On the Resurrection of Christ

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

is the one the sermon now looks to: that since God had transformed the whole man into the divine nature by mingling him with himself, at the time of the dispensation of the passion what had once been mingled did not withdraw from either part (“for the gifts of God are irrevocable”); rather, the Godhead of its own will separated the soul from the body, but showed that it itself remained in both. Through the body, in which it did not admit the decay that comes from death, it destroyed him who had the power of death; and through the soul it opened the way for the robber's entry into paradise. Both are accomplished at the same time, the Godhead achieving good through both: through the incorruption of the body, the destruction of death; through the soul, hastening to its own hearth, the return of humankind to paradise. Since, then, the human compound is twofold, but the nature of the Godhead is simple and of one form, at the time of the separation of the body from the soul the indivisible is not split along with the composite; rather, the opposite happens. For by the unity of the divine nature, which is equally in both, the separated parts grow together again. And so death comes from the division of what had grown together, and resurrection from the union of what had been divided. And if you ask how, while in paradise, he commits himself into the hands of the Father, the lofty Isaiah will explain to you what is sought here. For he said, speaking in the person of God about the Jerusalem above, which we believe to be none other than paradise: “I have painted your walls on my hands.” If, then, Jerusalem, which is paradise, is drawn on the hands of the Father, clearly he who has come to be in paradise surely dwells in the Father's palms, on which the divine city has its outline. So much for this. But it would be worth adding briefly to the sermon what we hear the Jews say when they attack our teaching with vehement accusation. They say that in the law about the Passover Moses enacted for the Jews the fourteenth day of the moon's course, and the eating of unleavened bread for seven days, and the use of bitter herbs as a relish with the unleavened bread. “If, then,” says the Jew, “you are careful to keep the fourteenth day, let the bitter herb and the unleavened bread be kept with it. But if these deserve to be disregarded, why the zeal about that?” For of one and the same lawgiver one command is not judged just and profitable for the soul and another useless and to be thrown away; so that it is necessary either that we carry out all that has been enacted about the Passover, or that we keep none of it. What, then, do we say? Let us remember him who commanded us not to fear the reproach of men and not to be overcome by their contempt. For we know the profit to the soul in the observance of unleavened bread, and the gain

of the bitter herbs, and the usefulness of the fourteenth day. The reasoning is this, and we will examine it briefly. The law, which has the shadow of the good things to come, looks first of all to one aim: that through its various commands the human being may be cleansed of the evil mixed into him. This is achieved in circumcision, in the Sabbath, in the observance about foods, in the various sacrifices of animals, in each one of the observances of the law. It would take long to set out precisely what the law shows us in figures about each of them for the cleansing of life. Just as, then, through circumcision performed spiritually, nature puts off what is subject to passion, stripping away the fleshly life; and through Sabbath-keeping it is taught to be idle in evil; and the sacrifice of animals slaughters the passions; and the distinction of unclean foods laid down by law counsels you to estrange yourself from a filthy and unclean life; so too this feast shows you that other feast, for which the soul is prepared through unleavened bread, keeping itself pure for seven days from eating anything leavened. Their figure means this: the number of seven days shows you this passing time, which goes round in cycles of weeks. In it one must take care that no remnant of yesterday's evil be kept into the present day, so that stale evil may not give some sourness and acidity to today's dough. “Do not let the sun go down on your anger,” says the Apostle, who bids us keep the feast “not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” What we have learned about one kind of evil, we are taught by analogy about the other kinds of evil. The bitter herb drives out what is slack and dissolute in life and brings in instead a life that is self-controlled, hardened, and harsh to the senses, since “all discipline seems for the present to be not a matter of joy but of grief.” So whoever, through the whole week of this life, keeps each present day unleavened and unmixed with old evil, making self-control the relish of his life, separates himself from every admixture of darkness. For this is what the fourteenth day of the moon's course indicates. Since the days of the moon's course are twenty-nine and a half in all, in which the moon, from the new moon, is completed into a full circle by waxing, and returns again by waning to the total eclipse of its light, half of that number is clearly fourteen and a little more. So when the moon happens to be in this shape, since, advancing on its own course along with the interval of the night, it adds what is lacking to its circle, so that, filled with light, it mingles its own brightness with the rays of the day, so that neither at evening

nor at dawn does any intrusion of darkness break the continuity of the light in the succession of the heavenly bodies, the radiance remaining undivided. For before the sun's ray has quite set, the moon appears directly opposite the sun, diametrically, and lights up what lies below with its own light. And again, before its disk has gone entirely below the horizon, the light of day is mingled with what remains of the moonlight. And so on that day of the full moon the darkness is done away with both at dawn and at evening, being made bright by the succession of the luminaries. What happens to the visible light on the fourteenth day, then, that through the whole night and day it admits no mixture of darkness, the spiritual law wishes to become a symbol for those who keep the feast spiritually, so that through the whole week of life they may make the whole time of their life one Passover, full of light and without darkness. For this is the meaning of the commands about Passover for Christians. For this reason we look to the fourteenth day, taking up through this visible and material light the image of the immaterial and intelligible light, so that while we seem to look for the full moon, which gives its own light continuously all night long, in truth the observance is a law for us that all our time, measured by night and day, should be continually bright for us and unmixed with the works of darkness. So much on these matters. But as for all the thoughts that the cross contains, through which the mystery of the passion is completed, who could easily make them clear in words? Were there not countless ways leading to death, through which the dispensation of death for our sake could have been fulfilled? But out of them all this one was fixed by him who, by his own authority, fixed his passion for himself. For he says: “The Son of Man must.” He did not say, “The Son of Man will suffer this and that,” as one might say simply in foretelling what will happen; but by his word he lays down as doctrine what was bound to happen of necessity for some secret reason, when he says: “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected and be crucified and on the third day rise.” Consider for me the sense of “must,” through which it is found that the passion so laid down had to take place in no other way than through the cross. What, then, is the reason for this? Only the great Paul, who was taught by the unspeakable words he heard when he was initiated in the inner sanctuary of paradise, could make clear the mystery about this, as he hinted at the hidden thing in part in his words to the Ephesians, saying: “that you may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length, the depth and height, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to all the fullness of God.” For not idly did that divine eye of the Apostle

contemplate the shape of the cross; through this too he showed clearly that whoever has cast the scales of ignorance from his eyes sees the truth itself purely. For he knows that this shape, divided into four arms from the meeting point in the middle, signifies the power and providence, reaching through all things, of him who appeared on it; and for this reason he names each arm with its own word, calling “depth” what runs down from the middle, and “height” what lies above, and “breadth” and “length” what stretches out sideways on either side of the meeting point, so as to call the part on one side of the middle “breadth” and the part on the other “length.” By these words he seems to me to signify clearly that there is nothing among things that exist which is not held fast by the divine nature: what is above the heavens, what is under the earth, and what stretches out sideways on every side to the limits of things. For by the height he signifies what lies above; by the depth, what is under the earth; and by the length and breadth, the limits in between, which are held together by the power that holds all things fast. Let the proof of what is said come from what happens in your own soul when you think about God. Look up to heaven, consider in thought the depths below, stretch your mind to the sides and the extremities of the frame of the universe, and reckon what power it is that holds these together, being a kind of bond of the universe. And you will see how of itself the thought of the divine power stamps on the mind the shape of the cross, reaching from the heights down to the depths and stretching crosswise to the limits of the extremities. This shape the great David too sang in his own words: “Where shall I go from your Spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? If I go up into heaven” (this is the height); “if I go down into Hades” (this is the depth); “if I take up my wings at dawn,” that is, at the rising of the sun (this is the breadth); “if I should dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea” (for so he names the west) (this is the length). You see how he paints the shape of the cross in his words? “You are,” he says, “the one who reaches through all things, the bond of all that comes to be, holding all the limits within yourself. You are above, you are present below; your hand is at this limit, and at the other your right hand guides.” For this reason the great Apostle too, where all things of faith and knowledge are to be fulfilled, says that he who is above every name is worshiped in the name of Jesus Christ by those in heaven and on earth and under the earth; again, by these words too, he divides the worship of the cross according to the shape of the cross. For the order above the world offers worship to the Master in the upper part of the cross; the order within the world, in the middle parts; and the order under the earth keeps to the depth. This, in my view, is also the iota

seen together with its stroke, which is more permanent than the heavens, firmer than the earth, and more lasting than the whole frame of things. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” and “the form of the whole world passes away”; but the iota and the stroke of the law do not admit of passing. The vertical line, reaching from above down to the depth, is called iota; the line drawn crosswise along the side is named the stroke (keraia), as one can learn even from sailors. For the beam that lies crosswise on the mast, from which they spread the sail, they call the keraia (yard), naming it from its shape. Therefore the divine voice of the Gospel seems to me to look to this: that this is that in which all things hold together, more everlasting than the things held fast in it, which shows its own power, the power that preserves all things, as through a riddle and a mirror, by the shape of the cross. For this reason he says that the Son of Man must not simply die, but be crucified, so that for those who see more keenly the cross might become a theologian, proclaiming by its shape the all-powerful authority of him who was displayed on it and who is all in all. Let us not pass over in silence, brothers, that noble councillor either, Joseph of Arimathea, who, receiving that undefiled and holy body as a gift, wraps it in a clean linen cloth and lays it in a clean tomb. Let the deed of that noble councillor be a law for us, that we too, when we receive that gift of the body, should likewise take counsel not to receive it in a soiled linen cloth of conscience, nor to lay it in a tomb of the heart that stinks of dead men's bones and all uncleanness, but, as the Apostle says, that each should examine himself, so that the grace may not become judgment for the one who receives the grace unworthily. But even as I speak I feel myself flashed upon by the shining robe of the angel, and that sweet earthquake shakes my heart with joy, the earthquake that rolls away the heavy stone of the human tomb, through which the door of the resurrection is opened to all. Let us too run to see the wondrous spectacle, for the Sabbath is already past; let us not arrive after the women. In our hands too there will be spices: faith and conscience. For this is the fragrance of Christ. Let us no longer seek the living among the dead. For the Lord pushes away one who seeks him in that way, saying: “Do not touch me; but when I go up to the Father, then you may touch me.” Let us hear what good news the woman too proclaims, who went ahead of the man through faith, and did well to do so, so that by taking the lead toward the good she might make amends for being the cause of evil. What, then, is the woman's gospel? Truly “not from men nor through men, but through Jesus Christ.” “Hear,” she says, “what the Lord has commanded us to tell you”—you, whom he also calls his brothers—“I am going to my

Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.” What fine and good tidings! He who for our sake became like us, so that by becoming of one race with us he might make us his brothers, brings his own humanity to the true Father, so as to draw to himself through it all that is of one race with it, so that those who served gods that by nature are not gods might no longer be under reproach. Through being brought back to the living and true God, those who followed the Son through adoption are not to be cast out and disowned from the Father's inheritance. He who through the flesh made himself the firstborn among many brothers drew to himself the whole creation which he shared through the flesh mingled with him. But since the unleavened bread before the Passover has the bitter herb as its relish, let us see with what seasoning the bread after the resurrection is sweetened. Do you see, as Peter is fishing, bread and a honeycomb in the Lord's hands? Understand what the bitterness of life prepares for you. So let us too rise from the fishing of words and now run to the bread, which the honeycomb of good hope makes sweet, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen.

On the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that the evangelists, without contradicting one another in anything, recounted in different ways what happened at the resurrection of Emmanuel.

All, beloved, one may say, welcome the reading of the holy Gospels about the resurrection of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, which we have fittingly brought in on the night of the Lord's day. Some, however, while they admit that they are helped, say that, since they seem to hear it rather often, they are troubled, because the evangelists do not say the same things about the same event, but contradictory things, and rather lead the hearer toward unbelief. For whom should one believe? Matthew, who writes that the resurrection took place “late on the Sabbath”; or John, who records that this same thing happened “early, while it was still dark”; or Luke and Mark, of whom the one called the same time “deep dawn” and the other “the rising of the sun”? For the solution of the problem before us, then, and of the other questions that spring up in examining the texts, we must be roused by the risen God, weak though we are, and set out a clear interpretation. For he who cast the seed of the reading and spread it abroad in everyone's ears is bound also to give an account of the questions that have grown from it. This I will try to do, bringing the solution from the very words of those who raised the difficulty. For the sacred writers of the Gospels did not say that the Lord was raised late on the Sabbath, or when most of the night had passed, or again at dawn, or after the sun's ray had shot forth; for then there would be a contradiction, if the writers had recorded that the one event took place not at one time

but at different times. Rather, they wrote that the women came to the tomb at different times and in different ways, and not at the same time. For how could women who came at different times all alike have heard from the angels about the Savior, “He has been raised, he is not here,” without the “when” being added? All agree and are in harmony that the resurrection took place in that divine night; but no one marked the hour, which is unknown to all except the risen God, and the Father, who alone knows the Son as he himself is known by the Father, and the Spirit, who searches all things, even the depths of God. For Matthew said that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came “late on the Sabbath” to see the tomb; that there was a great earthquake; and that an angel came down from heaven, his appearance like lightning and his robe like snow, so that by his fearfulness he might strike the guards with terror (they could not bear the sight and almost perished, becoming like dead men from fear), and by his brightness call the women and put courage into those who by nature are easily scared and timid, and announce the resurrection joyfully by his very appearance. For he had been sent for these purposes. For when he rolled away the stone, he found the Lord already raised, having left the tomb, in a manner worthy of God, closed, secured with seals, and guarded by the soldiers' watch, just as he also came into the room among the disciples when the doors were shut. That is why the angel said, “He is not here, but has been raised,” showing that the Savior's resurrection had been worked as a wonder before his own arrival; for the Savior, as God, accomplished it by his own power and carried out the dispensation without needing the help of angels. If this were not so, he would have said, “Behold, he is being raised,” indicating what was happening at that moment; but since it had happened before, he used the past tense and said, “He is not here, but has been raised.” From this it is also clearly shown that when the apostles, preaching the Gospel, said that Christ was raised by the Father, they did so because of the weakness of their hearers, making the message easier to accept in this way. But the angel, breaking into the voice that announced the resurrection, cried out, displaying unveiled the most divine authority of the one who rose: “He is not here, but has been raised.” And the saying that he was raised by the Father makes allowance, as I said, for the weakness of the hearers, but has the same meaning and not another. For in what does the Father work? Clearly in his own power. And who is the power of the Father? None other than Christ; for “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” So the Savior raised himself, even if he is said to have been raised by the Father. And “late on the Sabbath” does not indicate the evening at sunset; for he did not say in the singular

“late on the Sabbath” (sabbatou), but in the plural, “late on the Sabbaths” (sabbatōn). It is the Hebrews' custom to call the whole week “Sabbaths.” So the evangelists say “on the first of the Sabbaths,” meaning “on the first day of the week.” So too we use it in ordinary speech, calling the second and third days of the week “second of the Sabbaths” and “third of the Sabbaths.” He did not say, then, “late on the Sabbath” or “on the evening of the Sabbath,” to indicate the evening of that day, but “late on the Sabbaths,” to show the lateness and the long interval. For it is our custom to speak this way too: “You have come late for the occasion, late in the hour, late for the need”; these phrases do not mean the evening and the time after sunset, but indicate that something happened late, after the need or the occasion. And “late on the Sabbaths” indicates the distance and lateness of the week that has been completed. Each week is completed at the sunset after the Sabbath. Indeed Matthew, showing the long interval toward the end of the completed week, and as if interpreting himself, added: “as it was dawning toward the first of the Sabbaths.” The night, he means, had passed so far that it was the time of cockcrow, which heralds the light of the coming day. This is why we too break our fasts at this hour, and not on the evening after the Sabbath, and begin our rejoicing, the custom that prevails everywhere supporting the point. At this time, then, Mary Magdalene and the Mary of the same name came to the tomb, and saw the angel who had come down from heaven in the way described, who had rolled away the stone and was sitting on it; called forward by him, they saw the place where the Lord had lain; and, ordered to run and tell the disciples, they left the tomb quickly and ran. And as they were running Jesus met them and greeted them: “Rejoice.” For it was necessary that the race of women should be the first to have the resurrection announced to it by the angel, and to see the Lord, and to hear from him the first word, “Rejoice.” For a woman was the first to listen to the serpent's deceit, and to look lawlessly at the fruit of the forbidden tree, and she was condemned to grief. That is why the Savior allowed them to worship him and hold his feet, as those who had been the first to fall away and be estranged from him; and he ordered them to announce the joy to the disciples, wishing a woman to become a messenger of joy to men, as a woman had become the minister of grief to Adam, healing opposites by opposites. “As they were going,” he says, “to tell the disciples, behold, some of the guard came

into the city and told the chief priests all that had happened. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, saying: Say that his disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep; and if this comes to the governor's hearing, we will persuade him and keep you out of trouble. So they took the money and did as they were taught; and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.” The other Mary, then (it follows that we should believe her to be the Theotokos, since she was not absent from the passion but stood by the cross, as John recorded; and it was fitting that she should announce the good news of joy, being the root of joy, and having rightly heard, “Rejoice, you who are favored, the Lord is with you”), fulfilled the Lord's command and certainly told the disciples. For it was not right that what had been so wisely arranged and commanded should not be fulfilled, even if those who heard did not believe; for this often follows when the wonders reported are extraordinary. For they would not have stayed idle if they had believed. But the Magdalene, going with the Theotokos and hastening likewise to report, suffered something human. Just as Peter, arrested by Herod and freed by the angel from chains that fell off of themselves, and having got outside the prison and walked a long way, so as even to pass through the city gate, did not think that what was happening was real, but supposed he was seeing a vision, so she too reckoned the very greatness of the wonder as something almost out of place; and at the same time, since the guards had arrived first and had begun with the chief priests to weave their slander against the resurrection, she surely perceived something of the kind being whispered, admitted thoughts of doubt, and, neglecting the report and the Savior's command, went to the tomb “early, while it was still dark,” as John says. For just as the Lord allowed Thomas to say out of unbelief, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe,” and through Thomas's inquisitive unbelief and his touching we were confirmed in faith, believing that Emmanuel was raised in the very body in which he suffered, and dismissing the fables of the Docetists, so too he allowed Mary Magdalene, who had slipped back into unbelief and suffered this very readily (for the instability of women's nature is not unknown), through her curious searching to make more credible the wonder of the resurrection, which is beyond faith and all reasoning. And after this, coming with a doubtful mind and seeing only the stone rolled away

