Sermons 77–80

[On the resurrection of Christ.] It is a full and perfect sign of devotion that in the time of the passion the whole creation suffers with its creator. What flesh did not tremble when the earth trembled, what mind did not grow numb, what intelligence did not fail when the sun set before its time and the light fled? So, brothers, our hearts too lay down then; our understanding died with him; our speech was buried with its author, so that it might now be raised with him to his whole glory. This was the cause of my silence; this was the devout delay of my debt. Nor is it surprising, brothers, if my speech, with foresight and with all the service of affection, followed its giver even to the underworld, because without him I had nothing to pay you, such great creditors. But if some greedy and eager collector complains of the lateness of the payment, let him stop bringing the charge of delay against us, because my rich Lord increases and repays the interest itself many times over. So let the generous kindness of the Gospel reading now release us, whom the necessity of office has led into and bound to so great a debt. “At the evening of the sabbath,” it says, “which dawns toward the first day of the week.” In the Lord's rising not only was the law of human nature overturned, but the very order of creation was remarkably changed. “At the evening of the sabbath which dawns.” See, with the Lord rising, the evening does not grow dark but grows light, and what used to be the beginning of night becomes the beginning of light. “At the evening of the sabbath which dawns toward the first day of the week” (Matt 28:1). As mortality is carried over into immortality, corruption into incorruption, flesh into God, so darkness is carried over into light; so that night itself may rejoice that it has not perished but been changed, since it failed in its darkness rather than in its time and more happily lost the intervals and turns of its servitude, so that it might flow forth and break out into the freedom of everlasting light, as the prophet says: “And night is my illumination in my delights” (Ps 139:11). “Evening which dawns toward the first day of the week.” The sabbath rejoices that it has been made second, it which by the command of the law lay sluggish in idleness; losing its primacy to the Lord's day, it is wonderfully roused to the works of divine power, it which the inertia of Jewish observance had made a stranger to saving power, as the Lord says: “Is it not lawful on the sabbath to give care to the sick, help to the afflicted, sight to the blind, life to the dead?” (Luke 6:9). By interpreting it in this way they had wretchedly bound the day of the sabbath, which God had assigned to the study of the holy law, to the servitude of the belly alone. “At the evening of the sabbath which dawns toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came and the other Mary.” One came by name, who is now read as another in a different person. “Mary came and the other Mary”: so that the unity of the name might figure one woman in two, and the difference of persons might show the woman changed. For it says “came,” not “they came,” and while saying “the other” it designates the same woman in both by a mystical utterance, to show that one came before faith and another would return after faith. The woman comes, but Mary returns; she comes who brought death, she returns who gave birth to life; she comes who led Adam down to the underworld, she returns who received Christ back from the underworld. “Mary came and the other Mary.” Why? To see the tomb, not to seek Christ; only to see the tomb, as the inscription of her guilt, as the sad record of her crime, the deadly bargain of her presumption with the devil and of her gain, so that she might recover faith from the very place where she bore the perpetual reproach of her transgression. “And behold, there was a great earthquake.” If the earth trembled so when the Lord rose for the pardon of his own, how will it tremble when he rises for the punishment of the guilty, as the prophet says: “The earth trembled and was still, when God arose to judgment” (Ps 76:8–9)? And the earth that could not bear the presence of a fellow servant, that is, an angel, how will it bear God as judge? See, human salvation is restored along the same lines along which it had perished. The woman, first to faithlessness, is first brought to faith; she runs first to the slayer of death who first ran to the author of death; she first hears from an angel who first talked with the devil. “An angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, approaching, rolled back the stone and sat upon it.” Not to bring about the resurrection by such an act, but to reveal it, as the Lord says: “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again” (John 10:18). For us he opens what was closed, for us he unbars what was hidden; he does not bring out to the light his author, who was no longer in the tomb, but he leads to faith in the resurrection his fellow servants, who were placed in the darkness of doubt, as he himself attests when he says: “He is not here; he has risen.” “He rolled back the stone and sat upon it.” Why not “rolled” but “rolled back”? So that the angel might roll back toward faith and salvation the stone which the faithlessness of the Pharisees had rolled toward offence and stumbling, as the prophet says: “Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence” (Isa 8:14; 28:16; Rom 9:33). So the stone is rolled back to roll away death, the stone which, rolled against the tomb, had shut in life, as Scripture says: “You will see your life