Theological and Ethical Discourses 1 part 5/27

Truly, then, this mystery is great, and beyond great, and shall remain so: for such communion and union, such intimacy and kinship, as a wife has with her husband and a husband with his wife, such — in a manner befitting God, and beyond all conception and speech — the Master and Maker of all things has with the whole Church, as with one wife, being blamelessly and inexpressibly united to her, and being with her, and abiding with her inseparably and undividedly, as with one who is beloved and cherished by him.

Thus also the Church, having been united to her beloved God, is joined, as a whole body to its own head.

For just as a body cannot live at all without the head that has grown onto it, so neither can the Church of the faithful — the sons, I mean, of God, who are enrolled in the heavens — be for God a sound and whole body without its head, namely Christ, who is God himself; nor can it live the truly living and imperishable life unless it is nourished by him daily with the daily bread, from whom comes, for all who love him, the power to live and to grow into a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of his fullness.

But now that these things have been so brilliantly demonstrated, and the question we spoke of has been made clear by our discourse — how the saints from the beginning of the age, up to now, and those who will arise until the consummation, are destined to become one body with Christ and in Christ — come now, let us also give philosophical consideration to how the world above must be fulfilled.

But open your ears to me, and set your governing mind to attend to what is about to be said, since our discourse, in each question, concerns divine matters.

How the world above must be fulfilled, and what sort of thing it is, and in what manner it will be fulfilled.

It is necessary first to inquire what world it is that the discourse calls by this name — the one that must be fulfilled, without whose fulfillment the end will not come — and what this very end that is spoken of actually is.

It seems to me that this adorned world is the Church of Christ, and mankind entire itself, in whom God is said to dwell and to walk about, sending down, as it were a sun of righteousness, the radiant beams of his gifts;

we know it is also called the bride of Christ, as Paul, her escort to the bridegroom, cries out:

'I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ.' And the divine David:

'The queen stood at your right hand, arrayed in garments interwoven with gold, adorned in many colors.'

For even if some say this was spoken concerning the Mother of God alone, yet it applies most fittingly also to the Church of her Son, who is God, as what follows will show more clearly:

'The virgin souls after her,' it says, 'shall be brought to the king;'

'the souls near her shall be brought to you;'

'they shall be brought with gladness and rejoicing; they shall be led into the temple of the king.'

What then do you suppose this temple to be?

Do you perhaps imagine the temple to be some house other than this, and the king to be someone other than him?

For just as Christ, who is God, is the head of the Church, so also he himself becomes for her a temple; just as, again, the Church herself is his temple and stands established as a beautiful world — as what was said above makes clear, which it is also necessary to repeat and restate here, for a fuller and more precise demonstration.

What Christ, who is himself God, said to his own Father concerning the faithful, and concerning his own apostles as well:

'I do not ask for these only, but also for all who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one:'

'as you, Father, are in me, that they also may be one in us.'

Have you seen how he himself has become both king and temple of all who are being saved?

Learn, therefore, also how, in turn, all the faithful — that is, the queen, the Church, and those who follow after her — will become the temple and world of God and King.

And this you will learn first from Christ the king himself:

'I in them, and you, Father, in me, that they may be perfected into one.'

But what does Paul, his disciple, say?

Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that his Holy Spirit dwells in you?

Do you see how the Apostle's sayings agree with all exactness with the Master's own words, proving the Church to be the temple of God the King, and (also) a city, and a world?

Know that it was he who was in the prophets and apostles, and it is he who speaks in both of these, even now.

Since the Church is the body of Christ and the bride of Christ and the world above and the temple of God, and the members of his body are constituted by all the saints — yet not all have as yet come forth or become well-pleasing, nor is the body of Christ therefore whole, nor has the world above been fulfilled (I mean this very world of the Church of God); but there are many unbelievers in the world today who will yet believe in Christ, many sinners and profligates who will repent and change their minds, many disobedient who will yet be persuaded, many still to be born who will please God even until the last trumpet — it is necessary that all the foreknown be born, and brought forth, and that the world above the world — the Church of the firstborn, the Jerusalem in the heavens — be fulfilled;

and then the end and the fullness of the body of Christ will be fulfilled by those whom God has predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son;

and they are the sons of the light and of his day.

