Festal Orations 1-1

On the Theophany, that is, the Nativity of the Saviour.

Christ is born; give glory!

Christ comes from heaven; go forth to meet Him!

Sing to the Lord, all the earth!

And, to embrace both in one word: Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad, for the sake of Him who is heavenly and then became earthly.

Christ is in the flesh: rejoice with trembling and with joy—trembling because of sin, and joy because of hope.

Women, keep your virginity, that you may become mothers of Christ.

Who does not worship Him who is from the beginning? Who does not glorify Him who is the last?

Again the darkness is dispersed, again the light arises, again Egypt is punished with darkness, again Israel is illumined by the pillar.

Let the people who sat in the darkness of ignorance behold the great light of knowledge.

Behold, all things have become new.

The letter gives way, the spirit prevails, the shadows pass away, the truth enters in.

He who was without a mother becomes without a father; without a mother in the first begetting, without a father in the second.

Without a mother formerly, without a father afterward.

The world above must be filled.

All you nations, clap your hands, for unto us a child is born, a son also is given unto us, whose government is upon His shoulder (for He is lifted up together with the cross), and His name is called Angel of Great Counsel—that is, of the Father's counsel.

Prepare the way of the Lord.

And I too will proclaim the power of this day.

He who is without flesh takes flesh, the Word is made thick, the Invisible is seen, the Intangible is touched, the Timeless makes a beginning, the Son of God becomes the Son of man—Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today and unto the ages.

Let the Jews take offence, let the Greeks deride, let the heretics wag their tongues.

They will believe then, when they see Him ascending into heaven;

and if not even then, yet when they see Him coming from the heavens and seated as Judge.

But now is the Theophany, the festival, that is, the Nativity;

for it is called by both names, two appellations being given to one reality.

For God appeared to men through a birth;

on the one hand existing, and ever existing from the One who ever exists, beyond cause and reason (for there was no reason higher than the Word);

on the other hand, becoming for our sake at a later time, that He who gave being might also bestow well-being;

or rather, that He might lead us back, who had fallen away from well-being through wickedness, to that same well-being again through the Incarnation.

Its name, with respect to His appearing, is Theophany;

with respect to His being born, the Nativity.

This is our festival, this is what we celebrate today—the sojourn of God among men, that we may dwell with God, or rather return to Him (for so it is more fitting to say), that, putting off the old man, we may put on the new;

and as in Adam we died, so in Christ we may live—being born with Christ, crucified with Him, buried with Him, and rising with Him.

And as from better things came sorrows, so from sorrows let better things come back.

For where sin abounded, grace did much more abound;

and if the tasting condemned, how much more did the suffering of Christ justify! Therefore let us keep the feast, not in festal pomp, but divinely;

not in a worldly way, but in a manner above the world;

not the things of our weakness, but the things of our healing;

not the things of our first formation, but of our refashioning.

And how shall this be? Let us not garland our porches, nor form dancing-choirs, nor adorn the streets, nor feast the eye, nor lull the ear with flutes, nor enervate the sense of smell, nor prostitute the taste, nor gratify the touch—those ready highroads to vice and gateways of sin; let us not be softened by garments delicate, flowing, and whose chief beauty is uselessness, nor by the sparkle of gems, nor the gleam of gold, nor the artifices of colours that falsify natural beauty and are devised against the image of God;

nor by revels and drunkenness, with which I know lewdness and licentiousness to be coupled;

since from evil teachers come evil lessons—or rather, from evil seeds come evil harvests.

Let us not pile up lofty couches, building tabernacles to the belly for the things of luxury.

Let us not prize fragrant wines, the contrivances of cooks, the costliness of perfumes.

Let not land and sea bring us as gifts their prized refuse;

for thus do I know how to value luxury.

Let us not strive to outdo one another in intemperance.

For to me intemperance is everything superfluous and beyond need;

and this while others hunger and are in want—men of the same clay and the same mixture.

But let us leave these things to the Greeks, to Greek pomps and festivals;

they who name as gods beings that delight in the savour of sacrifice, and consistently serve the divine by the belly, being themselves wicked priests of wicked demons, both fashioners and initiators and initiates.

But we, to whom the Word is the object of worship—if we must indulge in any luxury, let us luxuriate in the Word, in the divine law, and in narratives, both others and those from which the present festival springs;

that the luxury may be fitting, and not far from Him who has called us.

Or will you—for today I am your host—will you have me set before you, my noble guests, the discourse concerning these things, as richly and generously as I can, that you may see how the stranger can feed the natives, the rustic the townsfolk, the man of no luxury those who live in luxury, and the poor and homeless those resplendent in wealth? I will begin from this point;

and cleanse for me your mind, your hearing, and your understanding—all you who feast on such things;

since the discourse is about God, and is itself divine;

that you may depart having truly feasted on the things that are not emptied.

And this discourse shall be at once most full and most concise;

so as neither to grieve by deficiency, nor to weary by satiety.

God always was, and is, and shall be;

for 'was' and 'shall be' are fragments of our time and of fleeting nature;

but He who Is, ever is; and this He calls Himself when He spoke as an oracle to Moses on the mountain.

For comprehending all being in Himself, He possesses existence neither begun nor ending, like some boundless and limitless ocean of being, transcending all conception of time and nature;

outlined by the mind alone, and that very dimly and scantily—not from what He is in Himself, but from what surrounds Him—as one image of the truth is gathered from another, fleeing before it is grasped, and escaping before it is conceived;

illuminating our ruling faculty—and that only when purified—as much as the swiftness of a flash of lightning, which does not stay, illuminates the eye.

As it seems to me, He does this so that by what is comprehensible He may draw us to Himself (for what is utterly incomprehensible is also beyond hope and beyond pursuit), while by what is incomprehensible He may be wondered at; and being wondered at, may be the more desired; and being desired, may purify; and purifying, may make us godlike; and to such, as His own, He may at last hold converse—the word ventures something bold—God being united to gods and made known by them, perhaps as fully as He already knows those who are known by Him.

The divine, then, is boundless and hard to contemplate;

and this alone of Him is wholly comprehensible—His incomprehensibility;

for of a nature it is necessary either to be wholly incomprehensible, or to be perfectly comprehended.

For why should we go on inquiring about Him who is of a simple nature?

For simplicity is not in itself His nature;

if indeed for composite beings their mere existence is not their being composite.

And when we look toward the lower order and what follows, He is immortal and indestructible;

and when He comprehends the whole, He is eternal.

For eternity is neither time, nor any part of time;

but what time is to us, measured by the sun's course, that eternity is to the everlasting—a co-extension with the things that are, like a kind of temporal movement and interval.

Let this much, then, be my philosophizing about God for the present.

For there is no occasion to go beyond this, since our present subject is not theology, but the divine dispensation.

And when I say 'God,' I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;

the Godhead being neither diffused beyond these, lest we introduce a multitude of gods;

nor confined within fewer than these, lest we be condemned for a poverty of Godhead—either Judaizing through a single rule, or Hellenizing through excess.

For the evil is alike in both, even though it be found in opposite extremes.

Thus, then, is the Holy of Holies, which is veiled even from the seraphim, and is glorified with three sanctifyings that meet in one Lordship and Godhead;

as has been most beautifully and loftily philosophized by another of those before us.

But since this—merely to be moved in contemplation of itself—did not suffice for the Goodness, but the good had to be poured forth and to journey outward, so that more beings might be benefited (for this belonged to the highest goodness), He first conceives the angelic and heavenly powers;

and the conception was a work, accomplished by the Word and perfected by the Spirit.

And thus there came into being second splendours, ministers of the first Splendour;

whether we are to suppose them intellectual spirits, or fire immaterial and bodiless, or some other nature as near as possible to those just named.

I would indeed like to say that they are unmoved toward evil, and possess only the movement toward the good, being about God and illumined first from God;

for the things here below receive a second illumination. But I am persuaded to suppose and to call them not unmovable, but hard to move, on account of him who, because of his splendour, was called Lucifer, yet became darkness through his pride, both in fact and in name—and the apostate powers under him, who are creators of evil by their flight from the good, and procurers of it for us as well.

Thus, then, and for these reasons, the intelligible world came into being for Him—at least as I, weighing great matters with a feeble word, philosophize concerning these things.

And since the first creation was good in His sight, He conceives a second world, material and visible;

and this is the system and compound of heaven and earth and what lies between—praiseworthy for the natural excellence of each part, but yet more praiseworthy for the harmony and concord of the whole, each thing being well-disposed toward another, and all toward all, for the completion of one world;

that He might show Himself able to bring into being not only a nature akin to Himself, but also one altogether foreign to Him.

For akin to the Godhead are the intellectual natures, comprehensible by the mind alone;

but altogether foreign are all that fall under sense-perception, and, further still than these, all that are utterly without soul and without movement.

But what is this to us?—perhaps one of those overly festive and over-fervent souls might say. Spur the colt round the turning-post.

Philosophize for us concerning the feast, and the things over which we preside today.

This indeed I will do, even if I began a little far back, thus constrained by both my longing and my discourse.

Mind, then, and sense, thus distinguished from one another, stood within their proper bounds, and bore in themselves the majesty of the Creator-Word—silent praisers of His mighty work, and resounding heralds.

But there was not yet a blending of the two, nor any mixture of opposites—a token of greater wisdom and of lavishness concerning natures;

nor was the whole wealth of the Goodness yet made known.

Willing therefore to display this, the Artificer-Word also creates man—one living being out of both, I mean out of invisible and visible nature;

and taking the body from the matter already pre-existing, but putting in from Himself a breath (which the Scripture knows as a rational soul and image of God), He sets him upon the earth as a kind of second world, great in his littleness—another angel, a composite worshipper, a beholder of the visible creation, an initiate into the intelligible, king over the things on earth yet ruled from above, earthly and heavenly, transient and immortal, visible and intelligible, midway between greatness and lowliness;

the same being both spirit and flesh;

spirit because of grace, flesh because of pride;

the one that he may abide and glorify the Benefactor;

the other that he may suffer, and by suffering be reminded and disciplined, even while priding himself in his greatness;

a living being here dispensed, and removed elsewhere, and—as the end of the mystery—deified by his inclining toward God.

For to this, as it seems to me, the moderate light of truth here leads: to see and to experience the splendour of God, in a way worthy of Him who both bound us together and shall loose us, and shall again bind us together in a loftier fashion.

Him He placed in Paradise—whatever that Paradise then was—honouring him with free will, that the good might belong to the one who chose it no less than to Him who provided the seeds, a tiller of immortal plants, that is, perhaps, of divine conceptions, both the simpler and the more perfect; naked in his simplicity and his unartificial life, and without any covering or screen.

For such it was fitting that the first man should be.

And He gives a law, as matter for the exercise of free will.

And the law was a commandment: of which plants he might partake, and which he must not touch.

And this was the tree of knowledge—neither planted in the beginning with evil intent, nor forbidden out of envy (let not the fighters against God send their tongues thither, nor imitate the serpent);

but good if partaken of in due season (for the tree was contemplation, as it seems to me, upon which it is safe for only those of more perfect habit to enter), yet not good for those still simpler and more greedy in appetite—just as solid food is not profitable for those still tender and needing milk.

But when, through the envy of the devil and the woman's wile—she who suffered as the weaker, and brought it on him as the more persuasive (alas for my weakness!

for that of my forefather is my own)—he forgot the commandment given to him, and was overcome by the bitter tasting;

and at once, because of his wickedness, he becomes an exile from the tree of life, and from Paradise, and from God, and is clothed with the garments of skin—perhaps the grosser flesh, both mortal and resistant;

and this is the first thing he comes to know—his own shame—and he hides himself from God.

Yet even here he gains something;

namely, death, and the cutting-off of sin, that evil might not be immortal;

and so the punishment becomes a loving-kindness.

For this is how I am persuaded that God punishes.

And after being disciplined beforehand by many things, in return for the many sins of which the root of wickedness had sprouted forth through diverse causes and at diverse times—by reason, by law, by prophets, by benefits, by threats, by plagues, by floods, by conflagrations, by wars, by victories, by defeats, by signs from heaven, by signs from the air, from earth, from sea, by unhoped-for reversals of men, of cities, of nations—the aim of all which was to wear away wickedness;

since these things needed a greater remedy, a greater one they obtain.

And this was the very Word of God Himself—the One before the ages, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the bodiless, the Beginning from the Beginning, the Light from the Light, the fountain of life and immortality, the impress of the archetypal beauty, the unmoving seal, the unvarying image, the Father's definition and word;

He comes to His own image, and bears flesh for the flesh's sake, and is mingled with a rational soul for my soul's sake, cleansing like by like.

And He becomes man in all things, save sin;

conceived indeed of the Virgin, who was purified beforehand both in soul and flesh by the Spirit (for both birth had to be honoured, and virginity to be honoured yet more);

and He came forth as God with that which He had assumed—one out of two opposites, flesh and spirit;

of which the one deified, and the other was deified.

He who Is comes into being, and the Uncreated is created, and the Uncontainable is contained—through the medium of a rational soul, mediating between Godhead and the grossness of flesh.

And He who enriches becomes poor;

for He becomes poor in my flesh, that I might be enriched in His Godhead.

For He empties Himself of His own glory for a little while, that I might partake of His fullness.

What is the wealth of His goodness? What is this mystery concerning me? I partook of the image, and I did not keep it;

He partakes of my flesh, both to save the image and to make the flesh immortal.

Inasmuch as then He imparted of the better, but now partakes of the worse.

This is more godlike than the former;

this is loftier to those who have understanding.

And having found it, He took it up upon His shoulders, on which He also bore the cross;

and having taken it up, He led it back to the life above;

unless someone should also blame the physician because he stoops over sufferings, and endures foul odours, that he may give health to the sick;

and the one who leans over a pit out of compassion, that he may rescue the fallen beast, according to the law.

