Easter Song 2.1–2.279

The most savage serpent had driven the first-born man from his flowering home, and by the allurements of a sweet taste had brought bitter death to the wretch. Nor did the presumptuous man alone feel the deserved anger, lying under the law of mortality, but from him the whole human race together. Alas, harmful wife! Are you the more harmful, wife, or that treacherous dragon? That dragon is treacherous, but you too are a harmful wife. O grief! The two had been eternal. After the race began to grow, it perished and took its ruin from its seed. What good did many days do, what good was it in that age to see beyond nine hundred happy years, to behold the tenth generation of aged descendants and no longer to know one's own offspring: when the irreparable lot of the last hour, conquered in its final courses, would come, however late, and short life over a long age would grieve that length is nothing when it has an end? Nor would hope bring back help, and the tomb of the first earth-born man would swallow his descendants in a blind balance: had not that kind Sower, ready to forgive faults, slow to repay them, lest his own handiwork perish, and the image that stood living, like God, should become unlike him through death, in pity restored the work that could be pardoned, and forbidden the children's teeth to be set on edge by the sour fruit the fathers ate, and, ever appeased, granted to his own that whence guilt gave death, from there kindness might give salvation; and, as a soft rose rises from sharp thorns, having nothing that wounds, and outshines its mother in beauty:

so, as holy Mary came from Eve's stock, a new virgin would atone for the crime of the ancient virgin: so that, since our former nature lay corrupted under the dominion of death, man might be reborn as Christ is born, and lay aside the stain of the old flesh. After the aged prophets had told of these things to come, the angel sang to untouched Mary of what was now at hand: and faith followed his word, and soon a starry burden fills the girl's womb, and the Creator of things came under the law of birth. The unwed virgin is amazed at her swelling womb, and rejoices that she will bear her own Parent. And now, nine months gone, from the threshold of the tenth month the hallowed day was shining, when, the virgin being with child, he fulfilled the promised work: the Word made flesh, willing to dwell among us. Then the greatest infant, preserving untouched the inner parts of his temple, left the way unharmed as he came out: for the virgin the birth itself stands as witness, entering when it was closed and leaving it closed. What new light for the world, what grace for the whole of heaven? What was that radiance when Christ came forth from Mary's womb with new splendor? Like the very bridegroom rejoicing as he comes from his beautiful chamber, fair in lovely form above the sons of men, from whose radiant figure a winning grace is poured upon his beautiful lips.

O ready kindness! Lest the servile yoke should hold us with sin reigning, the highest Lord bore the limbs of a servant, and he who, from the first origin of the world, clothes all things as they are born with his own gifts, had small rags wrapped around him for covering; and he whom the moving wave of the stormy deep, whom all the soil of the lands and the spacious hall of the wide sky cannot contain, remained full in a boy's body, and God rested in a narrow manger. Hail, holy Parent, mother who brought forth the King who rules heaven and earth through the ages, whose name, and whose rule, embracing all things in an eternal circle, remain without end; you who, with blessed womb, having the joys of a mother together with the honor of virginity, have been seen to have no one like you before, nor any to follow: alone of women, without example, you pleased Christ. Then he, born, shone first to unknowing shepherds, because he was a shepherd, and the Lamb shone out to the flocks, and the company of angels sang of the miracles. While such signs are being done in the region of Bethlehem, the magi came from the East, and with anxious words they trouble the savage tyrant with great news:

that recently, for the Jewish peoples, from the region of the East, a leader born had shone forth; this the stars from heaven, this a new star proclaimed with its rays. The fierce master of the Hebrew court seethes, thinking that this child might soon succeed him who was first: then, with serene brow, nursing the clouds of his mind, he secretly orders him sought everywhere as if to be adored, whom he plots by fraud to kill. Why do you rage, Herod? You confess Christ in speech, and in your mind wish to cut his throat, and, reading the law, you neglect it, and threaten the King of kings with your kingdom. Yet lest your name should lack an insane deed, another Herod will see what you are plotting carried out under the honor of the cross (but by the crime of the nation). So the magi, eagerly keeping their eyes fixed on highest heaven and following the flashing royal star, kept to the longed-for way, which, by the law of the future, led the nations to adore at the sacred cradle. And, opening their treasures for worship, so that the very kinds of gift could show who Christ was, they poured out gifts of gold to the newborn King, gave incense to God, and offered myrrh for the tomb.

