Works (CSEL) 15 part 5/31

But what it means that He was presented to the Lord in Jerusalem I would say, had I not said it before in my commentary on Isaiah; for, circumcised from vices, He was judged worthy of the Lord's regard, because 'the eyes of the Lord are upon the just.' You see that the whole sequence of the old law was a type of the future — for circumcision too signifies the purging of sins — but because, by a certain proneness to a desire of sinning, the frailty of human flesh and mind is entangled in inextricable vices, therefore through the eighth day of circumcision the future purging of all guilt was prefigured by the age of the resurrection. For this is that saying: 'Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord'; for by the words of the law the virgin's childbirth was promised. And truly holy, because immaculate.

In short, that it is He who is marked out by the law, the words repeated by the angel in the same manner declare: 'For that which shall be born,' it says, 'shall be called holy, the Son of God.' For no virile intercourse unlocked the secrets of the virginal womb, but the Holy Spirit poured an immaculate seed into the inviolable womb; for of all those born of woman, the Lord Jesus alone is holy in all things — He who, by the newness of His immaculate birth, did not feel the contagions of earthly corruption and repelled them by His heavenly majesty. For if we follow the letter, how is every male holy, since it is not hidden that many were most wicked? Was Ahab holy? Were the false prophets holy, whom, at Elijah's prayers, the heavenly fire, avenger of injury, consumed?

But He is holy, through whom the pious ordinances of the divine law marked out the figure of the future mystery, in that He alone opened the genital secret of the immaculate fecundity of the holy Church, the Virgin, for the begetting of the peoples of God. He, then, alone opened the womb for Himself. And no wonder; for He who had said to the prophet: 'Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and in the womb of your mother I sanctified you' — He, then, who sanctified another's womb that a prophet might be born, this is He who opened His own mother's womb, that He might come forth immaculate. 'And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, awaiting the consolation of Israel.'

Not only from angels and prophets, from shepherds and parents, but also from elders and the just does the birth of the Lord receive testimony. Every age and both sexes, and the miracles of events, build up faith: a virgin gives birth, a barren woman bears, a mute man speaks, Elizabeth prophesies, a magus adores, one shut in the womb leaps for joy, a widow confesses, a just man waits. And rightly a just man, who sought not his own grace but the people's, himself desiring to be loosed from the bonds of bodily frailty, yet waiting to see the promise; for he knew that 'blessed are the eyes that should see.' 'Now,' he says, 'let your servant depart.' See the just man, as it were enclosed in the prison of the bodily mass, wishing to be loosed, that he may begin to be with Christ;

for 'to be dissolved and to be with Christ is by far better.' But he who wishes to be released, let him come into the temple, let him come into Jerusalem, let him await the Christ of the Lord, let him receive into his hands the Word of God and embrace Him with certain arms of his faith. Then he shall be released, that he may not see death who shall have seen Life. You see the abundant grace of the Lord poured out upon all by His birth, and that prophecy was denied to the unbelieving, not to the just. Behold, Simeon also prophesies that the Lord Jesus Christ has come 'for the fall and resurrection of many,' that He may distinguish the merits of the just and the unjust, and according to the quality of our deeds, as a true and just judge, may decree either punishments or rewards. 'And,' he says, 'a sword shall pierce through your own soul.'

Neither the letter nor history teaches that Mary departed from this life by suffering a bodily death; for it is not the soul, but the body, that is pierced through by a material sword. And therefore it shows that the prudence of Mary was by no means ignorant of the heavenly mystery. For 'the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any most sharp sword, penetrating even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow'; it scrutinizes the thoughts of the heart and the secrets of minds, because all things are 'naked and open' to the Son, whom the secrets of conscience do not deceive. And so Simeon prophesied; a woman joined in marriage had prophesied; a virgin had prophesied; a widow too should prophesy, lest either profession of life or sex be lacking.

And therefore Anna, both by the stipends of widowhood and by such character, is brought in, that she might be believed to have been plainly worthy to announce that the Redeemer of all had come. Since we have described her merits elsewhere, when we exhorted widows, we do not think they should be repeated here, since we are hastening on to other things. Yet not without purpose did he set down the eighty-four years of her widowhood, because both seven dozens and two forties seem to designate a sacred number. 'And when those twelve years were completed.' From the twelfth year, as we read, the beginning of the Lord's disputation is taken; for here the number of the evangelists, who were to preach the faith, was owed.

