came to make good on his promise to be present 58

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visibly to those whom he had permitted to know him by faith. Christ had come to fulfill the promise of his own presence, thus allowing the human race to behold him, or better, to those whom he had granted to know him. He came so that the Jewish person would not be in contempt of the Law, and to introduce the Gentile races to the Faith. He came to appoint apostles as teachers of the whole world, to fill them with heavenly doctrines, to equip them with virtues, to arm them with miraculous signs, so that they could awe the ferocious with the miraculous, heal the sick with powers, and teach the ignorant with sacred doctrine. To sum: he came to defeat death by dying, to extinguish the hellish flames by penetrating them, to open tombs by rising, and to give to earthly creatures heavenly gifts by ascending into heaven. These are all the things that would have been kept from us if Christ had not fled while still in the cradle. But you, O hearer, may ask, “If it could have been otherwise, why did Christ submit himself to such multitudinous and malicious injuries?” Why? First off because a human person is not able to be saved but by the human, nor are the injuries of humanity to be removed but by human injuries. For whoever wishes to take care of another, takes on the other’s condition; whoever is not sympathetic toward the other, is unable to remove the other’s sufferings. Christ took us all up into himself so that he might give us himself; he took up our sufferings so that he might take our sufferings away. This is why Christ fled: in order to show us how to flee during our times of persecution. When a martyr is apprehended, he needs to remain resolute; but if he has not yet been apprehended, he ought to flee his persecutor so that he may kindly grant his persecutor some time to reconsider, and in this way he may not take away from his pursuer some time to make supplication, as the Lord himself says, “When they persecute you in one town, flee to another” (Mt 10:23). Whoever provokes his persecutor makes that one into a persecutor; he who turns away from his persecutor, corrects him. We therefore ought not to provoke but we ought to flee, if we really want our persecutors also to be saved, for whom we are given the command to pray: “Pray,” Scripture says, “for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44). We are thus to pray; we are thus to flee. This is so that he who is ferocious because of his ignorance might be healed. This is also so that the one who suffers will receive the victorious laurel because of his or her patience, and not be endangered out of rash thoughtlessness. Brothers and sisters, if the martyrs had not fled from Saul, they would never have been able to make Paul into a martyr. It is Christ who taught that this is to be done in this manner, and he even left us his own example: that if the Lord himself can flee, his servant ought not to think that it is below him or her to flee as well. And this is the other reason why Christ fled: that as an infant, he deferred the time of his passion, since he scaled the cross only after his thirtieth year of bodily life. He did this so that he who had created the human person perfect for life might restore him for the perfect life; and so that, just as he had given man and woman to the earth, so too he might restore them to heaven. Finally, that he fled to Egypt happened for another reason: he fled to Egypt so that he might reprimand the 59

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unbelief of the Jewish people through the faith of the Gentiles; for Egypt willingly received as its own the Lord whom Judea put to flight. In his own figurative way, Christ was accordingly able to reveal the Church to the synagogue, while opening the Gentiles to the Jews precisely by putting the Gentiles ahead of the Jewish people in faith.18

Notes 1 If it is too much to read the much later theory of Mary’s Immaculate Conception at this early stage, it is precisely comments such as this one which the 19th century Roman Catholic dogma was based. While the fully worked out doctrine of Mary’s being conceived without any of fallen Adam’s contagion comes only much later, many early Fathers could hold that from her very beginnings in the womb, Mary was already saved for Christ by a divine arrangement. Most of Peter’s precursors here would rely on the Protoevangelium (Gen 3:15) as well as Mary’s being plena gratia (Lk 1:28) to make the case of her unique role in salvation history. For more here, see Luigi Gambero, Mary and the Fathers of the Church, trans. Thomas Buffer (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999); Brian Reynolds, Gateway to Heaven: Marian Doctrine and Devotion, Image and Typology in the Patristic and Medieval Periods (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2012); Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 2 While Bishop Peter employs the term concupiscentia only 17 times in all of his sermons, the term had by his time come to be known mainly as the fallen sexual urge. This limited meaning of what could be taken more generally as irrational urges or bodily promptings was introduced into Christian hamartiology through the works of St. Augustine who linked it mainly with a disoriented sexuality seeking pleasure instead of prodigy. For more here, see F.J. Thonnard, “La notion de concupiscence en philosophie augustinienne,” Recherches augustiniennes 3 (1965): 259–87; Paul Rigby, The Theology of Augustine’s Confessions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 116–29. 3 It is easy to see a Trinitarian formula here with Peter invoking the Son as “the Power of God” (1 Cor 1:24). 4 Ever since Daniel 3, a text dear to the early Christians (“All you birds of the air . . . beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord . . .”), the faithful have seen in the natural operations of all creatures a certain innate praising of the Lord—cf., Tertullian, On Prayer, §29 is the classic example; for more, see my “Establishing an I-Thou Relationship with Creation,” in On Earth as in Heaven: Cultivating a Catholic Theology of Creation, in the Catholic Theological Formation Series, ed. David Vincent Meconi, S.J. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2016), 273–94. 5 Aloys Grillmeier, S.J. worries that, Chrysologus is “far more in danger of explaining the unity in Christ by way of a confusion,” Christ in the Christian Tradition, trans. J.S. Bowden (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965), 460, n. 2. 6 Peter’s etymology of the Hebrew name for Mary is informed by how Mar (‫ )רמ‬can be translated as “master” but with the feminine ending -ah (‫ )ירמ‬is to be translated “my mistress” or domina. 7 This notion of a house being locked to all other than those already within is surely a metaphor for Mary’s perpetual virginity, emphasizing the singular and unique human conception of the Son of God in the womb of his mother; for more on Bishop Peter’s Mariology, see Gambero, Mary and the Fathers of the Church, op. cit., pp. 292–301. 8 Here Peter has Mary play a dual role, the Mother of God as well the type of the first Eve, a common patristic trope: through one woman disobedience entered the world, but through this New Eve, fidelity had been restored.

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9 Peter here is making an intriguing point: since “angel” is a created (and therefore given) nature while “virgin” is a habitual matter of the will’s choosing chaste sexual abstinence, he estimates that the latter is better (maius) because it is a freely chosen virtue. 10 While Peter does not here clarify what he means by a fear more fitting for slaves (timorem seruitutis), Augustine distinguishes clearly between a chaste and a servile fear: the former is likened to a lover who is afraid her beloved might one day leave, while the former is like an adulterer who is afraid his rightful spouse may come home early; e.g., Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, §9.6. 11 With the naming of Moses as a “god” (Ex 7:1), Norman Russell argues that in the Jewish paradigm of theosis, Moses represents the one “who has attained the telos and [has] become truly divine,” The Doctrine of Deification, op. cit., p. 62. 12 In this provocative phrase, “love slays its beloved” (Amor . . . necat amantem; CCL 24B.912), Peter is making the point that love is an all or nothing affair. Accordingly, in this part of his homily, s. 147.6–7, our preacher is making the point that everything other than the saint’s love for Christ must be metaphorically killed (necat) until Christ is the guide and the goal of anything a true saint calls love. As he continues, it is thus seeing God himself which allows us to love rightly, but without such union, every other desire and affection is to be counted as nothing (meruerunt parua). 13 What a pastoral affection Peter shows here in stressing that if God loves each and every one of us perfectly, we must in response quit hating ourselves; for this same theme in an Augustinian idiom, see my, On Self-Harm, Narcissism, Atonement, and the Vulnerable Christ, in the Reading Augustine Series (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). 14 Peter here is committing himself to the view that Satan’s rebellion and heavenly fall was prompted by his jealousy that a divine person was going to become human and not angelic. 15 Peter begins with a provocative image: while all other babies come into the world to live, the Son of God was already alive, so he is born into the world not to live but to die, to save the very condition which he has now entered. Consequently, the rest of the sermon stresses the fittingness of the Son’s defeating sin and its effects not through divine power but by human weakness—sensuality is defeated through the Son’s taking flesh, death is destroyed by his dying, and so on. 16 During the pre-Constantinian persecution of the Church, treatises were written discussing the nature of Christians’ fleeing inevitable death. Perhaps Peter is picking up on this natural reaction that fleeing is an act of cowardice, but Christian leaders who had known persecution were not always of this opinion; Tertullian’s De Fuga in Persecutione, Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis, §4, Cyprian’s De Lapsis; Athanasius’ Apologia de Fuga; for more on this debate, see G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, in Michael Whitby and Joseph Streeter, eds., Christian Persecution, Martyrdom and Orthodoxy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 17 Athanasius similarly makes this point that it was most fitting that the death of Jesus occur publicly; On the Incarnation, §23. 18 For an in-depth study of Bishop Peter’s relationship with the Jewish people in Ravenna as well as in his overall theology, see Giuseppe Scimè, Giudei e Cristiani nei sermoni di San Pietro Crisologo, Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum, vol. 89 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2003).

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4 JESUS Tempted, teacher, and thaumaturge

Sermon 1: on the father and his two sons Today the Lord God calls a father along with his two sons and has placed them in our midst. Through this beautiful father figure, he wants to show us three things: the immense power of his love for us, the hurtful jealousy of the Jewish nation, and the prayerful return of his Christian people. “A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them” (Lk 15:11–12). As much as the father is dutiful, so the son is greedy for his inheritance. He finds his father’s life a burden, but since he is unable to cut short his father’s days on earth, he fails to blush when seizing his father’s property. The son did not have the right to make such a demand, to have the wealth of his father without his father. So he deserved to forego the privileges of being his son. But let us ask what came over the son to bring about this boldness, what confidence bolstered him to bring forward such a major request? What was it? Well, it was that something by which he knew that his heavenly father could be hemmed in by no boundary, closed off by no time, undone by no power of death; and, therefore, the son desired to delight in the generosity of his father while he was still alive, not wishing to be enriched by his father’s properties after his passing. In the end, the prompt generosity of his father proved that there had been no offense in his making this petition. So the father divided the property between them. With the one son pleading, the father soon divided his wealth between both boys so that these sons of his might know that before this request was voiced, he had been holding on to their inheritance not out of greed, but out of love. He never wanted to distribute it out of jealousy, but out of providence. That is, the father wanted to hold on to his wealth, never to deny his sons, but so that he could keep it safely for his two heirs. Blessed are those sons whose entire well-being rests in the love of their father. Blessed are they who remain wholly obedient to their father, and who find their true wealth in him. Anything else rips unity apart, destroys fraternal concord, divides families, scatters relationships, disregards one’s parents, and violates charity, as the following lines make more than clear:

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“Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.” So the father divided the property between them. After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any. (Lk 15:12–16) See what selfishness does when it pursues wealth. See how, detached from the father, such wealth never enriches the son but only deprives him. See how this search for ease and wealth stripped the son from his home, from his native land, and how it took away his good reputation and despoiled his chastity. Whatever he once had of a good life, of good habits, of filial piety, of freedom, or whatever glory he once enjoyed, nothing now remains. This folly has thus disfigured a citizen into a stranger, a son into a mercenary, one who had been well off into a beggar, a free-born person into a slave. Above all, it separated him from his dutiful father to whom he was once so closely joined, uniting him instead to the swine. The result? The son who made a mockery of his father’s love, became a servant to the muddy swineherd. The younger son collected all his belongings. This son is called younger not necessarily because of his age, but obviously because of his level of maturity, for he first stored up all his father’s good not in some distant place, but in his mind. While receiving no payment himself, this son actually paid a price to sell himself into deplorable servitude. What a businessman he has turned out to be! Here is someone who has no idea how to repay his parents or to make right with his father. There were only agreeable conditions back at his father’s house: free maid service, the joyful honoring of one another, absolutely clean surroundings, a rich simplicity, and the security of all these assets. All of this work may have been done for the father of the house, but his sons got to enjoy its fruits. He squandered his inheritance. The prodigal son frittered away all the goods his father’s moderation had stored up. By the time the son comes to his senses and realizes that his father had all along been the custodian of and not the competitor for his own wealth, it is too late. A life of dissipation: this is the life that leads to death because the one who lives immersed in vice inevitably smothers all the virtues. His reputation becomes buried, he forgoes any glory; dawdling in decrepitude, his villainy only grows. For when the younger son had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country. Like a torturer, deprivation always lurks within riotous living, within one’s stomach and throughout one’s hunger, so that where punitive punishment was once felt, avenging pain may flame up. A severe famine struck. Rapaciousness always leads to such as this, because the lavishness of luxuries, from which one ought to flee, always brings you to that end. And he found himself in dire need: the possessions which were given to the 63

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son have now brought him to destitution. Ironically, if he had not gotten such an abundance, he would have remained rich. While still under his father’s roof, the son owned nothing but lacked for nothing; however, now he owns everything and lacks for everything. So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine. Those who abandon their father will inevitably come to this state, consigned as a stranger. Having rejected an indulgent provider, such as these will always find themselves before a most severe judge. This is how the son has become a deserter of affection and a fugitive from filial piety. Now a herder of swine, he has been condemned to hogs and entrusted to their service. He is thus wallowing in filth, battered and bruised by the restless teams of swine, but consequently comes to realize how miserable and grievous it is to have lost the peacefilled happiness of being in his father’s home. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any. What a cruel livelihood he has taken on: he who must live with the pigs is not allowed to eat with the pigs. This poor man, hungering for such wretched food and unable to be fed by even that. Taught and instructed by such events, let us remain in our Father’s house. Let us remain in the bosom of our Mother. May we thus always cling with warm embraces to all of our rightful family, into which we shall inquire in a sermon still to come.

Sermon 4: the fourth on the same While we have been rejoicing over the return and salvation of the prodigal, it is now the time, woefully enough, to uncover the hurtful jealousy of the older son. Let us see how his extremely noxious envy came to spoil what had been up to now the great good of his caring for home: Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, “Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.” He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him. (Lk 15:25–28) He had been, it says, out in the field. He may have been in the field tilling the earth, but he was not tending to himself. He may have been able to break up hard clumps of dirt, but his heart was only being hardened; he weeds out briars and unwanted turf but fails to remove his own urges of envy. Standing in the fields of covetousness, he thus collects only the fruit of jealousy and envy. On his way back, Scripture says, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing This symphony of piety forces the jealous son to flee, this chorus of charity shuts 64

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him out. But while the natural bond of nature draws him to his brother and their boyhood home, it is his jealousy that prevents him from truly arriving. Envy does not allow him entry. What a primal sin such jealousy is: it is the first sin, the ancient virus, the venom of the ages, and the cause of all endings. In the beginning, this is what ejected that angel and tossed him out of heaven, it is what got the first man evicted from paradise, and it is what keeps this older brother out of his father’s home. The same jealousy armed the race of Abraham, that people called to holiness, to crucify the Author of life and to put their Savior to death. As an enemy from within, envy does not shake the heart’s walls, it does not crush the defenses of the body’s members. It instead batters against the very citadel of the flesh; even before your innermost recesses detect its presence, envy acts like a skilled thief capturing and imprisoning your soul, the very master of the body. However, if we wish to merit heavenly glory, if we wish to possess the blessedness of paradise, if we desire to live in the house of our heavenly Father, and if we do not want to be regarded as having committed regicide against our heavenly King, with vigilant faith and with the spirit of light, let us fight against the disgracefulness of envy and defend against all its ambushes. Armed with heavenly power, we shall hence put this envy down, aware that just as charity unites us with God, such envy divides us from him. His father came out and pleaded with him. The father’s distressed heart is pressured by his sons’ rebellion. The father is astonished and his goodness runs back and forth between the differing claims of his commitments, since he sees that one brother is soon put to flight at the return of the other brother, and that with the safe return of the one, the other is soon lost to him. Oh, the swelling tumor of jealousy! Can a large house not contain even two brothers? But, brothers and sisters, why are we aghast at this? Envy does this: envy makes the entire expanse of our world too small for two brothers or two sisters. This very envy induced Cain to put his younger brother to death. Envious jealousy had made him an only son, whom nature’s law had first established as a first-born brother. “He said to his father in reply, ‘Look, all these years I served you’” (Lk 15:29a). So says the one who dares to judge the care of his father. Look, all these years I served you. Would you look at that? The son thinks he can offset being born with some years of service. “Not once did I disobey your orders” (Lk 15:29b). This, however, is not because of the son’s innocence but because of the father’s indulgence, because the father lovingly preferred to conceal his son’s delinquencies rather than expose them. “And not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends” (Lk 15:29c). Such a jealous soul of one brother cannot be pleasing to a father, nor can one so unmindful of his father’s goodness ever be aware of the love he owes his brother. He does point out that a young goat had never been given to him, yet he did receive his share of inheritance when all was divided out earlier. For when the younger brother made the request that his portion of inheritance be given to him, the father divided all he had equally between the brothers, just as the Gospel relates: “So the father divided the property between them” (Lk 15:12). But a jealous man never 65

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sees reality for what it is and is always therefore lying. And you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. Of course, he fails to think of the friends of his father as his own, viewing these men only as threats and cannot therefore regard them as friends. “But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf” (Lk 15:30). The older brother is hurting because the younger brother has returned, not because he has lost his inheritance; he persists so, not on account of any loss of fortune, but because this is what envy does! Instead of making him feel worse for what he had squandered, he should have drawn from his own resources to make his younger brother decent upon his return. The entire estate of a father resides in his son, so when the father received his younger son, he considered nothing really to have been lost. But the older brother really did believe everything was lost when he saw his beleaguered brother return. For when is a jealous man also not greedy? When does he not count what another possesses as a loss for himself? He said to him, “My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.” (Lk 15:31–32) Oh how great is the power of love! Even though the father does not know how to avoid being regarded as evil to his son, he cannot not be a father. He sees that his son has degenerated from his own spirit. He beholds how his son has nothing of his own fatherly goodness, his own fatherly character. But he nevertheless calls him his son, trying to get him to take on a different attitude, recalling him to his favor or hope of his generosity: You are here with me always; everything I have is yours. This is what he is really saying to that older brother: Suffer your brother’s return to his father and permit your own father to welcome you, also, back as his son. Once content being only a hired worker, your brother asks for nothing now except your father, saying: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you, I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.” Everything is still yours, the father is enough for your younger brother now. And so that you do not think some of your own goods, past or present, have been lessened, I shall find other resources in the future. Certainly, if you follow my instruction, you would share your present bounty with your brother, so that any future goods would come equally to you and to him. Rejoice, therefore; rejoice over the one found, so that he might also rejoice that you have not also perished.1 But let us now bring our sermon on this historical happening to an end, so that with Christ being revealed, we may in a future homily open up these mystical and profound truths all the more. 66

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Sermon 5: the fifth on the same Often a shrewd and shameless debtor refuses to pay back his debts. He instead, by extensive and artificial schemes, tries a creditor he knows to be patient. This fifth sermon on the departure and return of the wanton son will try to advance the historical sense, as promised, but it will also provide a mystical and singular understanding of divinity. Pray for me. I am charged with so much and though on my own I am not an ideal debtor, pray that through God I might become the ideal re-payer. “A man had,” Scripture states, “two sons” (Lk 15:11). After Christ took on the burden of our flesh and God had dressed himself in external humanity, God calls himself truly human. The Lord rightly calls himself the father of two sons, because divinity has been mixed with humanity, piety united to deity. Humanity and God have mingled, the Lord unites himself to the father in this story. Scripture tells us about this one man, this one father, who had two sons through the gift of the one Author and not simply through the exigencies of procreation.2 He had two sons not because he deserved them but because God prescribed so. In a similar way, Christ was a man to our eyes, but he remained hidden as God in his majesty. Christ also had two sons, two peoples in reality: Jews and Gentiles, but he made the Jews older by the wisdom of the Law. He designated the Gentiles as the younger ones by the foolishness of pagan thought. Just as wisdom gives grey hair, whatever is of mortal man brings out unwise things. In morals the Gentiles stood out as younger not in age, but in their good sense. For it is not the years that make one older, but wisdom. “The younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me’” (Lk 15:12). This one sought the Knower of the heart not in voice, but in desire; because good things come from God, while out of our wills comes evil. You see, this younger son who was originally the owner of his father’s entire estate, has chosen to be an owner now of only a portion, saying, Give me the share of your estate that should come to me. And what is this share? What is it? Custom, speech, knowledge, reason, and judgment, all these things which pertain to the human person who lives above all the other animals on the earth. That is, according to the Apostle, the law of nature (cf. Rom 2:14–15). So, the father divided the property between them. By giving to the younger five things which we have called the good things of nature; to the older he gave five books of the divine law. By inheritance the gifts were unequal according to what is deserved, but by number it is actually equal. One held together human order, while the other retained an order divine. Both laws lead both sons to a knowledge of the father, while offering a reverence for their Author. “After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation” (Lk 15:13). We said above that this one was younger not by his years, but by his actions. That is why it says after a few days because, at the beginning of the world itself, Gentiles hurried towards the fatherland of idolatry. This is a journey to a

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faraway region of the devil residing in the soul, not to a specific location. This is how the Gentiles wandered in their vain principles and in fickle thought, unsettled not in their bodily motions but as ones scattered throughout the lands. Even though they were always in the presence of the Father, they were really without the Father; and even though they were always among themselves, they were not really with themselves. Dissipation here means a desire for secular eloquence, schooling in lewd women, and trivial doctrines. In such things, the Gentiles wasted the inheritance of God the Father in mad arguments and whatever else was reasonable, which could have led them to God through their eloquence, reasoning, wisdom, and judgment. Even so, it brought the greatest need and a tremendous hunger for the knowledge of truth, because philosophy leads to seeking divinity, even though it brings no real fruit of finding truth. This explains why the Gentiles pledged allegiance to the prince of the world, by whom they were sent into the world, into his one villa of his many superstitions. Here “he tended the swine” (cf. Lk 15:16a), that is, demons, who say to the Lord: “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of swine” (Mt 8:31). They thus feed demons through incense, through sacrifices, through blood, and for this work they received false oracles in return. The cattle, which had no knowledge of true living, were killed and only prophesied death. Their carcasses spoke from their dead entrails what they could not bring forth in speech while living. Truly nothing of the divine, nothing of the coming salvation, nothing good was found in those pagan rites. They took themselves out of true schooling by despairing of God; they removed themselves from his providence and judgment, from the things to come, and instead sided with their insatiable stomachs, desiring to satisfy their stomachs from their own desires, “on which the swine fed” (cf. Lk 15:16b). This is what (those Gentiles who would later be called) the Epicureans realized when they came to the Platonists and Aristotelians. In this encounter, they found no true teaching in either divinity or knowledge, so they handed themselves over to Epicurus, one of the last of the philosophers and the first author of desire. They had eaten of the pods (cf. Lk 15:16a). That is, they opened wide and fed on sweet sins of the flesh. They thus fed demons, who always feasted on the vices of the sordid body. As Scripture states, “whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:17), in the same way, whoever unites himself to the devil is one with a demon. And although he desired so much, the younger son never satisfied his stomach from the pods. Why not? Because nobody gave him any. The devil certainly wanted to arouse greed in the Gentile son to provoke illicit seeking, to cause him to commit faults by his hunger for knowledge, and through his fallen desires. God the Father, however, permitted the Gentile to be hungry, so that the recognition of his errors might stir a desire for his salvation. The Devil prefers that you would perish, but hopefully the hunger pangs of the Gentiles will eventually lead them back like the return of the younger son. He returned, however, to the father and exclaimed, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you” (Lk 15:18). Every morning the Church’s voice bears witness to the younger son’s return to his father’s home, exclaiming to the 68

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Father this prayer, “Our Father, who is in heaven (Mt 6:9), I have sinned against heaven and against you” (Lk 15:21). I have sinned against heaven, blaspheming that the sun, moon, stars in heaven are gods, and he profanes them by worshiping them. “I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers” (Mt 15:19). That is to say: “Since I no longer deserve the glory of being a son, let me at least have your blessing to work as a hired hand for pay.” As far as “daily bread” (Lk 11:3, Mt 6:11) is a son’s inheritance, this honor which had been due to him has now expired. But the Father runs after him nonetheless. In fact, the Father runs from a long distance off. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). The Father ran, he ran in heaven, when by himself he descended from heaven, and so came to earth: “The Father who sent me is with me” (Jn 8:29), and “the Father fell on his neck” (cf. Lk 15:20). The Father fell, so to say, by Christ’s full divinity coming down from heaven and assuming our flesh. Listen to him, “so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us” (Jn 17:21). “And he kissed him” (Lk 15:20). When did this happen? It is when “love and truth meet; justice and peace will kiss” (cf. Ps 85:11). He gave him his “finest robe” (Lk 15:22), signifying what Adam lost in the glory of perpetual immortality. Then, “he put a ring on his finger” (Lk 15:22), a ring of the title of honor, designating liberty, a spiritual pledge, a sign of faith, a pledge of the heavenly wedding. Listen to the Apostle: “I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Cor 11:2), and then he put “sandals on his feet” (Lk 15:22), as it says, “your feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace” (Eph 6:15). The Father then killed the “fattened calf” (Lk 15:23), about which David sang: “That will please the Lord more than oxen, more than bulls with horns and hooves” (Ps 69:32). The calf was killed by the request of the father because Christ, the Son of God, could not be killed without the will of the Father. Listen to what the Apostle says, “He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all” (Rom 8:32a). Here is the calf who is continually sacrificed for our daily feasting. But the older brother, the Father’s oldest son, came in from the field. Here are the People of the Law, where “the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few” (Lk 10:2). The older son “heard the sound of music” (Lk 15:25) coming from his father’s house, he heard the chorus and refused to go in. We see this every day with our own eyes; for the Jewish people come to the house of the Father, that is to the Church, but they stand outside because of their jealousy. They hear the cithara of David alive with music, music fitting for the prophet. They hear all the harmonious melodies coming from the people, and out of jealousy they refuse to enter. Standing outside, they judge their former Gentile brothers and are horrified by their ways, thinking to themselves that only they can be the good son while excluding themselves from all the family delights. This older son says, “‘Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat’” (Lk 15:29). We said above how it is better to be quiet than to speak, because when the Jewish people speak here, these are not words of good action (facientis) but words of swollen pride (tumentis). The father then goes 69

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on to say to the son, “My son, you are here with me always” (Lk 15:31a). But how so? Because this older son is signified by Abel, by Enoch, by Shem, by Noah, by Abraham, by Isaac, by Jacob, by Moses, by all the holy ones, and by those from whom the Jewish generation in the Gospels is derived, as the reading puts it: “Abraham became the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers” (Mt 1:2). “Everything I have is yours” (Lk 15:31b). But in what way? Because the Law is for you, all the prophecies are for you, the temple is for you, the priests and their sacrifices are for you, the Kingdom is for you, and above all the Christ has been born for you. However, through the power of jealousy, you have now lost a brother, you have foregone your ancestral feasts and the delights of your Father. In this confined sermon, we were not able to lay open as much as we desired. But these points are spread out for your understanding and for your knowledge, albeit seemingly shortened in our sermon. Although simple and rough by comparison to others, we hope this was not unpleasant. We were compelled to expound mystical things and high things, but not to make them ornate or to rant in a rhetorical manner, but simply to open these mysteries by explaining them.

