Easter Work (prose version of the Easter Song) 4.1–5.9

Now, when, crossing the streams of the Jordan again, he was passing along the road of Judea, he healed everywhere an immense crowd and countless throngs of every kind of nameless sickness, receiving the sick and allowing them to go back healthy. Nothing, then, is hard for God most high to grant to those who hope in him, whose ready power is able to level the steep and straighten the crooked, that is, to bring the proud down to lowlier things and show the path to those who stray. For the great prophet Isaiah is known to have spoken thus when he announced the coming of Christ: “And the crooked,” he says, “will become straight, and the rough ways level.” Did he prophesy of rocks or briars or the bending turns of roads, when Christ came to save not the world set in woods and mountains, but in the human race? This too is what the voice of one crying in the desert urges: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”: the way, that is, of thoughts and the paths of wills, by which the Lord may come with straight step into the dwelling of a clean heart. For thoughts and wills are the ways of works, which are seen to go before the good or evil outcome of each one. Whatever, then, natural force denies is very easily subject to divine power.

For as the huge beast, the camel, cannot pass through the tiny eye of a needle because of the bulk of so great a body, so the wealthy, rich and swollen, could not enter the heavenly kingdom by the slender gate of the narrow path, had not the provident governor of things, who holds the whole by law and is himself held under no law, whom no face ever sees but who himself always watches over all things, comforted the disciples, troubled by this condition, with such words: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” For the patrimony of one's wealth is not a burden to all the rich, but to the one who is a bad manager of his own abundance. For when the Lord says through the prophet, “The gold and the silver are mine,” he shows that what is his is not evil if a good worker has it; for it makes no difference whether someone spends nothing on good works or pours out a great deal on wicked ones. That man indeed keeps his wealth safe and invests it, and hides and stores his treasures in heaven, where the bite of no devouring moth or scaly rust consumes anything, nor is entry opened by digging through to thieves for stealing, who gives food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, hospitality to strangers, comforts the sad in prison, cares for the sick in body, and, most generous to all, is poor and needy only toward himself. Nor should anyone doubt that the wealth which is shown to have been spent on Christ in the most humble form of the poor man reaches heaven altogether, wealth which grows by losses, is kept by scattering, perishes so as to remain, and, dead, brings back life.

Meanwhile, when the Lord, surrounded by the accompanying people, had gone out of Jericho, he sees two men deprived of their eyes sitting by the roadside, asking that their sight be restored. They asked sitting, because hostile darkness resists trusting in the motion of their steps. Nor did that power, which refuses nothing to kindness and is accustomed to bring healing where it feels faith burning, delay even a little; it suddenly roused with a wakeful touch the eyes pressed down by a long sleep, and, unlocking the bars of the windows hidden under their brows, at once drove back the gloomy night as the day came in.

Then, walking again within the sacred walls of the temple, he gave sight to the blind and restored walking to the lame.

After these memorials of noble mighty works, leaving the city of David, he had come to the region of Bethany, and, returning the next day, was going back to the roofs of that city. Not far from the road was a fig tree, shady with the interwoven coverings of its leaves, on whose wood the Lord, hungry in the flesh, found no fruit at all; he did not wound the inhuman branches of the tree with a curse, but condemned them by a command, rebuking it thus: “May no fruit ever be born from you for ever.” And at once the fig tree, widowed of its sap withdrawn, barren and unsightly, its glory of leaves laid down, withered away. Yet let us not take this according to the letter, although it is believed to have been plainly fulfilled, since the divine law suits spiritual causes. For what sin had matter without sense committed? Especially since, as the evangelist Mark records, it did not have fruit because the season was not suitable: unless the Lord did this for the instruction of our profit, he who shows us the way of life by parables of deeds and words. Every effort of human life, then, that cares to nourish nothing pleasing to God, like a useless tree with a sluggish trunk, full of leaves, not of fruit, will be counted with the wood to be burned, like that fig tree that remained unfruitful, which the lord of the vineyard who had planted it ordered to be cut down but left it under a year's truce, so that, if it bore fruit even late, it might remain; otherwise it would deservedly perish. But, according to the song of the psalm that says: “The righteous will flourish like the palm, and like the cedar that is in Lebanon he will be multiplied.”

