Homilies of Maximus of Turin (Bruni's collection) 60.1–64.1

Not unfittingly, brothers, as you remember, our preaching some days ago went forward, in which we described how the Lord's flesh sprouted from the tomb, revived as in the brightness of a flower; and the evangelist testified that the tomb was set in a garden; hence we did not speak unsuitably. For it was fitting that the more precious flower should be born in a garden, and that the seed of good fruit, entrusted to the soil, should within a domestic enclosure, yet green, sprout the salvation of all. For the resurrection of Christ is the redemption of all peoples. So in a garden the Saviour takes up his revived body, and among flowering trees and gleaming lilies he flowers again in his flesh that had died, and so sprouts from the tomb that he finds everything sprouting and shining. For after what is in a way the cold burial of winter's stiffness, all the elements hastened to sprout, so that, when the Lord rose, they too might rise. For certainly from the resurrection of Christ the air is healthier, the sun brighter, the earth more fruitful; from it the shoot grows into a bush, the blade grows into a crop, the vine puts forth its branch. If, then, when Christ's flesh flowers again all things are clothed with flowers, then necessarily when he bears fruit everything bears fruit too, as the same Lord says: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” The Lord flowered again, then, when he rose from the tomb; he bears fruit when he ascends to heaven. He is a flower when he is born from the lower parts of the earth; he is fruit when he is stored in the highest seat. He is a grain, as he himself says, when he suffers the cross alone; he is fruit when he is surrounded by the faith of many apostles. For having spent forty days with his disciples after the resurrection, he taught them with all the ripeness of wisdom and turned them to good fruit with all the fruitfulness of instruction. Then he ascended to heaven, bringing, that is, the fruit of the flesh before the Father, leaving the seeds of righteousness in the disciples. So the Lord ascended to the Father. Your holiness remembers that I compared the Saviour to that eagle of the psalter whose renewed youth we read of; for the likeness is not small: for as the eagle leaves low things, seeks high ones, and climbs to the neighborhood of the heavens, so the Saviour left the low places of the underworld, sought the heights of paradise, and penetrated the summits of the heavens; and as the eagle, leaving earthly filth behind and flying aloft, enjoys the healthfulness of purer air, so the Lord, leaving the dregs of earthly sins, flying among his saints, rejoices in the simplicity of a purer life. In everything, then, the comparison with the eagle suits the Saviour. But what shall we do with the fact that the eagle often snatches prey, often takes what belongs to another? Yet even in this the Saviour is not unlike: for he took prey, as it were, when he carried to heaven the man he had taken on, snatched from the jaws of the underworld; so that, having rescued from captivity the slave of another's dominion, that is, of the devil's power, he led him captive to the heights, as is written in the prophet: “Ascending on high he led captivity captive; he gave good things to men.” This sentence is surely to be understood thus: that the Lord, by rescuing the captivity of the man whom the devil had taken captive for himself, took it captive for himself, and carried that very captivity, as he says, captured, to the heights of heaven. Both captivities are called by one word, but they are not equal: for the devil's captivity subjects to slavery, but Christ's captivity restores to freedom. “He ascended,” it says, “on high; he led captivity captive.” How well the prophet describes the Lord's triumph! The procession of captives, they say, used to go before the chariots of triumphing kings: see, the glorious captivity does not go before the Lord as he goes to heaven but accompanies him; it is not led before the vehicle but itself carries the Saviour up. For by a certain mystery, while the Son of God carried the son of man to heaven, the captivity itself is carried and carries. And when he says, “He gave gifts to men,” this is the mark of a victor; for after a triumph the victor always bestows gifts, and, sitting in his own kingdom, rewards the joys of his servants. So Christ the Lord, after the triumph over the devil, sitting at the Father's right hand, bestowed gifts on his disciples on this day, not talents of gold nor pieces of silver, but the heavenly gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that among other graces the apostles also spoke in various tongues: that is, so that a man of the Hebrew nation might thunder Christ's glory with the eloquence of Roman fluency, and foreign ears, which could not grasp the redemption of the human race when the Jewish tongue preached it, might recognize it in their own speech. Every tongue is loosened in the preaching of Christ, so that every speech may confess his majesty, as holy David says: “There are no speeches nor words whose voices are not heard.” And do not marvel that we said the Son sits at the Father's right hand; for he sits at the right hand, not because he is greater than the Father, but lest he be believed less, as the heretics are accustomed to blaspheme; for as the Godhead knows no grade of honor, so holy Scripture knows how to meet blasphemies.