All these, then, have been predestined and enrolled and numbered, and they are destined to be added to and joined to the body of Christ;

and then, becoming as it were whole, with no member lacking, it will be fulfilled, that is, perfected, just as in truth seems also [true] to the apostle Paul, who speaks thus:

Until we all attain to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

And those whom he called, these he also justified;

and those whom he justified, these he also glorified, to be made conformed to the image of his Son.

Do you see how all the saints have been predestined and foreknown?

Know, then, how he also says that they have been enrolled.

For having said, 'You have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels in festal gathering,' he added:

and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in the heavens.

If, then, they are enrolled, it is quite clear that they are also numbered, as it is written:

'Your hairs,' he says, 'are numbered before God who knows all things' — how much more, then, are we ourselves?

Since, then, all the saints are foreknown by God, and at the same time predestined and numbered, as also enrolled by name in the heavens, and are together members of Christ, being bound to become one body and to be completed as his [body], it has been clearly demonstrated by this discourse that, when all these are gathered together and become one body of Christ, then also the world above — that very heavenly Jerusalem which is also the church of the firstborn — will be fulfilled; that is, the whole body of the kingdom of God's Church, which is the body of Christ who is God, will come to be.

Where, then, are those who, outside the kingdom of heaven, fashion many mansions in the vanity of their minds, to their own destruction?

Where are those who say, 'We do not wish to enter into the kingdom of heaven, for this is too great a thing; rather, we wish to be in a place of rest, and that is enough for us'?

All the saints from the beginning of the age are bound to be one body with Christ.

And where else do such people suppose they will be, if they are found unworthy of his body and are cut off from it?

And when the whole world is renewed by fire, in what place do they suppose they will ever be, so as not to undergo trial of that fire and be tested by it?

Indeed they became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened;

But let us proceed, and let us seek out what the mystical marriage of God is, and thus direct our discourse toward another subject.

which some of the uninitiated seek to learn.

Will the saints, then, know one another in the age to come, when each is repaid by God according to his works, or not? We must, therefore, first begin from the words of the Gospel, and thus, as the discourse proceeds step by step, it will also make these matters clear.

On the saying of the Gospel:

The kingdom of heaven is likened to a king.

And what is the mystical marriage of God?

'The kingdom of heaven,' he says, 'is likened to a king who made a marriage feast for his son and invited many.' By 'king,' whom does he mean, if not that very Father and God of his own?

And for whom else did he make the marriage feast, if not for his only-begotten Son and God, our Lord Jesus Christ?

For each one of us men, wishing to take a bride for his own son, hastens to take as bride the daughter of one more illustrious, more glorious, and richer.

Whom, then, will God find equal to himself, that he might take from him a bride for himself?

For the prophet says concerning him:

He who holds the circle of the earth in his hand, and its inhabitants as grasshoppers;

the eternal God, who fashioned the ends of the earth and founded its pillars upon nothing;

he who looks upon the earth and makes it tremble.

He, then, who is such and so great — whose daughter, let us consider, did he take as bride, and for whom did he make the marriage feast for his son?

But the greatness of his condescension astounds my reasoning, and I wish to speak, yet I tremble;

but taking courage in his goodness, we will speak thus:

He took as a bride for himself the daughter of one who had offended him and had committed adultery and murder — that is, so to speak, of an adulterer and murderer.

Do you see his incomparable and ineffable goodness and condescension?

Learn from this, then, every one of you who thinks great things of yourself, to be humbled and to be modest in mind, and never to be exalted over anyone — even though you be the most royal of all kings, even though you be more illustrious than rulers, even though you be richer than all the rich — by beholding the Master and Lord of all, the Holy of Holies, the blessed God and only Sovereign, who dwells in unapproachable and ineffable light, thus condescending, and taking to himself a bride, from one who had offended him, for his only-begotten Son — the invisible, the incomprehensible, the untraceable, the maker and creator of all things — for your sake and for your salvation.

Who, then, is the one who committed the murder and the adultery, whose daughter God chose for himself as a bride?

David, the son of Jesse, who both killed Uriah and committed adultery with his wife.