from the door of the tomb, but no angel sitting on it as before, she let unbelief prevail, supposing the sight to have been a fantasy and a trance, not true but false. And running to Peter and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, she cried out, saying: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and I do not know where they have laid him.” You see how, having heard something of the kind echoing around from what the Jews made up by night after the guards' report, she was carried away in her reasoning, and thought that the opponents had stolen Jesus' body so as to lay the theft at the apostles' door. But Peter and John readily got up and ran to the tomb. For what was said was not incredible, so that they should disbelieve it as they would the resurrection; rather it was credible and not out of keeping with the villainy of the Jews. They did this without fear, since it was quiet and still dark, and they took courage from God. But when they came they found clear signs of the resurrection. For they see the linen cloths lying in the tomb; and this would never have happened if the body had been stolen. For, first, thieves like to steal clothes; and then, to carry out the theft very quickly, so as not to be caught and suffer the worst. And about Jesus' body John wrote somewhat as follows: “They bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the custom of the Jews in burying.” How, then, would it not have been hard work for thieves to undo the bindings and strip the body of the linen cloths, which were stuck to it and hard to pull away, and would tear before they could be taken off? For they had been bound together with a mixture of aloes and myrrh, which Nicodemus brought. Moreover the napkin that had been on his head, lying not with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself, showed no disturbance such as there would be if thieves had taken the body. For where would thieves have had the leisure and the freedom to roll up even the head covering in order and lay it apart? So this too clearly establishes the truth of the resurrection; and at the same time it hinted at a mystery worthy of God: that the head, holding the rank of the Godhead (according to the saying, “the head of Christ is God”), and the words about it remain even after the incarnation as if wrapped up and undissolved, even if the lower things, those of the dispensation in the flesh and of his life on earth among men (of which the linen cloths were a figure), have been unwrapped and handled as far as is possible for us. Seeing this, Peter and those with him believed, not simply, but beholding with a higher and apostolic mind. For the tomb was full of light, so that, although it was still night, they saw what was inside in two ways, both with the senses and spiritually. For if there is light for the righteous continually, as it is written, much more

for the God of the righteous. “But they did not believe,” he says, “for as yet they did not know the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” And yet they knew, since the Savior had often told them beforehand that he would rise; but they were not persuaded as from the Scripture and the oracles it contains (which could not possibly fail to come to pass), but were still wavering in faith. That Jesus rose naked, without the linen cloths, shows that he would no longer be known after the flesh as needing food or drink or the covering of clothes, although in fulfilling the dispensation he had willingly subjected himself to these, as one who shared the same nature with us. Further, it also shows the restoration of Adam to his original state, when he was naked in paradise and was not ashamed. For from then on, as God, though incarnate, he was clothed with the most divine glory, being himself the one who “covers himself with light as with a garment,” as the prophet David says. But Peter and John, convinced by what they had seen, went back home, and said nothing to Mary. For the only wise One arranged that she, since she did not believe, should be brought to faith by sight rather than by hearing. So she stood outside by the tomb weeping, and stooping she saw two angels, white and bright in their robes, sitting one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And when she ought to have turned her mourning into gladness, she did not stop her tears, so that the angels said to her, as if with rebuke, “Woman, why are you weeping?” as if to say: “These tears are a woman's, not those of a sensible mind. For what place is there for lamenting after such a sight?” And she, still held by the same unbelief (for her affliction was prolonged so that by what was set before her little by little she might be completely cleansed for faith), said to them: “They have taken my Lord out of the tomb, and I do not know where they have laid him.” And having said this she turned around and saw Jesus standing, and did not know that it was Jesus, partly because she was darkened by her tears and weighed down as if by a mist, and partly because Jesus arranged that he should not be recognized by her. So he too said: “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She, thinking that he was the gardener, said to him: “Sir, if you have carried him off, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Perhaps it was not unfitting that she took Jesus to be the gardener; for in truth he was himself the true and immortal cultivator of paradise, setting right, in the garden of the tomb as in paradise, the woman who out of unbelief had deceived Adam, the first gardener. So everything is full of mystery, and full of more divine and lofty meanings.

But when Mary had said this, and was distraught about searching for the body, and had turned away still further, so as even to leave, he who pierces even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and who discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart, seeing her sufficiently tormented, cut off her unbelief with a single word and sharpened the woman's sight to recognition, saying only, as he knew how, in a tone of reproof: “Mariam.” At once she turned and called him “Rabbouni,” which means Teacher, and sought to take hold of those divine feet, and heard: “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” “Having already received the gift of this word,” he says, “and having touched me with the other Mary, and worshiped me, and held my feet, you so despised it as even to disbelieve, and you thought nothing great of me, but still looked around the tomb for him who, from above, is with the Father as God. And now do not touch me, if with the same mind you think that ascending to the Father is something I lack. For I have not yet ascended to my Father, as you think. But go to my brothers and say to them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.” “Since,” he says, “I have become according to the flesh the firstborn among many brothers, I will now ascend bodily to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God, not for myself but for you, my brothers. For if he had not been called my God, seeing in me, as in the firstfruits of the race, the blamelessness of human nature, because I do not know sin, he would not have been called your Father, or the God of those who had been estranged from him.” That is why Paul too, writing to the Hebrews, said: “For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, copies of the true ones, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.” So Mary Magdalene comes and tells the disciples that she has seen the Lord, and that he said these things to her. Having arrived and told them, she finds again Mary the mother of James, and Joanna, and other women with them, hurrying to the tomb with prepared spices and ointments, when the darkness had withdrawn and it was “deep dawn” (that is, exactly when it had just first begun), as Luke says. And joining herself to them she went along, seeming to lead them because of the warmth of her longing for Jesus, and being counted first by the evangelists because of the distinction she gained from this. For she wanted them too to be convinced of the resurrection, not from what they heard from her and the other Mary, but from the divine presence itself or that of angels. So she went with them, wisely keeping silent and saying nothing as they went along, but waiting for the proof of events, and trusting that some personal assurance would be given to them too through their own eyes. And indeed the stone, rolled away

away from the tomb, they went inside; and not finding the body of Jesus, and being at a loss, they see two men standing by them in dazzling robes, and heard from them: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has been raised,” and so on. “And returning,” he says, “from the tomb, they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.” But being many, they disbelieved all the more, and mocked and spurned the report. “For their words seemed to them like nonsense, and they did not believe them,” so that Peter, stirred up by their unbelief, and himself somewhat troubled and shaken, ran again to the tomb, stooped, and saw again the linen cloths lying there, which he had already gone in and examined more closely; so, content just to stoop and look, and seeing nothing different, he went away wondering and amazed at what had happened, and glorifying the one who had arranged these things. And again Mary Magdalene, just as she had gone along at deep dawn with the women around Joanna, who were carrying the ointments and spices they had prepared before the Sabbath, in the same way, with the same intention, ran along readily with Salome too, a stranger beside the other women already named, who had bought spices late, though after the Sabbath; and she took with her also Mary the mother of James, so that Mary seemed to have shared in buying the spices. For sharing the journey, they reckoned the whole undertaking as common to them all. “And very early on the first day of the week they come to the tomb.” The word “still” is found in the more accurate copies, to show that this arrival of the women at the tomb also took place, in addition to those that had already happened. And Mark, making “very early” clear, added, “when the sun had risen.” “And they said,” he says, “to one another: Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb? And looking up they see that the stone has been rolled away; for it was very large.” For Salome was rightly at a loss, since she had never come to the tomb at all, and said this to those walking with her; they, keeping silent in the way described above, raised their eyes and gave their answer with a look, for the stone, rolled away, was there before their eyes. Because of their common journey together, it is written that they were at a loss and talked with one another, while we attend to the truth of the history and the nature of the events, and determine whose the perplexity properly was. For it is implausible that women who had already seen the stone rolled away many times should be worried about it. But since among these women in Mark a person who did not know, Salome, is included, the explanation has an unassailable plausibility. For it would not be consistent for the others, either, to say: “Who will roll away

