Homilies at the Council of Ephesus 73.0–73.13

Of the same, delivered on the day of the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ; it too was read in the same synod

Splendid and paradoxical is the theme of the present feast: splendid because it has brought common salvation to human beings, paradoxical because it has overcome the law of nature. For nature does not know a woman who has given birth as still a virgin; but grace both showed her giving birth and kept her a virgin, made her a mother and did no harm to her virginity; for it was grace, guarding chastity. O virgin who has surpassed paradise! O earth unsown that has sprouted a saving fruit! For paradise sent up a race of ungrafted plants, plants that rose from the virgin earth of Eden; but this virgin is better than that earth. For she did not send up fruit trees, but the rod of Jesse, offering saving fruit to human beings. That earth too was virgin, and this one is virgin; but there God commanded trees to grow, while of this virgin the Creator himself became, according to the flesh, the shoot. Neither did that earth receive a graft before the trees, nor did this virgin wrong her virginity by the birth; and she has become more glorious than paradise. For paradise became God's cultivated field, but she cultivated God himself according to the flesh, who chose to be joined to the nature of man. Do you see how the mystery became paradoxical, thrusting aside the law of nature? Do you see a thing beyond nature happening by the power of God alone? Do you see the Word born beyond reason? For that the one born is the Word of God is clear from his not dissolving the virginity. She who bears mere flesh ceases to be a virgin; but since the Word of God was born in flesh, he keeps the virginity, showing himself to be the Word. And when you hear 'Word',

understand it as essential and subsistent, not this word poured out through the mouth. The only-begotten Son of God, then, who is also called the Word, is born, not taking from the birth the beginning of being the Word, but making the birth the beginning of becoming man. For he was God the Word before the ages, co-eternal with the one who begot him; but since he willed to become man for the sake of human beings, not by a change of the divine nature but by the wonder and will of God, he embraced the birth as the beginning of becoming man. That is why he is both born as man and as God the Word kept the virginity. For neither does our word, when it is born, destroy the mind, nor did the Word of God, essential and subsistent, when he chose birth, destroy virginity. What happened, then, is beyond the law of nature; descend no longer to the laws of nature. I tell you of a wonder: do not set your reasonings in motion. I tell you of God born, choosing birth, not beginning his Godhead. Being God, he made birth his own; the birth did not make him God. What he was, he remained, and he became what he was not. Wishing, then, to become by the economy what he was not, he chooses birth as the beginning of the economy. He became man, the nature not changed, the bounds of the divine essence not moved: 'For you are the same, and your years will not fail,' says the divine Scripture, and 'You are enthroned forever,' showing by this the unchangeability of the divine essence. And again: 'I am God,' he says, 'the same, and I have not changed.' Not, then, by the essence of God being moved did he become man, nor by its being changed into another nature. Otherwise what happened would not be a wonder, if by a change of nature he received another nature; for many such changes of things happen among us. But in this God works a wonder, that remaining what he was, he became what he was not; which the great apostle signified when he said: 'Who, being in the form of God': he says 'being', not 'having once begun to be', to show the permanence of the nature. 'Who, being in the form of God, did not count being equal with God a thing to be seized': he says 'being equal with God', not 'going to become so at some time'. Then again he cries: 'but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.' Do you see how he both remains what he was and emptied himself into the form of the servant, being the one and becoming the other, working a wonder, not changing his nature; willing it, not forced by a change of essence? For what God says, he does, even if what is said is beyond the law of nature. For he has a power able to work wonders that does not wait upon the laws of nature. That is why he both is God and is emptied into the form of a servant; is equal to God and becomes man; is before the ages and undergoes birth; and he works these wonders which the law of nature does not know.