Sermon 11: on Lent and on the Gospel account of Jesus’ being led into the desert The divine law readily enables us to know what the intricacies of human curiosity, what the labor of our ancestors, and what worldly wisdom has been seeking, and seeking for a very long time: What is the source of evil? From where does guilt and the power of vice come? Why is there criminal fury, a war within our flesh, turmoil in our souls, and so many storms in life? From where do such shipwrecks, so deadly that they kill, come?3 No mortal could know the answer here unless the law of God disclosed the ways of the devil. For it is the devil who is the author of evil, the origin of iniquity, the enemy of all that is, the adversary of everything that is human. He is the one who lays traps, who puts up stumbling blocks, digs ditches, establishes ruin. He is the one who agitates bodies, fights against souls, suggests wicked thoughts, stirs up your ire, makes you hate virtue and love vice. He sows wrongdoing, feeds discord, disturbs your peace, breaks up your affections and seeks to divide any real unity. The devil savors evil and has no affection for what is good. He befouls all things human and even attacks things divine. So, as the Scripture says, this reckless seducer even went after Christ: “He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. The tempter approached and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread’” (Mt 4:2–3). Those now hearing these words should neither upbraid God nor incriminate nature. Let them not cast aspersions on the Author or accuse the flesh. They should not just look inside their own souls or accuse the seasons. It is not the fault of the stars, nor is it right to blame the innocence of creatures. Instead, let them realize that evil is an accident, not a created thing, that God is the Creator and Author of good. The devil is the inventor of 70

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evil, and so they should refer all evils to the devil, but all good things to God. They should avoid evil and do what is good, and in so doing have God as their helper in doing good things. For God gives the power to do what he bids, and he himself achieves what he commands. So, while the devil prods us toward what is evil, God draws us toward what is good. No one therefore should ever succumb to thinking that his or her vices are part of their intended creation, or that we could ever ascribe our evils to nature. Instead, let us take up the arms of fasting, let us war against sinful attacks, and let us trounce the warring camps of vice. With Christ battling for us, let us score a victory over the author of evil. For when the devil has been defeated, your vices will no longer have power over you because once the tyrant has been laid low, the front lines of tyranny are flattened. Hear the Apostle when he says: “For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens” (Eph 6:12). Then the Gospel continues: “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert” (Mt 4:1a). He is led not by the devil. This makes it clear that this is a divine journey (cursus) and not a human endeavor (incursus). This stems from the Spirit’s prescience (praescientiae) and not human nescience (inscientia). It is through the power of God, not the power of the enemy. The devil always thrashes our good beginnings and tempts us when the virtues are just starting to take root. He hastens to extinguish our holy ardor as it begins to arise, knowing that he is not able to overcome it once it has been established. Christ is not unaware of this and so patiently permitted the devil to question him. In this way he bound his enemy with his own trap, the enemy ensnared by the very plan by which he thought he could ensnare. And being so defeated by Christ, he now cedes to Christians. He fasted for forty days and forty nights. See, brothers and sisters, our Lenten fast is not a human invention, but its authority is divine. Fasting comes from a heavenly mystery not from human brashness, it is not a human custom but a celestial secret. The forty days of Lent contain a discipline of the faith that becomes doubly-perfected (quadrata perfectio).4 But because we cannot here develop what sacramental significance the numerical value of the fortieth and the tenth have in heaven and on earth, let us focus on the fasting undertaken here by our Lord. He fasted for forty days and forty nights. Mortal man, God hungers in you, and in you, God thirsts. But something even more: he hungers for you, he thirsts for you. God does not need to eat for his own sake, as he is not able to grow hungry. But for you he hungers and thirsts. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. This is not a sign of infirmity but a sign of strength. When it states that, afterwards he was hungry, Scripture is stressing the fact that he did not hunger during those forty days and forty nights. To feel hunger and then to overcome it is a human struggle, but not to hunger is a divine strength. Christ thus never grew tired of fasting nor did he grow hungry while fasting. But Christ did come to hunger in order that the devil might discover a situation in which to tempt him. The devil was not bold enough to tempt Christ while he was fasting, as 71

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he saw how the one who fasting so must be God and not a mere man. Only when he hungered did the devil sense Christ was human. Only then, assured that Christ was mortal, did this clever inquisitor (callidus explorator) realize that Christ was hungry and thus able to be tempted. “The tempter approached and said to him” (Mt 4:3a). The devil approached Christ with the deceit of the one who tempts, not with the care of the One who helps. The devil drew near to Christ with a more wicked brazenness than when he withdrew. Let us then listen to what he offered to the one so hungry: “Command that these stones become loaves of bread” (Mt 4:3b). He offers stones to the hungry. This is always typical of humanity’s enemy: this is how death’s author and the enemy of life tries to feed us: Command that these stones become loaves of bread. You devil, your protection has failed you. He who can change stones into bread is also able to turn hunger into fullness. What is your plan with respect to the one whose power is utterly sufficient? Say, Command that these stones become loaves of bread? You poor wretch, you want to be malicious but you are not able; you desire to tempt but you do not know how. You should have offered this hungry man delicious food, not inedible rocks; you should not have tempted his hunger with things coarse; you should not have tried to whet his appetite with horrid food but with luscious savories.5 Your plan could not even entice a son of man, let alone the Son of God. Understand, O Tempter, that in the presence of Christ your craft fails you. Command that these stones become loaves of bread. The One who is able to change water into wine is certainly able to turn stones into bread. But such signs of faith must be performed not with treachery; they must be given to the one who believes, not to the one who tempts. Such signs must be done for the salvation of the one who seeks, not for the affront of the one doing them. So, you devil, why do you need such signs? No sign will ever save you and everything is actually now a punishment for you. Even such miracles intensify your ruin. But accept this answer, so that you might understand yourself and so be subject to your Creator: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4). Hear the word of the Father who hungers not for bread but for the words of our salvation. Everything he does, he does so that the human person may live by his heavenly Word and not by earthly bread. This means to live for God, and this is not burdensome because it is true life, which does not pour with sweat, requires no pain, and has no end.

Sermon 12: the second on fasting Since we see how the springtime of fasting and the time of spiritual warfare converge, we march toward camp as soldiers of Christ who are now getting rid of our laziness in both body and soul.6 This is so our bodies, which have grown soft because of the slowness of winter, may be strengthened through the exercise of heavenly warfare.7 We have rested our bodies for a year; let us now give some days to our souls. We make time for ourselves; let us now make some time for 72

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our Creator. We have lived totally for the world; let us now live just a little for God. We should thus put away the cares of our homes and so remain in the camp of the Church. May we now not seek the sleep of our beds, but let us keep vigil on the battle lines of Christ. Having thus joined with the courageous, we shall be far from sweet embraces; the love of the triumphant ones will hold us. May the honeyed words of children not coax us, nor the familiar sounds of old disturb us, but let only the divine voice fill our ears. May only a tiny bit of food be taken from the heavenly rations, and may an abundance of worldly comforts not be sought. Let our drinking be guarded by the cups of sobriety and may drunkenness never dilute our resolve. As far as our stipend, let the beggar as well as the military man be content with what there is, and may there be no destructive excess to bring him any harm. During a time of war, whoever first feeds the hungry and offers aid to the helpless will himself be nourished. Thus strengthened and ready, brothers and sisters, we should declare war against our sins, establish the fight against our crimes, and announce that there is now a battle waged against our vices. We do these things assured of victory because worldly enemies are unable to defeat heavenly armies, and no earthly adversaries can hold out against our Divine King. No deception of the enemy will be able to be brought against those standing firm in the Faith. Even with all of his surprise attacks, the devil will not be able to prevail against those who are guarded, vigilant, and sober. He will certainly not presume to employ his wiles in an undisguised manner, and will thus have to contend in battle openly with those of us who have been armed in these ways. So, our minds must always be focused on heavenly things in order that we may put to death the devil’s devious deceptions and the secret snares of the flesh. While the devil alone is a vile thing, he is even worse if called upon. Listen to the Apostle when he describes how, “the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet 5:8b). When you and I fast, the devil goes hungry since he only feels full when feeding on our sins. It is he who coaxes us to eat to overindulgence and drink to the point of drunkenness in order that he might muddle our minds and dishonor our flesh. What is supposed to be a home for the mind, the vessel of our soul, the guard of our spirit, a school for the virtues and the temple of God, our human body, the devil instead labors to turn into a crime scene, a public parade for the vices, and a true theater of sensual indulgence. When such excess loosens our souls, when our libidos are stimulated, when worldly pomp excites us, self-interest motivates us, wrath propels us, and fury animates us, when jealousy burns us and greed inflames us, when worldly cares seduce us, disagreements trouble us, the hope for wealth captivates us, when greed for money triumphs over us, business contracts encumber us, when moneybags press us down and the weight of gold squashes us, when virtue dies and the vices thrive, when gratification runs rampant, integrity perishes, tenderness is tossed out, when avarice abounds, confusion reigns, order breaks down, and when discipline is dethroned, then the devil is satisfied! Then he derives pleasure and he is gorged with his feasting! 73

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Yes, these, these are the struggles that fight against the soldier of Christ; these are the allies of Satan, the legions of the devil. These are the things that have filled the world with dead men’s tombs, which have devastated entire peoples, which have overturned nations and have led the entire world into captivity. These are the realities which no mortal is able to withstand on his or her own, and so God himself comes to demolish them. He is the King of heaven who descended to earth. He is the sole victor who alone came in order to prepare and establish our Lenten fast, so that our four-times-ten day fast might build an unassailable wall around all four corners of the world. This fast, brothers and sisters, we know to be God’s refuge, the encampment of Christ, the defense of the Spirit, the standard of the Faith, the sign of chastity and the victorious monument of holiness. Adam did so in Eden, but his gluttony eventually forced him out of paradise (cf. Gen 3:6). Noah fasted on his ark while drunkenness flooded the world. Through such fasting, Lot put out the fires of Sodom, but through his own drunkenness he was engulfed by the flames of incest (cf. Genesis 19). Fasting made Moses glow with a divine light when revelry and drunkenness darkened the Israelite people with the errors of idolatry (cf. Ex 34:28). Through fasting Elijah reached heaven (cf. 1 Kgs 19:8), but it was drunkenness which threw the unfaithful Ahab into hell (cf. 1 Kgs 22:34–37). John became the greatest born of women (cf. Mt 11:11) because of his fasting, but it was intoxication that reduced the ruler Herod to a murder by the command of a woman (cf. Mk 6:24). This Lenten fast, brothers and sisters, reveals the ancient ways of the devil and lays bare his deceptions. For the devil who despised Christ while he was eating and rendered him only human as he drank, saw that when Christ fasted he was taken to be God, and in fact even confessed to be the Son of God: “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “command that these stones become loaves of bread” (Mt 4:3). In saying this, the devil wants to denounce man, not God; he does not want to nourish Christ but wants to make a mess of his fast: If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread. For after a fast it is not divine strength but human weakness that looks around for bread. Even though it is in his power to do so, it is not as if God is so enervated by hunger that he is on the lookout for bread. It thus follows that the devil here shows us what he is after: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down” (Mt 4:6a). But you are wrong here, O devil, and do not really know how to tempt: God is not able to fall downward. Then from a lofty mountain top, “he showed him all the kingdoms of the world” (Mt 4:8b) and all their worldly pomposity, and said: “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me” (Mt 4:9). This was said by the very one who had just called Christ the Son of God. If you will prostrate yourself and worship me! Alas, the audacity of the devil! He says to God, “Adore me,” but he will soon witness that the One whom he is now grilling will show by means of his powers that he is actually God. The devil will soon recognize the Judge by the sanctions he imposes; he will soon know the Mediator by his recompense. For by the name of Christ, by the name of the One now fasting, the devil himself begins 74

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to be dispelled from the bodies he had been possessing. Thus trembling, the devil begins to give glory to the One he now so deviously and proudly seeks to harm. This is why Christ fasts: not only that he himself will emerge victorious, but that he might also grant to us both the power to defeat the devil as well as the way with which to win: “But this kind does not come out except by prayer and fasting” (Mt 17:21; Mk 9:29). Let us, too, then fast, brothers and sisters, if we desire to imitate the Christ, and if we thereby desire to trounce the tricks of the devil.

Sermon 14: on Psalm 40 [41] The military trumpet instructs those experienced in battles what to do, but it is a terrifying clamor for the novice soldier. The trumpet is the director of battles, bestowing confidence on its own but pouring fear into the hearts of the enemy. Whoever wages a military campaign without a trumpet is not really a soldier, as he would be motivated by frenzy, not by battle. Such a one does not act out of virtue but out of fear; he seeks to die (perire) rather than to defeat (vincere). So we say this: the soldier of Christ understands why heaven provides a little hymn for him. Situated now in the battlefield of this world, we wage war with the devil whenever we resist his evil doings. Thus, whenever the prophetic trumpet blast sounds, we should be ever vigilant in times of peace, courageous on the battle line, and victorious in battle. For today the blessed psalmist summons us to a new concern through his heavenly song: “Blessed the one concerned for the needy and the poor” (Ps 41:2a). But what is there to understand when poverty is so evident? The force of such understanding will probe intimate matters, announce otherwise secret affairs, and lay bare what is now covered. Yet, situations clearly witnessed by our eyes, obviously exposed in public—those ugly matters retched forth (ingesta rebus) from within—are not in need of being understood, they simply need to be seen. The naked who are chilled to the bone for want of clothing, the hungry who languish from lack of food, those who are parched from thirst, enervated from fatigue, pale like ghosts from so much want—who has to labor to understand that such people are in need? And if a man or a woman does not strive to understand all of this, what use is there in having such understanding already? So let us pray, brothers and sisters, that the very one who grants us the understanding to grasp the things we must, also demonstrates to us how he is the one to be understood in the poor. The One who adorns the heavens is naked in the poor. The One who is the satiety of all existing things now hungers. The Font of all fonts thirsts. How is this not something awesome to understand, how is it not blessed to behold? Poverty enwraps him whom the heavens cannot hold, he who enriches the entire world is the One now in need in all the needy ones. The Giver of all things begs for just a crumb of bread or a cup of water. God empties himself (se deponat) by his love of the poor, but in such a way that he does not simply attend to the poor, he actually becomes the poor man himself. Those to whom God graces to see this, see! 75

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But exactly how he transforms (transfuderit) the poor person into himself or himself into the poor person, he himself will tell us now: “For I was hungry and you gave me food” (Mt 25:35a). He did not say: “The poor man was hungry and you gave him food.” Rather, he said: I was hungry and you gave me food. He announces that the poor man was the one who received what had been given to him; he says that the poor man is nourished by what he has eaten; he testifies that what the poor man drinks is poured into him. Oh, what our love for the poor brings about: for when the poor man on earth is embarrassed, God is glorified in heaven. God makes an honor for himself precisely out of what the poor man considers an injustice. Surely it would have been sufficient if the Scriptures had simply said: You gave me to eat, you gave me drink, but it first says, I was hungry and I was thirsty. Christ prefaces these lines this way because it would be a stingy love for the poor that accepted just the poor man and not all the circumstances of the poor man. For love is not real until it is tried through such circumstances as these. That is, true love makes its own the sufferings of the one suffering. It is incredible that the food of the poor man is appetizing to God. The one who has no hunger for all the good things throughout creation asserts before all the angels and all the resurrected gathered in the Kingdom of Heaven that he has fed lavishly on the food of the poor. While Abel suffered, as Noah preserved the world, when Abraham showed such faith, when Moses brought us the Law, as Peter is being crucified upside down, God remains silent. But here he announces: the poor person eats! See how in heaven the fullness of the hungry comes first, the first things noticed are our offerings to the poor. The first lines in the heavenly registry are our allocation of goods to the poor. Blessed is that name read by God every time that poor person’s record is read aloud in heaven. But let us also listen to the fruit of that blessed one: “On a day of misfortune, the Lord delivers him” (Ps 41:2b). The one who realizes that he must lead a life combating the evils of this present age, should always bring along alms to assist others. This one should call upon the company of the poor as a refuge for himself, extending his task of offering nourishment to the poor, and by frequently providing gifts to the poor, he should be freed from anything he fears. For whoever fills the empty hand of someone asking with gifts will himself lack for nothing, as the repository is unable to be emptied because a penny (nummus) alone can fill it back up. On a day of misfortune, the Lord delivers him. On that day God himself will prove to be the Deliverer of anyone who has freed a poor person from misfortune. God will hear such a person when he cries out from his anguish, because God was the first to have heard the poor person when he cried out. God will avert his eyes from the evil of that one who enabled the poor man to have some good days. But anyone who comes to the day of judgment without the poor person’s endorsement will in fact see his own day of evil. When accused, the sins of the merciful will be inconsequential when the poor man excuses him. But the one who cannot be excused is the one whom the poor man’s hunger still accuses. “May the Lord keep him,” it says, “and give him life” (Ps 41:3). The passage does not say: “The Lord keeps him and gives him life,” but it says: May the Lord keep him 76

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and give him life. The passage expresses it in this way so the psalmist’s voice might be a petition and not a demand, as God now hears his Church praying throughout the world: May the Lord keep him and give him life. That is, may God keep him from suffering punishment; may God give him life so that he may rise from the dead and receive life. “And may the Lord not betray him into the hands of his enemies” (Ps 41:3b). Who is his enemy (inimici)? The devil, namely, and he himself is the prince of all other forms of malevolence (inimicitiarum), so the one who treads upon these enemies is the one who also tramples on the author of all malevolence. “The Lord sustains him on his sickbed” (Ps 41:4a). The prophet investigates all the calamities of human frailty. The Lord sustains him on his sickbed. What is lying on the bed of our pain but our human body in which our soul lies? The soul is there writhing in pain. It is in pain because the soul longs to soar into heaven but is weighed down by the earthiness of the body. “You turn down his bedding whenever he is ill” (Ps 41:4b). God does not change the just man in his bed, but the sick man is changed in his bed. For it is human flesh that is changed and that changes. It is the flesh that is flung about by afflictions, that changes in times of prosperity. For the Lord does turn down our bedding whenever he converts our afflictions into blessings. Because the sick man was being diminished while on his sickbed—that is, in the sickbed of his body, his soul was being tossed about—this suffering person himself, being tossed about, cries out: “I said, ‘Lord, have mercy on me, cleanse my soul’” (Ps 41:5). Because of his relationship with his flesh, the sick man begins to realize how he now suffers from a sick soul as well, imploring God to heal his soul too. Ever faithful, he asks for mercy because he has shown mercy to the poor person. Blessed is he who by supplying the poor person with what he needs, has himself rendered the Judge as his own debtor.

Sermon 15: on the centurion Brothers and sisters, you are now going to hear how a centurion of a Roman cohort became a leader in our Christian army. This was done justifiably because he began to teach even before he believed: When he entered Capernaum, a centurion approached him and appealed to him, saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.” He said to him, “I will come and cure him.” The centurion said in reply, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof; only say the word and my servant will be healed. For I too am a person subject to authority, with soldiers subject to me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes; and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” (Mt 8:5–9) Do you see this? Before the centurion became a disciple he first put himself in the place of a teacher. He models for us all the way to request something from Christ, 77

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and he gives us a norm for our believing in Christ. He makes public his reasons for believing, and he exemplifies for us the virtues, and all of this while not yet even having entered the regimen of Christian formation. A centurion approached him and appealed to him. This is wisdom, not groveling. My servant is lying at home. As one with authority, he himself appeals on behalf of this boy. He is truly a centurion (centurio), but one who has now converted his worldly salary into a heavenly one-hundred-fold (centenarium) reward, consecrating his earthly military duty into a divine dignity. Lord, my servant is lying at home. The one who calls another Lord is at the same time confessing his or her own indebtedness. But how does this centurion, who acknowledges that this One is his Lord, also dare to claim his servant as his own, as if he did not know that any servant’s property belongs to his Master as well? Could one who teaches matters so eternal and profound really be ignorant of something so mundane? My boy. I say my because he is lying down, but if he were yours, Lord, he would not be down. This the Prophet evinces when he writes: “Oh come, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, you who stand in the house of the Lord” (Ps 134:1). You are the one who stands; you are not the one who lies down. Your servants stand upright; the servants of men lie down. Because this servant is mine, he is paralyzed, but he does this so he might now be yours and thus be healed. Because he is mine, he suffers painfully, but when he becomes yours, he shall suffer no more. Lord, it is not right that your servants lie down in the grip of maladies. The pains of your servants are really your own afflictions. It is not fitting that the power of maliciousness should ever take hold of your servants. For even when your servants are suppressed by evils, they suffer not as a punishment but as a preparation for their crowns. For your servants, calamities do not bring about desolation but are the causes of victory. Servants of other humans are the ones who suffer uninvited maladies because their lords are unwilling to come to them in their need. But you, Lord—you, who even the powers obey and to whom all caring submits, you with whom all healing complies—how will you count him among your servants when you see him so enslaved to such diseases? But your goodness is known among such evils, even the godless confess your grace, and even strangers shout of your mercy. But if your kindness does not go and find this servant lying down, should I still say that he is really yours? My servant is lying at home suffering dreadfully. Not only is the intensity of his suffering so great that I am unable to carry and offer him to you, but if I were to, if my servant’s sickness were made public, it would bring him even more pain and shame. With such a discourse, the centurion moved the Judge, and he moved him so much that even the Lord of the heavens himself agreed to go and heal his servant. I will come, Christ says, and cure him (Mt 8:7). Brothers and sisters, the centurion did not drag the Author of mercy to perform an act of mercy, nor did he force Christ to come and agree to perform an act which Christ had already come to do. But the centurion is taught and made more aware of why Christ came to his servant as a servant, why God comes to man as a man. As one of them, Christ came to lift those lying down, to raise up those crushed down, and to free those who are 78

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bound. Since Christ himself is the most gentle (clementissimus) servant of his own handiwork, he goes and carries those whom nobody is able to carry and present them for healing. So let us now listen to how the centurion responded: Lord, he proclaims, I am not worthy to have you under my roof (Mt 8:8a). The centurion gave a response carved out of his own indebtedness, and in this singular awe-filled response, he acknowledged Christ to be the Lord. Who leads God down into the home of his soul, into the secret pathways of his heart, into the court of his conscience? Who allows God into the enclosures of his mind where the most intimate thoughts are twisted, swirling and disallowing the sanctuary of his human heart to abide in the silence of sincerity without the swirling of vices? This is why he responds to the teacher with such fear: Lord, I am not worthy to have you under my roof. This is also what Peter proclaimed when he understood that Christ was the Creator of all things, saying: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Lk 5:8). Just as Peter asks him to depart from him, so the centurion makes his plea not to come to his house in broad daylight. Both do this so that the indignity of their residence does not bring more insult to the resident. I am not worthy to have you under my roof. This is a most fitting thing to say before God takes up residence within our mortal flesh. So even though the centurion clearly sees Christ now dwelling in his human body, why does he want to forbid Christ from coming under his own roof? Brothers and sisters, the centurion was already able to see the form of his own body in Christ’s own body, but he did not see the fallen disturbances (passiones) of his own body in Christ’s. For Christ is born in the flesh but his birth is from the Holy Spirit. He accepted human flesh for his dwelling, but this space was from the Virgin; so that while it is true that he has a human body, he has absolutely no trace of the uncleanness of the human race. Rightly, then, did the centurion judge that his own dwelling would be an unworthy one for Christ, because Christ was dwelling in our human body in a very singular home, or as the Prophet put it: “I lie awake and moan, like a lone sparrow on the roof” (Ps 102:8). “Only say the word and my servant will be healed” (Mt 8:8b). This centurion did not know the Law but he doesn’t do anything without the Law. He says: Only say the word, because the Law states, He commanded and they were created (Ps 148:5). And if all things were created by his simple decreeing it, how could the infirmity of just one boy not be cured by means of a single decree? Only say the word. And what can be said without a word? But the word the centurion is requesting is not for the use of speech but for the power of healing: “He sent forth his word to heal them” (Ps 107:20a). Only say the word, because the centurion really believed that all power was in this word. Your word is healing, [Christ], your word is life. When your word draws near, then pain flees at once and sickness soon comes to an end. Think of Peter: without the word this nighttime fisherman was ignorantly working in the dark, but with Christ’s word he made a tremendous catch of fish once he was told to lower his nets: “Master, we have worked hard all night and caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets” (Lk 5:5). Furthermore, as if what the centurion had requested from this word (i.e., Christ’s command) was not 79

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sufficient, he is able to show what he has asked for, adding reality to his request, and he asks for it again, but this time by means of an example: For I too am a person subject to authority, with soldiers subject to me. And I say to one, “Go,” and he goes; and to another, “Come here,” and he comes; and to my slave, “Do this,” and he does it (Mt 8:9). What he is now saying is: You are God! Subject to authority means you yourself are the Power of all powers. With soldiers subject to me means you have all might. And when I say to this one “Go,” and he goes really means, “Say to the sickness of my slave ‘Go,’ and it will go.” To another, “Come,” and he comes really means, “Say to my servant’s health ‘Come,’ and it will come.” And to my servant: do this and he does it. My servant will become your servant upon receiving healing, so let him hear, let him truly hear: “You are well; do not sin any more” (Jn 5:14). May my servant then act only righteously so that he might be freed from the paralyzing effects of all his sins, and then he will be able to sing along with the prophet: “Return, my soul, to your rest; the Lord has been very good to you. For my soul has been freed from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I shall walk before the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps 116:7–9). Brothers and sisters, whoever desires to enjoy fruit one-hundred-fold (centesimum), then imitate this centurion (centurionem). Do not therefore flippantly pass over the centurion’s prudence here. Our homily about him today should be enough because the mystery which is represented by his example is very great.

