Easter Song 0.1–1.337

Whoever you are, guest, who look for the Easter feast and have deigned to recline at our couches, put away your haughty brow, if you know yourself a friend, and do not look here for the work of an artful book: but, content with a modest table, come to its solemn meal and gladly satisfy your spirit rather than your appetite. Or if you are taken with the sweetness of grand things and, a lover of luxuries, prefer riches, feed at the elegant dinners of noble, learned men, whose manifold wealth cannot even be counted. There you will find whatever the sea nourishes to eat, whatever the earth produces, whatever flies to the stars. Waxen honey grows golden in jeweled baskets, and golden vessels shine with their own honeycombs. But we have picked from our poor garden a little vegetable, which a red earthenware dish serves up.

Since the pagan poets strive to parade their fictions in grand-sounding measures, and with tragic bellowing or with laughable Geta or any art of singing renew the cruel contagion of unspeakable deeds and sing the memorials of crimes, and, with ritual as their teacher, hand down a mass of lies on Nile papyrus: why should I, accustomed to make the odes of David's songs resound on ten strings, and to stand reverently in the holy choir and sing heavenly things in gentle words, keep silent about the bright miracles of Christ who brings salvation? For I can speak of things that are plain, and it delights me to confess the thundering Lord with my senses and my whole heart: he who gave senses and hearts, whom alone it befits that his handiwork should serve, who by everlasting right in the citadels of heaven has one power with the Father, equal splendor, a common summit, a shared height, equal honor, the same might, a kingdom without time, always the beginning, an unending scepter, a shared glory, like majesty. For this is the way of salvation, this leads firm steps to the gifts of Easter. This will be my song: turn your minds this way, all of you. Apply this help constantly to your wounded marrow, you into whom deadly evil creeps, into whom the Attic doctrine of Cecropian poison creeps, given over to vain cares; and, following instead the fragrance of the law that breathes life, leave the filth of the Athenian village.

Why, sons of Theseus, do you wander in the labyrinth's cave and roam the blind thresholds of Daedalus's house? Why do you still prefer the wild vine to the gentle grape, and, neglecting roses, gather the wild nard of the field? What good will it do to worship stones and bronze, and profane shrines, and condemn souls to dumb metals? Cease to dwell in the squalid acres of a dusty plain and sterile tracts, where the dry ground does not know how to bear fruit; and do not pluck from bloody earth livid poisons with deadly juices, condemned to the food of Tartarus: but enter the pleasant green places of ever-flowering groves and the blessed seats through the holy waters, where the seeds of life are quickened by divine waters, and, gladdened by the spring from above, the crop is cleansed, its thorns removed, so that it may be God's harvest and heap up a hundredfold fruit in the great granaries of the reward to come. Almighty eternal God, only hope of the world, who are present as the maker of heaven and founder of the earth, who forbid the wave-roaring storms of the sea, as the flood rises, to overwhelm the borders of the neighboring land, who fill the sun with rays and the moon with horns and measure out both lights for day and night, who count the stars, whose names you alone know, and their signs, powers, courses, places and times,

who formed the new earth into diverse bodies and gave living limbs to the inert soil, who restore man, perishing through the sweetness of the forbidden fruit, with better food, and by the drink of sacred blood drive out the poison poured in by the serpent, who, when the human race was buried by the rushing mass of the foaming flood, except those whom the ark had shut in, create it again from one stock, so that a mystic power, with this wood presiding, might show that what the sins of the flesh kill can be renewed through flowing waters, washing the whole world with one baptism: open to me the saving way that leads a few to the city by a narrow path, and grant the lamp of your word to shine for my feet, so that the path of life may bring me to the country folds, where the good Shepherd keeps his pleasant sheepfold, where the Lamb of a virgin ewe, going before with white fleece, and all the white flock enter. With you as guide the way is not hard; all nature is subject to your commands, and, its custom loosened, passes into opposite forms at your sovereign bidding. If you bid crops ripen amid frosts, winter brings out the reaper; if you wish new wine to run under the spring sun, in flowering fields the grimy vintner will tread the pressed grapes: and all seasons will obey your divine words.