And not without purpose, though forgetful of His parents according to the flesh, He who according to the flesh was being filled with the wisdom and grace of God, is found after three days in the temple, that it might be a sign that after the three days of that triumphant Passion, in the heavenly seat and in divine honor, He would present Himself as risen again for our faith — He who was believed to have died. 'What is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?' There are two generations in Christ: one paternal, the other maternal; that paternal one more divine, but the maternal one which descended into our labor and use. And therefore those things which are done above nature, above age, above custom, are not to be assigned to human powers, but to be referred to divine.

Elsewhere His mother urges Him to a mystery; here His mother is reproved, because she still demands what is human. But since here He is described as twelve years old, while there He is taught to have disciples, you see that the mother had learned from the Son, that she might demand the mystery from One stronger, she who marveled at the miracle in One younger. 'And He came to Nazareth and was subject to them.' For what would the Master of virtue do, but fulfill the duty of filial piety? And do we wonder if He defers to His father, who is subject to His mother? This subjection is surely not of weakness but of piety, though the serpent of perfidy, sent forth from his sinister hiding-places, raise his head and spew out venoms from his serpentine breast.

When the Son says He was sent, the heretic calls the Father greater, that he may call the Son imperfect, who can have one greater, and may assert that He who is sent stands in need of others' help. Did He perhaps even need human help, that He might serve a maternal command? He deferred to a man, He deferred to a handmaid — for she herself says: 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord' — He deferred to His supposed father: and do you wonder if He deferred to God? Or is deferring to a man piety, and deferring to God weakness? Weigh divine things by human ones, and acknowledge what love is owed to a father. The Father glorifies the Son: do you not wish the Son to glorify the Father? The Father, by a heavenly voice, professes that He is well pleased in the Son:

do you not wish that the Son, clothed with the garment of human flesh, with a human voice, should speak with human affection and call the Father greater? For if 'the Lord is great and exceedingly to be praised, and of His greatness there is no end,' surely the greatness which has no end has also no increase. But why should I not receive with religious ears the Son obedient to the Father in the assumption of a body, since I religiously receive the Father deferring to the Son? Learn rather the precepts of your own profit and acknowledge the examples of piety. Learn what you owe to your parents, when you read that the Son differs from the Father neither in will, nor in work, nor in time.

Although in persons they are two, in power they are one, and surely that heavenly Father experienced no labor of begetting, yet you owe to your mother the injury of her modesty, the loss of her virginity, the peril of childbirth, to your mother the long discomforts, to your mother the long dangers — for whom, poor woman, there is greater peril in the very fruits of her vows, and when she has brought forth what she desired, she is released by the birth, not from fear. Why should I speak of the years that fathers spend for their children's advancement, and the wealth multiplied for others' use, and the seeds cast by the farmer to profit the ages of posterity? Ought not at least services to be repaid for these things? Why should the impious man's life seem too long, and the sharing of the patrimony too narrow for the father, when Christ does not refuse co-heirs?

'The word of God came upon John, the son of Zechariah, in the desert.' About to gather the Church, the Son of God first works in His little servant. And therefore well did holy Luke set down that the word of God came upon John the son of Zechariah in the desert, that the Church might begin not from man but from the Word. For she herself is the desert, because 'the children of the desolate are more than of her that has a husband.' In short, to her it is said: 'Rejoice, O barren one,' and: 'Exult, O desert,' because it was as yet cultivated by no works of an assembled people, nor did those trees, which could bear fruit, as yet display the summit of their merits. Not yet had He come who should say:

'But I, like a fruitful olive in the house of the Lord' — not yet did that heavenly vine minister fruit to us by the offshoots of its branches, that is, of its words. The Word therefore came to pass, that the earth which was before desolate might bring forth fruit for us; the Word came to pass, the voice followed; for the Word first works within, and the office of the voice follows. Whence David also says: 'I believed, therefore have I spoken.' He first believed, that he might be able to speak. And the Word came to pass, that holy John the Baptist might preach repentance. And therefore very many impose upon holy John the type of the law, in that the law could denounce sin but could not pardon it;

for the law recalls from error everyone who followed the way of the Gentiles, restrains him from crime, persuades repentance, that he may obtain grace. 'But the law and the prophets were until John; and John was the forerunner of Christ.' Thus the law is the forerunner of the Church, and repentance is the forerunner of grace. And so holy Luke rightly used brevity, that he might declare John a prophet, saying that the word of God came upon him. He added nothing else; for no one needs a token of himself who abounds in the word of God. And so he said one thing and declared all things.