Sermon 18: on the mother-in-law of Simon Peter Those paying attention to today’s reading have learned why the Lord of Heaven has entered the lowly dwellings of his servants. But it should not astound you to learn that he who had come to heal all things, so courteously enters all things. “For when he entered,” the Scriptures report, “the house of Peter, Jesus saw his mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever” (Mt 8:14). You see the purpose of Christ’s entering Peter’s house: it was not for the sake of reclining to eat, but for the sake of the sick woman lying in bed. He came not out of his need to eat but out of an occasion to heal. For this is the exercise of divine strength, not the elaborate display of human eating. For in Peter’s house it is not the wine which pours forth, but the tears; the family there was not concerned about preparing a meal but about curing the woman who languishes; in that house, what was boiling up was a fever, not gluttony. Christ thus entered there not in order to busy himself with dishes but to restore another’s life. God seeks human persons, not human frivolities; God longs to give heavenly gifts, he does not desire to acquire worldly goods. Christ has thus come in order to restore us, not to amass what is ours. For when he entered, the scripture says, the house of Peter, Jesus saw his motherin-law lying in bed with a fever. Christ entered Peter’s house and saw why he had come. He was not taken up with various aspects of the house. He was not occupied with all the people making their way to see him. He was not bothered by the fuss of all those wanting to greet him, nor by the members of Peter’s family already 80

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there, and he certainly was not there to take in the house’s decorations. He desired to attend to the fever of the one so sick. He saw how dangerously ill she was and immediately extended his hand to work a divine healing. Christ did not recline to eat until the woman, who had been lying, was able to arise to divine works. “He touched her hand,” scripture says, “the fever left her, and she rose and waited on him” (Mt 8:15). You see how this fever leaves the one whom Christ embraced. The sickness cannot stay where the Author of health stands, death has no access where the Vivifier has entered. He touched her hand, it says. Why was there need of touching when the power of commanding would have been sufficient? But Christ touched the woman’s hand to bring her to life, as Adam had taken death from the hand of the first woman. Christ touched her hand so that what the hand of the conceited one had forfeited, the hand of the Creator might restore. He touched her hand in order that the hand which had once plucked a sentence of death might now receive the remission of sins. And she rose and waited upon him. And why did Christ really need the help of this woman, a woman so advanced in years that she was already quite old and had already raised her children? There was obviously no young servant girl in Peter’s house: no attendant, no family member, no neighbor, and certainly not a wife who would have taken the place of his mother to wait upon them. Above all, did Peter himself not consider it a bit immodest that this old woman, this mother-in-law of his, was forced to do what a disciple ought to do for his Teacher? Brothers and sisters, Christ did not require human help from her for whom he had just worked divine power. But he allowed her to wait upon him as an indication that her health had in fact been restored. In this way Christ scatters sicknesses and restores us to our pristine vigor; for when such a skilled expertise cures, not even a trace of sickness remains. But if we wish to understand the spiritual sense of this reading which could otherwise remain hidden, we shouldn’t look among the tiny blossoms.8 For whoever seeks the real ripened fruit of this reading must scorn the ever-alluring blossoms in the field. Violets, roses, lilies and the narcissus are all flowers for which to be grateful. However, we should be even more appreciative of bread. As sweet odors are for our noses, ornate embellishments of a sermon are for the ear, but as bread provides life, wisdom brings about salvation. Let us therefore put the sweetness of human oratory aside when the soundness of wisdom is set before us. When he entered, the scripture says, the house of Peter. Christ came to the house of Peter so that Peter’s household might come to Christ. In fact, Christ came into the house of Peter when he entered the dwellings of earthly flesh. When Jesus entered the house of Peter. And what is the house of Peter? It is that which Jesus talks about when he says: “And you, House of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, since from you shall come a ruler, who is to shepherd my people” (Mt 2:6). What is more, the Apostle says: “From them, comes Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, be blessed forever” (Rom 9:5). For when he entered, the scripture says, the house of Peter, Jesus saw his mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. What he saw was the synagogue lying in 81

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the darkness of its faithlessness, lying there oppressed by the weight of its sins, frantically feverish because of its infidelities. So he took its hand and not just with words alone but by his own hands does Jesus work the salvation of the Jewish people. Listen to the Prophet: “Yet you, God, are my king from of old, winning victories throughout the earth” (Ps 74:12). He took her hand in order that her own hand be made pure from the blood of the prophets before administering to her the Church’s sacrament. And she rose and waited upon him. This is why she who was once lying low is now able to stand upright and wait upon Christ: because earlier she polluted her hands through unrighteous deeds, those hands are now being sanctified by means of good works. “When it was evening, they brought him many who were possessed by demons, and he drove out the spirits by a word” (Mt 8:16). How can this passage be understood in a more human way—that with contempt for the daylight, these people who were so desirous of healing carried many severely sick people for the sake of their being restored back to health? The evening is a sign of this age coming to an end, a sign of this world straying from the light of ages. But “late” is the time the Preserver of Light comes in order that he might restore the unending daylight to his people who come to him only in the eventide of the ages. When it was evening, they brought him many who were possessed by demons. It was in the evening, that is, in this final age! This is the time when the piety of the apostles and their solemn dedication of life presents us Gentiles to the Lord so that he may now purify us from the demons who once lorded over us as we once idolized them. Listen to the prophet: “For all the gods of the nations are idols” (Ps 96:5). Unmindful of the one God, we instead were serving innumerable gods through the most sacrilegious and sordid enslavement. But he drove out spirits by a word, because Christ came to us here not by means of his flesh but by means of being the Word. Christ came in this way because “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word” (Rom 10:17), and we are freed from being enslaved to demons because Christ punished the demons for their impiety and put them under his dominion. This is why these same demons are tormented by our hands and by our commands, those who used to subdue us to the wood of idols, enchain us by means of stones, and routinely vex us with empty figurines and inane fears. But now, brothers and sisters, let us not fall back to that same enslavement through our own infidelities to Christ. Let us not be trapped by the promise of omens and the fallacies of divination. Do not be enthralled by psychics or taken in by palm readers. Do not be seduced by these things of death and enticed by the alluring aroma of calamity. But let us instead commend our actions and our very selves to the Lord, surrendering ourselves to the Father and trusting in God. Because as God he providentially directs the course of human time, and as Father he directs the actions of his children in order that the Lord may never abandon the care of his family.

Sermon 28: Matthew sitting at his customs post Training in both earthly and heavenly ways of life verifies that poverty is interconnected with the virtues. The athlete enters the ring without clothing, the sailor 82

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confronts the stormy waves while naked, and the soldier is able to stay his ground on the battlefield only if he is not weighed down. Whoever tends toward philosophical study must shed his concern for earthly things before he is able to enter into contemplation, because poverty is interconnected with the virtues. If poverty is the parent of the virtues and if it is a true friend of the virtues, we can then understand why Christ selected the poor for the service of virtue. Peter and Andrew, John and James, brothers joined together—or better, two conjoined paupers—brought together to be leaders among the apostles, were poor in what they owned, lowly in social standing, base in their career [as fishermen]. They led insignificant lives, ordinary in their work, forced to stay up all night while handed over to sea storms, void of any honors, prone to injuries, and they sought out what they needed for their clothing and daily food with nothing but a fishing net. But in these who were seen as nothing in the eyes of this world, so precious are their souls in the eyes of God. They may have been poor in what they owned but were rich in innocence, lowly in social standing but majestic in sanctity, base in their livelihood but rich in simplicity, overshadowed in this life but now shining brightly with what they have come to deserve, ordinary in work but extraordinary in steadfastness, forced to stay up all night but now ordained for heavenly victories, handed over to sea but never sunk by the storms. While they were being denied worldly esteem, they were enriched with real honors; handed over to misfortunes, they were never ruined by injuries; catching fish but called to be fishers of men. “Come after me,” Christ said, “and I will make you fishers of men” (Mt 4:19). With living bait now cast on the hook of the heavenly word, these fishermen are to snatch souls from death and so bring them to everlasting light. Catchers of fish have become catchers of men: they have changed from one kind of labor to another type of labor, because work well-executed does not grow wearisome. When all things are made useful, they do not fatigue, and this is why the exercise of virtue continues untiringly. This is why Christ wanted his apostles to continue in their worldly work, so that they might remain tireless in their divine labors. God wanted them to remain strong by constantly exercising virtue because good fruit comes only from such labor. He did not want them to cast off their work but simply to change their job. It was God himself who first gave this hard work to them, so that he might later make them steadfast in virtue. That is why they were able to prove victorious over earthly kingdoms, nations, jails, chains, tortures, and all the various ways of killing found raging throughout the earth. We said earlier that poverty was something dear to God, chosen by God, and has proven to be a friend to the apostles in their exercise of virtue. What remains to be said? Christ chose Matthew as an apostle, a wealthy man plucked from his customs post, rich from usury and encumbered with much worldly gain: “As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, ‘Follow me’” (Mt 9:9). Matthew the gatherer of public revenue raises for us no small question with his quests (quaestibus quaestionem), and his dealings place before us much to deal with (negotium sua negotiatione). But someone might ask: What question? What deal? God takes the poor without discarding the wealthy; he takes those who have while attracting those who do not have to 83

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himself. Abraham was rich, Job was rich, David was rich—and who was more blessed than Abraham, more courageous than Job, holier than David? Abraham’s consoling embrace welcomes those dutiful souls who suffered grief while on earth but who now fly up to heaven. In all of his wealth, Job was put to the test, but he defeated the devil and left us an example of how to be victorious over him as well. Abraham possessed his wealth in a way that allowed him to scorn riches often, trampling them underfoot. He lived so as to own his riches and not to be owned by them, to possess wealth as part of his own alms for others but never for the feeding of his own covetousness. To these examples should come this response: riches are not harmful to those who are being sanctified, insofar as riches are given by God and not acquired in an ugly manner, given by God to use on one’s journey of life and not for an excess (usuram) which brings death. The riches of Matthew announced to everyone that he was an expert in the ways of acquisitiveness. These riches were roasting him in a cauldron of avarice, were binding him to business deals, were pressing him down under the weight of moneybags, so that he was not well enough to be raised to innocence, to rise to justice, and to make his way to a life of virtue. His sitting (sedere) was not really a sitting but just a settling (subsedere). But now we must still ask why Christ called such a one to his own goods, why did Christ select Matthew for his own riches? Unless this is asked straightaway, it becomes a momentous question. How would our human weakness not be scandalized when it sees wealth influencing Christ in this way? For Christ gives the gift of faith to the fraudulent tax collector, grace to a double-crosser, the duty of open-handedness to one who was a guide in greed, the ability to teach about sacred matters to one so learned in extortion, and the secrets of heaven to a worldly-minded tax collector. Those seeing this were outraged because usury, which was then devastating the earth, was being taken up into heaven. Something which men and women detest was being divinely sanctioned. Even Matthew himself is the one who perceived that those looking on were disturbed, and that is why the one who would tell the truth about himself could not remain quiet: “While Jesus was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mt 9:10–11). This must be a great evil because it is the already-evil Pharisees who are scandalized and who ask about Christ. Also, if it is something greatly forbidden that tax collectors and the Christ share a meal together, even more scandalous is how a tax collector is invited to enjoy a share in things divine. On this question, brothers and sisters, the ingenuity of an interpreter becomes strained, because even the Lord himself, to whom this question was posed, did not resolve every query. Let us therefore reread the arrangement of this passage in order that we might hear in what way Christ comes to Matthew. “As Jesus passed on,” it says, “from there” (Mt 9:9a). The scripture does not say, “As Jesus was standing there.” He passed on, Jesus crossed over from there, so Matthew would not remain where he was. From there Jesus crossed over so that 84

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Matthew could cross from where he was. He saw a man. It does not say, “He saw Matthew,” because in Matthew he set a man free, that is to say, all men and women over whom money has had power. The servants of money refuse to be servants of God: as the Scripture states, “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt 6:24b). “And he said to him, ‘Follow me’” (Mt 9:9b). Jesus did not say, “Fetch me,” because he was after Matthew not after Matthew’s money bags. Come, follow me—by which he meant, “Put aside that which weighs you down, break the chains that bind you, be freed from the traps which ensnare you, and follow me. Find yourself, put away your extortion, so that you may be made worthy to discover who you are.” But let us now listen to how Christ responded to the Pharisees. “The healthy,” he says, “do not need a physician, but the sick do” (Mt 9:9). Pay attention to how Christ approached Matthew. He comes to him in order to heal him from his greed, to cleanse him from his disease of usury. “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Mt 9:12). Christ desires mercy so that Matthew might restore through mercy the misery he had inflicted, so that he might make restitution from the very place where he had incurred his guilt. “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Mt 9:13b). In saying this Christ does not leave the righteous out, but instead excludes the unjust who feign righteousness. Christ comes to sinners, he desires to absolve sins, and wants those sins not to remain in sinners any longer. Granting generosity to the greedy is giving life to the dead, and that is why Christ calls Matthew. It has nothing to do with Matthew’s wealth, but it has everything to do with his well-being. As a consequence, Matthew immediately became poor in terms of his earthly wealth, but he is now regarded as eternally rich in heaven.

Sermon 54: on Zacchaeus the tax collector We have heard how the blessed evangelist has described the life of an inhumane rich man and his destiny, moving us and troubling our affections. But today he brings out the humanity of the rich Zacchaeus and his faith and carries us to heavenly delight. “He entered,” the evangelist says, and Jesus was “walking through Jericho” (cf. Lk 19:2). Why was he walking through and not just walking? Since Moses had walked, Christ was walking through; and the people, whom Moses was leading on their way, Jesus brought to the peace of their promised homeland. He was walking to Jericho. Jericho is of course a city itself, which Jesus of Nun overthrew by the sound of seven trumpets.9 But because Christ had come to save that which had been perishing, he enters into Jericho, so that what the Law destroyed by a terrible cry, Jesus would raise up by the shout of pious preaching. “Jesus,” it says, “came to Jericho and intended to pass through the town. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector and also a wealthy man” (Lk 19:1–2). Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector in Jericho, that perishing city. Perishing by his own works, Zacchaeus is said to be chief. On that place, person, and deed, an accusation is cast in order that the greatness of the Forgiver might shine. Now a man there named Zacchaeus, who was a chief tax collector 85

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and also a wealthy man, was seeking to see who Jesus was. Whoever seeks to see Christ, looks to heaven from where Christ is, not to the earth from where gold comes. The rich man who thus looks up does not bear wealth, but tramples on it. He does not bend down to wealth but lifts it up and puts wealth at the service of the Giver, not at the service of wealth’s greediness. The avaricious person is a slave to riches and not a master over his riches, while the merciful person has as many servants as he has coins. “He was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature” (Lk 19:3). He was great enough in soul, this one who appeared short in body. For this man who was not equal to other humans in bodily stature, touched the heavens with his mind. May no one care about being short in body, about which nothing can be done, but may such a one seek to increase in faith. He was seeking to see who Jesus was; but he could not see him because of the crowd, for he was short in stature. “So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way” (Lk 19:4). By what steps do you think he came to the branches of the very high tree? He treaded the earth, he ascended over gold, he transcended greed, and he climbed above the total mass of wealth, so that leaping onto the tree of favor, he could hang in the fruit of mercy and from the mirror of confession of pardon, now able to discern the Giver. He climbed a sycamore tree. By mystery, not by chance, he climbed a sycamore tree. So that from whence Adam covered the nudity of the body (cf. Gen 3:7), there also Zacchaeus could cover the ugliness of greed. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus, who was about to pass that way. Truly it states that he was about to pass that way because Christ traversed through earthly ways and human labors not to remain but to pass through. “When he reached the place, Jesus looked up and saw him” (cf. Lk 19:5a). It is as if Jesus had not turned his eyes in that way, he would not have seen him, as when he spotted Nathaniel under the same tree from a long way off, even though he was so distant. Yet he saw him, and he saw him with forgiveness, he looked up with grace, he viewed Zacchaeus’ life and contemplated his salvation. God longs to know the one whom he sees no longer as a stranger but as someone he wants to know for the sake of his glory. So, Jesus looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house” (Lk 19:5b). If he had already rightly ascended, why does Jesus say to him: Come down? For scripture already stated, he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree. The servant runs ahead of the Lord: Zacchaeus ascends that tree before his Lord mounts the cross. That is why this is spoken to him: Come down quickly. Let that suffice, Quickly, come down. Before your Lord, come down from that Adamic tree (de Adamitica arbore), so that you are able to ascend the Cross of your Lord’s passion. “Unless one takes up his cross and follows after me” (cf. Mt 10:38). He did not say, “Go in front of me.” Descend, therefore, so that you can put off such great works of fraud, such a weight of desire, a mass of usury, and your leadership over the highestranking, cruel tax collectors. May you thus swiftly enter the school of poverty, the discipleship of mercy, the use of piety, the discipline of patience, the desire 86

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for virtue, understanding of divinity, the withstanding of sufferings, and the true understanding of death, and then, after having been perfected through the trials of the Tree of Life, ascend. Come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house. When Peter had said to the Lord, “You will not wash my feet” (cf. Jn 13:8), the Lord responded: “Allow it now, for thus it is fitting” (Mt 3:15). And then he says, I must stay at your house. The one whose house Christ has not entered, will not come to the divine mansion. The one at whose table Christ has not sat, will not sit at the heavenly table. “And he came down quickly and received him with joy” (Lk 19:6). Zacchaeus was with joy because he sustains his Sustainer, because he pastures his Shepherd, because the guilty bends the Judge to a humane judgment, because the food and drink he serves the One to whom he owes interest now places him in his debt. And in this way the tax collector foregoes any gain but changes it. When they all saw this, they began to grumble, saying, ‘He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner’ ” (Lk 19:7). But who is without sin? If there is no one without sin, anyone who accuses God for going to sinners refuses pardon for himself as well. When God seeks out sinners, he is not in search of the sins but of the one sinning. He despises the sinfulness which is the work of humans, in order that he not lose us humans which is his own work. Listen to what the prophet says, “Turn away your face from my sins” (Ps 51:11), namely, from my works. But with regard to himself, he says, “Never forsake the works of your hands” (Ps 138:8). When a judge wants to pardon, he looks not at the guilt but at the man. When a father wants to have mercy on his son, he thinks of the love he has for him and not the son’s misconduct. In the same way, in order that God can forget the works of humanity, he remembers his work and looks at humanity. May you, who thus criticize and complain about why Christ goes to the sinner, receive the way of salvation, this model of forgiveness, and the hope of mercy. And be careful lest you blaspheme that which should be the occasion of salvation for you. Where does the doctor go but to the sick? “Those who are well,” scripture says, “do not need a physician, but the sick do” (Mt 9:12). Where is the panting pastor hurrying but to his dying sheep? When does a king mix with the enemies, unless he wants to liberate the captive? Who scatters precious pearls, and would not deign to enter into the muck, willing to search for such a pearl amongst even excrement? Is there any peril too great wherein a mother would refuse to hand herself over for the sake of her son? And God, who created the human person in his image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26), proves why he seeks us even in our sin. You complain, O mortal, that God pursues us in our sin. What will you do when you see him descend even into Tartarus, into darkness itself, for our sake? Listen to what was gained when Christ went to the house of a sinner. “Zacchaeus,” it says, “stood there and said” (Lk 19:8a). You see how the one who was lying down is now standing upright. In our vices we lie down oppressed by them. In our good works, we stand upright as we make progress in virtue. Zacchaeus said, “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor” (Lk 19:8b). He believes that if he transfers half of his wealth to his future life, he will 87

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be alive after death. It is a given that the perfect person is the one who regards all that he has here on earth as being sent to the place where he is going. This one is a companion in the virtuous life, an ally in prudence, a participant in the faith, one who gives to God half of everything because he knows that a person forgoes everything he leaves here. In reality, brothers and sisters, just as he who transfers his own things there believes he will live there, surely the one who does not believe he will live there, has prepared to have nothing there for himself. For if we can barely bear poverty today, who will be able to endure eternity as a poor person? Who serving in the military does not send to his homeland what he conquers by blood in war, so that in his old age he will be able to compensate himself luxuriously for his labors in adolescence? And how could a Christian, whose military service is to live in this age, fail to act likewise, so that his earthly perils will console him in the swiftly coming heaven? Such things a Christian ought to do, and Zacchaeus himself teaches this by his word, and shows us by his example. “Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over” (Lk 19:8b-c). Whoever disposes of someone else’s property, pillages more by giving away than by stealing. Such an evildoer does not quench the groaning of suffering, but prolongs it. I dare to say: it will be remembered as a crime, offering to God what was obtained from fraudulent acts, and such a one will not purify himself, because God considers such works to be spoils and not as mercy for the poor. To no avail will such a one cry out to God, as another is rightly crying out against him. And so the voice of God is this: “If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, you shall return it to him before sunset” (Ex 22:25). Just as a lamp manifests a thief, so the sun accuses the fraudulent. If we want to offer all we have to God, if we want to possess our own things forever with God, let us earn the right to hear those things which Zacchaeus heard: “Here is a descendant of Abraham” (Lk 19:9c). “Today salvation has come to this house because this man too is a descendant of Abraham” (Lk 19:9). The pitiless rich man went from being a son of Abraham to becoming a son of Gehenna (cf. Lk 16:19–31). But Zacchaeus, being a son of pilfering, became an adopted son of Abraham by giving away his own things and returning the things of others. But do not think that Zacchaeus reached the peak of perfection by giving up only half of his wealth. He will give away all of his possessions to the Lord, along with his very self when he becomes a bishop. Zacchaeus came from the tax collector’s table of profit to the table of the Body of the Lord. Getting rid of the fraudulent wealth of this age, he discovered the true wealth of the age in the poverty of Christ.

Sermon 68: the second on the Lord’s prayer10 Our mortal state, the earthly structure, this muddy substance suspended between life and death, withered by perilous labor, wasting away in punishment, rotting, a nature subjected to the grasp of dust and decay, not sufficient enough to dwell upon and does not dare to feign otherwise, is terrified to believe what is today 88

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obvious to behold. Human frailty is not able to find the source from which it is able to merit such a great gift of God’s grace, the magnitude of the promise, or the bounty of his offer. I think Habakkuk saw this in his mind’s eye, when such a great fear caused the hearer, Habakkuk, to tremble when he professes, “O Lord, I have heard your renown, and am in awe, O Lord, of your work” (Hab 3:2). He feared what was heard, not because a great prophet had heard the Lord at that time, but because the servant discovered that the Lord conversing with him had become a Father for him. Indeed, he became frightened by contemplating the framework of the discordant elements of this world, but also because considering such awesome works of devotion towards himself, he was hit with fear and trembling wonder. O Lord, I have heard your renown, and am in awe. He marveled that when he had lost the confidence that comes with being a servant, he had in fact been adopted as a son. Finally, that you may know about this prayer, which today divinity intended and fulfilled, how by hearing from heaven the prophet was moved to perceive this gift given in a certain way by fear, take a look again at what he said, “I guarded myself, and my stomach trembled; at the sound, my lips quiver” (Hab 3:16a). After he sensed that such a great gift had been bestowed upon him, he protected himself, so that he would not be forced to always live as a hostile, as an enemy, as a thief as it were in paradise. He became a watchman, a guard more concerned with himself, who sensed himself to have found heavenly treasure after throwing away such a great thing, as Paul says, “But we hold this treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Cor 4:7). I guarded myself and my stomach trembled. Here the prophet calls his insides the stomach of the heart, because as the stomach is fed and filled by food, so is the heart by its judgments. My stomach feared because of the voice of supplication from my lips. If understanding of the heart poured a voice into his mouth and gave words to his lips, why did his vow, his desire, cause him to fear what he was about to pray? Because it was not by the suggestion of his heart, but because he was speaking by the utterance of the divine Spirit. Listen to what Paul says, “God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father’” (Gal 4:6). This was what was transmitted to his hearing deep within. He marveled to have deserved such a thing, and his entire insides feared. With good reason, then, he added, “Decay invades my bones” (Hab 3:16b), because the prophet’s very insides were vexed. “Below me my strength was shaken” (Hab. 3:16). But what is below me? However far man himself is raised up through grace, he had been lying down below by his first nature, because earthly strength could hardly withstand heavenly strength. Mount Sinai smoked when God descended on the mountain to give his law. What about mortal flesh, then, when God descended into our state to bring his grace to our flesh? The Father came because the human person as a servant could not sustain God as Lord, and because the one who said, “Open wide your mouth that I may fill it” (Ps 81:11), is faithful in these words. Open now your mouths so that by such prayers, and by such a shout, God might fill it. “Our Father in heaven” (Mt 6:9a). Where are they who despair of the promise of God? Behold how quickly the confession of faith is paid back: how soon you 89

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confess God as the Father of the only Son, and you yourself are adopted by God the Father as his child too. You too are now made an heir of heaven, an exile of Eden and of earth. You can henceforth call upon God as Our Father in heaven, because the one who once had claimed to be your father melted you into mud, led you out of paradise and dragged you into hell. Let such a one not know the earth again, let him ignore the love of flesh, let him not seek the father of dust. For the one who now seeks from God a heavenly nature, should allow for vice never again. In fact, let the person who believes that he or she is a child of God, by actions, by life, by customs, by so great and noble a family, never again descend to things earthly and thus inflict so great an injury on his or her Father. “Hallowed be your name” (Mt 6:9b). If the name of Christ enables the blind to see and the lame to run, if it brings health to those fatigued by various maladies, life to the dead, how do you, O mortal, pray or ask to have your entire creatureliness hallowed? It is because from this you are called Christian by Christ, and you therefore ask that the right of so great a name may be given to you in order to strengthen you in good deeds. “Your kingdom come” (Mt 6:10a). He commands devotion, he weighs desires, he seeks out your prayers, so that in his coming he would be surrounded by his power. The faithful soldier is one who desires the presence of his king, one who longs for the kingdom, and he zealously goes after triumphs. By this petition, however, you are petitioning that he will reign for you and in you—you, in whom the devil had once enjoyed a stronghold, death was your sovereign, and for such a long time hell held you in possession and had power over you. We therefore pray, beloved, that Christ will reign in his soldier so that the soldier will triumph in his King. “Your will be done, on earth as in heaven” (Mt 6:10b). How blessed is that day which combines, unites, and makes equal the will of heaven to that of earth, so that among these different realms (substantias), they might become one and the same will. Here is a faithful peace, a firm harmony, and a persevering grace, when the family has one proper nature in the Lord. Through many in wills, such a family is to be found one in thought. “Give us today our daily bread” (Mt 6:11). After a heavenly reign, who asks for earthly bread? But daily does God want us to ask for bread in the sacrament of his Body. There we come to the very table of Christ and in this eternal day, we enjoy a taste here and now of what we shall receive there in full and in absolute satiety. “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Mt 6:12). Whoever seeks this while refusing to relax the debts of others, accuses his own praying this way. Whoever asks for such a great thing to be given, as much as he forgives is forgiven, and he gives to the pleasure of the Lord, inviting God into the bargain. Whoever gives as much to another, also expects as much to be given back to himself. The things that are to be forgiven, brothers and sisters, are not just debts of money of course, but forgive all causes, faults, or crimes. From whomever you have incurred debts, you should also release them from their debts to you. The trusting one who freely forgives others’ sins, seeks pardon for himself. 90

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“Lead us not into temptation” (Mt 6:13a). In many diverse ways, we must encourage several to make this prayer, brothers and sisters. Why so? In order that bold fragility and timid presumption, and their ignorance of how weak they really are, might not succumb to evil in the conflict because they were ill-prepared. Then the God who is offended hands them over to their temptations and leaves them there. “But deliver us from evil” (Mt 6:13b). He who thinks humbly of himself, does not presume to be able to save himself, and instead begs to be delivered from evil by God. Sign yourselves!11 Understand, little children ( filioli), what glory and what power there is in those who have been perfected and strengthened when such power is provided at the conception [of your Christian lives] and what great majesty is opened for them at the time of their birth. The one not yet born calls on the Father, asks for holiness, seeks the kingdom, gives justice to the earth, reconciles the wills of earth and heaven. Ever faithful, such a one requests the provisions needed to make his labors fruitful: Give us today our daily bread. Blessed are you who have begun to win before the fight, to triumph well before you lived, before reaching the lap of the Father, before entering the storeroom of the Father, or even nuzzling in the bosom of your Mother.12 Blessed are those who enter the pasture of the flock before taking milk, and who cry jubilantly at the sound of victory, even before they wail with the cry of the cradle. As the Apostle so rightly says, “the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (1 Cor 1:25). Who is able to refer to such a great holy conception, where a virgin mother gives birth daily? She does so not to abandon her children to toils, but to send them ahead to their eternal glory.

