Homilies on Numbers 23.1–23.11

[… of the feasts.] If the observance of sacrifices and the legal ordinances, which were given to the people of Israel as a type, had been able to stand until the present time, they would without doubt have shut out the faith of the gospel, through which, since the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, the nations are being converted to God. For in those things which were then observed there was a certain magnificent religion, full of all reverence, which even at first sight amazed those who beheld it. For who, seeing what was called the sanctuary or holy place, and looking at the altar, and the priests standing by and completing the sacrifices, and observing the whole order with which all those things were carried out, would not think that this was the fullest rite by which God the creator of all ought to be worshipped by the human race? But thanks be to the coming of Christ, who, tearing our souls away from this sight, has brought them to the consideration of heavenly things and the contemplation of spiritual realities, and has destroyed those things that seemed great on earth, and has transferred the worship of God from visible things to invisible, and from temporal to eternal. But truly the Lord Jesus Christ himself requires both ears to hear these things and eyes to see them. Hence we too, now having in hand the law given through Moses, and wishing to show that it is a spiritual law, require of you such ears and eyes as do not look back to those things which have been destroyed, but seek these things there where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, and set their minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth. Let this, then, suffice as set before you by way of preface to what is to be said.

Now let us come to what is written. “And the Lord spoke,” it says, “to Moses, saying: Command the sons of Israel and say to them: My gifts, my presents, my victims for a sweet savour, take care to offer to me on my feast days. And say to them: These are my victims which you shall offer to the Lord.” No one offers anything of his own to God; but what he offers is the Lord’s, and one does not so much offer his own things to God as render to him what is his. For this reason, then, the Lord, wishing to write laws of the sacrifices and gifts to be offered him by men, first of all opens the reason of the very things to be offered and says: “My gifts, my presents, my sacrifices for a sweet savour, take care to offer to me on my feast days.” These gifts, he says, which I am about to command you to offer me on my feast days, are my presents, that is, they are given to you by me. For from me the human race receives all that it has. So that no one, then, in offering gifts, should believe that he was conferring some benefit on God, and through this should prove impious in the very act in which he seemed to worship God (for what is so impious as for a man to think that he is supplying something to God as to one in need?), necessarily, as we said, he first teaches man, so that he may know that whatever he has offered to God he is rendering to him rather than offering. But let us also see how he says: “which you shall offer to me on my feast days.” Has God, then, his feast days? He has. For the salvation of men is a great festival for him. I think that through each one of the believers, through each one who is converted to God, who advances in faith, a festival of the Lord arises. How do you think it gladdens him when one who had been unchaste becomes chaste, and one who had been unjust practises justice, and one who had been impious becomes godly? All these conversions of each and every person produce festivals for God. Nor is there any doubt that our Lord Jesus Christ too, who even shed his blood for our salvation, keeps a very great festival when he sees that it has been worth the price that he humbled himself and, taking the form of a servant, became obedient unto death. The Holy Spirit too keeps festival, when he sees many temples prepared for himself in those who are converted to God. And what shall I say of the angels, to whose festival all who are converted to the Lord are said to come? Or is it not a great festival for them when they rejoice “in heaven over one sinner who repents more than over ninety-nine righteous who have no need of repentance”? The angels too, then, keep a feast day, rejoicing over those who, fleeing the company of demons, hasten through the exercise of virtues to join themselves to the company of angels. It may perhaps be astonishing, what I wish to say: we, it seems, give God and the angels causes for festival and joy; we, placed on earth, furnish heaven with occasion for joy and exultation, while, walking on earth, we have our way of life in heaven, and through this we without doubt produce a feast day for the heavenly powers. But just as our good acts and our advances in virtues produce joy and festival for God and the angels, so I fear that our evil way of life brings lamentations and mourning not only to the earth but also to heaven, and that human sins perhaps cause mourning even to God himself. Or is it not the voice of one mourning when it is said: “I repent that I made man on the earth”? And also that of our Lord and Saviour in the Gospel, where he says: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who stone the prophets and kill those sent to you, how often I wished to gather your children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not!” And do not think that it was said only of the ancients that they stoned the prophets: I too today, if I do not hear the words of the prophet, if I spurn his warnings, stone the prophet, and as far as lies in me kill him, whose words, namely, I do not hear, as if he were dead. And that too is the voice of God lamenting the human race which is spoken through the prophet: “Woe is me, for I have become like one who gathers stubble at harvest, and like grapes at the vintage, for there is no ear of corn nor cluster to eat the first fruits. Woe is me, my soul, for the godly has perished from the earth, and there is none who corrects among men.” These are the voices of the Lord mourning the human race. For he came to gather the harvest and found stubble instead of a harvest; and he came to gather the vintage, but found a few grapes instead of a vintage, namely the apostles: and unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, and unless the grain of wheat had fallen into the ground to bear much fruit, we would have become like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah. For the angels of God too, as we said above, there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. It is certain that where joy is made over good things, there mourning is made over the contrary: if, then, they rejoice over one converted, they must mourn over one who sins. For this reason, then, because Jerusalem sinned a great sin, as is written in the Lamentations, “she became a thing shaken,” and all her festivals and her solemn days perished, because they killed my Jesus Christ. And therefore he says to them: “Your new moons and sabbaths and your feast days my soul hates.” Here, indeed, where he commands concerning gifts, where there are as yet no sins, he says “my feast days”; but where there is sin, the Lord says not “my” but “your feast days.” But all these things in which God is said either to mourn, or to rejoice, or to hate, or to be glad are to be taken as said by Scripture figuratively and in a human manner. The divine nature is wholly alien from every affection of passion and change, remaining always immovable and unshaken on that summit of blessedness.

