Homilies of Maximus of Turin (Bruni's collection) 83.1–86.1

When among our fathers, as the book of Judges relates, certain Israelite tribes were fighting one another in civil war, and because of the like appearance of one people there could be no distinction between the combatants, the tribe whose cause for fighting was more just, since it rightly presumed victory through God's help, set itself a sign in a certain word, so that the secret of a hidden word might distinguish those whom one look of arms confused. Following this example, as I think, the blessed apostles handed down the mystery of the creed to the Church of God, which they were arming against the warfare of the devil's fury; so that, since under the one name of Christ there would be diversity among believers, the seal of the creed might separate the faithful from the unbelieving, and he might appear alien to the faith and an enemy of the Church who either, though baptized, did not know it, or, as a heretic, had corrupted it. “Do you believe,” it says, “in God the Father almighty?” God the Father almighty is without doubt to be believed, whose power is so felt that his greatness and nature are not known: for that he is and that he is able we attain not by discussing but by believing. Whom we ought to believe the authority of our Redeemer teaches us, saying: “He who believes in me and in him who sent me has eternal life”; and elsewhere: “Believe in God, and believe in me.” What we see with the eyes of faith, brothers, is more than fleshly sense can see. “Do you believe,” it says, “in God the Father almighty?” In “God” is shown unbegotten nature, in “Father” the reality of the only-begotten, in “almighty” the fullness of power. For he is almighty through his unbegotten deity and Father through his omnipotence; nor must it be inquired how he is Father, because how he is God or almighty cannot be comprehended. “And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.” That he who was Son became Christ is the dispensation of human redemption; that he is Lord is of the property of his nature; he is announced and believed to be only, or only-begotten, because he alone was so begotten and has no partner in his birth. You hear “Son,” not so that you may think him produced by some sex, but so that you may believe that by incomprehensible majesty God came forth from God, as he himself says: “I came forth from the Father and have come into this world.” “Who was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary.” You hear “Holy Spirit,” so that you may recognize that birth as both wonderful and blameless. For what the Spirit does is heavenly; what the Holy one works is inviolate. For when the need of our redemption required the only-begotten of God to become man, he brought this privilege of his own divinity into his birth: that he should be born of a virgin. For he who was coming to call back the nature of men, grown old in sins, willed to have a new law of being born. The only-begotten of God, then, became the son of man, so that he who was the Creator of the world might become its Redeemer too. “Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried.” Let us have no shame at the cross of Christ, since we have victory from his passion: for as the everlasting Son of God was born not for himself but for us, so the spotless Lamb of God suffered not for himself but for us. Who would not notice that it is a wonderful mystery, where the one who is God is proclaimed a man, and the same one is announced as Lord who is declared crucified? Nor did his being killed happen to him as something unthought or unforeseen, who by the counsel of his divinity took on man for this very reason, that he might be killed for man. He chose the punishment of the cross so that a worse penalty might bring forth a loftier victory; and so that he who suffered for the good of all might die lifted on high as in the sight of the world, so that at the same time those who saw him crucified might see the wonders of the Crucified. For the sudden darkness of the sun, the trembling of the earth, the splitting of rocks, the resurrection of the dead show the glory of the sufferer quite fully. And of what weight of testimony is this: that even the thief crucified with him begged his companion in punishment to remember him in the heavenly kingdom? That is why, dearest ones, we do not groan with sighs over the mockeries and reproaches that Christ endured, his cross and his death, but celebrate them with continual praises. He was buried, because it followed that one who had died should receive burial. The Lord was buried so that the earth too might receive the blessing of his body for the consolation of the buried. He was buried so that he who was seen truly dead might be believed truly to have returned from the dead. “On the third day,” it says, “he rose from the dead.” If you have believed of Christ what is shameful, believe what is glorious; if you have believed what belongs to death, believe what belongs to life. For as in the passion there is the mystery of love, so in the resurrection there is the working of power, as he himself says: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again.” How, then, should life after death not be at his disposal, for whom to die was not a condition but a power? Nor is it anything great if we say: Christ could rise again, since it was impossible that the author of life should not return to life; or how could he be held by the laws