Homilies 8.8–8.11

Then he adds plainly, “I am Jesus”, the name of his condescension, to confirm faith in the incarnation, at which the Jews took offence. “I am the one you struck, whom you scourged, whom you dragged and carried off, first to Caiaphas, then to Pilate; whom you constantly called the carpenter's son, whom you counted among the dead, laughing loudly at those who proclaimed the resurrection. That one now speaks, and I do not appear; I am present, and I am not seen; I enlighten the soul while I bring blindness on the eyes. Believe, then, that I appeared to Stephen too, when he was disbelieved for saying so to you.” “It is hard for you, then, to kick against the goads.” He calls the nails of the cross goads. For as one [who kicks] against sharpened iron does not destroy it (how could he, since it is hard?) but wounds himself, so the one who contends against God brings destruction on himself of his own will. “Come to your senses, then, from now on; and having lost your sight through this wonderful brightness, understand now above all that this is why I put on a body and became man: so that all who would converse with the Godhead naked, without a veil, might not be blinded.” [So he spoke]; and Paul was led away by the hand, a pitiable sight, or rather a charming one and worthy of delight. The wolf was bound, the ravager brought to his senses, the savage tamed; the runner walked gently; the tyrant of the disciples was led away a disciple; the man whose hands were stained with Stephen's blood was led away to drink the blood of another. For three days he remained living in blindness; and very fittingly, for he who had sinned against the Trinity was justly condemned to a punishment equal in number. So, then, the divine man was initiated into godliness. And when he had tasted the truth and learned by experience that Christ lives, and is, and reigns over all, and was neither destroyed by death nor stolen by the disciples, he quickly changed sides from the law to the Gospel, and proclaimed to all as God the Christ whom yesterday and the day before he had reviled with blasphemies; and he was as strong an ally as he had been an enemy, for he was strong in both. Entering the synagogues of Damascus suddenly and unexpectedly, he spoke publicly from the words of the law and the prophets, not to strengthen the law, but to build up Christ from it, comparing the prophets' titles with the events that had happened, and casting out the law through the law. As he says of himself, writing to the Romans: “For through the law I died to the law”; that is, guided by the writings of Moses, I came to know the godliness of the Gospel. Amazement held Damascus, and everyone said to one another in astonishment: “Come and see the Hebrew of Tarsus, the zealous disciple of our ancestral law, a vehement advocate of Jesus, calling him God and proving from our own writings that this is the Saviour according to the promise. There is fear that he will win over the whole city, that he will draw the whole people after him and turn them from the law. For he is practised in Scripture, sharp of mind, swift of speech, resourceful in manner, and possessed of great credibility; knowing our affairs exactly, he does not seem to be led astray by ignorance, but to have found the truth by testing and judgment.” Into this perplexity he threw a great city, a populous people, first of the noble … as the Christians in Jerusalem had been [troubled] before, when Paul stoned Stephen. For as wonderful champions carry victory with them wherever they change sides, so the divine man made great in every way those to whom he lent his weight. So, having proclaimed the Gospel in Phoenicia and laid the first seeds of his apostleship there, where he himself was enlightened with knowledge, he came to Jerusalem, a strange and fine sight to those there. For those who had sent him and given him the [letters], when they first saw him, saw him gladly and demanded the catch, expecting to see a crowd of Christian prisoners, and asking for the fulfilment of his many promises. But when, as he spoke, they found Paul instead of Saul, …

… a servant [of Christ], and a disciple more ardent than the other apostles, at first they thought what he said a game and a joke; but when they tested him and found his mind in agreement with his voice, they planned one thing only, how the young man might be destroyed; as though it were impossible for the religion of the Hebrews to exist and carry on its business while Paul lived and spoke. All the time that followed showed this clearly. For while many, even though they were Christians, were not content to live purely by the Gospel, but wavered both ways, and here and there even made use of circumcision, so as to soothe the anger of the Hebrews by doing things partly pleasing to them, he alone, with undaunted mind, taught nothing watered down, but proclaimed the word in a pure voice from the beginning. He advanced so far in his free spirit that once, when the Galatians, through their own levity and the negligence of their teachers, were running back to the life according to the law, he wrote them that wonderful letter (in which he taught them to be godly and to worship in the newness of the way of life in Christ, no longer attending to the letters on the stone tablets), and in it he took on