Homily 4, On the Holy Mother of God and on Simeon

Today too the prophetic word rouses and urges us on to the divine thanksgivings. “Proclaim the good news of the salvation of our God from day to day,” it commanded, “declare his glory among the nations, his wonders among all the peoples.” For the inspired David knew through the Spirit that the things hidden from the wise in the law, and what had been deafened to the knowledge of the truth in the books of the intelligent, had become good pleasure for infants before … ; and he urges the proclaiming of the good news of spiritual joy. Honouring the sacred command, then, with obedience and in due order, come, let us too, having clothed our souls in brightness, cry out the joyful and clear tidings of the divine Psalmist: “Let the mountains receive peace for the people, and the hills righteousness”; for “A child has been born to us, a son has also been given to us, whose rule is upon his shoulder. And his name is called Angel of great counsel, Wonderful Counsellor, mighty God, Ruler, Prince of peace, Father of the age to come.” He was born, it says, and he was given: born in Judaea, but given to the whole world. For so the oracle about him to Abraham contained: “In him all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.” But “his rule is upon his shoulder”, since his authority is his own possession and not acquired; his power is natural and not procured; the divine glory is of his being and not bestowed. Long ago, then, the heavens announced the wonder to the Magi through a star; then the Magi announced to Judaea the King of whom it had been spoken, when they were tracking him down to worship him; angels too announced Christ the Saviour to the shepherds at their night watch in the fields; and last of all the Holy Spirit announced to Simeon the awaited Christ of the Lord.

So, following all these at their command, we too go on to proclaim the good news to the church: not as the powerful, but as the obedient; not as the well-off, but as those who have received mercy; singing in praise what the prophets said, chanting what the apostles said, and not improvising on our own account things that need witnesses. “Sing, then, to our God, sing,” for “the Lord has made known his salvation; he has revealed his righteousness before the nations.” For truly an astonishment and dreadful things have happened on the earth; creation has seen fearful and paradoxical things: “God seen on earth and living among men”; God born according to the flesh, and not separated from the heavens. “And who is sufficient for these things? Who will tell the mighty acts of the Lord, or make all his praises heard?” The Virgin, the prophetess of Isaiah, has given birth to Emmanuel without a man; to him who was begotten for us without a father, before the ages, “Wisdom from God the Father, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” The prophetess has given birth without knowing the manner of the conception. New is the wonder and inexplicable. Mary the prophetess conceived the living God through hearing; for hearing is the natural passage of words. The conception of that woman, passed on by her tongue to her husband, withered the stock of humanity like a flame; but the pregnancy of this woman, springing up through the womb, brought the fruit back to life together with the stock.

Therefore, as debtors and grateful servants of God, let us offer to God the Word and to his Mother the gift of speech, as far as we are able; not ashamed of the poverty of our offerings, but delighting in our own nature while worshipping the transcendence of the Master's mysteries. For we are not contending, by human rule, to circumscribe the subject before us in rhetorical words, but to be lit up by the illumination of the divine memorial. In other contests defeat always brings disgrace to the competitors; here, to bow before what is beyond comprehension brings good repute. Let us come, then, to the hymn in holiness; let us come rejoicing, acclaiming, glorifying, and magnifying the mystery beyond mind and word, beginning with the divine greeting of Gabriel, citizen of heaven, and saying: “Hail, favoured one, the Lord is with you.” With him let us repeat: Hail, our longed-for delight; hail, gladness of the church; hail, sweet-scented name; hail, face shining with God and full of grace; hail, all-venerable memorial; hail, saving and spiritual fleece; hail, light-robed mother of the unsetting light; hail, all-spotless mother of holiness; hail, most transparent spring of the life-giving stream; hail, new mother and mould of new birth; hail, inexplicable mother of incomprehensibility; hail, the new book, according to Isaiah, of the new writing, whose faithful witnesses are angels and men; hail, alabaster jar of the sanctifying ointment; hail, fair merchant of the virginal coin; hail, creature that holds its own Maker in its grasp; hail, smallest of spaces, who contained him whom all things cannot contain.