of the underworld who died for this very reason, that death might lose its power? Let us, then, be no longer ashamed of his sufferings, nor fear at all because of his death, who had both the power to rise again and the nature to live. And what madness is it not to believe that he rose, at whose command the buried came out of the tomb? “He ascended into heaven.” Such glory befitted, brothers, the man who was born of a virgin; nor was it impossible for him to ascend to heaven to whom it was possible to triumph over the underworld. And it was necessary that he who had come from the kingdom to death should return after death to the kingdom. In this, dearest ones, there was a saving communion between heaven and earth, incomprehensible to human minds: and as the earth rejoiced that it had received the Son of God, so heaven rejoiced that it had received the son of man, as was sung by the prophet: “Let the heavens rejoice and the earth exult.” For as it is plain that the earth exults over God, so there is no doubt that heaven rejoices over man. “He sits at the right hand of the Father.” That Christ sits is the gift of a victor; that he sits at the right hand of the Father is the privilege of the Godhead and the fellowship of undivided love. And he is fittingly announced to sit at the Father's right hand, in whom the devil, who is wholly left-handed, found nothing of his will. “From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.” It is necessary, brothers, that he who created the human race should examine it, and he who redeemed it should judge it; and it is just that the almighty Lord should distinguish by a judge's examination his mortals whom he formed by the power of his divinity and saved by the Father's love. For what can be more equitable with God than that those whose life in the world was different should have their merits distinguished after this world? The living and the dead are said to be judged so that God's care may be believed to extend to all men. “And in the Holy Spirit.” This, dearest ones, is the unerring rule of truth: that those whose name is one should not have a different confession, and those who are one in heaven with themselves should not be separated by us on earth. For as nothing among creatures can be equal to the Godhead, so the nature of the Godhead excludes all division and inequality. For according to the truth of the Gospel, as the Son came forth from the Father, so the Spirit too proceeds from the Father; and as the only-begotten is the Son of God, so the Holy Spirit is God's; and as the Father has mercy on whom he wills, and the Son reveals the Father to whom he wills, so the Spirit too is read to breathe as he wills and to divide the gifts of heavenly graces as he wills. How, then, is the Spirit not to be believed one with the Father and the Son, to whom equally belongs the power to do what he wills? “The holy Church.” The Church is truly to be confessed holy, through which sanctification has been given to mortals, and, as the number of believers grows, a holier world exults in the praises of God in the tongues of almost all. The Church is holy, which, cleansed of the contagion of sins by the sacrament of baptism, sends the inhabitants of the earth across to heaven. “The forgiveness of sins.” The forgiveness of sins is above all to be believed, brothers, because this is the one remedy which frees the human race from the sentence of perpetual death. That is why the only-begotten of the Most High deigned to take flesh and embraced the cross: so that by indulgence he might make you innocent, who could not erase your crimes and sins. That is why the spotless Lamb was slain, so that by his blood the stain of the human race might be wiped away. See, brothers, the depth of the mystery, see the height of the sacrament: where death has given back life, and the filth of sinners has been washed away by the blood of the innocent. But this forgiveness does not feed you for sin; it warns you to fear sinning now, you who understand that you could not have been saved without pardon. For God's goodness does not arm us for guilt by the gift of his indulgence, but washes us for glory. “The resurrection of the flesh.” This is the end of our religion, this the sum of believing. And indeed, who that believes God could doubt the resurrection, when it is plain that this was the only cause of Christ's being born? For what other reason or what benefit was there that the Everlasting should deign to take flesh, except to give flesh perpetuity? What glory was it that the Son of God did not flee the cross, sought death, endured burial, unless he were to bring life to mortals by granting resurrection? That this can happen the Godhead makes believable, for whom all that he wills is possible. Indeed, so that we may take undoubted examples of rising again, this world itself, losing and recovering the appearance of its beauty, both dies and rises again. We certainly receive a proof of the future resurrection when grain entrusted to the furrows comes back into its stalk, and woods stripped by frost revive with renewed leaves; and all that the earth produces is given back multiplied either by seed or by root. What hardness of heart is it, then, not to believe that man is re-formed, when the things that were made are restored? This, dearest ones, is the creed, whose truth makes every believer a Christian; this is the creed which both sanctifies the living and brings the dead back to life.