Sermon 121: on Lazarus and a rich man Today, brothers and sisters, by listening to the Lord, you have heard both the culmination of poverty as well as the result of wealth: There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried in netherworld. (Lk 16:19–23a) Behold, sisters and brothers, what a lamentable change: the angels bear up the pauper, hell swallows the rich man. Behold, brothers and sisters, the death of the pauper surpasses all the wealth of the rich man, and the sole glorification of the pauper transcends all the rich man’s glory and pomp. In what way does 91

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the burial mislead the eyes? How does the pomp of this funeral tell a lie? The entire city comes to follow the funeral procession of the rich man while the dead man is being carried out, departing all alone. It is the pity of two pallbearers which carries the poor man out; it is not even four pallbearers which is our custom for the dead, but only two reluctant carriers under one bar who bring out this dead weight. But this angelic kindness, along with the divinely celebrated ceremony, is fitting for that one who was so cruelly denied the fitting care a human deserves at the end of one’s life. The funeral of the rich man went ahead of a crowd of mourning servants, while the bier of the pauper went ahead of the multitude of angels’ hymns. In a marble tomb with golden slats, the body of the rich man lies enclosed, while the flesh of the poor man rests in the naturalness of the earth, in the underground where it is protected from the gnawing of worms, and where creation preserves this flesh from rotting and from stench. But, brothers and sisters, let us figure out what the rich man’s crime was, what maliciousness brought him to the punishment of hell and what led him before the judge who sentenced his damnation, now sung by so many generations, as the Lord says, Here was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. (Lk 16:19–21) Surely wealth should not be considered so great a crime? Should God condemn clothing simply for being clothes? Are feasts to be punished? While such revelry may not be anything too wonderful, does it actually warrant the same punishment as things clearly evil? Is being a beggar so welcomed and even sanctified, that the beggar’s sores are rendered as holy enough to be snatched up by the hands of angels to holy Abraham’s bosom? And so, brothers and sisters, it is surprising that Abraham who too was a rich man, should now repudiate this rich man—for the Scriptures do state that, “Now Abram was very rich” (Gen 13:2)—and that Abraham might now reprove and permit someone who was his equal in earthly treasures to undergo sufferings, especially since the divine word mentions nothing about the poor man doing anything good nor the rich man doing anything evil.13 Why then does Abraham now embrace the poor man while fleeing and refusing the rich? In other words, why does Abraham’s wealth make him innocent, while Dives is a criminal for being rich? How did the riches of Abraham place him in the peace of the blessed, but they sent the rich man into the abyss of the damned? Let us hurry and answer these questions so you are no longer in suspense, or before the length of this sermon wearies you. Abraham, sisters and brothers, was not rich for himself but for the poor; he did not hold tightly onto his wealth but was eager to give it away. Abraham desired 92

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his own means to be stored more and more in the bosom of the poor than in storehouses for the length of his long life. As a sojourner himself, he labored continually because the sojourner understands himself to be a pilgrim in a foreign land. Knowing what it is to stay in a tent, he made sure no traveler would rest without a roof. As a guest he always received a guest. Not knowing a home, he was exiled from his own fatherland, and so he became the home and the fatherland of all. Knowing he was never meant to become a hoarder of his own possessions, but a provider of God’s goods, he made himself a new kind of warrior who might defend the oppressed, free the captives, and rescue those who were about to perish, someone whose care for these others was more dear to him than his own life. When receiving his guest, Abraham stood and did not sit down—he was not a host but a servant. Once a sojourner was spotted, Abraham did not put himself in the place of the master, but he himself brought in the meal after instructing his wife what a delicacy this must be, and then he entrusted his servants with all the preparations. Though his wife was well-tested, he barely entrusted much to her. What more, brothers and sisters? Abraham’s humanity was so holy and his hands always so ready to serve others, that he invited God himself and compelled God to be his guest. So God came to Abraham, God came to the refreshment of the poor. God came as a guest, who himself will one day confess that he was received, when he will say, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:35). “When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham” (Lk 16:22a). My brothers and sisters, this is not without reason: he receives all the holy ones into peace, and in that very blessedness of heaven he takes on the office of steward, because while he was down here, always welcoming the pilgrim and the poor, he received even God and the angels, meriting to see God under his own tent, the One whom he had always credited as his Benefactor. This is fitting, brothers and sisters, for if in this eternal glory Abraham’s pious work would have made him relinquish being hospitable, he would have accounted even blessedness as too little. If he were the only one enjoying these divine gifts, Abraham— who never denied any good thing to any human—would have considered himself inhuman. Brothers and sisters, Abraham always runs to meet those who come from a long way off, he beckons those passing by, and with tremendous supplication he compels those who are hesitant to come to his table. There he always places before his guest the best of his herd, and he provides warm bread kneaded by his wife’s hands, his unending kindness (iugis humanitas) unwilling to let the bread to be cold or even a day old. But this other rich man—the one who was imprisoned by his wealth, who was a servant of his possessions and shackled to his estate—was nothing other than a stony tomb of pomp, in whom even a scintilla of affection had never been seen or heard, disdaining not only some person, not only the poor man, but disdaining even mercy itself as Lazarus lies in his doorway. With purple, with finery, with exquisite linens, and with pleasing feasts he nurtured his cruel soul and ironclad heart. But God, that zealous Seeker (auidus inquisitor) of human salvation, desired 93

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to mollify the rich man, not so much by Lazarus’ lying at his door but by showing him the very furnace of mercy. I intentionally chose that word “furnace” because the rich man possesses an ironclad heart. Poor Lazarus was put before his merciless eyes in order that the rich man would have the opportunity to give and for his riches to grow more and more. But Dives is harder than iron, and whatever amount of wealth God had piled upon him for the feeding of Lazarus, he either spent shamelessly or mercilessly stored up for himself. So that Lazarus would not be silent, so that he would cry out, so that the rich man would be admonished, and so that it was all the more obvious that the hungry and poor Lazarus was only asking for bread, God increased this poor man’s hunger. Scripture says, “he would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table” (Lk 16:22). Having gorged on a smorgasbord of rich dishes, the rich man belched his bellyache heavenward so that he would not have to listen to the cries of the poor man lying on the hard ground. But since the voice of the poor man was muted to such hardened ears, God then laid bare the poor man’s entire body to wounds, hoping that the heart of the rich man might be opened; in this way, the poor man had as many mouths admonishing the rich man as he had wounds. His insides were exposed, sores swelled, blisters gushed open, and all the flesh of the poor man became a stage for a display of piety, so if the crying-out of does not move the rich man, maybe the sighs of pain, the groaning, and the entire display of such suffering might shake him up. But the rich man with “haughty eyes and arrogant heart” (Ps 101:5) despised all these things which came to him in sight, sound, and touch. Nonetheless, God sought how he could use anything to crack the hardness of the rich man’s heart, so he dislocated the poor man’s hands from their joints so that he could not push the rich man’s dogs away, which fed on the poor man’s wounds (cf. Lk 16:21) and so nourished the wounds of the rich man. In a whole new way, brothers and sisters, the order of decent humanity is transformed: human impoverishment reveals inhumane greediness. Dives refuses to feed Lazarus from the scraps that fell from his table, while poor Lazarus so tenderly fed the rich man’s dogs from his own flesh because he had nothing else to offer. O miserable Dives, even if you did not give bread, why would you not at least send your dogs away? But they are gentler than you are; rather, you are more vicious than your dogs, for while you are ferocious, they at least show restraint. They do not use their teeth to bite, but they offer their tongues like sponges to clean Lazarus’ wounds and not aggravate them any further. In you dogs, O rich man, pity has conquered hunger, but in you abundance could never overpower your impiety. This only proves that dogs act with a desire to care for others, which they do before our very eyes, for dogs care for their own wounds by licking them. Now dogs care for the poor man by this same rule of nature, but humans can gravely neglect other humans, which only reveals our nature. It is true, true for the rich, that although he did not part even with his table scraps, his greed will always keep him needy. Any more of this sermon, brothers and sisters, must be put off. With what we have already said, we have used up all our time, and besides, the most important part of this reading for us to talk about will follow soon. 94

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Sermon 123: the third on Lazarus and the rich man It is typical of a shameless debtor either to defer what he owes or to deny what he had promised to pay, while it is the mark of an honest one both to pay in full and without delay. We have made the promise to give an account of everything which remains to be said about the rich man, who not only acts harshly towards Lazarus, but in so doing becomes even more severe and cruel to himself. Up until today the Gospel and our other sermons have, insofar as possible, told us what has happened, declaring how the rich man raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.14 And he cried out, “Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.” (Lk 16:23–24) “My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime” (Lk 16:25). What admirable devotion. At this point he calls him child, this one whom he looks upon as corrupted because of his cruelty. Oh remarkable Goodness! He calls this one child, who has become a slave of hell, a progeny of punishment, a lowly slave possessed by Gehenna. But he calls him child in order that this son’s mercilessness toward Lazarus might be more and more revealed. This is why with such fatherly words Abraham continues: You call me father, I call you child, so that you might feel even more painfully what it is to lose that which was yours by birth. Also, I still call you child so that you might weep bitterly, sensing how you forfeited what was given to you by nature and by grace, since it is just as distressing to lose what one once had in his or her possession as it is never to have had it at all. I call you child so that you might understand your suffering comes from a just judgment and not from fury. I call you child so that my patience continues for me and your punishment might remain for you.15 But, brothers and sisters, this man knows that he is not a child. He instead admits and recognizes that that losing such a great gift from the nature of such a loving father is his fault. He certainly would have represented the family better: more piously, hospitably, and mercifully, if only he had acted humanely toward the poor man. He who does not do the works of his father, denies his family, which the Lord accordingly teaches us: “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works of Abraham” (Jn 8:39). The one who acts in defense of his father’s great works proves his fidelity to his family. But what does Abraham say? My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime. Here is the rich man’s essential crime: in receiving good things, he became an even greater sinner by taking what was not due to him. If someone is rendered

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guilty who locks up his own things and who does not give what he himself has received, how deserving of punishment is the one who holds on to not only what is his own, but what has come from another. Brothers and sisters, let us then give what is ours, if it is ours. Or, rather, let us give away all that we think is ours, shun what is clearly not ours, and turn away from the goods of another. Certainly, if we have taken something from another, let us give it all back quickly, lest we ourselves be led away and then having left all things we arrive along with this rich man, poor in estate but rich in crimes. Let the rich man learn that he has received good things; he did not take them. See, brothers and sisters, that rich man’s soul is exposed by the words of holy Abraham: his capacity for feeling is convicted; his understanding is punished. He had believed these things were not merely only for himself alone, but that these goods which he possessed by the Lord’s generosity were somehow owed to him. See his manner of thinking and the condition of his heart: he believed God to be a debtor to himself and by his evil wealth he believed he could enslave the Lord into liability by usury. He ignored the fact that the Lord, even though he lived on this earth as a poor man, was rich when he ascended into heaven. The Lord did not take wealth but distributed it: giving to one five talents, to another two, and to another one (cf. Mt 25:14–30). And he promised that he would return for it expecting some return, saying to the servant: “You wicked, lazy servant! Should you not then have put my money in the bank so that I could have got it back with interest on my return?” (Mt 25: 26b, 27). This rich man is even more ungodly because he did not give to another devotedly; even though he had received good things, he did not receive good things for good deeds, but for bad deeds did this unworthy man receive good things. But let us move over to Lazarus and search out what the Gospel has to say about him. “Lazarus likewise received what was bad” (Lk 16:25). That Lazarus did not do good things but received bad things is to his credit, adds to his glory: for clearly he is blessed, brothers and sisters, who believed he would receive good things from God but instead received what was bad. Blessed is the one who judges himself to be a debtor to God. Blessed is he who always gives back to God what he borrowed. For if he is unable, such a one should clearly lament in complete humility for his debts to be forgiven, as the Lord himself says, “Forgive us our debts” (Mt 6:12). Blessed is he who pays his debts to God when he does not understand how much he has accumulated, as the prophet nobly put it when he said, “Must I now restore what I did not steal?” (Ps 69:5). Blessed is he who always accuses himself before God, so that he might be exonerated, as Scripture admonishes, “Those who plead the case first seem to be in the right” (Prv 18:17). And if he is just, why would the just one accuse himself? “Because before your sight, no one alive will be justified” (cf. Ps 143:2). A human person before another man or woman might glorify himself in terms of justice, innocence, or merit. But before God whoever boasts about his innocence, or glorifies himself by his justice, is not human. This is what the Pharisee did when he did not pray, but instead estimated, thought about, and even belched out his own righteousness (cf. Lk 18:9–14). He departed the temple far less justified than the justified tax collector. But let us continue on to the rest. 96

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“But now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented” (Lk 16:25c). See and understand, brothers and sisters, what has been said about the just and unjust: even though there is a separation of location, one infernal region encompasses everyone. Here there is a great abyss, but it was not yet an abode separated from heaven. A great crevice of sadness separated these two regions, and it was separated from the high habitation of the angels. A flaming spear, to which the Lawgiver refers, rotates in front of the heavenly door so that no human may return or have access there (cf. Gen 3:24). This infernal region is shut tight with bolted gates of copper bars and iron doors, so that none of those souls which were tossed down from the heights would be allowed to leave there. For there is a ledger of ancestral debts, which judges each worthy of death. It is kept with the pen of blame and the accusation of each is written down in the ink of his guilt. The punishment of progeny is the interest which kept growing and growing over time. Accordingly, there was no one suited who might enter paradise in order to extinguish the flame of divine judgment, to open those doors bolted by heavenly decree; nor was there anyone who was able to pay off that ledger which was enclosed in the ark by command of the Law of God. This is the reason why the Lord himself came. He came for the first human, the servant exiled on account of pride. The Lord himself, who had protected heaven, who had blocked off the nether region, descended to earth as well as into hell with all his power so that he might extinguish those fires and right away destroy immediately what was closed off to him. This is the reason why he carries the battering ram of the Cross marching on the netherworld, so that he might break and crush those very doors of Tartarus fortified by iron and copper. In orderthat he might arrange a way to paradise, he poured out water from his side and extinguished the flames of the infernal regions on the side of the holy ones. This is how he completely washed away the ledger of debts, so that he might remit through his suffering all that which was brought about by his command. Recognize, brothers and sisters! Rejoice, sisters and brothers! After the triumph of Christ released the saints who were taken captive but who owed nothing to hell, Christ penetrated hell to set free the just but not the unjust. Let us understand, brothers and sisters, how much Christ profited us, or rather how without Christ there was no salvation. Not only the bodies of the saints, but also their souls were bound and held in hell. Blessed Lazarus, who owed all things to God, but owed nothing to guilt, is blessed in receiving so many bad things, so that there he would come to possess all good things! And Abraham adds to this saying, “Nor is anyone able to cross over to your side from here, and no one can pass from their side to ours” (cf. Lk 16:26). It is terrifying, brothers and sisters, exceedingly terrifying to hear such a thing said. This only proves that once those persons are relegated to a punitive imprisonment after death, they are unable to be brought over to the restfulness of the saints unless redeemed by the grace of Christ. Now they could be released from their desperation through the intercession of the Holy Church, so that what their sentence would have denied them, the Church could acquire and her grace confer.16 97

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Regardless, the rich man still asks and says, Father Abraham. Now he still calls him father, who by his own merits has left both father and fatherland. Father Abraham. This wretched man lies even while suffering his punishment. “Father, send him to my father’s house” (Lk 16:27). If truly he calls him father, then about whose father’s house is he inquiring? Perhaps he believes that he has a father, albeit a father who is absent, a father whom he sees in this present moment but whom he has thus forfeited. The bosom of the father and true rest are being denied him, but for a moment he starts to think that a home is still being kept for him. Father Abraham, send him. Whom? Surely Lazarus. Where? To my father’s house. It is now too late for the rich man to invite Lazarus to the house of his father, inviting him not out of mercy but misery. Now he invites the same Lazarus, who for so long and under such a great misery was not welcomed, although he was lying by this rich man’s doors. Behind the facade of pity, he suddenly wants Lazarus to return to his original wounds and previous cries. Since in his first petition he was unable to call him down to his own torments, saying earlier, “send him to me” (cf. Lk 16:24) he now says, “send him to my brothers” (cf. Lk 16:27). This wretch who is unhappy here is grieved to see the one whom he earlier reckoned to be unhappy, to be the happy one now. Send him to my brothers. Where? To my father’s house. Why? “For I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment” (Lk 16:28). How can one so uncaring toward himself care for others? He shamelessly presumes to obtain repentance for others, even though he has so cruelly failed to provide any forgiveness for himself. Send Lazarus, for I have five brothers. And you think that Lazarus, who for such a long time cried out from the sores of his body, had then been unable to benefit your five brothers, can now suffice? Abraham responded correctly: “They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them” (Lk 16:29). Let Lazarus rest after so many troubles, mourn your own punishment which you so rightly deserve. But a long time ago, the Lord God looked out for your brothers and all peoples, not because of your advice but out of his own graciousness did God bring salvation: through Moses he gave the Law and through Elijah he offered prophecy. Let those brothers listen so they too are not condemned to your torments. The rich man responded: “Oh no, Father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.” Then Abraham said, “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.” (Lk 16:30–31) Nothing could be so true, brothers and sisters: whoever does not want to believe that the Law speaks from heaven, whoever refuses to trust the One coming from heaven through Christ, will not believe in the One who comes back from the netherworld. Brothers and sisters, Christ himself, our God and our Lord, spoke to 98

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Moses from heaven. He spoke in an earthly way through his body, and he returned from hell with an earthly body. Nevertheless, the brothers of this rich man, who are understood to be the Jewish people, obstinately refused to believe in the One who comes to declare to us all the good things there are in heaven and all the bad things in hell. Truly, brothers and sisters, because time does not allow us to say who this rich man is, or who is like Lazarus the pauper, or who the five brothers of the rich man are among us, neither do we have time to lay out how we are to understand this story in a spiritual sense. However, we have all been taught through Christ what they can expect, and what the unjust can anticipate once in hell. We must therefore act! We must hurry with our words, actions, and deeds of mercy so that we might attain heavenly goods, and so avoid and shun all evils.

Sermon 124: the fourth on the same As often as the rich man clothed in purple is placed before us by God, and as often as the wounded pauper appears in front of us, a training ground of mercy is spread out and a stadium of piety is opened up for us, so that from the heavenly vantage point we can observe how quickly the pauper attained the palm of victory, and how the rich man came to ruin:17 There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. (Lk 16:19–21a) The rich man was clothed in purple garments, the poor man in black and blue bruises; the rich man in linen, the poor man in filth; the rich man in gold, the poor man in stench. The poor man sweated from his wounds, the rich man from his ointments; the poor man was covered in pus, the rich man in perfume. The rich man reclined on a bed of flowers, the poor man upon the hard ground. The rich man belched out sumptuous feasts, the poor man vomited out corrupted blood. The rich man poured out wine, the poor man bitter tears. The rich man threw out the stale crumbs, the hungry pauper did not even have scraps. From his excess the rich man fed his curs who barked at the poor man, while the poor man filled the dogs of the rich man with his wounds. And we have read that to the rich man all good things have come, to the poor man all bad things, and not anything less. Neither did such adverse events break the poor man, and neither did all the good things truly profit the rich man. Rather, poverty brought the pauper to philosophy, pain to virtue, contempt to patience, necessity to freedom, hunger to fasting, thirst to tolerance, death to life, punishment to reward, earth to heaven, servitude to sovereignty. In the same way, the purple robes brought the rich man to pride, linen to luxury, plenty to inhumanity, abundance to impiety, 99

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oil to decay, splendor to blindness, sublimity to ruin. Therefore, neither did it energize the sluggish, nor did adversity topple the strong, because neither prosperity of wealth nor poverty, but only the soul, can lead either grateful ones to reward or ungrateful ones to punishment. Full of wounds, this pauper was placed at the door of the wise man, but this did not happen by a human accident, but rather by divine will, such that the conflict of the rich and the poor on earth persisted even in heaven. God was a spectator, the angels too were watching this exceptional battle between the poor man and the rich man. The rich man was standing totally protected in the armor of his wealth, while the poor man lay clothed only in his flesh—unless by chance you consider the wounds covering his entire body as some sort of armor (lorica). The rich man was safely encircled by his crowd of servants, the poor man impelled by the pains of flesh being peeled away from him. The rich man was hurling spears of impieties, while Lazarus held them off with a shield of compassion. With his cruelty, the rich man assailed the poor man in his woundedness, but the sword of the rich man was totally rebuffed by the wounds of the one who was truly living. What else can be said? While all the while safe in soul, the pauper emerged victorious even though his whole body had crumbled. Although crushed in flesh, in spirit he ascended safely to heaven where the rich man’s blows of cruelty could no longer find him. For this reason, God arranged it so that the rich man would remain forever before the eyes of the poor man, and the poor man before the eyes of the rich man, since both could provide a cure for their different torments. The poor man was sick in body, the rich man was sick in mind. This is why the cure of the poor man was put off for so long, so that from the poor man the rich man would take medicine from his wounds: receiving remorse from his groans, penitence from his tears, an example from his patience, mercy from his hunger, and understanding from his thirst. But even more to the point, that the rich might receive heavenly community from their earthly compassion. When the rich man saw how the pauper persisted in thanking God in all his hardships, he clearly should have been grateful to God for all his blessings. So now it is right that the poor man who was lying at the door be carried aloft by the angels; the one who mourned now be consoled in the bosom of Abraham. For this one who did not live for himself while on earth, now lives for God eternally. “When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried in the netherworld” (Lk 16:22–23a). The wretched man’s soul received burial well before his body went into the ground, and he did not receive bodily rest before he had been handed over to the punishment of death. This was so that he who had been dead to life might always live in punishment. “And he was buried in the netherworld . . . and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side” (Lk 16:23). How great a transformation of fortunes! Look to where the rich man descended! Look to where the pauper ascended! There the rich man looks upwards, when here he had looked downwards. From hell he sees the poor man in the bosom of Abraham, but from the proud comfort of his couch he never saw him lying right in front of him. 100

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“Father Abraham, have pity on me” (Lk 16:24). Having denied mercy to a brother, he now foolishly seeks it from a father. Have pity on me! What good is mercy now for one passing into punishment? Or how could this father help him when his very accuser is resting in his father’s bosom? Lazarus holds fast to the bosom of his father Abraham, and thus obtains the total righteousness of a holy heart, and in so doing, Abraham preserves himself as the father of a good son and the judge of a bad one. “Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames” (Lk 16:24). Send Lazarus, so that he who is the cause of my torment, can now extend solace by his own finger as the minister of extreme refreshment, even though all that time I withheld to him lying on the ground my entire hand of comfort. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. The throat of the one who had poured out vats of wine now thirsts, dismissive of the poor man who had thirsted. And so, he believes that a drip from the finger of the poor man can extinguish the flames of Gehenna, when he did not extinguish the fires of drunkenness with an entire day of drinking. But now he seeks refreshment to be given for his throat, while denying the same to the parched pauper. But, O Dives, this is the drop which made you so pitiless, the drop which you denied to the dry mouth of Lazarus. Even a drop is sufficient for the refreshment of the poor man, a scrap—desiring, it says, to be sated by the scraps that fell to the ground (cf. Lk 16:21). Denied to the poor man at the end of his life, bread was being scattered and wine was being poured out, all wasted on the pomp of the rich. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue. In the head the tongue is the head of evil (in capite caput mali); that is, it is this very tongue which disparages the needy, insults the pauper, lashes out at piety, eats away at misery. So it is fitting that the tongue be the first in Gehenna and lead the way in torment, because the tongue has the power to grant mercy, but it becomes the first to deny it. Although this series of readings both compels me to tell you and to invite you to hear about all these figures: who the purple-clad rich man is, who the pauper Lazarus is, and who these five brothers are, as well as how before the Day of Judgment the wealthy man felt the tortures of Gehenna, my sorrow prevents me from telling you all of this. The rich man also died and was buried in the netherworld. If the prison of Tartarus is below the earth, if there is reason to believe there is fire underneath, if hell is endless torture, and if there is a harsh gatekeeper who seizes us to this place after our labors in this life, why are we surprised? Where are we? What is the lethargy that baffles us? What is this thing, this fatal oblivion that has its grip on us? Why is our only worry not to evade all hellish things? Why should we care about anything else than not being taken immediately from living in this world to such savage punishments? So, if there is a possibility of ascending to heaven, if there is the possibility of living in the heavenly realms, if peace has been prepared for all good people at the side of Abraham, if Peter is the guard at the heavenly gates, if Lazarus is in the bosom of such a father—and since there is 101

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no doubt about where these locations, persons, and the names we have described are—why do we not exchange earth for heaven? Why do we not procure things which are eternal instead of those which are doomed? Why do we not compare what is perishing for what will remain, so that we might avoid the sufferings of hell, and thus desire to hear, to see, to hold, and to have all these eternal things, even in our own limited way, now?