Since, then, we have in hand the laws of the feasts, and our discourse is now about them, let us inquire more carefully what the order of the festivals is, so that from these very orders and the rite of the sacrifices we may gather how each one, by his own acts and holy ways of life, can prepare a festival for God. The first festival of God, then, is that which is called “perpetual”: for it is commanded concerning things to be offered perpetually and without any interruption at all in the morning and evening sacrifices. In commanding the rites of the festivals, then, he does not come first straightway to the festival of the Passover, nor to that of Unleavened Bread, nor to that of Tabernacles, and the others about which commands are given, but he put this first, in which he commands the perpetual sacrifice to be offered: so that he who wishes to be perfect and holy may recognize that the festival for God is not to be kept at one time and not kept at another, but that the righteous man ought always and perpetually to keep the feast day. For the sacrifice which is commanded to be offered perpetually both in the mornings and in the evenings signifies this: that he should persist with perpetual attention both in the law and the prophets, which signify the morning time, and in the teaching of the gospel, which is the evening, since it shows the coming of the Saviour at the evening of the world. These festivals, then, the Lord speaks of: “And you shall observe my feast days.” It is, then, a feast day of the Lord if we offer the perpetual sacrifice, if we pray without ceasing, so that our prayer rises like incense in his sight in the morning, and the lifting up of our hands becomes for him an evening sacrifice. The first solemnity, then, is that of the perpetual sacrifice, which must be fulfilled by the worshippers of the gospel in the way we have explained above. But since, as the prophetic word has taught, the feast days of sinners are turned into mourning and their songs into lamentation, it is certain that he who sins and keeps a day of sin cannot keep a feast day; and therefore on those days on which he sins he cannot offer the perpetual sacrifice to God. But he can offer it who perpetually keeps righteousness and preserves himself from sin. On the day on which he breaks off and sins, it is certain that on that day he does not offer the perpetual sacrifice to God. I am afraid to say something which is given to be understood from the apostolic words, lest I seem perhaps to grieve some. For if the prayer of the righteous is offered like incense in the sight of the Lord, and the lifting up of his hands is an evening sacrifice, and the Apostle says to those who are in marriage, “Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a time, that you may be free for prayer, and then come together again,” it is certain that the perpetual sacrifice is hindered for those who serve the necessities of marriage. Hence it seems to me that it belongs to him alone to offer the perpetual sacrifice who has devoted himself to perpetual and lasting chastity. But there are also other feast days for those who perhaps cannot perpetually offer the sacrifices of chastity.