Then there was brought to him a man who, along with the affliction of madness, also suffered the loss of speech, whose throat's passages being closed, no voice sounded from the cymbals of his lips, and, uttering nothing at all with his mouth, by his silence he made his mute madness known. But that starry Creator, accustomed to strengthen the weak, struck off from the siege of his throat the robber who hung over his panting straits, and, the bonds of his tongue loosed, restored full exchange with fluent freedom through the opened paths of the voice.

Moreover, while the Lord was ennobling by his humility the banquet of a certain Pharisee who had invited him, a sinful and notorious woman came in hastily, who, wounded by the many wounds of her offenses, was leading a shameful life. And, throwing herself down at the Lord's feet, she did not cease to wash them with weeping, to wipe them with her hair, and to anoint them with precious ointment as she kissed them, until the sentence of God was pronounced, who does not regret giving his hand to the fallen, if we regret the slippery path of our old ruin, granting pardon in these words: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” O how much it helps the wretched and the weak to uncover by confession what becomes deadly when hidden! For he nourishes his wounds who hides them and neglects to bare to the physician the wound inflicted by the goad of pain. See now, a woman defiled by the contagion of a long disease is purged by the affliction of a little groaning, is washed in the flood of her own weeping, and, drenched with tears and wiped with her hair, she who had come filthy departs clean.

And when the Lord had come to the city named Capernaum and was teaching the peoples heavenly things in a crowded gathering of the synagogue, suddenly, through the bodily service of a human voice, that most wicked devil roared out in this cry: “What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” And soon, terrified and cast down as the Lord said threateningly, “Be silent, and come out of the man, unclean spirit,” bellowing with a great roar by which he confessed that he had been beaten by the divine command, he left the human heart, fleeing invisible into the dark air. Likewise the Lord gave saving help to many who were sick in various ways and harassed by the calamity of various disasters, and, driving out many demons by the word of his power, he did not allow them to speak at all, disdaining such a common witness to the faith in his heavenly majesty. For that ancient serpent of Tartarus, destroyer of life, inventor of death, cast down from the heavenly summit with all the madness of his allied pomp and the whole foul retinue of his damned army, was astonished to see on earth, clothed in the humility of the flesh, the Christ whom he had known shining in that citadel, and he groaned the more from envy, because he saw man so beloved by the Lord of power.

And while, passing from there through the region of Tyre, the Lord was walking on the shore of Sidon, he healed a man brought to him, most wretched with a twofold calamity, who, deprived of the functions of voice and ears, could neither give his own words nor receive those of others. But at the touch of the heavenly hand all the inner chambers which violent ruin had closed were broken open, the doors suddenly burst wide, and, the guards of the passages at once relaxed, he who just before was seen to be mute and deaf both deserved to speak himself and heard others speaking.

You too felt the gifts of the Lord's power, on whose eyes, pressed down by a hellish blindness, Christ spat, and at once

wiped away the appearance of a feigned death. And when, teaching the peoples to have the support of everlasting life through sacred instructions, he revealed himself more plainly as God, avoiding for a little the crowds that pressed headlong upon him, he came to the lake of the sea, and, sitting in Simon's small boat, had instructed with divine oracles the people remaining on the shore. And at last, ending his words, which were never too many for their desires, he bids the boat go farther out to sea and the fishing nets be let down, which, the whole night's course having run, had been able to draw nothing from the depths, their labor frustrated. Simon, glad at the sacred command, obeys, and, skilled in enclosing the wave-wandering throngs with a siege of linen, he captures the nations of the watery marble surrounded by a walled siege, and so great a multitude of fish heaped the stretched folds that both Simon's boat and the partner boat that stood by, filled with scaly masses, were scarcely rescued from danger. So too the unexpected happiness of the greatest success often troubles us, and the joy we receive as we wished, if it goes beyond measure and limit, we now fear like an unbearable burden; for men are afraid even to wish for what is ready to be granted by the Godhead.

