Sermons 72–76

[On the same.] What I am now about to say with great trembling, what you are now about to hear with awe, or rather to call out with awe, the angels are astonished at, the powers dread, the highest heaven does not contain, the sun does not see, the earth does not sustain, the whole creation does not attain. What is a mortal breast before this? What is the weak mind of man before this? What the narrowness of human understanding? What the breath of the human voice? What the human tongue, soon to fall silent? When Paul had seen this invisibly, he disclosed it by not disclosing it, saying: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9). When Isaiah had begun to hear this, he doubted whether even faith in it could reach human beings, saying: “Lord, who has believed our report?” (Isa 53:1). When Jeremiah had conceived this by divine hearing, he could not bear the birth of heavenly thoughts, and cried: “My belly, my belly, I am in pain, and the thoughts of my heart are troubled” (Jer 4:19). Habakkuk was pleading this by the breath of the divine Spirit when he says: “I kept watch, and my belly trembled at the voice of the prayer of my lips; and trembling entered my bones, and beneath me my strength was troubled” (Hab 3:16). Lifted up by the power of God, he felt his own strength sink beneath him. It would take long to pursue this mystery of fear and to enumerate the examples of the saints; time does not allow me to linger long in this fear; the onrush of the heavenly birth cannot hold back those who are being born. So I speak, and I address you, still in the womb, with a penetrating voice; I forewarn you with provident exhortation, that before you see your mother you should call on your Father; that before your mother's caresses you should strive and hasten toward your Father's kingdom; that you should reach your Father's bread before you hang at your mother's breasts. Let neither a mother's claims nor the stages of age claim anything in you for themselves; but let everything in you answer to and run to meet the divine Father, the heavenly maker. “Our Father who are in heaven” (Matt 6:9). This is what I was afraid to say, this is what I trembled to utter, this is what the condition of their own servitude allowed none of the heavenly or earthly beings to suspect: that so great an exchange could suddenly take place between heaven and earth, between flesh and God, that God should be turned into man and man into God, the Lord into a servant and the servant into a son, and that there should come about, in an ineffable way, one everlasting kinship of divinity and humanity. And indeed the condescension of the deity toward us is so great that creation cannot know what it ought to marvel at most: that God lowered himself to our servitude, or that he carried us off to the dignity of his divinity. That is why, O man, he who is now inflamed with such great love for you exhorts you from heaven: that while you are still in the womb God adopts you as a son by your own voice; that he wants you not only to become free but to be born free; that for your sake he sets nature itself free, so that birth may impose no blemish, no stain of the old servitude. O blessed are you, to whom it is given to rule before being born, to reign before living, to reach the glory of God the Father before recognizing the stock of your own lowliness. Happy mother church, who looks on you as such! We marvel that she, while remaining a virgin, has borne you so, as such and so great. Of old this birth was signified by examples that went before. That is why Jacob wrestles with his brother in his mother's womb (Gen 25:22) and snatches the triumph beforehand. That is why in Tamar's womb the twins fight over the honour of the firstborn, delay the birth, and want to conquer before they see the light (Gen 38:27–30). That is why John leaps for joy and goes to meet his maker before he comes out of his mother's womb (Luke 1:41). And if human offspring thus serve as soldiers of God before they are born to their parents, before they live in the world, what wonder if the divine shoots of the church, God's own offspring, still in the womb, already confess that they are of heavenly stock? “Our Father who are in heaven.” Amazement rises: Christ, from the bosom of God the Father, calls on a mother and confesses her on earth; and man, from his mother's womb, calls on a Father and confesses him in heaven. “Our Father who are in heaven.” To what height, O man, has grace suddenly carried you? Where has the heavenly nature swept you, that, though still placed in flesh and on earth, you already disown flesh and earth by saying, “Our Father who are in heaven”? So let him who confesses and believes himself a son of so great a Father answer to his lineage by his life and to his Father by his conduct, and assert in mind and action what he has obtained as heavenly by nature. “Hallowed be your name.” We are reckoned by the name of him whose lineage we have begun to be; and so we ask that the hallowing of that name may continue in us, the honour and privilege of the name which the loftiness of so great a parent has so exalted. “Your kingdom come.” We do not ask it for him who has never lacked the kingdom, who rather is himself the kingdom and holds in himself the whole power of the kingdom; but he who wants us to come to the promised glory of the kingdom urges us to seek it with all our prayers; he wants us to long for it with our whole minds. For as rash as one who disputes about his lineage is, so slothful is one who does not rejoice, burn and pant as he reaches out and stretches toward the promised kingdom. “Your will be done, as in heaven so also on earth.” As in heaven, so also on earth: then everything is heaven, then