Ancient faith is the proof, and the hoary origin of the earlier fathers is the witness, and the signs of your mighty works stand firm, not to be blotted out by any time through the ages. Of these I scarcely dare to touch on a few in bold narration, and, entering the open forest, I strive to reach a few branches. For though an iron voice should cry out, moving a hundred mouths, and a human breast pant out a hundred sounds, who will set forth them all, which neither the bright stars of heaven nor the thirsty sands equal in number? First, from the beginning of the world, Enoch by his living merits reached many ages through countless years, nature losing its measure: whom, born by the law of creation, the earth bore, but death marvels that he was taken away. Already old Sarah's wounded womb was withering, consumed by long decay, and the cold blood dying in her aged body denied offspring: when, her husband older still, the chilly depths of her belly swelled for a new birth, and the trembling mother, her cold bosom laden, brought forth the hope of a great nation and held her late-born son to her breasts. And the father offered him to God to be slain, but a sacred ram is slain at the very altar in place of the boy's throat.

O holy mind of the just man! Setting aside fatherly love, having more of piety, he made light of his son's wounds, embracing God's commands, and, by the help of figurative blood, teaches what is to come: that by the blood of Christ the dutiful Lamb would die for the human race. As Lot fled the chaos of Sodom, his wife, looking back, was changed into a statue of salt and remained stupefied, turned to her punishment: because no one who looks backward, while escaping the harmful dangers of the despised world, will be saved, nor should the ploughman, doing worthy work, turn his face back over his shoulders. Once a bush appeared, blazing with harmless fire, burning without being burnt, nor did its matter, joined to the heat, give fuel, nor did the living shrub feel the loss of scorching, but in the heat of a friendly tinder caressing flames licked its leafy wood. The gentle rod was quickened into a savage serpent, winding in curving coils, and, with triple-forked tongues, swelling its scaly neck, it swallowed the hostile snakes with its mouth and returned to the stiffness of its own wood. The blue waters of the divided sea lay open as a path, rolled back on either side, and the bared earth is stripped of its kindred waters, and a throng on foot enters the sea of an absent ocean, and on the deep floor the dry marble wondered at strangers' feet.

Nature changed its course, and the people, going through the midst of the sea, already bore a rudimentary baptism, with Christ as their leader; for the reading cries out: “The voice of the Lord is over many waters”; the voice, then, is the Word. Christ the Word is present, who, governing the harmonious testaments of the twofold law, opened up the old abyss, so that the teaching that followed might walk on level fields. Why should I tell how countless troops took the food of angels in heavenly bread, and how the people, fed from the clouds with the airy sweetness of nectar from above, had banquets in the rain and food in the showers? Again the thirsting army, in the scorched fields, where the places were too dry, where the land lay long sick for lack of water, where all hope of drinking and of living was gone, drew sudden waters from the parched rock, and a stream flowed from the barren crag, and the fasting stones poured out a new drink. Giving sacred gifts in these three things, then, Christ was the bread, Christ the rock, Christ in the waves. The she-ass, terrified by the angel's threats, addresses her rider in words, and with braying tongue a beast of the herd uttered human speech.

The sun stood still at Gibeon and fixed its panting light at the summit of mid-heaven, evening delayed, unused to reining in the day, nor did the moon run sluggish in its course, until the burning sword with plundering arms consumed the vast enemy, the sky conspiring: already then the serving stars saw Jesus to come, his name sent on before. Once ravens as ministers fed Elijah, bringing him meals without fail, and the bird given to plunder, that fills its hollow throat with greedy beak, handed over food untouched by hungry bites. Now good to Elijah, the bird that was once faithless to Noah washed away on land whatever wrong it did on the waters. But he, full of God, after he had given the world many miracles and made his friend the heir of his own power, worthy to succeed to his merits, carried up to the golden stars in a flaming four-horse chariot, where the light wheel presses no furrows in the air, pierced the starry path and, with flashing chariot seeking the regions on the right, led his triumph over a greater course and did not reach the goal of human life. How well the shining path of the flashing heaven suits Elijah! Gleaming in merit and in name, he was worthy of this help: for if in the Achaean tongue one letter is changed by its accent, it is “sun.”