And who will tell the generation of him who is more ancient than knowledge? What shall we marvel at, the divine and unspeakable birth or the inexplicable childbearing? What is beyond reason is not grasped by reason; what is beyond thought is not circumscribed by the mind. For even if a painter dares to trace the Mother of the economy with his brush, he will not be able to express in any word the manner of her pregnancy. What, then? Shall we assign a beginning to the one born? But he has none. Shall we call the one born unchangeable, without beginning, eternal? But his birth according to the flesh shows a beginning in time. Shall we then call the one born an infant? But we know him as the Ancient of Days and Maker of the ages. The whole is a wonder. When I look at the lowliness of the flesh, the supremacy of the Godhead draws me up; but when again I am raised up with the Godhead, the measure and the reality of the flesh, which is no phantom, draw me down again; and the unspeakable character of the unconfused union of the natures becomes for me a school of the divine power. Such paradoxes the divine Mother and Virgin always brings to us in her holy shinings forth. For with her is “the fountain of life” and the breasts “of the spiritual and pure milk”, to which we have now eagerly run to suck sweetness, not out of forgetfulness of what came before, but out of desire for what is to come. For having often received good things never keeps us from a greater longing for good things; rather, the splendour of what has been given and has gladdened us becomes a kindling of thirst for the delights that follow. For love of divine things by no means allows itself to reach its peak,

But if anyone thinks he bears the name of Christian, and is vexed and grows dizzy at the title Theotokos for the inspired Virgin, a dignity and a most effective and proper name, he prides himself vainly and falsely on the name of holiness while disagreeing with its doctrines. For he gets nothing fitting from the title and outward form of piety, “denying its power”; since the kingdom of God is “not in word but in power”, as the great herald declared. For being, as Scripture says, a “false brother secretly brought in” and a spy on our freedom, he has not become an obedient hearer of the divine teacher, who teaches us to lay down the law not “against the truth, but for the truth.” It is useful, then, for the strengthening of those who are pious and sincere, to practise a short inquiry with this counterfeit and interloper; for so it is right to call those profane in their thinking. Tell us, then, when we ask, whether you agree at least, as the Jews do, with the sacred law, which says that Adam's wife was fashioned by the spotless hands of the Creator, just as the man was. If you say no, are you not plainly a stranger to us and alien to the Scriptures? But if you grant yes, why do you foolishly quarrel with the truth, and rebel against and reject God's good pleasure, carried out in the all-holy Virgin for the common salvation? For he who created the virgin of old without outrage himself also fashioned the second blamelessly; and he who made the outside beautiful himself also adorned the inside in holiness as a dwelling for the soul. How then, most shameful of all, do you dare to overturn with Jewish idle talk, as though it were most shameful, what was seen by God as most gracious and most joyful? Nay rather, you deranged and most senseless man, “who are you, to answer back to God?” For if to fashion her was no outrage for God, as also to dwell in his own creature, as you say, and to make his glory dwell …

… as the divine Scriptures maintain. For nothing dear to God is without honour or subject to outrage. Far from it! For “confession and majesty is his work”, divine and much praised, as it is written. So one of two things must be: either, as you confess readily and gratefully that the forming of Eve was God's work, so also accept the incarnation from a Virgin, which he planned with all wisdom, and worship it as the pious do, if you wish to share with them; or else put on yourself a Jewish and unbelieving name, as belonging among them. For the church is not accustomed to bear amphibious children. For Christians, being obedient to God, listen to the inspired predictions of the prophets, which everywhere cry out thus about the all-praised Virgin: “The Most High has sanctified his tabernacle; God is in the midst of her, and she shall not be shaken.” And again: “A man was born in her, and the Most High himself founded her.” But the opponents of the truth, being fleshly and “not having the Spirit” of God, have thought in a fleshly way about spiritual things. For truly it is wisely said: “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God.” For this reason they neither chose to be enlightened by the testimony of long ago, nor were they willing to understand, from things in our own experience, the Virgin's change to holiness. But the most evident things are a way of seeing what is unseen. For if iron, black and earthy, when it keeps company with fire, at once casts off the stains contrary to nature and is restored to the beauty of its nature, and very quickly acquires a likeness to the active flame that set it on fire, and becomes untouchable and burns up all matter, what wonder is it if the all-spotless Virgin was set on fire into purity by the entrance of the divine and immaterial fire, and was scoured of all material things and things contrary to nature, and was brightly restored to the beauty of her nature, so as to be from then on untrodden, closed, and not to be gazed on by fleshly corruptions? And just as one who receives water poured down over his head carries the moist nature, filtering through his whole body, from head to foot, so we are persuaded that the divine Mother and Virgin was wholly anointed with the holiness of the divine Spirit who came upon her, and so then received the living God the Word … in the virginal chambers anointed with perfume.