the stone for us?” when the Jews had sealed the entrance of the tomb and set a guard of soldiers beside it, and the third day had come. For the abominable men said to Pilate: “We remember that that deceiver said while he was still alive: After three days I will rise.” If, then, the women knew of the wonder done through the angel, the moving of the stone and the guards' becoming like dead men from fear and their withdrawal, how could they have been at a loss about the stone being rolled away? And if they did not know of the wonder, they should have thought of the soldiers' guard and not imagined the tomb open. But, as I said, Salome did not know this either, and the words were hers alone. For Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, sitting opposite the tomb, as Matthew recorded, and keeping watch there diligently, had seen with their own eyes both the seals of the Jews and the guard of armed men. And when Salome went in with both the Marys, they saw a young man sitting on the right, clothed in a white robe, and they were all alarmed: the one as lacking in faith and disposed in a more human way; the others as frequenting the tomb often and seeming now to be inquiring into the resurrection more than was fitting. For this reason a young man appeared who could astonish them by his stature and put fear into them, mingling brightness with what was fearful by the whiteness of his robe, as at a feast; and so that they might not be frozen with fear, he speaks to them rather forcefully, teaching them by what he said not to be curious after such sights, but rather to stand firm on what they had seen. “Go,” he says, “tell his disciples and Peter” (the disciples, as having often disbelieved; Peter, as having come to the tomb a second time with the same curiosity as you) “that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you”: told you women, when he appeared “late on the Sabbaths, as it was dawning toward the first of the Sabbaths,” as Matthew wrote. For he is never shown to have told the disciples that after his rising he would appear to them in Galilee, unless someone cites what Matthew and Mark wrote, said by the Savior after the mystical supper, when they had gone out to the Mount of Olives after singing a hymn, somewhat as follows: “But after I am raised, I will go before you into Galilee.” Going out of the tomb, the Marys and Salome, seized with trembling and amazement, fled, and said nothing to anyone; “for they were afraid,” partly because of the fearsomeness of the young man, partly because the day had now advanced and the Jews, as was likely, were roaming up and down, thirsting for blood. In the more accurate copies the Gospel according to Mark

has its end at “for they were afraid.” But in some this too is added: “Having risen early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons.” This seems to contain some contradiction with what we said earlier. For since the hour of the night at which the Savior rose is unknown, how is it written here that he rose early? But the text will not appear contradictory if we read it with understanding. One should wisely put a stop after “having risen,” and then go on: “early on the Sabbath he appeared first to Mary Magdalene,” so that “having risen” refers, in agreement with Matthew, to the earlier time, while “early” is assigned to the appearance made to Mary, who saw the Lord first together with the other Mary, and again alone. For the whole span after cockcrow is “early.” Since, then, there were four times and as many arrivals at which the women came to the tomb, the Holy Spirit arranged for each evangelist to write of one time. Matthew recorded the women who came to the tomb late on the Sabbath, and one angel who came down from heaven and rolled away the stone; John wrote that Mary Magdalene came alone, in the darkness before dawn, and saw two angels inside the tomb; Luke, other women at that same dawn; and Mark, another at sunrise, with some of those who had already come mixed in with them. And the one group saw two men standing by them, the other a young man sitting on the right, and all clothed in white robes. So one can, by putting together in the order of the times what each has written, make a single harmony and a single body of the whole history, as though one person had written the whole and not many. For if the four had recorded a single arrival of the women at one time, and had not said that the same angels appeared; or if, all speaking of one and the same appearance or vision, they had said that it took place at different times, each mentioning a different time, the account would be open to the charge of disagreement. But if the times and the persons are different, and the appearances of those who appeared are not the same (God wishing to confirm in many ways the incredible wonder of the resurrection), and one evangelist recorded what another did not say, how is the whole narrative not pure and free of every pretext for attack? And since many Marys are mentioned in the Gospels, we must recognize that there are three in all,

whom John counted together, saying: “Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” For Mary the mother of James and Joses, as she is named by the other evangelists, we have believed to be the Theotokos and no other. For just as, for the sake of the dispensation, and so that the divine birth might be kept in shadow and not made known to the murderous Jews, it is recorded that the Virgin conceived by the Holy Spirit just when she was about to be led to the bridal chamber, so that Joseph was called her husband and the father of Jesus, in the same way, since Joses and James, children of Joseph the carpenter by an earlier marriage and a wife who had died before, were of a child's age, the Theotokos was called and named their mother. This is why the Jews, blaspheming against the Savior, said: “Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James and Joses and Simon and Judas?” And for this reason John, as one who spoke of God with boldness, called her, standing by the cross, the mother of Jesus, from the truth itself; while the rest of the evangelists, occupied for the most part with the dispensation, called her, for the sake of the dispensation, the mother of James and Joses (for these were Joseph's first and best-known children). The account clearly shows this: that with this arrangement, and the supposition that came of it, Mary was present at the saving passion without danger. For if she had been known to many as a virgin, she would have been destroyed by the envious Jews. One can also find her named by the evangelists after only one of Joseph's children: “Mary of James” and “Mary of Joses.” Mark called her the mother of James the Less and of Joses, since there was another James, the son of Alphaeus, called great because he was counted among the twelve apostles; for the lesser was not counted among them. But one might reasonably ask how the Savior, having promised the disciples, both through the angels and with his own voice, that he would be seen when he came to Galilee, appeared and fulfilled the promise in Jerusalem as well: according to Luke, on the very day of the resurrection, to the eleven gathered together; according to John, he makes his appearance both on that day and on the eighth day, standing in their midst and saying, “Peace to you,” and giving himself to Thomas to touch. But this shows the wealth of his loving generosity; it does not bring a charge of falsehood. For he did not say, “They will see me only in Galilee”; nor, having appeared in Jerusalem, did he fail to be seen in Galilee as he had promised (that would have been to belie his own words). But if he both appeared in Jerusalem to those shut up in a room

for fear of the Jews, when they needed his presence, and also fulfilled the promise by appearing in Galilee, every charge can be escaped, both things being done at once in love and in truth. But the words in Matthew about the disciples, “that they should go to Galilee, and there they will see me,” seem to me to carry great significance. For while there would be many appearances to them, the promise looks to one as exceptional beyond the others, in which he was to appear to them on the mountain. For then, when they had come to him and worshiped him, though some doubted, he said with an authority worthy of God: “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.” What he had by nature as God, he is said to receive, by way of the dispensation, as having become man. That is why he also said: “Glorify me, Father, in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world was.” For if he had not had it as his own as God, it would have been impossible for him to receive it as another's, since God the Father says through the prophet: “My glory I will not give to another.” And then he adds the words by which they were to draw the whole world into their net, and in which lies the whole mystery of godliness: “Go,” he says, “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” And he then adds the words that guarantee the end and outcome of these words: “And behold, I am with you all the days, until the end of the age. Amen.” For this reason he said, “Tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me,” pointing, as I said, to this sight as one peculiar and exceptional, which he had also announced to them beforehand more fully in other words not included in the Gospel writings. For if this were not so, Matthew would not have said, “The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them,” since nowhere in the Gospels does the Lord promise to make his appearance on the mountain. For before this sight on the mountain he also appeared to them by the Sea of Tiberias, which is in Galilee, when they were seven in number, Peter and Thomas and Nathanael and the sons of Zebedee and two others of the disciples, as John wrote. But “there they will see me” looked to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them, where, in a manner worthy of God, he commanded: “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” And it does not seem to me beside the point that these words were spoken on the mountain of Galilee and not somewhere else. For “Galilee,” translated into the Greek tongue, means “rolled down”; that is why the wheel is called gelgel. Just as, then, from a high mountain

these words, brought forth from the Savior's mouth, rolled like a wheel over the world and ran through all of it; and all were baptized, nations and cities, “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” But having heard these words, the disciples did not go at once to any nation, but stayed in Jerusalem until Pentecost, waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit, who came upon them in tongues of fire. For so, appearing to them in various ways over forty days and staying with them, as Luke says at the beginning of the book of Acts, he charged and commanded them, saying: “Do not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit.” “Do not depart” is very well put: that is, do not go far away or get to a distance; he did not say not to leave Jerusalem at all. For how could he say this, who had commanded them to go to Galilee? And what is said at the end of the Gospel by Luke, “And it came to pass, while he was blessing them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven,” and likewise what is written in Mark, “So then the Lord, after speaking to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God,” must be understood to have taken place on the fortieth day, as recorded in the Acts. For what they said in shortened form in the Gospels is spread out and made clear in the breadth of the history. These are the things contained in the Gospel readings of the night of the Lord's day, which can trouble one who does not understand, and which we have laid before you as a debt we owed. What you ought to do, having heard them, I blush to say, when I consider the rush to the shows and the frenzy of the many. May the Lord give us power to turn away from evil and do good, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and power with the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the ages.

On holy Easter, and on the resurrection; delivered on the great Lord's day.