But holy Matthew and Mark wished to declare him a prophet both by his clothing and his girdle and his food, in that he had clothing of camel's hair and a leathern belt about his loins, and he ate locusts and wild honey. For the forerunner of Christ did not allow the cast-off skins of unclean beasts to perish, by his very clothing signifying that Christ was to come, who, woven over with the filth of beasts on account of the deformity of our merits, taking upon Himself the sins of unclean heathendom, would in that trophy of the cross strip off, as it were a garment, the covering of our flesh. But what does the girdle of the leathern belt mean for itself, but that this flesh, which before was wont to burden the mind, after the Lord's coming began to be not a hindrance but a girding?

for, according to David, we hang our instruments upon the willows, and according to the Apostle, we have no confidence in the flesh, and we have confidence in the body — we have it not in pleasures, we have it in sufferings — since the affection, fervent in the spirit, may flourish, and we may be girded for every obedience of the heavenly precepts, intent with devotion of mind and ready with equipment of body. The prophetic food too is an index of his office and a herald of mystery. For what is so idle for a man's occupation as to seek locusts, and what is so full for the prophet's mystery?

For the more useless locusts are for fruit, the more inert for use, the more fleeting to the touch, wandering by leaping, shrill in their cry, the more fittingly is the Gentile people's figure adapted to them — a people that, with no use of labor, with no fruit of its own work, without weight, without voice, would utter the sound of complaint and would be ignorant of the word of life. This people, then, is the food of the prophets; for the more numerous the people that is gathered, the more abundantly is increased the use of the prophetic mouth. The grace of the Church too is prefigured in the wild honey, found not within the beehive of the law, by the offspring of the Jewish people, but spread in the fields and leaves of the forest by the Gentiles' error, according to what is said: 'We found it in the fields of the forest.'

And here indeed he ate wild honey, announcing that the peoples were to be satisfied with honey from the rock, as it is written: 'And He satisfied them with honey out of the rock.' So too the ravens fed Elijah amid the deserts with imported and gainful food and drink, that it might be a sign that the peoples of the nations, foul with the squalid color of their merits, who before sought their food among fetid corpses, would now provide from themselves an imported nourishment for the prophets; for the food of the prophets is the accomplishment of the divine will, as the Lord Himself declared, saying: 'My food is to do the will of Him who sent me.' 'The voice of one crying in the wilderness.' Well is John called the voice, the forerunner of the Word. For John himself, when asked: 'What do you say of yourself?' said:

'I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.' Therefore he says: 'He who comes after me was made before me,' because the voice, the inferior, goes before, and the Word, which excels, follows. Therefore He willed also to be baptized by John, because among men the Word is consecrated by the voice of the teacher. Therefore perhaps Zechariah too received back his voice, because he had spoken of the Voice. 'O generation of vipers, who showed you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say: We have Abraham for our father.'

'But I say to you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.' The malice of the Jews indeed seems to be accused, in that, varied by the venom of a harmful mind, they work serpentine glidings and earthly couchings, not any mystery of divine knowledge; yet when it is said: 'Who showed you to flee from the wrath to come?', there is shown to them, by the mercy of God, an infused prudence, that they may do penance for their offenses, fearing with provident devotion the terror of the future judgment. To generation, then, not to succession, is the comparison of vipers to be referred. Or perhaps, according to what is written:

'Be prudent as serpents,' they are shown to have a natural prudence, who foresee what is to profit and of their own accord earnestly seek it, but as yet do not relinquish what is harmful. And therefore they are admonished to claim for themselves the renown of their work rather than the nobility of their lineage, because there is no prerogative in succession, unless the inheritance of faith concurs — which God, by His nod, revealed in prophetic speech as to be transferred to the Gentile peoples, saying: 'God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.'

For although God can convert and transform diverse natures, yet because mystery profits me more than miracle, in the forerunner of Christ I ought to recognize nothing more than the building up of the rising Church, which, constructed not of rocky stones but of living stones, rose up into a dwelling-place of God and the summit of the temple by the conversion of our souls. For God was preparing to soften the hard things of our minds and to raise up worshippers of religion from the stones of offense. For what else than stones were they held to be who served stones, surely like to those who made them?