hanging before your eyes, and you will not believe” (Deut 28:66). “And he sat upon it,” not refreshing weariness but showing in this way that he was the guardian of the sacred and life-giving tomb; and by this sign of his sitting the minister of the heavenly office declared that death was destroyed, and that he who suffered is God, God who was received within the narrow bounds of our body, God whom, seated in heavenly garb, he attested as his witness. And what more, brothers? He sits, because an angel never leaves that so venerable tomb. “For fear of him the guards were terrified and became like dead men.” The terror that lays low the guilty soon returns upon those conscious of guilt. So, so, when the innocent rise, terror and death will take possession of the unjust and the wicked. “His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing like snow.” What does clothing do where there is no nakedness? What use is a garment where there is no need of covering? But the angel, brothers, thus prefigures our garb, our form, our likeness in the resurrection, where man is restored with the very brightness of his body, as the Lord says: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt 13:43). “The angel answered and said to the women: Do not be afraid, you; for I know that you are seeking Jesus who was crucified.” They were still seeking one crucified and dead, those whose faith the fierce storm of the passion had disturbed, and whom the weight of temptation had so bowed down that they were still seeking the Lord of heaven in the tomb. “He is not here”: with respect to his having been in a place; but he is here, inasmuch as he is everywhere and is not enclosed by the capacity of any place. “Come, see the place where the Lord was laid.” The angel calls the women to see, so that the place of the sacred body might cleanse the eyes which the sight of the forbidden tree had stained when the devil beguiled them. They enter the tomb, so that, buried with the Lord, they might rise to the full salvation of faith: “If we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection” (Rom 6:5). “Go, tell his disciples.” Return to the man, woman, now healed, and persuade him to faith, you who persuaded him to faithlessness; bring to the man the sign of the Lord's resurrection, you to whom he earlier owed the counsel of temptation and ruin.

[On the seventh appearance of Christ, made to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias.] After that storm of the Lord's passion, unknown on earth, dreadful to the heavens, unheard of through the ages, unbearable to the underworld, the Lord came to the sea and found his disciples tossing in the darkness of night. For when the sun fled, what could remain of the moon's splendour, or of the stars, to comfort the night? There was one darkness over the earth, a confused gloom, which blinded not only the sight of the body but the very gaze of the mind, and did not allow those who were sailing to seek or regain the shore of faith, the harbour of salvation. “When morning had come,” says the evangelist, “Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus” (John 21:4). The whole creation had fled from the injury done to its Creator; the world strove to avoid the death of its Lord, knowing that vengeance reaches the whole house in which the master has been killed by the crime of his servants. That is why the earth trembled as its foundations deserted it; the sun fled so as not to see; the day withdrew so as not to be present; the rocks, because by nature they could not depart, were split by a new wound, accusing so great a crime by sound, since they could not by voice; the underworld, when it saw the judge himself penetrate to it, was conquered and, wailing, lost those it held. That is why souls restored to their bodies announced to the living that the dead, whom the world had thought perished, would rise. So when the whole fabric of the world was tossing thus in confused order and believed itself rolled back by its author's death into the primordial darkness and ancient chaos, suddenly by the light of his resurrection the Lord brings back the day and re-forms the whole world into its former body, so that the world he had seen suffering with him in this way he might raise with him to his glory, as the evangelist says: “When morning had come”: that is, when the night of the Lord's passion was past, “Jesus stood on the shore”: to call all things back to their ancient boundary, make firm what was wavering, restrain what was tossed, settle what was disturbed, and by his standing establish the very foundations of the world, which had been so shaken, so that the world, which had fled from the injury done to its author, might soon run back to its author's service. “When morning had come, Jesus stood on the shore”: above all to bring the church, in which the disciples were then being tossed by the waves of the sea, back to the safe anchorage of its faith. In short, because he had found them destitute of the strength of faith and quite cast down from manly vigour, he rebukes them by calling them children, when he says: “Children, have you any fish?” For Peter was there, who had denied (Matt 26); Thomas, who had doubted (John 20); John, who had fled (Mark 14). So he addresses them not as the bravest soldiers but as timid children; and those whom he had not yet found fit for battle he invites, as tender ones, to table, saying: “Children, have you anything to eat?” so that kindness might call them back to grace, bread to confidence, food to faith; for they would not believe that the body had risen unless they saw him eat in the whole manner