Poor people who love feasts welcome public festivals with eager souls and a proud bearing; and even if they cannot afford by themselves the splendor they are eager for, they collect every kind of finery from their relatives and acquaintances, and so make themselves lack nothing for the occasion at hand. This, I think, is what I experience on the present day. For having nothing magnificent in my

own resources to contribute to the praises set before us, I will take refuge in the sacred song we have just sung. Taking my starting points from there, I will pay my debt by weaving my own words onto the wording of Scripture, whatever praises of thanksgiving to the Master the poor servant may have. David, then, was just saying, and we with him: “Praise the Lord, all nations; extol him, all peoples.” He calls every human being descended from Adam to the hymn, leaving no one outside the summons: those of the west, those of the east, those on either side, whoever is neighbor to the north and whoever dwells in the south; he gathers them all together by the psalm. Elsewhere he speaks to some of mankind in part, either calling the holy ones or rousing the children to a hymn; but here he gathers nations and peoples with the psaltery. For when, according to the Apostle, the form of this world has been dissolved, and Christ has appeared to all as King and God, having fully convinced every unbelieving soul and bridled every blasphemous tongue, and has put a stop to the vanity of the Greeks, the error of the Jews, and the untamable wordiness of the heresies, then indeed, then all the nations and the peoples from of old will bow down and offer up worship without resistance, and there will be a wonderful harmony of praise, the holy singing hymns as is their custom, the ungodly supplicating because they must. Then truly the hymn of victory will be sung in harmony by all, both the conquered and the conquerors. Then he too who caused the disturbance, who imagined for himself the dignity of the Master, will be seen by all as a slave fit for the whip, dragged by angels to punishment, and all the servants and accomplices of his wickedness will be subjected to fitting punishments and penalties; and one King and Judge will appear, confessed by all as the common Master; and there will be a settled stillness, as when a magistrate sits on the tribunal, the herald signals silence, and the people, straining eyes and ears, wait to hear the address. For this reason: “Praise the Lord, all nations; extol him, all peoples.” Praise him as mighty; extol him as one who loves humankind: because, when we had fallen and were dead, he made us alive again, and renewed the vessel that had been worn out, and in his love for humankind formed the loathsome remains in the tombs into an incorruptible living being, and brought back the soul that had left the body four thousand years before into its own house, as from a long journey abroad, not at all estranged from its own instrument by time and forgetfulness, but going to it faster than a bird flies down to its own nest. Let us speak of what belongs to the feast, so that we may keep the feast consistently

and in keeping with the events. For what is unfitting and foreign, besides being of no use, is disorderly and absurd, not only in discourses about religion and piety, but also in secular matters and the wisdom of the world. For what orator would be so foolish or so utterly ridiculous that, invited to the brightness of a wedding, he would abandon the fitting and elegant words that share in the delight of the festivity, and sing mournful dirges and lament the bridal chambers with the woes of tragedy? Or, on the contrary, appointed to perform the customary rites for one of the dead, would forget the sorrow and be cheerful before a gathering full of gloom? If in worldly matters order and skill are good, they are surely far more fitting in things great and heavenly. Christ, then, has risen today: God, the impassible, the immortal (wait a little, you pagan, set aside your rash laughter until you have heard everything), not suffering under compulsion, nor forced into his descent from heaven, nor finding the resurrection beyond his hopes as an unexpected benefit, but knowing the end of all things and so making the beginning, having before the eyes of his Godhead the knowledge of what lay ahead. Even before he came down from heaven he saw the turmoil of the nations, the hardness of Israel, Pilate presiding, Caiaphas tearing his robe, the seditious mob inflamed, Judas betraying, Peter fighting in his defense, and himself, shortly afterward, transformed by the resurrection into the glory of incorruption. And with the whole future sketched out in his knowledge, he did not put off his grace toward man nor postpone the dispensation. But just as those who see a sick man being swept along by a torrent, though they know that they too may be entangled in the mud of the stream and have to endure the blows of the stones driven along by the water, nevertheless do not hesitate to go in, out of compassion for the one in danger, so our Savior, who loves humankind, willingly accepted insult and dishonor to save the one perishing through deceit. He came down into life, since he foreknew that his going up would be glorious; he allowed himself to die in his humanity, since he also foreknew the rising. For he did not venture recklessly, like an ordinary man, entrusting the outcome to the uncertainty of the future; rather, as God he arranged what lay before him with a definite and known end. “This, then, is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it,” not with drunkenness and revels, not with dances and drunken violence, but with godlike thoughts. Today one can see the whole world as one household, brought together into the harmony of one

purpose, set free from its usual business and changed by one signal to eagerness for prayer. The highways have no travelers; the sea today is empty of sailors and voyagers; the farmer has thrown down his mattock and plow and dressed himself in festal attire; the shops are idle from trade; troubles have melted away, like winter when spring appears; the din, disturbances, and storms of life have given way to the peace of the feast; the poor man adorns himself like a rich man; the rich man shows himself more splendid than usual; the old man runs like a young man to share in the gladness; the sick man forces himself past his illness; the child keeps the feast with his senses by a change of clothes, since he cannot yet keep it with his mind. The virgin rejoices greatly in her soul because she sees the reminder of her own hope so bright and so honored; the married woman rejoices, keeping the feast with her whole household, for now she, her husband, the children, the servants, and everyone at the hearth are glad. And just as a new, newly born swarm of bees, flying out for the first time from its hiding place or its baskets into the air and the light, settles all together in one mass on a single branch of a tree, so at this feast whole families run together to their hearths. And truly the present day is well compared, as an imitation, to the day that is to come. For both gather human beings together: that one, all of them; this one, those in each place. And to speak more truly, as far as brightness and good cheer go, this day is more delightful than the one we await, since then those whose sins are uncovered must necessarily be seen mourning; but now the rejoicing admits nothing gloomy. For the righteous man is glad, and he whose conscience is not clean looks for amendment through repentance, and all grief is put to sleep on the present day; no one is so sorrowful as not to find relief in the magnificence of the feast. Now the prisoner is freed; the debtor is forgiven; the slave is set free by the good and kindly proclamation of the church: not slapped shamefully on the cheek and released from blows by a blow, nor displayed to the people on a high platform as in a procession, having insult and shame as the beginning of his freedom, but released so decently that, as is well known, even the one who still remains in slavery receives a benefit. For even if his sins are many and grave, beyond excuse and pardon, the master, out of respect for the calm and kindness of the day, receives the one who had been cast off and was seen among the dishonored, as Pharaoh did the cupbearer from prison. For he knows that at the appointed time of the resurrection, in whose likeness we honor the present day, he too needs the forbearance and goodness of his own Master, and lending mercy here, he expects repayment in due season. Have you heard, you masters? Keep the word as good; do not accuse me before your slaves of having praised the day falsely. Take away the

grief of afflicted souls, as the Lord took away the deadness of bodies; change the dishonored into honor, the afflicted into joy, those without freedom of speech into freedom of speech. Bring out of their corner those who have been cast aside, as out of tombs; let the beauty of the feast blossom like a flower for all. For if the birthday of a human king opens the prison, will not the day of victory, the day of Christ's rising, release the afflicted? You poor, welcome your nourisher; you whose bodies are wasted and maimed, welcome the healer of your misfortunes. For it is because of the hope of the resurrection that virtue is pursued and vice hated; if the resurrection is done away with, one saying will be found to prevail among all: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Looking to this day the Apostle despises the life of the moment and longs for the life to come; and belittling what is seen, he says: “If in this life we have hoped, we are of all people most to be pitied.” Because of this day human beings are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Because of this day, the part of the body that carrion birds ate a thousand years ago will be found not missing; and what sea monsters and dogs and the creatures of the sea fed on will rise again with the man when he is raised; and what fire burned up and the worm consumed in the tombs, in short, all bodies that corruption has destroyed since their making, will be given back from the earth entire and whole; and, as Paul teaches, the resurrection will be completed “in the twinkling of an eye.” The twinkling of an eye is the closing of the eyelids, and there could be no speed quicker than this. But you, reckoning in human fashion according to your own power, sketch out in your soul so many intervals of time: first, that the bones that have rotted and turned to earth may be compacted into hardness and smoothness, and, united again from their crumbling into a well-fitted order, come together in their natural joining. Then you think of the flesh molded around them, the stretched bonds of the sinews, and the fine channels of veins and arteries spread out beneath the skin; and of the untold and countless multitude of souls coming from certain unspeakable dwellings, each recognizing its own body as a garment that is its own, quickly dwelling in it again, and distinguishing it without error among so great a multitude of kindred spirits. Consider the souls from Adam on, and the bodies from him on: a multitude of so many houses dissolved, and of householders returning from a long journey abroad, and all accomplished wondrously. For neither is the house that is rebuilt slow, nor does the inhabitant wander and stay out of doors, looking

for where his own particular things are; rather it goes straight to it, like a dove to its own dovecote, even if there are many next to one another in the same place, gleaming with similar shapes. And again, whence comes the recollection and reckoning of the former life, and the thought of each deed, so quickly made complete along with the living being that was dissolved so many ages before? Yet even a man roused from a deeper sleep does not know for a little while who he is or where he is staying, and forgets familiar things, until wakefulness scatters the numbness and rekindles memory and activity. These and similar things, running through the reasonings of the many, fill the mind with surpassing wonder, but bring unbelief in along with the wonder. For since the mind does not find the solution of what perplexes it and is sought, and cannot bring its curiosity to rest by finding an answer and coming to an end, it finally turns to unbelief in the weakness of its own reasonings, casting out and rejecting the truth of things. But rather, since the sermon, advancing on its way, has come to a question that is continually discussed, and one proper and akin to the subject of the present feast, come, let us take the matter back a little to a fitting beginning and try to give full assurance to those who wrongly doubt what is plain. The Creator of all, wishing to make man, brought him into being not as a contemptible creature but as more honorable than all, and showed him to be king of the creation under heaven. Having chosen this, and having completed him as such, wise and godlike, and adorned him with much grace, did he bring him into being with the intention that, once born, he should be destroyed and undergo complete annihilation? That aim would be futile, and it is quite unworthy to attribute such a thought to God. For that would liken him to children, who build eagerly and quickly pull down what they have built, their thinking ending in no useful purpose. But we have been taught the complete opposite: that he made the first-formed man immortal; and when transgression and sin came in, he deprived him of immortality as the penalty for the offense; then the fountain of goodness, overflowing with love for humankind and moved with pity for the work of its own hands, ordered things with wisdom and knowledge, and was pleased to renew us to our ancient state. This is both true and worthy of our conception of God, for it bears witness to his power together with his goodness. To be unfeeling and harsh toward those one rules and shepherds is not the way even of good and excellent men. So the shepherd wants his flock to be healthy and