the very chief of the apostles. He went on attacking him at every point and skirmishing with Peter, as one who was clouding the new way of life by the use of old doctrines that had ceased; and he respected neither the old man's grey hair nor the seniority of his apostleship when he saw the truth in danger. Against the Galatians he rose up sharply; others he often struck as he could, mixing his frankness with seemliness. Everywhere he went on speaking and persuading. And if anywhere, meeting with wicked characters, he suffered something terrible, whether lodging in prison, or receiving lashes, or being stoned, he did not relax his eagerness because of the failure; but after a short pause he approached his enemies again, turning their arguments back on them, finding out the ways they attacked, and adapting himself very resourcefully to the needs that arose, and he went away having persuaded either all or most. Often he was found after grievous blows and thrown out in the suburbs of the city which he was initiating into godliness, and thought to be dead from the greatness of his sufferings; and the next day he took his place in the market and, stretching out his right hand, taught again those who had brought him near to death: so little did he care for his body. Looking to the goal of the upward call, he was strong …, changing country for country and city for city, contending in labours on land, arrayed against the dangers of the sea, defending himself before peoples …; leading Hebrews to the knowledge of Christ through the writings honoured among them; shaming Greeks with words from outside and with the unwritten laws of nature; confirming Christians; building up converts and nourishing them … of plants, with a measured and sparing flow of water. Let us learn what most shows his strength in speech. [Athens] is a city that presides over Achaea, a hearth of eloquence, as its eulogists have called it, an ancient workshop of wise men and of those who live by words. When Paul had run through all Illyricum, and everywhere cast the sparks of faith, which the Spirit took up, fanned into flame, and kept unquenched, he came in the course of his circuit to the wise Athenians too. It was a matter for much anxiety how the tentmaker would address words about God to those who thought themselves fit by their education to rule all men together. But he, uplifted by greatness of nature and the wealth of the gift from above, did not take one of the roofed halls, nor sit in some workshop and hold a dialogue, as the leading philosophers among them used to converse with those who came near; but running up to the Areopagus, where the council was …, and finding a great crowd gathered there, he stood and spoke publicly, surpassing the habitual orators who contended among them every day. Taking his starting point from an inscription carved on an altar, and from it appropriately proclaiming to them the unknown God, and bringing his whole discourse to its conclusion, he was so far from falling short in his speech, as a layman in outside wisdom, that he persuaded Dionysius, the leader of the Areopagites, together with his wife, and converted him and made him a slave of Christ, turning him away from many altars by one altar and a little inscription.

Coming down victorious from the place where the warlike demon of the Greeks was strongest, he passed from there to the neighbouring city of Corinth, the metropolis of Achaea; and speaking the saving teaching in the synagogues, he went away with a convert, not one of the many or of ordinary people, but the ruler of the synagogue himself, with his whole household. Having defeated the law from its summit, and magnified the cross as a lofty trophy, he left that city too bowed under Christ. As time went on, and the word of godliness [grew] … gaining for the King every day cities, villages and fields, and cutting the sinews of the tyrant who had ruled before. He passed from Corinth to the region of the Pisidians, then to Lycaonia and the cities of Phrygia, and from there he visited Asia, then Macedonia, and was the common teacher of the world, benefiting by his tongue those he saw, and turning the absent through his letters. His knee alone never tired, though always on the road; his tongue never grew numb, unceasingly setting out the mysteries of the Gospel to enemies and friends. Such was he in teaching; and in the rest of life's philosophy, what kind of man was he? Always and continually persevering in the word and serving the Gospel, he did not accept even bread from anyone free; the day held his contest against countless enemies, and the night the knife, the hides and the work [of tent-making], so that he might have his provisions from it and appear to all an apostle who was no burden, a herald who cost nothing, sparing his hosts even in bread. Let us hear this word, priests, we who not only share with the altars but grow rich and live in luxury from them, who make the sacred property our own possession, and [treat] those subject to us for Christ's sake vulgarly, like slaves. The priesthood is not lordship, but rather, to one who understands, slavery; not a dignity of magisterial arrogance, but a ministry of reverent stewardship. Did not the divine Paul have the right to eat and drink from the sacred things, and to take at least a small reward