Homilies of Maximus of Turin (Bruni's collection) 48.1–53.1

Your charity remembers that last Sunday we preached that Judas Iscariot, condemned by his own sentence, brought back to the Pharisees the fee for the Lord's blood, and, driven by remorse, pouring back the price of the sale, hanged himself with a noose, so that he who had fined himself of money might fine himself of life as well. For understanding how great a crime he had committed, it was not enough for him to be without the fee of sacrilege unless he were also without life; for he judged himself worthy of death because he had betrayed Christ, the life of all. Judas, then, the severest judge of himself, confesses in avenging him whom he had denied in betraying him. So he returns the money to the Pharisees; but the Pharisees do not gladly accept it either; for they say it is forbidden them to keep it in their treasury. See, then, how great is the force of the Lord's money: Judas casts it away from himself; the Pharisees do not lock it in their coffers; for iniquity dreads to possess the price of just blood. Yet the Pharisees take counsel to buy with it a potter's field in which the bodies of strangers might be laid. I think this was done by providence, so that the price of the Saviour should not supply expense to sinners but provide rest for strangers; should not serve the sacrilegious for sport but the dead for burial; so that from then on Christ by the passion of his blood might both redeem the living and receive the dead by his precious passion. With the price of the Lord's blood, then, the potter's field is bought. We read in the Scriptures that the salvation of the whole human race was redeemed by the Saviour's blood, as the apostle Peter says: “For you were not redeemed with corruptible things, gold or silver, but with the precious blood of the undefiled and spotless lamb, Jesus Christ.” If, then, the price of our life is the Lord's blood, see that what was redeemed is not so much the earthly frailty of a field as the everlasting safety of the whole world; for the evangelist says: “For Christ did not come to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” See, I say, whether that money did not buy not so much a small portion of a field as the plentiful possession of the whole world, as the prophet David says: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession.” This field, then, is this whole world, in which we, scattered and sown, sprout the fruit of good works for the Lord. But perhaps you ask me: if the field is the world, who is the potter who can have dominion over the world? Unless I am mistaken, he is the potter who made the vessels of our body from clay, of whom Scripture says: “And God made man from the clay of the earth.” He is the potter who animated the muddy clay of our flesh with the breath of his spirit and baked the fluid and earthy material with fiery heat. He, I say, is the potter who formed us for life by his hands and re-formed us for glory by his Christ, as the Apostle says: “We are transformed into the same image from glory to glory”; so that we who fell from the first making by our own vices may be restored in a second birth by this potter's mercy: that is, we who fell into death through Adam's transgression may rise again through the Saviour's grace. He is plainly the potter of whom the blessed Apostle says: “Does the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why have you made me thus?” And again: “Has not the potter power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?” For from the same clay of our body God reserves some for punishment, others for glory, according to the merits of each. This potter's field, then, was bought for strangers with the blood of Christ; for strangers, I say, who were without home, without country, and were tossed about as exiles over the whole world, rest is provided by Christ's blood, so that those who have no possession in the world may have burial in Christ. And whom do we say these strangers are but the most devoted Christians, who, renouncing the world and possessing nothing in it, rest in the blood of Christ? For the Christian who does not possess the world possesses the whole Saviour. Burial with Christ is promised to strangers so that whoever keeps himself from fleshly vices as a stranger and alien may deserve Christ's rest. For what is the burial of Christ but the rest of the Christian? We, then, are strangers in this world and live in this light like guests, as the Apostle says: “For while we are in this body we are away from the Lord.” We are strangers, I say, and a burial has been bought for us with the price of the Saviour's blood. For we have been buried with him, as the Apostle says, through baptism into death. Christ's baptism, then, is our burial, in which we die to sins, are buried to crimes, and, the conscience of the old man dissolved, are restored to a second birth in a revived infancy. Baptism, I say, is the Saviour's burial for us: because there we first lose what we lived before, and there we receive anew that we may live. Great, then, is the grace of this burial, in which both a useful death is brought upon us and a more useful life is granted; great, I say, is the grace of this burial, which both purifies the sinner and gives life to the dying.