Distinguished and renowned for such mighty works, the Lord was hastening to enter the city called Nain, surrounded by disciples and peoples, when suddenly he sees the corpse of a young man being carried out, raised on the sad service of the empty gifts of a funeral, whose mother an envious lot had formerly widowed of her second husband and now of her son by the misery of a twin urn. And kindness, the enemy of grief, delaying not at all, at once lent life-giving help, and, touching the bier with the hand of redemption, the Lord said to the dead man: “Young man, I say to you, arise. And he who was dead sat up and began to speak, and he gave him to his mother.” For although the young man, deprived of light, had been overwhelmed by the numbness of sluggish death and was being carried as a lifeless corpse, the servant could not keep silent when the Lord called him, nor could the spirit fail to return when Life was present. Soon, then, the whole gathering that had been clouded with weeping is given back with serene faces, and, turning its steps onto the road back with grief laid aside, the white procession brought the rejoicing mother back to her home.

Nor was it a small healing, Mary, that the Lord bestowed on you as physician; he cured the secret place of your heart, hurt by many blows and wounds, which a sevenfold rage, wedged in a demonic mass, possessed with sevenfold movements of arms. But the serpent, spotted with scaly glory, fleeing the dread commands of the Almighty, driven from your heart, went to the chaos of hellish Tartarus, twisting the coils of his seven members and vanishing with his seven folds together.

Then, lest the very rich growth of an abundant harvest should languish for lack of the work of scarce laborers, he commands seventy-two other disciples, simple in mind, shining in purity, who, conspicuous in number and merit, deserve to be called a golden balance, to go like innocent and gentle lambs to the harsh minds of men as among ravening wolves. He exhorts them in such words, addressing them: “Go; behold, I send you like lambs among wolves.” And again, when they returned eagerly because even the demons were subject to them, he said this in warning: “Behold, I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will harm you. Yet do not rejoice that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” For this is the rule of the divine judgment: to put life before deeds, not to place deeds above life. For if the merit of a holy way of life is lacking, miracles have no weight, since they are shown to be often displayed even by the wicked, to whom that witness of secrets and judge of deeds foretold in the words of the gospel that he will say at the reward: “I do not know you; depart from me, all you who work iniquity.” Such were the two craftsmen of a wicked partnership present once under the Egyptian tyranny of Pharaoh, who, trusting in the vanities of Memphis, tried to rival the heavenly miracles of Moses, and opposed to them rival images and shapes fabricated by magic tricks and human efforts.

Meanwhile, coming at the entreaty of a certain ruler of the Pharisees to a meal, hastening not so much to eat as to honor his house, he saw a man distended with the swelling of a false stoutness, whose belly, transparent with overflowing water, was thought to be a wineskin, not a womb, and the huge pregnancy of the skin was in labor with an enclosed death, and the immoderate bosom was increased by the wasting of the limbs. So, emaciation ruling everywhere, the whole dropsy had gathered in the swollen belly. The Father of the world did not suffer this sight to remain in his presence, and did not care for his Sabbath, which was then at hand, hastening to care for the man whom he desires rather to be his own. For God did not make man for the Sabbath, as the Lord himself taught by his own words in another chapter of the holy gospel, but brought the Sabbath into being for man. Then, bestowing the work of healing, he commanded the watery filth of the inner parts to be dried up: when suddenly the diseased wave of the bodily marsh departed, and the lake of the now glassy flesh is emptied by the sudden departure of the watery plague.

