Homilies of Maximus of Turin (Bruni's collection) 43.1–47.1

The contest with the tempter carried out by our Lord Jesus Christ, of which we have read, profits our security and salvation, dearest brothers; for those whom our forefather's transgression once cast down into death in paradise through the serpent's persuasion, the Lord's triumph has now raised to life. So he conquered for us who deigned to hunger for us. The devil sets about tempting Christ, and anxiously probes whether perhaps he may discover him to be the Son of God, in whom he sees no trace of his own corruption. He marvels and is disturbed that a man of this kind has come into this world, who was indeed born of a woman but not begotten by a man. He suspects him to be the Son of God, whom he sees to have completed a continuous fast of forty days; but again he doubts that the divine nature is in him, whom he sees hungry like a weak man among other men. He is astonished and wonders what this newness is: to have no human sin and yet to bear the needs of a sinful man. But Christ our Lord and Redeemer, in order to call back lost and weak man to God, took on himself hunger, weariness, sorrow, and all the weaknesses of the human body. Amid these things, then, the devil, doubtful and uncertain, engages the hungry Lord with this speech: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves.” Foolish and bold, to think that the Son of God, from the need to eat, would do the devil's will! As if it were impossible for him to change stones into bread who once brought forth abundant streams of water from a dry rock for the thirsty peoples in the desert; or as if he could not provide food for himself, hungry after a forty days' fast, at whose command heavenly food flowed from the clouds to feed the countless army of the Hebrews. But the truly almighty only-begotten, who hungered rather for our salvation, confounded his tempter with this answer: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” By this answer, dearest ones, so that the spy who had come uncertain should be made more uncertain, the Lord of inestimable prudence neither denied that he was hungry nor professed that he needed to eat. “Man does not live,” he says, “by bread alone, but by every word of God.” That is: though I hunger, devil, yet I do not need bread; but the word of God works the substance of everlasting salvation for all the faithful. But the enemy, incapable of being taught, said again to the Lord as he stood on the pinnacle of the temple: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written that he has commanded his angels concerning you, that they should bear you up in their hands, lest you ever strike your foot against a stone.” “Throw yourself down,” he says. It is the devil's custom, dearest brothers, to urge a headlong fall; but he could not obey him who did not know how to fall. Nor does the deceiver obtain anything from the Lord, because his words are not of religion but of fraud. The Redeemer of the human race struck him again with the weapon of a heavenly sentence, saying: “It is written: You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” In this answer, so that the author of falsehood might hear nothing of the manifest truth, the Lord, governing words and meanings from on high, neither revealed that he could nor lied that he could not, but said: “It is written: You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” That is: he tempts God who, through the vice of boasting, wishes to make a show of superfluous and useless power. For what benefit has it, what advantage does it bring, if I go down headlong from here to the level ground? Or why do you urge this with the temptations of your flattery, when it is your work to cast down to the lowest one who falls from on high? After this, as the reading just completed testifies: “He took him to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, saying: All these I will give you, if you fall down and worship me”: so that the deceiver, deceiving, offers what he does not have, and, truly blind, promises the kingdoms of the earth to the Lord of the heavens. “All these,” he says, “I will give you, if you fall down and worship me.” He truly falls down and falls who acquires the dignities of the world not by God's gift but at the devil's nod. But the Lord answered him: “Get behind me, Satan; for it is written: You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” In tempting, he came so far as to demand to be worshipped by the Son of God, who is to be worshipped, thinking that Christ, who could not be deceived by the trick of praise, might betray himself to the spy in indignation at the insult offered. But the mightiest champion, who for our life and liberty was waging a new war against his tyrant, is neither broken by soft flattery nor moved by the harshest insults, but so answered all the enemy's temptations that he could not detect the sacrament of the heavenly mystery in the one and same God and man. And so, brothers, following the example of the Lord's contest and victory, and guarding against the devil's snares, let us celebrate the fast of these forty days acceptable to our God. For then we shall be able to overcome the adversary's tricks, if with continued prayers and chaste fasts we restrain the vices of the body and cleanse our heart of all vanity and ambition, as the Saviour himself says: “This kind is not driven out except by fasting and prayer.” He fasts well who sustains his hunger by the fullness of the poor man he has fed; he fasts well who, restraining himself by remembering the divine fast, holds himself back from all the pleasure of enticements; he fasts well who chastises his flesh, sprouting the buds of vices, by meditating on the holy virtues and by the love of sobriety; he fasts well who forgives his brothers' injuries with the gentleness of a peaceable breast; he offers a fast most pleasing to God who guards his mind from evil thoughts, his eyes from lust, his tongue and hands from strife. And after all, brother, you will be blessed, and you will rightly hunger for bread and thirst for drink, if with the disposition of a Christian mind you begin to hunger and thirst for righteousness, as the Lord himself said: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Therefore, dearest ones, if we wish to overcome the devil with Christ, if we desire on passing from the world to reign with God, if we long to celebrate the most sacred day of the Lord's resurrection with glad minds, let us abstain from food and drink as far as our strength allows, but fast from vices with all our strength.

