Easter Song

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.

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.

First, the Lord, deigning to be present at a wedding, gave proofs of his power and, present as a guest, coming to feed, not to be fed (wonderful!), turned poured-out water into wine: the waters rejoice to lose their pallor, the glad wave changed its taste, bestowing pure wine, and at every table sweet cups grew red with must not born of the vine. So Christ filled six vessels with this nectar: he who was himself the fruitful vine, by his tilling power making all things fruitful, under whose kindly covering the gentle vine-leaf nourishes grapes that never fail. Afterwards a certain official, his son dying, begged the Lord, weeping and suppliant, to visit the sick boy laboring with fever and forbid his trembling soul to slip from its seat. Then generous power, which denies nothing to the believer and does not delay its gifts, kept pace with swift faith, granting health by an easy word: “Your son lives now,” he says, “go.” How much authority Christ's command carries! He did not say “he will live” but “because he lives now,” in the manner of God, who, seeing all things before they are born, sees as past whatever he wills to be future. Then, advancing with saving steps, traveling through cities, towns, fields, cottages, villages and fortresses, he healed all bodies, driving away their diseases.

But look, crying out from the column in the middle of the crowd, a leper was asking for help, wretched with the excess of white all over his mottled limbs: “If you will, Lord,” he says, “you can cleanse me of these spots.” As Christ says “I will,” at once his skin returns to one color, and with their own beauty his glad limbs changed their foreign look, and in his own color he is scarcely recognized. It happened that a panting fever was roasting Peter's mother-in-law with the heat of a strong torch, and, hanging between life and death, her wounded life was burning amid chilling perils, and immense heat was seething a deadly cold. But after the Lord's hand touched her weary limbs, the fiery heat departed, and, quenched in all her marrow, the violence of the flame fell as by a spring of hidden water. Moreover he drove out the raging wrath of black spirits, lest their cruel breath tear men with wicked plague and harass the honor of God's handiwork, a spirit he knew was not of God; and everywhere, kindly, he restored countless crowds to health, their weakness driven out, and relieved the peoples of all kinds of disaster. Then, making for the sea, he trod the dry seaweed and, climbing into the timbers of a small boat, went out on the waters; and the disciples following the Lord trimmed the sails on the calm sea.

The boat was already far from land, and, driven by the winds, the stern was furrowing the middle of the deep in safety, when suddenly a fierce storm rises, the sea is overturned by gales, and the salt waves shake the trembling keel. Fear had struck their minds, and they thought they were already shipwrecked, stretching out their arms to the rocks of the shore. But he himself was enjoying calm sleep, wakeful in majesty, because he who rules Israel never slumbers, and will never sleep at all. So when his rest was broken, as all, weeping, cried together with one voice, “Have mercy quickly, have mercy, we are perishing, come to our aid with your kindly help,” not delaying their prayers at all, the Lord, rising, commands the strong winds to grow mild and quicker than said calms the swollen seas. It was not the fierce sea's combative daring that made the swollen waves rise against the Lord, nor were the blasts driving fearsome, savage forces: but the sea, leaping for joy at Christ, made the depths of the strait seethe in obedience, and the joyful winds moved their eager wings in rapid flight. Meanwhile, carried across the calm marble surface, he had left the boat and was traveling on foot through the fields, when far off, from the tombs, two men rushed out shrieking, harassed not by the evil of a few demons but by a fierce legion, and, in a bloody bond, bearing cruel shackles on their chained arms.

A double punishment tormented them too. Alas, the harsh lot of madness! The one who suffers violence is the one more tightly bound. Then, trembling at the command of the Lord who orders it to come out, the unhappy spirit does not dare approach a man, and gives back the image which it sees Christ to bear; but they asked, as they deserved, for the beast that rejoices in unclean filth, ever fond of dirt and used to living in stinking mud, and the sad troops took over the herd of swine: black, bristling, shaggy, such a guest was indeed worthy to have such a house. From there the Lord, carried by sea to other shores, entered his native soil, where he had willed to be born in the body, and where the Father himself had dedicated a homeland to him. Look: men were coming carrying a living corpse, four of them on their necks, and lying on a bed scarcely a man, for whom life remaining without the use of his body was the image of death; his loosened limbs lay deserted by their duties, and through his slack limbs the languid bonds hung with their sinews undone. When the Lord of mighty works saw this man lacking strength, he first cleansed him, taking away his sins, which bring increase of evil to the wretched man as he lies: “Rise,” he says, “lift your own pallet onto your shoulders and go off to your house.” Delaying his commands not at all, he to whom health had been granted, leaving behind others' footsteps, rejoices at last to walk on his own feet, and carried back his carrier in grateful repayment.

Meanwhile the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, her day closed, had died and lost the air above. But her father, from whom devouring death had taken the hope of a grown child, weeping and groaning, threw himself before the Lord's holy feet, scarcely able to utter words of prayer for the sobs that shook him, saying: “Have mercy on a bereaved parent, have mercy on an old man; just now my only daughter, not yet ripe in her virgin years, has died and taken from wretched me the name of father. Bring help and pour back her departed soul into her limbs, you who can do all things.” So he said: and the Author of light was making his way to the funeral of the dead girl, scarcely able to move his steps for the crowding people; and mingled with the crowds went a woman who had suffered from a flow of blood, who had wasted great wealth to become healthier, and, her house drained and no medicine helping, had lost her property together with her blood. But when rich faith began to dwell in the believer's now sound heart, plunging into the midst of the crowds, she strives to touch even a thread of Christ as he turned away. And, hiding behind, she stole a sudden cure, snatching it from the hem of his garment, and, the flow dried up, her bold confidence closed the open veins. God had felt this, from whose spring there ran what his secret power gave, and he praises the faithful theft and grants its wish to the excellent robbery.