Your holiness ought to know, brothers, why we keep this holy day of Pentecost, or why for the number of these fifty days we have a continuous and unbroken festival, so that during all this time we neither proclaim fasts to be kept nor fall on our knees to entreat God, but, as we usually do on Sunday, we celebrate the Lord's resurrection standing and on holiday. Sunday is venerable and solemn to us because on it the Saviour, like the rising sun, scattering the darkness of the underworld, shone out with the light of the resurrection; and for that reason the people of the world call this day the day of the sun, because Christ, the sun of righteousness, having risen, illuminates it. Like Sunday, then, the whole course of the fifty days is celebrated, and all these days are reckoned as Sundays. For the resurrection belongs to Sunday; for rising on Sunday the Saviour returned to men; and after the resurrection he stayed with men through the whole fifty days. It was necessary, then, that the festival of those days should be equal whose holiness was equal. For the Lord so arranged it that, as we grieve at his passion in the fasts of Lent, so we should rejoice at his resurrection in the holidays of the fifty days. We do not fast, then, during the fifty days, because in these days the Lord stays with us; we do not fast, I say, while the Lord is present, because he himself says: “Can the sons of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?” For why should the body abstain from food when the soul is fattened by the presence of the Lord? He cannot be fasting who is refreshed by the grace of the Saviour. For the company of Christ is in a way the food of the Christian. So we are refreshed in the fifty days while the Lord lives with us. But when after these days he ascended to heaven, we fast again, as the same Saviour says: “But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days.” For when Christ ascended to heaven he is taken from our sight; we suffer hunger, not of the body but of love; and we labor not so much with fasting from food as with longing. For our eyes bear a kind of longing while they do not see him whom they seek, as the prophet says: “My eyes have failed while I hope in my God.” The prophet's eyes failed because he did not yet see him whom he hoped to see; so the apostles' eyes failed when they could not watch the Lord going to heaven, as Luke says: “And as they watched he was lifted up, and a cloud received him from their eyes.” For the blessed apostles stood, their whole bodies straining, and followed with their eyes the Lord ascending to heaven, since they could not with the steps of their feet; and though human sight failed to escort the Saviour, the devotion of faith did not fail; for they escort Christ as far as the cloud, but as far as the heavens they accompany Christ by the devotion of faith. Hence the Apostle, knowing that our faith is in heaven with the Lord, says: “But our citizenship is in heaven.” So a cloud received the Saviour from the apostles' eyes. Let us see, then, what this cloud is, how bright, how splendid, that it deserves to receive Christ, the light of the world. For it could not be dark and gloomy or shadowy, because it is written: “And the darkness has not overcome it.” For darkness could not carry the light; for that cloud which received the ascending Christ is the one which also bore witness to Christ on the mountain, of which the evangelist says: “A voice was heard in the cloud, saying: This is my beloved Son; hear him.” So it was not a cloud that received Christ, but God the Father received the Son, and, meeting him in love, embraced him as he ascended in a softer bosom. For the Father is said to receive the Son in the shade of a cloud to show that with a kind of refreshment he soothes the wounds of his passion. For after the cross, after the injuries, after the underworld, there is no greater refreshment for Christ than to be overshadowed by the power of the Godhead, as is said to Mary at his birth: “And the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” So the Father Most High, who overshadowed Mary in power when Christ was born, received him in a cloud as he ascended; for God always protects with the shade of a cloud those whom he leads to rest after injuries, as he protected the sons of Israel, freed from Egypt, with the pillar of cloud, and, to bring them after much labor into the land of promise, soothed them with the shade of refreshment, as the prophet says: “He spread out a cloud to protect them.” He spread out a cloud lest they be parched by the dryness of the desert and the heat of the sun. Let us rejoice, then, on this holy day, as we rejoiced at Easter; for on both days there is a like and the same solemnity; for at Easter all nations are usually baptized, but at Pentecost the apostles were baptized, as the Lord said to his disciples when about to ascend to heaven: “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit, whom you will receive not many days from now.” And so Luke says: “When the days of Pentecost were fulfilled, suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a mighty wind coming, and it sat upon each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.”