Notice, dearest brothers, how many lessons of spiritual life grow up for us, how magnificent are the examples by which we are called to the purpose of holiness, in that blessed Moses and the Son of God are related to have fasted forty days each. Observe this well: as far as the servant is distant from the master, so far must their fasts be distant. For Moses is the publisher of the old law, Christ the founder of the New Testament. Moses fasts to train one people's discipline in the precepts of the law; Christ fasts to redeem all nations. Moses fasts to receive the commandments of the present life; Christ fasts to establish the sacraments of eternal salvation. Moses fasts to see God; Jesus fasts to show, by triumphing over the devil, that he is one with God. Moses after his fast broke the tablets written by the finger of God when the people transgressed; Christ by his fast preserved the Gospel to remain through the ages. And what does it mean that, though each fasted forty days, it is not said of each that he hungered after the fast? Moses did not hunger, so that the Godhead might be proved to have worked in a frail man; the Son of God hungered, to reveal by the assumption of our flesh that he had taken on frail man. That Moses did not hunger is an example of heavenly power; that Christ hungered is the sacrament of our redemption. The Lord carried out a mystery of this kind in his flesh, so that, as he is believed to be God by divine powers, so he might be recognized as man by human weaknesses. Hence it is that Christ hungers as man and feeds the hungry as God; hence that he is wearied by a journey and gives the lame the power to walk; hence that he lets his eyes run with tears and wonderfully restores sight to the blind; hence that he is sorrowful as death approaches and raises dead Lazarus from the tomb. All these things, brothers, our Creator and Redeemer does as God and man; not because such was the necessity of his birth, but because he willed such a mystery to reign in heaven and on earth. And how wonderful it is in Christ that he answered all the tempter's questions in such a way as neither to betray the truth of his kingdom to the tyrant nor to let the spy recognize the mystery of the flesh he had taken! In short, he turned his speech with such subtlety that that enemy, the craftsman of all guile, deceived by the error of his own rage, while he tempted Christ as a man, did not see God in the man. But we, brothers, for whom the unconquered champion dedicated this venerable Lent, rejecting fleshly desires, let us so chastise our limbs with fasts as to fatten our souls with virtues. Let ruinous self-indulgence fast in us, let all iniquity fast, let hateful contention fast. Let us abstain from feasts; let us abstain more from vices. Let us so restrain ourselves, so be sober from wine, that no drunkenness of pleasures may master us. For what profits it to keep the seasons of fasting by observing forty days and not to keep the law of fasting? What profits it you to be free of banquets and fill the day with lawsuits? What profits it not to eat your own bread and to plunder the living of the wretched? A Christian's fast ought to be the refreshment of the needy; a Christian's fast ought to nourish peace, not quarrels. What sort of thing is it that you do not eat meat, and a curse fouler than any food comes out of your mouth? What sort of thing is it that the belly is sanctified by fasting and the tongue polluted by lies? You will rightly frequent the church, brother, if that greedy usury does not entangle and wrap your steps in deadly snares. You will rightly pray to your Lord if the envy of your heart does not stand against your prayers. You will rightly beat your breast with your hands if you have shaken out of it all the fury of malicious will. You will rightly give a penny to a poor man if you have not taken it from another poor man. This, then, dearest ones, is a religious hunger, this is the food of faithful souls: that chastity sanctify our fast, patience adorn it, kindness cherish it, mercy gladden it, humility commend it. With these virtues let us follow Christ's Lent as far as we can, so that by a kind of twofold fast of body and soul we may always commend ourselves to divine grace.