of a man. That is why the very fullness of all things asks for food; the bread himself eats, because he hungers not for food but always for the love of his own. “Children, have you anything to eat? They answered him: No.” And what did they have, who did not have Christ, though he was already set beside them, who did not yet see with their eyes the Lord standing before them? “For the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. He said to them: Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find.” He calls back to the right those whom the whirlwind of the passion had driven and pushed back to the left. “They cast it,” it says, “and could not haul it in for the number of fish.” They had cast on the right, they had cast on the manly side, but like children they were not yet able to haul it in; yet they perceived from the very weight, they perceived that the fish had come at the command of the one who ordered it and had not fallen into the catch of human skill. “And that disciple whom Jesus loved said: It is the Lord.” The one who is loved sees first, because the eye of love always looks more sharply, and the one who loves always perceives more keenly. “When Peter heard.” What had so slowed Peter's mind that he heard of the Lord from another, he who used to announce it to the rest? Where is that singular confession of his, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16)? Where is it? It had fled in the house of Caiaphas, the chief of the Jews; he who readily heard the voice of a whispering maidservant was slower to see his Lord (Matt 26). “When he heard,” it says, “that it was the Lord, he girded his tunic about him, for he was naked” (John 21:7). A wonder, brothers! When the Lord was seized, John threw away his linen cloth, and Peter was found naked: for flight covered John, while denial stripped Peter in this way. A wonder, brothers, a true wonder: he who was stripped in the boat plunges clothed into the sea; because innocence is never naked, and guilt always flees to a covering. Indeed, like Adam (Gen 3), so now Peter after his fault is eager to cover his nakedness, both of whom before their fault had surely been clothed in holy nakedness. “He girded his tunic about him and threw himself into the sea”: so that the sea might wash away what the denial had so soiled. “He threw himself into the sea”: so that he who had received the primacy in rank might be first in returning. “And he girded his tunic about him,” he who was to be girded by the passion of martyrdom, as the Lord says: “Another will gird you and lead you where you do not wish” (John 21:18). “But the other disciples came in the boat, for they were not far from land, but about two hundred cubits, dragging the net of fish.” The others arrive by boat and drag the catch of fish, so that by faithful labour they may bring with them to the Lord the church tossed by the storms of the world, and those whom they snatch with the gospel net to the light above and lift from the deep. “They were not far,” it says, “from land.” They were not far from the land of the living, those whom the end of present things had already brought near to things to come. “But about two hundred cubits.” He who joins the life and salvation of two peoples doubles the number one hundred, from Jews and Gentiles. The remaining part of the reading we shall treat in the next sermon, with the Lord's help.

[On the resurrection of Christ.] Since we have already run through the readings of Matthew and Mark on the Lord's resurrection, let us now inquire what most blessed Luke has thundered on it. “On the first day of the week,” it says, “very early in the morning, the women came to the tomb, bringing the spices they had prepared” (Luke 24:1). We have often said that what was done around Christ's resurrection was done as a pattern of our resurrection; that is why the evangelists set out the course of Christ's deeds in language more mystical than new. “On the one day of the week,” it says. Well said, “one,” because the day of resurrection knows no second; mother of eternal light, it does not know the time of night; the perpetual day shines perpetually; the light of those who rise cannot die; the light that destroys night does not know how to be extinguished. “They came,” it says, “to the tomb, bringing the spices they had prepared; and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, and going in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.” Why is it that those who had earlier fled from the tomb now boldly return to the sepulchre, return fearless to the fearful corpse, confidently enter the gloom of the tomb, and, not finding the Lord, seek him steadfastly and linger more steadfastly still, without dreading the night added to the tomb, which by producing darkness adds fear? Brothers, woman was the cause of evil, the author of sin, the way of death, the inscription of the tomb, the door of hell, the whole necessity of lament; for this reason women are born to tears, are bound over to grief, are handed over to groans, and are as strong in lamenting as they are found weak in strength; and as unprepared as they are for labours, so prepared are they for tears. That is why they conquer arms with tears, bend kingdoms with weeping, and break all the strength of men with laments. It is no wonder, then, if for tears, for the funeral, for the tomb, for service to the Lord's body, women here appear more ardent than the apostles; where the woman runs first to tears who ran first to the fall, goes ahead to the tomb who went ahead to death, becomes the messenger of the resurrection who was the interpreter of death; and she who