Commentary on John 1 part 90/94

And when He had breathed His last, the veil of the temple was torn in the middle, from top to bottom.

The veil in the temple was a certain cloth let down straight across into the very midmost part of the house, somehow overshadowing the things within, and making the inner tabernacle accessible, as it were, to the high priest alone.

For it was not permitted to those who wished, darting inside with unwashed feet, to look unguardedly upon the Holy of Holies.

And Paul too, showing us how very necessary was the division made by the veils, said in the writing to the Hebrews: 'For a tabernacle was prepared, the first, which is called holy;

and after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holies, having a golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant overlaid on every side with gold, in which was a golden jar containing the manna, and the tablets of the covenant, and Aaron's rod that budded. But into the first tabernacle,' he says, 'the priests enter, performing the services; but into the second the high priest alone, once a year, not without blood, which he offers for himself and for the errors of the people; the Holy Spirit signifying this, that the way of the holies had not yet been made manifest while the first tabernacle still had its standing.' For it was not disputable that the veil was stretched across the first doors of the temple.

Therefore it was reckoned to the first tabernacle, and it was called holy;

should anyone say that there was some place of the temple that was not holy, he will speak falsely, since the whole was holy.

But after the first tabernacle, the intervening veil made, as it were, a second—I mean the inner one—the Holy of Holies.

But as the blessed Paul said, through the figures given us in types the Spirit was signifying that the path more befitting the saints had not yet been made manifest, the peoples being still shut out and the first court still having its standing.

For not yet truly was the manner of that citizenship made manifest which is given through Christ to those called through the Spirit unto sanctification; not yet had the mystery concerning Him been made manifest, while the commandment in the letter still held sway.

Wherefore the Law also stationed the Jews in the first court.

For the legal system is, as it were, a kind of forecourt and, so to speak, a vestibule of the evangelical training and citizenship.

For the one is in types, but the other looks to the truth.

And holy indeed was the first tabernacle, for the Law is holy and the commandment righteous and good;

for those being holy who partook of the righteousness according to the Law became more holy when they received the faith—clearly the faith in Christ—and were anointed with the divine and Holy Spirit.

Greater, then, than the righteousness of the Law is that which is through faith, and far, far richer is the sanctification.

Therefore the most wise Paul also says that most gladly and very readily he counted the righteousness in the Law as loss, that he might gain Christ and be found in Him, not having his own righteousness which is in the Law, but that which is through faith in Jesus Christ. And some fell back, and running well were bewitched—these were the Galatians—who, after the righteousness in faith, ran back to the commandment of the Law and reverted to a citizenship in types and letters; to whom indeed Paul very rightly bore witness, saying, 'If you be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.'

'You who are justified by the Law are severed from Christ; you have fallen from grace.' But, that we may usefully and necessarily take up again the thread of the subject before us: the veil of the temple is torn from top to bottom, God as it were now uncovering the Holy of Holies, and rendering the inner tabernacle henceforth accessible to those who believe in Christ.

For now the knowledge of the divine mysteries is set before us, no longer clothed with the grossness of the legal letter as with some veil, nor having the covering that comes from the historical narrative—that is, walling up before the eyes of our understanding what is obscure in the types—but in simplicity of faith and in very few words;

For 'the word,' it says, 'is near you, in your mouth and in your heart'—that is, the word of faith which we preach—'that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved;

for with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.' For in these things the whole mystery of godliness is seen by us.

But as long as Christ had not yet, contending on behalf of our life, undergone the death of the flesh, the veil was still, as it were, spread out;

for the power of the commandment according to the Law still held sway.

But when all the deeds of daring against Christ had been accomplished by the unholiness of the Jews, and He had at last breathed His last for our sake, Emmanuel having suffered this too, it was now time for that ancient and broad veil to be rent asunder at last—that is, the security of the legal letter—and for the beauty of the truth to be laid bare to those who have been sanctified through faith in Christ.

The veil is rent throughout its whole extent; for what else can that phrase 'from top to bottom' signify to us than this? And for what cause? For the saving proclamation does not possess a merely partial revelation, but pours upon us the most complete illumination of the divine mysteries.

In everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all wisdom and all knowledge. Since, then, the worshippers of the Saviour were destined to be made rich in all wisdom and in all knowledge and in all speech, receiving, that is, the knowledge of the mystery concerning Him unclouded and free from every shadow, the veil, being rent not in part but wholly through and through, made this plain.

For this is the meaning of 'from top to bottom.'

And we say that the most fitting, and indeed by far the most appropriate, moment for the revelation of the divine mysteries was that in which the Saviour laid down His life for us, when Israel had already spurned grace and had utterly leapt away from love toward God, through its drunken outrage against Him and its most discordant acts of daring.

For one would perceive that nothing was left wanting to their unholy deeds, learning that the Giver of life had been brought down even to death.

I think, then, that these things too have been sufficiently said by us, and that the reasoning concerning the divine contemplations has not strayed from its fitting aim.

But since with a certain keen attentiveness the inspired Evangelist is found saying, 'And when He had breathed His last, the veil of the temple was torn,'

by these words he all but of necessity indicates to us the very moment of the event.

Come then, let us conceive, in addition to what we have just said, yet another thing, possessing, as it seems to me, no slight elegance when apprehended by the mind.

For it will by no means be found to fall short of what is needful in point of usefulness and grace.

Such, then, was a custom that prevailed among the peoples of the Jews and their rulers.

For when they observed something being done which seemed most of all to grieve the Lawgiver, or when they heard something most discordant—I mean words, that is, which amounted to blasphemy—they would rend their garments and fashion the appearance befitting mourners, thereby in a manner making their defense to God, and by the very things which they seemed to bear intolerably, marking off as it were the penalty due to the madness of the offenders, and setting their own head, so to speak, outside all responsibility in the matter.

And indeed the disciples of the Saviour—I mean Barnabas and Paul—when some of those who had not yet believed supposed them to be gods, [did the like].

And when our Saviour Christ was being judged before the teachers of the Jews, and was required to tell who He was and whence He taught, and clearly said, 'Verily I say unto you, henceforth you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming upon the clouds of heaven,' Caiaphas, springing up from the sacred seat, rent his own garments, saying, 'He has blasphemed.' Following, then, the custom that prevailed among them, the divine temple itself likewise, as it were, rent its own veil like a garment as soon as our Saviour breathed His last.

For it condemned the impiety of the Jews against Him as a want of love for God.

And this too was surely accomplished by a divine operation, that it might show us Israel mourning, and the holy temple itself mourning as well.

The Jews therefore, since it was the Preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath—

for that Sabbath day was a great one—

asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.

It is not to attest reverence in those accustomed to commit murder savagely and inhumanly, and who had already been condemned for such unholy deeds, that the blessed Evangelist says these things; rather, he is showing once more that they were, without understanding and unlearnedly, enduring the very thing which Christ had spoken.

For they strain out the gnat while swallowing the camel; for they are found deeming of no account whatever the excessive and utterly dreadful of their impieties,

while over the very smallest matters they busy themselves with much precision, being ignorant on both counts.

For behold, behold, having slain Christ they make great account of reverence concerning the Sabbath, and having insulted the Lawgiver with deeds beyond words, they feign reverence toward the Law;

and they pretend to honor as great that Sabbath day especially—they who slew the Lord of the great day—and they ask a favor most fittingly suited to them and to them alone.

For they besought that the men's legs might be shattered, thus contriving for those already spent an assault of death more feverish, through the unbearable torment that yet remained.

The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who was crucified with Him; but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs, but one of the soldiers pierced His side with a spear, and immediately there came out blood and water.

And he who has seen has borne witness, and his witness is true.

And he knows that he speaks the truth, that you also may believe.

For these things came to pass that the Scripture might be fulfilled, 'A bone of Him shall not be broken.'

And again another Scripture says, 'They shall look on Him whom they pierced.'

Fulfilling the request of the Jews, those who were sick with a madness bordering upon the cruelty that dwelt in them—I mean, plainly, the soldiers of Pilate—shatter the legs of the two robbers, inasmuch as they were still found among the living, setting for them a sharper threat of their fatal calamity, and thrusting them as it were by a now more grievous necessity into death.