the one mind of God moves all, then all are in Christ and Christ is in all, when all savour and do the will of God alone; then all are one, or rather all are one man, when the one Spirit of God lives in all. “Give us today our daily bread.” As in the psalm, “Blessed be the Lord day by day” (Ps 68:19), so here: “Give us today our daily bread.” By daily we mean continual; that bread is continual which came down from heaven: “I am the bread that came down from heaven” (John 6:41). This bread, then, belongs to perfect blessedness; today, that is, in the present, we already begin to live on the food of that bread, on whose perpetuity, which is what “daily” means, we shall feast in the future. “And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” From the breast of the one who prays the spring of pardon flows out and flows back as pardon: whatever love overflows and pours out on another, when one pardons oneself as much as one has pardoned another. “And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” A merciful man is strong enough, who contends with God in love, when he desires to be given as much as he has given and to be forgiven as much as he has forgiven. O man, let pardon always be in your breast, if you wish not to fear your crimes. “And lead us not into temptation.” These words need interpretation, because temptation goes before the devil and is his bitter servant; as long as we are held in this fragile body, we must pray that no entry be open to temptation in us and no access granted to the devil. “But deliver us from evil.” May the Lord our God himself deliver us from evil and lead us to every good, who lives and reigns as God now and always, and through infinite ages of ages. Amen.

[On the paschal feast.] Today's festival, dearest brothers, does not join old things to us, nor does it keep the flesh of the lamb until the morning; but while it shares the past with the present in solemn devotion and joins our Pasch to the returning Pasch, it weans the infancy of the new regeneration, because, according to the Apostle, “the old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor 5:17). The Lord's year is completed in its seasons but does not grow old; it runs round again in its circle for as long as it takes to bring us to the day of retribution. Today's paschal solemnity now takes from milk those whom it bore earlier, so that by feeding on more solid food they may be strengthened into the perfect man of Christ. We know from the account of sacred history that Abraham made a great feast and roused his whole household to joy when Isaac was weaned (Gen 21:8). If the offspring of old age, the only son of a barren woman, with dancing choirs, lyre and drum, and the whole harmony of the psaltery resounding, drew and moved the hearts of the whole household to joy, how much more fitting is it for us today to exult in spiritual hymns and songs, when the whole fruitfulness born of the Virgin is weaned? If Hannah, Sarah's fellow in barrenness, who moistened the dryness of her body and nature with the tears of her prayers for as long as offspring had been denied her through a long time, gave back Samuel, received as a divine gift, as a gift to God as soon as he was weaned, and heaped up her joy with sacrificial victims to the full measure of her deliverance (1 Sam 1), much more ought we to offer a sacrifice of praise, pay our vows, burn the incense of sweetness, and sacrifice victims to God the Father with all the fatness of burnt offerings, when the Virgin mother, having nourished and weaned as many children as there are stars in the sky, presents them to the Father throughout the whole world, so that the prophet's word may be fulfilled: “You will bless the crown of the year of your goodness, and your fields will be filled with abundance” (Ps 65:11). So let no one think that this saving mystery of our festival is idle, or suppose that we sew a new patch onto an old garment, when we join nothing of Jewish oldness to Christian newness, knowing, as the Apostle says, that a whole new creation has arisen for us in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). Rather, we raise divine knowledge to the advance of heavenly power, so that, while the newly born are taught at the same time what they owe, and those born earlier are instructed how much thanks they owe to God for their perfection, those who have just been born may be hung on the neck and be wholly occupied, with all love, beneath the breasts of mother church, may draw the food of innocence with tender throats, may practise stretching out their arms in holy work, may strive to steady their trembling steps on the course of faith. Are those already nourished to be left in such a way that they are not ruled by the father's care, the father's hand, the father's judgment, and so protected by the mother's counsel and the mother's faith that they may perceive and seize what brings salvation not only by human but also by divine prudence? So Jacob, very timid on his own but bold enough through his mother's counsel, went in to snatch his father's blessing, more as a mystery than as a deceiver (Gen 27). For he did not lie in claiming to be the firstborn, because the firstborn is the one whom heavenly grace begets, not mortal nature. He prefigured us under the goatskins: we who, that we may die to sin, at the urging of mother church put on the garment of the mortified body, and are fragrant with the continual fruits of confession and the abundance of the field's work, until, mocking Israel's blindness in a saving way, we seize the paternal blessing in the whole secret of faith, as the Apostle says: “Blindness has come upon Israel in part, until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in” (Rom 11:25).