Sermon 137: where John flies to the desert (Lk 3:2–14) After the Jewish soil was emptied of its fruitfulness by being tilled over and over by the plow of the Law, Blessed John flees to the desert of the Gentiles. His spirit burnt up the thorns of sin, he razed the fruitless trees with his ax of vengeance, and he leveled the barren hills of pride, making equal the valleys of humility. He therefore prepared the whole plain masterfully in order to receive flowing nutrients by aligning the plain with the path of the Jordan. Through all of this, he was getting the newly plowed land ready for fruitfulness when the seed of the Gospel fell. “The word of the Lord,” Scripture states, “came upon John the son of Zechariah in the desert. He went throughout the whole region of the Jordan” (cf. Lk 3:2b3a). The word of the Lord came because “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (Jn 1:14). Upon John. Why not “to John,” but upon John? Because the Word is above, over all things (cf. Jn 3:31). The word of the Lord came upon John because John is the voice, while God is the Word. The word of the Lord came upon John: God came upon John, the Lord over his servant, the Word over its voice. But you say to me: Why does the voice precede the Word? It may precede it, but it does not surpass it. It goes before to prepare as does a servant, but not as evidence of its own power. The voice is not itself the Judge but, rather, it is the announcement of the judging. The Word judges, the voice heralds. Power resides in the commanding, not in the shouting. But let the voice itself confess, testify and plant, for the herald himself shouts: “The one who is coming after me is mightier than I” (Mt 3:11). Why is this? Because in me is to be found the fear, but in him appears the judgement. He went throughout the whole region of the Jordan. He came to the Jordan because he could not wash off the dirt of the Jews with just a water jug but needed a river, as it is written: “There were stone water jars for the purification of the Jews” (cf. Jn 2:6). He came to the Jordan to give the repentant water, not wine. “He went throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Lk 3:3). John was able to grant forgiveness but not without self-reproach; there was the remission of sins but obtained only through tears; there was a cure for the wound but only through heartache; there was baptism to take away the offence but unable to absolve the conscience. And what else is there? Through the baptism of John a man is purified by penitence, but not moved forward to grace. But the baptism of Christ regenerates, transforms, and rejuvenates anew what was old in such a way that there is not even awareness 102

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of the past or a recording of former ways. From this earthly person comes a heavenly one taking hold of all celestial and divine realities. This is something like the return of the prodigal son: after wanton spending, the immortal father gave his son a fine stole, put a ring of freedom on him, slaughtered the fatted calf, and transformed the waters of penitence into the wines of grace. Now our banquet of grace is full of cups of pure wine to the extent that the drunken sobriety of the Lord’s Chalice washes away the pangs of conscience, the groans of penance, and the lament of sins, which the prophet describes: “Your intoxicating cup, how wonderful it is” (cf. Ps 23:5). For as much as earthly intoxication is a defect, how much greater is divine drunkenness in all its splendidness and worth: He said to the crowds who came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce good fruits as evidence of your repentance; and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Lk 3:7–9) Brood of vipers! John rebukes by example, brands by making a comparison, and in so doing produces an image so that he might change not merely human actions, but the very nature of this venomous brood. Brood of vipers. In creating them humans, God had made them children of Abraham, but it was their malice which produced and changed them into vipers. Those whom piety formed and filled with the sweetness of heaven, impiety forced to love deadly vomit and be filled with the venom of vipers. By an unspeakable act of cruelty, vipers are conceived from the death of their father, born from the death of their progenitor. Brood of vipers, stock of an ungrateful nature, whose beginning means the departure of their father, and whose life demands the death of a parent. Brood of vipers. A viper is conceived when the head of the father is taken into the mouth of the mother and is bitten off. Through such an affectionless and blood-spattered kiss is the viper conceived. But it is a crime really, because by such a carnal, evil action the viper bears her children not through what is natural but by rejecting the right order of nature: for the offspring arise by means of slaughtering the father, and then demand to be fed on the mother’s blood before her milk, thereby seeking revenge upon their mother. For it is said that vipers must destroy their mother’s womb: while the viper is in the womb and their organs are still very young, with the rage of a full-grown adult they destroy that abominable abode where they were conceived. Accordingly, for them, “to live” actually means that their mother, who bore them, is never beheld.18 Compelled to open up this comparison, we should describe the type and figure which St. John had composed in order to show that what he called the Jewish people was not a curse but a matter of truth. John shows, brothers and sisters, that the brood of vipers is the synagogue and its children to whom Christ came 103

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as with the affection of a spouse, as John said, “The one who has the bride is the bridegroom” (Jn 19:6). The head of Christ was desired and sought by the words of Judas amid his hugs and bloody kisses when he cried, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” (Jn 19:6). The offspring conceived by such a pledge of blood are quickly prepared to put their mother to death, and hearing John’s voice, they shatter the womb of the synagogue, and are thus refashioned into the brood of God. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?” (Lk 3:7). What is the wrath to come? That wrath which has no end, a wrath which does not release a mortal upon his death, but instead seizes him and robs him of having any hope of mercy, consigning him to Tartarus for punishment. The coming wrath. Brood of vipers! They are admonished in such a way that they recognize their own sort as well as their crime and therefore respond, “What then should we do to be saved?” (cf. Lk 3:10). What will be said next, brothers and sisters? I am afraid to tell you, afraid that you whom I see listening today might grow contemptuous and John might make you even more obstinate. What will I do? I fear speaking, but I cannot be silent. Piety prohibits me from one thing, utility pushes me to another. Piety speaks so the hearer might not incur guilt from condemnation. Utility requires speech so the hearer is instructed on what to do. As your teacher, may I never harm you by my silence. So, brothers and sisters, I speak in order that the naked one be clothed by my undressing. “Whoever has two tunics should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise” (Lk 3:11). Do you think he asks too much who seeks one coat from another? He does not seek too much, because he does not seek jewels, but a coat; he asks not for gold, but bread. And if whoever has two tunics but does not share one is at fault, how should we describe a person who has many and refuses to give away even one? Since such a person locks up his garments and withholds his bread, the poor perish by hunger and are consumed by the cold; in this way he does not store his garments but really ends up burying them, saving them not for the sake of wearing one day but for his own grave. For whoever denies something to the pauper in need, instead donates it to the moths and they, in turn, devour the rich man’s clothes along with his body, as the Lord says, “Their worm does not die” (Mk 9:48). Because Christ is struck by the hunger of the poor, the pauper’s pain is felt in God’s very “gut” (uiscera), and the cries of the marginalized are heard inside Christ himself. Those who are in need shout out to their Creator on account of their weakness, helping them as the Lord knows, “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mt 25:35). “Even tax collectors came to him and said, ‘Teacher, what should we do?’” (cf. Lk 3:12). The tax collectors listened: “Stop collecting more than what is prescribed” (Lk 3:13). This reveals why the tax collector is guilty: Stop collecting more. A person who seeks more is not a tax collector but an extortionist, and such a person who extorts from the weak and downtrodden is a criminal before God. By this fraud he oppresses and weakens, and for the one who owes, the tax collector puts on a heavier burden and increases what that person owes. 104

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Approaching were soldiers who were also inquiring (cf. Lk 3:14), so let these soldiers listen to what the Teacher had to say to their questions here: “And what is it that we should do?” (Lk 3:14a). John told them, “Do not practice extortion, do not falsely accuse anyone, and be satisfied with your wages” (Lk 3:14b). A true soldier does not lash out but protects, does not strike another in malice but defends. He does not run after the payment of a king nor does he run after the spoils of a city. Blessed John teaches these divine things, never confusing them with what is human. In so doing, John seeks to establish a republic, not remove it, proving that these matters, which he teaches are to serve and enact justice, are ultimately from God. But what difference there is between this baptism of John and the baptism of Christ would take too long to explain, now I must be silent.

Sermon 167: the second on fasting It is proper that the most blessed John comes to us as a doctor of penance in this season of fasting. A true teacher plants by word and demonstrates by deeds, for it is an office which consists of knowledge, but the authority of which comes from one’s way of life. Doing the very things one teaches encourages the obedience of the listener. Teaching by means of one’s actions is doctrine’s only standard. Teaching with words produces knowledge, while teaching with one’s actions produces virtue; knowledge is only true, therefore, when it is combined with virtue. The Gospel thus acknowledges that knowledge is divine, not human, when it states, “all that Jesus did and taught” (Acts 1:1b). When the teacher himself lives by what he is to teach, he both instructs by what is heard and informs by how he lives. “In those days John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Mt 3:1–2). Repent. Why not something more like this, Rejoice? Rejoice, rather, because the divine now draws near to the human, heaven advances towards earth, the eternal upon the temporal, the good on the bad, the secure on the anxious, blessings over afflictions, that which is permanent will succeed the perishing. The kingdom of heaven is at hand! Repent. Repent totally: may the one who offered human things for divine things repent, the one who wanted to serve and dominate the world even though the Lord of the world never sought to possess it. Repent, those who would rather perish with the devil, than reign with Christ. Repent, the one who flees the freedom virtue brings and prefers to be captured by vice. Repent and repent wholeheartedly, whoever would not keep his or her own life, but would instead hand it over to death. The kingdom of heaven is at hand! The kingdom of heaven is the reward of the just, it is justice for the sinner, as well as the penalty for the ungodly. Blessed John, who desired that penance stave off judgment, wanted sinners to experience God’s reward, not his judgment. He wanted the impious to enter into the kingdom, not into punishment. The kingdom of heaven is at hand! And so John foretold the nearness of the kingdom of heaven, when the world was still a child but was 105

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seeking to grow old. This is why we now say that the kingdom of heaven is so near, because the world is extremely tired and emptied of strength, its members have given up, its senses are numb, it is weighed down with sorrows, rejects its cure, is dead to life, alive with pestilence, announcing its own frailty, and witnessing to its end! We are accordingly more hard-headed than the Jewish people. We follow a world which is fleeting, we who forget the future and are enthralled by the present, we who do not have any fear in the judgment day, who do not run to the Lord who is drawing near, we who want to remain dead and not desire the dead’s resurrection, we who desire enslavement more than sovereignty, since we delay such a great dominion for our Lord. Where is that phrase, “When you pray, say, ‘May your kingdom come’” (cf. Lk 11:2)? Since this is so, we have a need for greater penance, and for our wounds we need to apply the proper form of medicine. So, let us do penance, brothers and sisters. Let us repent quickly, because for us the amount of time is now running out. That hour is now closing in, for the coming judgment will bring the time for making satisfaction to an end. Let your penance be swift, that the coming judgment does not outpace it. That the Lord has not yet come, that he is still expected, shows that he is desirous for us not to perish but to return to him, as he told us in such piety, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live” (Ezek 33:11). Let us do our penance, brothers and sisters, lest we come to dread time’s running out. For the Author of time does not know what it is to be pressed for time. The good thief in the Gospel shows this: that on the cross at the hour of his death, he snatched a pardon, he invaded life, he broke into paradise, and he infiltrated the kingdom. Brothers and sisters, we have not deserved any merit from our own will, so let us receive strength where necessary in order that we are not judged but instead become our own judges, imposing our own penances upon ourselves so that we might be able to lift the sentence which could have been imposed upon us. This is the first aspect of the perpetual happiness, to delight in the security of innocence, to preserve an unclouded mind and bodily sanctity, for our thoughts to be unstained by the world, to be free of a guilty conscience, not to know the wounds of sins, to possess forever the grace of virtue, and always to live under the hope of heaven’s reward. But if our mind has been pierced by the dart of sin, or if our flesh should swell from a fault, or if our human fragility should be broken by the corruption of vices, then let the medicine of penance make well the sick ones—for those who are well do not need it—let the sword of contrition draw near, and the dressing for our pain be applied. In this way the fever of the swelling conscience would go down, unhealthy guilt would dissipate through the outpouring of tears, and the penitential hairshirt (cilicia) would wipe away the body’s uncleanliness. Let it be brought, let the bitter cure of penance be brought to the one who lacks the desire to remain healthy. For whom life is precious, no cure is too harsh. No doctor who brings about health through a bit of suffering should go unthanked. For the one who safeguards the deposit of innocence need not pay the interest of penance. The Lord lays this out by saying, “The work of the doctor is not with the healthy, 106

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but with those who are sick” (cf. Mt 9:12). And he reveals the condition of these sick ones by saying, again: “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Mt 9:13). While John calls back by penance, Christ calls through grace. This is how John demonstrates the complete form of penance: in his clothes, in his life, and in his place of dwelling. John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, “Repent.” Throughout the Judean desert, John shouted repent. Judea was putting an end to its own lack of fruitfulness by cultivating the Law, through the work of the prophets, by the fathers’ giving of life, and the harvest of God. With good reason, then, the call to penance arises from a place that has been deserted, devoid not of people or location, but of meritorious discipline. Such a call is in vain, where there is no one present to hear it. “John wore clothing made of camel’s hair” (Jn 3:4a). He could have had clothes of goats, but it was not useful to have goat hairs in this case. He instead took on the hairs of the most tortuous of animals, of a beast which has nothing dignified about it, nothing of grace, nothing of beauty, a beast to whom nature bestowed hard labor, made to bear a great burden, and betrayed to extreme servitude. It was fitting that the teacher of penance put on such clothes, so that whoever contorts himself by dissenting from orthodox teaching, becoming deformed through the sins he committed, would be weighed down by such great burdens of penance, and assigned the difficult sufferings of satisfaction, and so carry these laborious laments of penance. In this way they can be corrected and made humble enough to enter the narrow opening of penance, fulfilling what the Lord has told us, that it is possible for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle (cf. Mt 19:24). “His food was locusts and wild honey” (Mt 3:4b). Pertaining to the correction of sinners, the locust rightly represents a penitential food. It is an animal that springs from a place of sin to a place of penance, eventually able to fly by its wings aloft to heaven. The prophet was thinking of this when he stated, “Like a lengthening shadow I am gone, I am shaken off like the locust. My knees totter from fasting; my flesh has wasted away because of mercy” (cf. Ps 109:23–24). You can hear how he is thrown like the locust from sin into penance, bending his knees so that he might bear the weight of penance, but he is provided honey for his food so that the bitterness of his penance might be tempered by the sweetness of mercy.

Notes 1 Bishop Peter seemingly finds this nature of discourse catechetically profitable. It was a genre not unfamiliar to the Fathers, setting a fictional scene between biblical interlocutors and thereby inviting their congregations to listen to the deeper, hidden thoughts of these characters. The hope was to draw the faithful into a more profound awareness of the internal steps and struggles each goes through in following Christ. 2 This is an extraordinary sermon. Bishop Peter is reading the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 through the lens of an allegorical historicity. That is, he sees in the older brother the Jewish people of the first covenant who stand proudly outside of their Father’s house, the Church; while in the younger brother, we are supposed to see the

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Gentiles who have wandered afar but are nonetheless dissatisfied in the world and thus return home. Whereas the former have had the Father always yet appear obstinately ungrateful in the coming of his Son, the younger brother, symbolized by the non-Jewish Mediterranean world, is able to use hisworldly wiles and skills to return to the Father in very rich and innovative ways. This question of theodicy, unde malum—From where does evil come?—was also the same intellectual querywhich drove St. Augustine (e.g., Confessions 3.7.12) to search for the one, true God. Ganss alerts us to a note by Mita in the Patrologia Latina 52.221C showing that this phrase connotes a completed and therefore perfected endeavor; Ganss, St. Peter Chrysologus: Sermons & St. Valerian: Homilies, op. cit., p. 58, note 5; see also the clearer reading, Quadragesima usque perfectio, at CCSL 24.74. One wonders what Bishop Peter’s congregants would have thought upon hearing their preacher offer the devil very practical suggestions on how to tempt their Lord more successfully. Palardy keenly sees in this analogy between Christian discipleship and military prowess, a Lenten homily preached most probably in March of that year, the month when “military exercises begin again after being suspended all winter,” William Palardy, St. Peter Chrysologus, Selected Sermons, vol. 2.57 (citing Franco Sottocornola, L’anno liturgico, Ravenna: Centro studi e ricerche sulla antica provincia ecclesiastica ravennate, 1973, 210). This Lenten homily naturally assumes the later etymology of the word, the Old English lencten meaning springtime, the 40 days before Easter. For more on the early Church Fathers’ varied ways of reading and interpreting sacred Scripture, see Frances M. Young, “Interpretation of Scripture,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 845–63; see also the older but still standard works: Henri De Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, vol. 1: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. Marc Sebanc (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, [1959] 1998), as well as Jean Danielou, S.J., From Shadows to Reality Studies in the Biblical Typology of the Fathers (London: Burn and Oates, 1960). Bishop Peter is of course using Joshua 6 to show through the Hebrew name “Joshua” a foreshadowing of its Greek equivalent, Jesus. Peter Chrysologus devotes sermons 67–72 to the Pater Noster, continuing an early tradition. The earliest commentaries on biblical passages are on the Our Father, mainly from early and mid-3rd century. For the most succinct instances of this, see Tertullian, Origen, and Cyprian On the Lord’s Prayer, trans. Alistair Stewart-Sykes (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004). In exhorting his congregation to make the sign of the cross over themselves, Peter is simply continuing an ancient Christian liturgical gesture, clearly called for by such diverse authors as Tertullian (To His Wife, §5; The Chaplet, §3–4), Origen (Commentary on Ezekiel, §100.9), and Augustine (Homilies on the Gospel of John, §118). By Peter’s time, this couplet of God as Father and Church as Mother had become fairly common; e.g., Cyprian of Carthage, Unity of the Church, §6, “One cannot have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his Mother.” For the rise of ecclesial devotion as maternal, see Karl Baus, “Devotion to the Church in the Third Century,” in History of the Church, vol. 1: From the Apostolic Community to Constantine, ed. Hubert Jedin (Kent: Burns & Oates, 1989), 365–7. Bishop Peter is careful not to condemn riches qua riches, but riches as withheld from one who clearly needs them. It is not the financial status of a person which determines his or her salvation or damnation, but what one does with what God has allowed each to have while on earth. This is surely meant to admonish the rich of Ravenna carefully while simultaneously disallowing the less well-off to think that their earthly hardships

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will automatically translate into heavenly glory. It is charity that saves the soul, not the level of one’s material well-being. Sermons, 122, 123 and 124 (preached in November and December; Palardy, op. cit., 3.155) all treat the eschatological figure of Lazarus and the rich man, eponymously named Dives early in the Tradition. These sermons are all directed toward admonishing those in the congregation who think more of their own temporal comfort than they do their neighbor’s well-being which, we learn, goes into determining the rich person’s own salvation. Bishop Peter stresses throughout these homilies on eleemosynary justice the fact that now that God has become human, there is no way back to God except through and in the human. This is another wonderful example of Bishop Peter’s proclivity to reimagine a fictitious exchange between biblical characters in order to draw his hearers further into the depths of the scriptural scene on which he is preaching. The Church on earth has a responsibility to pray for its members who have died, the earliest scriptural evidence of such prayers found at 2 Macc 12:38–46 and St. Paul’s praying for the deceased Onesiphorus at 2 Tim 1:18. Tertullian teaches that the fruits of the Mass are salvific when offered for the dead (De Corona, §3), and other Latins develop this devotion. It is intriguing to think that a court preacher at Ravenna like Peter would have known how Ambrose promised the Emperors Valentinian and Theodosius that he would remember them always while offering the holy sacrifice of the altar (De obitu Valentiniani consolatio, §78) while Augustine preaches that while tears and elaborate funerary rituals serve as temporary consolations for those still on earth, “the dead can be helped by the prayers of the holy Church, and the eucharistic sacrifice, and alms distributed for the repose of their spirits; so that God may deal with them more mercifully than their sins have deserved” (s. 172.2; trans. Edmund Hill, Sermons 148–183, New City Press, 1992, 252). Peter preached on the story of Lazarus and Dives at least 5 times (s. 66, 121–4) and probably developed this story’s major theme of the rich’s responsibility to assist the poor during the season of Lent; cf., Sottocornola, op. cit., pp. 82–3, 152–3; see Helen Rhee, Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012) to trace how the story of Lazarus was used in the early Church to emphasize the responsibility of the wealthy in social matters. Peter obviously knew that vipers are ovoviviparous, which means that the clearer, lighter shells of the mother’s offspring are actually shed within her and her offspring emerge alive and already moving. Where, however, he learned of sexual cannibalism among vipers is unknown. In antiquity, there was a certain fascination with the viper and its mating rituals. In fact, the longest extant work of the 2nd century BC is The Theriaca of Nicander of Colophon, a 958-line hexameter poem cataloging different venomous creatures, and it is Nicander’s thesis that in the mating ritual of vipers, the mother kills her mate during copulation and then the offspring (and a viper can produce up to 80 hatchlings at once) in turn tear the mother’s womb open and thereby avenge the death of their father.

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5 PASSION, CRUCIFIXION, AND THE VICTORY OF EASTER

Sermon 72A: first on the Lord’s passion After the miracle of the virgin birth radiated throughout the whole world, after the joys of the Lord’s nativity had been realized, and after the revered solemnity of the Epiphany had been accomplished, the Lord presages the unfolding of his passion to his disciples, speaking in this way: Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day. (Mt 20:18–19) The one who was able to foretell these future events is also the one able to forestall them. For adversities come upon the ignorant, not the knowing. He who so willingly went up to the place where he was to suffer is clearly willing to undergo his passion. Death rules over the reluctant but serves those who are willing to die. This man therefore dies willingly, not due to a chance event but from his own power. “I have the power,” he says, “to lay my life down, and I have the power,” he continues, “to take it up again; no one takes it from me” (Jn 10:18b,a).1 Where there is the power to lay down life and take it up again, there death does not come from necessity, but is willed. No one, he says, takes it from me. If no one, then not even death. Besides, if not even death can take his life, neither could the underworld hold on to it. Quaking at the Lord’s command, it released even the souls it had once bound: “Tombs were opened, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised” (Mt 27:52). Just as with Christ’s coming into this world— his conception so uncommon, his birth acknowledging no usual observance, and nature not being bound to its own criteria—likewise with his dying. Tartarus gave up those whom it held in its power, the underworld relinquished the right of its ancient power, and in this newly sanctioned arrangement, death renounced the sanction provided by the timeworn law. But let us return to earlier matters. “Behold,” he says, “we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the 110

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scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and hand him over to the Gentiles” (Mt 20:18–19a). God knows all that can be known, and knowing thus he had foreseen these future events, that at the scandal of the Cross, at the tumult of the passion, at the abuse of its Creator, the earth would tremble, the heavens would quake with fear, the light would flee, the sun would break away, the underworld would shake, and all of creation would totter and be confounded. For the world which was unable to withstand a God concealed in its own body, was foreseeing how he would be stripped of this flesh and it proved too unbearable. Above all, when the world realized the great many misdeeds had been committed against this man, it figured that these had injured his divinity. But putting this before their eyes, the Lord time and time again had cautioned his disciples, positioning them in the arena of his Passion, so to speak, and thus walking before them into it. In this way he was announcing to them that there would be as many indignities as there would be types of savage beasts, as many onlookers as there would be persecutors. Such participants would be seeking not a simple victory in the battle, but actually showed up only for the death of the Conquering Champion, crying out: “Crucify him, crucify him” (Mt 27:22–23, Mk 15:13, Lk 23:21). These ones were lifting up their fierce eyes and their deadly shouts to heaven—or, better, against heaven—until with their boiling blood they strove against holy blood and came to stain themselves and all their descendants with it, as they were crying out: “His blood be upon us and upon our children” (Mt 27:25). “The Son of Man,” he declared, “will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes” (Mt 20:18b). The Lord Jesus often outlined the events of his passion by speaking in this way, so that his followers could look for the expected events and not be suddenly overwhelmed by the weight of anything unexpected, not be cast down by some sudden onslaught. When events are known, they prepare the soul; when things are announced beforehand, they strengthen the soul; and long-awaited matters warn the soul in advance, thus making us all the more resolute through these things. Just as the surprise attack of an enemy puts a soldier in danger, so too if he were to have foreknowledge of his enemy’s plan, he would emerge triumphantly. Even a strong king, however protected he might be by armed forces, cannot be safe if he is unaware of plots against him. For even if a soldier is all alone, he need not fear if he is aware of the tactics of the enemy troops. This is why our Lord wanted his followers to understand beforehand the entire upheaval which his passion would bring about, so that he might make them more magnanimous and stronger in the uproar about to ensue. Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem. Just as a builder repairs a defect in a great house in its ruin by changing one main support, so also Christ, after so many and multiple oppressions of his passion, puts down one sure underpinning, the Resurrection. In this way he supports the faith of the apostles that could have waned, and thereby builds their faith up into something eternally unshakeable. After three days he will rise (Mt 20:19b). His going away is not so sad when his return is so swift. After three days. Such a leaving and returning makes apparent that he was really never away from them. When God goes, he is here; when he 111

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is here, he is in no way away. Christ went away but he never departed from his apostles; he went down to his death, but the Lord never left life. He descended into hell, but he never left heaven, as he himself confirms: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man” (Jn 3:13). Fear of death is a sign of being human; dying and resurrecting is a sign of God alone. After three days. Why not four days? Why not five, or anytime after three days? This was so that in the Son’s passion, belief in the whole Trinity might be indicated.2 A trinity of days (Triduum) bespeaks the figure of the Trinity, because the Trinity who had, in the beginning, through the work of Christ created the human person, restores him through the passion of Christ at the end of time. “Let us make,” it says, “the human being” (Gen 1:26). “Go,” Scripture states, “baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” for the forgiveness of their sins (Mt 18:19). If in the forgiveness of sins there is the Trinity’s common tenderness, how could the entire Trinity not be united in will in the passion of the Son? Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth” (Mt 12:40). In the heart of the earth, it said; it did not say “in the power of the earth” because the earth might feel its Creator, it might acknowledge him and quake before him, but it could never hold him. The earth receives its Creator not to insult him with corruption but to honor him, for the earth could never believe that the Lord’s body belonged to it but receives him as one sharing in his heavenly loftiness. But why the Father willed or even allowed his Son to undergo such a death disquiets the heart. Why did the Lord decree to renew the life of mortal men and women by such an outrageous death? Why did the Holy Spirit accede that divinity descend to such bodily damage, that more would fall because of this scandal, than would be saved by believing? No human mind is able to hold how God can be born and how God can die. Brothers and sisters, if we desireto understand this more deeply, let us break off for today in order that a sermon more scrutinizing and spacious, with Christ himself as our guarantor of truth, may respond to such a query.