They had come to the grieving roof of the sad house and the weeping home, where the maiden lay dead, having met her last day, and a frantic tumult filled all with bitter laments and howling, and the flute-players moaned funeral strains in weeping song, and constant beating of breasts had filled the house with confusion. “Lay aside the griefs your anxious minds have conceived; this is sleep,” the Savior says, “do not believe that a funeral is here, nor mourn the girl laid to sleep.” He had spoken, and he warms the corpse held fast by icy death with the fire of the Spirit, and by his word raises the motionless body and grants her who was born once to live twice. The parents were astonished in mind, and they see their unhoped-for wishes, and, in changed measures, beat their breasts for joy. Then, as he turned back, look, he sees two blind men following and crying out: “Glorious Son of David, shake off the nocturnal shadows from our darkened faces and grant us bright day.” How safe it is to believe, how sound to know God! They already saw in heart, who had perceived the way of light; then the blind eyes of those praying, like a fire growing dim when olive oil is poured on, flashed under the Lord's hand, and at his serene touch their faces, restored, shone with their own lamps.

These dismissed, another sick man is brought forward, wretched with manifold weakness, whom his voice had left, empty of hearing, filled only with a demon throughout his empty limbs. God healed him at once in holy order, turning the causes into their opposites, emptying him of the demon, restoring hearing and voice. No less, meanwhile, he bids his own disciples have power over all things, and fills them at once with all powers: “Go,” he says, “and shut out the sad plagues of disease, but to the house of Israel (for not yet had he enlarged all nations with this name) proclaim the kingdom of heaven, leave no place to demons, drive out leprosy, and call back the bodies of the dead whose life was withdrawn: you have received freely, spend freely on all.” As if he said: “To you, my ministers, I entrust the flocks to be saved; I, in short, am the good shepherd, and I lavish my own fields for food: let no one sell to my sheep the pastures that are mine.” The Almighty spoke these words first into the apostles' ears, so that from them as teachers, he himself being the author, the teaching might flow down through the rest of the ages: just as four great rivers are read to go forth in their courses from the one spring of paradise, and from them streams are scattered through the whole world.

For whoever receives under a pure name the work of the Godhead, which he does not have from himself but carries as the Lord hands it on, let him dispense it as a pure gift, so that he may be counted a steward, not a merchant, and may sing of the life to come in David's measures: “I will enter into the Lord's rest, because I do not know trade.” Then, entering the conspicuous hall of the synagogue, he sees a weak man, maimed in his divided body, half-dead in his limbs, not wholly alive, whose withered right hand had condemned the paralyzed part; and, healing by command, he orders the cold palm to grow warm again and to be restored to health in God's way, as he always does: he takes nothing away and restores everything. Look: that slippery serpent is here again, renewing his old arts, livid with the gall of black poison, who rejoices to grow fat on human gore, and the venom which he had so often scattered among different sick people he poured, advancing, into the entrails of one: he took from him his voice and his sight, and, holding his wounded limbs with a threefold fury, he shook him, mute and blind. Then the Lord of the world, our light and the Word of the Father, shutting out the filth, renewed his eyes and mouth; and words rise through the Word, sight through the Light. There had come also a woman bent by an old disease, not by age, trembling, groaning, stooped, with downcast face, bowed over and looking only at the ground.

who, by the Lord's mercy, after eighteen unbroken harvests raises her limbs, and sees at last the sky and the stars and recalls the burning orb of the sun, seeing everything, upright: because those whom the evil enemy crushes head for the depths; those whom Christ nourishes rise up without stain. And when he saw that the people who had followed him into the desert felt the ancient hunger, he, the Moses of the figure and the true prophet, showed the ancient help by greater deeds: then, with many birds, he gave rich meat; now he multiplied two fish; then he rained sufficient manna; now with five loaves he gave ample food to five thousand men. The rest of the crowd lies hidden, not counted in any number, the great legion of little ones, or the great one of mothers. And, what you may wonder at more, the fragments gathered up filled twelve baskets, and, increased as the people ate, the plenty that comes back from all the tables is more than what was given. And now, as Ocean was snatching the aging day beneath the blue of the warm sea, when the pallor of night had come and Hesperus was bringing on the starry shadows, the disciples, their master remaining alone on land, made for the billowing sea, and in the swelling flood grim waters were tossing the laboring boat; for the wind was against them. Then, in the darkness of night, the Lord walks over the waves he treads and presses the plains of the vast sea, and with gray flowings

the marble waters flowing around licked his holy soles. The astonished company marvels that ways for ships lay open to a path for feet: but Peter, taught to keep friendly faith and always to recognize Christ, goes down into the midst of the waters; the Lord's right hand lifted him as he slipped, so that he suffered nothing in so great a flood: for him that hand was a harbor, and, a traveler on the sea, he moved free footsteps over the glassy plains. Then, when the Lord came, the inhabitants of the land of Gennesaret brought their sick, so that the fringe of God, even barely touched, might heal their bitter diseases: and as many as touched it felt lasting health. How precious was the garment that was never sold, which by the gift of a little thread redeemed them all! From there, as he made for the region of Tyre and the fields of Sidon, a Canaanite woman, anxious over the affliction of her daughter, whom a spirit tormented with black goads, was begging him, having confessed herself equal to the dogs, which with their keen nose always lie at the threshold of the fragrant table, used to licking the crumbs that fall from their masters. A humble voice, but lofty faith, which, saving her daughter, made a sheep out of a dog, and made one born among the briars of the Gentiles feed on the grass of the Hebrew field.

Then, climbing the high ridges of the mountain, the people following, thousands of blind, thousands of lame from everywhere, and peoples of lepers together, and crowds of the deaf, and weak hands, and whatever of the crowd had come feeble, he restores to their former use in motion, and fits the organs he has recalled to their sinews. And while, healing, he refreshes the sick multitude by his power, the third day had come, and on the barren turf so great a people had found no food, and hunger, about to be doubled, was feeding excessive toil, if the wounded crowd should go back, fasting from food, along the long road. Moved by this kindness, God, who is always the bread of the needy and brings food to places without crops, fed a huge column of men with a few small fish and seven loaves, and, besides those of the weaker sex and of tender age, satisfied there four thousand who ate. That you may marvel the more, learn too that the food was increased: the crowd made the meal grow by eating, and the worn food grew under their bites. And fleeting hunger dreaded its remnants, seven baskets filled to the top, when, the fragments gathered, it saw an abundant harvest from a little seed.