[On the resurrection of Christ.] The toil of the vigils, dearest brothers, made us keep silent for a little while, and the weariness of fasting compelled it; and so today we render our sermon on the Lord's resurrection. If it is divine that Christ is born of a Virgin, how much more divine is it that Christ rises from the dead? What is divine, then, let it not be received with human hearing. “At the evening of the sabbath,” it says, “which was dawning toward the first day of the week” (Matt 28:1). An evening of the sabbath that dawns: the days of this world do not know this; the world's usage does not have it. Evening ends the day, it does not begin it; evening grows dark, it does not grow light; it does not turn into dawn, because it does not know the rising of the light. Evening, the mother of night, gives birth to the day; it changes its order when it recognizes its author; the mystery shines with newness; it longs to serve the Creator, not time. “At the evening of the sabbath which was dawning toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.” Late does the woman run to pardon, who ran early to guilt. In the evening she seeks Christ, she who knew that in the morning she had lost Adam. “Mary and the other Mary came to see the tomb.” She who had taken faithlessness from paradise hurries to take faith from the tomb; she strives to snatch life from death, who had snatched death from life. “Mary came.” This is the name of Christ's mother; so the mother came in name; the woman came, so that she might become the mother of the living who had become the mother of the dying, and that what is written might be fulfilled: “This is the mother of all the living” (Gen 3:20). “Mary and the other Mary came.” He did not say “they came” but “she came”: under one name two came, by a mystery, not by chance. “Mary and the other Mary came.” The same woman came, yet another; another, yet the same; so that the woman might be changed in life, not in name, in virtue, not in sex; and that she might become the messenger of the resurrection who had been the go-between of the fall and of ruin. “Mary came to see the tomb”: so that she whom the sight of the tree had deceived the sight of the tomb might restore, and she whom an enticing sight had laid low a saving sight might raise up. “Behold,” it says, “there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven.” The earth trembled, not because an angel came down from heaven, but because the Lord ascended from the underworld. “Behold, there was a great earthquake.” Chaos is moved, the depths of the earth leap apart, the earth trembles, the weights of the mountains tremble, the foundations of the world are shaken, Tartarus is seized, the underworld is brought to a halt; death is condemned, which, reaching for the guilty, ran into the judge; having ruled over servants, it blazed out against the Lord; raging against men, it leapt upon God. Rightly, then, the law of Tartarus perishes, the rights of the underworld are removed, the power of death is taken away; and, as the penalty for its rashness, the injury done to the judge has raised the dead. At last bodies are given back, man is made whole again, life is restored, and everything now rests on pardon, because the sentence soon passed over onto the author of life. “Behold, there was a great earthquake.” Now a great earthquake! Oh, if only then even a light whirlwind had thrown down the deadly tree! Oh, if only the smoke of a cloud had darkened that woman's sight! Oh, if only a black cloud had dimmed the look of the deadly fruit! Oh, if only the hand that touched what was forbidden had trembled! Oh, if only an unseasonable night had darkened the day of sin and taken away the laments of the world, the increase of death and the injury to the Creator! But allurements always serve vices, sweet things pander to sins, while harsh and strong things are friends to virtues. “For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven.” With Christ rising and death perishing, heavenly fellowship is restored to earthly beings; and the woman who had held deadly counsel with the devil now has life-giving converse with an angel. “For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and rolled back the stone.” He did not say “rolled” but “rolled back” the stone, which, rolled against the tomb, proved the death, and, rolled back, became the witness of the resurrection. Blessed the stone that was found worthy both to reveal and to veil Christ! Blessed, for it opens hearts no less than the tomb! Blessed, for it gives faith in the resurrection and a resurrection of faith, and testifies that the divine flesh has risen! Here the order of things is changed: here the tomb devours death, not the dead man; the house of death becomes a dwelling of life; a new kind of womb conceives a dead man and gives birth to a living one. “For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, approaching, rolled back the stone and sat upon it.” And what reason to sit had an angel, in whom there was no weariness? But he sat as a teacher of faith, as a master of the resurrection; he sat on the rock, so that the solidity of the seat might give firmness to believers. The