But finding Jesus with His head bowed, and perceiving that He had already breathed His last, they consider it now vain to shatter His legs; and, having a little disbelieved that He was already dead, they pierce His side with a spear, and it gushed forth blood mingled with water, God setting the event before us as an image and, as it were, a firstfruit of the mystic Blessing and of holy Baptism.

For holy Baptism is truly Christ's and from Christ, and the power of the mystic Blessing sprang up for us from His holy flesh.

Moreover, the most wise Evangelist assures his hearers from the things that came to pass that He was indeed the Christ, He who of old was proclaimed beforehand through the holy Scripture;

for the events turned out in accord with the things written concerning Him.

For neither was a bone of Him broken, and He was pierced by the soldiers' spear, according to the Scriptures.

And he says that the disciple who bore witness concerning such things became an eyewitness and beholder, as it were, of the event, and that he knows in truth that he has borne true witness—signifying himself even in this, and no other.

For he declined to speak more openly, repelling the suspicion of vainglory as an unholy thing and a most extreme disease.

Concerning the request for the Lord's body.

And after these things Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus;

he came therefore and took away His body.

The passage indeed accuses, and cries out not moderately against, the unholiness of the Jews, showing that to be a disciple of Christ was perilous and by no means without penalty;

for it plainly brings in this most gentle young man—I mean Joseph—as having taken great pains to remain unnoticed, though he had been persuaded by the teachings given through Christ to choose the worship that is truly true and both better and more pleasing to the virtue-loving God than the commandment of the Law; and at the same time it confirms what is necessary for our faith.

For it was needful—yes, needful—to believe that Christ laid down His life for us.

seeing Him lying breathless and dead, though they knew that He was the Christ, and had often been amazed at Him working wonders—even if envy, being keen, in no way permitted the benefit from the wonder-working genuinely to settle in them.

Therefore, unto the condemnation of the Jews' inhumanity, and unto the conviction of the men of Jerusalem, the disciple from Arimathaea comes and honors with the fitting rites Him whom he had honored not yet with an open faith, but nevertheless with a secret one, for fear of the Jews, as the blessed Evangelist says.

And Nicodemus also came, he who at the first had come to Him by night, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds.

He says that not one disciple only had prudently resolved, and most eagerly and greatly come, to the wrapping of the holy body, but he joins to the first a second also;

gathering, as it were, for the matter the testimony honored according to the Law.

For 'at the mouth of two or of three witnesses,' it says, 'shall every word be established.' Two therefore were those who buried Him, Joseph and Nicodemus, having indeed faith within in their mind, yet still cowering with a senseless dread, and not yet preferring the honor that is with God to earthly honor and glory.

For otherwise they would have dismissed the fear of the Jews, and, caring altogether little for the threat proceeding thence, would have granted free boldness to their faith, and would have been shown to be holy and good keepers of our Saviour's commandment.

They took therefore the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as the custom of the Jews is to bury.

Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever yet been laid.

He was reckoned among the dead, He who for our sake was among the dead according to the flesh, but who according to Himself and Him who begot Him is understood and truly is Life.

But that He might fulfill all righteousness—that is, plainly, the righteousness befitting the human condition—He submitted His own temple not only to dying by voluntary will, but also to the things after this, I mean again, both the burial and the laying in the tomb.

And the writer says that this was in a garden, and that it was new, the event signifying to us, as it were, in a type and figure, that Christ's death has become for us the procurer and beginning of the entrance into Paradise.

For as a forerunner He Himself entered on our behalf.

For what else than this very thing could the fact that Jesus was carried dead into a garden signify? And through the newness of the tomb is signified the untrodden and, as it were, strange character of the return from death to life, and the new order devised against corruption through Christ.

For new is our death, in the death of Christ transformed as it were into the manner of a sleep, both in its power and in its use.

For we live unto God, being destined to live, according to the Scriptures.

Therefore also the blessed Paul, up and down, calls those who have died in Christ 'fallen asleep.'

For of old the terror of death waxed insolent against our nature.

For it reigned from Adam even to Moses, and over those who had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression, and we have borne the image of the earthy, according to his likeness, enduring the death that comes from the divine curse.