I believe, dearly beloved brothers, that yesterday you received joy enough, and from the discourses of my lord and brother the bishop who is present here, who treated divine things with such eloquence that his preaching was full of the grace of the priesthood, the eloquence of an orator, and the instruction of a teacher. And no wonder if he who holds the first rank of honour in the pontificate should also have the first rank of eloquence in preaching, so that he commends in the speech of an eloquent sermon the mighty works of God which he draws forth from the secret place of his holy breast. And so I know that my littleness will please your ears less than usual. For who is content to drink from a brook when he can draw from the springs? For the earth does not take in a thin dew of water at all once a generous shower of rain has soaked it. So too your love, flooded with the eloquence of the holy priest, will not put up with the cheap distaste of my sermon. For however learned, however fluent an orator may be, he will seem tongue-tied if he begins to speak in the presence of a better. Yet this embarrassment has its consolation. For there is nothing shameful in the least priest falling short in comparison with the highest priest, especially since the distinguished company of the blessed can help me. For if David proclaims that one holy man can become holy by the company of another, saying, "With the holy you will be holy": who then would not think that I, however unskilled, however much a sinner, can become a preacher by the power of the Lord through the company of such great teachers? Therefore, since our most blessed brother has followed the praises of the holy apostles with great eloquence, we too ought to preach the burial of the Lord himself, so that, since we seem to be members of one body attended with like services, the whole body may also be adorned with like preaching. Let us see, then, what is done with the Lord's body after it is taken down from the cross. Joseph of Arimathea, a just man, as the evangelist says, received it and buried it in his own new tomb, in which no one had yet been laid. Blessed, then, is the body of the Lord Christ, which when it is born is brought forth from the womb of a virgin, and when it departs is entrusted to the tomb of a just man. Blessed indeed is the body which virginity bore and justice guarded. Joseph's tomb kept it uncorrupted, just as Mary's womb preserved it unblemished. For in the one it was not defiled by the pollution of a man, in the other it was not harmed by the corruption of death; a new womb conceived it. The Lord's womb, then, is a virgin, and his burial place is a virgin; indeed I would call the burial place itself a womb, for the likeness is not small. For just as the Lord came forth alive from his mother's womb, so too he rose alive from Joseph's tomb; and just as then he was born from the womb in order to preach, so now he is reborn from the sepulchre in order to proclaim the gospel. Except that this birth is more glorious than that one. For that one brought forth a mortal body, this one an immortal; after that birth there is a descent to the underworld, after this one a return to heaven. This birth is plainly holier than that one. For that one held the Lord of the whole world shut in the womb for nine months, while this one kept him in the lap of the tomb for only three days; that one brought forth the hope of all more slowly, this one raised up the salvation of all more quickly.