Sermon 72B: second on the Lord’s passion We recently heard about all the brutal reproaches heaped upon the Lord during his passion, and it suddenly occurred to us why God—who, simply with a word, created heaven and all it holds, who created everything supported upon the earth, all that the sea holds and all that the underworld has brought together, and who with absolute command has adorned all the world with such beauty—has chosen to defeat the sentence of death by the shower of his own sacred blood. Why did the Wellspring of all that is and the Author of nature desire to be born, unless he wanted to die? Why would God take on all the frailties of the flesh unless he wanted to take on the flesh’s injuries? Why would the Lord of all creation enter the enslaved human condition unless he wanted to keep all the misfortunes of enslavement in check? When he allows himself to be pronounced guilty by the guilty, the Judge comes to be judged, the Counselor to be counseled. But why is it necessary 112

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that he suffer when he alone has the power and the possibility to save? What is the reason for his dying when he alone has the power and capability of restoring life? Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day. (Mt 20:18–19) Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and this is on the day of Passover so that the entire city of Jerusalem could assemble together in order to behold the parade of the passion, the spectacle of death, and the scandal of the cross. An everyday kind of suffering would not have satisfied; there could have been no private passing away, no simple death nor the kind of everyday death by which we all will die. No, the particular significance of the One who is here suffering had to fit the particular significance of his suffering. It thus occurred that the Author of his age went to his death with this age as his eyewitness, the Lord of this world was seen by the world through his suffering before he could be acknowledged by his glory. Heaven’s Peace was betrayed by deception’s kiss: the One who contains everything is himself now constrained, the One who binds all things is bound, he who leads all things is led away, Truth is denounced by falsehood, and he for whom all things appear is himself made to appear in court. The Jews betray him to the Gentiles; the Gentiles return him to the Jews. Pilate sends him to Herod, and Herod sends him back to Pilate. Reverence now becomes the industry of irreverence, and holiness is led through the circus of cruelty. Forgiveness is flogged, clemency is condemned, majesty is mocked, virtue vilified. The Giver of the rains is himself spat upon, the Straddler of the heavens is now nailed down, the Bestower of bees’ honey is fed with human gall, the Provider of fresh waters is offered vinegar. But once all these punishments are exhausted, death recoils and cowers, because it now senses that there is nothing in this man which is its own. Ancientness holds this Innovation in suspicion because this man is the first, the only man the ancient curse has acknowledged to be free from sin, the only one not in debt to its olden law of death. Death thus trembles on earth, beholding the One who had nothing about the earth in him: “The first man,” it says, “was from the earth, earthly; the second man, from heaven” (1 Cor 15:47). All the same, when death had been mingled with the fury of the Jewish leaders, it desperately grasped and attacked the Author of life. And here death was even willing to die as long as it did not have to relinquish such a trophy. But let us now return to the beginning and to the theme promised earlier: Why did the Father send his Son to death, and to such a death as this? Why did the Son have to acquiesce to such outrageous suffering? Co-reigning with him in one and the same divine nature, why did the Holy Spirit allow Christ to come to such bodily disfigurement? Pray, brothers and sisters, that the dignity with which Christ suffered may also unveil the mystery of his passion and might inspire in each of us the reason for such a holy death. 113

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The first item for us to consider is this: When is a King most resplendent? When he is dressed in his fine purple, bejeweled and covered in gold, when he is perched high on his throne, and all set to parade with his retinue? Is he more glorious when he is seated in private? Or is it when he is dressed in the common garb needed for the open field, when he is the last to receive honor but the first to go into battle, weighted with armor and armed with a sword? Is it when he slays the enemy for his country, for his people and for their children, and for the life of all his subjects? Is it when he spurns dangers and scorns wounds? Is it when he is freely willing to die for the safety of his people, thereby enjoying an even greater victory and triumph because of his contempt for death than for his defeating the enemy? If so, why do we find it so unfitting that the Christ leaves the bosom of the Father (de sinu patris; Jn 1:18) and comes to our servitude from the disguise of his divinity (de deitatis secreto) in order to recover our liberty, assuming our mortality so that through his death we might live? What do we find so off-putting in learning that when he so disparaged death, Christ restored us mortals as gods and re-evaluated us earthly beings as celestial creatures? And how does God call Christ to such an insult but raises us men and women, exalting us into such glory? If someone were to say: “This is about human necessity and not about divine power,” he would speak truly: that (raising humans into God’s life) is not a divine attribute, but it is a characteristic of—and even requires—God’s intimacy towards us. “No one,” Christ says, “has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13). So, are you amazed if Christ who achieved so much for us and who has given us so much, lays down what he has assumed from us? How evident is the strength, the power, and the magnificent things of the Creator when contemplating his works, but how hidden can the love of God be, and the charity of God seem obscure. The proof of a generous giver is usually found in providing for his subjects and in giving to his servants. But to suffer for his subjects and to die for his servants is a pledge of boundless love, a most unique testimony of a love that is unequalled. “God proves,” Scripture teaches, “his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). And elsewhere we learn, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16a). Any person can provide assistance and hand out gifts; in times of prosperity, anyone can be a benefactor and so love those who toady up to him. But can such a one ever be likened to someone who takes upon himself the pains of his people, who puts himself between his people and their problems, who surrenders his own well-being so as to take on their punishments? Could such a person ever be compared to a man who faces death so as to protect his people from utter destruction and thereby return them to life? Love is authenticated through afflictions, affection is weighed by the dangers it faces, delight in another is tested by punishments endured, and perfect love is strengthened by death. This is precisely why Christ entered the indignity of our flesh, why he underwent the insults of his passion, why he endured all sorts of beatings, and why he accepted such a grievous death, allowing himself to be condemned so as to show how much he loves what he has made. But the divine 114

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will here is nothing new, as the earliest utterance of the ancient law desired: “You shall love,” it says, “the Lord your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength” (Deut 6:5). True sovereignty rules its servant not with fear but with the kind of love which tames both bodies and hearts through affection. Through this loving, sovereignty instructs its servant not unwillingly but freely. This was thus the first reason for the Lord’s passion by which he wanted God’s immense love for humanity to be known, as he desires to be loved more than feared. The second reason is that even though God had established the penalty of death in all fairness, he wanted to abolish it an even more just way. It was by suffering that God thus desired to fulfill his own decree so that he would not rebuke death by simply overpowering it, as he himself proclaimed: “I have come not to abolish the law but to fulfill it” (Mt 5:17b). God’s promise of good things to those who are in fact good would be shaky at best if what he has ordained for the evil goes unrealized. “Not the smallest letter,” it says, “or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place” (Mt 5:18). The one who is prudent in discerning these matters which have been made known understands. If God did not save his own Son because of this decree, to whom can he grant forgiveness apart from this arrangement? For he, who does not know how to deceive, does not know how to exonerate otherwise. Accordingly, because the first man had been condemned to death by God because of this man’s guilt, now having transmitted death to his posterity and to the entire human race—as he who is now mortal in body begets only mortals, people who are enslaved and not free, not liberated but still bound. But the Second Man comes from heaven, the only one to draw near who knows no sin.3 The Second Man comes, foreign to the guilt we have incurred, descending in no way indebted to sin and to death. He came freely to the dead in order to denounce death by means of his own death, which had been commanded in order to conquer the guilty who presumed to be able to apprehend the Author of Innocence himself. In this way, the guilt of mankind is brought to death, and innocence is restored to humanity. The death to which the sinful Adam had been led had itself become treacherous and so is now led back to Christ. Christ is now the new head, the new source of life, the Father of all the living. This is why the Apostle says: “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all may live and be vivified” (cf. 1 Cor 15:21). Yet, because there are both many causes for the Lord’s suffering as well as the need to bring our sermon today to a close, let us stop for today so we do not spoil now what a more thorough discussion can reveal next time.

Sermon 74: on the resurrection of the Lord The work of our recent vigils as well as being exhausted from our Lenten fasts, have forced us to be somewhat silent. But today we repay this debt with a sermon on the Lord’s resurrection. For if Christ’s being born from the virgin is a divine occurrence, how much more is the divine Christ’s rising from the dead? As such, do not let what is divine be received by mere human ears. 115

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“In the night of the sabbath,” it says, “as the first day of the week was dawning” (Mt 28:1a, slightly altered). The day of this world does not know. In the night of the Sabbath, the practice of this world does not regard it. The evening ends the day, it does not begin it; it darkens, it does not illumine; the evening does not turn into the dawn. Evening, the mother of the night, gives birth to the day, it changes the order of things while acknowledging the Creator of all things. The evening radiates a mystery of newness, striving to serve its Creator and not the changes of time. “In the night of the sabbath,” it says, “as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb” (Mt 28:1). Late in the day a woman runs toward licentiousness, but later on she hastens towards forgiveness. She who seeks the Christ in the night is the one who had earlier in the day realized that she had ruined Adam. “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.” A woman snatched infidelity out of Paradise, and she now hurries to snatch faith from the tomb; she who hurries to pluck life from death, is the one who had grabbed death from life. Mary came. This is the name of the mother of Christ: it is a mother who comes in name, a woman comes in order that she who had been made the mother of all the dead might now become the mother of all the living. This is so Scripture might be fulfilled: “She was the mother of all the living” (Gen 3:20b). Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came. Scripture did not say “they” came, but that “she” came. It is not by accident that two women under one name come. This is a mystery. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came: she came, but so did another. One Mary, came, and so did the other: so that woman could be transformed into life, not just in name. She is to be changed in virtue not in her gender. She who is now to become the herald of the resurrection, was she who had stood out as the intermediary of our fall and ruin. Mary came to see the tomb: beholding the tree had lured her, but seeing the tomb restored her; a seductive stare brought the woman low, but a redemptive glance raised her high. “And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven” (Mt 28:2a). The earth quaked, not because the angel descended from heaven, but because the Conqueror (dominator) has come up from hell. There was a great earthquake. Chaos is unleashed, the depths of the earth burst asunder, the world is in fear, the mountain masses tremble, the foundations of the world are shaken, hell is plundered, the lower worlds are frozen, death is delivered over, death—stretching out for the guilty ones—crashes into the Judge; ruling over its servants, death has blazed out against the Lord; raging against humans, it has broken forth against God. Rightly, therefore, the law of hell has perished, the rights of the underworld have been banished, the power of death has been annulled, and as a penalty for its rashness, death has raised the dead; souls are recalled, because of the wrongdoing of its defender, bodies are returned, humankind is restored, life is recovered, and pardon is entirely settled, because now the penalty has hereupon been consigned to the Author of Life. Behold, there was a great earthquake. There was thus a great earthquake. Oh, if only a swift wind had earlier uprooted that death-dealing tree. Oh, if only dark clouds had blackened that woman’s gaze. Oh, 116

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if only a loathsome cloud had fogged over the beauty of that lethal fruit. Oh, if only her hand had shuddered when reaching for that forbidden fruit. Oh, if only the imposing night had darkened that day of sin. Then the sorrows of the world, the ever-creeping nearness of death, and the offending of our Creator would all have been taken away. But blandishments will always serve vices, sweet allurements will always flatter vices, but only asceticism and strength are amenable to a life of virtue. An angel of the Lord descended from heaven. With Christ’s resurrection, death is now put away. Heavenly communication has returned to earth, and the woman who had once entered into a deadly pact with the devil now enjoys an uplifting conversation with the angel. “For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, approached, rolled back the stone” (Mt 28:2b-c). Scripture does not say simply rolled but rolled back. Rolled back (reuolutus) because when the stone was rolled into place (aduolutus) it confirmed his death; but being rolled back proved the Champion (adsertor) had been resurrected. Blessed is that rock which was found worthy to veil as well as reveal the Christ. Blessed that stone which provides the resurrection to the Faith while testifying that the flesh has been resurrected. Here the order of all reality is changed: this sepulcher devoured death, not a dead man; this dwelling place of death becomes a place of life; a new kind of womb conceives the man who has died and brings him forth alive. “For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, approached, rolled back the stone, and sat upon it” (Mt 28:2b-c). What reason did an angel have for taking a seat, as there is no weariness in angels? He was perched like a doctor of the Faith, a teacher on the resurrection. He was sitting upon rock (petram) in order that the rock’s very reliability could provide a firm foundation to those who believe. The angel was thus placing the fundamentals of the Faith on the rock upon which Christ was going to found his Church, when he said: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church” (Mt 16:18). “His appearance,” Scripture says, “was like lightning and his clothing was white as snow” (Mt 28:3). Is not the glorious refulgence of an angel enough? What did snow-white clothing add to the angel’s heavenly nature? With such splendor he was heralding the beauty and the kind of our own resurrection, because those who are resurrected through Christ are transformed into the glory of Christ. For the resurrection of the flesh will not possess any murky aspects of flesh, as our Lord has promised: “The righteous will shine like the sun” (Mt 13:43). “The guards were shaken with fear of him and became like dead men” (Mt 28:4). Pitiful are they who are struck by the fear of death when it is being restored. Were those agents of such a savage cruelty, those executioners of another’s treason, not able to assume a trust in heavenly matters? They were watching over the tomb, they were blocking the door to the resurrection, disallowing life to enter at any cost, and ensuring death would not be destroyed. The advent of the angel struck these men and they fell to the ground. O wretched mortal, always an enemy to yourself, lamenting that they must die, but resisting the idea that a resurrection could be possible. Miserable death, always an enemy to itself, constantly suffering 117

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its own death, and unable to rise and fight. It would have been appropriate for the grave to open and something be brought forth which was capable of manifesting the resurrection so that a miracle might occur from it: that hope would come from such an example, that some new thing come from such a reversal as life from death, and belief come through seeing. For it is a great lunacy that any human would not believe that which every human desires to happen. But this talk about these soldiers must suffice for today. Our speaking about what the Faith still has to offer shall have to wait, lingering no longer for today.

Sermon 117: the tenth on the Apostle Today the Blessed Apostle tells us how our common humanity takes its singular beginning (principium) from two men, namely Adam and Christ. These are two people who may be alike in bodily stature, but unlike in excellence; while entirely alike in their physical makeup, they are wholly at variance in their own origins. Paul says, “The first man, Adam, became a living being, the last Adam a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45). That first Adam was made by the final Adam, from whom the first received his soul in order that he might come alive. This final One was the author of his own being, not having to wait to receive his life from another. He himself is the only One who is able to grant life to all there is. The first Adam was formed from the muckiest of earth, the Second came forth from the most precious womb of the virgin. In the first, earth was transformed into flesh; in the Second, flesh is lifted up into God. What else? The final Adam stamped his own image into the first upon creating him, and this is why he assumed both the office and the name of that first Adam (e.g., Rom 5:12–21), so that he might not let perish what he had fashioned in his own image. The first Adam and the final Adam: the former has a beginning, the latter has no end. In fact, the final Adam is in truth the first, as he himself says: “I am the first, I am the last” (Is 44:6). I am the first, that is, without a beginning; I am the last, entirely without end. “But the spiritual was not first,” Paul says, “rather the natural and then the spiritual” (1 Cor 15:46). Similarly, the earth comes before the fruit of the earth, but the earth is in no way as precious as the fruit. The earth deals out grumblings and labors, but fruit provides sustenance and life. Rightly does the prophet thus boast when he says of such fruit: “Our land will yield its produce” (Ps 84:13). What produce? The answer is surely the produce he refers to elsewhere: “Your own offspring I will set upon your throne” (Ps 132:11). “The first man was from the earth, earthly; the second man, from heaven, heavenly” (1 Cor 15:47). Where are those who imagine that the virgin’s conceiving as well as her giving birth were comparable to those of other women? For the first Adam is from the earth, but the virgin’s offspring is from heaven; the first is of human infirmity, the latter from divine power; the first arose in bodily passion, the second wholly in the tranquility of divine spirit and in the calmness of a human body. Visited by the Heavenly One, the virgin’s blood was silent, her flesh was amazed, the members of her body were stupefied, and her entire womb was in 118

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suspense until the Author of flesh assumed his own flesh, and until he who not only gives the earth back to the human race but even gifts heaven itself to humans, had become a Heavenly Man. The virgin conceives and the virgin gives birth, and yet remains a virgin. Her body is not aware of labor pains but only of an integrity which is actually increased by giving birth, saved from the penalties of pain. On the contrary, with absolutely no pains of childbirth, she serves as the supreme witness of motherhood. This new mother marvels at her sharing in these heavenly mysteries, realizing that the manner in which her Son was born is in no way customary among others. By his gift, the wise man confesses that it is God being born; he is making that assent by performing an act of adoration, and thus points out to us what a Christian should feel and what a Christian ought to believe. But let us now listen to what comes next: “As was the earthly one, so also are the earthly, and as is the heavenly one, so also are the heavenly” (1 Cor 15:48). How will it be that those not born heavenly will be found to be so? It won’t be from their remaining as they were naturally born, but by persevering in how they have been reborn. This is why, brothers and sisters, through a mysterious infusion of his light, the Holy Spirit makes fertile the virginal womb of this font, in order to lead those whose natural lineage make them wretchedly earthly, back to the likeness of their Creator. So now that we are reborn, we have been reformed into the likeness of our Creator, fulfilling what the Apostle has commanded us: “Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one” (1 Cor 15:49). Such rebirth was necessary, since we who are from the earth are unable to aspire to things heavenly. We who are born from concupiscence are unable to avoid concupiscence. We who are brought forth through the overwhelming allures of lust are forced to carry about the turmoil of such enticements, and we who have been born into this world have become imprisoned by the evils of the age. Therefore, as we have said, we whom the virgin has conceived anew, whom the Spirit vivifies, whom chasteness carries, whom integrity begets, innocence nourishes, sanctity teaches, and whom virtue makes strong, have been reborn to the likeness of our Lord. God has adopted us as his sons and daughters, so let us bear whole and entire the image and likeness of our Creator. We do so not through the majesty which he alone is able to be, but through innocence, simplicity, gentleness of spirit, patience, humility, mercy, and harmony—the very characteristics which the Creator himself became so as to be one with us. Accordingly let the noxious itching of vices cease, let the lethal allures of sinful transgressions be defeated, and may damnable rage, which is so detestable, the origin of all crimes, be restrained. May the darkness of all worldly pomp be far from our senses and may the deceit of worldliness be cast aside from our minds. Instead, let the poverty of Christ, which stores up eternal treasures in heaven, be sought after. May the holiness of our body and of our mind thus be preserved entirely, so that the divine image of our Creator, not in its magnitude but in how we act, be borne and even brightened in us. The Apostle confirms what we have said here when he states: “This I declare, brothers and sisters: flesh and blood 119

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cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor 15:50a). In this way the resurrection of the flesh is preached about, because where the flesh is inhabited by the Spirit, the flesh will not have mastery over the spirit, as the rest of that verse makes clear: “Nor does corruption inherit incorruption” (1 Cor 15:50b). You see, then, that it is not the flesh that dies, but corruption; it is not the human person who is to perish but his sin, not the person but his crime, in order that the one alive in God and before God (in deum et coram deo) may rejoice at having come to the end of his unrighteousness. A sermon on the resurrection should then be offered, brothers and sisters, because it is not fitting that we mention what brings us to eternal ages and into perpetual life, only in passing, at the end of this one.

Notes 1 It is noteworthy that this is one of the few places where Peter inverts a passage from a biblical verse. 2 Whereas Peter assigns a reflection of the Trinity to the 3 days of Christ’s death, some like Athanasius see the fittingness of 3 days in the tomb more as a matter of human fickleness: if it would have been only one day, people may have always wondered whether he really died, and if any more than three, “people should have forgotten about it,” On the Incarnation, §26. 3 This Pauline contrast between the first Adam and the Second Adam (Romans 5) is a popular motif when Peter is preaching on the crucifixion: juxtaposing the first king’s utter failure in leading others to life with the new King’s glorious resuscitation of the human race through his own rejection, death and resurrection.

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Sermon 57: the second on the creed1 Blessed Isaiah, an evangelist who is no less than a prophet, laments that he has unclean lips and that he is in the middle of a people with unclean lips, saying, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Is 6:5). A human wretchedness always arises in someone who senses and sees something from God. Here Isaiah is unable to speak. He cannot report. He cannot confess. As much as the flesh is constricted, so are the lips too compressed to express his soul. His tongue is too curtailed to explain his mind. A burning fire is enclosed in his flesh. His veins boil. His insides are on fire. His marrow seethes, and all of his innards are constantly aflame, because whatever he contemplates in the vision of his mind, whatever comes out of his mouth and flows from his lips, is parsed out by a tongue insufficient to draw out everything from within and put it into speech. This is what is happening to Isaiah when he sees the kingdom of God, gazing with clear vision on Christ himself, the Lord of the Sabbath. He weeps for the unclean lips of his own people because denying Christ’s majesty pollutes the lips, while confessing Christ’s divinity enlightens the heart, cleans the mouth, and purifies the lips. But let us hear what profit is contained in the prophet’s sighing: Then one of the seraphim flew to me, holding an ember which he had taken with tongs from the altar. He touched my mouth with it. “See,” he said, “now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.” (Is 6:6–7) This is not the right time to say why one is sent, and who this one is who is sent. It is not the right time to examine the greatness of this one who intrepidly carries the ember of the heavenly fire by hand, and how such touch purges the lips of the prophet, while not consuming them. Rather, at this point, we are convicted by the affect of our whole heart, admitting that we too are to be pitied in these

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miseries of the flesh. We should weep by pious groans that we too have unclean lips, so that one of the seraphim of the law of grace may with those tongs take for us from that heavenly altar a fiery sacrament of faith. Let him likewise touch our lips with the same delicacy; let this take away our iniquities, cleanse us from our sins, inflame our mouths in the ardor of open confession—a fire used for salvation, not pain. Let us also seek that same ember’s heat until it pierces our hearts, so that by such a great sweetness of mystery it is not only our lips which taste it, but it seizes the fullness of our senses and of our mind. Notice how after this ineffable cleansing of his lips, Isaiah speaks about the virgin birth, saying, “Behold, a virgin will conceive in her womb and she will bear a son” (cf. Is 7:14). Similarly, let us announce the mystery of the Lord’s passion and the glory of his resurrection. I believe in God the Father almighty. Today you have confessed to believe in God with good reason, this happens when you happily flee those gods and goddesses who were distinguished by their sex, confusing in their many numbers, popular with the crowds, vile in their origin, ugly in their reputation, greatly impious, premier in sin, and outstanding in crimes—so charged with these offenses because they are etched as idolatrous images. Be glad, all of you who have fled them, for having such as these even as your lackies brings about only misery, pain, and misfortune, but hitherto you have held them as your sovereigns.2 But rejoice that you have now come to the true, to the living, and to the sole but not to a solitary God (solum, sed non solitarium deum),3 by professing I believe in God the Father. The moment one confesses the Son, one calls upon the Father, because he who is called Father desires to be called Father by showing that he has a Son, whom he did not receive out of time, or begat at some point in time, or took to himself only for a time. Divinity neither takes up a beginning, nor receives an end; divinity does not admit of something after, nor does it know decline. God did not beget the Son in pain but manifests the Son’s existence by his powers. It is not that God makes anything else the way he did the Son, who is from himself: God begets (generat), as the Son is within God, opening him up and revealing him to us. The Son does not recede, but proceeds from the Father, coming forth from the Father but always remaining in him. Listen to what John says, “That which had been in the beginning” (cf. Jn 1:2), and elsewhere, “What was from the beginning” (cf. 1 Jn 1:1). What was is certainly not added to; what had been certainly appears not have begun. “I am,” he says, “the first and the last” (Rev 1:17). Whoever is first, does not come after someone else, and whoever is last leaves no one behind him. But when he says this, he is not omitting the Father, but is summing up how everything is enclosed in himself and the Father. But let us proceed next to that which was before all. And in Christ Jesus, only Son of the Father, our Lord. Just as earthly kings are called by the titles gained from their military triumphs, their innumerable salutations coming from the names of all their conquered peoples, likewise, Christ is called “the Anointed One” because he is the godly Healer (pius medicator) who poured out the oil of his divinity upon the parched members of the mortal race. And as he is called the Christ because of his chrismation, he is called Jesus by his 122

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salvation, he who poured out for us his divine oil, so that he might bestow perpetual salvation upon the perishing and grant certain health to the infirm. And in Christ Jesus, his only Son. If there are many sons and daughters due to grace, he is the single and only One due to his nature. Our only Lord who goes in search of us, having liberated us from the masses of overlords, and by his own hand releases us from their torturous cruelty and leads us into everlasting freedom. Who is born of the Holy Spirit. Again and in a different way the Christ is born for you, so that he can change the order of your birth as a human, that whereas decrepitude was going to fall upon you as you neared death, he would raise up in your life a new wholesomeness. Who is born of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary. Where the Spirit generates, the Virgin gives birth, and all divinity is brought forth, not just the human. Here there is no place for anything deficient (infirmitati), as power is unified with power. Adam was asleep, so that from the man a virgin (de uiro uirgo) was taken; now the virgin, however, marvels that a man is found coming from a virgin. What could nature claim for itself from such a great birth? Nature now sees a new order come about, all its laws have been changed, and so nature marvels that its Author has come into his own creation. Let the faithless see this as something contemptible, but it is a tremendous sacrament for believers. Who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried. You hear the name of the Judge, so that you might also become aware of the time of his passion. You hear “he was crucified” in order that you might know that the salvation which we forfeited was restored to us through crucifixion. And there you see the life of the faithful hanging, where the death of the faithless hangs. You then hear “he was buried” so that you do not think this death is a mere illusion. For all of this is a sign of divine might: when death dies because of a death, when the author of sin is slain by his own sword, and when the thief is captured by his own plunder, hell is stripped from the life it had swallowed. On the third day he rose from the dead. Three days Christ spent in the grave so that he could benefit these three places: hell, earth, and heaven. He would renew those things which are in heaven, recover those things which are found on earth, and redeem those things in hell, so that through this sacramental Triduum he could simultaneously reveal the saving grace of the Trinity to all men and women. He ascended into heaven. He ascended not so that he who had always remained in heaven might return himself to heaven, but so that he would bring you, whom he absolved from shackles and has freed from hell. Understand, O mortal, from where and to where God has lifted you, making you, who were always slipping and staggering on earth, stable in heaven. He sits at the right hand of the Father. But he does not have a Father to his left. Our confession of faith is not saying anything about divine placement but is instead indicating divine power. God does not know location, nor does the divine nature receive anything sinister. From whence he will come to judge the living and the dead. So be it for the living, but in what way will he be able to judge the dead? This refers to those who are alive, but whom we think of as already being dead. So confess that those whom 123

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infidelity renders as simply having perished will be resurrected once again, for the sake of being judged, that those who have in fact perished will have been found alive, so as to give an account of their actions and life. I believe in the Holy Spirit. After you have confessed the mystery of the flesh that has been assumed, it is necessary that you confess the divinity of the Spirit in order that the equality and the unity of the Trinity—of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit—through all things and in all things may guard and hold in its fullness the truth of the excellence of the faith in our profession. Holy Church. Because neither are the members ever separated from the Head, nor the bride separate from her Bridegroom, but in such a union (tali coniunctione) they become one spirit, and God becomes All in all things (cf. 1 Cor 15:28). Consequently, the one who believes in God is also the one who confesses the holy Church to be one with God. And in the forgiveness of sins. By trusting that sins are forgiven through Christ, one can grant pardon to him or herself. Resurrection of the flesh. A person believes correctly when trusting that God is able to raise the dead. For God, the elements rise again: thus, season follows upon season, night flows from day, seeds from where they had fallen. Similarly, neither can you perish, since all these things are made to become alive again. Since this is not difficult for you to understand in the life of a seed, know that it will not be difficult for God to accomplish this for you when you grow old. Life everlasting. This faith, this holy mystery, is not something to be committed to paper nor written in letters, because papers and letters can only describe the deeper realities which communicate grace, about which we should be much more careful. But where that divine gift of God’s grace takes root, faith is sufficient to establish the covenant, and the heart’s depths are sufficient for this hidden reality. The divine Judge recognizes this creed (symbolum) of our salvation, this covenant of life, while the deceitful witness is unable to notice it. Sign yourselves. May our Lord God himself watch over your thoughts and your hearts, and may he prove to be your Patron as he guides you in all these matters in which he is instructing you.

