Easter Work (prose version of the Easter Song) 0.1–2.5

Preface of Sedulius's Paschal Work. Whoever you are, guest, who share in the Easter feast, not disdaining to recline on our couches, put down the raised height of your brow if you come as a dear friend, and do not look here for the work of an artful book; but, gladly receiving the slender solemnities of a small table and taking them with contentment, be readier to satisfy your spirit than your appetite. Or if you are taken rather with a great abundance of rich things and, a lover of luxuries, expect choice riches, you ought to be filled at the dinners of noble learned men, whose manifold provisions cannot be told. There you will surely find whatever the sea's wave nourishes for eating, whatever the fertility of the earth supplies, whatever holds up its body in the clouds by the balance of its wings. On the very dishes, jeweled with exceedingly precious variety, honey grows golden with its nectar-filled wax, and the honeycomb, set in golden baskets, plays against the metal with its color. But we have picked a cheap vegetable grown from the seeds of a poor garden, which we are seen to serve in a dish of red earthenware, more with goodwill than with splendor.

Since the zealous custom of the pagan poets commends the trifles of fabulous song by the pomp of noble words, and, whether with the shouts of buskined tragedy, or with the comic foulness of laughable Geta, or with any of the numbers of the metrical art, they hand down the criminal deeds of ancient times, some even composed by the art of shameful narration, the pen ploughing the papyrus of the Nile's flood: why should I, who, practicing the songs of David's melody on the ten-stringed psaltery among the choirs of blessed doctrine, reverently answer with spiritual words, keep silent in a muted voice about the wonderful and saving mighty works of Christ, when I ought to take up the work of truth and not keep silent about the gifts of heavenly grace with the instrument of faithful speech? For the service of the human heart and sense ministers to no one more justly than to the almighty Lord, who instituted the senses and founded hearts, so that the material ever devoted to its Creator may not abandon its own author; from whom it is not fitting that the handiwork that is his by right should be withdrawn or perish; to whom, by everlasting rule in the citadels of heaven, there is one power with the Father, equal brightness of splendor, the undivided sublimity of a common summit, equal honor, the same might, a shared height, a kingdom without end in time, a beginning ever abiding in unbroken eternity, a glory sharing the fellowship of the scepter, and like majesty. This is the way that leads to the home of salvation; this path is opened to firm steps toward the Easter gifts. Here we will lay the foundations of our work; here, then, all of you, turn your sick minds; apply this medicine to the deadly diseases of those into whom the vain purpose of harmful disputation creeps and whom the incurable discipline of Attic dogma wounds with the poison of Cecropian doctrine, so that, when you have drunk in the life-giving breezes, the breath of the divine law, the fragrance of the sweetness of burning grace, you may thereafter with purer sense leave the gluttony of Athenian filth. Why, sons of Theseus, do you go round the labyrinth's windings in dark errors and, your footsteps entangled with no way out, roam the gloomy caves in blind mazes? Why do you still prefer the wild vine to the good vine? Why do you put wild nard before the shining rose beds? What good will it do to trust with empty worship in images of stone and figures of bronze, or to condemn souls to the slavery of profane shrines and venerated metals? Spare yourselves, I beg, spare yourselves now the squalid clods of sandy dust and the enjoyment of the bare dryness of sterile fields, where the ploughed land has never known how to relieve the labor of the sweating farmer with a fruitful reward from its pregnant depths. Nor pluck from the shoots of a bloody turf the poisonous nourishment of deadly juice, which, ever friendly to the food of Tartarus, knows how to serve not life but death. Rather enter, through the flowing waters of a pure spring, the pleasant meadows of flowering grass and the lovely approaches of the blessed seat, where the fruitfulness of life-giving seeds, quickened by divine waters, nourishes a crop that grows once the roughness of the thorns is torn out; a crop that, by the great abundance of manifold fruit, can now be God's harvest and, opening the hope of future reward, can store its fruit in hundredfold heaps in the greatest granaries.

