Homilies of Maximus of Turin (Bruni's collection) 15.1–21.1

At the Lord's coming, dearest brothers, whose due honor we pay at the present festival, a multitude of heavenly mysteries is revealed by grace. For today, that is, at the end of the ages, he was brought forth whose eternity no times of the ages contain. Today the Lord of heaven and earth put on the form of a slave for the freedom of slaves. Today a virgin, the new glory of the female sex, gave birth; and, what all creation marvels at with us, a man was born who was not begotten through a man. But though it may seem new, it is not incredible that Christ was conceived in Mary's womb without a begetter, who proceeded from God the Father without conception. For as God he is the only-begotten of the Father alone; as man he is the son of his mother alone; and so him who is God from the Father and man from his mother, that is, God and man, we confess as one Lord. All this was done so that God through the flesh of man might undertake the mystery of the saving passion, and man through the power of God might recover the dignity of his eternity. So Christ is born of Mary, so that the female sex might give a man and virginal integrity might show forth God. Christ is born of a woman, so that, as Adam could not guard against the devil deceiving him through Eve, so the devil might not detect that God, coming through Mary, was present. A woman, then, brings forth the salvation of the world, so that she who had been the kindling of iniquity might become the servant of righteousness, and life might have its entrance to us through her through whom death opened its way into this world. And to show that the Creator of the human race cares for both sexes and wills to save both, a man is born and comes forth from a woman, so that we might notice that with God there is no difference between man and woman in receiving salvation. Why should we not believe with full devotion that the saving child could be born of a virgin, when we believe that a complete man was formed from dust? Let us exult, then, brothers, and rejoice as we celebrate the birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ, for in his birth we all feel ourselves born to life. For he who is the author of life became man, not to live for himself, but by his death to redeem the life of the dead. With such chains had the enemy bound the human race, and with such a weight of monstrous sins had he pressed us down, that there was no return for us to salvation unless he were born who by his own power could return to life after death.

Although I do not doubt, dearest brothers, that you, taught by fatherly care through the instruction of the divine word, wholly turn away from and abhor all the follies of the coming Kalends, yet as an argument for more perfect amendment I have not been reluctant to bring to your ears the customary sermon, as the most blessed Paul says: “Brothers, to write the same things to you is not irksome to me, but for you it is necessary.” I think it necessary, beloved, and not superfluous, if, in place of the holy admonition given long ago, the addresses of the fathers who went before us are repeated to you. And indeed, what tedium, what burden is there in often saying and frequently hearing things useful and pleasing to God for the advancement of salvation? And so, dearest ones, walking with your accustomed faith and devotion along the ways of the religious journey and the paths of truth, trample more and more on the byways of error and the devil's fictions. For the faithful soul, which desires the fellowship of angels, must not take pleasure in the games of demons. Nor can there be among God's servants any fellowship of light and darkness, truth and falsehood, shamefulness and decency, as the teacher of the churches instructs us, saying: “What agreement has Christ with Belial? What accord has the temple of God with idols?” Whoever of the believers, then, either is the temple of God or desires to be, let him carefully beware lest, by pursuing dead and empty things, he cease to be the temple of God and become a dwelling of darkness, a tomb of the demon. The most glorious prophet David says: “Blessed is the man whose hope is the name of the Lord, and who has not looked to vanities and false madness.” So he who hopes in God and directs the gaze of his eyes with all his heart toward God's glory must not turn back eyes once consecrated toward the thickest vanities; for, as the Lord says: “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” For anyone ploughing, if he looks back, will make a crooked or broken furrow or will wound the feet of his ploughing oxen. So too he who, furrowing through worldly vices with a straight path and a spiritual ploughshare, advances to the kingdom of God, if he turns his gaze to impious and empty things, will both wound his yoke-mates, that is, body and soul, and fall into a dangerous straying from the best road. “And has not looked,” he says, “to vanities and false madness.” How does blessed David speak of “false” madness, when those who throw the fear of God behind them and look back to the vanities of demons are truly mad? But the faithful man expressed the nature of impious falsehood properly; for all things are mad which, through the devil's deceiving lie, do not have the power of God in them. And the sickness of those is graver and incurable who, deceived by the frenzy of superstitions and the sweetness of games, are mad under the appearance of sanity. Are not all the things done on those days by the ministers of demons false and mad, when a man, the vigor of his strength softened, breaks himself wholly into a woman, and does it with such effort and art as if he were sorry to be what a man is? Is not everything there false and mad, when men formed by God transform themselves into cattle, or wild beasts, or monsters? Does it not exceed all madness when they disfigure the beauty of the human face, shaped specially by the hands of God into all loveliness, with