I call her most pure and most blameless in comparison with us and the people of that time, comparing her to them and to us her servants; but in comparison with her own bridegroom and his Father, she is indeed a human being, yet holy and most holy, and purer and more undefiled than all human beings of all generations.

Her, then, he took as bride, and made the marriage feast for his son.

The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, having sent forth one of his servants — Gabriel, I mean, the archangel — from his holy height, announces to the Virgin the greeting 'Rejoice';

who, having come down, ministers the mystery to the Virgin and says to her:

Rejoice, favored one, the Lord is with you.

And together with the word, the hypostatic, consubstantial, and co-eternal Word of God the Father entered wholly into the womb of the maiden, and by the coming and cooperation of his consubstantial Spirit took up a flesh endowed with mind and ensouled from her pure blood, and became man.

This, then, is that ineffable union, and such is the mystical marriage of God, and thus has come about the covenant of God toward men: he who is above nature and above being having been united, without confusion, to our corruptible and impoverished essence and nature.

The Virgin, then, conceived and gave birth paradoxically from two natures — I mean divinity and humanity — to one Son, perfect God and perfect man, our Lord Jesus Christ, who neither corrupted her virginity nor was separated from the bosom of the Father.

But indeed, from this point, as far as concerns the evangelical saying, grace grants me to understand yet another thing, and presses me to say it — something which happens mystically always, even in all the sons of light.

Did he make a marriage for his son, or marriages?

Here, for me, is the novelty of the thought.

Since upon each and every one of the faithful and sons of the day, this same marriage always occurs, in like manner and without variation.

Being united to us in a marriage most blameless and most pure, God works in us something greater than our power [can grasp].

For all the saints likewise conceive the Word of God within themselves, just as the Theotokos did, and give birth to him, and he is born in them, and they are born by him, and how they are named his sons and brothers and mothers.

The Son of God, being God, having entered into the womb of the all-holy Virgin, and having taken up flesh from her, and having become man, was born, as we have said, perfect man and perfect God, being the same one, without confusion, both.

What, then, is the greater thing that has come to be for us?

Each of us human beings believes in this Son of God, who is also Son of the ever-virgin and God-bearing Mary, and believing, we receive the word concerning him faithfully in our hearts; and confessing him with the mouth, and repenting from the soul for our former transgressions, immediately — just as the God Word of the Father entered into the womb of the Virgin — so also in us ourselves the word which we receive, as we are taught piety, is found like a seed.

We conceive him, then, not bodily, as the Virgin and Theotokos conceived him, but spiritually, and yet substantially;

and we have that very one whom the pure Virgin conceived, in our hearts, as the divine Paul says:

'God, who said that light should shine out of darkness' — he who has shone in our hearts for the illumination of the knowledge of his Son — that is to say, instead [of merely shining], he himself has come to be wholly and substantially in us.

And that the meaning of what is said is indeed thus, he made clear through what follows, saying:

'But we have this treasure in earthen vessels' — calling the Holy Spirit 'treasure.'

And elsewhere he also calls the Lord 'Spirit':

'For the Spirit,' he says, 'is the Lord.'

He says this so that, even when you hear 'Son of God,' you may also understand the Spirit and hear him together with the Son;

and again, even when you hear 'Spirit,' that you may likewise understand the Father together with it, since Scripture also calls God 'Spirit' concerning him, everywhere teaching you the inseparability and consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity — that where the Son is, there also is the Father, and where the Father is, there also is the Spirit, and where the Holy Spirit is, there is the whole of the tri-hypostatic Godhead: the one God and Father together with the Son and the Spirit, who are consubstantial with him, who is blessed unto the ages, Amen.

Therefore, believing with our whole soul and repenting fervently, we conceive, as has been said, the Word of God in our hearts, as the Virgin did — carrying, that is to say, our own souls virgin and chaste;

and just as the fire of the Godhead did not consume her, who was utterly spotless, so too it does not consume us when we bear our hearts pure and clean, but instead becomes in us a dew from heaven and a fountain of water and a stream of immortal life.

That we too likewise receive the unbearable fire of the Godhead, hear the Lord saying:

'I came to cast fire upon the earth.'