And when the Lord, going to Jerusalem, was passing through Samaria and Galilee and Jericho, he mercifully entered a certain village. When ten wretched lepers saw him from afar, most foul with the spotted obscenity of their bodies, whom a discolored punishment scattered over their faces had made portents of shameful deformity, they cried out together tearfully with one voice: “Jesus, master, have mercy on us.” Then that singular power, which is never empty of kindness, answered with pity and said: “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And suddenly, as they hurried, all the foulness fled from their limbs, and, looking at one another, they rejoiced together in their mutual cleansing, because nothing of the horrible mottling remained in any of them. Of these, one, as though to offer a tithe for all of the gift received, returning with grateful haste, prostrated himself on his face before the Lord. Great was the man's faith and great his prudence, who, in the effect of a single act, performed the duty of a twofold devotion: faith, in that he believed he had been cleansed by the one he had asked; prudence, in that, though ordered to show himself to the priests, he preferred to adore Jesus. For who but the Lord Christ is the pontiff of pontiffs and the priest of priests? The author and founder of the twofold offering, to whom, after the order of Melchizedek, are offered the gifts of his own body and blood which he, crucified, offered for us: the sweet food of the wheat harvest and the lovely drink of the pleasant vine.

When the son of Timaeus, deprived of light, was sitting by the road by which he had learned that Christ was passing, and, shouting often with a cry and not falling silent when the people forbade him, asked more and more that he be granted the abundance of seeing brightness, he was told to come to the Lord and went by another's hand, and, having obtained his wish, came back supported by no guide. O power of unbroken confidence! How forcefully you obtain what you wish, and, gathering constant prayers from the heart, demand it as though owed; and so you deserve what you ask! For whatever a harder situation has denied because of its difficulty, the frequent prayer of a suppliant alone obtains by simple and honest wishes; not that anything is difficult for God, but that the greatness of the matter is humanly despaired of. Like the man who, in the silence of the night, asking his friend for loaves which he long refused him, because he could not earn them by the right of love, extorted them with the help of importunity.

The Lord too, passing through the region of Samaria, had taken on the heat of human thirst on a blazing day, and the ever-living spring, always flowing with everlasting water, desired a little water to drink, inasmuch as he bore the matter of a body. Here a woman native to that region, who was drawing water from a deep well, while she hesitates to give the gift of a little water, recognizing by his prophetic voice the life of her sin with many or rather other people's husbands, begs the Lord to bestow on her such streams, whose substance never failing, her thirst would fail, to be abolished; not knowing at all, and ignorant, that no one will obtain so great a gift except one who has been plunged into the flood of Jesus Christ and filled with spiritual waters in his soul, not in his body.

And while the Savior, thundering with his Father's voice, sat within the walls of the sacred temple, in pity turning the wandering people to the right path with friendly admonitions of life, see, an ugly adulteress, dragged headlong to him by the gathering of a great multitude, was being brought to be overwhelmed by blows of stones according to the rule of the lawful custom. When the savage fury of her accusers thrust her on the kindly judge, wishing to condemn her, it set her free; for, the condition being laid down that he should be the author of punishing the crime who had nothing of crime, no one was found pure by his own judgment to strike the impure woman. For no one dared to pluck the speck out of another's eye when he knew that a beam remained in his own. Soon, then, the whole blaze of the raging tumult fled, quenched by the flood of conscience, and every accuser was found guilty by silently confessing. Then the merciful and gentle sentence of the Lord did not acquit the adulteress of a manifest crime by judging, but in pity did not punish her, she who would indeed return to punishment if she returned to guilt. For whoever, in the way of dogs, seeks and licks again the filth he vomited neither cares to keep the old pardon nor to have a future one, losing the gain of the one which he acquired in vain, and feeling the loss of the other which he did not deserve to reach.