I believe you know, brothers, the reason why we celebrate this venerable day of Pentecost with no less joy than we kept holy Easter, and why we run through the observance of this feast with the same devotion with which we fulfilled the services of that festival. For then, as we have done now, we fasted on Saturday, celebrated vigils, and persisted in prayers through the night; hence a like observance must be followed by a like joy. The joy is plainly very similar: for then we received the Saviour rising from the underworld; now we await the Holy Spirit from heaven; then, anxious and careful, we proclaimed his coming; now, trembling and fasting, we long for the coming of the Paraclete; for in all things God has provided for human salvation: then the Saviour opened the underworld for us to rise; now the Paraclete has unlocked heaven for us to reign; and as by certain steps of progress, then we learned to come back from death to life; now we practice ascending from earth to heaven. All this Christ the Lord works in us, who before returning to heaven promised his disciples, saying: “When I have ascended, I will ask my Father, and he will send you another Paraclete, to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth.” Hence we must believe that Christ has reached the Father when we see that the Paraclete has come down to the apostles. We must believe, I say, as David says of the Saviour, that he sits at God's right hand, because we see the Holy Spirit, as the Lord promised, exulting in the disciples. For the prophet of the psalms says: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand.” According to our custom a seat beside one is offered to him who, arriving after completing some work, earns for honor's sake to sit down. So too the man Jesus Christ, overcoming the devil by his passion and unlocking the underworld by his resurrection, arriving at heaven as a victor with his work completed, hears from God the Father: “Sit at my right hand.” Nor is it any wonder that a seat on one throne is offered to the Son by the Father, who is of one substance and nature with the Father. Why the Son is believed to be at the right hand may perhaps disturb someone. Though there is no grade of dignity where the fullness of the Godhead is, yet the Son sits at the right hand, not so that he is preferred to the Father, but lest he be believed inferior. And the Son is at the right hand because, according to the evangelist, the sheep will be placed at the right hand and the goats at the left. The first lamb, then, must take the side of the sheep, and the spotless leader must go ahead to secure a place for the spotless flock that will follow, as John says in the Apocalypse: “These are those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes, who have not defiled themselves with women.” So the prophet David relates: “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand”: that is, the Lord the Father offers the Lord God Christ the Son the lofty seat beside him on his throne, and for honor's sake sets him at his right hand on an eternal seat. But we read in the Acts of the Apostles that blessed Stephen said, as he was being stoned by the Jews: “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Lord Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” Let us see, then, why the same Lord is prophesied by David as sitting but proclaimed by Stephen as standing. First of all, how can God, who is incorporeal and invisible (for he is spirit, as the Lord says: “But God is spirit”), sit or stand? And then on what seat would God sit, who is infinite and immeasurable and rather contains all creation within himself? I think these things were said of the Lord by the holy men not because they are contrary to each other, but so that now his omnipotence, now his mercy, might be described. For he is said to sit by the power of a king, and suggested to stand by the goodness of an intercessor; for the blessed apostle says: “For we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ.” Christ, then, is judge when he sits, advocate when he rises; plainly judge to the Jews, advocate to Christians: here, standing before the Father, he pleads the causes of Christians, though they sin; there he sits with the Father condemning the sins of the persecuting Pharisees; on those he takes vehement vengeance in indignation, on these he intervenes and gently has mercy; here he stands to receive the spirit of the martyr Stephen; there he sits to condemn the crime of Judas the traitor.

The festival of our prayers, dearest ones, must now be known to your holiness. For from the celebration itself we learn what we keep and why. For when the past feast turns again in its footsteps, we become more learned as we celebrate it more often. Today, then, we keep Pentecost, that is, the fiftieth day from the Lord's resurrection; not that on this day, as many think, the Saviour ascended to heaven. For after the resurrection he stayed with the apostles and on the fortieth day returned to the right hand of God the Father, as the evangelist Luke says: “To whom he also showed himself alive after his passion, appearing to them for forty days.” For a course of forty days, then, the Saviour showed his company to his disciples, so that we might rejoice in the grace of his resurrection for as many days as we had wept over the injuries of his passion, and be refreshed by his presence for as long a space of days as we fast in his absence. So it is not today that Christ ascended to heaven, but Christ's Spirit came down from heaven, as the Lord himself promised, saying: “When I have ascended to the Father, I will send you the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, and he will teach you all things.” A great grace indeed, a double joy: that we do not lose Christ as he departs, and we possess the Spirit as he comes. For him we hold by the merit of faith, this one by the approach of sanctification. “When I have gone,” he says, “to the Father, I will send you the Paraclete.” For we believe that the Son has reached the Father when we see that the Paraclete has come down to the apostles. For we believe that he reigns in heaven whom we see giving holy gifts on earth, as is written through the prophet: “Ascending on high he led captivity captive; he gave gifts to men.” The victor surely rewards, the victor bestows gifts; hence the Saviour too, the victor over the devil, after his triumph enriched with a blessing the disciples whom he had freed from captivity. He freed us when by himself he closed the underworld for us to rise; he enriched us when through the Paraclete he unlocked heaven for us to reign. And as by certain steps of progress, then we learned to come back from death to life; now we are taught to ascend from earth to heaven, as it is written: “He will teach you all things.” What does the Holy Spirit teach? Surely he knows how to teach what is holy. What does the Paraclete teach us? Surely what the Saviour says: “I have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now; when that Spirit of truth comes, he will teach you all things.” The Paraclete is a good teacher, then, because he teaches what Christ kept back to be taught. For the Holy Spirit teaches what the Lord says he had to be taught. He is plainly a good teacher who carries out the Saviour's precepts. It must be, then, that he is of one substance and nature with Christ, since we see that he is of one teaching with Christ. And so, dearest ones, let us cleanse ourselves of all defilement of the flesh, so that we may be found worthy to receive the Holy Spirit. If we leave this world, we shall receive, like the apostles, the same Paraclete, that is, the Spirit of truth whom the Father will send you; for there is no respect of persons with God the Father; but the promises already made to the apostles profit us if we perform the works, desires, and acts that the apostles did. And if, by fulfilling the law of the Lord, which is spotless and converts souls, we carry out his commandments, we commit ourselves, with the grace of Christ, as heirs of the Lord and co-heirs of Christ, to the everlasting inheritance and the company of the angels; which may he deign to grant, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

The reading from the Acts of the Apostles which has been read to us today, dearest brothers, while it has very much to admire on its surface, contains no less dignity in its mystery: “Behold,” says blessed Stephen, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of the power of God.” Consider more attentively, dearest brothers, why the blessed martyr, when he had seen our Lord Jesus Christ at the right hand of God the Father, testified that he saw the Son of Man and not rather the Son of God, since he would surely seem to pay the Lord more honor if he had said that he saw the Son of God rather than of man. But a sure reason required that it be shown so in heaven and proclaimed so in the world; for the whole stumbling block of the Jews was this: why our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to the flesh is the Son of Man, should also be called the Son of God. That is why divine Scripture beautifully recorded that the Son of Man stood at the right hand of God the Father: so that, to confound the unbelief of the Jews, he might be shown to the martyr in heaven, since he was denied by the unbelievers in the world, and heavenly truth might give testimony to him whom earthly impiety had refused faith. Hence, though according to the psalm which was read, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints,” yet if there can be any difference among martyrs, he seems to be the chief who is the first. For though holy Stephen was ordained a deacon by the apostles, he went before the apostles themselves by a blessed and triumphant death; and so he who was lower in order became first in suffering, and he who was a disciple in rank began to be a master in martyrdom, fulfilling what the blessed prophet said in the psalm: “What shall I render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to me?” For the martyr Stephen wished to be the first to render to the Lord what