But let us bring the discussion back to its subject, beloved, having said farewell for the present to the argument against the ill-named Nestorius and those of his kind. You, most beloved, have done very well to come together today too to honour the mysteries of God and to consider what the divine Scriptures foretold: a Virgin, beyond nature and in a manner worthy of God, carrying in her spotless arms him who carries all things by his word; an aged priest, approaching with longing to receive the awaited High Priest and Master; and an old prophetess welcoming the one prophesied. For it was fitting that the firstfruits of piety from both kinds, male and female, should go to meet the Redeemer of both, and should prefigure in themselves, in holiness, the worshippers from each. So too the patriarch Isaac foretold, when he ended with blessings for the patriarch Jacob, his son, being led to a vision of things to come, and saying: “And the sons of your father shall bow down to you.” The righteous man was not unaware that his whole offspring was comprised in a pair of twins; and the sequence of his words bears witness. For after saying, “Be lord of your brother,” he then added, “The sons of your father shall bow down to you,” passing over from the fleshly Jacob to the spiritual one. So too he said to Esau: “I have made him your lord, and all his brothers his servants. But what shall I do for you, my son?” So it is a most mystical riddle of the Father and of the multitude of sons, and of the one from that multitude who is worshipped. This John and Paul, enlightened in the divine mysteries, interpreted when they spoke of God: the one saying, “As many as received him, to them he gave authority to become children of God, to those who believe in his name; who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”; the other saying, “And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.”

Do you see, most beloved, the most radiant harmony of the Old and New Testaments? Do you see how great is the good Master's affection for us? He has deigned to call us brothers, and to make us sons of his Father by nature; not by equality of honour, as some, carried away by carelessness, have supposed. Away with their boasting! For they did not know what was foretold by him long ago to Isaiah: “It is a great thing for you to be called my servant”; but by a sharing of dignity, and by the access to the Father gained through him. “For who shall be likened to the Lord among the sons of God?” says the inspired Scripture. For Christ is not a mere man, so that like might be joined in being to like without remainder. For even if we have been made his own, through our fleshly kinship with him who has deigned it, we are no less inferior to him, unable to look at him and trembling before him, since he is Master by nature and by authority. For some, “understanding neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertions”, say that the Master and Saviour himself is to be compared with men, ignorantly bringing forward in this matter the Lord's saying about John the Baptist, in which he testified: “Among those born of women none is greater than John; but the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he”; unintelligent wise men, who bring forward such a notion, which they have dressed up for themselves, for an insult. For he said that among the prophets none is greater than John, as Luke testifies. So he compared not himself, but clearly a prophet with the earlier prophets, since John had seen what they had foretold. For about himself he said: “If I bear witness about myself, my witness is not true.” And “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” points to the evangelist John, his namesake, who was called “Son of thunder” by the Saviour and spoke of God greater than all in the gospel preaching; which was fittingly called the kingdom of heaven by the Lord and Master of the kingdom, as leading those who follow it to that endless kingdom. For he says: “Go and preach, saying: The kingdom of heaven has drawn near to you.” And the prophecy of the prophet David about these things also repels them, saying: “God stood in the assembly of gods; in the midst he will judge between gods”; foretelling Christ, the true God and Lord by nature, as standing in the midst of the holy disciples and judging between the Baptist just mentioned, the earlier prophets, and the later John, the herald of the eternal [kingdom].