The world's tales relate that Ulysses, tossed about for ten years in wanderings on the sea and unable to reach his homeland, was carried by the course of his ship to a certain place where the cruel variety of the Sirens' sweet song resounded, and so soothed those who came near with its alluring melody that they did not so much enjoy a spectacle of pleasure as incur the shipwreck of their safety. Such was the charm of the song for them that whoever heard the sound of the voice, as if caught by a kind of enticement, no longer made for the port he wished but went on to the destruction he did not wish. So when Ulysses came upon this sweet shipwreck and wished to avoid the danger of that sweetness, he is said to have put wax in his companions' ears and bound himself to the mast of the ship, so that they would be free of the ruinous enticement of hearing and he would take the ship's course out of danger. If, then, the tale tells of that Ulysses that binding to the mast freed him from danger, how much more must we proclaim what truly happened: that today the tree of the cross has snatched the whole human race from the danger of death? For from the time that Christ the Lord was bound on the cross, we pass the enticing dangers of the world as if with stopped ears; for we are neither held by the ruinous hearing of the world nor turn the course of the better life aside onto the rocks of pleasure. For the tree of the cross not only brings back to the homeland the man bound to it, but also guards with the shadow of its power the companions placed around it. That the cross makes us return to our homeland after many wanderings the Lord declares, saying to the thief placed on the cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” That thief, having long wandered and been shipwrecked, could not have returned otherwise to the homeland of paradise, from which the first man had gone out, had he not been bound to the tree. For the cross in the Church is like the mast in a ship, which alone is kept safe amid the alluring and ruinous shipwrecks of the whole world. In this ship, then, whoever either binds himself to the mast of the cross or stops his ears with the divine Scriptures will not fear the sweet storm of self-indulgence. For the soft lust of pleasure is a kind of sweet figure of the Sirens, which with harmful blandishments makes womanish the steadfastness of the captured mind. So Christ the Lord hung on the cross to free the whole human race from the world's shipwreck. But to leave aside the tale of Ulysses, which is fiction, not fact, let us see whether we can find in the divine Scriptures any like example which the Lord, who was afterward to fulfill it himself, promised beforehand through his prophets. We read in the Old Testament that when holy Moses had led the sons of Israel out of captivity in Egypt, and that people was suffering in the desert from a severe attack of serpents, and no defense of arms could withstand it, then holy Moses, filled with the divine Spirit, set up a bronze serpent fixed to a wood in the midst of the crowds of the dying, and commanded the people to place their hope of healing in that sign; and from this came so great a remedy against the bite of the asps that whoever, wounded, either looked at that cross of the serpent or hoped in it, at once received the remedy of health. The Lord too recalls this deed in the Gospel, saying: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Hence, if a serpent fixed to a wood brought health to the sons of Israel, how much more does the Lord crucified on the gibbet give salvation to the peoples? If the figure profited so much, how much do we believe the reality profits? The serpent, then, is crucified first: rightly indeed, so that, since the devil first sinned before God, he should first be struck by the sentence of the cross. He is crucified on wood: reasonably done, so that, since man was deceived in paradise through the tree of desire, he might now be saved through the tree of wood, and the same material that had been the cause of death might now be the remedy of health. Then, after the serpent, man himself is crucified in the Saviour, so that after the author the crime too might be punished; for by the first cross vengeance was taken on the serpent, by the second on the serpent's venom: that is, first the author himself is punished, then his malice is condemned. For the poison which he had poured into man by his persuasion is now cast out, now cured; for when man is given over to suffering, he is not handed over to death, but the crime of death in him is corrected; for this the Lord does through the man he took on, so that while the innocent suffers, the disobedience of that devilish transgression might be corrected in him, and from then on he might become free of guilt and be free of death. Having, then, the Lord Jesus, who freed us by his passion, let us always look to him and hope in his sign for a remedy for our wounds: that is, if perhaps the poison of avarice spreads in us, let us look on him, and he heals; if lust stings us like a scorpion, let us ask him, and he cures; if the bites of earthly thoughts tear us, let us pray to him, and we live. For these are the spiritual serpents of our souls, to trample which the Lord was crucified, of whom he himself says: “You will walk upon serpents and scorpions, and nothing will harm you.”