Sermon 108: sermon on where the Apostle says, “I urge you” What a marvelous piety that both seeks to pray for one another as well as to give to one another. Today the blessed Apostle is not asking for things human, but is conferring things divine. That is why he is praying: “I urge you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God” (Rom 12:1a), because when a doctor is forced to urge his sick patients to suffer a bitter pill for what ails them, he does so by persuading them, not by using his authority to force them. Often the sick man refuses the helpful things which will cure him, but the physician knows that the infirm man spits out what will heal him because he is sick, not because he is freely choosing to do so. In this way a father entices his son to live a life of discipline not out of power but out of love, not unaware how difficult self-mastery is to the 124

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young. So, if bodily healing is brought about by such pleading, and if a young person is hardly led to wisdom by such blandishments, it is surprising that the Apostle Paul—who is both a doctor and a father to us—entices human souls wounded by bodily illnesses to divine remedies with this petition: I urge you, he says, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God (Rom 12:1a). Here Paul is introducing a new type of prayer. I mean, why does he not urge us to God’s strength or to God’s majesty or to God’s glory, but instead to his mercy? This is because Paul escaped the guilt of being a persecutor of God by that very mercy alone, having won the dignity of such a great vocation, as he himself confesses, saying, “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man, but I have been mercifully treated” (1 Tim 1:13a). And again: This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost. But for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life. (1 Tim 1:15–16) I urge you, he says, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God. Paul is asking, rather it is God appealing through Paul because God longs to be loved more than he wants to be feared (plus amari . . . timeri), to be not so much a Lord but more of a Father. God pleads to us out of mercy in order that he need not punish us out of his sternness. Listen to the Lord’s appeal to you: “All day long,” he says, “I stretched out my hands” (Rom 10:21a). Is he who stretches out his hands not appealing to us by his very posture? I stretched out my hands. Stretched them out to whom? “To my people” (Rom 10:21b). And to what sort of people? “To a disobedient and contentious people” (Rom 10:21c). I stretched out my hands. God opens wide his arms, he expands his heart, he offers his breast, shows us his tender love, and even offers us his lap in order that through all of these affectionate gestures, he might show us how he is our Father. Listen then to the Lord’s appeal: “My people, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me” (Mic 6:3). Is this not the Lord’s way of saying if my divinity is unrecognizable to you, at least see that I am flesh? See! See that your own body is in me too, your bodily members, your heart, your bones, your blood. While you may fear what is divine, why not love what is also yours? If you flee me as a Lord, why not return to me as your Father? But perhaps your causing the severity of my passion shames you. Do not be afraid! The Cross mortally wounded death, not me. Those nails did not inflict pain upon me, but they are now to pierce your heart with a greater love for me. These wounds did not draw forth my cries, but through them I draw you ever closer into my own heart. My body was stretched out on the Cross to bring you into myself, not to increase my 125

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suffering. My blood does not dry up, but serves as the price I paid for your ransom. Come, therefore, and return to me. Learn how I am your Father, the One you see returning good for evil, love for offenses, and such charity for such painful wounds.4 That is why we must now hear how the Apostle encourages us: I urge you, he says, “offer your bodies” (Rom 12:1a), and by this exhortation the Apostle thus raises all of us to the dignity of the priesthood: “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice” (Rom 12:1b). This is an unaccustomed office unique to the Christian priesthood, when a man is both his own priest as well as his own sacrifice; when a human person does not need to go out of himself to find an offering acceptable to God, but when the human person with himself and in himself brings what he needs to offer to God; when both the sacrifice as well as the priest remain intact; when the offering although sacrificed still lives; and when the priest who offers the sacrifice is himself not able to kill. What a miraculous sacrifice when a body is offered without being slain, when blood is offered without gushing forth. I urge you, he says, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God. Brothers and sisters, this sacrifice follows from the very pattern of Christ’s sacrifice, when he offered his body for the life of all ages. He made his body a living sacrifice, sacrificed yet still alive. In such a victim death is ransomed, the sacrifice abides, and the sacrifice lives on, while death is the one consumed. This is why by death the martyrs are actually born, why their ending marks a new beginning, and why they live by being killed. For those who were believed to be done away with on earth actually now shine in the heavens. I urge you therefore, brothers and sisters, Paul says, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. This is also what the Prophet had sung: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me” (Heb 10:5, quoting Ps 40:7). Be, O mortal, be both God’s priest and sacrifice; do not refuse what divine authority has given to you and what it wants to hand over to you. Dress yourself in robes of sanctity, gird yourself with the cincture of chastity, let Christ be your head covering and his Cross on your forehead be your surest guard. Put on as your armor the mystery of divine wisdom, keep burning before you the sweet fragrance of incessant prayer, lay hold of the sword of the Spirit. Let your heart be God’s altar. Offer your body cheerfully as a sacrifice for God. God desires your faith, not your death, he thirsts for your surrender not your blood, he is pleased with your benevolence not your extermination. God himself showed this when he asked for the son of holy Abraham (cf. Genesis 22). For what else was Abraham sacrificing in his son other than his very own body? What other than faith was God requiring in Father Abraham whom he commanded to be offered but would not allow to be killed? By such an example, O mortal, be edified and offer your body. However, do not just sacrifice it, dismember it into all the virtues! The skillfulness with which you commit vices dies away as often as you will have offered the virtues of your bodily members to God. Offer your faithfulness in such a way that your infidelity 126

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is punished. Fast so that your gluttony may end. Offer up your chastity so that your lust may pass away. Put on piety so that any impiety can be removed. Invite mercy so that greed can be obliterated, and let your foolishness be devastated. For it is always fitting for you to offer your sanctity in these ways. Then can your body become a sacrifice as long as it remains unwounded by any spear of sin (si nullo peccati iaculo). Your body lives, O mortal; it lives whenever you offer God a life of virtue by the slaying of its vices. The one who is able not to die is the one who merits to be slain by a life-giving sword.

Sermon 120: the third on the Apostle Christ reveals to his apostles today that they are to be salt when he said: “You are the salt of the earth” (Mt 5:13). Let no one grow impatient if we break apart the words of Blessed Paul as if they too were grains of holy salt, so that in our ability to spice up Paul’s message, we ourselves might be better seasoned. You see, entire deposits of salt flavor other things by being ground up into smaller pieces and thus more potently give gusto to that which is being seasoned. When the message of the Apostle is read in the usual way, it offers a simple meaning. But when we read Paul’s words with a more diligent reading, they bestow an even more profound wisdom, when re-examined alongside the topics which we chose to analyze earlier. Today the blessed Apostle says, “Do not conform yourselves to this age” (Rom 12:2a). In saying this, do you imagine that St. Paul the Apostle is warning us not to be configured into the elements of the earth? Or do you think he was telling us not to become like those kings of the Persians who place a globe under their feet in order to mimic God’s control over the earth’s axis? Or warning us not to imitate those who, with a head covering made to appear like the sun’s rays, sit in the likeness of the sun so they appear to be no longer merely mortal; or, at other times they arrange these horns in a doleful way to express how sad it is to be just a man, while at other times they arrange the horns like women in imitation of the moon?5 Every now and then they adorn themselves with various images of stars so as to lose the appearance of being men, but even in this they gain nothing of heavenly brilliance. All of these rites stem from vanity of the ages, and to those who are truly wise such practices are to be fled and even to be scorned. That is why the Apostle says, Do not conform yourselves to this age in order to correct the life of this age. He wants to remove such things from Christian minds, to correct human customs, to judge human habit, to castigate our attitudes, to condemn our opulence, and to drive far from us all the vain pomp of our worldliness, forcing such things to flee. But in this way Paul is strongly reminding us what he examined at length at the beginning of this same epistle where he described the spirit of this age in all its vices: They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite. They are gossips and 127

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scandalmongers and they hate God. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wickedness, and rebellious toward their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know the just decree of God that all who practice such things deserve death, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Rom 1:29–32) Brothers and sisters, you have heard the spirit of this age, you have learned of all its spectacles, you have seen its shape, if this is even a form and not an amorphous monster. This is the monster where the whole face of what is real is wiped away through the committing of crimes, where the entire shape of the world has been dissolved through a marriage with sinfulness, where the very image of the Creator has been severed by delighting in diseases, where the human person is buried in his sins, where the wicked deeds of a rotting body gush forth, where a human person has become a mere tomb of a true human, and where in humanity there are no longer found real people but only corpses. The Apostle accordingly prohibits us to be conformed to this sort of world, forbids us to be configured to the spirit of this age, not permitting us to become like this world, but instead to be reformed into the image of God, to recall within ourselves the likeness of Christ and to bring back whole and entire the image of our Creator, saying: “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom 12:2b). That is, if you are to be renewed in your mind through Christ, cast aside the spirit of this age and put to flight all that has been deformed in this obstinate ugliness; bring back into your own self the appearance of your Savior in order that the newness of your minds may shine forth in all your actions, and that the Heavenly Man may walk on earth with all heavenly comportment. For this is how the stature of this New Man is revealed: For as in one body we have many parts, and all the parts do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually parts of one another. Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us. (Rom 12:4–6a) Christ is acting, he is surely acting, so that the Body—which he arranges in heavenly action, in heavenly life, in the ways of holiness—may prevail in the harmony and in the union of its members, and so that the foot may not confound the ministry of the eye, nor the eye through a perverse swelling of pride, refute the office of the foot. This is so that all the members may be content with the Giver’s gifts of sanctity and so that they may trust that all the members are one. Inasmuch as any member belongs to this One, it must know that it can never be devalued, but is to be honored on account of the entire body. That is why the Apostle describes operations with members and members with operations in this way: 128

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If one is a teacher, in teaching; if one exhorts, in exhortation; if one contributes, in generosity; if one is over others, with diligence; if one does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be sincere. Hate what is evil; hold on to what is good. Love one another with mutual affection. Anticipate one another in showing honor. Do not grow slack in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope; endure in affliction; persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the holy ones. Exercise hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. Have the same regard for one another. Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be concerned for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, on your part, live at peace with all. Beloved, do not look for revenge but leave room for the wrath . . . if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. . . . Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good. (Rom 12:7b-21) Earlier in his epistle, brothers and sisters, the Apostle uncovered the members which make up the vices, but now he reveals to us those that are virtuous so that the heavenly Body may consist of such members, strengthened with such sinews, equipped so as to overthrow the world’s conflicts and overcome any struggles with the devil. If one lives by what the Apostle has here taught, would such a one not overcome the world, not trample the flesh, not defeat the devil, not become equal to the angels and even greater than the heavens? Surely this one does become greater than the heavens. Because the heavens cannot move themselves, they do nothing freely nor through right judgment, but serve always and only through necessity because commanded to do so once and for all time. It is through a state of subjection that the heavens remain unstained, not through the virtues and not through hard work. Consequently, the heavens are never liable to punishment, but neither are they ever able to be rewarded. But when the human person, one formed through common earth, defeats this earthly baseness, when he tames the driving impulses of his blood and overcomes the passions of his flesh, then he transcends the heavens and is brought high to the very throne of God. In this way he becomes greater than the heavens, surpassing all else not by his nature but by his merits (meritis). All this the Apostle Paul proves when he was utterly defeating the world and thus entering heaven, traversing through the second heaven and found worthy (meruit) of arriving into the third. This was fitting, namely, that the one who first taught others through his words and by his very life how to reach the heavens, become the first to attain such heights. He will, he will be greater than the heavens, anyone who lives according to what Paul has here taught. Such a one will be brighter than the sun, shining with gleams of virtue more splendidly throughout every land so that absolutely no vice darkens him. The One who restrains the 129

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darkness with a piercing light will radiate more brilliantly than the moon. He will repel all the darkness of the age through the perfect splendor of his merits (meritorum). Such a one will be unlike the moon in that he will not be interrupted by a monthly waning but will remain steadfast in the light of God. And if the moon is magnificent because it eases the dark of night, how much greater is the One whose life allows no dark of night at all! I shall remain silent about the stars, for as many stars as there are in the heavens, there are as many virtuous lives of the saints emitting light too, as the Lord himself promised, “You are the light of the world” (Mt 5:14). Shine, my people, as lamps in the world! The heavens and the sun, the moon and the stars will pass away in the end, as God himself has promised, but the just person will remain uninterruptedly in the light of God. Brothers and sisters, I desire to offer a talk on every single one of the Apostle’s words, but an incessant reading brings about only the weariness of the listener. Yet we cannot remain silent about the virtues found throughout the Evangelists. And so you in your charity, may you be grateful that we are now concluding this present reading and bringing this brief sermon to a close. May our God consent to make favorably known to your holy hearts both the matters we have discussed and the things about which we must now be silent.

Sermon 132: where it says, “whatever you seek from my father in my name will be done for you” If all things in nature were produced and brought forth already perfect, if they were at once in full bloom and lacking nothing, our duty toward them would certainly be abolished, our ingenuities would disappear, and all of our skillfulness would be lost. Gold would remain hidden in the earth and gems would be left within the stones. But it is the artisan who unearths them both, cleans them off, sorts them, and polishes them up. Such workmanship and artistry lead then to the beauty and the glamor of a precious necklace. Note too, unless the skillful farmer’s industriousness trims all growth back into a suitable garden, whatever the earth produces from nature’s copious wellspring is either choked by brambles or grows wildly with a luxurious dominance. And lest I stray any further, let us strive with a singular and familiar example with which to draw out our point: when a newborn babe lies in the cradle, a man is hidden therein but not yet fully, a man’s limbs are seen but not completely as they will be, animated but not yet with full vigor. Because of this, care stoops down, parenting works to the point of sweat, skillfulness labors, and, if I may say more, as many limbs as this little one has, just as many skills (magisteria) are put to work in order to perfect this little one into a full-grown adult. What else? Whatever nature brings forth or produces, our dutifulness nourishes, our industry improves, and our skill makes more beautiful. So, why should we be astonished, brothers and sisters, if God wanted to suffer for us? Why should we be amazed that he too wanted to honor human industry by willing that our nature be enfeebled in our present state of affairs? This is how meaning resides hidden in the letter, how divine mystery lies concealed 130

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in human speech, so that future events may be made known to the faithful and remain unfathomable to the perfidious as well as to the incredulous. In this way the penalties of the unfaithful favorably contribute to the glory of the faithful. It is not insignificant to be unable to discern what is seen, to be ignorant of what is heard, to deny the aids to salvation as if they were dangers, and thus to be leery of the virtues as if they were vices. This is what the Lord was saying: “This is why I speak to them in parables, because ‘they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand’” (Mt 13:13). And then to his faithful: “The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you” (Mk 4:11a). As such, brothers and sisters, let none of us in our simplicity regard the Gospel’s words as too ordinary or of little account, particularly where it forecasts how nothing will be denied to those who seek rightly and who devoutly desire, saying, “If two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father” (Mt 18:19). All of you have heard how our agreement in such matters makes our holy petition more efficacious: Christ did not say I shall give you “this” for “that,” but he promised everything. He promised everything to those who sought in a unified desire when he said, “Whatever thing they request, will be done for them” (cf. Mt 18:19), thus cautioning us to request only those things which are salvific and honorable in order that we might seek from God only that which is worthy of him. Whoever seeks that which is evil from God, judges God and regards God to be the author of evil. Whoever prays for vile and unworthy things proves himself to be a debauched seeker ignorant of the power and of the authority of the Provider. Let us therefore ask for those things which ought always to be sought from such a free Giver: not ungodly but godly things, gifts not earthly but heavenly, not enticements but talents corresponding with a life of virtue, not things which arouse hatred but result in harmony. Where are those who believe that the gathering of the Church is able to be despised and who say that private prayers are to be preferred to the worshiping community, if our Lord has promised that “when two or three have been gathered together” (cf. Mt 18:20), he himself would be in their midst and that he would fulfill all the things which have been asked of him? What would he refuse the many who seek? What would he deny those seeking in the meeting places and in the gathering of the saints? This is how the prophet trusted and why he gloried in having obtained his prayer thus: “I will praise the Lord with all my heart, and in the assembled congregation of the upright” (Ps 111:1). Whoever confesses with his whole heart, and who seeks entirely within the gathering of the saints (consilio sanctorum), will receive word about everything for which he has long awaited. But using faith as a pretext, some endeavor to excuse their laziness and contempt for the Church. These are the ones who shake off their fervor of the holy assembly and gathering, who pretend that they are assigning that time to prayer, but it is a time which they instead spend on household chores, and while they serve their own wants, they hold in low regard, and sneer at, God’s commandments. Those are the ones who disperse the Body of Christ and scatter its members. They refuse to allow the manifestation of the Lord’s appearance to 131

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reach its own beauty, the manifestation which when the prophet had seen in the Spirit, he sang this: “You are the most handsome of men” (Ps 45:3). Certainly each member of the Church has his or her own particular duty, but each is able to fulfill this duty only if they are of like mind and are united together, so that they may attain the beauty of the perfect Body. Herein lies the difference between the glorious fullness of a congregation and that proud vanity which comes from either ignorance or contempt. The beautiful unity of the Body’s members arises from the health and respect for the entire Body, while the dissolution of the Body comes from ugly, lethal, and horrendous dangers. O mortal, what is the separating of the joints, or the joining together of disparate members in your own body teaching you other than that you are to live as one person who is composed of many parts, one person in many members? The eye, for example, is precious for the healthy dealings of the body, but only if it remains in the body; otherwise, if it cannot be itself, it will fail the entire body. All members of the body are indebted to the eye for indulging the body with light, but the eye too perceives that it is indebted to the body to be its light. Thus, in cooperation with all the body’s members, the eye provides the body with the ability to see, but if it is torn out of the body, the eye itself is no longer able to see. Whoever regards himself as a person of great consequence should be edified by such an example and remain in the Church in order that he may become truly valued; however, where he fails the Church, he soon puts an end to his own worth. Whoever desires to receive a fuller understanding here, let him read through the decrees of the Apostle, where he speaks about the Body of Christ, as the desired brevity of our sermon does not give us enough time to penetrate such a doctrine thoroughly. The Law was not given to a sole individual, but to all. Christ came not for one or only to one, but to all and for all, in order that he might reincorporate all into one which alone is good and pleasing, and why the prophet who understands future events is able to proclaim: “How good and how pleasant it is, when brothers and sisters dwell together as one” (Ps 133:1). Brothers and sisters, who are all truly one because it is not singularity which is pleasing to God but unity. As a wholly nourishing font, the Holy Spirit fell gently upon the apostles, and into one congregation he gathered those who had been instructed by the Lord’s command that they should be gathered together for the Spirit’s arrival. Brothers and sisters, if someone tosses divine gifts aside, if he loses the abundance of grace and deprives himself of the goods of charity, the blessing of unity will not remain in him. This is the person who is malicious to himself and through the defect of his own stupidity becomes reliant only upon himself, thus seeking a life outside of the Church. But the prophet witnesses to how true life can be found only in the Church when he says, “How good and how pleasant it is when brothers and sisters dwell together as one,” and again, “There the Lord has decreed a blessing, life for evermore” (Ps 133:3).

Sermon 133: on the birth of the Apostle St. Andrew Today is fittingly believed to be the birthday of Blessed Andrew. It is a birthday not of his being born into this present life from his mother’s womb, but as the 132

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day he was conceived by God for martyrdom, recognized as one brought forth for heavenly glory. This is not the day when his mother’s cradle welcomed him as a wailing infant, but when heavenly mysteries received him as one triumphant. This is not when he took in the tender nourishment of milk from the breast of his mother, but when as a most devoted and virtuous soldier he poured out his blood for his King. This soldier of the heavenly army now lives having conquered death. Parched and panting he follows the Lord, and with the full gait of virtue, he strives to keep pace with the Lord’s own steps, lest this journey render him unequal to his brother with whom he is equal in nature (viz., St. Peter; Jn 1:40), alongside whom he has become a partner in being called, and with whom he has been perfected as an equal through God’s grace. At one call of the Lord, like his brother, Andrew too left his father, his homeland, and all he owned. With his labors, his enduring of insults and contempt, and with his nightly vigils, he tirelessly gave himself in partnership alongside his brother to Christ. Andrew’s only fault was to flee when the Lord underwent his passion (cf. Mt 26:56). But this fleeing does not render him unequal to Peter, for denying our Lord is also something regarded as sinful (cf. Lk 22:54–62), and fleeing is no more grievous than denying. But on these matters, let us remain silent. Forgiveness smooths out what sin has scattered. Besides, the devotion with which these two later followed [Jesus Christ] far outweighs the fear that held them back before. For they came to embrace zealously and with all their strength the Cross which they had earlier fled. Consequently, they were taken up into heaven, receiving their eternal reward and crown from the same Cross from which they initially procured blame. Peter mounted his cross, Andrew took up his tree: this was accomplished, so that these two who had desired to offer themselves to Christ, could make manifest in their own death the fashion and fittingness of Christ’s own passion. Both were redeemed through wood, and by wood both were perfected for the palm of victory. As such, even if our Andrew yields to Peter in office, he does not lag behind in either his reward or his labor.

Sermon 134: on St. Felicity Since the various triumphs of our martyrs are so numerous, and because the cruelty of their persecutors, so often thwarted, has accumulated over the centuries, time does not allow all of these to be laid out before us. The entire prayer of our sermon (tota sermonis oratio) will therefore appeal to the one who merited to bear as many sons as the world brings forth days. She is truly a mother of lights, the font of days whose brilliance of her seven sons shines throughout the whole world.6 She is blessed, not only for suffering for the Law, but as a holy mother who was found worthy to bring forth this seven-candled lampstand. Brothers and sisters, such a lampstand is not meant to illumine just the sanctuary of a temporary tent of worship, but with sacred flame burning, it is meant to illumine the everlasting Church. Blessed is she who has won the right to bear as many mighty sons as the Ark bore sanctified scrolls of the Law. But, while the Ark teaches through the word, she teaches by example. Even then, brothers and sisters, she brought forth these 133

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children already as martyrs, having consecrated them at birth by this mystical number of seven. Come, let St. Paul come here now, he who is still suffering labor pains until Christ is formed in every human person (cf. Gal 4:19). Behold the mother who also bears another over and over until her weakness is transformed into strength, until her flesh is taken up by spirit, and until earth is transformed into heaven. On fire, she was sighing to bring forth these boys one day as holy martyrs, these boys whom she bore through a cycle of many years. Behold this woman, behold this mother whose sons’ lives caused her much anxiety, but whose deaths brought her great assurance. Blessed is she who has as many brightly-burning candles for her future glory as she has had sons. Blessed is she who sent so many sons ahead into the Kingdom, but even more blessed is she who in this age actually lost none of them. She was moving more joyfully among the slain corpses of her sons than she once did among their cradles, because with her spiritual eyes she was discerning as many winnings as there were wounds, as many torments as there were trophies, as many casualties as there were crowns. And what is more, brothers and sisters? One is not a true mother who does not know how to cherish her children in such a manner.

Sermon 154: on the birth of St. Stephen Signs with the names of the landowners serve as boundary markers. In the same way, the names of saints often mark off their marvels and give witness to their remarkable acts. So it was with Abraham who manifested how he believed by faith. Through divine decree his name was added to, once Abram but now named Abraham. His name was enlarged first as a sign of how he himself would also be added to: “No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I am making you the father of a multitude of nations” (Gen 17:5). Accordingly, when the sterility of Abraham’s saintly wife had been turned into fertility, her name too was changed. She went from Sarai to Sarah, signifying how her name would also grow (in Hebrew from SaRai to SaRaH), before she grew larger with child.7 This was all accomplished through the Lord’s permission, eliciting laughter (cf. Gen 18:12) that such an old woman so aged with wrinkles could now bear a child, that someone whose fertility seemed hopeless might bring about life, that someone who was sterile because of her old age should now be with child. Because of all this, the moment she named the child, she brought forth laughter, thus providing him with a fitting name when she laughed: “Abraham gave him the name Isaac” (Gen 21:3), which means laughter. This was also what happened with Jacob, who in the womb began to wrestle even before he could see, he who won the victory more through spiritual strength than through physical power, and who even though still in his mother’s womb was himself named “The Claim Jumper” (subplantatoris), since he had already become renowned for having dethroned his divinely disapproved-of brother. Canvassing every one of these examples would take too long. Having received his name from “rock” due to the solidity of his faith, Peter was the first (primus) 134

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to merit to be the foundation of the Church. Stephen means “crown” because he was the first to merit undergoing the great contest for Christ, the first to deserve to achieve martyrdom by the shedding of his blood, like all the soldiers of Christ henceforth. Let Peter retain his primacy over the apostolic choir (apostolici chori): for those allowed entrance, let him open the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven, and by his power (cf. Mt 16:19) let him mercifully absolve the contrite but bar the guilty. Stephen is the first martyr. Stephen thus leads his noble (purpuratum) army, that zealous warrior who shed his own blood for the blood of the Lord while it was still warm. In this way he sought out for himself a purple robe colored with his own blood, and consequently came to earn a crown for having followed his King. This is the one who, from birth, received his name from a crown, showing how God justly foresees and preordains the one whom he had called to be the first of his martyrs into glory.