Almighty God of undivided and eternal Godhead, who hold the whole world by your sacred nod, who made firm the frame of heaven by the work of your fingers and founded the fabric of your mighty word, who forbid the rushing madness of the surging sea to overwhelm the boundary of the neighboring land beyond the limits you have set, who, setting the appearance of the radiant sun and the horned face of the moon next to day and night, dispense the alternations of both lights by the sacred balance of your moderation, who alone gather together and alone know the number of the stars, their powers, signs, names, places, courses and times; who quickened the inert limbs of the raw earth with living bodies through diverse motions; who, after condemning to death the man who ate the fruit of the tree in forbidden presumption, raise him again by the sacrament of better food, and preserve him from the voluptuous deceit of the viper's bite by the drink of spotless blood; who, when the name of the human race, except those whom the guardian ark had protected, was wholly submerged and buried by the sudden flood of the rising deluge, restored it and multiplied it again from one stock, so that, by the demonstration of a mystic power, you might show that what the sins of the flesh had killed, fenced in by the faithful protection of the wood, was to be washed by the one baptism of the whole world: show me now graciously that way, show your suppliant that path which directs the footsteps of a few by a narrow road to the walls of the saving city, that is, Jerusalem, the city of the Lord, which bears our Pasch through the passion of Christ, so that through this city, which performs the hospitality of bodily grace, we may deserve to come to that fatherland of spiritual glory; and let your word, Lord, be a lamp to my feet, so that the brightness of the right road may lead me to those places of flowering grass where the good Shepherd keeps his shining fold, where the whole white-robed flock follows the Lamb of the virgin ewe, most pure in snowy brightness. The way is not hard if you deign to offer yourself as leader. All things lie under your power, all nature yields to your commands and passes into opposite kinds and shapes at your sovereign bidding. If you wish the yearly crops to grow golden in icy seasons, sluggish winter produces the nimble reaper for the sickles; if, in the mildness of the spring season, when the earth shines covered with its first robe of flowers, you bid the vineyard bring forth with laden shoots, the vintner, dancing in a river of new wine, will force out the nectar-filled heart of the happy grape by the welcome injury of his drunken heel; and the turns of all the seasons, their fruits changed, will not refuse to serve the Creator. Indeed, hoary faith gives proof of the divine wonders, and the ancient origin of the early fathers bears witness, and the immortal signs of heavenly powers endure, not to be abolished as the ages pass and time grows old. Of these, with the fear of a trembling talent, I scarcely allow my mind and feeble heart to touch on even a few by bold narration, so that, entering a very dense forest, I may strive to touch a few branches with the tips of my fingers. For even if a hundred mouths at once were given to a human body, and an iron voice did not cease to cry out with the motions of a hundred tongues, who could set out all those things which neither the densest stars of heaven nor the thirsty sand of the sea could equal in number?

First, from the time when the confused matter of things, which is called chaos, rose into the bright face of the world by the fashioning Word, Enoch, most pleasing and beloved to God, obtaining a living glory and passing beyond the measure of human nature through countless courses of years, fulfilled by his birth what was owed to the earth, but stirred the wonder of death, from which he was withdrawn.

Sarah's languid limbs were already withering with old age, and her blood, extinguished by long decay, had condemned the veins of her aged body to the barrenness of offspring despaired of, when, made fruitful by her union with an older husband, she suddenly expanded the bosom of her cold womb, and, her heart swelling with a new birth, the trembling mother held the son born by a late happiness, the hope of a future nation and people, to the breasts that give milk to drink.

Him his father offered as a gift to God, he who had been promised when all hope was gone; the boy stood at the knife, and a ram was made the burnt offering. O spotless mind of a holy high priest! He rejected the human and looked to the divine; by denying life to his son he gained it for him. Abraham drew the sword to strike, and the Lord changed the sacrifice for himself so as to spare. A great mystery was indeed being enacted in this devotion: that for the life of the human race Christ, the gentle Lamb, would offer himself of his own accord as a victim.