We said yesterday that the Lord's cross brought salvation to the human race; and it is true. For his passion is our redemption, his death is our life. He bore all these evils so that we might experience all good things; he preferred cruelty to be exercised on himself so as to bestow mercy on us; he willed to be good toward us in such a way that he was first harsh to himself; for, taking away the injuries of the human race through the cross, he used them all up in his passion, so that there would no longer be anything to harm man. Great, then, is the sacrament of the cross; and if we understand, by this sign even the world itself is saved. For when the sea is cut by sailors, first the mast is raised by them and the sail spread, so that, the Lord's cross being formed, the walls of the waters may be broken; and, secure in this sign of the Lord, they seek the harbor of safety and escape the danger of death; for the sail hung on the mast is a kind of figure of the sacrament, as if Christ were lifted up on the cross; and so, confidence coming from the mystery, men disregard the storms of the winds and undertake their vows of travel. And as the Church cannot stand without the cross, so a ship without a mast is weak; for at once the devil disturbs it and the wind dashes it; but where the sign of the cross is raised, at once both the devil's iniquity is driven back and the storm of the winds is lulled. And the good farmer, when he prepares to turn the soil of the earth and seek the food of life, tries to do it only by the sign of the cross; for when he fits the share-beam under the plough, fixes the mould-boards, and inserts the handle, he imitates the figure of the cross; for the very joining is a kind of likeness of the Lord's passion. Heaven itself also is arranged in the figure of this sign. For since it is divided into four parts, that is, east and west, south and north, it is held together as by the four arms of a cross. The very bearing of a man, when he raises his hands, depicts a cross; and so we are taught to pray with raised hands, so that even by the gesture of our limbs we may confess the Lord's passion. For then our prayer is heard more quickly, when the body too imitates the Christ whom the mind speaks. By this example holy Moses, when he waged war against Amalek, overcame him not with arms, not with iron, but with his hands raised to God; for so you have it written: “When Moses raised his hands, Israel prevailed; but when he lowered his hands, Amalek grew strong.” By this sign of the Lord, then, the sea is cut, the earth is tilled, heaven is ruled, men are preserved. By this sign of the Lord, I say, the underworld too is unlocked; for from the time that the man the Lord Jesus, who carried the cross itself, was buried in the earth, the earth, as if ploughed up and broken open by him, brought forth all the dead it held.

Since yesterday we mentioned the thief, let us see who this thief is, who, when the Lord was placed on the cross, not only obtains pardon for his sins but is also presented with the delight of paradise: so that he who had been condemned to punishment for his crimes was carried over to glory for his faith, and the cross he bore was for him not so much the condemnation of a penalty as the occasion of salvation. For placed on the cross, he believed in Christ our Lord crucified; and so he who shares in the passion is granted a share in paradise. For the blessed thief, while he suffers the penalty, obtains the heavenly kingdom. See, he is called guilty, as one for whom it was profitable to be condemned for a time. For he would not have come to glory had he not been sentenced to punishment. Let us see, I say, why one guilty of such great crimes so quickly earned paradise from the Saviour, when others, by the tears of a long time and frequent fasts, scarcely obtain pardon for their offenses. The cause, brothers, is great and manifold. First, that this thief was changed so suddenly by the devotion of faith that he despised the present punishment and prayed for pardon in the future, and believed it more useful to ask concerning the eternal judgment than to plead concerning a temporal penalty; for remembering his crimes and repenting of them, he began to long more for what he hoped for than to feel what he suffered. For one who had once believed in Christ could have pleaded rather about the present penalty, had he not thought more about the future. Then this is of greater merit for his grace: that he believed in Christ placed on the cross, and the passion, which made a stumbling block for others, profited him toward faith; for the passion of the cross was a stumbling block to many, as the Apostle says: “But we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness.” Rightly, then, he earns paradise who did not think Christ's cross a stumbling block but power; for the same Apostle says: “But to those who are called, Jews, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Rightly too the Lord gives him paradise, because the one whom Judas Iscariot had sold in the paradise of the little garden this man confesses on the gibbet of the cross. A wonderful thing: the thief confesses him whom the disciple denied; a wonderful thing, I say: the thief honors the sufferer whom Judas betrayed with a kiss; by the one the endearments of peace are sold, by the other the wounds of the cross are proclaimed. For he says: “Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom.” This is the full devotion of faith: that when the blood is seen flowing from the Lord's wounds, then pardon is asked of his power; when his humility is seen, then his divinity is held the more; when he is thought given over to death, then the honor of a king is paid him. For this faithful thief did not believe that he would die whom he announces will reign; he does not think