had handed the man the message of so great a destruction herself hands men the news of great salvation, to make up by the message of faith for what she took away by the message of faithlessness. This is not a reversed order but a mystical one; the apostles are not placed after the women but are kept for greater things. The women undertake the service of Christ, the apostles undertake the sufferings of Christ; they carry spices, these scourges; they enter the tomb, these prison; they hurry to service, these fly to chains; they pour oil, these pour out blood; they are stunned at death, these undergo deaths. And what more? They stay at home, these go to the battle lines, so that as devoted soldiers they may prove faith in adversity, virtue in labours, patience in injuries, death in dangers, endurance in wounds, devotion in punishments, constancy in the tearing of their flesh. So women bring tears for Christ; the apostles, with the devil overcome and the enemies defeated, bring Christ both victory and triumph. But let no one condemn severely the report that the apostles either did not believe the women who announced that the Lord had risen or judged it nonsense (Luke 24:11). He doubts deeply who believes more deeply; he cannot be deceived who is not quick to listen; very sluggish is he who after an example is found incautious; a raw soldier rushes to the battle line who does not know the cause of the war and is ignorant of the warrior's strength; it is skill, not sloth, when the veteran soldier advances slowly. So the new-made Adam fell quickly when he believed quickly, and by readily giving ear to the woman's message he bound himself and his descendants to the worst enemy; but the veteran Peter does not readily listen to a woman, believes the women's message slowly, and deliberates like a veteran so as not to rush in like a boy. Then, when two of the disciples, who after the resurrection were found worthy to have Christ as their companion on the road, returned and announced that they had seen the Lord, the apostles judge what they hear to be not nonsense but manly; they give ear, fix their gaze, open their eyes, lay open their hearts, and so commit to their minds what is said that after the heat of hesitation they thirstily drink the hearing of faith from the river which their colleagues' tongue poured out. As cold drinks quench and cool the heat of thirst, so the mind's hearing becomes happier after grief. Brothers, who can grasp the reasons for the Lord's birth? Who is worthy to assess the business of the Lord's resurrection? No one will be able to think, grasp or estimate these things unless he has received it from God himself: that the Creator of things is created by a woman's childbearing; that the Lord of the world is seen in human servitude; that the shepherd of all needs feeding; that he who acquits everyone is handed over to the guilty; that the life of the world is punished; that the raiser of the dead dies; that he who encloses all things is enclosed in a tomb; that the Lord of those above is found in the underworld. Whoever can grasp these things, judging deeply, does not wonder at the apostles' hesitations, tremblings, fears, flights and hidings. So, brothers, let us, who have not believed even until now, not wonder that the apostles doubt and receive such great things so slowly and with such hesitation of belief; but let us pray that we may be worthy to perceive as much of these things as he grants, who gives man to perceive divine things. What remains of the course of the reading we shall examine, with God's help, in the next sermon.

[On the resurrection of Christ and his second appearance, made to the women returning from the tomb.] Since in the last sermon we touched on the first part of the reading, today let us hear what follows. “The angel,” it says, “answered and said to the women: 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). Do you think that the absence of Peter, of John, of all the disciples is being reproached and their sloth rebuked, because the women first, alone, wakeful, meet the rising Christ so ardently; that even the male portion is censured, since womanly weakness runs ahead to the glory of the resurrection? Far from it, brothers. This is design, not chance; mystery, not happenstance; order, not fault: for here woman follows man, she does not precede him, since man rises in Christ. So understand that Peter yielded not to women but to Christ; not to a maidservant but to the Lord; to the sacrament, not to sleep; to order, not to fear. Indeed, the man was already in Christ when the angel came to the women, so that as much as the Lord surpasses the angel, so much might the man precede the woman in honour. “Do not be afraid, you.” Because love possesses the good, dread the wicked; fear terrifies the impious, affection consoles the devout. “Do not be afraid, you.” That is to say: let the Jew who handed him over fear, and Pilate who sentenced him, the soldier who mocked him, the impiety that crucified him, the cruelty that offered him bitter cups, the savagery that besieged the buried, the faithlessness that bought a lie and sold faith, the inhumanity that grieves that its Lord has risen but does not grieve that it killed him. But you ought to rejoice, not to fear, because he whom you sought dead has risen; he whom you mourned as slain lives. “For I know that you are seeking Jesus who was crucified.” That is: Why do you seek the living with the dead? Why do you seek life in the tomb? Rather go to meet the living one, and no longer run to the service of one who died. “I know that you are seeking Jesus who was crucified; he