Hence the mystery of Christ is reckoned foolishness by the Greeks, and the Jews call the account of the economy a stumbling block, as Paul too made plain, saying: 'We preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, to Greeks foolishness.' Why foolishness to the Greeks? Because 'the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him.' For the natural man, sitting beside nature and searching out all things by the reasonings of the soul, reckons the wonders of God foolishness, since they do not carry the law of nature with them. For when a Greek hears that the Saviour entered when the door was shut, passing this thick body, which needs room, through it, he laughs, not believing the wonder but seeking the reason of the thing. And hearing that a virgin, having given birth, remained a virgin, he thinks the account foolishness, not having learned to believe God's wonder-working. So too, hearing that God became man without change, he thinks what happened impossible, demanding here too changes of nature. But Paul did not teach so, when he said that the one who is equal to God became man; for he says that he emptied himself, without casting off the fullness of the Godhead. That is why he said: 'We preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, to Greeks foolishness.' And why foolishness to the Greeks, if a mere man was crucified? No one thinks foolish what happens according to nature. If he suffered what was natural to him, how is the story thought foolish? But since, he says, we preach Christ crucified, whom again we call the power of God and the wisdom of God (for 'to those who are called,' he says, 'both Jews and Greeks, we preach Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God'), we are thought by the Greeks to speak foolishness, since we preach, as he says, the wisdom of God crucified, to people who do not know how to believe God when he works wonders, but in all things set the reasonings of nature in motion and think that God is outraged by making passions his own in order to save what is passible. For they do not see the purpose achieved, which is saving and fitting for the goodness of God, but say only that God joined sufferings to himself, not considering the achievement of human salvation that came from it. But none of the things that save man outrages God, who is shown by them to be not passible but loving toward

humankind. 'But I do not dare,' he says, 'to attach human passions to God.' Then you do not say that he saves man by his passions, nor that by the cross he exposes the power of the devil, nor that he nailed our sin to the wood, nor that by his own passions he heals the passions of human beings; nor do you say that by death he abolished death. For if God did not make the passions his own, whence did the passions of Christ have such great achievements? How did they become powers? How is death destroyed by death, unless God made it his own? But these passions, made God's own, received from the Godhead the strength for such great achievements, as having become God's own, yet they did no harm to the essence of the Godhead, which remains always in its own impassibility. For how was the bond of sin against us nailed to the wood, if a mere man endured the cross? How did a cross crucify sin, or death dissolve the tyranny of death, unless these became God's and received power from him who made our things his own, not suffering by nature? The great apostle signified this when he said that none of the rulers of this age knew the mystery of the Lord's passion: 'for if they had known,' he says, 'they would not

have crucified the Lord of glory.' That is why we say both that he remains what he was and that he became what he was not. For remaining in essence what he was, he received passions, having united himself to the passible nature. He became subject without laying aside his kingship; he became man, remaining God and Word; being bodiless in nature, he became flesh without alteration. How, and in what way? Not as you can reason, but as he is able to work wonders. For when I tell you of a wonder, leave reasonings behind. Signs and portents are made firm by faith in God and are not searched out by reasons. None of the other wonders is according to our reason either, yet each of them happened, even if our reasoning does not reach the matter. These things the magi too confessed, believing a star and not busying themselves about nature. Barbarians receive wonders by faith, and you, the believer, why do you disbelieve, falling back on human reasoning? Those who came from Chaldea, as the evangelist told us today, showed the mystery by their very gifts to one who rightly discerns the purpose of the barbarians. For they bring a threefold kind of gift: gold, frankincense, myrrh; gold because the one honoured is king, frankincense because the one born was God (for this they were accustomed to bring to those they regarded as gods), and they also offer myrrh, indicating by it, I think, the suffering of death. Do you see how even the magi recognized that he both remained God and became man, accepting death? For he became what I am, so as to raise our nature to his own dignity. For the union does this, joining to each the things of the other. That is why, being God, he became man, so that man too might become God, raised by this conjunction to divine glory, so that one and the same is both glorified as God and suffers human things. And all who confess a union of Godhead and humanity would agree with us on this. For what has been united is no longer named two but one; yet in thought you divide it again and consider each separately. Then you dissolve the union; for it is impossible at once to keep the union and to consider each separately. But what has been united has become one indissolubly

one and no longer becomes two. 'But I separate them only in thought,' he says. Then by that same thought you have dissolved the union; for by whatever you set the one apart from the other, by that you have also cut the conjunction. Why then do you undo the saving economy, thinking of two and setting aside the union? But as the great apostle too says, 'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever,' calling one and the same both eternal God and man beginning from a point in time, let us too confess the same as God and man, the one being before, the other having come to be later. 'But how,' he says, 'has the Only-begotten become a slave, remaining what he was and becoming what he was not?' Do you wish to learn this? Learn that he became so; but how he became so, only the wonder-worker knows. For neither can you tell me how the river of the Egyptians became blood, the nature of the water remaining unchanged.