Yet, though he bore in a human body the mortal limbs he took from his mother, it was not hidden that Christ was God, because a city set on a mountain is never hidden, nor is a burning lamp put under a bushel, but, scattering its panting flame higher, it gives light to all: for, shining with ample brightness before three disciples as witnesses, like the fiery heat of the sun, turned in splendor into a heavenly form, he had outshone the day with his face, and to those watching the white form of snow shone from the Lord's very garment. O sublime merit of the three, who were given to see in the world what was not entrusted to the world! What of their seeing both Elijah and glorious Moses? They saw them, unknown to their eyes, by the light of the heart, so that our faith may be greater: that he is through the world the beginning and the end, that he is to be seen as A, he as Ω. Around him in the middle such prophets shone, one still living, the other standing at the boundary of life. And with a starry sound, saying “This is my Son,” the Father's voice showed by its word Christ his begotten. After his power, returning through his bodily limbs, had covered the adored form with the veil of flesh, and the Lord had given himself openly to the peoples, look, suddenly a humble man, his eyes cast down and his face sad, comes forward and, a suppliant, stretches out his hands and arms and implores, groaning: “I have one son, one only, Lord, whom a spirit tears with horrible fury and does not leave, except to plunge him into water or overwhelm him in black fires, and it wears out his soul in a doubtful death.

Have pity, I pray, drive out the madness and restore him either to me or to himself, lest the blind power drive out his trembling life and take away the light.” He had spoken, and, embracing his knees and rolling at his knees, he clung to him; and the Lord with kindly heart had already assented to his prayers. Then the raging robber, the harmful enemy, who had long possessed a building that by right belonged to another, forced to leave the house he had invaded, is lifted up into blazing anger and strives to tear the limbs he had seized, and, laboring in vain as the Lord forbids, flees into dark shadows, the boy still living. The King too, the only King of kings and Lord of lords, not disdaining to pay Caesar's tribute through Peter's fishing, bids the hook bring up from the depth of the sea a carrier of a golden didrachma. Soon a dweller of the sea bit the hanging line, bearing the tribute commanded, and, heavier for the burden of metal, the cheap honor of a fish was worth a greater price. And when his disciples asked him who could be held greater in the hall of the heavenly kingdom, he answered as God and wonderful teacher: “Higher than all,” he says, “is the humble, and he will go more powerful than all who is subject to all and bears himself as lesser with bowed neck, as this one is seen to be a little one” (and he shows a small boy standing there);

that is, he bids us follow the disposition of tender age, not in years but in mind, because that softer age loves nothing of worldly pomp, does not court honor, and does not swell with head thrown back: so the path of a pure life, the lower it bends to the ground, the nearer it comes to heaven. For the mind that bends down seeks the heights, and the heights bend down, and the lower step rises where it wishes to descend. Look, the Lord lifts the humble needy man from the dung and makes him sit among the great rulers: but, on the other hand, the swollen rebel with his combative mind he commanded to go headlong from heaven down to Tartarus. I would be speaking of small things if I ran through God's deeds one by one and unrolled a particular good when the good is general.

Now, having crossed again the calm sands of the Jordan, following the road through Judea: a crowd mixed without name, and, relieving countless throngs from disaster, he receives the sick and lets them go away healthy. Nothing, then, is ever hard for the most high God to grant to those who hope in him, he whose ready power levels the steep and brings back the crooked to straight, and, as judge, grants whatever nature denies. For as a camel cannot pass through the eye of a needle because of the bulk of its limbs, so a rich man, swelling with abundant produce, could not approach the narrow path that leads to the threshold of the heavenly kingdom, had not the Begetter of things (who holds the world in check by law and remains under no law, for whom to will is to create, whom no face sees, but who himself sees all) said: “This is impossible for man, but for God on high all things are possible,” and made troublesome wealth grow gentle at last for many rich men. For he handles his riches well and wants his treasures stored in heaven, where whatever is kept no biting rust devours, no moth furrows, nor does badly buried gold serve thieves, who gives food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, shelter to strangers, clothing to the naked, comforts those bound in prison, cares for the sick, and, generous to others, is needy only toward himself.

Nor is there any doubt that the wealth reaches heaven which, given to Christ, is given in the person of a poor man, which grows by being lost, which is scattered so that it may be, which perishes so that it may remain, which, dead, gives life. Moreover, while the Lord was passing along a certain road with a crowd accompanying him, he sees two blind men sitting, asking the gift of their extinguished sight and filling the wandering air with tearful cries. Nor did kindness delay, accustomed to bring health where it feels faith burning; at once, touching their eyes, he bids them wake, eyes that a great sleep had pressed down, and, unlocking the windows long closed beneath their brows, he made the night depart as the day came in. Then, walking again within the walls of the sacred temple, he gave sight to the blind and footsteps to the lame. After such deeds he had left the city of David making for nearby Bethany, and, returning, he was hastening, as the day grew bright, to visit its roofs again. But look, standing tall in the middle of the fields was a leafy fig tree, on whose wood, hungry, he found no fruit when he searched the trunk; and to the tree's foliage he said: “From your shoots, from now on, let no fruit be produced for the rest of time.” At once the fig tree, widowed of its sap, dried up and remained dead with withered branches.