Lot was fleeing from Sodom, which was about to perish, and his wife, by the boldness of incautious presumption, looking back at what she had escaped, was changed and remained as a statue of salt, not as a token of wisdom but of punishment. For no one who has turned back again with headlong desire to the dangers of the world once despised will enjoy the gladness of pleasant salvation. Nor is that ploughman worthy to rejoice in the coming abundance of the crops who, confusing by turning his face backwards the furrow of the plough which he ought to keep on a straight course, scatters the order of his earlier labor.

The bush, once wrapped in harmless fires, was seen burning without burning; its matter neither supplied fuel to the flames nor, seized by the fire of the heat around it, suffered the loss of burnt wood. So the touch of the divine tinder was tempered that, as the flame caressed the glowing branches, a splendor, not a punishment, was seen in the leaves.

The tractable nature of the gentle rod was changed into a savage and intractable serpent: bending in a sinuous coil as it practiced a viper's movements and brandished its triple-forked tongues, it swallowed the twin serpents of hostile fraud and, by a stiffening change again, took back the proper appearance of a rod.

Through the depths that lie hidden beneath the sea's waves, the waters rolled back to either side and held up by divine construction of the sea, a crowd on foot passed over. The sea stood on every side like a wall, and the land, stripped of the covering of its kindred flood, remained bare, until the people, walking in the sea while the sea was absent, took with strangers' footsteps a hospitable road of watery dryness. Nature changed its path, commanded to relax its constancy for a little, and the countless multitude, crossing the plains of the slippery salt, beheld without knowing it the rudimentary mystery of baptism, having passed through the saving straits of the waters with Christ as their leader. So, indeed, the prophet sang, signifying these things: “The voice of the Lord is over many waters.” Who, then, doubts that the voice means the Word? And who would deny that the Word of the Father is Christ? He, the founder of the old and new testaments, by his coming opened the immense abyss of the first law, so that by the newer teaching, as if the masses of the waves had been removed from its inmost depths, the following age, fearing no danger, might now walk securely along the path of level freedom.

Why should I tell how the countless troops of the same people, in desert stretches of land condemned to the barrenness of all food, obtained the food of angels and the bread of heavenly grace, when a nectar-filled cloud of heavenly majesty, bedewing them, poured out for the people feasts from the rains and abundant food from the showers?

Again, through fields squalid with violent heat a thirsty army was burning, where the land lay languishing, its springs always denied it by the familiar heat, where the failing nature of the waters had taken away the hope of drinking and likewise of living: when the stillness shut up in the bowels of the astonished rock suddenly overflowed from the surging crag into foaming water, and the veins of the dry and fasting stone poured out abundant drink for all. In these three things, then, already announcing the great sacraments of his mystery, Christ was in the sea, Christ in the bread, Christ in the rock.

A she-ass, a cheap and stupid beast, terrified by the sight of the angelic power, addresses her rider with words, and the crude cry of a braying tongue unfolds into the speech of a human voice.

The sun, at the summit of mid-heaven, reining in the rapid courses of its panting flame, stood fixed over Gibeon and held back its light through unaccustomed delays of the day, the evening postponed; nor did the moon, moved by its own laws, go beyond the threshold of its sluggish station and keep the order of its accustomed step, until the sword of the victorious army had utterly cut down the strength of the enemy, with heaven's help conspiring. In short, the very stars, serving, already saw the Lord Jesus who was to come, his name going before through the sacrament of a like name.

Contrary to the order of nature, ravens kept Elijah alive with daily meals, and the bird given to the rapacity of a voracious beak, which supplies easy prey to its hollow throat, brought him food untouched by hungry bites. Now good and faithful to Elijah, the bird that was once bad and faithless to Noah washed away on land the guilt it had contracted in the flood of waters. But Elijah, being full of God, after he had shown many miracles to the world and passed on, through the spirit, as by a hereditary bounty, the gift of his own power to the friend worthy to succeed him, was snatched up by fiery horses and chariots through those heights of clear calm, where the lighter road of a pure path keeps no furrows in the heavenly field from the track of the glowing wheel sinking in; he sought the regions on the right of a greater space in such a way that, shining in the chariot of heavenly triumph and relying on a long life, he scorned the goal of the human limit. How well the majesty of the shining path smiled on the brightness of Elijah, fittingly and deservedly, in his name! For if in the Greek tongue one letter could be changed by its accent, the word would be seen to express specifically “sun.”

