We read in the history of the Kings that a certain famous one of the prophets, with a scanty nourishment of heavenly food, accomplished a very long journey of many days without any support of earthly food; so far did the power of the divine benefit prevail in the human body, its weakness set apart. But this comparison is here not without cause in the discourse. So therefore for us also, as we run through the yearly journey, as it were, with a diversity of deeds, misfortunes, and fears, a certain bread of the Rogations is taken up, stretched out as from heaven, to strengthen us amid these things: whose strength and healthfulness would not only supply the want of past barrenness, but also would shut out the peril of famine from our spirit, living not on bread alone, but on the word of God.
But if anyone should wonder that the Rogations were instituted in our own age, which so long before a multitude of Churches did not know, it is evident that this same person could also disparage the gifts of redemption, which came in the end of the ages when the age of the world was already almost consumed. Let each one see for himself indeed what he thinks; let the raving man laugh at the quality of the remedy, let the desperate man be ignorant of it, but let him who has often tried it [judge otherwise]. But who is so entirely whole that he does not need medicine, that he succumbs to no disease of the ailing soul, that he neither burns with lust, nor grows pale with avarice, nor is livid with envy, nor swells with pride, nor is heated with wrath, nor itches with detraction?
If therefore anyone is conscious to himself of some weariness from these things—he who at every time owes repentance—let him not refuse the three days. And this the prophecy which was read, in full order and arrangement, if it be gone over in its several steps, insinuates, having begun thus from the beginning of the discourse: You, it says, have I known out of all the families of the earth (Amos 3:2). Here at once the people of the Jews hurl themselves into a kind of plunder, not by love but by ambition, that they may seem to be admitted before all to the knowledge of divine familiarity. But let the opportunity of clamoring cease here, because rather, under the judgment of reason, certain things concerning the property of words must be measured by their causes. 'You have I known'—He did not say 'among all,' but 'out of all the families of the earth.'
But who are they who are acquired out of all the families of the earth, except those who, gathered from the whole company of the nations into one, become out of the diverse parts of the world one people, and out of many members under Christ the head one body? To acknowledge and proclaim which calling afterward, the most blessed Peter, fixed in a stupor of mind, saw a certain linen sheet descending from heaven, which, let down by its four corners with a swelling fold, contained every kind of living creature together with birds and reptiles; and being admonished to slaughter for necessary refreshment whatever he wished, he indeed shuddered at such an appetite, when such a manner of foods was enjoined, on account of legal observance;
but presently the divine word came to him: What God has cleansed, do not you call unclean (Acts 10:15). And he: In truth, said he, I have found that there is no respect of persons with God; but in every people and nation whoever fears God and does His will is acceptable to Him (ibid., 34-35). Then therefore you see with what unity there agree those who have been known out of all the families of the earth, namely by the prophets and the apostles. This is assuredly what even now the lesson says: Shall two walk together, unless they have agreed (Amos 3:3)? Now two agree, Christ and Moses, because the latter wrote concerning the former. The Law and grace agree, because the one imposed more strictly, that it might the more preciously loose in the other.
Truth and prophecy agree, because the one brought forth what the other conceived. Among the Jews these two do not walk together, therefore they do not accord. For between the two Testaments themselves they place certain trifling differences. To the one true God there is no going except by one road. Surely, if for whatever other reasons it can be done by a diverse road, by a contrary road it cannot. But among us these two are joined together and agree as a pair. Yet there is in this word of the prophet also something that can be taken personally, if that very duality which must needs agree be first in one man, then in the human race. For our spirit and our body are compacted out of the quality of a disparate substance.
These two can in no way run the way of this age unless, keeping the law of the divine ordinance between themselves, they consent together. For if the spirit be not subject to the flesh, but rather the flesh yield to the mind for the bridling of concupiscence, the concord of reason leads the two together along the way of the law to the fatherland of eternity. But if, while the journey of this age is being run, with the spirit lagging, the flesh outrun the soul, and, by the liberty of sin permitted to it, close off the possibility of the way, then that very equality of running, which is enjoined upon man by the Creator, deserts him, and it begins, hindered, to perish by the law of the mind, and to be exalted above measure by the law of the body; and now the two no longer proceed together—there one lies and the other presses down.
