On the Resurrection of Christ 1.599–1.615

If there is any blessing of the patriarchs that holds its certainty from the divine Spirit, if any good of the spiritual lawgiving is hoped for by promise by those who do right, if any foreshadowing of the truth is believed to be given through the enigmas of the histories, if any prophetic voice announces the good news of things beyond nature, all those belong to the present grace. And just as, in the

spectacle set before our eyes, a single light flashes around, gathering its brightness from countless lamps, so every blessing of Christ, shining by itself like a torch, produces for us this great light, which is blended from the many and varied rays of Scripture. For one may take from each of the inspired proofs what fits the present holy feast. Do you seek the blessing of Abraham? You have what you seek, if you look at what is before you. Do you see the stars of heaven? I mean these stars, which have just now risen from our father and have all at once made the church a heaven, whose soul's flashing grace is signified by the rays of the torches. Anyone who says that these are truly children of Abraham, born to him by promise, likened to the stars of heaven, will not miss the truth. Do you admire the lofty Moses, who took in the whole creation of God by the power of his knowledge? See, here is the blessed Sabbath of the first making of the world. Recognize through that Sabbath this Sabbath, the day of rest, which God blessed above the other days. For on this day the only-begotten God truly rested from all his works, keeping Sabbath in the flesh through the dispensation of death; and returning again to what he was, through the resurrection he raised up with himself all that lay fallen, having become life, and resurrection, and dawn, and day to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death. The history, too, is full of the kindred blessing: the father not sparing that beloved Isaac, the only son becoming an offering and a sacrifice, and a lamb slaughtered in his place. For in the history one may see the whole mystery of godliness. The lamb hangs from the tree, held by its horns, while the only son carries on himself the wood for the whole burnt offering. You see: he who bears all things by the word of his power, the same also bears the load of our wood, and is taken up by the wood, bearing as God and borne as a lamb. So the Holy Spirit divided the great mystery figuratively between both, the beloved son and the sheep shown alongside him, so that in the sheep the mystery of death might be shown, and in the only son the life that is not cut off by death. And if you wish to take Moses himself, tracing the cross by stretching out his hands and by this figure overthrowing Amalek, you may see the type in the truth, and Amalek falling beneath the cross. You have Isaiah too, who contributes not a little to the present grace. For from him you were taught beforehand of the unwedded mother, the fatherless flesh, the painless travail, the undefiled birth, since the prophet spoke thus: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son, and they shall call his name

Emmanuel,” which means, God with us. That the travail was without pain, let reason teach you first. Since every pleasure has pain joined to it, it is entirely necessary, with things that are seen joined together, that if the one is not, neither is the other. Where, then, pleasure did not go before the birth, neither did pain follow. Then the prophet's wording also confirms the argument, for it reads: “Before the pain of her travail came, she escaped and bore a male.” Or, as another of the translators puts it: “Before she was in labor, she gave birth.” From this virgin mother, he says, “a child was born to us, and a son was given to us, whose rule was upon his shoulder, Angel of great counsel,” and so on. This child, this son, “was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb dumb before its shearer”; or rather, as Jeremiah says, this is the innocent lamb that is led to be sacrificed. This is the bread into which the enemies of both the bread and the wood put the wood. But let us rather take from the prophet what is best known and plainest of all, the one through whom the mystery is clearly written beforehand: I mean Jonah, who went down into the sea monster without suffering, and came up out of the monster without suffering, and who, by three days and as many nights in the monster's belly, prefigured the Lord's stay in Hades. These things and the like you must seek out and gather from each Scripture. For you see all of those through what is present; and on the present bright feast “the whole law hangs, and the prophets,” as the Gospel says somewhere; and every inspired word and law is summed up in this grace, according to Paul's saying. For this is both the end of sorrows and the beginning of good things. I mean something like this: “Death reigned from Adam,” taking the beginning of its destroying power, and its evil dominion lasted even until Moses, for the law did nothing to blunt death's wicked tyranny. The kingdom of life came, and the dominion of death was destroyed. And there has come another birth, another life, another manner of living, a change in the very elements of our nature. The birth of this one is “not of blood, nor of the will of a man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.” How so? I will set the grace plainly before you in words. This offspring is conceived through faith; it is brought to the light through the rebirth of baptism; its nurse is the church; its breast, the teachings; its food, the bread from above; its full growth, the lofty way of life; its marriage, living together with wisdom; its children, its hopes; its house, the kingdom; its inheritance and wealth, the delight of paradise; and its end, instead of death, eternal life in the blessedness laid up for the saints. The great Zechariah too sees this beginning of the change toward the good, and is at a loss about what name to give it, what one should properly call the