What comparison is there between a womb and a tomb, when the one brought forth a son from her inmost being, while the other only provided a place of burial? But I say that Joseph's devotion was no less than Mary's. For she conceived the Lord in her womb, he in his heart; she offered the Saviour the hidden place of her members, he did not refuse him the hidden place of his own tomb; she wrapped the Lord in swaddling cloths when he was born, he in linen cloths when he departed; she anointed the blessed body with oil, he honoured it with spices. Their services, then, agree, and their devotion agrees; hence their merit must agree too, except that an angel admonished Mary to her service, whereas justice alone persuaded Joseph. Joseph laid the Lord in his own tomb. We read in the prophet: "Their throat is an open sepulchre." If, then, the throat of men is an open sepulchre, consider whether, according to this likeness, Joseph did not so much lay the Lord in an earthly grave as place him in the tomb of his own breast, and receive him to be kept not so much in a frail memorial of the elements as in the holy memory of the virtues. This memory of the virtues is faithful: holding Christ within itself, it does not allow him to be harmed by the corruption of heretics. Of this memory the Lord says in the holy mysteries: "As often as you do this, you will do it in memory of me, until I come." For as often as we speak of Christ, so often we commend him by the memory of a holy mouth. "Their throat," then, "is an open sepulchre." The prophet speaks rightly indeed; for the open sepulchre of Christ is the blessed throat of the evangelists, through which they laid him up in the everlasting treasury of letters. It is called an open sepulchre because whoever wishes to come to the mystery of Christ does not enter into it except through the hidden place of the gospel Scripture. For the Lord is to be entrusted to the sacred letters as to a new vessel. Whoever, then, desires to see him finds there both the mystery of his passion and recognizes the glory of his resurrection. The throat of the saints, then, is open; hence the Apostle says to the Corinthians: "Our mouth is open to you, O Corinthians," inviting them always to enter the open door of his preaching into the hidden mysteries of Christ. In this memory of the breast, then, the Lord is placed by Joseph, so that he may rest in the seat of justice and the Son of Man may have somewhere to lay his head. Let us see, then, why the Saviour is laid in another's tomb and has no tomb of his own. He is laid in another's tomb because he was dying for the salvation of others; for this death was not inflicted on him but borne for us; this death did not befall him, but it profits us. Why, then, should he have a tomb of his own who did not have his own death in himself? Why a grave on earth for him whose seat remained in heaven? Why a tomb for him who for the space of only three days did not so much lie dead in the sepulchre as rest like one sleeping on a couch? For the very shortness of the time declares that it was sleep rather than death. A sepulchre is the necessary dwelling of death; but a dwelling of death was not necessary for Christ, who is life, nor did he who lives for ever need the house of the dead. Rightly, then, did we lay up this life in our sepulchre, so that, as he gives life to our death, we might rise from the dead. Hence that Mary Magdalene too, who was seeking the Lord among the other dead in the tomb, is rebuked and told: "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" That is: why do you seek among those below one who, it is plain, has already returned to those above? Not yet understanding or recognizing him, she answered him: "Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." For she supposed, as Scripture says, that he was the gardener. The holy and simple woman, then, was seeking Christ from Christ, and in the devotion of her mind she prophesies without knowing it; for she says to the Lord about himself: "If you have taken him away, tell me." She asks rightly, "If you have taken him away"; for he himself took away his body, he who raised it; he himself took the body, who gathered it up by his breath as it lay sleeping; he himself took the body, who bears it by the power of his divinity and carries it to heaven. And so the woman wisely asks and inquires, "If you have taken him away, tell me where you have laid him"; that is, whether in taking it from the sepulchre you have carried it over to paradise; for she had heard him saying to the robber, "Today you will be with me in paradise"; or else whether you have placed it from the lower regions at the Father's right hand, as the Apostle says: "Seek the things that are above, where Christ is at the right hand of God." Blessed, then, is he who so seeks the Lord Christ as to believe him both established in paradise and placed in the heavenly places. For whoever seeks him either in the lower regions or in tombs is told: "Why do you seek the living among the dead?"