And these things—which is the more to be lamented—not so much steal upon the ignorant as they lord it over the smitten. This the discourse which follows teaches: The lion, it says, has roared; who will not fear? The Lord has spoken; who will not prophesy (Amos 3:8)? Sin appears from afar; why do we not flee? Scripture cries out close by; why do we not believe? Who is the roaring lion, except that one of whom the apostle says, that your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, goes about seeking to devour you (1 Pet. 5:8)? The incontinence of fury brings it about that he who sends the roar before him from afar does not recline in silence: but he who carries with him to the beginnings of sin the consciousness of the precept hears the roar and does not beware, and forthwith is invaded with a ravening bite, unless he is terrified by the warning sent before;
which indeed we conjecture not absurdly, for at once in what follows the quality of that very bite is shown: As, it says, if a shepherd should rescue from the mouth of a lion two legs of a sheep, or the extreme part of an ear (Amos 3:12). The shepherd is for us without doubt that good one who, having left the ninety-nine sheep, did not disdain to seek the one that was wandering. But it is worth the effort to gaze more diligently upon this: that those ninety-nine which this shepherd left on the mountains, being manifested in the flesh, He did not desert, remaining in His nativity. For they evidently bear the figure of the angels glorying in the heavenly height, who assuredly can no longer err.
For the lion of whom we spoke above, after that ruin of his own fall by which, aspiring to fellowship with the Divinity, he was made even more wretched than man—since he disdained to be inferior to the Creator—was stripped of the dignity of all archangelic power. Yet to this fall he bound, that he might not perish alone, some however small power of the heavenly ministers to the ruin of his own casting down. And of that vigor of the eminent creature this alone now remains to them: that, already suffering the future damnation while they foreknow it, since they have lost the merit of living, they cannot have even the very remedy of dying.
From that fall therefore, as I said, whoever remained in the love of his Creator and in the honor of angelic blessedness could thereafter no longer be seduced, and consequently could no longer be imperiled; so that what was done in the beginning concerning the angels was to be done in the end concerning men, namely, that the unrolled course of salvation and of perdition should be terminated when the number is completed and fulfilled. These sheep, then, of the supernal height the good shepherd left, and came to that one lost sheep, in whose signifying lay the human race; and that one, which, gnawed by this lion, could not of itself ascend to those ninety-nine, He carried on His own shoulders, because He lifted it up in His own body:
and when, with the flesh He had assumed, He returned with man to the heights of the heavens, that very one which had strayed from paradise He brought back to the angels. Wherefore it is now plain who is the shepherd who delivers the two legs and the part of the ear, and who is the lion who devours the rest: that is, the shepherd is this Christ, the lion that devil. But, the carnal consideration being somehow set aside, let us see what is the smallest part of the body which is said to have remained covered from the devourer. For I do not think that that good shepherd would with so great zeal wish to rescue a thing so torn and almost consumed, unless he recognized that there was still in the little portion itself something of palpitating life.
This sheep, as we have already said, is assuredly whoever is a sinner, if, having strayed from the folds that protect him, about to run by his own fault into the beast, he has turned aside from the shepherd. For while he walks through the deserts—that is, while he ponders vain and perishing things—the devil meets him, and invades his thought with the bite of pestilent persuasion. When this one has begun already to have in his power the concupiscence of the captive man, the voracious mangler has, as it were, swallowed his former part. And yet, if the effect does not follow upon the concupiscence and the resolve of sin, there are freed, as it were, two legs—that is, the hinder part which had not yet been eaten.
For even if he has lost, through concupiscence, in the lion's jaw certain former feet of his thought, yet the remaining steps which he did not carry through to the effect of a work, he has snatched from [and given to] the mercy of the shepherd. It is to be noted, however, that he freed that portion of the body which he mingled [with the rest], namely the extremity of the ear, which seems to be left over. For after he had said, 'as if a shepherd should rescue two legs,' he added 'and the extreme part of the ear.' Our ear, then, is our obedience: for when we pray and come to our senses, the lion devours the first part of that ear, the shepherd looses the last. The first part of the ear is: You shall not covet. This has already been swallowed down, because the thought coveted.