It is prophesied, then, that faith is to be poured into the rocky breasts of the Gentiles, and the oracles promise that they will become, through faith, children of Abraham — those in whom, through hardness of mind, a certain stony, insensible, and irrational habit of nature had grown ingrained. For if the apostolic sentence compared men strengthened by the firmness of faith to living stones, according to what is written: 'And you also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, into a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices' — much more loftily here, by the prophetic voice, do men seem compared to stones, who had so lost the sense of the human mind that, while they thought there was some divine reason residing in stones, they were themselves turned into the nature of stones, not by the use of the body, but by the disposition of the mind.

Finally, those who flow down by descent from Abraham according to the flesh are called both 'princes of Sodom' and 'whitewashed walls.' Thus likeness of character claims the prerogative of lineage for itself more truly than the rank of one's ancestors. Moreover, that you may know that men are compared to stones, the prophet has also compared men to trees, adding: 'For already the axe is laid to the roots of the trees.' But the change of figure was made for this reason, that by that progression of comparison a man may be understood to have already made a somewhat gentler advance.

For those men, before deformed as to their use, naked as to adornment, barren as to fruit, irrational as to advancement, are now figured under the appearance of trees, which by a certain rational gift of nature rise up comely for use, lovely to behold, rich in fruit, spreading out in their crowns, pouring forth in branches, filled with fruits, clothed with foliage. And would that we might be able to imitate the use of fruitful trees, and, founded upon the root of long-enduring humility, with our merits increasing, lift up high from the ground tops fair to look upon and laden with fruitful works, lest the axe of the Gospel husbandman cut away the root of the wild trunk. 'For woe is me, if I preach not the Gospel' — but this is the apostle's word — woe is me, if I have not bewailed my sins;

woe is me, if I rise not at midnight to confess to Thee; woe is me, if I deal deceitfully with my neighbor; woe, if I have not spoken the truth. Already the axe is at the root; let him bear fruit who can — fruit of grace, who owes the fruit of penance. The Lord is present, who would require fruit, who would quicken the fruitful and detect the barren. He has had three years from the time he came, and he could not find fruit among the Jews: may he find it in us! He is about to order the unfruitful to be cut down, lest they cumber the ground. But let those who as yet have no fruit make effort and bring it forth in time to come. That good husbandman of the field will intercede for us who are barren, for us who are unfruitful, that a space may be given, that patience may be shown, lest perchance even we be unable to bear any fruit to God.

To each kind of men also the holy Baptist gave a fitting answer, one for all: thus to the publicans, that they should exact nothing beyond what was appointed; to the soldiers, that they should do no violence, nor seek plunder, teaching that for this reason the pay of military service was established, lest, while seeking a livelihood, the soldier should turn brigand. But while these and other precepts of duty are proper to each, the practice of mercy is common to all; therefore it is a common precept, necessary for all duties, for all ages, and to be discharged by all. Neither the publican nor the soldier is excepted, neither the farmer nor the townsman; rich and poor, all alike are admonished to share with him who has not; for mercy is the fullness of the virtues.

And therefore to all is set forth the form of perfect virtue, that they spare not their own garments and food. Yet the measure of mercy itself is preserved according to the possibility of the human condition, so that each one should not strip himself of everything, but should share what he has with the poor. Now while the people were musing and considering in their hearts concerning John, whether perhaps he himself were the Christ, he answered, saying: 'I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance.' John therefore saw the secrets of the heart. But let us consider whose grace this was. How the secrets of the heart are made plain to the prophets, Paul shows when he says: 'The secrets of his heart shall also be made manifest, and so falling down on his face he will worship God, declaring that God is truly in you.'

It is therefore the gift of God who reveals, not the power of man. He who is rather aided by a divine benefit than discerns by a natural function. But to what does this reasoning of the Jews tend, except to prove that Christ came according to the Scriptures? For there was one who was awaited, and it was he very one who was awaited, not one who was not awaited, that came. But what is more absurd than that he who is reckoned to be in another should be believed not to be in himself? Him whom they thought would come through a woman, they do not believe to have come through a virgin. What birth could be more worthy of God, according to the flesh, than that the immaculate Son of God should preserve, even in taking up a body, the purity of an immaculate birth?