What else could this be but the Spirit consubstantial with his Godhead, with whom he himself also enters in and is beheld together with the Father, and comes to be within us?

But since the Word of God was incarnate once for all of the Virgin and was born of her bodily, ineffably and beyond reason, and it is not possible for him to be incarnate again or to be born bodily from each one of us, what does he do?

That immaculate flesh of his, which he took up from the pure womb of the all-immaculate Mary the Theotokos, with which he was also born bodily, he imparts to us from it as food;

and by eating it, each of us believers who worthily eat this flesh of his have within us the whole incarnate God and our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God himself and Son of the Virgin and all-blameless Mary, who sits at the right hand of God the Father, according to what was said by him:

'He abides in me and I in him' — never proceeding forth from us, or being born bodily and separated from us.

For he is no longer known to be in us according to the flesh as an infant, but is present bodilessly within the body, being ineffably commingled with our essences and natures, and deifying us as those who are of one body with him, being flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones.

This is the greater work in us of his ineffable economy and condescension beyond reason; this is the mystery full of all awe, which I even shrank from writing and trembled to undertake.

() But since God always wills that his love toward us be uncovered and made manifest to us, so that we too might at last consider his great goodness, and being moved to reverence, be made eager to love him, moved by the Spirit that stirs and enlightens our hearts from above, I have made these mysteries plain to you in writing — not in order to show that any human being is equal to her who bore the Lord in the manner of her ineffable childbearing — God forbid!

For the ineffable incarnate birth of the Word of God from her is one thing, and the birth that comes to be spiritually from us is another;

for she, having given birth to the Son and Word of God incarnate, brought forth on earth the mystery of the refashioning of our race and the salvation of the whole world, which is our Lord Jesus Christ and God, who united to himself the things that were divided and took up the sin of the world;

whereas this other birth, bringing forth in the divine Spirit the Word of the knowledge of God, always accomplishes in our hearts the mystery of the renewal of human souls, and communion and union with God the Word — which the divine oracle also hints at, saying thus:

'Through whom we conceived in the womb, and were in labor, and brought forth the spirit of salvation, which we carried on the earth' — but this was said so that his boundless and genuine love toward us might be manifested, and so that, if we are willing, all of us too, according to the divine saying of our Lord Jesus Christ, might in the manner described be called his mother and his brothers, and become in every way equal to his own disciples and apostles — not according to their worth, nor according to the journeys and labors which they underwent, but according to the grace of God and the gift which he poured out richly upon all who are willing to believe and () to follow him unswervingly, just as he himself, willing this, cries out plainly:

'My mother,' he says, 'and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.'

Do you see how he has raised up all who hear his word and do it to the dignity of his mother, and calls them his brothers, and names all of them his kinsmen?

Nevertheless, she alone is properly established as his mother in the bodily sense, having, as I said before, borne him ineffably and without knowledge of a man, whereas all the saints have conceived and possess him according to grace and the gift.

And from his all-blameless mother he borrowed his all-blameless flesh, and in return he gave her his Godhead — O strange and novel exchange!

But from the saints he does not take flesh; rather, he imparts to them his deified flesh.

The grace of the Spirit, then, that is, the fire of the Godhead, belongs to our Savior and God from his nature and essence, but his body is not from that source, but from the all-pure and holy flesh of the Theotokos and from her all-immaculate blood, from which, having taken it up, he made it his own, according to the holy saying:

In just this way, then, the Son of God and of the immaculate Virgin imparts to the saints, from the nature and essence of his co-eternal Father, the grace, as has been said, of the Spirit, that is, the Godhead, just as he says through the prophet:

'In the last days I will pour out from my Spirit upon all flesh' — that is, upon those who have believed; and from the nature and essence of her who properly and truly bore him, comes the flesh which he took up from her.

() And just as we have all received of his fullness, so too we all partake of the blameless flesh of his all-holy Mother, which he took up;

and just as Christ, being her son and God, became our God, and was named our brother, so also do we — O ineffable loving-kindness!

we become sons of the Theotokos his mother and brothers of Christ himself, since, through that super-blameless and super-unknowable marriage which came to be with her and in her, the Son of God was born from her, and from him again all the saints are born.