And let no one stumble when he hears “God” said among “gods”; for it is written: “I said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.” For Scripture, in naming them gods, did not compare the God who is with things that are nothing; but it proclaimed those “led by the Spirit of God” sons of God and gods, as Paul also wrote. Christ our Lord, then, is above all not only as God, but also as he became man. Therefore this too is written: “Who is like you among the gods, O Lord?” For how will a birth from intercourse be compared with a virginal birth? And how will a mere man, or a god by grace on account of virtue, as Moses was named, be classed together with the true God who became flesh without change out of love for mankind? This is what he says through the prophet: “As the heaven is far from the earth, so are my ways far from your ways.” And the chief point of what has been said is also the Baptist's testimonies about the Saviour, in which he said: “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandal.” And since “from his fullness we have all received”, when both David the prophet and John himself have borne witness to the incomparable and divine majesty of Christ, who is so foolish as to fight against what is plain, and to make him who royally and with authority grants life in his kingdom equal to and comparable with those who receive it? But I tell the most Christian to think thus about him who is supremely exalted above all things and beyond all speaking. “For what was glorified has not been glorified in this respect,” says the word, “because of the surpassing glory.” Therefore he also said: “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.”

But what has been said is enough to give full assurance to those of sound mind, for the sake of due proportion; let us run back again to the subject before us, marvelling at the spiritual reverence and theology of the righteous Simeon and Anna, and inquiring rightly into it: how the old man spread out his bosom to receive him whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is the earth, and the old woman recounted the prophecies about him to those awaiting redemption. Oh, the wonders! Moses on Sinai was held by dread, and approached the one who spoke with fear and trembling; but Simeon with holy boldness and without hesitation approaches the one who had spoken to Moses, receives him in his arms, carries on loving wings him who sits on the throne of the cherubim, and sends up his twofold hymn, in a reversal of Moses: “Now you let your servant depart, Master, according to your word, in peace; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared before the face of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.” Well did the spiritual man, guiding the spiritual light of the world, proclaim it. For those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death needed the day of twelve hours, which had died. For the devil's mist had darkened the human race, thrown it into confusion, and estranged from their Maker those who had become liable to judgement through the transgression. Therefore the illuminating day came and, in mercy, channelled back to the good those who of their own accord had been stirred up to evil by a mocking deceit, sending out the twelve apostles to the ends of the world like rays of sunlight; as the prophet Habakkuk says about the Saviour and the apostles: “You will mount your horses, and your riding is salvation.” And again: “You made your horses go into the sea, stirring up many waters.” About these the Jewish crowd in Thessalonica cried out in vexation: “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here too; and they all act against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” And this is nothing strange for the madness of the Jews; for revolt against the saints is their custom. For they insulted Moses as a wrongdoer while he was praying for them; they forced Aaron to make the calf; and they hurled Jeremiah into a pit of mire. And now, raging against the apostles, they call them disturbers and usurpers against Caesar. But why do you stumble over the things that save, Jews? Why do you stir up crowds against your benefactors? How long will you be like a lightless night? As it is written: “I have likened your day to night.” And again: “And you, a parched tower.” The pious proclaim Jesus as King, and rightly, as one who possesses the kingship not as a usurper but by nature; “for through him kings reign,” and rulers hold the earth.

But tell me, accusers of the truth: what was the manner of Jesus' kingship? How did he march against the tyrant? How did he lay waste his dominion? How did he pull down the strong one who was against us? How did he plunder his spoils, us, whom he had used for every outrage? What was his armoury? What his full armour? But the enemies of Christ, who turn away from life, cannot bear to speak of the novelty of the wonder; for they know that it turns into a refutation of them. For men, a varied panoply of iron has been made, to help and fence in the stale weakness of the flesh; but for Jesus, the King and God, who is mighty, it would be a contradiction if the battle had been fought in a human way. For hiding his own power through the weakest flesh, he openly appears to those who touch him for war, “having put on,” as Scripture says, “righteousness as a breastplate,” and as a helmet unfeigned judgement, and as a shield unconquerable holiness; and by seeming to be overpowered by his adversaries through the flesh, he has triumphed over those who held him, showing them stale and powerless.