As we are about to run through the course of the twenty-first psalm, which has been read, we must first attend carefully to what its title contains, so that, knowing its origin, we may more easily reach its meaning, and, the head made plain, the limbs may be more rightly distributed. For it is inscribed thus: “To the end, for the morning help, a psalm of David himself.” Unless I am mistaken, the morning reception always comes before the rising of the sun, and before the clear splendor of its rays lights up the world, the morning sets a limit to the darkness of the nights; and as the blindness of the gloom is gradually dissolved, a kind of face and light is poured on all things; and when the world has lain in confusion as under one substance of darkness, at the coming of morning it is marked out in the varied diversity of forms: that is, when all things were blind, the eyes of all are restored. For night in a way takes away the eyes of the world, and dawn restores them; and so we enjoy the morning reception first, so that afterward we may more gloriously possess the splendor of the sun. But since, as the Apostle says, “the law is spiritual,” and “spiritual things are to be compared with spiritual,” I think the sun of righteousness is meant here, that is, Christ the Lord, who poured the light of his heavenly teaching on us when we were sunk in the darkness of ignorance and the blindness of sins; who put into us the eyes of the heart, which we did not have; and who sent his apostles like rays to free us from the foulest night of wrongdoing, and, little by little, as the darkness of sins was dissolved in us, to accustom us to the morning reception, so that, made perfect, we might more easily bear the heat of the sun: that is, they would first instruct us with simpler precepts, so as to make us more capable of the heavenly secrets. In the morning of this sun of righteousness, then, the whole gloom of sins is destroyed, as the prophet himself says in the person of the Lord: “In the mornings I destroyed all the sinners of the earth.” That is: when the sun of righteousness rises in us, who are the dwelling of the Lord, every wicked thought is overthrown.

This whole psalm is composed in the person of the Lord the Saviour, since many things about him are set down in the New Testament. So it says: “God, my God, look upon me,” and the rest. Here he pleads the cause of the man he had taken on, so that he seems in a way to ask, saying: God of all, who are my God, why have you forsaken me? For I am conscious of nothing against myself. For according to the prophet he knew no sin, nor was there deceit in his mouth. He says this to show that he was forsaken for our sake, whose sins he bore, and that seeing it we too might learn to die for him, the holy and just one, since he died for sinners. Indeed, he used this cry in his passion, as we read in the Gospel: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He used this cry, I say, so that the outcome of the event might prove what prophecy had announced. And since what follows is almost plain, let us look at that verse in which he says: “But I am a worm and not a man.” Why the Lord of all creation willed to be compared to a little worm we can first ascribe to humility, which is the greatest virtue of the saints, as holy Moses professes himself an irrational beast before God, and David often calls himself a flea. But I think it should rather be taken thus: since a worm is produced with no admixture of another body from outside but from earth alone and pure, he is compared to the Lord, since the Saviour himself is begotten of Mary alone and pure. I have also read in the books of Moses that worms were produced from the manna: a plainly fitting and just comparison, since the worm is born of manna and the Lord Christ is brought forth from the Virgin. Indeed I would rather call Mary herself manna, because she is fine, bright, sweet, and a virgin; who, as if coming from heaven, poured down on all the peoples of the churches a food sweeter than honey; and whoever neglects to eat and consume it cannot have life in himself, as the Lord himself says: “Unless one eats my flesh and drinks my blood, he will not have life in himself.” Rather, the food itself will be turned into judgment, as the Apostle says: “Whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats judgment on himself.” This was subtly prophesied to the sons of Israel in the Testament. For when they handled the manna against the divine commands it became worms: that is, avengers and judges of their obstinacy. This likeness points to Christ the Lord: whoever neglects to take him as sweet food and pleasant drink will suffer him as judge, as he himself says: “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” And as for his saying, “They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots,” we find this done in the Gospel: the four soldiers who crucified the Saviour divided his garments among themselves into four parts; but his tunic, which was not sewn but woven from the top, they took by lot. Let us see, then, what these garments are, who the soldiers, and what the tunic. I think the garments are the prophecies, or the readings of the heavenly Scriptures, by which the sacrament of Christ the Lord was announced: these prophecies, which sing one thing and announce one thing throughout, the adversaries of the Saviour, that is, the perverse heretics, who daily lay impious hands on him like soldiers … divide among themselves at their own will, and