Why three gifts, though? Because the faith that confesses this number is the greatest hope of life, and God most high, who sees all times, present, past and future, is always present, always was and always will remain in his threefold power. Then they, warned from heaven in sleep to scorn the tyrant's orders, traveling by out-of-the-way places on a changed road, returned to their own country. So we too, if we desire at last to reach the holy fatherland, after we have come to Christ, should not go back to the wicked one. So when the impious king found himself deceived, he lays bare his anger (if he can rightly be called a king who lacks piety and does not rule his own anger), and, groaning that his crime has been snatched from him, like a gnashing lion from whose mouth a tender lamb suddenly slips, he turns his arms against the whole flock and chews and drags the soft cattle, and the trembling ewes call their young in vain and fill the empty air with bleating: just so Herod, goaded by Christ's escape, does not cease, ferocious, to strike down crowds of little ones crushed in undeserved slaughter. For what crime does the innocent crowd perish? Why have those who could scarcely be born already deserved to die? There is madness in the bloody king, not reason; killing those who had just begun to cry and daring to commit a countless crime, he slaughters thousands of boys and gave one lament to so many mothers.

This one tore her hair from her bared head, that one gashed her cheeks, another strikes her bare breast with her fists, and the unhappy mother (no longer a mother now), bereaved, presses her breasts in vain over her cold child. What feelings had you then, butcher, seeing such things? What roars did you give, when you looked out from the highest citadel and saw wounds seething far and wide and the vast plain filled before your eyes with such lamentation? Yet, though absent from the slain infants, Christ was present, who always takes up holy perils and feels punishment in another's body. But when he reached twice six years of age, drawing this span from the flesh, and bore the course of life for his human part, he seemed older in heart than the elders, and among the teachers of the law he sat by right as a master of long service. No delay (for what delays does the world, flying through the times, know how to have?): having the strength of fuller youth, bearing about six lustra, he came to the calm wave of the Jordan to receive what he himself had come to give. When mighty John the Baptist saw him from the river, the prophet who, while he lay hidden in his mother's womb and was not yet born, had perceived him already then, though his speech was blocked, as his father fell mute (to whom the gift of the tongue, after the long silent breathing of the ninth month, was restored when his son was born), at once he proclaims: “Behold the Lamb of God, who comes to take away the sin of the world.”

When he says “take away” what he does not have, he takes it away for me: not so that he himself may bear evils, but so that he may destroy what harms. As when bright light is poured into the midst of darkness and, not darkened, shakes off from its own clear brightness the shadows it drives out, its face unharmed, so the Savior, putting our sins to flight by bearing them, wiped them away and by his touch bade them vanish far off. Then, entering simply the shallows of the rushing waters, he washes in himself all the contagions of our life, having himself nothing to lose, and with his holy body cleansed the flowing waters, blessed the stream's fame, and hallowed the rivers with his own limbs. The elements felt God: the sea fled, and the Jordan itself turned its course back in refluent waves. For the prophet sings: “What is it, O sea, that you flee, and you, Jordan, that you draw back your river?” So when the Lord, after the mystic gifts, came out of the river's bath and trod the dry sands, at once the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove clothed Christ with honor and teaches us to walk gentle and very meek by means of the bird that has no gall; and, the Son being named by the Father's voice, God is proved by a threefold reckoning, for the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are there; and he who does not count them as one remains unworthy of him.

Then, when he had fasted from food for forty nights and days, full of the sacred Spirit, the tempter approaches him with snares, skilled in the art of offering deceitful meals: “If you are seen,” he says, “to be the Son of God, say that this stone suddenly be turned into the help of bread,” as if he did not always do these same miracles, he who, quickening the stony bowels of the earth, makes them fruitful with grain-bearing ears and creates bread from rock. Driven back first by this word, that man lives not by bread alone but by every word of God, shaken and frantic, renewing other weapons with a viper's poison, he goes with the Lord to the mountain heights and showed him all the wealth of the kingdoms throughout the world: “All these,” he says, “you will have, if I give them, if you prostrate yourself and adore me.” As perverse as he was, so perverse were his words: that he who prepares eternal kingdoms for the peoples should aspire to kingdoms of fragile honor, and should bow down to adore an unspeakable monster, he whose throne is above the ether, whose footstool is the earth, whom no one sees and whom every power on high praises with lowered voice. Christ answers: “Scripture has commanded that the Lord God alone be adored, and the one alone be served.” Failing in these encounters too, the wicked one dares, three times raising himself, to persist in his proud spirit, and, three times rolled in the dust, to trust in a fragile war.