Such, Jews, is the battle line of Christ our King, even if you store up your own refutation. And he sent out destroyers of error into the world, generals without weapons, without anger, without bloodshed, by the preaching of piety alone abolishing every height raised up against his divine union, and enlightening every race of men, as the prophet says: “Your arrows will go into light, into the brightness of the lightning of your weapons.” Therefore the most divine Apostle also cries: “For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but mighty before God for the destruction of strongholds, destroying reasonings and every height raised up against God, and taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” Oh, the wonder! Oh, the unspeakable and adorable goodness! Oh, the divine and indescribable affection of the Master for us! How, by lawful order and not by compulsion of power, with reasoning and persuasion, he arranged salvation for those who had been lured away from life by the author of theft, and made prosperous the return to that from which the first-formed man had been taken away. Spitting out and rejecting, with knowledge, the mockery and error of the foul enemy, and recognizing one profitable rule, to prefer nothing to piety, they then leapt away, before they knew it, from the Greek religion of myths, which has its hopes in dead abominations; they withdrew from the folly of the Jews, which does not confess the rightful and most radiant mark of the ever-living and unmoved divine being, its hypostatic Word and most manifest Son; and they took hold of the right and firm knowledge of the God who truly is, confessing the living God, who in the living and at the same time good Son and in the divine and consubstantial Spirit has revealed to us his undivided Trinity; who, in his consubstantial and unvarying Son, to whom witness has been borne, brings forth the mark of the Father's hiddenness; who has shown us the fruit of every divine prophecy, Christ our Lord, complete in Godhead, and Jesus perfect in manhood, worshipped by angels on earth as in heaven, according to him who said: “And when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says: And let all the angels of God worship him.” Let them worship, clearly: first those at the manger; Simeon and Anna second, in the temple; afterwards the Magi in Bethlehem; and then in succession throughout the whole world those adopted as sons, according to Isaac's foretelling over Jacob; about whom Paul says: “We have received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, Abba, Father.”

But how did the divine and all-praised virgin mother respond to what was being done? She rightly marvelled at what was said; “yet she kept these things too in her heart,” with what had gone before. To her Simeon addresses a word, saying: O dove, made white and pure! O holy tabernacle of our hope, in which all holiness and majesty is established! “This one,” whom you have borne unspeakably, “this one is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against. And a sword will pass through your own soul too, so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” But why do you mingle gloomy things with bright ones, old man? Until now you spoke of light and glory, and now you announce a fall and describe a sword for her who conceived? Yes, he says; all will happen in its own time: a fall for those who do not believe, a rising for those who believe. “And for a sign that is spoken against”: … the world … by signs and mighty works … by men. And there will one day be torment for the virgin's soul too, from various thoughts coming in and going out. For the matter concerns no trifles, but God, the change of customs and laws, the transformation of men, the union of peoples, the concord of nations, the joining of tongues, an undivided worship, and the overthrow of a tyrant. And how do they suppose all these things could be accomplished without a sound? Therefore some will fall and others will be put to death; and some will speak against the strangeness of the sign, while others will bow before its active working. The righteous man's words, then, are very clear, having their proof in the event. And this is shown first from our own teachers. How? Listen. Paul at first disbelieved in ignorance; and having at last learned the power of Christ, he gratefully proclaimed: “I am not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of Christ.” Again, Thomas doubted, and having touched, afterwards confessed the Lord he longed for as his own God. The sons of Joseph also once disbelieved, as the evangelist testifies; and, taught the truth by experience, James and Jude wrote to the whole world that they were servants of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. May we all share with them, by the grace of him who chose them as apostles, Jesus Christ our Lord and God; with whom to the Father, with the Holy Spirit, be glory, honour, and worship, as it was from the beginning, and now, and always, and to the ages of ages. Amen.