To Hezekiah, a most just king, set at the last limits of life, the Lord by his kindness and his right added fifteen years for his safety, and, closing the doors of death that already lay open, called back his life, fading in its setting, to the origin of its rising.

Jonah, thrown into the sea's waves in the trembling of an anxious ship and hidden in the belly of the swallowing sea-monster, did not feel the waters though he was set in the sea, having entered, that is, a life-giving tomb so as not to die; and, safe in a most gentle custody beneath the voracious belly, he was seen to be God's deposit, not prey; and, preserved more healthfully by the protection of an enemy, he came to land by vomiting, not by keel. In this event, by a contrary exchange, the sailor showed savagery and the beast provided the ship.

When, by God's inspiration from heaven, the single resolve of heart of the three young men despised and refused the Babylonian rites alike, and underwent the harsh destruction of death by the atrocity of a tyrant's law (whose rage, kindled by the fire of Persian fury, surpassed the scorching heat of his own furnace), the young men are thrust bound into the midst of the pyres, the pyre not daring to touch them, and, burning so in heart, they overcame the punishment for the image as the penalty failed. O how great is the salvation and glory of believers! By the flames of a hotter faith the force of the furnace was quenched and grew dull.

So the author of so wicked a judgment did not escape the punishment his deed deserved. For because, seized by insane madness, he had despised the laws of human kindness, he lived like a beast in the woods, and, following the rustic company of cattle, he exchanged the delights of the court banquet, fed on hay and drinking from the river; and seven seasons saw him in this deformed shape wandering shaggy through woods and mountains.

No less afterwards, while the fury of Darius, then reigning, imitated the earlier madness, Daniel, the greatest glory of the Hebrews, is shut in with beasts goaded by fasting, and the innocent body of a simple soul is assigned to be devoured by savage bites. Yet the beast, made gentle and calm, so as not to tear the holy limbs with insane tooth in its hunger, now began to love its hunger; and rage, softened, lowering its terrible looks, and wrath, resting more gently in the savage jaws, then taught lions, forgetful of their native fierceness, to keep their prey safe.

Tell me, after such things, stubborn Nature, where are your laws? Who is it that so often took away your rights? Who commanded the underworld not to know the man carried away, granted a fruitful old age to a barren wife, compelled a beast to come of its own accord to the altar, turned a woman's form into an image of salt, showed branches blazing with fire without burning, turned a rod into a snake, opened paths for feet through the sea's waves, poured out nectar-sweet manna from raining clouds, cast out waters from the dry bowels of the rock, allowed the mouth of a dumb beast to speak human words, held the elements in a long halt, their courses fixed, fed a man by the service of birds and brought him to heaven in a chariot of flashing horses, granted three lustra of life to a king already dying, made a harbor for shipwreck in the belly of a savage robber, bathed the boys' limbs in the furnace with starry dew, made a wandering king the fellow-guest of wild beasts and cattle in brambly pastures, and taught lions to spare their prey and not to love plunder? Surely it was the creator of all things, whose works, all fashioned by the machinery of his word, whether known or hidden, are the foundations of his work and lie subject to him; and the creature follows the command of the one who orders it, wherever the divine sentence draws it by its nod.

Alas, wretched are those who, bowed down to empty worship, spend the foolish service of a perverse heart on images they have carved, and, leaving their own maker, venerate the likenesses made by their own hands! What madness is this? What so great insanity mocks their minds, that a man sound in his limbs should adore a foul bird, a most obscene cow, a twisted serpent and a half-human dog?