present grace. For after going through the other wonders at the passion, he says this too about this season: “Not day, and not night.” By this he shows that it cannot be called day, since there is no sun, and it is not night, since there is no darkness either. For “God called the darkness night,” as Moses says. Since, then, by the time it is night, but by the light it is day, for this reason the prophet says: “And not day, and not night.” If, then, according to the prophet's word, this season is neither night nor day, the present grace is surely something other than these, and is so named. Do you want me to tell you what I have pondered? “This is the day that the Lord has made,” a day other than those at the beginning. For on this day God makes a new heaven and a new earth, as the prophet says. What heaven? The firmament of faith in Christ. What earth? I mean the good heart, as the Lord said, the earth that drinks the rain that comes upon it and ripens the plentiful ear. In this creation the sun is the pure life; the stars, the virtues; the air, the transparent way of life; the sea, the depth of the riches of wisdom and knowledge; grass and green shoots, good teaching and the divine doctrines, on which the people of his pasture, that is, the flock of God, feeds; and trees that bear fruit, the doing of the commandments. On this day the true man is created, the one made after the image and likeness of God. Is not this beginning a world for you, “the day that the Lord has made”? Of it the prophet Zechariah says that it is neither a day like the other days nor a night like the other nights. And the sermon has not yet proclaimed what is exceptional in the present grace. This day loosed the pangs of death. This day brought to birth the firstborn of the dead. On this day the iron gates of death were shattered. On this day the bronze bars of Hades were broken. Now the prison of death is opened. Now release is proclaimed to the captives. Now recovery of sight is given to the blind. Now the dawn from on high visits those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death. Do you want to learn something about the three-day interval as well? It is enough to learn this much: that in so short a span of time the all-powerful Wisdom, the Lord, having come to be in the heart of the earth, was enough to make a fool of that great mind which lived in it. For so the prophet names him, calling him the great mind and the Assyrian. Since, then, the heart is a kind of hearth of the mind (for the governing faculty is believed to be in it), for this reason the Lord comes to be in the heart of the earth, which is the dwelling of that mind, so as to make his counsel foolish, as the prophet says, and to catch the wise in his craftiness and turn his clever undertakings against him. For since it was impossible for the ruler of darkness

to approach the unmixed presence of the light unless he saw some portion of flesh in him, for this reason, when he saw the God-bearing flesh, and saw also the wonders of the Godhead worked through it, he hoped that if he mastered the flesh through death, he would master all the power in it as well. And so, gaping at the bait of the flesh, he was pierced by the hook of the Godhead, and so the dragon was drawn by the hook, as Job says, who foretold through him what was to come, saying: “You will draw the dragon with a hook.” Let us hear from the prophet's voice what this heart of the earth plotted against the universe when it opened its mouth against the flesh of the Lord. What does Isaiah say to him in reproof? “You said in your heart: I will go up into heaven, I will set my throne above the clouds, and I will be like the Most High.” This is what the wicked heart plotted against itself. And still before this, let us hear again from Isaiah's voice what the mind great in evil, the wicked Assyrian, recounted to himself, what he said: “By the strength of my hand I will do it, and by the wisdom of my understanding I will remove the boundaries of nations and plunder their strength, and I will shake inhabited cities, and I will seize the whole world like a nest, and take it up like abandoned eggs, and there is no one who will escape me or speak against me.” With this hope he receives into himself the one who, out of love for humankind, came to live among those below. And what happens to him instead of what he hoped for, the prophecy tells clearly, speaking of what befell him: “How has the morning star fallen from heaven? How has he been crushed upon the earth, he under whom rottenness is spread, whose garment is a covering of worms?” and all else it recounts about his destruction, which anyone who wishes may learn accurately from the writings themselves. But I must bring the sermon back to its aim. For this reason the true Wisdom comes to be in this boastful heart of the earth: to wipe out from it the mind great in evil, that the darkness may be lit, and what is mortal be swallowed up by life, and evil pass away into nonexistence, when the last enemy, which is death, has been destroyed. This is what the three-day interval has accomplished for you. Is the grace slow? Has so great a good been achieved only over a long span? Do you want to know the surpassing power of what was achieved in so short a time? Count for me all the generations of humankind in between, from the first entry of evils until the dissolution: how many people in each generation, numbered in how many tens of thousands. It is impossible to go through by number the multitude in whose successions evil spread wider and wider, and the evil wealth of wickedness, divided among each one, grew greater through each; and so, multiplying