The second festival, then, after the festival of the perpetual sacrifice, is set down as that of the Sabbath; and it is fitting that every holy and righteous person should keep the festival of the Sabbath too. And what is the festival of the Sabbath except that of which the Apostle says, “There remains, then, a sabbath rest,” that is, an observance of the Sabbath, “for the people of God”? Leaving aside, then, the Jewish observances of the Sabbath, let us see what kind the Christian’s observance of the Sabbath ought to be. On the Sabbath day one ought to do none of all the works of the world. If, then, you cease from all worldly works and do nothing worldly, but give yourself to spiritual works, come to church, lend your ear to the divine readings and discourses, and think of heavenly things, are concerned about the future hope, keep the coming judgment before your eyes, do not look to present and visible things but to invisible and future ones, this is the observance of the Christian Sabbath. But the Jews too ought to observe these things. Indeed, even among them, if one is a smith, a builder, or any such craftsman, he is idle on the Sabbath day. But the reader of the divine law or the teacher does not cease from his work, and yet does not defile the Sabbath: for so my Lord too says to them: “Or have you not read that the priests in the temple violate the Sabbath and are blameless?” He, then, who ceases from the works of the world and gives himself to spiritual things is the one who offers the sacrifice of the Sabbath and keeps the feast day of the Sabbaths. Nor does he carry burdens on the way. For every sin is a burden, as the prophet too says: “Like a heavy burden they have weighed upon me.” Nor does he kindle a fire, namely that fire of which it is said: “Walk in the light of your fire and in the flame which you have kindled.” On the Sabbath each one sits in his place and does not go out from it. What, then, is the spiritual place of the soul? Righteousness is its place, and truth, wisdom, sanctification, and all that Christ is, is the place of the soul. From this place it ought not to go out, if it is to keep true Sabbaths and complete the feast day in the sacrifices of the Sabbaths: as the Lord too said: “He who abides in me, and I in him.” As for what we called true Sabbaths, if we go back more deeply to what the true Sabbaths are, the observance of the true Sabbath is beyond this world. For what is written in Genesis, that God rested on the Sabbath day from his works, we do not see either to have happened then on the seventh day or to happen even now. For we always see God working, and there is no Sabbath on which God does not work, on which he does not make his sun rise on the good and the evil and send rain on the just and the unjust, on which he does not make grass grow on the mountains and herbs for the service of men, on which he does not strike and heal, bring down to the underworld and bring back, on which he does not kill and make alive. Hence the Lord too in the Gospels, when the Jews were finding fault with him about working and healing on the Sabbath, answered them: “My Father is working until now, and I am working”; showing by this that on no Sabbath of this age does God rest from the governance of the world and the providential care of the human race. For he made the creation from the beginning, and brought forth as many substances as he, being the founder of things, knew to be enough for the perfection of the world; but until the consummation of the age he does not cease from their providential care and governance. The true Sabbath, then, in which God will rest from all his works, will be the age to come, when grief and sorrow and groaning will flee away, and God will be all in all. On that Sabbath may God grant us too to keep the feast day with him and to celebrate the feast with his holy angels, offering the sacrifice of praise and rendering to the Most High our vows, which our lips have uttered here. Then perhaps the perpetual sacrifice too, of which we spoke above, will be better offered. For then the soul will better be able to stand perpetually before God and offer the sacrifice of praise through the great high priest, who is a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek.

The third festival is set down as the day of the new moon, on which a victim too is offered. “Neomenia” means new moon. This festival too, then, is when the moon is renewed. And it is called new when it has come very near the sun and is closely joined to it, so that it is hidden under its brightness. But it may perhaps seem strange, or rather superfluous, for the divine law to command this. For what does it contribute to religion to observe a festival of the new moon, that is, when it is joined to the sun and clings to it? If these things are considered according to the letter, they will seem not so much religious as superstitious. But the apostle Paul knew that the law does not speak of these things, and that the Holy Spirit did not command that rite which is seen to be observed by the Jews; and therefore he said to those who had received the faith of God: “Let no one, then, judge you in food or drink, or in part of a feast day, or a new moon, or a Sabbath, for these are a shadow of things to come.” If, then, the Sabbath is a shadow of things to come, of which we have explained above according to our strength, and the new moon is a shadow of things to come, it is certain that the other festivals too are likewise shadows of things to come. But now let us look at the new moon. We said that the festival of the new moon is so called when the moon is renewed and has come very near the sun and is wholly joined to it. The sun of righteousness is Christ: if the moon, that is, his church, which is filled with his light, is joined to him and clings wholly to him, so that, according to the Apostle’s word, he who joins himself to the Lord becomes one spirit with him, then it keeps the festival of the new moon: for then it becomes new, when it has cast off the old man and put on the new, who has been created according to God; and so it will rightly keep the solemnity of renewal, which is the festival of the new moon. Then, finally, is the time when it can neither be seen nor grasped by human sight. For when the soul has joined itself wholly to the Lord and given itself wholly to the splendour of his light, and thinks of nothing earthly at all, seeks nothing worldly, and does not strive to please men, but has devoted itself wholly to wisdom, wholly to the light, wholly to the warmth of the Holy Spirit, having become fine and spiritual, how can it be seen by men or apprehended by human sight? For the natural man cannot understand or discern the spiritual. And therefore it will most worthily keep the feast day and sacrifice the victim of the new moon to the Lord, as one renewed through him.