If you have listened carefully to the gospel reading, you can understand what reverence is owed to the ministers and priests of God, and how the clergy themselves ought to anticipate one another with zeal in humility. When the disciples asked which of them would be greater in the kingdom of heaven, the Lord set a little child before them all and said: "Whoever humbles himself like this child, he will be greater in the kingdom of heaven"; from which we understand that the kingdom is reached by humility and heaven is entered by simplicity. Whoever, then, desires to hold the heights of the Godhead should pursue the depths of humility; whoever wishes to go before his brother in reigning should first go before him in serving, as the Apostle says, "Outdo one another in showing honour"; let him conquer him with kind services so that he may be able to conquer him in holiness. For if your brother has not hurt you, he deserves your service, so that you may love him; but if perhaps he has hurt you, he deserves your kindness all the more, so that you may conquer him. For this is the sum of our Christianity: that we repay those who love us with love in return and those who hurt us with patience. Whoever, then, is more patient under injury will be set up as more powerful in the kingdom; for one does not come to the empire of heaven by pride, riches, or a prefecture, but by humility, poverty, and gentleness. For narrow and confined is the way that leads to the kingdom. Whoever, then, is puffed up with honours and swollen with treasures of gold will not be able, like a loaded and encumbered beast, to pass along the narrow road of the kingdom; and as soon as he thinks he has arrived, the small gate will not admit his baggage, he will be thrown back from the threshold and forced to go back. For the gate of heaven is as narrow for a rich man as the eye of a needle is small for a camel; hence the Lord says: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." For just as a small hole does not let the camel, a crooked and misshapen animal, pass through, so the narrow gate of heaven does not let in the greedy and lying rich man. For that is why we are born naked into the world, why we also come naked to the font, and why we hasten naked and unencumbered to the gate of heaven. And how unfitting and absurd it is that one whom his mother bore naked and the Church received naked should wish to enter heaven rich! That is why the Saviour says to that rich young man in the Gospel: "If you wish to be perfect, sell all that you have and give to the poor." So fitting for heaven is naked virtue that a man, however just, however holy, cannot be perfect while he possesses gold or riches. For the Lord wished that young man to return to paradise such as Adam had been when he was cast down from the height of paradise. For Adam dwelt in paradise naked; then after his sin, perceiving his nakedness, he covered his shame with a leaf. Before he sinned, he was clothed with the colour of honour; and so it was not nature that established shameful nakedness, but the guilt of sin that discovered it. For are the holy angels, set in their most splendid state, covered with tunics and cloaks? Yet though in them the substance of their birth is naked, they appear clothed because they are holy. So Adam too, keeping the dignity of angelic honour, was indeed naked of worldly clothing, but he was clothed in the splendour of immortality. His eyes looked on nothing depraved; his heart thought nothing shameful; among honourable minds nakedness itself was clothed. For just as among wicked men the shameful thought of lust is not kept off by clothes, so among holy men honourable simplicity is not drawn to lust by nakedness; but as to the vicious all things are naked for corruption, so to the devout all things are covered for chastity. And what does the gospel reading say? "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him that a donkey's millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the sea." Here he calls little ones not children in age but those who are little in malice, as the Apostle says: "In malice be children, so that in understanding you may be mature." Who are these but worthy clergy, devout monks, or lay people? Whoever, then, is irreverent or insulting toward them will be punished with this brutish penalty: with a shapeless stone tied to his neck he will be thrown headlong into the sea. But let us see why this penalty is decreed for those who cause Christians to stumble, or what the sentence itself means; for I think it contains some mystery. As though any stone, not large or enormous, would not suffice for drowning a man in the sea, but the stone of a donkey's mill is to be tied to his neck, so that a thing necessary for use should perish with the man who perishes! But I think this rather is the point: in the Scriptures the Gentile people is named under the figure of the donkey, which with eyes shut is dragged round the mill of ignorance in the circle of its error, and without any straight course, its footsteps often returning on themselves, labours unwillingly for another's use. Does not the Gentile people seem to you to turn the donkey's millstone, as long as it is occupied in the toil of its ignorance? It is indeed bound by the bonds of nature to grind the word of God and seek the Lord of heaven, but, overcast by the blindness of a veiled mind, it cannot raise the face of its soul to God or lift the eyes of its heart to heaven. But since the donkey's mill is known to be a stone, let us see whether the pagans' mill is of that kind. Plainly it is; for the pagans' mill is a stone Jupiter and a stone Hercules, around which they go with blind eyes in constant wandering. Blind, I say, I would call the eyes of those who think they see what they do not see; for looking at a stone, they are confident that they see a god. And yet whoever turns a mill has some time an end of finishing the work and hope of leaving off the toil; but the one to whose neck the true donkey's millstone is hung carries a stone, he who ought to have carried the yoke of Christ. The donkey, then, to the mill, the blind man to the stone, the Gentile to the rock, who worships what he neither sees nor knows. For God does not dwell in things made with hands, nor is he known in metal or stone. This Gentile people, then, when it brings persecution on a Christian, is punished with this penalty: to be drowned with its sacrilegious millstone in the waves of the world that is to be judged.