Departing also from this region, the Lord sees a man blind from birth, who, slipping from the womb of a wretched mother, more wretched himself, came into the light without light. Then that Sower of the human beginning, the founder and perfecter of the world, not suffering the fabric of his work to remain less complete for lack of the matter of seeing, smearing clay, that is, the natural instrument, on the enclosures of his eyelids, the good craftsman supplied from the old cement what he had seen to be lacking in the man. Yet he did not receive his sight until, admonished by the Lord's commands, he had come to the healthful water of Siloam and, now safe with the medicine of the clay that was his kin, had washed his eyes with the water poured on them. Soon, then, from his healthy face shone twin eyes, worthy at last to behold the day which they had at first wholly not known. All who read these things spiritually, then, ought to note what the mystic miracles of this deed teach. For we are the blind offspring, created from the brood of most wretched Eve, walking through the darkness of native gloom in long errors. But after God deigned to have the form of human flesh, there was given us from the virgin a saving earth, which, washed in the springs of sacred baptism, opened the eyes of reborn brightness.

Then, anxious, he had come mercifully with saving steps to Bethany, where Lazarus, having met his end by the human condition, lay under the stone of the tomb, already stinking in the course of the fourth day. When the Lord came to his tomb, the sisters, gathered, were weeping with dutiful grief, the crowd standing by was weeping, and the Almighty himself wept too, not in his Godhead but in his body, grieving over the cold limbs of the lifeless man in that part in which he himself was to die. For he shed tears as a friend, he showed the glory of his majesty as God. Why, Martha, do you not yet believe? And you, Mary, why do you groan? Why do you hesitate in doubtful trembling whether he can raise one man from the underworld, he who will make the countless crowds of the whole world rise again with renewed life? So when the Lord, by the wonderful command of his commanding voice, cried out, “Lazarus, come out,” suddenly Tartarus lay open, shaken with great fear, the inner chamber of hell trembled, deadly chaos dreaded, and the law of deep death departed; and, the soul poured back into the fibers of its body, the corpse is seen standing alive, the protection of the tomb broken. And after the due rites, after the burial of the funeral was completed, as though he had been born and created anew, having died for himself he stood out as both posthumous son and survivor and went away.

And so that the Lord, despising the fleeting things of worldly display, might show himself the more to be the most high God by humility, he did not make his journey borne in lofty chariots, which are shown to be the love of mortal pomp, drawn at four-horse speed, with the wheel furrowing a dusty track, nor did he press the high back of a snorting horse, which, conspicuous with trappings and purple, shakes its restless mouth, champing the foaming weight of bloody gold: but rather the slow carriage of a very humble donkey was honor enough for the Lord. Its hoof, great not in price but in the merit of so great a rider, shone nobler under its burden, not unequal to that ancient one, which, though it saw Christ in a small manger, yet knew him to be God. By his grace the beast of burden shone, for which, as it walked along the middle of the road, all the people spread their garments. Say now, all you peoples, who have until now lain subject to pagan errors, to what reigning king was there ever glory like this? To whom did a great crowd in full festivity ever come to meet with palms and branches, chanting a song in heavenly hymns, except the Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father governs the starry empire, everlasting Prince in Prince?

Amid these riches of mighty works without end the Pasch had now begun to draw near, at which the glorious power of Christ wished to lay down his mortal flesh, to take it up again, now living forever, not another flesh but the same, which, raising it from the underworld filled with the reward of light, he lifted to the stars. And, troubled a little, fearing the nearness of death as a man, he cries out to the Father in these words with the confidence of holy devotion, showing himself to be the Son of God: “Father, save me from this hour; but for this I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” He spoke most divinely and powerfully, who, when he asked to be glorified himself, indicated that the Father's name was to be glorified. For his name is God, which the Father and the Son possess undivided in a common majesty. And a voice came from heaven: “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” What is plainer than the testimony of the Father's declaration fulfilled? What is clearer than the oracle of heavenly assertion? Yet the faithless Jewish nation, which had heard the weight of so great a truth, was by no means moved by such manifest signs to believe that the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ had been proved. For some maintained that it had been the crash of thunder, others argued that an angel had spoken to him. O people truly blind of eye and hardest of heart, of whom Isaiah prophesying spoke thus: “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, so that they may not see with their eyes and understand with their heart and be converted, and I heal them.” For neither thunder nor an angel, a creature, begot Christ its author, so as to answer him at once as a Father when he cried out confidently to the Father; but the answering voice came forth from the mouth of God, specifically the Father, who truly knew the Son, so that at least by this reason the too unbelieving crowd, pricked, might be led late to heavenly faith. This, then, is the Father answering the Son, and likewise agreeing with his own voice, since Christ, begotten by the Word, is the Word of the Father, and the like interpretation of the speech revealed the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father.