him to be subject to the underworld whom he confesses will rule in heaven; he does not reckon him to be held in hell by whom he asks to be freed himself. Though he sees his gaping wounds and looks on his flowing blood, yet he believes him God, whom he does not know as guilty; he confesses him just, whom he does not remember as a sinner. For he says to the other thief who reviled him: “We indeed receive justly what our deeds deserve; but this man has done nothing wrong.” For he understood that he received these blows for the sins of others, bore these wounds for the crimes of others; and he knew that those wounds in Christ's body were not Christ's wounds but the thief's; and so he began to love the more after he recognized his own wounds in his body. For the prophet says: “For he bears our weaknesses and grieves for us; and we thought him to be in pain; by his bruise we are healed.” So, placed on the cross and seeing his bruise, the thief loves God the more. A wonderful thing: the thief loves Christ more on the cross than Judas loved him at the supper: the one trips up his Master through food; the other honors the Lord through pain, as the prophet says: “He who ate my bread has lifted up his heel against me.” So this thief knew that the Lord's whole passion was done by his own will, and that it was in his power either to give up his life to death or to return again to life, as the Lord himself says: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again.” … He believed him so free from the laws of the underworld that he even asked to be freed from them himself.

Your charity remembers, brothers, that I gave the reason why a thief hardened in such great crimes, and condemned by the confession of his wickedness, could earn paradise on the very gibbet of his punishment, and was saved with such speed that grace forestalled his sins before punishment did, and he began to glory in his evils before he began to be punished; for he does not suffer punishment while he is earning paradise. To Peter Christ says: “You cannot follow me now; you will follow afterward.” And to this man he says: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” The one, as a disciple, is put off; the other is invited as a companion; the one is still kept back for the reward, the other is already chosen for fellowship. “You cannot,” he says, “follow me now.” It is impossible for Peter to follow the Lord; it is easy for the thief to be with the Lord. “Today you will be with me in paradise.” He is not put off to another time, not kept back for another day; in the very hour in which paradise receives the Lord, it receives the thief too: one … is for the salvation of all, and the door of immortality is opened to two alike. But faith gave the thief all this. For it is faith that covers sins, that conquers crimes, that makes the guilty innocent; for though the guilt of offenders is heavy, the grace of faith is greater: it is more to have believed in Christ than to have sinned in the world; it is of greater merit to have hoped for pardon from the Lord than to have contracted guilt from the world. For as unbelief makes one a criminal, so faith has made him innocent. Indeed, Judas, after he lost faith, lost the innocence of his apostleship; for he was made guilty of all crimes after he denied God, the author of all virtues. As, then, it was enough for the one, for crimes, to have denied Christ, so it was enough for the other, for innocence, to have believed in the Lord. Faith, then, makes thieves innocent, and unbelief makes apostles criminals. Great, then, and perfect was the faith in that thief; this is admirable faith, which believes Christ crucified to be glorified rather than punished; for in this is the whole form of salvation: to recognize the Saviour as the Lord of majesty at the very moment he is seen tortured in the patience of humility. Hence the Apostle says: “If they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of majesty.” This, I say, is perfect faith: to believe that Christ on the cross is not guilty. That is why that thief was justified: because, when the Saviour was set on the gibbet and the Jews were insulting him or saying criminal things, “Save yourself, if you can,” he, certain of his divinity and secure of his will, rather asks to be saved himself. Great, I say, was the faith in that thief, to be compared with the holy apostles; except that it perhaps even went before them; for he went before in devotion who went before in reward; for the thief came to paradise before the apostles. Indeed, Peter follows the Lord, and this man accompanies him. But the Lord gives the service of reward according to faith and merit. For all the disciples, as we read, were afraid at the Saviour's passion; almost all deserted him when he was handed over; it happened as it is written: “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.” Indeed, Peter, though warned, could not keep faith; he fell as often as he had been warned not to fall; and had the Lord not set a limit of three denials for him, perhaps, asked more often, he would have denied more often. For the Saviour's passion struck such fear into the disciples that a maidservant destroyed what Christ had foretold to the apostle, and the doorkeeper prevailed more toward unbelief than the apostle toward caution. Not a good doorkeeper, who shuts Peter into the priest's house in order to shut him out of faith in the Saviour. Eve led Adam in to evil; the maidservant brought Peter in to evil: the one shut him out of paradise, the other shut him out of Christ; the one deceived her husband by her persuasion, the other ensnared the apostle by her questioning; the one drove Adam to transgress, the other Peter to deny; and the same sex, performing the office of doorkeeper in both, either shuts out from life or shuts in to death.