itself, evil went on together with the generations that kept succeeding, poured out by its multitude toward the infinite, until, having advanced to the very height of evil, it overpowered the whole of human nature; so the prophet declares universally: “All have turned aside, together they have become worthless”; and there was nothing among things that exist that was not an instrument of evil. So this great heap of evil, gathered from the foundation of the world until the dispensation of the Lord's passion: he who scattered it in three days, has he given you a small display of his surpassing power? Or is it not mightier than all the wonder-workings in the histories? For just as Samson's wonder is the greater, not only because he overpowered the lion, but also because he dispatched it without effort, tearing the beast apart with bare, unarmed hands as if in play, so too the Lord's wiping out so much evil without any toil is a greater proof of his surpassing power. It was not endless waters pouring from the cataracts above and falling on what lay beneath, nor deeps swelling beyond their own bounds and flooding the earth with seas, nor the whole world covered by the deep like a ship with all hands, nor mountains becoming sea floor and mountain peaks under water; nor, as with Sodom, rains of flame purging the corruption with fire; nor anything else of the kind. Rather, a simple and incomprehensible coming, of life alone, and the presence of light, to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, brought about the total eclipse and disappearance of both darkness and death. Shall I add something else to what has been said? Evil sprang up in the serpent; the woman was overcome by the dragon's temptation; after this the man was overcome by the woman. Evil had its origin through three. What does recalling these have to do with my point? It is possible to discern an order of the good through the order in evil. I see these three receptacles of evil: first, that in which it first arose; second, that into which it flowed over; third, that in which it arose after these. Since, then, evil flooded these three, I mean the diabolical nature, the race of women, and the whole body of men, it follows that the disease is wiped out in three days, one day being allotted for the healing of each kind of those sick with evil: on one day the men are cleansed of the disease; on the second the race of women is healed; on the last the last enemy, death, is destroyed, and with him the rulers and authorities and powers of the opposing forces that preside over them are wiped out together. Do not be surprised if the creation of the good is divided by intervals of time. For at the first making of the world, too, the divine power was not too weak to complete all things in an instant; yet it took up intervals of time together with the making of things, so that one part of creation

was completed on the first day, another on the second, and so in order things were brought to completion, God fitting together the whole creation in set days. So too here, according to the ineffable reasoning of his wisdom, evil is driven out of things in three days: from men, from women, and from the race of serpents, in which the nature of evil first had its origin. But concerning the reason for the number of the days, this is what we have conjectured; whether rightly or not, we leave to the judgment of the hearers. For the sermon is not a pronouncement but an exercise and an inquiry. But if you seek to see precisely the span of these days in the passion (for the count falls not a little short if you reckon the time from after the ninth hour of the day of Preparation, from which he committed his spirit into his Father's hands), wait a little, and perhaps the sermon will give you clarity on this. What, then, is the explanation? Look up to the greatness of the divine power, and you will not be ignorant of what is sought here. Remember the Lord's declaration, what he who holds the power over all declares about himself: how by sovereign authority, and not by necessity of nature, he separates the soul from the body, when he says: “No one takes my soul from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again.” Let this stand, and what we seek has been made clear. For he who orders all things by his sovereign authority does not wait for the compulsion of the betrayal, and the robbers' assault of the Jews, and the lawless judgment of Pilate, as though their wickedness were to become the beginning and cause of the common salvation of humankind. Rather, he anticipates their assault by his own dispensation, in the ineffable manner of the sacred rite, invisible to men, and offered himself as an offering and sacrifice for us, at once the priest and “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” When was this? When he showed his own body to be eaten as food, he clearly showed that the sacrifice of the lamb had already been completed. For the body of the victim would not have been fit for eating if it had been alive. So when he gave his disciples his body to eat and his blood to drink, already, by the will and authority of him who ordered the mystery, the body had been sacrificed ineffably and invisibly. And the soul was in those places where the authority of him who ordered it had placed it, with the divine power mingled with it, going about that region in the heart of the earth. So from the time when the sacrifice was brought to God by the great High Priest, who ineffably and invisibly sacrificed his own lamb for the common sin, anyone who counts the time from then will not miss the truth. For it was evening when that sacred and holy body was eaten. Then the night before the Preparation followed that evening. Then the day of the Preparation, by the inserted

night that cut it in two, is counted as one night and two days. For if God called the darkness night, and during the three hours there was darkness over the whole world, this is the night newly made in the middle of the day, marking off by itself two segments of the days, the one from dawn to the sixth hour, the other from the ninth hour to evening. So up to this point there are two nights and two days. Then comes the night before the Sabbath, and after it the day of the Sabbath: you have the three nights. Now seek for me the hour of the resurrection, and you will find the truth of what has been said. When was this, then? “Late on the Sabbath,” Matthew cries out. This, surely, is the hour of the resurrection according to the angel's word. This is the limit of the Lord's stay in the heart of the earth. For when it was already deep evening (and the evening was the beginning of that night which the first day of the week follows), then the earthquake takes place. Then the angel, flashing like lightning in his garments, rolls the stone away from the tomb. And the women, coming a little before dawn, when the light of day was already showing, so that some gleam of the sun was appearing from the east, then learn of the resurrection that had already taken place. They knew the wonder, but were not taught the hour. For the angel told them that he had been raised, but did not add when. But the great Matthew alone of all the evangelists marked the time precisely, saying that the hour of the resurrection was the evening of the Sabbath. If this is so, the interval stands firm for us: the time is measured from the evening after the fifth day to the evening of the Sabbath, with the inserted night, as has been said, cutting the Preparation into two days and one night. For it was fitting, in the case of him who rules the age by his own power, that his works should not be stretched out by necessity along with the fixed measures of time, but that the measures of time should be made new for the need of things; and since the divine power accomplished its working of good things more swiftly, the measures of time were made shorter on the spot, so that the time was counted neither as less than three days and as many nights (since the mystical and secret reasoning requires this number), nor was the divine power hindered in the swiftness of its working by waiting for the usual intervals of days and nights. For he who had authority both to lay down his soul of himself and to take it up again when he wished had authority, as maker of the ages, not to be a slave to time through his works, but to make time according to his works. But the sermon has not yet touched the greatest of its main points. For the more studious will likely ask how, during that time, the Lord gives himself to three places: to the heart of the earth, to

paradise with the robber, and to the Father's hands. For to the Pharisees he says: “As Jonah was in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth,” for the three-day span of time; to the robber: “Today you will be with me in paradise”; and to the Father: “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” For no one would place paradise in the regions under the earth, nor the regions under the earth in paradise, so as to be in both at the same time, or call these the hand of the Father. But for those who reason with piety this is perhaps not even worth inquiring into. For he who is everywhere by his divine power is present to all and absent from none. But I also know another explanation of this, which I learned and will set out briefly for you, if you wish. When the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin, and the power of the Most High overshadowed her, so that the new man was formed in her (called new for this reason, that he was created according to God, not according to human custom, so as to become a receptacle of God not made with hands; for the Most High does not dwell in things made with hands, I mean those built by human beings), then, as Wisdom built her house, and it was shaped from within by the overshadowing of the power as by the impress of a seal, then the divine power is mixed with both of the parts of which human nature consists, I mean soul and body, mingling itself with each in the way that fits it. For since these two had been made dead through disobedience (and the deadness of the soul was its estrangement from true life, that of the body its corruption and dissolution), death had to be driven out of both of them by the admixture of life. So, since the Godhead was mingled with each of the parts of the man in the way that fitted it, the marks of the higher nature were evident through both. The body indicated the Godhead within it by working cures through touch, while the soul displayed the divine power by that mighty will. For as the sense of touch belongs to the body, so movement by choice belongs to the soul. The leper comes, already wasting away and ruined in body. How does the cure come to him from the Lord? The soul wills, and the body touches, and the leprosy departs. Again, those who waited on him in the wilderness in many thousands he does not wish to send away fasting, and he breaks the loaves with his hands. You see how the Godhead that accompanied each is made known through both, through the body that acts and through the impulse of the will that arises in the soul. And why go through all the wonders that were done in the same way, occupying the sermon with what is plain? But I will pass on to that for whose sake I recalled these things. How is the Lord at the same time both in Hades and in paradise? One solution to this question is that nothing is inaccessible to God, in whom all things hold together. Another