Then, when by the sacrament of the yearly banquet he was celebrating the Passover meal according to custom, to teach by his own example rather that humility is to be loved, he rose and girded himself with a towel, and the Lord, the teacher, bowed himself down to his disciples, washing his servants' feet, and laid aside so much of the summit of his power that he did not exclude from the dignity of this service even Judas, whom he knew to be the author of an unspeakable betrayal. But you would gain no glory from this, accursed traitor, so that you might seem clean in your feet, you who were defiled in your soul, like a tomb whitewashed outside which is full within of the foul filth of corpses. Nor did the arranged plots escape the Lord, but he marked him out as the head of the coming crime, to whom he, the bread to be handed over to death, would hand the bread. Then the word of David was made plain, saying: “He who ate my bread has enlarged his treachery against me.”

But after the Lord Jesus Christ consecrated the two gifts of life of his body and blood and offered his own disciples the spiritual food and drink, by which faithful souls, fattened with heavenly feasts, can no longer feel hunger and thirst: at once the savagery of the foul spirit entered into the heart of Judas, the most wicked seat where envy had found its home, and, seizing weapons against the Lord, stirred up the madness of an accursed servile war, having bargained the great crime of the business for any amount of reward; for the guilt does not lie in the price, but the crime grows strong in the deed. Taking blindly a small gift of thirty pieces of silver, he committed as great a sacrilege as he would have perpetrated if he had gained at once all the kingdoms of the earth, the riches of the sea, and the whole region of the sky with its wandering clouds. For the goods of the whole world would not be enough to compare with the shed blood of Christ, who is the father of the whole world*, who allowed even this abominable man to be born. And would that, condemned by the dry barrenness of his mother, he had never seen his birthday nor beheld the pleasant things of heavenly light, remaining nothing in eternal torpor; and that would have been a better lot for the wretch, not to know the life handed to him than to feel it taken away; or else that, as soon as he deserved to be begotten, he had deserved also to die and become an example of the first psalm, so that he might perish wholly from the world like dust which the wind drives from the face of the earth, and the unhappy man might have left no memory of his name. Then, bold, bloody, fierce, rebellious, insane, then deceitful, cruel, unjust, venal and treacherous, then traitor, robber, savage betrayer, merciless and impious, do you go before as leader and standard-bearer and escort the horrible enemies, and, when you lead on threateningly the sacrilegious band, violently armed with swords and clubs, do you violate the covenant with lying kisses, join honey to poisons, and flatter the Lord with a cruel betrayal? Why do you falsely profess yourself a comrade and perform the greeting of a friendly fraud? Never does peace conspire with harmful swords, nor does a savage wolf offer kisses to the gentlest lamb.

So the holy worker, handed over to accursed men, does not leave off his accustomed help, but at once restored and healed the servant's ear, violently cut off, which Peter's sword had struck off, so that the merciful one might at no time withhold himself from mercy. For it would not have accorded with reason for human vengeance to support God, who could have asked that more than twelve thousand legions of angels be sent for his defense by the Father, if he had preferred to exact punishment from the criminals rather than forgive the injury of his own slaughter.

So he then commands the edge of the bare blade to be hidden in its guardian sheath, since he had come, that is, to lay down his own life for all, not to snatch anyone's. For to Peter himself, who had then promised with confident voice that he was willing to die with the Lord, he said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow today until you deny me three times,” not accusing him of unfaithfulness, but disclosing the fear of the trembling to come.