the squalor of filth and an adulterous foulness? How is it not plain to the wise that there is nothing sane there, where they both do and say all impious and indecent things, not hearing blessed David crying out daily in the church and saying: “Sons of men, how long will you be heavy of heart? Why do you love vanity and seek falsehood?” Heavy indeed is the heart of those, and pressed down with all impiety, who, mocking the divine admonitions with sacrilegious jests, both love empty things and pursue false ones; and after all this, to fill up the offense, they call these very days the new year. Though in their own sense they do not inaptly call it a new year, since through these abominable holidays false shamefulness and perversity are renewed in place of decency. They call it a new year, as if either the sky or the earth then showed something new. They call the Kalends of January the new year, though they grow filthy with ever-old error and horror. The most foolish also say they gather auspices, and, judging the state of their life by empty signs, they search out through the uncertain signs of birds and beasts the future of the coming year; though surely knowledge of the future belongs to God alone, and the authority of the law forbids this, saying: “Do not take auspices; do not attend to omens.” But wretched and pitiable men, carried away by the errors of the pagans and blinded by an improvident heart, go out of their houses with impiety and return with sacrilege. Or how can one think he can even be called a Christian who has seen himself a partner with unbelievers in such an observance? I have learned by clear report that you, dearest ones, have long neither observed nor sought out such things. And indeed they are not to be inquired into at all by us who believe in almighty God, who by the power of his own judgment dispenses prosperity or adversity to all mortals according to the quality of their merits or the testing of their faith; especially since the Apostle reproves and rebukes such men, saying: “You observe days and months and seasons and years; I fear that I may have labored among you in vain.” See, dearest ones, in what they lost the apostolic labor spent on them. But you, as you have done until now out of the fear of God, abhor empty things, flee false things, turn away from impious things, so that you may always come to the house of God with a confident heart, and Paul, the teacher of the nations and judge of his own teaching, may find its fruit in your faith.

Let us exult in the Lord, dearest brothers, that new feasts always follow our feasts and joys are heaped on joys. For see, we have scarcely celebrated with joy the most solemn day of our most holy restoration, when at once we rejoice in our Redeemer's glorious manifestation among the nations. On this most festive day we celebrate the feast of that day on which he himself, born an infant in a stable, willed to manifest himself to the world. So that the nations might not be ignorant of the coming in the flesh of him who had come down from heaven to free the whole human race from the slavery of sin, he gave a star in the sky as a sign, which unbelieving Judea too could from then on have known, but which the Gentile world alone, which came to his cradle, recognized. So the Gentile world alone came to Bethlehem then in the three Magi, while Judea remained in the darkness of the setting sun; and in the persons of those three men the Gentile world paid its gifts to so great a King. For they offered, as you have heard, gold, frankincense, and myrrh: in the gold, to show the beginnings of our redemption, which already appeared in him; in the frankincense, to signify the worship of the true religion that was one day to come and the superstition of idols that was to cease; in the myrrh, to foretell his resurrection and ours from the dead that was one day to come. [The edition notes: ten lines are missing here; then follows:] So, brothers, let us who have come from the nations to the adorable light of faith exult and rejoice in this great feast of the manifestation of our Lord. Yet we must exult no less because on this most sacred celebration of this day, as we are taught by the tradition of the fathers, Christ our Lord himself, invited to an earthly wedding, came, not to take pleasure in that banquet nor to get drunk on wine, but to show that he is the author of marriage and, sanctifying it, to make his divine power known when he himself gave the wedding party the wine that had run out for them. He gave wine indeed, and supplied drink: wine and drink that could make those guests drunk, for he himself changed into wine the jars filled with water. Wine indeed which the steward of the feast, when he tasted it, judged better than what had been served already. And no wonder; for the wine they had drunk before had been drawn from vineyards into wine by human hands; but this, from the water with which a hired servant had earlier filled those jars, had been turned by the working of divine power, changing the whole nature of the water, into precious wine that made those wedding guests drunk. Seeing so great a miracle, then, his disciples believed in him, as the divine word has it: no longer that he was the son of a man, but the Son of God, as was proved by so great a miracle. Let us too, brothers, believe this with our whole heart: that he, though a sharer in our nature, is coequal with the Father's divine substance. Why, then, of those at the wedding who saw so great a miracle did his disciples alone believe in him? The others attended to the wine and did not notice his miracles. They knew the wine had run out, but did not know that water had been changed into wine. For it is clear, as we have said elsewhere, that from those vessels the one group drew a harmful drunkenness, the other everlasting righteousness: with the one, what they drank passed away because it was earthly; with the other, what they had taken remained because it was heavenly. [Here it ends.]