We said, brothers, that, after the likeness of Eve, a woman doorkeeper also deceived Peter; and as a woman ensnared Adam, so a woman ensnared the apostle. The sex is used to deceiving: the devil recognizes in the doorkeeper the vessel of his fraud, because he is accustomed to attack faithful men only through a woman. There he put Adam to flight through Eve; here he conquers Peter through the doorkeeper; for, as we read, the devil was in the paradise of delights; nor, as we understand, was he absent in the Jews' praetorium. There Satan the serpent pressed on; here Judas the snake was urging. There is the same likeness of deception, then, in Peter as there was in Adam, since there is also the same likeness of the commandment. For each received a commandment from the Lord: Adam not to touch, the apostle not to deny; the one not to presume upon the tree of knowledge, the other not to pass by the cross of wisdom; but each transgressed the precept and sinned in like manner: the one tastes what is not lawful, the other speaks what is not fitting. And yet Peter's denial is more easily dealt with than Adam's transgression; for the apostle is helped more quickly than the first-formed man. For God seeks out the one wandering at evening; the Lord seeks out the other denying at cockcrow. Adam, guilty of the deed, blushed at being naked; Peter, conscious of what he said, groaned when rebuked; the one, as if caught, hurries to hiding; the other, as if corrected, bursts into tears. To Adam, as to one hiding and concealing himself from the Godhead, it is said: “Adam, where are you?” Not that Adam could hide from the Lord's sight, but because no place is safe or sure for a sinful conscience while it fears to be caught. The Lord looked at Peter, and opening his eyes corrected his error. Rightly he corrects with his eyes, because it is written: “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears toward their prayers.” So Peter burst into tears, praying nothing with his voice. For I find that he wept; I do not find what he said; I read of his tears, I do not read of his satisfaction. Peter plainly did well to weep and be silent, because what is usually wept over is not usually excused, and what cannot be defended can be washed away; for a tear washes away an offense which shame forbids confessing with the voice. Tears, then, care for modesty and salvation alike; they do not blush in asking, and they obtain in pleading. Tears, I say, are in a way silent prayers: they do not ask for pardon, and they deserve it; they do not plead their case, and they obtain mercy; except that prayers of tears are more useful than prayers of words, because words in praying may deceive, but a tear does not deceive at all; for words sometimes do not bring out the whole matter, but a tear always shows the whole feeling. And so Peter no longer uses the speech by which he had deceived, by which he had sinned, by which he had lost faith, lest he not be believed in confessing by the means he had used in denying; and for this reason he prefers to weep his case rather than state it, and to confess with tears what he had denied with his voice. I find also another reason why Peter was silent: lest the request for pardon, made so quickly, should offend by impudence more than obtain; for he usually earns indulgence more quickly who entreats more modestly. In every fault, then, one must first weep, and then pray. We know now by this example how to cure our sins. See, his denial did the apostle no harm, and his amendment profited him greatly. Let us imitate him, then, speaking elsewhere: for when he was asked three times by the Lord, “Simon, do you love me?”, he answered three times, “Lord, you know that I love you”; the Lord said, “Feed my sheep.” And this three times; this was said in compensation for the earlier error; for he who had denied the Lord three times confesses three times; and as often as he had contracted guilt by sinning, so often does he gain grace by loving. See, then, how much weeping profited Peter: before he wept, he fell; after he wept, he was chosen; and he who before his tears proved a transgressor was after his tears taken up as a shepherd, and received others to rule who before had not ruled himself.