Soon he was led to the house of Caiaphas, who at that time was indeed the chief of the priests by the rite of the Jewish religion; but since he sat in the chair of pestilence and stood in the way of sinners, he seemed to possess the leadership of crimes. For the council had begun to be violently inflamed and stirred up by false witnesses. A thousand lies flew against the Lord, dead in the empty embers of the accusers, not living with the warmth of faith, and all soon perished, spent by the movement of their own lightness, like a raging fire running through stubble of arid dryness, to which weak material does not supply the strength to burn the high tops, but, turned at once to ash, the flame loses its empty victory.

After no path smiled on their deceits, fraud, yielding to force, is turned into fury, and the impatient crowd arms itself to raise its hands against the Lord. Alas for me, hindered by such dews of tears, wounded by such groans of soul, I shudder to recall the sacrilegious hands raised against the Lord by the madness of the raging tumult! In short, the accursed crowd did not cease to strike his head with blows, to spatter his face with spittle, and to beat him with the strokes of their palms. Yet he, receiving all patiently, gave himself up for our salvation and assigned his holy body to punishments for us. For through those blows we have the healing of our head, that spittle is the washing of our faces, and by these slaps we have obtained everlasting freedom.

But the elder, to whom the author of truth had foretold everything, because what Christ had marked as to come could not remain unfulfilled, having followed the Lord's footsteps right into the house of the chief of the priests, was three times recognized as being one of his disciples, and three times denied it. And the cock, the herald of day, crowed, and, the oracle of the divine decree fulfilled, Peter's former senses also returned; recalling the memory of his guilt, he punished in himself the error of forgetfulness; and as unceasing groaning followed, the sins flee, the offenses depart, and the showers of tears he poured out brought sweet pardon through the bitterest weeping. Taught, then, by the apostolic example, we ought to recognize the force and merit of repentance, so that, relying on such remedies, we may deserve to shut out deadly diseases from the weariness of our souls. For if we have been wounded by the harmful poisons of thoughts, or of deeds, or even by the contagion of shameful words, let us at once strive to take refuge in the most healthful medicine of repentance, so that, grieving from guilt, we may not grieve from punishment, and weeping from the wound, we may not weep from death. Yet let us not prepare repentance for future errors, but apply it to past offenses. For those who sin trusting in pardon obtain with difficulty the desired pardon which many, presuming it, promise themselves in security in order to sin. For David too, the wonderful prophet, when he asked pardon for past error, in order to obtain it more easily, indicated by this prayer that he had sinned through ignorance: “Do not remember the sins of my youth and of my ignorance, Lord.” What then, should whatever outrages youth has committed be kept to be forgiven in old age? Far be it that vices should remain and grow old in us. But since the divine clemency, in its most gentle and patient long-suffering, has suspended the vengeance of judgment, let no hope of impunity dull us because of this truce; but like servants who have long been runaways, let us at least late return to our Lord, asking pardon from him for a slippery youth, even if we are old; although it is fitting that each sinner, at once, while the guilt is still fresh, should cut out its ulcer with the knives of repentance, lest the first shoots of a creeping disease, like the roots of a bitter growth sunk deeper by the neglect of a careless farmer, can no longer be torn out by any labor. The same prophet, in short, lest he should seem negligent in asking too late for the sins of his youth, added ignorance, so that he might more easily deserve to have his error forgiven by the kindly judge.

So the apostle Peter did not intend to deny Christ, but fell simply and ignorantly into a lapse of forgetfulness. For he who had promised with full devotion that he was willing to die with the Lord could not bear to be seen as a stranger to his company in any danger. For among other things he had shown a magnificent example of his belief, that not even the fear of death could separate him from Christ, to whom, hastening through the midst of the sea, he had once thrown himself into the rushing waves, deterred by no trembling at the nearness of death.