The following part is: After your lusts do not go. And so, if the evil which we conceived in thought we do not fulfill in deed, then, the former part of obedience having been wounded, that which is the extremity is rescued from the mouth of the lion. How? Assuredly through repentance and correction. And these things the very lesson, as the Lord unfolds them manifoldly throughout the whole, [teaches]: what and what manner of things we have suffered while we not yet come to our senses: I sent among you want of bread, dullness of teeth; I struck you with a burning wind (Amos 4:6, 9). The want of bread is, that we may know that when one withdraws from the Lord, there is nothing whereby one may live. But whence is dullness of teeth contracted? I think there fits that which Solomon says in a certain place, when he set down a comparison, saying: As a sour grape is harmful to the teeth.
Now the sour grape is a promise seized upon prematurely, and a content when the fullness of time is deferred. For to wish to have in this world the sweetness and pleasantness which is promised to us in eternity, is quite unripe and sour. Of this grape, still rough and green—not the wine but the venom—Adam within paradise tasted, to the destruction of himself and of us; and because the parents ate the sour grape, the teeth of the children were set on edge. But Ezekiel, foreseeing that the original debt was to be discharged by Christ's paying it, thus says: As I live, says the Lord, that proverb shall no longer be current in Jerusalem: The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the teeth of the children are set on edge (Ezek. 18:3).
No longer does whatever Adam was harm you — that which he coveted in pride, that which he presumed unlawfully, that which he desired heedlessly; but you, fear for yourself the setting of teeth on edge that comes from your own eating; you, restrain the reach of appetite from useless greed. You crave the sour grape, but wait for the ripeness of the promise. That delight is not owed to your age. If you seek what is sweet, wait for the heavenly; if you crave the human, you will suffer the bitter. But what is the glory of the world, except that very thing which he calls below a 'scorching wind'? And even if its gentleness delights men, yet its terror strikes those who love it: 'And because not even so did you return to me, says the Lord, now, O Israel, prepare to meet your God' (Amos 4:10–12). Paul the apostle indeed says (1 Thess.
1 Thess. 4:17), where he describes the coming of the Redeemer, how we shall be caught up to the clouds to meet Christ in the air; yet here I think this meeting pertains to another. For here too, while living, we as it were meet God, if we embrace the precept that is held out to us; and since He is ready to forgive, let correction go forth to meet Him unto repentance. But whoever, for love of eternal life, not only abstains from what is unlawful but even restrains himself from what is lawful, is to be judged to have met Him of his own accord. For, to give one example of anything at all: though adultery is generally forbidden, simple marriage is permitted by law; yet to this the splendor of virginity is preferred beyond all comparison:
whence he who gives his virgin in marriage does well, and he who gives her not does better (1 Cor. 7:38). This, therefore, we ought to hold concerning every observance: he who does ill, flees; he who does well, waits; he who does better, goes forth to meet. Now indeed, after many and most pious admonitions which also according to the letter serve our progress, he fittingly describes our Rogations in the very course of the reading, saying: 'In all the streets and ways let there be wailing' (Amos 5:16). These ways and streets signify our acts, through which we run our course of human converse in mortality. The ways are the lesser faults, but the streets are the wider sins, which send a man to that broad and spacious road that leads to perdition; and many are they who find it.
But through the narrow path one goes to Him of whom the prophet foretold that no one heard His voice in the street, whose word surely did not sound in the freedom of sin. Therefore in this street, because our act is there, let our wailing also be there: yet that this wailing ought not to be confused and tumultuous, the words that follow bear witness, saying, 'He shall call the husbandman to mourning, and to wailing those who know how to wail' (Amos 5:16, ibid.). You see, then, that not all know this wailing, but only those are to be called who have learned it. The husbandman is he who, with this mourning of penitence and this affection of compunction, purges of thorns his land — that is, his own substance — tames it with precepts, waters it with tears, makes it fruitful with humility, enriches it with seed, and multiplies it with produce.