distribute the garments of one body among various members, despoiling the Lord, and clothe their false doctrines with them. But his tunic, which was not sewn, we can take to be his heavenly wisdom, because it was woven from the top. For our wisdom, that is, human wisdom, is sewn together: it is sewn on when we give our children to grammarians for study, … to philosophers; we educate them so that a wisdom that was not in them may be acquired. But the Lord's wisdom was not sewn on, not sought; for he did not learn from teachers, as the Jews themselves say: “How does this man know letters, when he has not learned?” And he himself says: “My teaching is not of this world, but of him who sent me.” This is what it means, “woven from the top”: the tunic … with which, or with all which garments, the Catholic Church is always clothed, as the prophet says: “The queen stood at your right hand in gilded clothing.” …

Perhaps it seems strange to you, brothers, why the Lord is accused before the governor Pilate by the chief priests and is silent, and does not refute their wickedness by his answer, since an accusation brought is usually refuted only by a defense that follows. It may well seem strange, I say, brothers, that the Saviour is charged and is silent; for silence is sometimes taken for consent; for one seems to confirm what is alleged when he will not answer what is asked. Does the Lord, then, confirm the accusation against him by being silent? Plainly he does not confirm it by silence, but despises it by not refuting it; for he does well to be silent who needs no defense. Let him strive to be defended who fears to be overcome; let him hasten to speak who fears to be conquered. Christ conquers even when he is condemned; when he is judged he wins, as the prophet says: “That you may be justified in your words, and conquer when you are judged.” So there was no need for him to speak before the judgment, for whom the judgment itself was full victory. For Christ conquers when he is judged, because in this way he is proved innocent; hence Pilate says: “I am innocent of the blood of this just man.” Better, then, is the cause which is proved without being defended; fuller is the justice which is not built up by words but supported by truth. It must be silent … where equity itself is present; let it be silent in the case, because … bad causes too are commonly won … I do not want justice to be defended as iniquity is usually excused. That Christ conquers is not a matter of speech but of power; for the Saviour, who is wisdom, knows how to conquer by keeping silent, how to prevail by not answering; and he prefers to prove his cause rather than plead it. For what could compel him to speak, when silence was quite enough to conquer? But perhaps fear might have forced him, lest he lose his safety; except that this was the whole cause of his victory; for he lost his own safety to gain the safety of all; he preferred to be overcome in himself so as to be victor in all. But why should I speak of Christ? The woman Susanna was silent before her enemies, and conquered. For she did not defend herself before Daniel the judge with reasoned words, nor protect herself with the speech of an advocate; but in the holy woman, while her tongue was silent, her chastity spoke for her. For Susanna's chastity stood by her at the judgment, which had defended her in the garden too; there it took care of her modesty, here of her safety; there so that her purity should not be stained, here so that her innocence should not be condemned. So Susanna's chastity both convicted the elders, the unchaste men, in the garden, and prevailed over the false accusers at the judgment; and, twice victorious, it made those guilty of false witness whom it had made guilty of adultery. And what judge, after all, does chastity deserve? Daniel, a young boy, not yet of the age of puberty. Purity, then, obtains much from God; it earns so virginal a judge; for chastity is sure of victory when virginity is to judge. The case of purity ought to be heard by none but a pure man; for chastity deserves such an arbiter, before whom modesty is in no danger. So when Daniel learned of Susanna's case, as the ignorant people wished to condemn her on false accusations, he said: “I am clean of the blood of this woman.” By this word he called back the error of the sinning people. Daniel uses this word about Susanna which Pilate used about the Lord; for Pilate says: “I am clean of the blood of this just man.” By the same sentence, then, purity is freed by which justice is acquitted. But Daniel did better than Pilate; for the one does not condemn chaste blood but frees it; the other both confesses just blood and hands it over. For what did it profit to bear witness to innocence and then hand it over to wickedness like a guilty man, except that it is a graver sin to pronounce one and the same man just and to hand him over as a criminal? For he is a witness to his own iniquity who acquits with his mouth and condemns with his heart. Though Pilate washed his hands, he did not wash away his deeds; and though he thought he had wiped the blood of the just man from his limbs, his mind is still held stained with that blood. For he killed Christ who handed him over to be killed; for a steadfast and good judge ought to have yielded neither to envy nor to fear, so as not to sentence innocent blood. Daniel, then, did better than Pilate: the one called back the error of the sinning people; the other confirmed the sacrilege of the raging synagogue.