For everyone who nourishes nothing fruitful for God will be counted, like a barren trunk, with the burnt wood. But the just will flourish like the lovely palm, always in leaf, and like the cedar of Lebanon he will be multiplied and touch the stars with his top. Afterwards a madman without speech, brought to him, felt the master's power; the shut-in force of evil was choking him in his narrow throat, and he had shown his affliction by his silence. But the Creator, accustomed to lift all infirmities, drove the robber from the besieged throat and opened a path for the voice, and, the bond loosed, the tongue, long mute, poured out speech that had been silent. Then the Lord, going to a Pharisee's dinner, shared the meal of a friend who had invited him. Then a woman, whom an evil reputation and the many offenses of her life were biting, a suppliant for mercy, threw herself down embracing his feet, and, bending over them, waters them with streaming tears, and with her loosened hair does not cease to wipe and kiss the holy feet, soothing them with fragrant ointment, until the sentence of God was given, who never regrets lending his hand if we regret having sought our old ruin: “Go, woman, your faith has saved you from all the evil,” he said, “that you are seen to have done:

enjoy my peace.” It is a great medicine to confess that it is harmful to stay hidden, since he feeds his own wounds who covers them and is afraid to bare the blow to the healer. See, she who had long been defiled went away cleansed in a little while by her groaning, and, washing herself in the flood of her own weeping, she goes back clean by her tears and wiped dry by her hair. And now he had entered the synagogue of the city of Capernaum, duly teaching the people. When the wicked spirit, hiding in a human heart, had seen him, it roared with an insolent shout, saying: “What have we to do with you? Alas, Christ, have you come to destroy us? I know at last who you are, and I recognize the Holy One of God”; and, saying no more, it falls silent at his terrifying command and left the man, driven out, and, fleeing into the empty air, vanished. So too he put an end to various sicknesses, and always forced the demons he cast out to be silent, and forbids such a witness to reveal him. For once that harmful serpent, fierce and lover of black death, cast down from the summit of heaven with his pomps and his allies and the whole column of his unspeakable army, sees Christ, whom he had known there, on earth, covered with the veil of flesh, and groans that the Lord of power is a friend to man.

And while the Lord, having gone the way of Tyre and passing again through the fields of Sidon, trod the calm sands, he healed a wretched man shut off in two passages, who uttered no voice from his mouth and took none in by his ear, and at the touch of the starry hand, the inner chambers broken open, all the doors opened, and, glad, suddenly he deserved both to be heard as he spoke and to hear those who spoke. You too felt the gift of the master's power, bent down over your blind eyes, on whose eyes Christ spat and took away the look of a feigned death. Then, teaching the peoples greater heavenly things, he reveals himself by his words to be true God, and, wishing for a while to avoid the dense crowds that pressed too hard on him, he goes to the lake and, sitting in Simon's little boat, was strengthening from the water the people standing on the shore. And now his words had ended; then he bids the boat be taken farther out to sea and the fishing nets let down into the vast deep, nets which had been able to catch nothing through the whole night in empty labor. Simon obeys, rejoicing, and, pressing on the watery tribes, throws out the linen enclosure, and so huge a catch filled the open folds that the overflowing prey strained two hulls with the heaped fish: for there was a partner boat. So often we cannot bear the greatest joys, and fear wishes too readily granted;

and what is easy for God, men do not even dare to wish for. Distinguished by such mighty works, he was going into the city called Nain, surrounded by a great crowd and a band of disciples, when, look, close by he sees a wretched young man being carried out, a cold corpse, the sad service having already suffered many funerals and an empty burial; an envious fate had widowed his mother, long since a widow, by a second urn. Nor did kindness, the enemy of grief, delay long; it brought life-giving help, and, touching the bier, “Rise,” he said, “young man”; and, obeying the word at once, the dead man rises, and, sitting up and speaking, came back to life and goes off as his mother's companion: for, though numb in death and though he had suffered the loss of his life, the servant could not stay silent when the Lord called, nor be dead when Life was present. Soon, the procession turned about, laying down its trembling grief on the road back, a white procession brought back the happy mother. Nor was it a small healing for you, Mary, when the Lord treated you; it cured your mind, hurt by many wounds, which a fierce rage had invaded with sevenfold arms, wedged in a demonic mass; but the scaly serpent, fleeing the commanding miracles of the holy word, driven from your heart, goes off and, through the flying air slipping into the chaos, the inner chamber of hellish Gehenna, dragged its seven huge coils, its sevenfold folds.

And lest the Lord let the harvest, overflowing with heaped growth, languish with too few laborers, he commands other disciples, whose mind, aware of right, and pure simplicity, shining in number and merit, were a golden balance, to hasten like lambs among bloodthirsty wolves, saying: “Take the rights of power, so that you fear no enemy; tread underfoot with faithful mind the threats of vipers and the scorpion and all things of the hostile power: no hostile savagery will harm my servants. Do not rejoice so much, men, that the black spirit is subject to you, as that the heavenly letter writes your names in the eternal book.” For it is God's rule to put life before deeds. For when good merit is lacking, miracles are nothing, which wicked men often perform, to whom the judge of the world will say: “I do not know you; depart, all you craftsmen of crimes, who in deeds always wicked have counterfeited the work of God.” So in the time of Moses certain men, on the shores of vain Memphis, by their spells produced signs, not by God's will, but by a false image gave magic shapes to human eyes. Afterwards he enters the house of a certain ruler of the Pharisees, to honor the house, not only to take food, to which he had come then at an easy request.

Here a man was swelling, distended with a transparent belly, full of water, and his belly had stretched the pregnant skin, about to give birth to an enclosed death; already his limbs were melting as his belly grew, and a swollen wasting, poured through his wretched limbs, had thinned the bloated sick man, and the whole dropsy had gathered into the space of his belly. The Father of the world could not bear this sight, and he passes over his Sabbath not caring for it, ready to care for the man whom he wished rather to be his own: for the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Then, kindly, drying up the body's flood, he bade the watery plague depart: soon the flowing disease leaves the inner parts, and the emptied fibers settle in the chest, and the watery plague left the lake of the flesh. Meanwhile the Lord, passing through the fields of Galilee, had begun to touch with his holy foot a certain village. When ten lepers saw him from afar, men bearing spotted portents, whom a discolored punishment disfigured with obscene shapes on their foul bodies, crying together they said: “Master, have mercy, for you can do all things, Jesus”: then the moved power, which is never empty of kindness, begins more mercifully: “Go, show your faces to the priests.”