Perhaps, brothers, it troubles you that we constantly hear of the tumult of wars and the incursions of raiders, and perhaps it troubles your love still more why these things happen in our times. But this is the reason: the nearer we are to the destruction of the world, the nearer we are to the kingdom of the Saviour. For the Lord himself says that in the last days nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; and elsewhere: "When you see wars and earthquakes and famines, know that the kingdom of God is near." This nearness of wars, then, shows rather that Christ is near to us. And so I ought not to fear the coming enemy, because by these signs I understand rather that the Saviour is coming; for though the one strikes temporal fear, the other brings everlasting salvation. And the same Lord is able both to drive the terror of the enemy from us and to grant us his presence. By these tumults of wars, then, a certain destruction of the world is signified; for this unrest precedes the coming judgment of God. And it is a kind of judgment of God's disturbance to see what you should fear. For while we are careful about the things we see, we are made more careful about the things we hope for. The wise man is taught by these earthly doings how he ought to escape the judgment of the world to come; for when he sees, in this common disturbance, the leading men preparing defences on the walls, he is reminded how he should prepare a defence for souls in the future overthrow of the world. We see the gates of the city being armed; we ought first to arm in ourselves the gates of justice, of which the holy prophet said: "Open to me the gates of justice." For the gate of the city can be fortified only if the gates of justice are first fortified in us. Indeed, it profits nothing to fortify the walls with ramparts and provoke God with sins. For the one is built of iron, stones and stakes, the other is armed with mercy, innocence and chastity; the one is guarded by a multitude of weapons, the other is defended by frequency of prayers. And for the full protection of cities the standards of princes usually go before the gates: let the sign of the Saviour go before the gates of our souls. Therefore, brothers, because of the coming judgment let us fortify ourselves with heavenly arms; let us gird ourselves with the breastplate of faith, be protected with the helmet of salvation, and be defended with the word of God, the spiritual sword. For whoever is equipped with these arms neither fears the present disturbance nor dreads the coming judgment. Indeed, holy David, protected by this devotion, killed even unarmed that most mighty armed Goliath, and laid low by the power of faith alone a warlike man fenced about on every side with defences. For holy David was not covered with a helmet, not girded with a sword, did not use a spear; yet he killed him not with an iron weapon but with a spiritual sword. For though he seemed unarmed to the eyes of men, he was armed enough by the grace of the Godhead. And yet that spiritual sword was not a sword; for Goliath did not fall slain by a sword but by a stone. We read in the Scriptures that Christ is figuratively designated by the word "stone," as the prophet says: "The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner." So when Goliath is struck with a stone, he is laid low by the power of Christ. And in what part of the body is he laid low? In the forehead, of course. The Gentile is a sacrilegious man: he is struck by Christ where Christ was lacking, and the destruction of death is brought on him where the sign of salvation is not found. For though Goliath was fortified on every side by the protection of his armour, his forehead lay open to death because it did not bear the seal of the Saviour. And so he is struck where he is found bare of the grace of God. That these things were done in figure there is no one who does not know. For David too had first girded himself with the garments of armour; but since he was heavy and hindered in them, so that he could hardly walk, he threw them off without hesitation, signifying that such armour is vain and luxurious works, in which whoever chooses to entangle himself will, being weighed down, not have a free course for walking to heaven. At the same time he taught us that victory is not to be hoped for in arms alone, but to be prayed for in the name of the Saviour.