for his countless labours, for the care of a body beaten every day? But he did not use the right, so that, taking nothing on earth, he might store up everything in heaven. That is why he was thought worthy of things beyond human nature while still bound to corruptible flesh. And that you may see a pledge of the good things to come and of the honours there, he is taken up as far as the third heaven, sees visions surpassing our lot here, and hears unspeakable words, as he himself says; and he says even this with restraint and under necessity, everywhere fleeing from boasting and parading his own advantages. To humble the pride of those puffed up over small gifts, he is compelled to uncover a little of his own experience, and even this he attributes to another person, leading suspicion far from himself. Elijah the Tishbite, because he was taken up on high in the form of a fiery chariot, is sung of everywhere, and left much wonder to the world; but how far he reached no word has explained. Perhaps he was raised a little from the earth by the power that led him, and was restored to the place allotted for him to dwell in. But Paul's translation was more brilliant and glorious still, since the measure of how far he was taken up is added. For though seven heavens are spoken of, he came almost halfway. Let the Hebrews, then, put down their pride, who pride themselves on Moses because he alone reached the summit of Sinai and entered the darkness and the clouds. My Paul went up to heaven instead of a mountain, and instead of a cloud he drove beyond the air above the clouds. And very fittingly; for the man in Christ had to surpass Moses as far as the Gospel surpasses the law.

As for the theophanies and the words spoken to him by God, and how he was freed when bound and strengthened when disheartened, God giving him oracles waking and sleeping, why need one even speak of them, since he himself did not hide his grace but revealed it clearly to everyone, saying: “Since you seek proof of the Christ who speaks in me”? For the others, whether prophets or apostles, had the powers from above for fixed and limited times; sometimes the Divine was with them, sometimes it was not present. But this divine man, as once and for all allotted as a special temple of God for him to dwell in, so always had Christ as the finder of his counsel, the teacher of his words, and the fellow-worker in his deeds. John the son of Zebedee was thought great because, beyond the other disciples, he had such confidence with the Lord that he rested on his breast; and for this above all he is celebrated by everyone. But how could this man not justly be thought beyond human nature, who every day gave rest, not to Jesus in the body, but to the Word stripped of flesh, having made himself a useful and pure vessel for the Creator? Though I have many and various things to tell, all that this divine man said and did as he taught the whole world, on land and sea, in courts of law, in market-places, among peoples, in assemblies, in the courts of kings, I willingly pass them over because of their number. For I did not undertake a history of his achievements, so that nothing should be left out, but to produce a eulogy, and that as far as my power can reach. Mentioning only one thing, the last, I will end my discourse. When he had gone round the whole world [carrying] the torch of the knowledge of the Gospel, he came to the Romans, as the ruling city, so that by initiating and persuading those who rule all mankind, and gaining them as disciples, he might more easily converse with the rest of mankind. Finding Peter there too, a worker in the same zeal, and yoking a sacred and divine pair with him, he taught those under the law in the synagogues and won the Gentiles in the market-places. He was a many-sided teacher of good things, showing the pure and unadulterated knowledge of God, laying down exact rules of moral virtue, and driving far from people dancing, drunkenness and all licentious luxury, in which the whole crowd and the emperor of that time were especially held fast. For [the teaching] of the best … attacked Nero vehemently, as [though] he were being deprived of his pleasure, or as if someone were being driven out of his very kingdom. For he was, if anyone ever was, a sophist of pleasures, living in luxury and being piped to, a fool and effeminate, an overseer of prostitutes, not a king of men. How could he rule others when he had not learned to rule himself? He made it his one concern how he might cut out of the city the teacher of godliness and self-control. Emulating Herod's mind, he led the apostles off to prison as Herod had led John; and having, in the same way, another Herodias, his own licentious and pleasure-loving mind, which demanded the heads of Peter and Paul, he crowned them both with the crown of martyrdom, nailing the one to the wood and cutting off Paul's head, and leaving to us and to the world the passion of the saints as a festival and the occasion of so great a feast. These things, thrice-blessed ones, the yearly law has brought us: it proclaims you everywhere as the common athletes of the world, and improves people's minds through the honour paid to you. For virtue honoured rouses many to emulation; in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be the glory and the might to …