The ineffable coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ into this world, brothers, first began to be known to the Gentiles when the Magi came from the East, following the guidance of a new star, to worship him. For when he had come, clothed in human flesh, to free the whole world from the deadly captivity of the devil … [the text is defective here] … And today's feast declares to us the beginnings of this our calling to the heavenly kingdom, on which he willed to manifest himself to the Magi in a star. For in those men who came from Chaldea to worship the newborn King in a stable the whole Gentile world is included, just as in the gifts they then offered the newborn King are contained those precious gifts which the Saviour himself, reigning in heaven with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, has obtained from the Gentiles. The Magi, then, were the firstfruits of the Gentiles in the Christian faith. The faith of the Gentiles in Christ took its beginning from them. *For although Christ our Lord willed his Church, and its most glorious leaders, to be Jews, yet the Church, though born from them, grew to full strength among the Gentiles; so that, while the Jews still persist in their mournful blindness, it has been so manifested among the Gentiles that it seems to have grown up from them alone; and even now the Hebrews are certainly not unlike their forebears.* For when the Magi inquired, and Herod himself sought out whether and where he whom they were then seeking as the newborn Redeemer of the ages was to be born, from the sacred volumes of the Scriptures which they themselves read they not only said that he would be born in Bethlehem [the edition notes: something is missing here which joined and connected the speech]. *The prophecies of their prophets showed this, and they asserted that the time of the same birth had already come; yet they do not seek the newborn King. Pitiable indeed is the blindness of the Jews! They were not ignorant that Christ was to be born in Bethlehem. They hold the oracles by which it is shown that Christ is already born. They hear and see the Chaldeans inquiring about the place of his birth, and yet they do not seek Christ.* And so that prophetic sentence was then truly fulfilled: “Those to whom nothing was announced about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.” Nothing had been announced to the Chaldean, and he saw the star, and believed, and understood that Christ was signified in the star. It had been told to the Hebrew that the Redeemer of the world would come. He held the oracles of the prophets about him. He knew that Christ was born in Bethlehem. And although this had been foretold to him about him, he neither understood nor was willing to see him born, so that he might one day crucify him. Leaving these, then, in their blindness, rejoice and be glad on this holy day, Gentile world, turned to God your Creator; and do not cease to venerate the beginnings of your faith in those three Magi who came from the East to Bethlehem to worship Christ. And with exulting hearts conceive the hope of one day obtaining those eternal seats, provided that to the faith you hold you add the works that Christ commanded. And although even now the Jews think our Redeemer, wailing in his cradle and lying in a manger, worthy of contempt, let us believe that this Christ is to be worshipped by all. [Here it ends.]