angel was laying on the rock the foundations of the faith on which Christ was to found his church, who said: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matt 16:18). “His appearance,” it says, “was like lightning, and his clothing like snow” (Matt 28:3). For an angel's glory lightning is not enough; and what did clothing do for a heavenly nature? But by such splendour he represented the appearance and form of our resurrection, because those who rise through Christ are changed into the glory of Christ. “For fear of him the guards were terrified and became like dead men.” Wretched men, whom the fear of death strikes at the moment when the security of life is restored! But how could ministers of cruelty, executors of another's faithlessness, take confidence from heavenly things? They were besieging the tomb, blocking the doors against the resurrection, and keeping watch so that no life could enter and death could not perish: rightly the angel's coming struck and laid them low. Wretched mortality, always its own enemy, grieves to die and fights against being able to rise again. It would have been fitting to open the tomb and offer every facility for the rising, so that there might be a miracle from the deed, hope from the example, the reality from the one who returned, belief from his living. It is great madness for a man to refuse to believe what he desires to happen to himself. Let it be enough to have said this today about these guards; what our faith holds we shall say later, so that today may not run long, by the gift of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father, God for ages of ages. Amen.

[On the same.] As far as I have been away from you, so far has speech been away from me; but pray, brothers, that as God has given me back to you, so he may deign to give back and restore speech to me. You heard the evangelist say (Matt 28): “At the evening of the sabbath,” he says, “which dawns toward the first day of the week.” What does human understanding grasp here? What does human wisdom make of this? “Evening that dawns.” Evening ends the day, it does not begin it; it gives birth not to light but to darkness. But here the author of the elements changes the courses of the elements, so that in the Lord's resurrection you may perceive everything divine, nothing human. In short, as Christ rises, evening grows light for the faithful and day grows dark for the unfaithful; for the disciples night is changed into day, for the Jews day is turned and changed into night. “From the sixth hour,” it says, “darkness came over the whole earth until the ninth hour” (Luke 23:44), so that even the brightness of full noon was darkened and what is written was fulfilled: “The sun will set for him at noon” (Amos 8:9). It will set for them, that is, for the Jews; but for ours: “Night will be lit up like the day” (Ps 139:12). Evening, which always sinks into deep gloom, then stretched out and rose wholly into the light of Christ, and with all its splendour filled the hearts of all mortals as Christ rose from the underworld. “At the evening of the sabbath”: because the sabbath is illuminated through Christ, not abolished. “For he came not to abolish the law but to fulfil it” (Matt 5:17). It is lit up so that it may shine on the Lord's day, and that what was darkened in the synagogue by the Jews' obscuring of it may grow bright in the church. “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.” Women go before the apostles to this ministry, women who follow men in sex and the disciples in rank; but they do not thereby make the apostles seem slower, for they bring to the Lord's tomb not the forms of women but the type of the churches: Mary and Mary, another in such a way as to be the same, the same in such a way as to be another; O other Mary who is the same, Mary the mother of Christ. One name is doubled into two women, because here the church, coming from two peoples, is figured as one made of two peoples, that is, of Gentiles and Jews, because “the first will be last and the last first” (Matt 20:16). Mary came to the tomb, came to the womb of the resurrection, came to the birth of life, so that Christ, who had been begotten from the womb for the flesh, might be born again from the tomb for faith; and that the closed tomb might give back to everlasting life him whom closed virginity had brought forth into the present life. It is a mark of divinity to have left the virgin closed after giving birth; it is a mark of divinity to have come out with a body from a closed tomb. Mary and Mary came to see the tomb. You see that they came not to see the Lord but the tomb; nor were they seeking the living among the dead, for they believed that the Lord had already risen. “For an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, approaching, rolled back the stone.” He rolled back the stone not to give the Lord a way out as he left, but to show the world that the Lord had already risen; to give his fellow servants faith to believe, not to give the Lord help to rise. “He rolled back the stone.” It is rolled back toward faith, which had been rolled against the tomb toward faithlessness. “He rolled back the stone,” so