And as they went on their way, the men suddenly marvel at each other's cleansed limbs, and, looking, see that there is nothing mottled on one another, and all examine their own forms in each other's eyes. Of them, to give thanks for so great a gift, scarcely one, turning back his steps on the return path, falls to the ground adoring the Lord of power, and showed his face to the true Priest. For who but Christ is the chief of pontiffs and the high priest? The author of the twofold offering after the order of Melchizedek, to whom are always given gifts that are his own, the fruit of the grain and the joy of the vine. When the blind son of Timaeus, sitting beside the road by which he had learned that the Lord was passing, had begged for light, shouting with repeated cries, and, not keeping silent when the people forbade him, was told to come to the Lord, groping with his hand, he received his sight and goes back with no one to lead him. How strongly importunate faith presses! Whatever a hard situation denies, prayer alone, repeated with honest desires, obtains. So that man was asking bread of his friend, who, the doors shut, through the dark silence of the night, with persistent cries and panting prayers wrung it from one who long and confidently refused.

And the Lord, passing through places on the Samaritan road, had taken on human thirst in the blazing heat, and the spring of everlasting water desires a little water to drink, inasmuch as he was in a body. Then a woman of that nation, standing there, who had drawn a small draught from the well, when she hesitates to give the gift of perishable water, recognizing her own life with its many husbands, begs that the gift of the inexhaustible stream be given her, to lay aside her thirst forever; which no one will be worthy to be rid of unless, plunged into the flood of the Lord Christ, he receives the calm waters of the soul, not of the body. And while, sitting in the middle of the vault of his temple, thundering with his Father's voice, he turns the wandering people to the open roads of the straight path with friendly warnings, look, a woman was being dragged, a great crowd thronging, to be stoned for the guilt of foul adultery; the band of Pharisees, setting her before a gentle judge, while preparing to condemn her, rather sets her free; for of all those in the crowds there was no accuser properly without sin to take up first a stone to throw and strike the defilement of the unchaste adulteress. Nor could anyone pluck a little speck from another's eye who knew there was a great beam in his own. So that onrush retreated in flight, and the merciful sentence pardons the guilt, now loosed on condition that she sin no more.

For whoever, like a dog, licks up his own vomit neither cares to keep the old pardon nor to have a future one, holding to the losses of the one, losing the gains of the other. Then, going on, he sees a man sitting who was born blind, who, slipping from the womb of a mother ill with child, rushed into the light without light. Then he, the founder of human blood and the origin of the rising world, not suffering the limbs of his own work to remain long unfinished, smearing his native clay over the enclosures of the eyelids, makes the man complete from the old seed. Yet he does not receive his sight until, having received the command of the Lord, he had come to the water of Siloam and, safe in the healing of the clay that was his kin, had bathed his eyes in the pure water. Soon, then, twin lights shine out in his face, and at last they deserve to behold the day they had not known. Know, all of you, what the mystic miracles teach our minds. We are the blind offspring born of wretched Eve, carrying the darkness born of long error. But when God deigned to take the mortal form of a human covering, there was made for us from the virgin a saving clay, which, washed in the sacred springs, unlocks the bright openings of the light of rebirth.

And, returning to the soil of Bethany, he had entered it; and there Lazarus lay buried by the lot of death, already on the fourth day without light, and, shut in the marble of the tomb, he gave off the smell of corruption. His sisters wept, the people present wept, the Almighty wept too, but in his body, not in his Godhead, and he grieved over the lifeless limbs in that part of himself in which he would die; by his tears he fulfilled the friend, by his majesty the God. Why, Martha, do you delay to believe? Or why, Mary, do you groan? Do you doubt whether Christ can call back one man from the caverns of the underworld, he who will grant countless crowds to rise after death? So when the trumpet of the Lord sounded, crying “Lazarus, come out”: shaken with great fear, Tartarus bursts apart, the recesses of Erebus lay open, deadly chaos trembled, and the law of deep death perishes, and the soul suddenly seeks its own marrow, and the corpse is seen standing alive before their eyes. And after a burial's honors, as though created anew, having died for himself he stands as both his own posthumous son and heir. And so that, despising the fleeting heights of the wandering world, he might show himself truly God, not in a lofty chariot, the honor of mortal pomp, nor with swift four-horse teams did he furrow the dusty road, nor press the tall back of a snorting horse, which, decked with trappings and purple, shakes its head, champing bloody gold:

but rather the honor of riding slowly on a humble donkey sufficed the ruler, whose gentle hoof, carrying the wonderful glory of so great a rider, would be the nobler for its burden, not unequal to that beast which, though Christ lay in the open manger, nevertheless knew him to be God. All the people, adoring, spread soft garments on the hard road. Tell me, pagan peoples, what king has had such glory in the world? To whom has a crowd coming to meet him, decked with palms or with branches of trees, ever given praise in heavenly hymns? To none but the Lord Christ, with the Father, who rules the heavenly kingdom as Prince in the Prince, with whom the Holy Spirit ever reigns equally.

Amid these riches of mighty works the day of the Pasch had now begun to draw near, when the glory of the Lord wished to lay down mortal flesh and take it up again alive, not other flesh, but the same again, which, full of the gift of light, he raised from the underworld and led to the stars. And crying out openly, “Father, save me from this hour; but for this purpose I came to this hour; glorify,” he said, “your name.” And a great voice came resounding from heaven through the clouds: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” What is plainer, with the Father as witness and heaven as advocate? Yet not even so would the Jewish nation recognize Christ as God; some said that this was thunder, some that an angel's speech had crashed. O nation blind of eye, O nation hardest of heart! Could thunder, or any angel, have begotten Christ, its own author, so as to answer when the name of the Father was heard? But from the mouth of the Thunderer, who acknowledges his Son, so that the people standing by might believe, the voice sent forth answered in harmony with his Word. Then, celebrating by the yearly gifts of the sacred supper the Paschal meal according to custom, and making himself a humble master and leaving welcome examples to his own, he rises and, willingly serving his servants, girded with only a linen towel, bowed down all his honor, so that, of his own accord washing the feet of all the disciples,

he did not except even Judas, whom he knew to be the author of wicked betrayal. But that glory gave you nothing, cruel traitor, to stand on clean feet, you who were polluted in mind, like every tomb that wears outwardly the covering of a white form and is full within of filth and a foul corpse. Nor did the plot escape the Lord, and he revealed the author of the coming crime, to whom he himself handed bread, he who was the bread to be handed over: for after he had established the two gifts of his body and his blood and had given the food and drink by which faithful souls without stain shall never hunger or thirst for all eternity, at once the foulest spirit entered Judas, where envy had its seat, and, taking up arms, raised a servile war against the Lord, having bargained the great wickedness for any price at all: nor is his guilt measured by the price, but the crimes cling to the deed. Taking thrice ten coins of silver, blinded by a small reward, he committed as great a crime as he would have committed if he had taken all the kingdoms of the earth, the riches of the sea, and the whole sky with its wandering clouds: for the goods of the world would not suffice as a price for the shed blood of the great Christ, who is the father of the world, who had made even Judas to be born.