But since the second Adam has shone upon us—the divine one, the one from heaven—and having striven for the life of all, purchased the life of all by the death of His own flesh, and having dissolved the might of corruption, lived again, we were remolded into the image that is toward Him, enduring as it were a certain new death, one that does not dissolve us into unending corruption, but casts us into a sleep full of good hope, according, that is, to the likeness of Him who inaugurated this way for us also, namely Christ.

But if one should wish to build further upon the saying that the tomb was new, and that no one at all had been laid in it before, this too would be well.

a memorial, none ever having been laid in it at any time.

There then, because of the Jews' Preparation, since the tomb was near, they laid Jesus.

Not merely does he say that He was buried, or that there was a garden near the cross and a new tomb in it, but he makes plain that He was actually laid there as well, leaving not even the smallest of the things that happened unexplained.

For most necessary indeed, unto the assent to and establishment of the mystery, is the confession and knowledge concerning Christ's having died.

For this reason also the most wise Paul, in defining for us the rule of faith, speaks thus: 'The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart'—that is, the word of faith which we preach—'that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.'

For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation; and again elsewhere: 'For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.' The author of the book therefore makes his exposition of these matters most necessary for us.

For it was necessary, indeed necessary, to believe that He both died and was buried.

For after this there enters in, as a further step, the believing in truth that, having also burst asunder the bonds of death, He ascended as God unto His own proper life.

For it was not possible that He should be held fast by death.

For being by nature Life, how could He have submitted to corruption? And He in whom we live and move and have our being—how could He have been subjected to the laws of our nature, and not rather, as God, have easily given life to that which stood in need of life? 'Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene comes early, while it was yet dark, to the tomb, and sees the stone taken away from the tomb.'

'She runs therefore, and comes to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and says to them: They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we know not where they have laid Him.'

'Peter therefore went forth, and the other disciple, and they came to the tomb.'

'And the two ran together; and the other disciple outran Peter more swiftly, and came first to the tomb; and stooping down, he sees the linen cloths lying, yet he did not go in.'

'Then Simon Peter comes, following him, and went into the tomb, and beholds the linen cloths lying, and the napkin that had been upon His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but wrapped together in a place by itself.'

'Then the other disciple also, who came first to the tomb, went in, and he saw and believed.'

'For as yet they knew not the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead.'

This most earnest and God-loving woman would not have had the heart to remain at home, nor would she have kept away from the tomb, had she not, out of dread of the Sabbath law and of the penalty hanging over transgressors, checked the ardour of her eagerness toward this, and yielding to the ancient customs the right still to prevail, deemed it necessary to restrain her own mind, unwilling though it was, from the things she most longed for.

But when the Sabbath was now past, and the neighbouring day was just dawning, she hastens at a run to the place.

Then, seeing the stone rolled away from the mouths of the tomb, she is carried off into reasonable suspicions; and calling to mind the unceasing malice of the Jews, she supposes that Jesus has been carried off, ascribing this impious deed too, along with the rest, to their madness.

And while the woman was in this state of mind, assailed by the reasonings that seemed likely, she returns to those who loved the Lord, eager to make the most genuine of the disciples her helpers, as it were, in the search for Him.

But having her faith firmly established and, as it were, impregnable, she was not moved to slackness through the sufferings on the cross, but as was her wont she still calls Him Lord, even Christ who had died.

For such truly is the disposition that loves God.

And they, when they had learned these things which the woman reported,

strained themselves at a run as fast as it was likely they could, and swiftly reached the tomb itself, and became spectators of the marvel, having sufficient means for the attestation of the matter;

for they were two, according to the law.

And though they do not yet meet Christ risen from the dead, yet from the gathering-up of the linen cloths they infer the resurrection, and henceforth believe that He had also burst asunder the very bonds of death—this too being what the Holy Scripture had long proclaimed aloud.

Thus, grasping the outcomes that came about from the events as fulfilling the true prophecies, they now receive a most steadfast faith.

It must be noted that the blessed Evangelist John, in making known to us the time of the resurrection, says: 'On the first day of the week, early, while it was yet dark, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb.'