For the Hebrews used it as water, but for the Egyptians the Nile became blood; it became what it was not, remaining what it was. Tell me the manner. But you cannot tell it; for it is a wonder of God, which thrusts reasonings aside. And how did the light in Egypt become darkness, not quenched but remaining what it was? For it was day for the

Israelites, and the light surrounded them brightly; but for the Egyptians this light became darkness, and the thing seen, being one, was at once both light and darkness, not changed from the one and becoming the other. For it became darkness without the light suffering anything, God working the wonder and not waiting upon the law of nature. How, then, did the water of the Nile, remaining water, become blood? Or how did the light, remaining in its own nature, become darkness? For the one was not destroyed and the other produced. The nature of the water was not destroyed, and the Hebrews showed it, having it to drink; but this nature remained within

its own bounds and became blood, which it was not, God showing the wonder beyond reason. And the Babylonian flame, how did it become dew for the three youths? For it was flame and became dew, and both are shown by what they did. That it was dew, the three youths teach, who were cooled by it; and that it was flame, the Babylonians who were burned up by it show. Do you see how the fire remained fire and became dew? Not two things, nor two natures, but what was seen was one and the same. For what was flame became dew, and the righteous bear witness. Ask me no longer, then, the manner of God's signs. For again I say to you: show by the wonders that something happened, but leave it to God to know the reason of the wonders. Then tell me: God works these wonders, keeping the flame and making it dew, not changing the flame and turning it into dew, wishing to undo the tyrant's sentence, to avenge those wronged, and to consume the guilty barbarians; and to save the world, do you doubt that he himself, remaining God, became man? He did not need to change the flame to produce dew; and wishing himself to become man for the salvation of human beings, did he need to change his own nature? The fire remained and became dew, and you say: How does he remain God and become man? For since God, wishing to save our nature, accomplished our salvation not through others but through himself, since all creation was too weak for our salvation, we being held fast by both evil and error (for the long habit of evil had become for human beings a second nature, thrusting nature aside): a prophet prophesied, but the word was too weak, overcome by evil; angels became ministers of our salvation (and the great Paul testifies, saying of angels: 'Are they not all ministering spirits sent out for service for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?'); an angel, superior in nature, ministered for our salvation, but man was not saved, being eagerly given over to wickedness. All things, then, were too weak against the negligence of human beings; for the evil of the wicked overcame the zeal of the good. Not that God is overcome, but because he entrusts virtue to the choice of free will: he does not thrust you by necessity to good deeds, nor drag you unwilling to virtue, so that, having made virtue voluntary for you,