Indeed, according to the condition of human calamity, there is no one who does not know how to wail, since the race is so constituted that even he who knows nothing else knows this; so that the new age of infants itself, entering this world and bursting forth its first cry in weeping — as though by a certain prophecy of calamities — lacks all understanding, and yet already brings forth in nature the wailing which it does not yet possess in knowledge, and without any support of teaching the very beginning of its perils gives birth to the lessons of tears. Since these things are so, let us seek according to the spirit what difference there is between those who know and those who know not how to weep. For according to the kinds and ranks of men, each ought to possess this knowledge of weeping.
One cause of tears belongs to the king, another to the subject, another to the sinner, another to the just. Secular history relates that a certain Parthian king, after a victory, having beheld from a higher place the vast multitude of his army, wept; and when he was asked by his satraps what cause of weeping there was amid such blessedness, he said: 'I mourn this multitude, which, however victorious, must within not many years be brought entirely to its end by the law of all nature.' If, then, according to secular wisdom — behold, tears worthy of a worldly king, which would befit even a Christian prince who, after his triumphs, thinking more of death than of the summit of power, should not swell with pride but should wail:
how much more, if we know the weeping of a religious prince to be a witness in the present case, when that David — great in virtue, endowed with power, most exalted in piety — amid golden wreaths and jewelled diadems sighed rather for the crown of the heavenly kingdom with the most urgent surge of fervent longing, saying, 'When shall I come and appear before the face of my God?' (Ps. 42:2). Did he not have his tears for bread day and night, while they said to him daily, 'Where is your God?' — which was surely said to him not by an outward persecutor compelling him to deny, but by his own soul desiring to see. For his spirit, intent on heavenly things, spoke to itself: 'Where is your God? When shall I come and appear before His face?'
If, then, such tears befitted a holy king, what shall we now say of the very Holy One of holies, who, before the four-days' corpse of Lazarus, before He displayed the power to raise the dead, expended the weakness of weeping? And so in the highest degree do such tears befit the Redeemer. For much did He Himself weep there. There He wept over Adam's sin; there over the wages of sin, which is death; there over Lazarus, that is, the human race; there over the dead man shut in by the stone, that is, the hardness of his condition; there over the tearful comforters, that is, the unbelief of the resurrection; there over the fourth day that had come upon the dead man: which four things happen to sinners bewailed at the funeral of souls — first, the thinking of evil; second, the resolving of it; third, the perpetrating of it; fourth, the remaining in the crime.
As for the fourth, all of us running back through Lazarus, that we may be raised again, need not only the sweetness of mercy but also the bitterness of weeping. After this, since by such a teaching He has taught even us to wail, let us discern and impart the knowledge of tears. Behold, today many gather at the church; but if anyone, prostrating himself in prayer, begins with however great weeping to pray for something that pertains to this world — whether the felicity of worldly living, or the death of enemies, or the increase of riches, or the length of this life, or the honor of secular dignities — do not tears of this kind teach that the man knows not what he bewails, tears which, useless enough and unskilled, he has beyond doubt lost as often as he has thus poured them out?
And this is not so wretched as when a man, by weeping, asks that there be granted to him those very things which many who know not God seem to obtain by sinning, without any prayers at all. On the contrary, you see another groaning and crying out, 'Lord, be merciful to me a sinner,' bewailing his evil life and seeking a good one, with the very tears with which he waters his bed washing away his sin, showing to God amid his groans the frailty of the flesh, the ardor of the mind, the horror of death, the love of resurrection. This man is skilled in wailing; this man is most learned in weeping. Such a tear does not fall to the ground, because it is entrusted to God, to whom it is said, 'You have set my tears in Your sight' (Ps. 56:8).
Finally, since, if our Rogations are rightly performed, they cannot be accomplished without wailing, I will discern the knowledge of wailing as briefly as I can. It is the greatest skill to spend one's weeping here, so that the setting of teeth on edge, of which we spoke above, may be healed, rather than to keep it for that place where the gnashing of teeth is never to be ended. For to those it is said: 'Woe to you who now laugh, for you shall mourn and weep'; but to these: 'Blessed are you who now weep, for you shall laugh and rejoice, and your joy no one shall take from you' (Luke 6:25, 21; John 16:22).