Some, blinded in clouded minds, would have the sun reckoned the begetter of things, on the ground that, flooding the tracts and spaces of the lands with the light of clear calm, it does not cease to traverse the regions of the sky and the stars with flaming speed: whereas from that very unstable mobility, which the wandering fire practices in its rapid courses, it is plain that it is a servant, not God; it keeps the order of a fixed arrangement, now rising, now, sinking toward its setting as the hours decline, sharing its turns with night. Nor is it always present everywhere, and it saw none of the beginnings of the world being born, until, two days having passed without a sun, the provident Begetter appointed it to shine from the beginning of the third light.

So too many pay needless vows to the moon, which they see always growing and waning at the appointed times of the months.

So too they do not cease to sacrifice to the stars, which are put to flight before the face of the morning light when night is driven away.

This one is a worshipper of waters, that one of flames, but they do not dare to make kinds contrary in nature neighbors to each other, lest, in closer discord, either the hotter fire dry up the weaker waters, or the pyre, unequal to the huge waves, suddenly die out.

Another, setting up altars at the roots of trees and setting out feasts, does not cease tearfully to beg branches and oaks to guard his children, house, fields, marriage, servants and property. Man of wood, why do you beseech wood? You waste your effort crying out to the deaf; you expect answers from the mute and will hear nothing; these uphold the stability of houses only in this way: if, cut down with axes, they support the overhanging roofs, or, put on the hearth and set alight, they serve in cooking the meals to be eaten.

Some, more madly still, are worshippers of vegetables, and, watering dry deities in gardens, show themselves to be true worshippers of transplanted gods. But I am ashamed to tell more of such things, lest, while we chastise the numerous errors of folly on the page of holy religion, the rough bramble should burn the lilies, softest in their great beauty, or the thistle and the thorn, armed with spiny points, should rise up through the purple violet beds of the flowering field. Enough of rebuke, then: we have laughed at the monsters that human errors worship, or rather wept over such acts in pity. Now it pleases me to go on with the plan of the path begun, to climb the lofty mountain with firm step, and to come with all the zeal of our strength to the city, the author of our freedom. It is, in short, the house of tranquil peace, the safe dwelling of salvation, the everlasting lodging of freedom. For if the poet of secular letters sang thus of the city of an earthly and mortal kingdom, founded by a mortal builder: “And what so great cause had you for seeing Rome? Freedom…”, how much more should we believe that the rights of everlasting freedom belong to the city of the heavenly kingdom, which God the Lord founded as its builder, of which the prophet of such songs says: “The Lord builds Jerusalem,” and in the following psalm likewise explained: “Praise the Lord, Jerusalem, praise your God, Zion, for he has strengthened the bars of your gates; he has blessed your sons within you, he who has made your borders peace,” and so on. Let us hear also the creator of all things himself in his gospels, saying in his most holy speech whose city this is: “I say to you,” he says, “do not swear at all, neither by heaven, for it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet, nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King,” as if he were saying “mine,” which he refrained from saying more plainly, so as to reveal the height of his majesty by the humility of his speech. For so, when he was teaching, he admonished, saying: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart.” This is where the royal hall shines with tawny domes, where the one who asks receives, the one who seeks finds, and the door is soon opened to the one who knocks.

This is that precious stone which, rejected by the builders, shines set at the head of the corner: whose burden is felt to be very light, whose yoke is proved most sweet. So, through certain miracles of the old testament set out in order, we have told what the Father did in fellowship with the Son, the Holy Spirit being present with him. In the same way, through certain miracles of the new testament set out in order, we will tell what the Son did in fellowship with the Father, the Holy Spirit being present with him, so that the one power of the Godhead, ever visible in inseparable might, may be threefold in simple majesty and simple in threefold person. This is the true faith and firm belief.