And surely the sign of the divine advent was set in a virgin's child-bearing, not in a woman's. 'I,' he says, 'baptize you with water.' He quickly proved that he was not the Christ, since he operates by a visible function. For since man subsists of two natures, that is, of soul and body, the visible is consecrated through visible things, the invisible through an invisible mystery; for the body is washed by water, the offenses of the soul are cleansed by the Spirit. We do one thing, we invoke another, although even in the font itself the sanctification of the Godhead breathes upon it; for not every washing is by water, but these two cannot be divided from each other. And therefore the baptism of penance was one thing, the baptism of grace is another: the latter is of both, the former of one only.

For since the offenses are common to mind and body, the purification also ought to be common. And well did holy John, signifying that he understood what they were musing in their hearts, and as it were declining the odium of majesty by pretending not to have understood, declare not by word but by deed that he was not the Christ. For it is the work of man to perform penance for offenses; it is the gift of God to fulfill the grace of the mystery. 'But there comes one mightier than I.' He did not make a comparison, as though he called Christ merely mightier than himself — for there could be no comparison between the Son of God and a man — but because there are many mighty ones. For the devil too is mighty; for no one can plunder the goods of the strong man unless he first bind the strong man.

Many therefore are mighty, but none mightier save Christ. Finally, so far did he refrain from making a comparison that he added: 'whose shoes I am not worthy to bear,' showing that the grace of evangelical preaching was conferred upon the apostles, who are shod unto the Gospel. Yet he seems to say this for the reason that John often took on the person of the Jewish people. Whence they refer to this that he says: 'He must increase, but I must decrease,' meaning that the Jewish people should be made less, and the Christian people should increase in Christ. Finally Moses too took on the person of the people, but he likewise bore not the Lord's shoe, but that of his own feet.

And these are shod perhaps not with the shoe of their own feet, but he is commanded to loose the shoe of his own feet, that, the steps of his soul and the bonds of the bodily mind being loosed from their fetters, he might walk a spiritual journey. But the apostles had laid aside the bodily shoe when they were sent without shoe, without staff, without scrip, without girdle; yet they did not at once bear the Lord's shoes. Perhaps after the resurrection they began to bear them; for before, they were warned to tell no one the deeds done by the Lord. Finally afterward it is said to them: 'Go into the whole world and preach the Gospel,' that, bringing forth the footprint of evangelical preaching, they might carry round the whole world the entire series of the Lord's deeds.

The evangelical preaching, therefore, is the nuptial shoe. But concerning this we shall explain something more opportunely in other places. 'He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire, having his fan in his hand; and he will purge his floor, and gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.' 'Having his fan in his hand.' By the sign of the fan the Lord is declared to have the right of distinguishing merits, in that, while the grain is winnowed on the floor, the full is separated from the empty, the fruitful from the void, as it were by a certain sifting of the breathing breeze.

By this comparison, therefore, the Lord is shown to distinguish, on the day of judgment, the solid merits and fruits of virtue from the unfruitful lightness of empty boasting and the worthlessness of deeds, about to place the men of more perfect merit in the heavenly dwelling. For he himself is the more perfect fruit, who shall have deserved to be conformed to him who, like a grain of wheat, fell that he might bring forth many fruits in us, hateful to the chaff, no friend to empty merits. And therefore before him a fire shall burn, not harmful by its own nature, inasmuch as it burns up the evils of wickedness and heaps up the splendor of uprightness.

Now it came to pass, when all the people were baptized, and Jesus being baptized and praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven: 'Thou art my Son, in thee I am well pleased.' The Lord therefore was baptized, not wishing to be cleansed, but to cleanse the waters, that, washed by the flesh of Christ which knew no sin, they might have the right of baptism. And therefore whoever comes to the laver of Christ lays aside his sins. But beautifully, in those things which were spoken by the others, holy Luke the evangelist took a summary, and left it rather to be understood than expressed that the Lord was baptized by John. But what was the cause of the Lord's baptism, the Lord himself declares, saying: 'Suffer it to be so now;'

'for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness.' Since therefore God by his divine favor granted so much for the building up of his Church, that after the patriarchs, prophets, and angels the only-begotten Son of God should descend and come to the laver, have we not truly and divinely learned that it was said of the Church: 'Unless the Lord build the house for himself, they have labored in vain who build it'? Nor is it any wonder if man cannot build, who cannot keep watch: 'Unless the Lord keep the city, they have watched in vain who keep it.' These things are from a certain psalm. Yet I too dare to say that man cannot set out upon his way unless he have the Lord going before him. Whence it is written: 'After the Lord thy God shalt thou walk,' and: