Exposition of the Faith 1 part 13/15

if by the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the breath of His mouth all their power; if heaven and earth and water and fire and air and all their array were brought to completion by the word of the Lord, and this much-talked-of living being, man also;

if God the Word Himself, willing it, became man and from the pure and blameless blood of the holy Virgin formed for Himself flesh without seed—can He not make the bread His body and the wine and water His blood? He said in the beginning:

"Let the earth bring forth the herb of grass," and to this present, when the rain comes, it brings forth its own shoots, being impelled and empowered by the divine command.

"This is My body," and:

"This do," and by His almighty command, until He comes, it comes to pass;

and rain comes to this new husbandry through the invocation: the overshadowing power of the Holy Spirit.

For just as all things which God made, He made by the energy of the Holy Spirit, so also now the energy of the Spirit works the things above nature, which nothing can contain except faith alone.

"How shall this be to me," says the holy Virgin, "since I do not know a man?" Gabriel the archangel answers:

"The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you."

How does the bread become the body of Christ, and the wine and water the blood of Christ? I too say to you:

The Holy Spirit comes upon them and does these things that are above word and conception.

And bread and wine are employed;

for God knows human weakness, since for the most part it turns away in displeasure from things not made customary by habitual use;

so, using His customary condescension, He works the things above nature through the customary things of nature;

and just as in the case of baptism, since it is the custom for

men to wash with water and to be anointed with oil, He joined to the oil and water the grace of the Spirit and made it a laver of regeneration; so likewise, since it is the custom for men to eat bread and to drink water and wine, He joined to them His own Godhead and made them His body and blood, that through the customary and natural things we might come to be among the things above nature.

It is truly a body united to Godhead, the body from the holy Virgin—not that the body which was taken up comes down from heaven, but that the very bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of God.

But if you inquire into the manner, how it comes to pass, it suffices you to hear that it is through the Holy Spirit, just as the Lord also formed for Himself and in Himself flesh from the holy Theotokos through the Holy Spirit;

and we know nothing more than that the word of God is true and active and almighty, but the manner is unsearchable.

And it is not amiss to say this also: that, just as naturally through eating the bread and through drinking the wine and water are changed into the body and blood of the one eating and drinking, and do not become a body other than his former body, so the bread of the offering and the wine and water are, through the invocation and descent of the Holy Spirit, supernaturally changed into the body of Christ and His blood, and are not two, but one and the same.

It comes, then, to those who partake worthily in faith, unto remission of sins and unto life eternal and as a safeguard of soul and body; but to those who partake unworthily in unbelief, unto chastisement and punishment—just as the death of the Lord also became to those who believe life and incorruption unto the enjoyment of eternal blessedness, but to the disobedient and the killers of the Lord unto chastisement and eternal punishment.

The bread and wine are not a figure of the body and blood of Christ—God forbid—but the very body of the Lord, deified, the Lord Himself having said:

"This is My body"—not a figure of the body but the body, and not a figure of the blood but the blood; and before this, to the Jews: "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, you have no eternal life.

For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink;" and again:

Wherefore with all fear and a pure conscience and unwavering faith let us approach, and it shall surely be to us according as we believe, not doubting.

And let us honor it with all purity, both of soul and of body;

let us approach it with ardent longing, and forming our palms in the shape of a cross let us receive the body of the Crucified; and applying eyes and lips and brow, let us partake of the divine coal, that the fire of the longing within us, having taken to itself the burning from the coal, may consume our sins and illumine our hearts, and that by partaking of the divine fire we may be set aflame and deified.

Now a coal is not plain wood but wood united to fire;

so also the bread of communion is not plain bread but bread united to Godhead;

and a body united to Godhead is not one nature, but one nature of the body, and another of the Godhead united to it;

so that the two together are not one nature, but two.

With bread and wine Melchizedek, the priest of God Most High, received Abraham returning from the slaughter of the foreigners;

that table prefigured this mystical table, just as that priest was a type and image of the true high priest, Christ;

"For You," it says, "are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek."

This bread the loaves of the showbread foreshadowed.

For this is the pure—that is, the bloodless—sacrifice which the Lord declared through the prophet is offered to Him from the rising of the sun to its setting.

It is the body and blood of Christ, passing into the constitution of our soul and body, not being spent, not being corrupted, not passing into the privy—God forbid—but into our substance and preservation, a defense against all manner of harm, a means of cleansing from all defilement—if it receives base gold,

it purifies it by the discerning fire—that we may not in the age to come be condemned together with the world.

For it purifies diseases and all kinds of afflictions, as the divine Apostle says:

"For if we judged ourselves, we should not be judged.

But being judged by the Lord, we are chastened, that we may not be condemned together with the world."

And this is what he says:

"So that he who partakes of the body and blood of the Lord unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself."

Being cleansed through it, we are united to the body of the Lord and to His Spirit, and become the body of Christ.

This bread is the firstfruits of the bread to come, which is the supersubstantial bread;

for "supersubstantial" signifies either the bread to come, that is, of the age to come, or that taken for the preservation of our substance.

Whether, then, in this way or in that, the body of the Lord will fittingly be so called;

for the flesh of the Lord is a life-giving Spirit, because it was conceived of the life-giving Spirit;

for that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

But I say this not to do away with the nature of the body, but wishing to indicate its life-giving and divine character.

And if some have called the bread and wine antitypes of the body and blood of the Lord, as the God-bearing Basil said, they spoke so not after its being consecrated, but called the offering itself thus before it was consecrated.

For through it we partake of the very Godhead of Jesus.

It is called, and truly is, communion, because through it we have communion with Christ and partake of His flesh and of His Godhead, and because through it we have communion and are united also with one another;

for since we partake of one bread, we all become one body of Christ and one blood and members of one another, being styled fellow-members of the body of Christ.

With all our power, then, let us beware of receiving communion from heretics, or of giving it to them.

"For give not the holy things to the dogs," says the Lord, "nor cast your pearls before swine," lest we become partakers of their false doctrine and of their condemnation.

For if there is wholly a union with Christ and with one another, then we are wholly united also, according to our choice, with all who partake with us;

for this union comes about from choice, not apart from our own consent.

They are called antitypes of things to come, not as not being truly the body and blood of Christ, but because now through them we partake of the Godhead of Christ, but then we shall partake intelligibly through sight alone.

Concerning the genealogy of the Lord and concerning the holy Theotokos. Concerning the holy, all-hymned, Ever-Virgin and Theotokos Mary, having in the foregoing treated moderately and set forth the most essential point—that she is and is named properly and truly Theotokos—let us now supply what remains.

For she, foreordained by the eternal foreknowing counsel of God, and pre-imaged and proclaimed beforehand by various images and words of the prophets through the Holy Spirit, sprang up at the foreordained time from the root of David, on account of the promises made to him.

"For the Lord swore," it says, "truth to David, and He will not set it aside:

of the fruit of your body I will set upon your throne;" and again:

"Once I have sworn by My holiness, that I will not lie to David.

His seed shall endure forever;

and his throne shall be as the sun before Me, and as the moon established forever, and the witness in heaven is faithful;" and Isaiah:

"There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall come up from the root."

Now that Joseph is descended from the tribe of David, Matthew and Luke, the most holy evangelists, expressly showed; but Matthew traces Joseph from David through Solomon, while Luke does so through Nathan.

But both passed over in silence the birth of the holy Virgin.

One must know, then, that it was not the custom among the Hebrews, nor in the divine Scripture, to give genealogies of women.

And there was a law that one should not take a wife in marriage from another tribe.

Now Joseph, being descended from the tribe of David and being righteous (for the divine Gospel bears this witness to him), would not have taken the holy Virgin to

betrothal contrary to the law, unless she too were descended from the same scepter.

Having shown, therefore, the descent of Joseph, he was content.

And one must also know this: that there was a law that, when a man died childless, his brother should take the wife of the deceased in marriage and raise up seed for the brother.

The child born, then, was by nature of the second—that is, of the one who begot it—but by law of the deceased.

From the line, then, of Nathan the son of David, Levi begot Melchi and Panther;

Panther begot Barpanther, so surnamed.

This Barpanther begot Joachim; Joachim begot the holy Theotokos.

From the line of Solomon the son of David, Matthan took a wife, by whom he begot Jacob.

When Matthan had died, Melchi—of the tribe of Nathan, the son of Levi and brother of Panther—married the wife of Matthan, the mother of Jacob, and by her he had Heli.

Thus Jacob and Heli were brothers by the same mother: Jacob of the tribe of Solomon, and Heli of the tribe of Nathan.

Then Heli, who was of the tribe of Nathan, died childless;

and Jacob, his brother who was of the tribe of Solomon, took his wife and begot Joseph.

Joseph, then, is by nature the son of Jacob, of the descent of Solomon, but according to the law the son of Heli, who was of Nathan.

Joachim, then, took to wife the venerable and praiseworthy Anna.

But just as the Anna of old, being barren, bore Samuel through prayer and promise, so this Anna too, through supplication and promise, received from God the Theotokos, that even in this she might fall short of none of the illustrious ones;

Grace therefore (for that is what 'Anna' is interpreted to mean) brings forth the Lady (for that is what the name of Mary signifies;

for she truly became Lady of all created things, having been declared the mother of the Creator).

She is born in the house of Joachim by the Sheep Gate, and is brought to the temple.

Then, planted in the house of God and made fruitful by the Spirit, like a fertile olive tree she became a dwelling place of every virtue, withdrawing her mind from every worldly and fleshly desire, and so keeping her soul virgin together with her body, as befitted one who was to receive God within her bosom;

for being holy, He rests among the holy.

Thus, then, she pursues holiness and is worthily shown forth as a holy and wondrous temple of God Most High.

But since the enemy of our salvation kept watch over the virgins on account of the prophecy of Isaiah—

who said, 'Behold, the virgin shall conceive and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel,' which is interpreted 'God with us'—so that He who catches the wise in their own craftiness might ensnare the one who ever prides himself on his cunning, the maiden was given in betrothal to Joseph by the priests, the new book to one who knew letters;

and the betrothal was both a safeguard of the virgin and a means of throwing off the track the one who kept watch over the virgins.

And when the fullness of time had come, an angel of the Lord was sent to her, announcing the good news of the Lord's conception;

and so she conceived the Son of God, the enhypostatic power of the Father, not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man—that is, of union and seed—but of the good pleasure of the Father and the cooperation of the Holy Spirit;

she supplied to the Creator that He should be created, and to the Maker that He should be made, and to the Son of God and God that He should be made flesh and become man, from her pure and undefiled flesh and blood, fulfilling the debt of the first mother;

for just as she (Eve) was fashioned from Adam apart from union, so this one (Mary) gave birth to the new Adam, who was born by the law of gestation yet beyond the nature of generation.

For He who is without mother from the Father is born without father from a woman;

and inasmuch as He was born of a woman, it was by the law of gestation; but inasmuch as it was without a father, it was beyond the nature of generation;

and inasmuch as He was born at the customary time (for He completed the nine months and was born upon entering the tenth), it was by the law of gestation;

but inasmuch as it was without birth-pangs, it was above the ordinance of generation;

for she whom no pleasure preceded, and upon whom no birth-pang followed, according to the saying:

'Before she travailed, she gave birth,' and again:

'Before the time of her pangs came, she escaped and bore a male child.'

Therefore there was begotten of her the Son of God, even God made flesh—not a God-bearing man, but God made flesh; not as a prophet anointed by an operation, but by the presence of the whole of Him who anoints, so that the anointer became man and the anointed became God—not by a change of nature, but by the union according to hypostasis.

For the same One was both the one who anoints and the one who is anointed: anointing as God His own self as man.

How then is she not Theotokos, she who bore from herself God made flesh? Truly, properly, and verily she is Theotokos and Lady, ruling over all creatures, who became the servant and mother of the Creator.

And just as, being conceived, He kept her who conceived a virgin, so also, being born, He preserved her virginity unharmed, passing through her alone and keeping her closed;

the conception was through hearing, but the birth through the usual passage of those who are born—even though some tell the fable that He was born through the side of the Mother of God.

For it was not impossible for Him both to pass through the gate and yet not break its seals.

The Ever-Virgin therefore remains a virgin even after the birth, having in no way consorted with a man until death.

And as for the words 'And he knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son,' one must understand that the firstborn is the one first begotten, even if he be the only-begotten;

for to be 'firstborn' indicates that He was born first, but does not at all imply also the birth of others.

And the word 'until' signifies the limit of a determined time, but does not deny what comes after it;

as in: 'And lo, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age'—not as though He would be separated from us after the consummation of the age.

The divine apostle indeed says:

'And so we shall always be with the Lord,' speaking of the time after the general resurrection.

For how could she who bore God, and who came to know the miracle from the experience of all that followed, have accepted union with a man? Away with the thought!

It does not belong to a sober mind to entertain such things, let alone to do them.

But this blessed one, deemed worthy of gifts beyond nature, endured at the time of the Passion those pangs which she escaped in giving birth, suffering the rending of her inmost being out of a mother's compassion; and seeing Him whom she had known as God through His birth now slain like a malefactor, she was torn in her thoughts as by a sword;

as it was said: 'And a sword shall pierce through your own soul also.'

But the joy of the resurrection transforms her sorrow, proclaiming God to be the One who died in the flesh.

Concerning the saints and the honour of their relics. We must honour the saints as friends of Christ, as children and heirs of God, as the theologian and evangelist says:

'But as many as received Him, to them He gave authority to become children of God.'

'So that they are no longer slaves, but sons;

and if sons, then heirs—heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.'

And the Lord in the sacred Gospels says to the apostles:

'I no longer call you slaves;

for the slave does not know what his master is doing.'

And if the Creator and Lord of all things is called King of kings and Lord of lords and God of gods, then certainly the saints too are gods and lords and kings.

Of these God is and is called God and Lord and King.

For 'I am,' He says to Moses, 'the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.'

And God made Moses a god to Pharaoh.

But I call them gods and kings and lords not by nature, but as having reigned and lorded it over the passions, and as having preserved unaltered the likeness of the divine image according to which they were made (for the image of a king is also called king), and as having been united to God by free choice and having received Him as indweller, and by participation in Him having become by grace what He Himself is by nature;

having been called servants and friends and sons of God. For the honour shown to the grateful among our fellow-servants is a proof of goodwill toward our common Master.

These have become treasuries of God and pure dwelling places;

'For I will dwell in them,' says God, 'and walk among them, and I will be their God.'

That the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them, the divine Scripture declares;

for the death of the saints is sleep rather than death.

'For they have laboured unto the age and shall live unto the end,' and:

'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His holy ones.'

What then is more precious than to be in the hand of God? For God is life and light, and those who are in the hand of God exist in life and light.

That God has dwelt in their bodies through the mind, the apostle says:

'Do you not know that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you?' And: 'The Lord is the Spirit,' and:

'If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him.'

How then should we not honour the living temples of God, the living tabernacles of God? These, while living, stand before God in boldness.

The Master Christ has bestowed on us the relics of the saints as saving fountains, pouring forth benefits in manifold ways and gushing with fragrant myrrh.

For if water gushed in the desert from the flinty rock by God's will, and from the jawbone of an ass for the thirsting Samson, is it then incredible that fragrant myrrh should well up from the relics of martyrs? By no means—to those at least who know the power of God and the honour the saints have from Him.

Under the law, everyone who touched a dead body was reckoned unclean; but these are not dead.

For from the time that Life Himself, the Author of life, was reckoned among the dead, we no longer call dead those who have fallen asleep in the hope of resurrection and in faith in Him.

For how can a dead body work miracles? How then are demons driven out through them, the sick healed, the blind made to see, lepers cleansed, temptations and sorrows dispelled, and every good gift come down through them from the Father of lights to those who ask with undoubting faith? How much labour would you undergo to find a patron to present you to a mortal king and to plead your cause before him? Should we then not honour the patrons of the whole race, who make intercession to God on our behalf? Yes indeed, we must honour them by raising temples to God in their name, by bringing offerings, by keeping their memorials with reverence and rejoicing in them spiritually, that the joy may belong to those who summon us together, and lest in trying to serve them we instead provoke them.

For by whatever things God is served, by these His servants also will rejoice;

but by whatever things God is offended, by these His shield-bearers also will be offended.

With psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with contrition and with mercy to the needy, let us the faithful serve the saints—by which things God Himself is most of all served.

Let us raise to them monuments and visible images; and let us ourselves become living monuments and images of them by the imitation of their virtues.