The venerable sacrament of our redemption, brothers, by which the immortal God took pity on the human condition, shines with such majesty that no human mind can understand it. For who could explain why the only-begotten Son of God, who has one and the same Godhead and omnipotence with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and for whom to will and to be able are one and the same, nevertheless deigned to so honor our nature that, taking what he did not have and not laying aside what was in him, he joined the divine nature to the human so inseparably that he was at once God and man? But if in investigating these things all human understanding is confounded and the whole philosophy of the pagans vanishes, yet in the mystery of today's feast, by which the incomprehensible God willed to manifest his rising to the nations by the sign of a glowing star [the edition notes: two lines are missing here]. For today Christ our Lord willed to show his glory to all. And although, born according to the flesh among the Hebrews and from the Hebrews, he seems to have loved them before others, yet since at his rising he made a new star glow in the heavens, the Gentile world too has cause to rejoice. For that star seems to me to have been given above all to the Gentiles, so that the nations too might recognize that the Redeemer was born, him whom Balaam, once a priest of the Gentiles, had prophesied would one day come into the world from the seed of Jacob. And indeed the Jews had their sacred volumes, in which were contained both the praises of the patriarchs of that nation and the prophecies of their prophets, testifying that Christ the Lord, the Redeemer of the world, would one day come. They knew from them that he would be born of a virgin, of the line of David according to the flesh; they read in them the place of his birth marked out beforehand, for Bethlehem, that city of David, was declared to be adorned by the birth of so great a divinity; and the wonders that were to precede his birth were announced. Only the pitiable Gentile world had remained until then in the darkness of the setting sun. So he who had come to restore all in mercy, lest it too should always remain in its lamentable blindness, gave it a sign, which the Jew too could see, in the star that announced the rising of so great a King and showed that the author of present redemption had come. The Magi in Chaldea see it flashing with brighter, gladder rays. They recognize that it signifies the birth of a new King. They follow the guidance of that light, and truly find the newborn one whom they come from so far to worship. They offer him their gifts: gold, as we have read, frankincense, and myrrh, precious gifts by which both the divinity of the newborn King and the humanity united to it are declared. Then they returned to their own country by another way. They came as Gentiles to worship; they went away from him as Christians. Before the worship they served idols; once they had seen the Saviour of the world, they detested idols. They returned to their own country. Let us too, then, brothers, imitate the Magi. They see a child in a stable and venerate him as God. We too see him with the eyes of faith reigning in heaven; let us venerate him, then, and cling to him always. For as he freed those three men from the blindness of idols, so he has freed us too, and from eternal death. [Here it ends.]

Gathering, brothers, for the venerable feasts of the Lord and the most sacred mysteries of our Saviour, we ought to be glad over his manifestation just as we rejoiced over his birth. The only-begotten Son of God, coeternal with God the Father, when he had been born in time of an inviolate virgin, willed on this day, as the tradition of the fathers teaches us, to manifest himself to the nations. While he wailed in the cradle, while he was praised by angels and the shepherds visited him, a new star from heaven made him known to all the nations. For to the Jews, in whose land and from the royal seed of David he had been born according to the flesh, that multitude of the angelic host had already made him manifest enough at the outset of his birth, praising God and saying: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace.” But to the Gentiles, to whom it had been promised by Balaam's prophecy that the Redeemer of the world would one day come from the seed of Jacob, since they were ignorant of the wonders then happening in Judea, he gave a new star as a sign by which they might understand that what that soothsayer had prophesied had been fulfilled: that the star had risen from Jacob and a man had come from Israel. And indeed, since he had come from heaven to redeem not the Jewish people only but all the nations, which he had created from the beginning of the world together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, he willed to give a sign in a star which both Judea could see and the whole world could recognize. The Jew saw it but did not know it; the nations marveled at it, but only three men of the Chaldeans understood what it signified. By that visible sign he called all to himself and promised the gifts of his grace to all. It announced that the Author of the world had come to break the yoke of the ancient slavery; it promised, in short, eternal life to all. Yet that star shone only for the eyes of the Magi; those who had the Saviour born among their own chose to ignore him, and the Gentile world ran to venerate him. So the Magi come from Chaldea; they follow the course of the star that goes before; they enter the royal city of the Hebrews, where mad Herod reigned; they ask for the newborn King of the Jews. Herod trembles and dreads the coming of the new king. Why do you fear, impious and unhappy man? He who is to give heavenly kingdoms has not come to seize yours. The Hebrews search the Scriptures and then learn that the Lord was to be born in Bethlehem, and they say that he is already born at that time. Then that prophetic sentence was fulfilled: “Those to whom nothing was announced about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.” Nothing had been announced to the Chaldean about Christ; he had heard nothing; and seeing the star, he understood in the star that Christ was present. The Magi see the Redeemer of the world in a stable; they behold a child at his mother's breast, sucking; they worship him and offer him gifts. Wonderful faith: to worship as God a child lying in the lap of his nursing mother, surrounded by no royal majesty, and to present gifts to him as to a king and as to God! Then, as the reading testifies, they returned to their own country by another way; and those who had come as unbelievers to worship at Christ's cradle, enlightened by the rays of that eternal Sun whom they had worshipped, laid aside their superstition and returned to their own country by another way. So, brothers, since we too have come from the nations to the knowledge of the true light, let us imitate the Magi. Having seen the Lord, they worshipped him as God; let us also do so, and, rejecting the false idols of the nations, let us venerate him alone and serve him. It is no longer a star that has led us to know him, but the preaching of the true faith, which by the grace of God has shone like a star in our hearts. Let us, then, exhort our brothers to lay aside that sacrilegious worship of idols and come to the new light of faith, which has shone for them too. The Magi offered their gifts to the newborn Lord; let us also present ours to him. Let us feed widows, sustain strangers, show mercy to all, so that the most loving Lord himself may deign to free us from the present distress of the advancing foreigners. For he is able to do it; let us entreat him with our whole heart that he may deign to grant it to us in his mercy. [Here it ends.]