Some days ago we set out that holy Susanna's trial was very like the Saviour's, and that the chastity of the woman we mentioned suffered under the same charges as Christ's integrity. For purity in Susanna suffered persecution in a like manner. For while she convicts the elders of adultery, she herself is held as an adulteress; while he convicts the Pharisees of sacrilege, he himself is accused as sacrilegious. That sacrilege in the Pharisees can be called a greater adultery; for it is graver to be an adulterer of religion than of the body, and more to injure the integrity of the Godhead than to violate the integrity of a human being. So Susanna is condemned, and the Lord is condemned: she, because she guarded the chastity of her body; he, because he defended the chastity of religion. The case for judgment was alike in both, except that Susanna had a better judge than the Lord. For a governor judges him, a prophet her; a man hears him who was terrified by the riots of the Pharisees; a boy hears her who was filled with the Holy Spirit. The one pronounces steadfastly what he perceives, yet does not defend; for Susanna's judge frees her whom he acquits; the Lord's examiner condemns and hands over him whom he acquits. So the trial of Susanna and of the Lord was alike in almost everything. Indeed, even the accusation in them was not unlike. The elders inform against Susanna; Judas accuses the Lord: her own teachers charge her, his own disciple charges him. False presbyters, I say, accuse Susanna; a false bishop betrays the Saviour. For Judas too was a bishop, as the prophet says of him: “Let his days be few, and let another take his bishopric.” Nor, brother, does the place seem unlike in the two cases. Susanna is surrounded by her accusers in a garden; the Lord is surrounded by his betrayers in the paradise of a little garden: she suffers plotters there; he bears a betrayer here. But let us see the outcome of each trial. Susanna's accusers are struck as false witnesses by the prophet's sentence, and are punished as guilty of the same crime by which they sought to condemn innocent blood; but I do not find that the Lord's betrayer was condemned by a judge; for Pilate does not condemn him, nor do the people; but, what is graver, he condemns himself and is judged while justice is idle. For he whom another judges can be excusable in some way; but he is guilty without excuse who is condemned by the judgment of his own conscience. He whom another judges can sometime hope for pardon from his judge; he who judges himself, from whom will he ask pardon? For Judas, bringing back the price of the Lord's blood, says to the Jews: “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.” It is great testimony, then, to the Lord's innocence, when his accuser both confesses his crime and is guilty in respect of the fee; for while the wretch pours back the price of the sale he thinks he can dissolve the contract of his crime; but not even so is he absolved; for since the author of the sale is guilty, it is plain that these men entered into a wicked contract with a sacrilegious man. So Judas the traitor is condemned by his own sentence. Perhaps you wonder that the people did not judge him, nor the governor sentence him. This is usually the judgment of the sacrilegious man: that he himself punishes his impiety as he remembers it, and avenges his crime as he recognizes it; for he passes beyond everyone's sentences who is condemned by his own conscience, by his own sentence. This, I say, is usually the judgment of the sacrilegious man, that, conscious of the deed, he condemns himself, as the apostle Paul says of the heretic: “Avoid a heretical man after a first and second correction, knowing that such a man is perverted, and sins, being condemned by his own judgment.” For the heretic condemns himself when he casts himself out of the Church and goes out of the assembly of the saints with no one compelling him; for he shows what he deserves from all, who by his own judgment is separated from all. The heretic, I say, condemns himself: for while all criminals are cast out of Christian fellowship by the bishop's sentence, the heretic, anticipating all, is cast out by the sentence of his own will. So the heretic is condemned with the same penalty as Judas: that he is both the culprit of his own crime and the judge of its punishment. With the same penalty, I say, the heretic is condemned as Judas, and not undeservedly, because the Lord whom the one sold the other blasphemes; whom the one handed over to persecutors, the other persecutes daily. For the heretic persecutes the Lord when he takes away his divinity and asserts that he is a creature.