Sermon 155: on new year’s day When Christ was dutifully born for our salvation, the devil immediately devised portents, pernicious and innumerable, in order to threaten such divine goodness. In this way the enemy sought to render the affairs of religion into things ridiculous, to turn sanctity into sacrilege, to reduce the things that should bring God honor to things which cause him pain. Brothers and sisters, this is why the pagans reveal their gods and goddesses on this day. They seek out disgraces. They plan out all sorts of filthy displays, and they enjoy things more obscene than obscenity itself. Then they parade their gods and goddesses around to be seen, making a show of them all around us, dragging along those figures which they have built into visible objects, such things which should not even be seen. What vanity, what a level of lunacy, what blindness to confess these displays as gods and goddesses while disgracing them with all sorts of detestable mockeries. Those who deride the ones they suppose to be gods and goddesses do not worship them, they do not venerate them but they instead mock them. Those who construct their gods and goddesses out of their own vices neither honor them nor glorify them, but they destroy those they have formed from their own deformities. For they have constructed these deities out of their own confusion. For sure, as the Apostle says, “since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper” (Rom 1:28). For when they grant divine status to beings whom they cannot consider even human, when they judge worthy of heaven those whom they deem not worthy even of earth, they show that they truly have been given over to an undiscerning mind. This is not simply a human opinion, it is the wisdom of God, in order that those who are proven to be the authors of divine injuries, might also be the vindicators of their injuries against God. What wrath and what retaliation should so avenge an offense against God concerning these idols!8 The ones whom antiquity (uetustas) pretended were gods with altars, incense, sacrificial victims, gems, and gold, posterity (posteritas) judges them to have been the most reprehensible of 135

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men belonging to a shameful cult, designating their life, morals, and actions in their very appearances and thus revealing that such men are to be avoided rather than to be worshiped.9 Brothers and sisters, let us weep over those who undertake such baseness. Let us rejoice with heavenly glee (caelitus) that we have escaped such disgraces. Pagans have no problem depicting adultery in these images. They immortalize fornication through images and they privilege incest through their works of art. They commend savage cruelty in their writings and have established patricide as part of their tradition. They have turned all sorts of wicked actions into public tragedies, and what should be considered obscenities are playful trifles. What sort of demented mind would believe that such things belonged to the divine unless the pagans themselves had a burning love for crimes and were possessed by a desire to have their gods and goddesses commit the same crimes as they? Whoever is desirous of sinning worships sin and adores the initiators of sin. This is why the adulterer unites himself to Venus and why the warmonger enslaves himself to Mars. Brothers and sisters, today we are speaking of such things so that we might disclose why we have to tolerate the pagans’ making their gods and goddesses commit such acts, acts which are so horrible and shameful to behold. Let us understand why even those who produce such idols sometimes abandon them in horror, and why we Christians should take delight in having been freed from such filth by Christ. If only we Christians would not be seduced by such spectacles, if only we were not defiled by coming into contact with such things, if only we could flee the risk of approving of such spectacles, since approval is tantamount to the spectacles themselves, as the Apostle says, “. . . they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Rom 1:32b). And if such damnation (damnatio) materializes through mere approval, how much more shall we mourn those who actually fabricate the idols themselves? Have these ones not forfeited their image of God? Have they not lost their likeness to God? Have not those who have cloaked themselves in the sacrilegious costumes of these idols taken off for themselves the garment of Christ? Yet perhaps one will say, All of this pageantry is done not out of pursuing sacrilege, but just out of a passion for games. It has to do with a joy of ringing in the new year and not with the error of the past, done out of the beginning of another year and not out of the wickedness of paganism (gentilitas). But, my friend, you are wrong! These displays are sin, not sport. Who plays around with godlessness? Who jokes about sacrilege? Who laughs about a holy sacrifice? Whoever thinks like this has deceived himself completely. For whoever cloaks himself in the habit of the tyrant is a tyrant, and the one who makes himself a god stands as someone impugning (contradictor) the true God. The one who refuses to bear the image of God is the one who wants to dress up in the likeness of an idol. Whoever desires to jest with the devil is unable to rejoice with Christ. For 136

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no one plays with the serpent untroubled, and no one jokes with the devil without punishment. Yet, if there is any piety in our hearts, if there is any care for humanity (contemplatio humanitatis) within us, or if we are possessed by any desire for the salvation of our brothers and sisters, let us prevent those who are running to their damnation, being snatched to their death, being pulled into hell, and rushing into Gehenna. A father must therefore restrain his son, a master his servant, a parent the other parent, let one citizen stop another, one man hinder another, and let the Christian restrain all who have lowered themselves to the level of beasts—those who have made themselves equal to livestock, who have conformed themselves to farm animals, and thus shaped themselves into demons. The one who frees such as these will have a reward, and whoever refuses to care about these ones deserves a punishment. Blessed is the one who protects his own life and who serves as a watchman (prouisor) for the salvation of others as well.

Notes 1 There are 8 sermons focusing on the symbol of faith (56–62A). These expositions of the basic creedal tenets of Catholic Christianity are surely delivered in the presence of the catechumens and those seeking full entrance into the Church at or around the Easter Vigil. 2 As in s. 155 later, it is clear that Peter is preaching to some who have just only recently abandoned the pagan worship of idols for the sacraments of Christ’s Church; for more on the lingering paganism of the 5th century, see Benericetti, Il Cristo, op. cit., pp. 40–4. 3 A most exquisite phrase extolling the monotheistic unity of God’s substance simultaneously alongside the personal relationships of God’s Trinity. 4 In such exhortations, Bishop Peter represents the Christ as pleading for his followers to understand themselves only in him. This is a move traceable back to the Odes of Solomon, “Behold, the Lord is our mirror. Open your eyes and see them in him. / And learn the manner of your face” (Ode, 13), and Augustine develops this theme most often when preaching on the Church as the mystical extension of Christ himself (the Christus totus): “Now, however, I wonder if we shouldn’t have a look at ourselves, if we shouldn’t think about his body, because he is also us (quia et nos ipse est). After all, if we weren’t him, this wouldn’t be true: When you did it for one of the least of mine, you did it for me (Mt 25:40). If we weren’t him, this wouldn’t be true: Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? (Acts 9:4). So we too are him, because we are his organs, because we are his body, because he is our head, because the whole Christ is both head and body” s. 133.8; trans., Edmund Hill, Sermons 94A-147A (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1992), 338. 5 Obviously Bishop Peter was aware of pagan rites that had occurred in the streets of Ravenna; for more on what was lingering in Late Antiquity, see Michele Renee Salzman, “Christianity and paganism, III Italy,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity: Constantine to c. 600, ed. Augustine Casiday and Fredrick W. Norris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 210–30; Michele R. Salzman, “Pagans and Christians,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 186–202. 6 2 Maccabees 7 also pivots on an anonymous mother whose 7 slain sons are clearly being invoked here, as both mothers are faithful to their God and whose great fortitude is therefore bestowed upon their sons as they make their way toward their martyrdom. 7 As in s. 147, Peter sees deep significance in the changing of a biblical name.

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8 Reading in Deum instead of in deos; see CCL 24B.962. 9 The taxonomy here is quite telling. We progress from pagan antiquity which regarded mere mortals as deities worthy of worship, to Christian posterity which has revealed these so-called demons to be nothing other than the most vile of men (turpissimos). Here Bishop Peter is condemning a type of mythological Euhemerism, wherein the gods and goddesses of paganism were criticized by the Christian community as nothing other than fabled mortals who had supposedly earned their heavenly status but who have been rendered by this vile cult (turpi cultu) as nothing other than proud demons.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary sources Peter Chrysologus. “Epistola XXV: Petri Chrysologi Episcopi Ravennatis ad Eutychem Presbyterum.” In Sancti Leonis Magni Romani Pontificis Opera Omnia, edited by Jacques-Paul Migne, 775–80. PL 54. Paris, 1846. ———. Petrus Chrysologus: Sermonum collection a Felice episcopo parata, sermonibus extravagantibus adiectis, edited by Alexandre Olivar. CCSL 24, 24A, and 24B. Turnhout: Brepols, 1975–82. ———. St. Peter Chrysologus, Selected Sermons, vol. 2. Translated by William Palardy. Fathers of the Church 109. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004. ———. St. Peter Chrysologus: Sermons & St. Valerian: Homilies. Translated by George E. Ganss, S.J. Fathers of the Church 17. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, [1953] 1984.

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INDEX

Abraham: descendants of 70, 88; faith, father of 50, 95–6, 98, 100–1, 103, 126, 134; riches of 83–4, 92; servant, as 93 Adam: Eve and 23, 81; first and final 118, 120n3; glory lost 69, 74, 86, 115 Agnellus, Andreas: hagiography, as hopeful 6–8; Liber pontificalis ecclesiae Ravennatis (Book of the Pontiffs) 5, 15, 20n7 Alaric 8, 10 Alighieri, Dante 4 Ambrose see Bishop angel: fallen 26, 53; Gabriel 39, 47; mediator, as 47; seraphim 121, 122 Apollinaris 3, 4, 7 apostle: brothers, as fishermen 83; faith, as strong 111; teacher, appointed 59, 82–3 Apostle: Andrew 132–3; John 11, 49, 55, 57, 74, 83, 102–5, 107, 122; Luke 67, 69; Matthew 82–5; Paul 41, 67, 71, 81, 91, 115, 118–19, 124–30; Peter 73 armor 100, 114, 126 Augustus, Caesar 3–4, 41 baptism 13, 32, 102, 105 Basilica of St. Apollinare Nuovo 3 Battle of Frigidus 9, 21n22 Benericetti, Ruggero 6, 36n2 Bishop: Ambrose 9, 16, 109n16; Apollinaris 3, 4, 7; Cornelius, of Imola 7, 8, 12; Felix 16; Flavian 8, 13, 14; Irenaeus 26, 36n 4; John 6 (see also Chrysostom, John St. John); Leo Magnus, “the Great” 6, 13, 14, 33; Peter, of Ravenna (see Chrysologus, Peter); Proclus 25, 36n3; Severus 5; Ursus 7, 13 bishops: list of 5, 15 Bizzozero, Andrea 17, 18

catechumens 13, 26, 34 cathedral 12, 13, 32 centurion 77–78 chief priests 110–11, 113 Christ: annunciation of 39, 46; apostles, appoints as teachers 59; Body of 131; crucifixion of 110; Egypt, flight into 55, 57; genealogy of 70; Generation of 59; goodness of 65–6, 78, 95, 135; humanity of 12; incarnation of 42; mother of 22n32, 40, 44, 116; Nativity of 51; Passion of 110–11, 112; resurrection of 17, 106, 111, 115–118, 120, 122, 124; sacrifice of 126 Christian: community 3, 15, 17, 62; faith 48; leader 7, 18, 90; priesthood 126 Christology 12, 13, 19, 34 Chrysologus, Peter: appointment as Bishop 13; death, date of 9; early training 12–13; ecclesiology of 12, 19, 32, 33, 34; expert, in presentation of meaning 17–20; Golden-Worded, as the 36; historical accuracy issues 6, 8; homilies of 12, 15–16, 24–5, 28–9, 33; influencers of 16, 21n16, 21n27; prayer, of his feast 35; servitude, as preached 12, 33; theological accolades 15; see also sermons Chrysostom, John (St. John) 6, 12, 21n27, 103 commercium (community) 3, 26, 29, 34, 131 communion 19, 25, 31, 121 Constantius 10, 11 creation 19, 23, 25, 42, 92, 112, 123 creed: apostles 121–124; sermons on, eight 16, 34, 121 crucify 65, 104, 111

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deification 9, 28, 30, 31, 36n11 Deliyannis, Deborah Mauskopf 6, 13, 20n7 De obitu Valentiniani consolation 9, 109n16 devil: deception of 56–7, 68, 70–4, 77, 135; defeat of 26, 58, 71, 73, 75–6, 84, 90, 105, 117, 129; jealousy of 53; Peter addresses 18 Easter 13, 21n24, 110 Elijah 50–1, 55, 58, 74, 98 Eliot, Thomas Stearns (T.S.) 4, 20n5 endeavor, not human (incursus) 17, 71 Epiphany 17, 29, 110 Eudoxia, Aelia 12, 21n27 Eutyches: letter to 13–14, 15; monk, condemned 8 Evangelist 47, 48, 85, 121 Eve 26, 40, 43 evil 66–7, 70–1, 75, 78, 84, 91–2, 96, 126, 131

imago Dei 19, 23–24 incarnation 12–13, 19, 23–6, 28–30, 42 Isaiah 54, 121, 122 Isaac 70, 134

fast/fasts 29, 71, 73–5, 115, 127 fasting 26, 71–2, 74–5, 99, 105, 107 Father: Church, early 22n39, 108n8; heavenly 31–2, 62, 65, 131 feasts 17, 35, 65–6, 68, 70, 92, 99 flesh and blood 71, 119–20 Gabriel, Archangel 26, 39, 47 Ganss, George S.J. 6, 108n4 Gehenna, torment in 88, 95, 101, 137 Genesis, story of 19, 23, 50, 74, 126 Gentiles 33, 58, 60, 67–8, 82, 102, 110–11, 113 Gibbon, Edward 30 God: Creator, as 39; goodness of, showing the 19–20, 31; incarnate 34–35, 39; kingdom of 120, 121, 131; likeness of, divine 23–24; mercies of 124; mother of 18, 21n31, 22n32, 60n8; power of 32; proves 114; Son of 45; as triune 25, 28, 112, 124 Gospel: authors’ of 17, 56, 70; stories 17, 40–1, 57, 65, 71, 96, 102, 105–6 guilt 87, 96, 104, 106, 112, 115, 116, 135 heaven: evil spirits in 71; kingdom of 76, 105–6, 135; Lord of 75, 78, 113; quake 40, 47, 111; virgin birth, story of 43, 47–8 heavenly: Father 31, 32, 62, 65, 131; gifts 59, 80; song 75

hell: cast into 74; descended to 27; destroy, as to 29, 59, 97, 116; punishment of 91, 92, 95, 102; vision from 100 Holy Spirit: being filled with 46, 49; conception by 14, 79, 119, 123; receiving of 7–8, 132; trinity, of the 18, 35, 46, 112, 124 Honoria, Justa Grata 10, 11 Honorius, Flavius (Emperor) 4, 8–10, 21n24 human person: created in likeness 23–5, 28, 36n1, 41, 87, 112, 134; eternal life of 53, 59, 72, 112, 120; mortal, as a 89; sacrifice, living 126, 128–9; selfrighteousness of 96

Jacob 50, 70, 134 Jerusalem 110–11, 113 Jewish: nation 62; people 33, 43, 57, 60, 69, 82, 99, 103, 106 Jews 33, 60, 67, 102, 113 John, the Evangelist 11; see also Apostle John the Baptist 105, 107 journey, divine (cursus) 17, 71 Judea 54–5, 58, 60, 105, 107 King, heavenly 24, 65, 73–4, 82, 90, 114, 121, 133 Lord: God 8, 46, 62, 98, 119, 124; passion of the 86, 110, 112, 115, 122; prayer of 69, 88; see also Christ Lycaeus, Proclus see Bishop Magi 14, 29, 56, 57 Martyr, Justin 26, 36n4 martyr/martyrs 3, 59, 126, 133–5 martyrdom 3, 133, 135 Mary: Eve, as the new 26; fiat of 25–6; Magdalene 116; Mother of God 18; virgin birth 25–6 Matthew see Apostle monk: Benedictine 3; Eutyches 8, 13 Moses 33, 50–1, 57, 74, 85, 98–9 nescience, not mortal (inscientia) 17, 71 Nestorius 13, 14, 22n32 netherworld 27, 91, 97–8, 100–1

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New Testament 17, 19, 26 Noah 41, 50, 70, 74, 76 Odoacer, Flavius 4 Old Testament 19, 26 Old, Hughes Oliphant 17 Olivar Daydí, Alejandre 16 paganism 9, 11, 30, 136, 137n2, 138n9 parable 17, 131 penance, groans of 103 persecute 59, 129 persecutors 29, 59, 111, 125, 133 piety: filial, as parental care 63, 64; reverence, as 82 Placidia, Aelia Galla: mausoleum of 12; revered in sermons 11; Visigoths, Queen of 10 Pontius Pilate 113, 123 Pope: Benedict XIII 15; Boniface 11, 21n24; Celestine 6; Leo 6, 13–15, 33; Sixtus III 6–7; Zosimus 11 Procopius 10, 21n23 Prophets 54, 57, 82, 98, 107 Ravenna: city of 20n6; naval base 4; Scroll 22n35 rejoice 66, 97, 105, 120, 122, 129, 136 repent 98, 105–7 repentance 98, 102, 103 resurrection 115; see also Christ Roman Empire 4, 9 sacrifice: holy 136; living 126 salt of the earth 127 salvation: human 48, 52, 54, 58, 72, 124, 135; inseparability of 32, 43, 47; sick, for the 26; spiritual 34–5, 40 sanctified 35, 49, 82, 84, 92, 133 sanctity 83, 106, 119, 126–8, 135 sanctuary 79, 133 Satan 18, 61n14, 74 scribes 110–11, 113 scripture: statements of 43, 56, 59, 64, 70, 80–1, 87, 94; study of 12, 15–17; teaches 17, 43, 48, 55–6, 114 sermons: afterlife, of rich man 16, 32; Annunciation, on the 17, 18, 39, 43, 46; destroyed in fire 15–16; dialogue,

extended 18–19; doctrine, of church 16, 34, 35, 57; Easter victory 110; exodus to Egypt, the Lords 55–7, 57–60; fasting, regarding 72–5; incarnate Christ 42–3, 49–51; incarnate God 39–40, 43–6, 46–9; Lord’s Prayer 69, 88; Nativity, on the 17, 40, 46, 51, 54; nativity, the 40–2, 51–4, 54–5; ordinary life illustrations 16; Our Father 17, 28, 32, 108n10; Prodigal Son 16–17, 33, 63, 67, 103, 107n2; rich man, parable of 85–8, 91–4, 95–9, 99–102; temptations of Christ 17, 18; themes of, pivotal 19, 23; thought out 16–17; see also Lazarus Simson, Otto von 5, 20n8 sin: cleansing of 29, 31, 34, 54, 90; flesh, of the 68, 106; forgiveness of 27, 57, 80–1, 85, 102, 112, 124; jealousy, of 64–5, 69–70, 73; unbelief, of 46, 57, 60 Son of God 12, 18, 25, 30, 45–6, 54, 69–70, 72, 74 Son of Man 30, 54, 110–13 Spirit, prescience of (praescientae) 17, 71 St. Andrew see Apostle St. Apollinaris 3, 7 St. Athanasius 6, 28 St. Felicity 133 St. Paul see Apostle St. Stephen 134–5 Strabo 3, 20n2 Tartarus (hell) 24, 27, 87, 97, 101, 104, 110; see also hell tax collector 84; see also Zacchaeus tempter 26, 70, 72 Theodosius I, Flavius Augustus 9 Theodosius II, Flavius Junior Augustus 13 Tomb 4, 59, 74, 92–3, 110, 116–17 Transformation 31, 117, 118, 127, 128, 134 Trinity 11, 25, 28, 112, 123 Valentinian III 10–11, 30 virgin birth 40, 43, 110, 122 Virgin Mary 26, 123 Visigoth 8, 9, 10 Wilde, Oscar 4, 20n4 Zacchaeus, tax collector 85–8

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INDEX OF SCRIPTURAL CITATIONS

1 Corinthians: 1:24 60; 1:25 91; 15:21 115; 15:28 35,124; 15:45 118; 15:46 118; 15:47 113, 118; 15:48 119; 15:49 119; 15:50a 120; 15:50b 120; 6:17 68 1 John: 1:11 22; 4:18 49; 4:24 46; 5:14 80; 8:28 69; 8:39 95 1 Peter: 5:8b 73 1 Timothy: 1:13a 125; 1:15–16 125 2 Corinthians: 11:26 9; 4:7 89; 5:16b 14; 8:9 28 2 Peter: 1:4 29, 30 2 Timothy: 1:18 109

10:34 30; 12:19 57; 13:36–38 55; 13:8 87; 15:13 114; 17:21 69; 19:6 104; 2:6 102; 3:13 112; 3:16a 114; 3:31 102; 3:4a 107; 3:6 46 Joshua 108

Hebrews: 10:5 126

Luke: 1:26–27a 39, 47; 1:28 39, 44, 47, 60; 1:29 40, 48; 1:30 44; 1:30a 44; 1:30b 44; 1:31 45; 1:31a 44; 1:31b 18, 45; 1:34a 45, 46; 1:34b 46; 1:35a 46; 1:35b 45, 46; 1:38 46; 1:41–44 49; 1:42 40; 10:2 69; 11:2 106; 11:3 69; 15:11–12 62; 15:12 65; 15:12–16 63; 15:13 67; 15:16a 68; 15:16b 68; 15:18 68; 15:20 69; 15:21 68; 15:22 69; 15:23 69; 15:25–28 64, 69; 15:29 69; 15:29a 65; 15:29b 65; 15:29c 65; 15:31a 70; 15:31b 70; 16:19–23 91, 92, 99; 16:19–31 88; 16:21 94, 101; 16:22 94, 100; 16:22a 93; 16:23–24 95, 100; 16:24 98, 101; 16:25 95, 96; 16:25c 96; 16:26 97; 16:27 98; 16:28 98; 16:29 98; 16:30–31 98; 18:9–14 96; 19:1–2 85; 19:2 85; 19:3 86; 19:4 86; 19:5a 86; 19:5b 86; 19:6 87; 19:7 87; 19:8a 87; 19:8b 87; 19:8b–c 88; 19:9 88; 19:9c 88; 2:1–2a 41; 2:4–5b 41; 2:6 41; 2:6–7b 41; 22:33–34 55; 22:44 57; 22:54–62 133; 23:21 111; 3:10 104; 3:11 104; 3:12 104; 3:13 104; 3:14 104; 3:14a 105; 3:14b 105; 3:2–14 102; 3:2b 102; 3:3 102; 3:7–9 103, 104; 5:5 79; 5:8 50, 79

Jeremiah: 1:5 49 Job: 10:10–12 49 John: 1:1 46; 1:14 102; 1:16 47; 1:18 49, 114; 1:21 22; 1:40 133; 10:18b,a 110;

Mark: 14:29–31 55; 15:13 111; 4:11a 131; 5:22–34 34; 6:24 74; 9:29 75; 9:48 104 Matthew: 1:2 70; 10:23 59; 10:38 86; 11:11 74; 11:27b 54; 11:29–30 42;

Acts: 1:1b 105; 9:4 137 Colossians: 1:15 25 Deuteronomy: 6:5 51, 115 Ephesians: 6:12 71; 6:15 69 Exodus: 22:25 88; 23:19 56; 33:13 51; 34:28 74; 7:1 50, 61 Ezekiel: 33:11 106 Galatians: 4:19 134; 4:4a 41; 4:6 89 Genesis; 19, 22, 23, 50, 74, 126; 1:26 23, 24, 51, 52, 87, 112; 11:1–9 41; 13:2 92; 17:5 134; 18:12 134; 2:21–22 49; 21:3 134; 3:15 36, 60; 3:20 40; 3:20b 116; 3:5 41; 3:6 74; 3:7 86

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I N D E X O F S C R I P T U R A L C I T AT I O N S

12:15 57; 12:40 112; 13:13 131; 13:43 117; 15:19 69; 16:18 117; 16:19 135; 17:21 75; 18:19 112, 131; 18:20 131; 19:24 107; 2:13 55, 56, 57; 2:6 81; 20:18–19 110, 111, 113; 20:18b 111; 20:19b 111; 22:21 41; 25:14–30 96; 25:26b–27 96; 25:35 93, 104; 25:35a 76; 25:40 137; 26:33–35 55; 26:56 55, 133; 27:22–23 111; 27:25 111; 27:52 110; 28:1 116; 28:1a 116; 28:2a 116; 28:2b–c 117; 28:3 117; 28:4 117; 3:11 102; 3:15 87; 3:4b 107; 4:19 83; 4:1a 71; 4:2–3 70; 4:3 74; 4:3a 72; 4:3b 72; 4:4 72; 4:6a 74; 4:8b 74; 4:9 74; 5:13 127; 5:14 130; 5:17b 115; 5:18 115; 5:44 59; 6:10a 90; 6:10b 90; 6:11 69, 90; 6:12 90, 96; 6:13b 91; 6:24b 85; 6:9 69; 6:9a 89; 6:9b 90; 8:14 80; 8:15 81; 8:16 82; 8:31 68; 8:5–9 77; 8:7 79; 8:8a 79; 8:8b 79; 8:9 80; 9:10–11 84; 9:12 85, 87, 107; 9:13 107; 9:13b 85; 9:14–17 26; 9:9 83, 85; 9:9a 84; 9:9b 85

Philippians: 2:10 14; 2:7 54 Proverbs: 18:17 96 Psalm: 101:5 94; 102:8 79; 107:20a 79; 109:23–24 107; 111:1 131; 116:7–9 80; 127:3 40; 132:11 118; 133:1 132; 133:3 132; 134:1 19, 78; 138:8 87; 139:5 49; 142:2 96; 148:5 79; 23:5 103; 28 31; 32–33:4 43; 36:7 42; 40:7 126; 41:2a 75; 41:2b 76; 41:3 76; 41:3b 76; 41:4a 77; 41:4b 77; 41:5 77; 45:3 132; 46:2a 58; 51:11 87; 69:32 69; 69:5 96; 72:6a 47; 72:6b 47; 74:12 82; 81–82:6 30, 31; 81:11 89; 84:13 118; 85:11 69; 89:1a 58; 93:14 9; 96:5 82 Revelation: 1:17 122 Romans: 1:28 135; 1:29–32 128; 1:32b 136; 10:17 82; 10:21a 125; 10:21b 125; 10:21c 125; 12:1a 124, 125, 126; 12:1b 126; 12:2a 127; 12:2b 128; 12:4–6a 128; 12:7b–21 129; 2:14–15 67; 5 120; 5:12–21 118; 5:8 69, 114; 7:1–6 29; 8:28a 69; 9:5 81

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