In the fourth place among the festivals of God is set the solemnity of the Passover, at which festival a lamb is killed. But look at the true lamb, the lamb who takes away the sins of the world, and say: “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.” The Jews, in a carnal sense, eat the flesh of a lamb; but we eat the flesh of the Word of God. For he himself said: “Unless you eat my flesh, you will not have life in yourselves.” What we are speaking now are the flesh of the Word of God, provided that we do not set out vegetables as for the weak, or the nourishment of milk as for children. If we speak perfect things, if robust things, if stronger things, we set the flesh of the Word of God before you to eat. For where mystical discourse is offered, where discourse is doctrinal and full of faith in the Trinity, and solid, where the spiritual sacraments of the age to come are distributed with the veil of the letter of the law removed, where the soul’s hope, torn away from the earth, is cast into heaven and placed among those things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have they come up into the heart of man, all these are the flesh of the Word of God: and he who can feed on them with perfect understanding and a purified heart truly sacrifices the sacrifice of the festival of the Passover, and keeps the feast day with God and his angels.

After this, or rather continuous with it, follows the festival of Unleavened Bread, which you will rightly celebrate if you root out all the leaven of malice from your soul and keep the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. For we must not think that almighty God writes laws to man about leaven, and therefore orders a soul to be rooted out of its people if it is perhaps found to have had a little of this leaven mixed from flour in its house; as though this had been of great concern to the divine majesty, which says it is so offended on account of this leaven that it orders the soul, which it made in its own image and likeness, to be rooted out and overthrown for this: this understanding does not seem to me worthy of the divine laws. But rather this is what God abhors, and rightly abhors: if the soul is leavened by the spirit of malice, of anger, of wickedness, and swells up to shameful deeds. This God does not want to be in the soul; and unless we cast such leaven out of the house of our soul, we shall rightly be rooted out. But do not despise it even if you see a small malice fermenting within you, because a little leaven corrupts the whole lump; and do not neglect even a small sin, since from sin another is also begotten. For just as from righteousness righteousness is begotten, and from chastity chastity (for if someone has first begun to be chaste in a slight degree, having received the leaven of chastity he becomes more chaste every day), so too he who has once stored up within himself even a small leaven of malice becomes every day more wicked and worse than himself. And therefore, if you wish to keep the festival of Unleavened Bread with God, do not allow even a small leaven of malice to remain within you.

After this follows the sixth festival, which is called that of the New Fruits, that is, when first fruits of the new crops are offered. For when the field has been sown and carefully cultivated, and the crop has come to ripeness, then a festival of the Lord is kept at the completion of the fruits. If, then, you too wish to keep the feast day of New Fruits with the Lord, see how you sow, or where you sow, so that you may be able to reap such fruits as will make God glad and keep a feast day. This you will not be able to fulfil otherwise unless you hear the Apostle saying: “He who sows in the spirit will reap from the spirit eternal life.” If you sow so and reap so, you will truly keep the feast day of the New Fruits. For this reason, finally, the prophet too admonishes, saying: “Break up for yourselves new ground, and do not sow upon thorns.” He, then, who renews his heart and inner man day by day breaks up new ground for himself and does not sow upon thorns, but upon good ground, which will yield him fruit thirtyfold, or sixtyfold, or a hundredfold. This, then, is he who sows in the spirit and gathers the fruit of the Spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit is first of all joy. And rightly he keeps the feast day of new fruits who reaps joy; especially if he reaps at the same time peace, and patience, and goodness, and gentleness, and if he gathers other fruits like these, he will most worthily keep the festival of new fruits to the Lord.

Then follows the festival of the Sevenths. For just as among days every seventh day is observed as a Sabbath and is a festival, so too among months every seventh month is the Sabbath of the months. A festival is therefore kept in it which is called the Sabbath of Sabbaths, and on the first day of the month there is a memorial of trumpets. But who is it that keeps the festival of the memorial of trumpets, except one who can commit to memory, and store up within the treasury of his heart, the prophetic and gospel Scriptures, which sound like certain heavenly trumpets? He, then, who does this and meditates on the law of God day and night keeps the festival of the memorial of trumpets. And if someone can merit those graces of the Holy Spirit by which the prophets were inspired, and say in the psalm, “Blow the trumpet at the beginning of the month, on the day of his notable solemnity,” and knows how to shout for joy to him in psalms, he worthily keeps the solemnity of Trumpets.