he might make it your own achievement. What then? Since prophets had been defeated, teachers were ineffective, the law was too weak, and angels failed in their zeal, the will of human beings not yielding to good things, the Maker of nature himself came to dwell, wishing to set a defeated nature upright. And he comes, not crashing as God, nor striking the ears with thunders, nor wrapping himself in thick darkness and showing a fearful fire in the darkness, nor frightening the hearers with the sound of a trumpet, as once he appeared to the Jews, producing fear; not frightening the servant, but rather calling him by grace and goodness. He brings no escort of archangels; he does not move the camps of the angels. For he did not wish to frighten the runaway, who had become a fugitive from his laws; but the Lord of all comes in the form of a servant, wrapped in poverty, so as not to frighten the prey. He is born in an obscure place, choosing an unseen field for his birth; he is born through a poor virgin and takes on all things poor, so as to catch man quietly for salvation. For if he had been born in splendour and had come wrapped in great wealth, the unbelievers would have said that the spending of wealth worked the change of the world. If he had chosen great Rome as his city, they would have reckoned the change of the world to the power of its citizens. If he had become the son of an emperor, they would have ascribed the benefit to power. Had he been the son of a lawgiver, they would have ascribed the benefit to his ordinances. But what does he do? All poor and lowly, all modest and unseen by most, so that the Godhead alone might be known as having re-ordered the world. That is why he chooses a poor mother, a poorer homeland; he becomes needy in money. And let the manger interpret the need to you. For there being no bed on which the Lord might lie, he is placed in a manger, and the want caused by need becomes a most beautiful sign of prophecy. For he was laid in a manger, signifying that he would be food even for the irrational. For the Word of God drew to himself rich and poor, the eloquent and those slow of speech, living with poverty and laid in a manger. Do you see how the want of need worked prophecy and the poverty showed the one who became poor for us to be accessible to all? For no one was without courage from fear of Christ's overwhelming wealth; the height of kingship prevented no one from coming to him; but he appeared common and poor, who set himself forth to all for salvation. For the Word of God is laid in a manger, and through the medium of his body, so that rational and irrational alike may freely partake of the saving food. And perhaps the prophet too cried this beforehand, describing the mystery of this manger, when he said: 'The ox knew its owner, and the donkey the manger of its lord; but Israel did not know me, and the people did not understand me.' For even if the saying has a simpler sense, showing the Hebrew to be more ungrateful than the irrational animals, yet it could also show this, pointing to the manger of the Lord, on which, laid, he became food for the more irrational. For the prophet does not speak of a manger indefinitely, but called it 'the manger of its lord', marking, I think, this manger definitely by the article. And let whoever wishes philosophize on these things, delighting in the varied contemplation of divine Scripture;

but we have shown that the rich one became poor for us, in the principle of his Godhead making salvation easy for all to grasp. The great Paul signified this when he said: 'For our sake he became poor, though he was rich, so that we by his poverty might become rich.' And who was the rich one? In what was he rich? And how did he become poor for us? Let those tell us who divide the man from God the Word and separate what is united by recalling the natures, who call Christ two and bring forward '(one) in thought only' as their defence. Who, then, being rich, tell me, became poor with my poverty? The visible man, whom you separate from the Godhead? But he was never rich; he was poor, born of poor ancestors. Who then was the rich one, and in what was he rich, who became poor for us? God, he says, was rich in creation. Then God also became poor, making the poverty of what was seen his own. For the same one was both rich in Godhead and became poor for us. For you would not say that the man was rich, poor as he was both in nature and in money; nor would you say that the one rich in the dignity of Godhead became poor without attaching human things to him. That is why the apostle too, joining the glory of the Godhead to human sufferings, not wishing to divide in thought or separate in speech what was united, said that the same one was rich in Godhead and poor in sufferings, the one for his own sake, the other having suffered for ours. If the one rich in Godhead becomes poor with the poverty of human beings, how did he not also suffer the rest, having once chosen to become man through love for humankind?