that the very stone which had received the guard who kept death might become the inscription of life. Pray, brothers, that the angel may now come down and roll away all the hardness of our heart, open the closed places of our senses, and testify from our minds too that Christ has risen; because, as the heart in which Christ lives and reigns is heaven, so the breast in which Christ is still held dead and buried is a tomb. Let it be believed that Christ's death, real as it was, has passed away: Christ as man suffered, died and was buried; as God he is, lives, reigns, remains and abides. Hear the Apostle saying: “Even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer” (2 Cor 5:16). And: “The death he died to sin, he died once; but the life he lives, he lives to God” (Rom 6:10); that is, he lives as God. “And approaching, he rolled back the stone and sat upon it.” He sat to teach the resurrection, not to relieve weariness. The heavenly nature knows no weariness, knows no labour; but the stone became the vessel of the angel's seat, the chair of heavenly teaching, the school of life, since for the Jews it had been set at the door of death, for the service of ashes, for sad silence. “His appearance,” it says, “was like lightning, and his clothing like snow.” The brightness of the face is distinguished from the whiteness of the clothes, and the angel's face is compared to lightning and his clothing to snow, because lightning is from heaven, snow from the earth. Hear the prophet saying: “Praise the Lord from the earth, fire, hail, snow” (Ps 148:7–8). In the angel's face, then, the brightness of the heavenly nature is kept; in his clothing the grace of fellowship with humanity is figured; and the appearance of the angel who speaks is tempered, so that fleshly eyes might bear the gentle brightness of the clothes, and from the brightness of the face might tremble at the messenger and revere the one who sent him. “For fear of him the guards were terrified.” Why terrified? Because they were guarding out of zeal for cruelty, not out of loving service. One whom conscience abandons and guilt drives on is overthrown and cannot stand. That is why the angel strikes down the wicked and speaks to and consoles the devout. “Do not be afraid, you.” That is: let those others fear; let those who seek not fear; let the persecutors fear. “Do not be afraid, you; for I know that you are seeking Jesus who was crucified; he is not here.” That is: I came to instruct you, not to bring him out, who is both the maker of things and the one who raises himself. “He is not here, for he has risen, as he said.” You see that the angel came so that the servant might confirm by deeds what the Lord had foretold in words, and teach that the power of dying and of living lay with him who before his death had foretold his resurrection; for surely he who could foreknow it could also have avoided it; but because he could conquer, he disdained to avoid it, since the glory of the one rising buried the injury of the one dying. Of what follows, brothers, we shall treat in the next sermon, because the weariness of a journey still recent has kept us from prolonging and extending the sermon.

[On the same, and on Christ's second appearance, made to the women returning from the tomb.] In the previous sermon we said that Mary and the other Mary bore the figure of the church coming from two peoples; today we wish to prove this from what follows, if only you will lend us a kindly hearing. “The angel answered,” it says, “and said: Do not be afraid, you; for I know that you are seeking Jesus who was crucified; he is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord was laid” (Matt 28:5–6). The angel proclaims the name, speaks of the cross, tells of the passion, confesses the death, but at once, at once confesses the resurrection and the Lord. And if an angel, after such great sufferings, after the tomb, recognizes the Lord, speaks of his own servitude, and perceives that the whole injury of the passion has passed into the glory of the resurrection, why does man either judge God to have been diminished in the flesh, or think that his power failed in the passion, or believe that his lordship was consumed by servitude? Fittingly, then, he says “crucified” and shows the place where the Lord was laid, lest it be believed that another, and not the same one, had risen from the dead. And if the Lord returns in the same flesh, brings back his wounds, takes up again the very holes of the nails, and makes the very insults of his passion into testimonies of his body and signs of his resurrection, why does man think that he will return in another flesh, or not in his own? Or does the servant perhaps disdain his own flesh, when the Lord did not change ours? Accept, O man, that you will be yourself in your own flesh, lest you should not be yourself if you rise in another's flesh. The angel added, saying: “And go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen, and he goes before you into Galilee; there you will see him.” Here the angel sends not women but the church in two women; he sends one, so that by sending her he may spread her far and wide. Here the angel sends the bride to the bridegroom; and then, as they go, the Lord meets them and greets them, saying: “Hail.” He meets them, and does not terrify them with power but anticipates them with the ardour of charity; he does not disturb them with authority but greets them by the law of the bridegroom; he does not burden them with a master's right but honours them with the love of a spouse. He greets them: “Hail.” He himself had said to his disciples: “Greet no one on the road” (Luke 10:4); why then does he come running on the road as so festive a greeter? He does not wait to be recognized, does not seek to be understood, does not allow himself to be questioned, but goes wholly into greeting, goes fervently, and by a greeting himself releases his own command? He did it, he did it, because the force of love conquers and overcomes everything; and also because in the church Christ greets himself, for he has made her his own and has thus received her as his own heart, his own body, as the Apostle says: “He is the head of the body, the church” (Col 1:18). The matter itself shows clearly that in these women the full figure of the church begins, since Christ rebukes his disciples when they waver about the resurrection, strengthens them when they tremble, and scarcely calls them back to faith by showing his side and the holes of the nails and by taking food (Luke 24). So he rightly calls them children, little ones in faith, saying: “Children, have you any fish?” (John 21:5); and elsewhere he calls Mary herself, weeping as for a dead man, “woman,” and denies her leave to touch him (John 20). But these women he finds so perfect, so believing, so untroubled because of their sex, so running for the mystery, so seeking the Lord with the whole ardour of faith, that he gives himself to them to be held with such a greeting, saying, “Hail.” The angel had said, “For I know that you are seeking Jesus who was crucified,” and to those who sought him Christ answered, “Hail.” Elsewhere Mary is not even given leave to touch (John 20:17); here not only touching but full freedom to hold him is granted. “And they,” it says, “came up and took hold of his feet.” They hold Christ's feet who in the church hold the type of the gospel preaching and earn it by running; and so by faith they touch the footsteps of their Saviour that they reach the glory and come to the honour of the whole Godhead. But that woman rightly hears, “Do not touch me” (John 20:17), who weeps for the Lord on earth and seeks him dead in the tomb in such a way that she does not know that he reigns in heaven with the Father. “Do not touch me”: that is, do not serve with the touch of the flesh him whom you ought to reach with the touch of faith; do not presume to touch on earth as merely a man him whom you do not yet know how to adore as God in heaven. Let a woman's care cease, let a woman's anxiety stop; let a man's belief climb into your mind; let the breadth of your heart take in my ascension, so that in heaven you may enjoy the eternal blessedness of touching me, according to the prophet's word: “Blessed is the man whose help is from you, Lord; he has set ascents in his heart” (Ps 84:5). He does not touch Christ on earth who does not climb up to Christ in heaven by faith. That the same Mary, now placed on the summit of faith and exalted on the height of the church, touches Christ and holds him with all the affection of holiness, and now, cast down by the weakness of the flesh and the frailty of a woman, doubts and does not merit the touch of her maker, raises no difficulty: the one belongs to the figure, the other to the sex; the one is of divine grace, the other of human nature. For when we know divine things, it is God's gift; when we savour human things, we are blinded by ourselves. So blessed Peter, when he confesses Christ as the Son of God, knows him by the Father's revelation; when he denies Christ, he feels and suffers the blindness of the flesh (Matt 26). Meanwhile the Jews either buy their own crimes badly or sell others' worse, putting a price on sins, weighing and paying off offences with money, and pouring out in their crimes what they gathered with every crime. So they buy Judas, the betrayer of his Lord, and weigh out at a price the blood of the world's Redeemer; so they shut up in a purse the evidence of the opened tomb, to purchase with the money of crimes the crime of denying the resurrection. “They gave,” it says, “a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying: Say that his disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep; and if the governor hears of this, we will persuade him and keep you safe. And they took the money and did as they had been taught; and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.” Among the Jews; surely not among the Christians? Jew, what you obscured with gold in Judea has shone and gleamed with faith in the whole world: the disciples received Christ, they did not steal him; you bought faithlessness, but you did not steal the truth. Jew, Christ has risen; you have lost your money. “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matt 27:25). Jew, Christ lives; you have killed both yourself and your descendants.