Let us honour the Theotokos as properly and truly the Mother of God;

the prophet John as forerunner and baptist, apostle and martyr (for among those born of women none greater than John has arisen, as the Lord said, and he himself became the first herald of the kingdom);

the apostles as brothers of the Lord, eyewitnesses and ministers of His sufferings, whom God the Father, having foreknown, also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son;

'first apostles, second prophets, third pastors and teachers';

and the martyrs of the Lord, chosen from every rank, as soldiers of Christ who have drunk His cup and have been baptized with the baptism of His life-giving death, as partakers of His sufferings and glory; of whom the leader is the first deacon of Christ, apostle and protomartyr, Stephen;

and our holy fathers, the God-bearing ascetics, who endured the longer and more toilsome

martyrdom of conscience, who went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth, of whom the world was not worthy;

and those before grace—the prophets, patriarchs, and righteous ones who foretold the coming of the Lord.

Contemplating the manner of life of all these, let us emulate their faith, their love, their hope, their zeal, their way of life, their endurance of sufferings, their patience even unto blood, that we may also share with them in the crowns of glory.

Concerning icons. Since certain people find fault with us for venerating and honouring the image of the Saviour and of our Lady, and also of the rest of the saints and servants of Christ, let them hear how from the beginning God made man after His own image.

For what reason then do we venerate one another, if not as having been made after the image of God? For as the God-bearing and greatly learned in divine things Basil says, 'the honour paid to the image passes over to the prototype';

and the prototype is that which is depicted, from which the derivative comes.

For what reason did the people of Moses venerate round about the tabernacle, which bore an image and pattern of the heavenly things, or rather of all creation? For God says to Moses:

'See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.'

And the cherubim that overshadowed the mercy seat—were they not the work of human hands? And what of the renowned temple in Jerusalem? Was it not made by hands and constructed by human art? But the divine Scripture condemns those who venerate carved idols, and also those who sacrifice to demons.

The Greeks sacrificed, and the Jews also sacrificed;

but the Greeks to demons, the Jews to God.

And the sacrifice of the Greeks was rejected and condemned, but that of the righteous was well-pleasing to God.

For Noah sacrificed, and God smelled a sweet savour, accepting the fragrance of his good will and goodwill toward Him.

So then the carved images of the Greeks, since they were representations of demons, are rejected and forbidden.

Moreover, who can make an imitation of the invisible, bodiless, uncircumscribed, and formless God? It is therefore the height of madness and impiety to give form to the Divine.

For this reason, in the Old Testament the use of images was not in common practice.

But since God, out of the bowels of His mercy, became truly man for our salvation—not as He appeared to Abraham in the form of a man, nor as to the prophets, but became man truly according to essence, and lived on earth, dwelt among men, worked wonders, suffered, was crucified, rose, was taken up, and all these things happened in truth and were seen by men—it was written down for our remembrance and for the instruction of those not present at that time, so that we, not having seen but having heard and believed, may attain the blessedness of the Lord.

And since not all know letters nor have leisure for reading, the fathers saw fit that these things, like certain heroic deeds, should be depicted in images for a concise reminder.

Indeed, often when we do not have the Lord's Passion in mind, on seeing the image of Christ's crucifixion we are brought to remembrance of the saving Passion, and falling down we venerate—not the matter, but the One depicted—just as we venerate neither the matter of the Gospel book nor the matter of the cross, but that which is represented.

For how does a cross that does not bear the figure of the Lord differ from one that bears it? Likewise also with the Mother of God;

for the honour paid to her is referred to Him who was made flesh from her.

Likewise too the brave deeds of the saints, which stir us up to courage and zeal and imitation of their virtue, and to the glory of God.

For as we said, the honour shown to the grateful among our fellow-servants is a proof of goodwill toward our common Master, and the honour paid to the image passes over to the prototype.

Now there is also unwritten tradition, such as venerating toward the east, the venerating

of the cross, and very many other things similar to these.

There is also handed down a certain account, that when the Lord sent to Abgar, who reigned over the city of the Edessenes and had sent a painter to portray a likeness of the Lord, the painter being unable to do so because of the dazzling brightness of His face, He Himself laid a cloth upon His own life-giving face and imprinted on the cloth His own likeness, and so sent it to Abgar who longed for it.

And that the apostles handed down very many things unwritten, Paul, the apostle of the nations, writes:

'So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or by our letter,' and to the Corinthians:

'I praise you, brothers, that you remember me in everything, and hold fast the traditions just as I delivered them to you.'