Pitying the last days of a fading light, God once added thrice five years to the king, using his own right, and, closing the opened thresholds of death, turned his life from setting to rising. Jonah, falling from the stern, devoured as the sea-monster swallowed him, in the sea did not feel the waters, having a life-giving tomb so as not to die, and, safe in the beast's belly, was a deposit, not a prey, and over the vast sea came to unknown lands with a hostile oarsman. When, inspired by God, three men with one mind refused the Babylonian rites and underwent harsh destruction by the Chaldean law of the savage tyrant, whose rage had kindled his Persian anger hotter than his furnace, they are thrust into the midst of the fires, the pyre daring nothing, and, burning so with the ardor of their heart, they overcome the flames of the punishment for the image by the fire of their spirit. O how great is the glory of believers! By the flames of burning faith the flame of the furnace was put out. But fitting vengeance soon struck the merciless king. For because, in his madness, he departed from human kindness, he became the companion of cattle in the wild grasses, exchanging courtly banquets for the hay he grazed. Bent down, he drinks from the river, and passes seven seasons wandering, shaggy, through all the woods and mountains.

No less did the orders of the tyrant Darius rage, for see, the wrath of the raging king added crime to crime, and Daniel, glory of the Hebrews, innocent, is sentenced to be food for hungry beasts. But the beast, made gentle toward the just man, so as not to harm the holy limbs, began to love its hunger; its rage, softened, laid aside its fury, and wrath rested in the savage jaws, and fierce lions learned to keep their prey safe. Tell me, Nature, after such things where are your laws? Who is it that so often took away your rights? Who ordered Tartarus not to know the man carried away, and made the barren old woman fruitful for her husband, ordered a beast to come of its own accord to the sacred altar, transformed a woman's limbs into an image of salt, granted that branches enduring fire should not burn, turned a rod into a snake, dried a path through the sea, rained manna wondrously from the clouds, brought forth waters from the depths of a rock, forced a four-footed beast to speak in plain words, held back the rushing hours, suspending the elements, gave a man to be fed by birds and carried him to heaven on flashing horses, added three lustra to a man already weighed down by death, founded help in shipwreck in the mouth of a robber, kept the pious safe under dew in a blazing furnace, fed a king in the pastures like a shaggy beast, and ordered the jaws of lions, though hunger goaded them, not to know fury?

Surely the Creator, whose word is whatever is seen or whatever lies hidden, and the whole machine of things: all his work serves him and follows the command of the one who orders it, wherever his decree draws it by his nod. Alas, wretched are those who worship vain things, who with perverse hearts carve religious images for themselves, and flee their own maker and revere what they have made! What madness is this? What great insanity mocks men's minds, that a grown man should adore as a suppliant a bird, a foul bull, a twisted serpent, and a half-human dog? But others, driven by blinded minds, affirm that the sun is the father of things, because it is seen duly to pour bright light on the clear lands and to traverse the whole sky: though it is plain from these motions that the unstable fire with its rapid running to and fro is a servant, not God, which in fixed order now rises, now, sent down to the western shores, shares its turns with night. Nor is it always everywhere, nor was it a light abiding at the origin of the world, when the new world had two days without a sun. So too they bring vows to the moon, which they see grow and wane, and sacrifice to stars that are put to flight by light. This one worships water, that one the hearth; but they dare not join hostile things in their rites, lest in a close contest the stronger pyre dry up the scanty waters, or the slender fires die by the strong springs.

Another places altars at the roots of trees, sets out feasts and tearfully begs the branches to govern his children and dear home and beloved fields, the faithfulness of his marriage, his servants and his property. Man of wood, you ask wood; you seem to cry out to the deaf; you seek answers from the dumb; and they govern the rights of houses in this way: if, cut down by plied axes, they hold up the lofty roof of the overhanging house, or, put under the hearth, they serve the meals to be eaten. Some venerate vegetables, and through soft gardens water their dry deities, and by this art seem to be truly worshippers of transplanted gods. I am ashamed to tell more, and it is wrong in a holy song even to condemn at length, lest I burn soft lilies with briars, or lest through the violet beds of the purple field the thistle and the thorn rise with their sharp spines. Enough now have we laughed at the monsters that human errors added, or rather wept at such acts. Now it pleases me to go the way I began, and, climbing the high mountain, to make my steps firm; let us hasten to the city, the help of liberty, where the radiant royal hall flashes with tawny domes, where what is worthy is given to the one who asks, sure hope awaits the one who seeks, and, the bars removed, the doors are opened to the heart that knocks.