But so much for these things. Look, I beg you, at the poorest dwelling of the one who is rich in heaven; look at the manger of the one seated on the cherubim; look at the swaddling clothes of the one who bound the sea with sand; look at the poverty below, reckoning his wealth above. For so you would see the greatness of grace and of love for humankind, if you reckon God's so great condescension. For in this very poverty the wealth of his Godhead is shown, a star pointing out the poor one to the magi and leading the barbarians to the manger of the poor one. And angels too, rejoicing, proclaimed this poor one to the shepherds, singing the wealth of his Godhead. For the magi brought the frankincense to the one who appeared, as to God, not separating nature from nature nor cutting the united one by thoughts; once they knew by the wonder that the one appearing was God, they offer him frankincense, showing by this very gift his divine dignity. Nor did the angels separate what was born from God the Word by thoughts such as yours; knowing one and the same, both seen and understood, they cried, saying: 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among men'; not saying one thing, as you do, and thinking another, confessing in words one Christ Jesus but dividing the same in thought, as you do, having thoughts at war with your words; but they glorify one and the same God. So in poverty and in a manger he appeared to all. That is why he is both in swaddling clothes and glorified by angels, … not that the star came down to the magi (for the stars do not change their places); but since the land of the Chaldeans has many who attend to the movement of the stars, the superior power guiding the magi took on the character of a star, so that from what the Chaldeans had learned they might learn what they did not know, and, attending to astronomy, might be taught the mysteries of Christ by the stars themselves. For that it was not a star but an angelic power guiding the barbarians to piety, the evangelist himself shows, saying that this star sometimes appeared even by day and sometimes was hidden, and at another time saying that it guided the magi and went with them to Bethlehem, which no one would say any of the stars does, but rather a power appearing in the form of a star to the astronomers. And what is said of the star, 'it stood over the child', will show clearly that what appeared was a power. For none of the stars set in heaven would have become visible standing over the child, since the greatness of the distance, deceiving the judgment of sight, makes neither the standing nor the motion of the stars visible to perception. 'The star,' it says, 'stood over where the child was.' So the star that appeared left its height and became lower, so as to show by its standing the birth of the king. For the magi sought him as king, asking about the king's birth and saying to the Jews: 'Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star in the East and have come to worship him.' You seek a king, O magus: why do you offer frankincense as to God? 'But I know him as king and I have recognized him as God; that is why I offer him both gold and frankincense, showing by the gifts at once both God and king.'

But he who then drew the magi to piety by an ineffable power has now also gathered this bright festival today, no longer laid in a manger but set forth on this saving table. For that manger became the mother of this table; that is why he is laid in it, so that he might be eaten from this table and become saving food for the faithful. The manger showed forth this splendid table; the virgin sprouted these choirs of virginity; the lowliness of the little house in Bethlehem showed forth these renowned churches; and the swaddling clothes of that time have now become ransoms from sins. Do you see the achievements now appearing from the poverty of that time? Do you see poverty become the mother of so much wealth? Does the brief lowliness of the Only-begotten here below do harm, when it has brought so much wealth to the world? Why then do you reproach Christ with the lowliness at Bethlehem? Why do you bring poverty forward, not reckoning the gains that came to the world from it? Why do you call suffering unworthy of God, when it has procured so many goods? Why do you take away from the Only-begotten the wounds which poured out such salvation for human beings? Why do you sit beside the sufferings and not see the achievements now coming from them? Why do you call suffering unworthy of God, by which the tyranny of the devil has been dissolved? Why do you call poverty unworthy of God, through which the world is rich in piety? Why do you call death unworthy of God, by which God destroyed death? For what reason do you not call the cross God's, by which God triumphed over the evil of the demon? Why do you not call this alone God's, which nailed my sin to the wood? Do not slander sufferings from which impassibility is born; do not disparage lowliness from which the devil's tyranny is dissolved; do not reproach God with the blow by which he freed man from sin; do not call God's bond unworthy, by which he loosed the bond of the chains of sin; do not call poverty unworthy of God, since by it the devil, rich in error, became poor; do not condemn the cross, which overthrew the altars; do not belittle the nails by which Christ fixed the world into one mind of piety. Do not reckon the lowly things, but the achievements that came from them of the one who suffered, which you would not say came from the suffering of a mere man, if you have a mind and are persuaded by what is seen. And why do you call lowly what God embraced for the salvation of human beings? For if they are and are called sufferings by nature, yet they have become the healing of our passions; no longer call them sufferings, then, but cures of our sufferings. And do not bring me the members of the virgin as a reproach to the Godhead. For their nature is not unworthy either, even if the passions of dishonour that came in afterwards damaged the nobility of the body. For the members are not shameful by nature, but are outraged through unfitting desire. For if they were shameful by nature, God would not have fashioned them with his own hands, since God is the maker not of shameful things but of the finest: 'For God saw all the things he had made, and behold, they were very good.' For nothing that came into being from God is evil in its own nature, nor did God make anything shameful; but we, falling from our first construction, outraged our nature by unfitting desires. If, then, God is not slandered for having fashioned the members of the woman, neither is he outraged by dwelling in them; for in his own creation God