almost immortal; and the cowherd increases his cattle with all kinds of care; the goatherd prays that his goats may bear twins; and, in short, every herdsman longs for his herd to survive and thrive for him, looking to some useful end. Since this is so, and it has been shown from what we have just said that it is most fitting for the Creator and Craftsman of our race to remold his work that was destroyed, it is plain that those who refuse to believe what follows fight against it for no other reason than that they think it impossible for God to raise what has died and been dissolved. Truly theirs is the mind of the dead and senseless, who reckon impossibility and helplessness in God and transfer the marks of their own weakness to his almighty majesty. But that we may strike at their folly with words of refutation, let what is to come and is disbelieved be proved from what has happened and exists. You have heard that dust was molded and became a man. Teach me, then, I beg you, you who think fit to grasp all things with your own wisdom: how the fine, scattered dust was gathered, how earth became flesh, and the same matter made bones and skin and fat and hair; how, though the flesh is one, the forms, qualities, and textures of the members are different; how the lung is soft to the touch and livid in color, the liver firm and red, the heart compact, the hardest part in the flesh, the spleen loose and dark, the omentum white, a fisherman's net woven by nature. Let us consider these things as well: how the first woman, from a small part of the rib, came to be a whole living being, like the first and complete one; and the part sufficed for everything, and the little made up the whole: the rib became head, hands and feet, the winding and varied structure of the entrails, flesh and hair, eye and nose and mouth, and simply everything (not to draw out the sermon), all wonderful and incredible to us of little power, but the principles of their construction ready at hand to God and fully agreed. How, then, will they seem sensible who grant that one rib became a human being, but do not believe that the same human being is remade from the whole of his own matter? It is not, it is not possible to pry into God's workings with human notions. For if all things were comprehensible to us, the greater would not be greater than we. Why do I speak of God? We cannot even compare with the irrational animals in some powers, but fall short of them. Horses and dogs and many others surpass us in running; camels and mules in strength; asses in finding their way; and the gazelle's sharpness of sight is not found in our eyes.

Therefore it belongs to the well-disposed and sensible to believe what God says, and not to demand the ways and causes of his works, since they surpass us. For one of the curious will be told: “Show me by your reasoning how the things we see came into being. Say by what art he crafted this many-formed work.” If you find these things out, you may reasonably be at a loss and vexed that you do not know the refashioning of the regeneration, while you know the principle of the generation. But if those things are a dream and a fantasy to you, and knowledge of them is impossible from every side, do not be indignant if, not knowing the principle of the construction, you also do not perceive the restoration of what was destroyed. The same craftsman is the maker of the first creation and of the second refashioning. He knows how to fit his own work, which has undergone dissolution, together again into its original state. If wisdom is needed, the fountain of wisdom is with him; if power, he needs no fellow worker or helper. He it is who, in the words of the wisest prophet, measured the water in his hand, the great and boundless heaven with a span, and the earth with a handful. Consider images that give signs of the working of his unspeakable power, and that make our reasonings despair of imagining anything worthy of God's nature. He both is and is called almighty. Perhaps you will not resist this, but will let it stand as agreed. To him who can do all things, nothing is impossible or beyond his means. You have many pledges of faith compelling you to assent to what we say: first, the whole varied and complex creation, which cries out more clearly than any preaching that there is a great and wise craftsman, who devised all that is seen. Besides this, God, being provident and seeing from afar the petty souls of the unbelievers, confirmed the raising of the dead by deed, giving life again to many bodies of the dead. For this reason Lazarus, four days dead, leapt out of the tomb, and the widow's only son was given back to his mother, released from the bier and the funeral procession to the living, and countless others whom it would be tedious to list now. Why speak of our God and Savior, when, to put the doubters to greater shame, he granted even to his servants the apostles the power to raise the dead? The proof, then, is plain. Why then, you quarrelsome people, do you make trouble for us, as though we were expounders of unproven doctrines? As one was raised, so too ten; as ten, so three hundred; as three hundred, so many. For the craftsman of one statue will easily be the maker of ten thousand. Have you not seen how builders model beforehand in a little wax the shapes and plans of great and extraordinary buildings? The principle in the small has the same force in the many great constructions. Great is the heaven, a skilful work of God. And since God [made] man a rational living being

made, so that by understanding his works he might glorify their wise and inventive Maker, you will see the astronomer's globe, small indeed, but turned in the expert's hand as the heaven is by God; the tiniest construction becomes an image of the great creation, and in small things the principle explains what is lofty and beyond our senses. Why have I gone through these things? So that you may know that, if you ask me how the resurrection of the bodies of all the ages will come about, you will quickly hear in reply: How was Lazarus raised on the fourth day? For it is plain that anyone of sound mind will accept the assurance given in one case equally for the many. Supposing God to be the one who acts, say that nothing is impossible, and do not think that the wisdom of the incomprehensible can be grasped by your own thought. For nothing is beyond his reach, while the things of the boundless are unsearchable to you. We shall see this argument well if, besides what has been said, we also examine the manner of our birth: not that first and oldest one, from God, of which we spoke earlier, but the one carried out by nature in succession to this day. For this is baffling and inaccessible to human reasoning. How does the seed, a fluid substance, unformed and shapeless, solidify into a head and harden into shins and ribs, and make a soft and porous brain, and the bone that encloses it so hard and resistant, and the varied structure of the living being, to speak briefly and not drag on by going through each detail minutely? As, then, the seed, shapeless at first, is molded into form and grows into bulk, fashioned by the unspeakable art of God, so it is not unlikely but entirely consistent that the matter in the tombs, which once had form, should be renewed again to its old shape, and the dust become a man again, just as at first it had its origin from there. Let us grant God as much power as the potter has. Let us consider what he does. He takes shapeless clay and works it into a vessel, and setting it out in the sun's rays, dries it and makes it firm. What is molded is a jar, or a dish, or a cask; but if someone falls against it clumsily and overturns it, it is broken in falling and becomes shapeless earth. But the craftsman, if he wishes, quickly repairs what has happened, and shaping the clay again by his art makes the vessel no worse than it was before. This potter is a small creature of God's power; and yet God is disbelieved when he promises

to renew the dead. This is great folly. Let us consider also the example of the grain, by which the all-wise Paul teaches the foolish, saying: “Fool, what you sow is not the body that is to be; you sow a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other seed; but God gives it a body as he has chosen.” Let us attend closely to the growth of the wheat, and perhaps we shall be taught the principle of the resurrection. The grain is cast into the earth. Rotting in the moisture, and, as one might say, dying, it ends in a kind of milky substance, which, thickening a little, becomes a sharp white point; and growing until it peeps out of the earth, it changes from white to a color gradually turning green. Then it becomes grass and a head of hair for the clods; spreading over them and scattering moderately, it nourishes beneath it a root with many branches, preparing a foundation in advance for the weight to come. And just as the masts of ships are stretched on every side with many ropes, so that they stay firm, held by balanced pulls, so the ropelike offshoots of the root become holds and props for the ears. When the wheat rises into a stalk and presses upward, God supports it with joints and knots, as one secures a house with tie-beams, because of the expected weight of the head. Then, when the strength is ready, he splits the sheath and brings forth the ear. And there again are greater wonders. For the grain grows around it in rows, and each kernel has its own storehouse; and at the very end the beards stand out in front, sharp and fine, weapons, I suppose, against the seed-picking birds, so that, pricked by their points, they may not harm the fruit. Do you see what wonder-working a single rotted grain has, and with how many it rises after falling alone? But a man receives nothing more; he takes back what he had; and for this reason our renewal appears easier than the growing of the wheat. From here pass on to consider the trees, how winter becomes for them each year a kind of death. For the fruit drops off, the leaf falls, and the wood remains dry, stripped of all grace. But when spring comes on, a most delightful blossom springs up on them, and after the blossom comes the covering of leaves; and then, as a beautiful sight, the tree draws the eyes of men and becomes a workshop of songbirds sitting among the leaves, and a wonderful grace shines around it, so that many have even left a house adorned with gold and with Thessalian and Laconian marble, and have chosen instead the pleasant life under the trees. That is why the patriarch Abraham pitched his tent under an oak, not because he altogether lacked a house, but because he delighted in the pleasure of the branches.