For just as, from union and seed with Adam, Eve first gave birth, and from her and through her all human beings were born, so too the Theotokos, having received the Word of God the Father in place of seed, conceived and gave birth only to him, the Only-begotten from the Father before the ages and only-begotten in the last times, made flesh from her;

and after she ceased conceiving and giving birth, her Son both has begotten and daily begets those who believe in him and keep his holy commandments.

For it was fitting, since our birth in corruption came about through the woman Eve, that our spiritual birth and refashioning should come about through the man, that is, the second Adam and God.

And observe for me from this the precision of the reasoning:

The seed of a mortal and corruptible man has begotten and begets corruptible and mortal sons through a woman;

but the immortal and incorruptible Word of the immortal and incorruptible God has begotten and forever begets immortal and incorruptible children, having himself first been born of the Virgin, evidently in the Holy Spirit.

According to this, then, the Mother of God is mistress and queen and lady and mother of all the saints, while all the saints are her servants, insofar as she is the Mother of God, () but her sons, insofar as they partake of the all-immaculate flesh of her Son.

for the flesh of the Lord is the flesh of the Theotokos;

and partaking of that very deified flesh of the Lord, we confess and believe that we partake of eternal life, unless perhaps we rather eat it unworthily and to our own condemnation.

The saints are her kinsmen in three ways:

in one way, because they share kinship from the same clay and the same breath, that is, the same soul;

in the second way, because from the flesh assumed from her they have communion and participation with her;

and in yet another way, because, through the holiness that comes to be in them according to the Spirit through her, each one, conceiving him within himself, likewise has the God of all, just as she too had him within herself;

for even though she gave birth to him bodily, she also always had him wholly within herself spiritually, and now, forever and in the same way, has him inseparably.

This, then, is the mystery of the marriage feast which the Father, co-eternal and equal in honor, made for his only-begotten Son:

'And he invited many, and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, and they were not willing to come.'

On the saying of the Gospel:

'And he sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, and they were not willing to come.'

() Who, then, were those who were sent?

for those were the ones called at that time and from the beginning, and they were not willing to listen to them;

'Behold, I have prepared my dinner; () my oxen and fatted calves are killed, and all things are ready;'

'one to his own field, another to his business;'

'and the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them.'

The kingdom of heaven, which he prepared beforehand for those who are called according to purpose from the foundation of the world.

The Son of the Virgin and God himself, being the fatted calf in his Godhead;

for he is also truly an ox, unconquerable in power, and he called himself oxen in the plural, because his holy flesh is divided into many parts, and each single part from him is again that whole one, so mighty is he — that he turns away all the enemies of those who receive him and gives them power, so that they may conquer the world and be able to become sons of God.

He is called a lamb — the all-blameless Lamb of God — as being a year old, and a ram, as bearing the cross from above like a pair of horns, by which he also dealt a mortal blow to the adversary, and upon which those men crucified and killed him.

By 'other servants' he means his holy apostles, whom he also sent, commanding them not to go into the way of the Gentiles and not to enter a city of the Samaritans, but rather to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel;

but they did not receive even these either, but rather shamefully treated and beat some, and even killed others, among whom is Stephen, the first of the martyrs.

'But when the king heard of it, he was angry, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.'

() He means the impious Hebrews, whom he indeed slaughtered, bringing about their utter desolation through the invasion of the Romans.

'I will send upon them wrath and anger, a mission by evil angels.'

Then, therefore, he says to his servants:

'The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy;'

'go therefore into the main roads, and invite as many as you find to the wedding feast.'

Do you see the sequence of events?

Do you see the precision of the parable?

That is, when the Jews, being called to the kingdom of heaven by the apostles, not only did not endure to listen to them, but even shamefully treated and killed them — then he sent them into the whole world and to all the nations.

'And those servants,' he says, 'went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.'

For this is what 'they gathered' signifies:

But indeed, from what follows we are taught this same thing again.

And when the king came in to see those reclining at table, he saw there a man not clothed in a wedding garment, and he says to him:

'Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?'

Then the king said to the servants:

'Bind him hand and foot, and take him away and cast him into the outer darkness;'

for many are called, but few are chosen.