And would that he, condemned by a barren womb, had never felt his day of birth, nor drawn in the calm breezes of this light with life-giving breaths, lying hidden in eternal torpor, and it would have been a better lot for the wretch not to know the life given than to lose it: or, badly poured out on the ground, would that he had at once lost the gift of light like dust, which the great wind tosses from the face of the earth, and which, driven in swift flight, is scattered into empty shadows, darker than the mists. Are you, bloody, fierce, bold, insane, rebellious, treacherous, cruel, deceitful, venal, unjust, pitiless traitor, savage betrayer, impious robber, going ahead as standard-bearer and escorting the horrible swords? And when you lead on the sacrilegious band, threatening with swords and clubs, do you press your mouth to his mouth, put poison into honey, and betray the Lord under a pleasing image? Why do you pretend to be a comrade and greet him with friendly fraud? Never does peace conspire with terrible swords, nor does the savage wolf offer kisses to the gentle lamb. Handed over, then, to wicked men, the holy worker does not leave off his accustomed help, and to the servant he restored the ear torn off by Peter's sword, lest the merciful one be empty of mercy. For human vengeance did not befit the Thunderer, who could ask the Father to give him more than twelve thousands of angelic legions, if he had preferred to punish what they deserved rather than freely forgive his own wounds.

Then he bids them spare the sword, because he had come himself to lay down his life for all, not to take it from anyone. For when Peter had long before declared in a clear voice that he was willing to die with the Lord: “Before the winged cock crows,” he said, “you will deny me three times this night,” not reproving his faith but foretelling his fear. At once he is led to the grim house of Caiaphas. He was then the chief of the priests and the chief of crimes; for, with him presiding, the pestilent council burns, stirred up by false witnesses, and now, now a thousand lies fly against the Lord, kindled from the empty embers of men, and they perish by their own lightness, like fire wandering over dry stubble, whose power to burn the weak material snatches away at its height, and, its fury overcome, the unsightly glory of the feeble flame dies down. When no way lay open for deceit, savage fury arms them to raise their arms against the innocent. Alas for me, with what tears am I hindered from telling how the raging tumult moved sacrilegious hands! The accursed rabble did not cease everywhere to beat his head with blows, to strike him with their palms, or to spit in his face. Yet he, patient, submitting his body, endured all and gave his limbs for our salvation.

For through these blows our head can be healed, through the Lord these spittings washed our form, by these slaps the greatest freedom was granted us. But the elder, to whom the mighty Author had foretold all that was to come (since what Christ said could not pass unfulfilled), denied once, twice and three times that he was at all one of his companions. And the cock crowed; Christ's decree was fulfilled, and Peter came to his senses: remembering his evils, he condemned the deed of his forgetful self, and, as groaning followed, the guilt fled, the offenses yield to streaming tears, and you, bitter tears, gave birth to sweet pardon. And now the day had come, sadder than the shadow of night, to see a new outrage, and, the darkness removed, it was laying open the crimes of the Jewish nation to the peoples. Soon, then, when wicked Judas saw the Lord bound with chains being led to Pilate's walls, he stiffened, and, giving back in vain the proceeds of his crime, he returned the price of the deed, but not the deed. For what does it profit to tremble with fear there where there is no fear? Or what confession shines in foul hell, when the axe, already sunk into the roots of the unspeakable tree which bore its deadly fruit, overturns its funereal shoots utterly, and the evil wood perishes in the flames it deserves?

And at once, seized in mind by a grim fury, he seeks his own death too, though he would then have been more sane had he run forward to avenge the crime; and the very throat, the path of the dread voice that dared to sell the redeemer of the whole world, he chokes with a knotted noose and hangs his unhappy soul from on high. A milder punishment indeed than so great a crime deserved, for which no penalty of all evils would be equal. Yet this manner of death and the corpse hanging aloft showed the peoples from what height he who was once a disciple and is now guilty had fallen, leaving the high stars and descending to the depths of Tartarus; then an apostolic man, now made a vile apostate. But the Lord, patient, when he stood before the governor's tribunal like the gentlest lamb led to the slaughter, the hostile band, finding nothing in the innocent worthy of death, accuses him of saying that he was a king, being a king, and, lying, treats the truth as a crime. Nor is it surprising if a faithless nation shuns God's rights and denies his rule, a nation that always loved the sacred groves and cherished idols; for, raging in the same way, they worshipped Baal then and chose Barabbas now. And, the righteous man condemned and the wanton one spared, the sentence reversed the just course in both:

he who was the author of death was ordered to receive the light, he who was the author of light was ordered to receive death. Believe in Christ now, believe that he suffered for all. Why do you still doubt? See, his back torn by whips, subjected to insults, he embraces all punishments, so that not even a robber who deserved death might perish. Alas, the grim sickle of the fathers that would cut down the crop of their descendants, alas, your crime, Pilate! If you had noted with a watchful mind how many crimes you committed in one judgment, you ought to have hoped for the sacred bath of pardon not by washing your hands alone, but with your whole body. You seize the innocent, you set a king under a governor, you put the human before God; to what death are you liable, for fixing the Lord to the cross with so many wounds? And when the Holy One went off to his punishment, handed to the savage soldiers, he is clothed in a cheap cloak of red scarlet, so that the whole bloody appearance might be the image of death; a woven crown of thorns encircled his great head, because he in his kindness had taken on himself all the thorn-thickets of our evils; a reed fills his hand, because the scepter of the earth is unsteady, weak, fragile, empty, light. And soon, taking off the garments of others, he took his own clothing again, showing that he would lay down the covering of human flesh and take it up again, so as to bear nothing changeable after death, rising again in his own majesty,