Then the criminal took him into the holy city, and, setting him on the pinnacle of the lofty temple, said: “If you claim to be the Son born of God the Father, glide down quickly from the top of the roof. For Scripture teaches that the Thunderer gave orders concerning you, that you should go more safely, borne up in angels' arms, lest perhaps you strike your foot against a stone.” O how blind a heart it bears in its black breast, the mind darkened by its own darkness! It believed that he shuddered at the drop from the high summit of the temple, the raised peak of the pinnacle, he who bent down the vast limbs of the highest heaven, and, carried through all the heavens, descended to the lowest parts of the farthest earth, seeking the lower regions and not leaving the heights. He had spoken, and, pierced by the point of the mighty word that he could not tempt his Lord and God, he flees the victor's face, groaning. Then, the enemy driven off, the chiefs of heaven and the shining companies stand by, and angelic ministers duly serve Christ. At once, then, he bids men from among the fishermen, fit to fish for human souls, which, chasing the slippery joys of the world as if the wandering blue of the sea, swim headlong through the blind uncertainties of the deep, to be his disciples, and wins for the life above such men as no windy glory of eloquence nor blood proud of empty nobility nourishes, but whom silent repute and the brightness shining from a humble mind make, though common people, neighbors of heaven.

For God in his might chose the foolish and the lowest things of the world, breaking the strong and destroying wisdom. Moreover, desiring to bestow swift salvation, he gave precepts for praying, and the kindly judge bids us ask briefly for what is to be granted, so that he may grant it quickly, saying: Pray to the Father, ours by baptism, his by right; and he granted his own honor to man, and allowed all to have what he alone has. We who call the Lord of heaven Father must now be brothers in him, and not practice hatred between brothers born of the flesh, but, burning with the fire of the Spirit, abolish the monuments of the ancient deceit and put on the new man, lest earthly beings fall away from God on high, to whom heavenly grace, with Christ as our leader, has made us adopted sons. Hallowed: where is the Lord hallowed, who hallows all things by creating them, if not by a pious heart, if not by a chaste breast? That we may deserve to hallow him by our worship, may he first grant it, as he likewise bids himself be blessed by us, he by whom we are all blessed. Thy kingdom come: now, now, surely, that kingdom free of death and without end, to which no times succeed through the ages, because a continuous day without night does not know how to have time: where, with Christ as prince encircling his noble head with an everlasting crown, the soldier, a victor, will rejoice, bearing rich rewards.

This let us pray with unceasing vows, night and day: that his will be done in heaven and on earth, who wills that wickedness be nowhere, and that the harmful enemy be driven from the earth as from the sky, lest the savage serpent claim our bodies for himself as worthless soil; but may the Almighty, who cherishes all things, overflowing with full kindness, preserve souls and limbs alike: for we are in one part of heaven, in the other of earth. We hope for the ration of faith in our daily bread, lest our mind ever feel hunger for doctrine, fasting from Christ, who with his body and his mouth satisfies us, remaining himself at once Word and food. For the sweet words of the Lord cling in our throats and surpass the honeycomb and all honey. We who ask that all our debts be released, let us also release; for the bond of our own word plainly holds us as guarantors, and, released ourselves, we are bound more heavily if we refuse to loose another's chains: and the kindly Lord, who forgave ten thousand talents, if he perceives that we afflict any fellow servant for a hundred denarii, will at once hand us over to the torturers, and, bound in a fierce prison, we shall not be allowed to leave until we have paid everything down to the last small coin.

Not that the Lord, the way of light, the path of peace, drives us into the snares of the tempter, but when he forsakes our evils, he lets us go. For whoever, following the delightful nets of the world, loves luxuries and the joys of alluring perdition, him God, the lover of virtue, leaves, and he goes wherever temptation leads him. From this, then, let us draw back our foot and with our heart seek the narrow way, where the thin path shows how to go through the narrow gate to the heavenly kingdom. If we wish to avoid evil, we must approach and follow the good: for the one frees, the other slaughters; the one nourishes, the other kills. For as far as the stars from the earth, fire from water, light from darkness, concord from war, life from the grave, so far apart are the good from evil. Everyone must walk either the right-hand or the left-hand road. But the right-hand path of the good calls the conspicuous just into its joys and into your bosom, patriarch: but the left-hand path of the wicked exacts punishment and sends them to impious Tartarus. So for God's lambs and sheep this is the only will and the good freedom: to escape the grim jaws of the bloodthirsty wolf and enjoy life in the pastures of Christ.