He was sent indeed—but as man;

for He also grew weary, and hungered, and thirsted, and was in agony, and wept, by the law of the body;

but if also as God, what of it? Reckon the good pleasure of the Father to be His sending, to whom He refers His own works, both as honouring an eternal Beginning, and that He might not seem to be opposed to God.

Since He is also said to have been delivered up, but it is likewise written that He delivered up Himself;

and to have been raised up by the Father, but also that He raised up Himself, and ascended again.

Those belong to the good pleasure, these to the authority.

But you mention the things that lower Him, while you pass over those that exalt Him;

and you take into account that He suffered;

but that He suffered willingly, you do not add.

What things the Word suffers even now!

By some, as God, He is honoured and joined together;

by others, as flesh, He is dishonoured and divided.

With whom shall He be the more angry? Or rather, to whom shall He show forbearance? To those who wrongly conflate, or to those who divide? For the one group ought to have divided, and the other to have joined together;

the one according to number, the other according to Godhead.

Do you stumble at the flesh? So also did the Jews.

Or do you even call Him a Samaritan? The rest I will pass over in silence.

Do you disbelieve His Godhead? This not even the demons did.

O you who are more faithless than the demons, and more senseless than the Jews!

Those reckoned the title 'Son' to be a voice of equality;

these knew the God who drove them out.

For they were convinced by what they suffered.

But you neither accept the equality, nor do you confess the Godhead.

It were better for you to be circumcised and demon-possessed, if I may say something even ludicrously, than in uncircumcision and health to be disposed wickedly and godlessly.

A little later, then, you shall see Jesus being cleansed in the Jordan—my cleansing;

or rather, sanctifying the waters by His cleansing (for He surely did not Himself need cleansing, He who takes away the sin of the world); and the heavens being rent asunder, and Him being borne witness to by the kindred Spirit, and being tempted, and conquering, and ministered to by angels, and healing every disease and every infirmity, and giving life to the dead (would that you too were given life, you who are dead in your false doctrine!), and driving out demons—some by Himself, some through the disciples—and feeding tens of thousands with a few loaves, and walking upon the sea, and being betrayed, and crucified, and crucifying my sin together with Himself;

as a lamb being led, and as a priest offering, as a man being buried, and as God rising again, then also ascending, and coming again with His own glory.

How many festivals there are for me in each of the mysteries of Christ!

Of all which the sum is one: my own perfecting and refashioning, and my return to the first Adam.

But now receive the conception, and leap for joy;

and reverence the enrolment, through which you were enrolled in the heavens;

and venerate the birth, through which you were loosed from the bonds of your birth;

and honour little Bethlehem, which led you back to Paradise;

and worship the manger, through which you, being without reason, were fed by the Word.

Know, like the ox, your owner—Isaiah charges you—and, like the ass, the manger of your lord;

whether you are one of the clean, and under the law, and chewing the cud of the word, and fit for sacrifice;

or one of the as yet unclean, and uneatable, and unfit for offering, and of the Gentile portion.

Run with the star, and bring gifts with the Magi—gold, and frankincense, and myrrh—as to a King, and as to God, and as to one dead for your sake.

With the shepherds give glory, with the angels sing praise, with the archangels join the dance.

Let there be a common festival of the heavenly and earthly powers.

For I am persuaded that they too rejoice and keep festival together today;

Hate one of the things connected with the birth of Christ—the slaughter of children by Herod;

or rather, reverence even this—the sacrifice of those of the same age as Christ, slain beforehand for the new Victim.

If He flees into Egypt, eagerly share His exile.

It is good to flee together with the persecuted Christ.

If He tarries in Egypt, call Him out of Egypt, where He is rightly worshipped.

Be purified, be circumcised, take away the veil that has been upon you from birth.

After this, teach in the temple, drive out those who make merchandise of God;

be stoned, if you must suffer this;

you will escape those who cast the stones, I know well, and will flee through the midst of them, as God; for the Word is not stoned.

If you are brought before Herod, do not answer the more part.

He will reverence even your silence more than the long speeches of others.

If you are scourged, seek also the remaining sufferings.

Taste gall, for the sake of the tasting;

be given vinegar to drink, seek out the spittings, receive the blows, the buffetings;

be crowned with thorns, by the roughness of the life lived according to God;

put on the scarlet robe, receive the reed, be worshipped by those who mock the truth;

and at last be crucified with Him, put to death with Him, buried with Him eagerly, that you may also rise with Him, and be glorified with Him, and reign with Him—beholding God so far as it is possible, and being beheld—Him who is worshipped and glorified in the Trinity, whom we pray may even now be made clear to us, so far as is attainable to those bound in the flesh, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory unto the ages.