Matthew, however, making the same declaration to us, said that the resurrection took place when it was deep evening.

But I think that no one should suppose that the Spirit-bearing men disagree, nor indeed that they set forth different times of the resurrection.

For if anyone should be willing to consider the force of what is signified, he will find that the utterances of the saints coincide in one and the same thing.

For deep dawn, as I think, and deep evening both point toward one and the same thing signified, and arrive at the very midmost point, so to speak, of the interval of the night.

There is therefore no disagreement at all.

For the one, taking his start from the end of the night, and the other from its beginning, both creep toward the depth of the hours, and descend to that very point, as I said just now, which is the midmost.

'So the disciples went away again unto their own home;'

'but Mary stood outside at the tomb weeping.'

The most wise disciples, having now gathered a full assurance sufficient for the resurrection of our Saviour, and being in travail henceforth with a firmly grounded and unshaken faith—both from the outcome of what had been done and from the foretelling of the Holy Scriptures—were returning again homeward, and, as was likely, were hastening to their fellow-ministers, to announce the wonder and thereafter to consider together the course of what ought to be done.

And one would not be off the mark in supposing that yet another thing too was done by them.

For while the wrath of the Jews was still at its height, and those who had been allotted the leadership were murderously raging with fury against every man who admired the word of our Saviour and welcomed His ineffable and most God-befitting power and glory, but most of all against the holy disciples themselves,

reasonably shunning to fall into their hands, they departed from the tomb before the full light, since it was not possible to do this without danger if they should be seen by day, when the sun's torch would uncover them to the eyes of all.

And we shall by no means call cowardice the unmanly cause of so exceedingly seemly a flight on their part; rather, we shall consider that the knowledge of what was profitable had been implanted by Christ in the souls of the saints, since He did not permit those who were to become the luminaries and teachers of the world to endanger themselves untimely.

For it was necessary that the word spoken by Him should be shown to be true, which He said concerning them to the Father in heaven: 'Holy Father, keep them,' He says, 'in Thy name which Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one.'

'While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me; and I guarded them, and none of them perished, save the son of perdition.' The disciples therefore withdraw, deeming it right to await the season of boldness.

And they did this in obedience to the words of the Saviour.

Being set as far as possible from human weakness, they armed themselves against the frenzies of the Jews, and judged that they ought to take no account of the plotting that came from them.

So the most wise disciples were concealing themselves profitably, as I said just now;

but Christ-loving Mary, inasmuch as she was free from all dread and did not hold the anger of the Jews very much in suspicion, keeps her post the more resolutely; yet she endures that affection which somehow always clings to womankind, for she laments the more insatiably, and unsatedly wrings the tear from her own eyes, mourning not only because He had died, but because she supposed that the Lord had been removed from the tomb as well.

'As therefore she was weeping, she stooped down into the tomb, and beholds two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.'

'And they say to her: Woman, why weepest thou?' Behold once more how the tear shed over Christ is not without reward, nor is the fruit of love toward Him far off; rather, as a neighbour and as one yoked to the toils, grace and an altogether rich recompense follow.

For she beheld angels in radiant garments, the vesture of their robes signifying the most pure beauty of angelic purity; and they, staying her from her lamentation, say: 'Woman, why weepest thou?' For they surely do not deem it worth learning the cause of her shedding of tears;

for they knew it even if perchance the woman did not say it, and the very aim of the matter had of itself no small disclosure;

rather, they exhort her to restrain her tear, as being at no fitting season, and as having chosen mourning over things about which she least ought;

for death being loosed and corruption having now lost its strength, and our Saviour Christ having on this account been raised and having made a new way for the dead unto incorruption and unto the ascent to life—for this cause, O woman, they say, thou dost fail of the fitting season, and thou art distressed, and exceedingly bitterly so, when the outcome of events calls thee to the contrary. For truly it were rather fitting to rejoice and to be of good cheer.

'Why then dost thou weep, wronging in a manner the demeanour due to the festival?' And they appear seated both at the head and at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain, all but signifying thereby also to the woman, who supposed that the Lord had been removed, that no one could have wronged the holy body while angels and holy powers were keeping guard, encompassing the divine temple in a circle;

for they knew their own Master.