There is yet another festival, when those celebrating the feast afflict their souls and humble themselves before God. O festival! The affliction of the soul is called a feast day. For this, it says, is the day of propitiation, on the tenth day of the seventh month. See, then: if you wish to keep a feast day, if you wish God to rejoice over you, afflict your soul and humble it. Do not allow it to fulfil its desires, nor let it wander in wantonness; but as far as possible afflict it and humble it. Indeed the festival of the Passover and of Unleavened Bread is said to have the bread of affliction; and no one can keep the feast day unless he eats the bread of affliction and eats the Passover with bitterness. For “you shall eat,” it says, “unleavened bread with bitterness,” or bitter herbs. You hear, then, what the festivals of God are: they do not admit bodily sweetness; they want nothing slack, nothing voluptuous or luxurious, but demand affliction of the soul and bitterness and humility, because he who humbles himself will be exalted before God. This, then, the day of propitiation demands too. For when the soul has been afflicted and humbled in the sight of the Lord, then God becomes propitious to it again, and then he comes to it whom God set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood, Christ Jesus, its Lord and Redeemer.

Now let us see what the last feast day of God is, in which God rejoices in man. Tabernacles, it says. He rejoices, then, over you when he sees you dwelling in tents in this world, when he sees that you do not have your mind and purpose fixed and founded on the earth, nor desiring earthly things, nor counting the shadow of this life as your own and perpetual possession, but placed as if in passing, and hastening to that true homeland from which you came out, paradise, and saying: “I am a sojourner and a stranger, as all my fathers were.” For the fathers too dwelt in tents, and Abraham dwelt in huts, that is, in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. When, then, you are a sojourner and a stranger on earth, and your mind is not fixed and rooted in the desires of earthly things, but you are ready to pass on quickly, and ready always to stretch out to what is further, until you come to the land flowing with milk and honey and take the inheritance of the things to come: if, I say, God sees you placed in these things, he rejoices in you and keeps a feast day over you. These things indeed are in the present; but in the future, if you wish to consider how the feast days are kept, lift your senses a little, if you can, from the earth, and forget for a while these things which are before your face. Picture to yourself how heaven and earth pass away, and this whole fashion of the world passes, and a new heaven and a new earth are founded. Remove from your sight even the light of this sun, and give to that world which is to come the sevenfold light of the sun; or rather, according to the authority of Scripture, give it the Lord himself as its light. Set there the angels of glory standing by, set the virtues, powers, thrones, dominions, and every name of the most glorious heavenly powers, not only that which is named in the present age but also in the future. Among all these consider and conjecture how the feast days of the Lord can be kept: what festival there, what joys, what greatness of gladness! For as for the spiritual festivals of which we spoke above, even if they are great and true, especially when they are kept spiritually in the soul, yet they are in part, not in full. For just as the Apostle said that we know in part and we prophesy in part, so it follows that we keep the feast day in part. And so that you may know that these things are so, let us return to the words of Paul himself which he set down about feast days and new moons; and see how carefully he said: “Let no one, then,” he says, “judge you in food or in drink, or in part of a feast day.” Pay closer attention, then, to how he did not say “in a feast day,” but “in part of a feast day.” For placed in this world we celebrate the feast day in part and not in full. For we are interrupted, even against our will, by the burden of the flesh, we are struck by its desires, and pierced by cares and anxieties. For “the corruptible body,” as that most wise man says, “weighs down the soul and presses down the mind that thinks many things.” In part, then, the saints keep the feast day in this world, because they also know in part and prophesy in part. But when what is perfect has come, these things that are in part will be done away. For just as this knowledge which is in part gives way to perfect knowledge, and this prophecy which is in part gives way to perfect prophecy, so too this festival which is in part gives way to the perfect festival. For this world cannot hold what is perfect, where, as we said, the necessity of the body now suggests food, now drink, now sleep, now also stirs up whatever anxiety is necessary for the present life, all of which without doubt interrupt the continuity of God’s festival. But when that comes which is said of those who are restored to the holy places, if indeed we too merit to be of those who are to be restored, who will neither hunger, nor thirst, nor sleep, nor toil, but will be ever watchful, as the life of the angels is said to be ever watchful: when we merit to be restored to that order, then there will be the true and incorruptible festival, of which festival the prince and bridegroom and lord will be Jesus Christ our Saviour himself, to whom is the glory and the dominion for ages of ages. Amen.