This is that stone, the rejected one, which the corner bears at its head and which offers wonders to our eyes: whose burden is light, whose yoke is sweet to bear. Through the miracles of the old law, set out in order, we have told before, with the Holy Spirit acting together with them, what the Father accomplished with the allied power of the Son. Through the miracles of the new law, set out in order, we will also tell, with the Holy Spirit acting together with them, what the Son accomplished with the allied power of the Father, so that the one form of the godhead, abiding forever, may make the simple threefold and make the threefold simple. This is the true faith; unhappy Arius scorned to hold this salvation, who, striving to bend the straight road through crooked byways, slipped into a black pit and fell headlong, and, sunk, seeks the depths of the foul abyss: as empty of sense as, at the time of his just punishment, he was left empty in belly too, his bowels poured out. Madman, who modeled the inimitable rights of the eternal Parent on the steps of perishable honors! For among men the law of the flesh holds a son less than his father, since the father himself was before the son of a parent, and soon he who is now a son will come to be a father: so through every generation of descendants a new offspring goes on, and grandfathers of grandfathers are counted.

But the Lord, Word, Power, Wisdom, Christ, sharing all that is the Father's, light from light, the Only from the Only, who has nothing less than the Father and nothing by which to grow, begotten indeed, not created: he is the beginning. For as he is held glorious, abiding in the Begetter, so the Begetter too abides glorious in him, and the head of all things is one God everywhere. Not that he who is the highest Father is also this Son, but that what the highest Father is, the Son is also. So he says himself, teaching: “I in the Father and the Father in me.” And again: “I and the Father are one.” Arius ought to learn “one,” and Sabellius must confess “are.” The latter does not embrace the threefold faith, the former not the one: both equal in error, though following opposite ways. So men accustomed to produce various sects attack their own sayings, men who show their arms thrust out from bare shoulders, taught to hand down nothing but clever only at disputing, whose prudence lies foolish, because the wisdom of the world is vain before God. This one talks too much, that one is silent; this one walks, that one stands; one loves weeping, another a curling guffaw: and in different ways the madness is equal in all. Meanwhile, as we duly lighten the way with speech and hope and faith accompany my steps to the heights, at last, more pleasantly, we reach the highest citadel.

See, the banners hallowed by the sign of the cross flash, see, the king's holy camp gleams, the master's trumpet calls, his gate stands open to his soldiers: let whoever serves enter; the eternal door calls you, and that door is Christ. You will take the golden rewards of eternal life, you who bear the arms of the Lord with all your strength and on whose foreheads the glory is fixed. I bear the glory and the arms and remain, good King, the last part of your army. Here grant me a home of my own; within the walls of this city grant me a tiny house, so that I may deserve as your resident to dwell in the holy places and to be enrolled for ever as the last citizen on the white roll of the blessed order. I ask great things indeed, but you know how to give great things, you who are offended more by whoever grows lukewarm in hope. Christ, favor my prayers, you who, wishing to give life to the world lying in death, once came from heaven to seek earthly things, deigning to take human form, so bearing what was another's that you could not leave what was yours. Matthew, telling of this, fills out the man in general terms, Mark roars like the lofty voice of a lion through the deserts, Luke holds the rights of priesthood with the face of a bullock, John, flying like an eagle, seeks the stars with the Word. These four chiefs, singing you with one voice, are scattered into the wide world like as many seasons. So too the twelvefold summit of apostolic honor always shines in its number, imitating the months and the hours, so that the whole year may serve you in all things. From here, then, recalling the beginnings of the old death, I will hasten to new life, and, sowing tears, reap lasting joys: for we who weep in Adam, sending out seeds, will soon all exult, carrying our sheaves as Christ comes.