The life of reptiles too leads me to assent to the argument before us. For in winter their life-giving power is deadened, and for the space of six months they lie in their holes, entirely motionless. But when the appointed time comes and thunder has echoed through the world, they take the crash as a kind of signal of life, quickly leap up, and after a long time resume their usual activities. What is the reason for this? Let him who scrutinizes and passes judgment on the acts of God tell me and teach me how thunder lets snakes be roused, though they are dead, yet does not allow men to receive life when the trumpet of God sounds from heaven, as the divine word says: “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised”; and elsewhere still more clearly: “And he will send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather his elect.” Let us not, then, disbelieve the changes and renewals. For the life of plants and of various animals, and of men themselves, teaches us that nothing among things subject to corruption and coming to be remains the same, but all is in alteration and change. First, if you like, let us observe the change in our ages. We know what the nursing infant is like. A little time passes, and it gains the power to crawl, and is no different from little puppies, supported on four feet. About the third year it stands upright and utters a lisping, stammering voice; then it articulates speech and becomes a charming boy; from that age it passes to adolescence and young manhood; when down has covered the cheek, soon a shaggy beard, and one form after another; then a man in his prime, rough and enduring. When four decades of years have passed, the beginning of decline whitens the head, strength turns to weakness, and finally old age arrives, the complete disappearance of strength. The body bends and stoops toward the ground like ears of wheat that have dried too much, the smooth becomes wrinkled, and the man who was once a youth and a champion is a baby again, lisping, witless, crawling on hands and feet as long ago. What do you think of all these? Is this not alteration? Not manifold changes? Not various novelties transforming the mortal living being even before death? And our sleep and waking, how should they not teach the wise what we are seeking? For the one is an image of death, the other an imitation of the resurrection. That is why some of the wise men outside called sleep the brother of death, because of the likeness of the effects that come from each. For in both alike there is forgetfulness and ignorance of

the past and the future, and the body lies without sensation, not knowing a friend, not recognizing an enemy, not seeing those who stand around and watch, limp, dead, without any activity, no different from those laid in tombs and coffins. So you may rob the sleeper like a dead man, if you wish, empty his house, put chains on him, and he has no perception of what is being done. But a little later, when there is some respite and relief from that state, the man rises as if just brought to life, coming little by little to awareness of himself and of things, slowly resuming his activities, and as though given a soul again by the rekindling of wakefulness. If, then, while the living being still exists and survives, so many trances, alterations, changes, forgettings and rememberings by night and day are bound up with life, it is quite senseless and contentious not to believe God when he promises the final renewal, he who also crafted the first formation. But what most hems in the objectors and disposes them to unbelief is above all, I think, this: they suppose that a complete annihilation of bodies takes place. But it is not so. For the body is not completely annihilated, but is dissolved into the things from which it was composed; and it exists in water and air and earth and fire. Since the original elements remain, and what came from them returns to them after the dissolution, the parts too are preserved in the wholes. And although it is entirely easy for God to create out of things that do not exist (for so in the beginning all things received their origin), to produce from beginnings that exist is surely far easier and simpler. Let us not, then, take away the fair hope of mankind, the restoration of our weakness and, as one might say, the second birth, free from death; nor let us insult God's good and loving promise by excessive love of pleasure. For those who oppose the subject before us seem to me to be companions of vice and enemies of virtue, lustful and greedy, without restraint of eyes and hearing and smell, welcoming the pleasure that flows in on them through all the senses. Since the doctrine of the resurrection has the judgment before it, and they hear the sacred books say expressly that our life is not free of accountability, but that when we are renewed to the second life we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, to receive under him as judge the due rewards for how we have lived, they, conscious of most shameful deeds deserving many punishments, abolish the resurrection out of hatred of the judgment. Like wicked slaves who have squandered their lord's property, and who picture to themselves the death and ruin of their master, and in vain toward their own desire

But no one of sound mind will think this way. For what is the use of justice and truth and kindness and every good? For what do people toil and practice philosophy, enslaving the pleasure of the belly, loving self-control, taking only a little sleep, and setting themselves against cold and stifling heat, if there is no resurrection? Shall we say to them the words of Paul: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”? If there is no resurrection, but death is the end of life, take away accusations and reproaches; give the murderer unhindered license; let the adulterer plot against marriages openly; let the greedy man live in luxury at the expense of his opponents; let no one rebuke the slanderer; let the perjurer swear continually, for death awaits the man who keeps his oath as well. Let another lie as much as he likes, for there is no fruit of truth. Let no one pity the poor, for mercy goes unrewarded. These notions produce a confusion worse than the flood; they drive out every sober word and sharpen every mad and murderous thought. For if there is no resurrection, there is no judgment either; and if judgment is abolished, the fear of God is cast out with it. And where fear does not bring sobriety, there the devil dances with sin. Very fittingly David wrote that psalm against such people: “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt and have become abominable in their ways.” If there is no resurrection, Lazarus is a fable, and the rich man, and the dreadful chasm, and the unquenchable burning of the fire, and the burning tongue, and the longed-for drop of water, and the poor man's finger. For it is plain that all these depict the resurrection to come. For tongue and finger are understood not as limbs of the bodiless soul, but as parts of the body. And let no one think that these things have already happened; they are a proclamation beforehand of what is to come. It will be then, when the refashioning, giving life to the dead, brings each to account for how he has lived, composite as before, made up of soul and body. And the God-inspired Ezekiel, beholder of great visions, toward what meaning was he led when he saw that great, wide plain full of human bones, over which he was commanded to prophesy? At once flesh grew round them, and the bones, loosened and scattered in disorder, were joined to one another in order and harmony. Is it not plain that by such words he sufficiently shows us the return to life of this flesh? Those who are contentious against this doctrine seem to me not only impious but deranged. For “resurrection” and “return to life” and “refashioning” and all such names carry the hearer's thought to the body that is subject to corruption. For the soul itself, considered by

itself, will never rise, since it does not die, but is incorruptible and indestructible. Being immortal, it has a mortal partner in its deeds; and for this reason, before the just Judge, at the time of the accounting, it will dwell again in its fellow worker, so as to receive with it shared punishments or honors. Or rather, so that the argument may follow still more closely, let us consider it thus. What do we call a man: the two together, or one of them? It is plain that the union of the two characterizes the living being; it is not right to linger on what is undisputed and well known. This being so, let us reckon this further: whether the things men do, such as adultery, murder, theft, and everything that goes with them, or on the contrary, sobriety, self-control, and every activity opposed to vice, we say are the work of both, or whether we restrict the deeds to the soul alone. But here too the truth is plain. For nowhere does the soul, cut off from the body, practice theft or commit burglary; nor again does it alone give bread to the hungry, or drink to the thirsty, or hasten readily to the prison to care for one suffering in prison. Rather, in every action both join with each other and accomplish together what is done. How, then, since this is so, while granting that there will be a judgment of how we have lived, do you tear the one from the other? And when the deeds are shared, do you restrict the court to the soul alone? If someone were an exact judge of human offenses, and considered carefully where the first causes of sin spring from, he would perhaps find the body first out of order in the charges. For often, while the soul is at rest and enjoys an untroubled calm, the eye has looked with passion on what it would have been better not to see, and passing the disease on to the soul has turned its stillness into storm and surge. Likewise the ears, hearing shameful or provoking words, pour into the thoughts, as through pipes, the mud of disturbance or of disorder. Sometimes the nose too, through its sense and the vapors, brings great and incalculable evils on the inner man. Hands also know how to soften by touch the firmness of a resolute soul. And as I go through it thus little by little and consider it, the poor body is found responsible for many sins. But it also bears the labors for virtue and toils in the contests for what is good: cut by iron, burned by fire, torn by scourges, weighed down by painful chains, enduring every outrage so as not to betray the sacred philosophy, like a city with fine towers surrounded by the war of vice. If, then, it toils with the soul in good deeds, and

does not abandon it in sins, on what ground do you bring the bodiless soul alone before the court? That argument is neither just nor that of sensible people. If the soul sinned alone and naked, he will punish it alone; but if it plainly has a fellow worker, the judge, being just, will not let that partner go. I also hear Scripture saying that just punishments will be laid on the condemned: fire, darkness, and the worm. All these are punishments of composite and material bodies. Fire would never touch the soul by itself, nor would darkness grieve it, since it has no eyes or organs of sight. And what would a worm do, being destructive of bodies, not of spirits? For this reason we are driven from every side by consistent reasonings to assent to the raising of the dead, which God will accomplish at the appointed times, confirming his own promises by deeds. Let us believe, then, him who says: “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised”; and again: “The hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.” For he does not only promise, but also clearly teaches by the works he does every day that he is almighty. For neither did he grow weary when he created in the beginning, nor will he be at a loss for wisdom when he transforms. Let us look at present things, and we will not disbelieve what is to come. Every work of God is followed by amazement, and great and inexpressible is the wonder when we see the likenesses of fathers and great-grandfathers passing exactly into the forms of their descendants, and children becoming casts of their forefathers. Then I am utterly astonished at the all-wise art of God our Savior, the best of craftsmen: how imitations of archetypes that neither exist nor appear any longer are fashioned and molded again in an unspeakable mystery, raising up the dead in other persons by the working of the patterns. Often, too, the features of many persons together are portrayed in one body: the father's nose, the grandfather's eye, the uncle's walk, the mother's voice; and one man is seen like a plant that has received grafts from many trees and bears countless kinds of fruit for those who gather it. All these things are wonderful, and how they happen is unknown to us; but they are ready at hand for the Creator and, as we know, accomplished with great ease. It is quite absurd and ignorant to grant that the features of bodies already rotted and destroyed rise again in those born every day now, and that what belonged to some passes into others, yet not to agree that what is proper and peculiar to them is renewed and brought back to life in the very persons who once possessed it, but on the contrary to deny it and fight against it, and to think a fable, not a reasoned word, the promise of him who established this whole visible world and

ordered it as he willed. But we have believed in the resurrection, sending up glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen.

On holy and saving Easter.

The true rest of the Sabbath, which received God's blessing, on which the Lord rested from his own works, keeping Sabbath for the salvation of the world in the stillness of death, has now come to its end, and has shown its own grace to eyes and ears and heart, since the feast has been celebrated for us through all of these: through what we saw, through what we heard, through the gladness we received in our hearts. What the eyes saw was light, carried before us through the night by the torches, as in a cloud of fire. The word that sounded in our ears all night long, in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, flowing like a stream of joy through the hearing into the soul, filled us with good hopes. And the heart, gladdened by what was said and seen, was given the imprint of the inexpressible blessedness, led by the hand through what appears to what is invisible. So the good things of this rest are an image of those good things “which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man,” confirming by themselves the unspeakable hope of what is laid up for us. Since, then, this night full of light, mingling the gleam of the torches with the morning rays of the sun, has made one continuous day, not divided by any intrusion of darkness, let us understand, brothers, the prophecy that says: “This is the day that the Lord has made.” On it the work to be done is nothing heavy or hard to accomplish, but joy and gladness and exultation, for so the word says: “Let us rejoice and be glad in it.” O fine things! O sweet lawgiving! Who delays to obey such commands? Who does not count even a short delay a loss? Gladness is the work, and exultation the command; through them the condemnation for sin is undone and sorrows are turned into joy. This is the saying of Wisdom: “In a day of gladness there is forgetting of evils.” This day has brought forgetfulness of the first sentence passed against us; or rather annihilation, not forgetfulness, for it has wiped out entirely every memory of our condemnation. Then childbirth was in sorrows; now the birth is without pangs. Then we were born flesh of flesh; now what is born is spirit of spirit. Then we were born sons of man; now we have been born children of God. Then we were sent away from

heaven to earth; now he who is from heaven has made us heavenly too. Then death reigned through sin; now righteousness takes power in its place through life. Then one man opened the entrance of death; through one man life is now brought in its place. Then through death we fell from life; now death is destroyed by life. Then we hid under the fig tree from shame; now through glory we draw near to the tree of life. Then through disobedience we were driven out of paradise; now through faith we come to be inside paradise. Again the fruit of life is set before us, to enjoy as we will. Again the spring of paradise, divided fourfold through the rivers of the Gospels, waters the whole face of the church, so as to drench the furrows of our souls, which the sower of the word has cut with the plow of teaching, and to multiply the harvest of virtue. What, then, is fitting for us to do in return? What else but to imitate the prophetic mountains and hills with leaping? “The mountains,” he says, “skipped like rams, and the hills like lambs of the flock.” Come, then, let us rejoice in the Lord, who has destroyed the power of the enemy and has raised for us the great trophy of the cross over the fall of the adversary. Let us shout. A shout is the cry of victory raised by the conquerors over the conquered. Since, then, the enemy's battle line has fallen, and he himself who held power over the wicked army of demons is gone and has vanished and has now passed into nonexistence, let us say: “The Lord is a great God, and a great King over all the earth,” who “has blessed the crown of the year of his goodness” and has gathered us into this spiritual choir, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory to the ages.

On the light-bearing and holy resurrection of our Lord and God.

Blessed be God. Let us praise today the only-begotten God, the begetter of the things of heaven, who has risen up out of the hidden depths of the earth and has overshadowed the whole world with his light-bearing rays. Let us praise today the burial of the Only-begotten, the resurrection of the victor, the joy of the world, the life of the nations of the world. Let us praise today him who clothed himself with sin. Let us praise today God the Word, who refuted the wisdom of the world, ratified the foretelling of the prophets, gathered the band of the apostles, and spread abroad the calling of the church and the grace of the Spirit. For behold, we who were once strangers to the knowledge of God have come to know God; and what is written has been fulfilled: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord,

and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.” What will they remember? The old fall and the new resurrection; the ancient transgression and the later correction; the death of Eve and the giving birth of the Virgin; the restoration of the nations, the forgiveness of sinners, the foretelling of the prophets, the preaching of the apostles, the rebirth of the font, the dwelling in paradise, the return to heaven; the Creator rising, he who put off his unsightliness, he who by his divine might changed the corruptible into incorruption. And what unsightliness did he put off? That of which Isaiah spoke: “And we saw him,” he says, “and he had no form or beauty; but his form was dishonored, falling short of the sons of men.” When was he dishonored? When you kept company with the accursed Jews and were called a Samaritan and one who has a demon; when Judas Iscariot and the offspring of darkness seized for murder him whom nothing can contain. Not without reason did John say to them: “Brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” For truly the wrath of God will remain on them. When was he dishonored? When the shoot of gentleness received a blow, and they questioned under oath him who is the judge of oaths. When was he dishonored? When the Judge was put on trial, and the Judge of the world was judged; the servant questioned, the Master was silent; the light was still, and the darkness exulted; the creature was insolent, and the Creator endured. When was he dishonored? When the bulls gored and the calf stood by; when the lion roared and the bulls exulted, as it is written: “Many calves surrounded me, fat bulls encircled me; they opened their mouth against me like a lion ravening and roaring.” When was he dishonored? When the dogs barked and the Master bore it; when the wolves snatched and the sheep stood by; when a robber was called to life, and the Life of the world was dragged to death; when they shouted that disorderly and destructive cry: “Away, away, crucify him! His blood be on us and on our children!”: the Lord-killers, the prophet-killers, the fighters against God, the God-haters, the outragers of the law, the enemies of grace, the strangers to the faith of their fathers, the advocates of the devil, the brood of vipers, the whisperers, the slanderers, darkened in understanding, the leaven of the Pharisees, the sanhedrin of demons, the accursed, the utterly wicked, the stoners, the haters of the good. Naturally they cried out, “Away, away, crucify him!” For the coming of the Godhead in the flesh weighed on them, and the manner of his reproofs grieved them; for it is the habit of sinners to hate meeting the righteous. When was he dishonored? When they scourged him and tortured his holy body, as he willingly bore suffering to heal the old bruises of our sins; when the wood of

the cross, the trophy against the devil, he carried on his shoulders; when they put a crown of thorns on him who crowns those who trust in him; when they clothed in purple him who grants incorruption to those reborn through water and the Holy Spirit; when they nailed to the wood him who is Lord of life and death. When was he dishonored? When the soldiers in mockery made a show of the Master of the host of heaven. When was he dishonored? When they put a sponge on a reed, filled it with vinegar and gave it to him to drink, and gave gall to him who had rained down manna on them; when the rocks split and the veil of the temple was torn, struck with amazement at the daring of the accursed; when the sun mourned and put on darkness like sackcloth, mourning the falling away of the Jews (for the day lamented the calamities of the Jews); when the Life hung between robbers, one reviling and slandering, the other stealing paradise by repentance. When was he dishonored? When his body was given up for burial. When was he dishonored? When soldiers stood guard, and the earth hid him who founded the earth upon the waters; when the apostles hid, unable to bear the weight of the trials. But see, beloved, the wonders of God, and after the passion the triumphs of joy. The dishonored one was changed into glory, and the joy of the world has been raised incorruptible with the body. Then the earth was in labor, the day was pregnant, and death spat out the life of all. For it was not possible for him who rules all things by his word to be held by death. Let us celebrate, then, the resurrection on the third day, the source of eternal life. For just as Mary the Theotokos, in a virginal and unwedded travail that left her virginity intact, by the will of God and the grace of the Spirit gave birth to the Maker of the ages, God the Word from God, so too the earth, loosing the pangs of death from its own depths, at the command spat out the Master of the Jews; for it could not hold a body that had become a vehicle of immortality. So the prophet David, considering the restoration of comeliness, the loosing of death, the freedom of those who were once slaves, cries out and says: “The Lord has reigned; he has clothed himself with comeliness.” With what comeliness has he clothed himself? With incorruption, with immortality, with the assembly of the apostles, the crown of the church. No longer does Judas betray; no longer does Caiaphas threaten; no longer does Pilate judge, nor do the Israelites hold power. For the corruptible has become incorruptible, and he who was thought among them to be a mere man has been shown to be true God. So we too cry out: “Where, O death, is your sting? Where, O Hades, is your victory?” “The Lord has reigned, he has clothed himself with comeliness; the Lord has clothed himself with power and girded himself.” By “power” he means the dispensation through the flesh. For since nothing is mightier than that, the bodiless one cast down the demons through a body, and through the cross he reduced the opposing powers by siege. For since at first sin shook the

earth, our Lord Jesus Christ, rising as he had foretold, made it firm by the wood of the cross, so that it should no longer go toward the slippery fall of destruction nor be tossed by the storms of error. Let us bring the blessed Paul as witness to this word, who says simply: “For this corruptible must put on incorruption.” That is why the Psalmist too says: “Your throne is prepared from of old; you are from everlasting”; and, “Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, which will not be destroyed”; and again, “Your kingdom is a kingdom of all the ages”; and again, “The Lord has reigned; let the earth exult, let the many islands be glad.” For to him belong glory and power. Amen.