laying down the mortal flesh with its human covering. Nor was it done without divine guidance that, receiving the wine mixed with gall and its bitter taste, he touched it with his lips and moved it away from his mouth, since he was to taste bitter death for a short time, which he was preparing to scorn when his flesh returned. At once, hung on the top of the spreading wood, changing the wrath of the ordeal by holy devotion, he himself was the peace of the cross, and, making the violent wood glorious with his own limbs, he clothed the punishment with honor, and made the torture a sign of salvation instead, and, sanctifying the very torments in himself, blessed them. And lest anyone not know that the form of the cross is to be revered, which bore the Lord in triumph, by a mighty reasoning it gathers to itself the four regions of the square world. The East shines bright from the head of the Author, his holy feet are licked by the western star, his right hand holds the North, his left raises up the middle axis, and all nature lives from the limbs of the Creator, and Christ rules the world, embraced by the cross, on every side. The title too is written: This is the King of the Jews, in which nothing lacks divinity; for what was done by heaven's will this the Hebrew, this the Greek and the Latin tongue proclaim; this one faith teaches: to say three times one king.

Lots are cast for his garments, so that the sacred robe, remaining untouched, might forbid schism from Christ. Moreover, on either side of the innocent one they set bloodstained men, though the same sentence does not make one merit for all; for among the executioners, the Holy One hanging between robbers, the punishment of the three is equal, but the cause of two of them is different. For these are guilty before the world for many crimes; to this one the world is guilty, saved by his just blood. And yet even in the punishments the Ruler of all did not lose the rights of power: for as a just judge, looking on both, he chose this one and rejected that one, weighing the merits of both in a lofty trial. For one, whose fierce life did not leave him even in death, hurling wicked insults at the Lord, was biting with his own words, and like a bristly goat was tearing the lovely vine with venomous mouth: the other, having adored Christ with words of prayer, bent down his wounded eyes, cast down, only his eyes, for wounds held back both his hands. Him the Lord, like a shepherd, gathers up, a straying sheep through the desert fields, and rejoices to lead him with him into your fields, paradise, where with everlasting flowers the grassy field delights, and the pleasure of the groves is nourished by watering streams, and among gardens kindly famous for fruits that do not deceive the ancient serpent groans that a settler now dwells.

So both robbers, setting out on different paths, committed a great and violent crime of different kinds. That one goes to the doors below, this one to the doors above; that one, following the depths, entered the prison of Gehenna, this one carried off the kingdom of heaven by his robbery. Meanwhile a dreadful darkness suddenly came and held the whole sky, covering the blackening day with sad funeral rites; the sun, hiding its flashing rays in a cloud and veiled in a foul garment, hid itself and stained the sad world with mourning. The elements deserved to see this face of theirs, bereft of their Father's help, glad at his rising, sad at his setting. For as the light shone at the time of the Lord's birth, so it withdrew as he died, not to stay away long, but signifying mystic secrets by its span; for as for three hours the stars of the darkened sky lay hidden in blindness, so the Lord bore three days in the cave of the closed tomb. Nor was the earth without disaster, which, seeing such things, trembled to its foundations, and nature, uncertain of its end, dreaded the final limit, lest the highest summit, heading for the underworld, should compel the whole mass to fall, and the world, following its Author, depart through Tartarus. But immense kindness was hastening to the wandering shades, restoring what was lost, not destroying what stands.

Yet those who fixed the Lord to the cross feared no signs of so great a danger; moreover, when, thirsting, he asked for a drink, one of the unspeakable crowd held out vinegar soaked in a sponge on a reed. That liquid suited bastard peoples who had turned to the worse; for as sweet wines, when they are turned into horrible vinegar, lie thrown out from the tables, so the nation once accepted by God is now a hated offspring. So when the whole passion of the good Christ was completed, he himself sent forth his holy soul from his own body, he himself would take it up again, because the same one was dead and the same one alive, his limbs dying in him but God not dying; by whose power the ways of the underworld lay open backwards, and the rocks, their joints sundered, burst apart, and the bodies of the saints who lay there, revived, went out from the broken tombs, animated in their own ashes; and with a sudden crash that temple, rejoicing to see that the summit of a greater temple had fallen, like a mourning foster-child bared its wounded breast as the veil was torn, teaching that its inner secrets were … to be unlocked to future peoples, because the law, long covered by the veil of Moses, lies open to us as Christ comes.

Tell me where your sad victory is now, tell me where now, Death, your horrible sting is, you who, never sated with rich evils, are accustomed to invade all nations with your penal rule? Look, most wicked one, you do not reach Christ, but Christ reaches you, he who could die without death, and who, begetting all things and establishing all things, did not form you to exist: you were created from the viper's seed, with guilt as your mother, and you perish as pardon reigns. Already the spirit had left the limbs for a time, already the cold body hung on the spreading wood, and still fury supplies arms: it violates his side, pierced with a spear point, and from the open wound purple blood ran, and water with it. For these are, for the honor of holy religion, the body, the blood, the water: three gifts of our life. Reborn from the font, we feed on the limbs and the blood of Christ, and therefore we are counted a temple of the Godhead; may God grant us to keep it undefiled, and make us, slight as we are, able to hold so great an indweller. So when that noble place received the rich treasure of the body laid in it, the Lord lying there, but nobler still when he rose, the deceitful generation was nursing wickedness in its heart: that in the silent night the disciples would steal Christ away and report that he had gone when the third day came round, as he himself had foretold.