Unhappy Arius scorned to hold this salvation. Striving to turn the straight road aside through the out-of-the-way windings of a crooked path, he slipped into the foul pit of dark Tartarus and followed the shadows, as empty and void of sense as, at the time of his just punishment, he was also emptied in belly, his bowels poured out, when he died. Madman, who thought that the rights of the Father's divinity, which can be matched by no example of likeness, could be compared to perishable degrees! For among men born by the law of the flesh the son is less than the father, since the father himself, who now goes before his son, was a little before a son, and there is no doubt that he who is now seen to be a son can become a father. So through every succession of descendants a new offspring runs on, and the forefathers of grandfathers are counted in great age. But the Lord Christ, who is the Word, the Power, the Wisdom and all that the Father has in common, risen as light from light, was born the Only from the Only; he is in nothing less than the Father, nor is there anything in which he could grow, higher than all things, since, begotten and not created, he has the name Beginning for his supremacy: for so, according to John, when the Jews questioned him, he said that he was the Beginning. What, then, is the Beginning but the lofty summit above which nothing at all is found, ever abiding in the Father, because the Father ever abides in him, and the one God of undivided majesty is the head of all things? Not that the Son is believed to be the one who is the Father, but that the Son is believed to be what the Father is, as he himself said in the teaching of the Gospel: “I in the Father and the Father in me.” And then he added: “I and the Father are one.” Let Arius hear that “one” is said, let Sabellius learn that “are” is said; the one fleeing from the Trinity, the other dissenting from the unity: both equal in error though following different ways. So the founders of the pagan doctrines try to oppose one another's sayings, men who, putting out their arms from bare shoulders, are ready to hand down nothing by teaching but only to contend in long disputation, whose prudence lies foolish, because the frail discipline of worldly wisdom is vain before God. This one talks more, that one is more silent; this one argues while walking, that one pronounces standing; one is always weeping, another never stops laughing: so in different ways an equal madness is seen in all.

Meanwhile, as we lighten the burden of the road's labor with talk, and hope and faith together accompany my steps toward the heights, we come more pleasantly, the difficulty laid aside, to the top of the highest citadel. See, the hallowed banners of the cross already shine; see, the most holy camp of the great King displays a flashing light, and with starry breath the trumpet of the Lord's post cries out: the approach of his gate lies open to his soldiers; let whoever serves enter fearlessly. The door of eternity invites you, and that door is Christ, that is, the Father's voice. You will rejoice in the golden reward of everlasting life, you who handle manfully the heavenly arms of the Lord and show on your foreheads the fixed glory, the sacrament of the faithful sign. Look, I, the least part of your army, good King, carry the consecrated glory and heavenly arms. Grant that I may receive a home of my own here, that I may be worthy of a small dwelling within the walls of this city, so that, ever your resident and your house-born servant, placed in a little corner of the holy mansion, I may deserve to be enrolled last as a citizen on the white page of life among the citizens of the blessed order. I ask great things indeed, but your greatness can give great things, and he offends you more who has conceived a doubtful hope of so great a kindness.

Christ, grant my prayers, smile on my prayers, you who, hastening to give life to a dying world, came from heaven to seek earthly things, deigning to take human form, taking up indeed what was another's but not leaving what was your own. Matthew, undertaking this first, set forth the man in general terms; Mark, like a wonderful lion roaring through the deserts, cried aloud; Luke took the likeness of the bullock from the priestly beginning of religion; John, with the swoop of a flying eagle, penetrated heaven by the majesty of the Word. These four chiefs and heralds, singing you with one voice, range like as many seasons over the widest figure of the whole world. So too the twelvefold summit of apostolic height and honor, ever shining, imitates in its number the hours and the months, so that, all things gathered together, the whole year may serve you. From here, then, remembering the ancient beginnings of the old death, I delight to hasten to new life, so that we who sowed tears in Adam may reap joy in Christ and may deserve to say the song of David: “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds; but coming, they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.”