he had received from the Lord with the whole human race; for the death which the Saviour deigned to suffer for all, he first rendered to the Saviour. After this sacred Scripture added: “Kneeling down, he cried out, saying: Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” See, dearest brothers, the disposition of the blessed man; see his great and admirable love. He was placed in persecution, and he was praying for his persecutors; and in that downpour of stones, when another might have forgotten even his dearest, he commended his enemies to the Lord. For what did he say while he was being stoned? “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” So he grieved more then for their sins than for his wounds, more for their impiety than for his death; and rightly more. For in their iniquity there was much to be lamented, but in his death there was nothing that ought to have been grieved; eternal death followed their impiety, but everlasting life followed his death. Let us imitate, then, in some measure, dearest brothers, the faith of so great a master, the love of so illustrious a martyr; let us love our brothers in the Church with the same spirit with which he then loved his enemies. But what is worse, sometimes we not only do not love our enemies, we do not even keep full faith with our friends. But someone says: I cannot love my enemy, whom I suffer daily as a most cruel foe. O whoever you are, you attend to what a man has done to you, and do not consider what you have done to God; for since you have committed far graver sins against God, why do you not forgive a man a little, so that God may deign to forgive you much? Recall what the Truth himself has promised you in the Gospel, and what sort of bond he has, as it were, made with you, or what pact he has entered into: “For if you forgive men their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you your sins. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father forgive your debts.” You see, brothers, that, with God's grace, how we are to be judged by the Lord has been placed in our power. “If you forgive,” he says, “you will be forgiven.” I have often said, brothers, and must say often, let no one deceive himself, let no one lead himself astray: whoever holds even one man in hatred in this world loses all that he has offered to God in good works, for the apostle Paul does not lie when he says: “If I give all my goods to feed the poor, and if I hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” Blessed John also confirms this, saying: “Everyone who does not love his brother remains in death.” And again: “He who hates his brother is a murderer.” In this passage every man must be understood as a brother; we are all brothers in Christ. So let no one without love presume on his virginity, no one on his almsgiving, no one trust in his prayers; for as long as he holds enmity in his heart, he will not be able to appease the Lord either by these or by any other good works. But if he wishes to have God propitious to him, let him not disdain to hear good counsel; let him hear not me but his Lord himself: “If you offer your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go first to be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” But we, with fights within and turning over tricks in our hearts, presume to approach the altar as if we had a good conscience, not fearing what is written: “Whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment on himself.” But someone says: it is a great labor to love enemies, to pray for persecutors. We do not deny it, brothers; it is no small labor in this world, but the reward will be great in the future; for by the love of one man, an enemy, you will become a friend of God; indeed not only a friend but also a son, as the Lord himself says: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” If some rich man in this world wished to make you his adopted son, how you would serve him! What indignities even from his servants, what hardest and sometimes even most shameful services you would endure, to come to his perishable and fragile inheritance! What another would endure, then, for earthly wealth, you endure for eternal life. For we are convicted by most certain reasoning that we can bear injuries for God's sake, but will not. Indeed, if some powerful person does us an injury, if he even curses us to our face, we dare not answer anything harsh, not to say repay in kind; why? Lest we suffer from that powerful person even greater things than we have suffered. What fear of a man wrings from us, the love of Christ ought to have demanded. If, then, a powerful person rages against us, we are silent and dare say nothing; but if an equal, or perhaps an inferior, does us even a slight insult, we rise up like a wild beast without any patience and without any regard for God, and either avenge our injury on the spot or certainly prepare our mind to pay back a greater one. What is this, that when a powerful person did us injury we took it patiently, and when an inferior, we are inflamed with excessive rage? We feared a man there, and here we will not fear God. Therefore, brothers, as far as we can, with God's help, let us prepare our heart for patience, and let us try to act like physicians toward all evil men, hating not the men themselves but their malice; let us pray for the good, that they may always climb to better things; for the wicked, that they may quickly take refuge in amendment of life through the laments of repentance; which may he deign to grant to us as we pray, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, God, for ever and ever. Amen.