Spurred by this fear, they ask that more guards be posted and that the place be held under savage siege. If, executioners, after the bonds of the cross, after the wounds of iron, after his death, bloody with many blows, you have not yet finished your work, and do not believe that he who so often brought souls back from the lowest shades can all the more recall his own: then arm deceits fit for worse counsels, seal the tomb, post guards, roll a stone against the monument. Who will be able to guard God, to whom on the hinge of the world all things lie open? He dwells in the waves, reigns through Tartarus, and thunders from the clouds of heaven. Why, savage mob, do you waste your work on watches? Why do you strive to test the faith which you do not wish to believe? Meanwhile, after the sad Sabbath, the happy day had begun to shine, which draws the height of its lofty name from the ruling Lord, and first deserved to see the world born and Christ rise again. For when Genesis calls the seventh day the Sabbath, it is clear that this day is the head of the world, to which the glory of its King, granting it now the splendor of his own trophy too, gave it to keep the primacy. At this rising of light the virgin mother, and other mothers with her, came weeping with the gift of a harvest of spices to the familiar tomb, and see the place now empty of the body, but full of power. For an angel sent from the stars was sitting on top of the stone that had been rolled away, flaming in appearance, bright in a snow-white robe.

He, bearing terror and joy in a twofold appearance and dispensing all things, had come in a form of menacing fire to the guards, and in white to those who were seeking Christ. So the women learned through the angel's faith that the Lord lives, death trodden down. But the terrified soldier keeps his life in a dangerous plight, flees, deserting his post, and, a witness of his fear, tells the truth for nothing; after bribes were given, he lies, and, a practiced pretender, says that the band of disciples had secretly stolen Christ away for themselves in a night raid at the time of calm sleep. Speak, wicked guard, answer, criminal band: if Christ, as you dare to say, was brought out stealthily from the closed cave without the sleepers' noticing, whose grave-clothes lie inside? Beside whose discarded garments does the angel sit? Or did the one who took away the blessed body think it quicker to unwrap him than to carry him off bound? Since delay is the enemy of theft, it would have been safer to take his linen cloths along with the Lord. Your empty words have lied. Yet this event holds an excellent figure: it is clear that the Christ whom we carry in our devoted hearts was taken away from the Jews. Lament, Judea, for your priests who will perish, lament for your ministers and your people, for such daring. Not the trumpet, not the anointed, not your victim any longer is pleasing.

What wars will the trumpet sound for you, your king slain? Who will be your anointed, since you have lost the true Anointed? What victim will be offered, when the shepherd is held to be the victim? Let the synagogue depart, darkened by its own color; Christ has joined the church to himself in beautiful love. She shines in conspicuous honor in Mary, who, though she is ever mother by a glorious name, remains ever virgin; standing before her eyes the Lord first showed himself openly in the light, so that the good mother, spreading abroad his great miracles, she who was once the way of his coming, might also be the herald of his return. Soon, a mighty guest, he shone out and was recognized by others in the breaking of bread, because the true bread is always present to opened eyes, which the grace of faith makes clear, so that they can see the Lord living. Often after that, at hours of various times, he comes openly to his own disciples while they are eating, now suddenly showing his face, now eating a meal of broiled fish and honeycomb, so as to teach clearly that the food was bodily and that he was seen in the limbs he had before. Again, in fear of the apostate people, which had blindly denied the Lord, when the faithful company was sitting with the doors shut, he came in, greeting them with peace, and, showing his pierced palms, he bares his side. But Thomas,

who was surnamed Didymus, had not been with his brothers, and bore a doubtful faith in his heart, until, when he too was sitting with them, there came again he who had never been taken away. Then, the door shut, he stood in their midst, not disdaining to show his open side to the disciple and to be tested by the touch of the wound, and to bear patiently the wavering mind: recognized all the more from this, that he is the friend of the doubter. For whoever devises crafty frauds under a dark image and wishes to practice empty illusions does not want to be recognized, does not want his deeds examined, so as to lurk under a cloud of deceit, and, shutting all things up in mist, the pretender hates anxious friends. Likewise the Lord, knowing that Peter, fishing on the sea with his companions, had caught nothing, urges them to let down their nets into the waters on the right. Soon, the deep enclosed, the hanging nets hauled in a wave-wandering prey, to be understood by way of a figure: for the nets are the shining precepts of God for the worthy, by which all who remain in that right-hand part are enclosed, and are carried together in the apostles' arms to the feet of the Lord Christ. Nor were fish and coals and bread lacking, found by the disciples in one place. Who would doubt that one faith consists in these things? for the fish is in the water, Christ is present as the bread, and the Holy Spirit as the fire.

For by the one we are washed, by this one fed, by that one consecrated. Then the teacher invites them to eat the meal with kind words, as was his custom, and, coming to the table with one mind, they enjoy the Lord's familiar goodness and knew him to be their Christ. And when, with a modest meal, hunger was overcome and they had risen, leaving their places in order, the Lord asks whether Peter loves him from the depth of his heart; Peter assents. So the loving shepherd, wishing to increase his shining flocks, entrusts the sheep to a worker good in every part, entrusts the lambs too, giving this charge in threefold speech, so that the threefold guilt of the recent denier might remain purged by an equal number. Then, teaching what they must follow, he says: “Have peace, all of you, bring my peace, carry quiet peace, scatter peace among the peoples by holy admonitions and empty the world of evils: and I command that the nations be called from all the ends of the earth, wherever the wide world stretches, and that all be washed in the font.” When the Lord had finished these words in kindly speech, he soon goes to the fields of Bethany: and before the blessed men who alone deserved to see the triumph, raised on high, he departs into the regions of heaven. And he sits at the right hand of the Father and governs all things by his own right, he who, holding all things high and low, entered Tartarus after heaven, and heaven after Tartarus.

But they, watching with glad faces as the Lord went above the high clouds and trod the shining tracts with his footsteps, reverently adore him and carry back in eager hearts the starry ways, to teach them to all: for they were rightly faithful witnesses of the divine power, who, having seen many things, wrote down a few of his countless good deeds. For if they had wished to hand down in sacred pages all the deeds of the Redeemer, not even the whole world would be enough to hold the crowded books in so many volumes.