That most wicked serpent had driven the first-born man by deceitful arts from the flowering home of paradise and, by the allurements of a sweet taste, had made him taste a hidden death that soon proved bitter. Nor did the violator of the command alone receive the sentence of divine indignation with the loss of life, but the human race coming from him had succumbed to the condition of a long death. Alas, cruel and harmful wife! Or is that treacherous, murderous serpent the more harmful? That serpent is a treacherous murderer, but you too are a cruel and harmful wife. O grief! The two only had been eternal. After the race began to grow, then it perished, and, bringing forth ruin, received its loss from its seed. What good, in that age, were the many days and the manifold, what good was it to exceed nine hundred years in happy spans of life, and, as the tenth generation of descendants grew old, to see now blood foreign to one's own race, when the last lot of the human condition, seized in its final courses by the irreparable hour, could by no means avoid death, however late, and a life that is short through a long age of times would groan that nothing is long that is closed by an end.

Nor would any hope promise that a remedy for this evil would come, but the sentence of the tomb deserved by the first earth-born man would swallow with greedy jaws all the nations of the last offspring as well, had not that kindly creator and founder of things, whose nature it is rather to pour pardon on sins than to threaten them with punishment, deigned to raise up more firmly, through the same stone, the fabric of his work that was weak from its very foundation, lest the image which, living, had been made in God's likeness should be held unlike him through death; and had he not bestowed the gift of forgiving indulgence and kept the teeth of the children from being set on edge by the sour fruit their parents had devoured, and, most gentle and appeased, granted that whence sins had brought death, thence immense kindness might nourish life again; and as the sweet and very soft rose is born from a thorny turf without harming its mother, whom it outshines in its charm, so, as Mary came from the stock of guilty Eve with holy light, the virgin following might wash away the stain of the first virgin, so that, since our former nature, defiled by vices, had been subjected to the condition of a hard death, when Christ was born man might be reborn through Christ, as Christ was born through man, laying aside the foulness of the original stain by the renewal of the old body.

After the prophetic voice had often foretold these things and the archangel Gabriel had announced them to Mary in person, at once the conception, breathed in by the faithful word, remained in the womb of the believing girl, and the starry offspring who granted all things to be born at his nod lay hidden under the law of birth. The virgin's womb swelled, and her untouched body marveled at the fruitfulness of her inner parts. The mystery of a woman's childbearing without a man promised great help to the world, when, darkened by the blemish of no stain, she nourished her heart in her swelling womb, soon to be the mother of her own Begetter.

Meanwhile the ninth month had passed and the immortal light of the tenth was shining, and the manifest promise of spiritual grace shone out in the virgin's child: and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, that is, he dwelt in the man with whose flesh he deigned to clothe himself. For the infant, both small and greatest, small in limbs, supreme in Godhead, coming forth through the pure chastity of the temple that gave him lodging, did not harm the body when he left it, which he had not harmed when he came. Truly this is the secret of the divine birth: the birth itself is shown to be the witness of the virgin, since he who entered as guardian of his mother's chastity was both conceived and born with her womb closed. What brightness of new light then filled the borders of the whole world! What joy in heaven! What radiance shone out when Christ, with starry splendor, came forth from Mary's womb like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber! His beauty was seen to shine so with divine grace that David's psalm speaks of him thus: “Beautiful in form above the sons of men; grace is poured on your lips,” and so on. And well did it define him as beautiful in form above the sons of men, because, although he took on the likeness of human incarnation and often called himself the Son of Man in the preaching of the Gospel, yet original sin had defiled us, which he did not have, who cleansed us by the purity of his own birth. O merciful kindness, ready to save! Lest the yoke of long slavery should press us because of our sinful condition, the Lord took on the limbs of a servant. Let us hear the voice of the apostle Paul saying: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,” and so on; and he who clothes all things born from the beginning of the world allowed his own limbs to be wrapped in swaddling cloths, and he for whom the bounds of heaven are small, for whom the earth is not enough, whom the sea's wave cannot contain, remained full in a boy's body, God lying in a small manger.

Hail, best of parents, consecrated by giving birth to so great a King, who so rules unceasingly above and below that his rule, power and name know neither beginning nor end; you who, by the conspicuous honor of a blessed womb, are proved to be at once mother and virgin. No woman at all is found equal to you, who either went before or follows your glory in like manner: alone pleasing Christ in a singular way, you are compared with no example.