The joys of the Lord's birthday, brothers, still leap in our hearts, and our continued gladness sighs for the heavenly festival. For although the day of our prayers has passed, the holiness of those prayers stays with us; and as the Saviour's nativity grows day by day from his birth, so our devotion of faith in him grows too, and it gives evidence both of his age and of our salvation. For the Lord grows in age for himself, and advances in holiness for us. Not that Christ's holiness advances, for it is everlasting and perfect; but it is said to advance when it makes faith increase in us. For Christ after his birth, though small in body, is yet God in majesty. The joys of the Lord's festival still stir our inmost being. They stir it as they urge us to burst out in speech for very joy, so that we too may say what the angels said at Christ's birth: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” See what the angels said. They did not say “peace to men” or “to any men whatsoever,” but “to men of good will,” so that we might understand that the peace of Christ belongs not to persons but to conduct. For it is not birth that earns it but will; not human wickedness but Christian goodness. It is not handed to all but offered to the approved; it is not given to be scattered abroad but set before us to be chosen. Christ's peace, then, belongs to the one who believes Christ to be the author of peace; Christ's peace belongs to the one who has no war of sins; Christ's peace belongs to those whose will is not polluted by the bloody rites of idols. For it is fitting that the Saviour whom an immaculate virginity bore should be possessed by an uncorrupted will, and that as Mary carried him unblemished, so our soul should keep him unpolluted. For Mary bore a kind of figure of our souls. For Christ, just as he sought virginity in his mother, so he requires integrity in our disposition. The soul that is a virgin from sins both conceives and brings forth the Saviour when it preaches him, and keeps him when it follows his commandments. Faith holds what is conceived, confession brings forth the birth, care guards the newborn. Let us rejoice, then, at this festival of him whose birth the brightness of the angels announces, the simplicity of the shepherds seeks out, and the devotion of the Magi venerates. For the grace of the angels honors God in Christ, the innocence of the shepherds the Lamb, the veneration of the Magi the priest. The veneration of the Magi plainly proves Christ a priest; for the whole mystery is confirmed by their gifts. They offered to the Saviour, as far as was in them, what they thought most beautiful: gold, frankincense, and myrrh; gold as for reigning, frankincense as for propitiating, myrrh as for rising again. By the gold his power is shown, by the myrrh incorruptibility is signified, by the frankincense his high priesthood is shown. For it was not done idly that the Magi came to the Lord with their gifts. Finding by the curiosity of their superstition that Christ would reign over all, they brought him the emblems of all the elements: gold, by which earthly things are conquered; frankincense, by which heavenly beings are thought to be appeased; myrrh, with which the dead are embalmed; showing surely that from Christ's birth there is no need of these things, since through Christ there would be victory on earth, propitiation in heaven, and rest in the underworld. So the Magi found by their curiosity that from the birth of Christ they must no longer be curious; and their magic art profited them in this, that they learned it would profit them no further. Then, no longer living in the same worship, they set out on another road both of returning and of living. For before they saw Christ the star led the Magi to his service as superstitious men; after they saw the Lord and believed, faith called them back to their homeland as devout men. So, brothers, let us too who have come from the nations imitate those Magi up to the knowledge of Christ. Let it be enough to have strayed no further. After receiving Christ we must beware lest the credulity of paganism lead us back by the same way by which we came. For there are many Christians who after receiving the faith are entangled in their former vanities, and when they have celebrated with us the joys of the Lord's birthday, they arrange with the pagans the drunken banquets of the Kalends; when they have received with us the blessing of the Godhead, they observe with them every superstition. It is plainly to be lamented that the Magi despised auguries and Christians observe auspices; that those laid aside the skill of their art, and these will not cast off luxury of conduct. [Here it ends.]