is not here.” The angel said this because he opened the tomb not so that Christ might come out of it, for he was no longer there, but to show that Christ was no longer there. “He has risen, as he said.” A twofold power: both to return from the dead and to foreknow the future. “Come, see the place where the Lord was laid.” Come, women, come, see where you laid Adam, where you buried man, where by your counsel you thrust the man down, by which you caused the Lord to lie in this way for his very servants; and understand that the greatness of pardon toward you is as great as the greatness of the injury done to the Lord. “Come, see the place where the Lord was laid.” Angelic power confesses that the one who was crucified is Lord; and does human weakness debate whether the one who rises is Lord? Christ took on human sufferings in such a way as not to lose anything that belongs to divinity. “And go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen; and behold, he goes before you into Galilee; there you will see him.” Nor are the apostles placed after the women; but the woman is absolved of guilt while she carries the news of life, the news of the resurrection, she who had carried the news of death and ruin. “And they went out quickly,” it says, “from the tomb with fear and great joy.” The women enter the tomb to become sharers in the burial and partners in the passion; they go out of the tomb so that they might rise by faith before they rose in the flesh. “Going out with fear and great joy.” And where is “Do not be afraid”? Fear was not taken away but changed; fear had departed as regards guilt but remained as regards service; the fear of guilt is bad, the fear of reverence is good. Having lost Adam once he was given, they feared to lose him once restored. “With fear and great joy.” It is written: “Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice in him with trembling” (Ps 2:11). “With fear and great joy.” Because “the fear of the Lord is holy, enduring for ever and ever” (Ps 19:9). He remains in holiness, then, who remains in the fear of God. “They were running to tell his disciples; and behold, Jesus met them, saying: Hail.” Christ meets those who run faithfully, so that they might recognize by sight what they had believed by faith, and so that his presence might strengthen those whom hearing still left trembling. “Jesus met them, saying: Hail.” He meets them as Lord, greets them as a parent; he encourages them with affection and keeps them in fear; he greets them so that they may serve out of love, not flee out of fear. “And they came up and took hold of his feet.” He who allowed himself to be seized willed to be held. “They came up and took hold of his feet”: so that they might know that the man is in the head of Christ and they are in the feet of Christ, and that through Christ it is given them to follow the man, not to go before him. “He said to them: Do not be afraid.” What the angel had said the Lord says too, so that those whom the angel had strengthened Christ might make stronger. “But go, tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” Rising from the dead, Christ took up the man again; he did not abandon him. So he calls brothers those whom he made kin of his own body; he calls brothers those whom he adopted as sons of his Father; he calls brothers those whom, as a kindly heir, he made co-heirs with himself. But hear how impiety rises when Christ rises: “Behold, some of the guards came into the city and told the chief priests all that had happened. And they assembled with the elders, took counsel, and gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying: Say that his disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep.” Those who give money buy things not to lose them but to keep them; the Jews, when Judas sold, bought so as to destroy Christ; now they poured out a large sum of money so as to lose themselves, the law, the temple and their homeland. Men of blood and deceit set a price on falsehood, draw up the deed of faithlessness, and in cruel commerce traffic in fraud against faith and robbery of the truth; they corrupt the soldiers so that they may call theft what was the secret of the resurrection: “His disciples came by night and stole him.” Not content with having killed the master, they plot how they can destroy the disciples; they turn the master's power into the disciples' crime. “His disciples came by night and stole him.” Plainly the soldiers lost him and the Jews destroyed him; but the disciples took up their master not by theft but by faith, by virtue, not fraud, by holiness, not crime, living, not dead. That is why they are sent to Galilee to be able to see him, because God is not seen in the place of faithlessness. And as for his saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18), he declares that he gave it to himself in himself, as the Apostle proves when he says: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor 5:19). The Son of God conferred on the son of the Virgin, God on the man, the divinity on the flesh, what he always possessed with the Father and the Spirit. And so he says: “Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” so that one and the same power might re-create for salvation all the nations which it had created for life. “And behold,” he says, “I am with you all days until the end of the age.” He is always with us who is always with the Father, and he will come to us through what he took from us. And what more, brothers? That he is born, that he suffers, that he rises, that he receives: this is not, it is not, from any necessity of his own; it is for our salvation.