Fittingly and appropriately, on the day of today's distinguished solemnity, we rise up to the voice of exultation, and say with the Apostle: 'Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation' (2 Cor. 6). Today, the Egyptians being slain, the people of God is freed from mud and straw, that is, from the vilest and most empty works (Exod. 5). Today that Lamb who takes away the sins of the world is offered for the redemption of human salvation, when the doorposts of the houses are commanded to be marked with His blood: that is, our forehead is painted with the sign of the cross, lest the destroying angel find a place. At this time Pharaoh with his army is shaken off in the Red Sea. As sins perish in the sacred font, they are drowned like the Egyptians in the reddened waves.
Reddened, that is, consecrated by the blood of Christ. At this time, for the return of the younger son who had perished and was found, for the salvation of the Gentiles, that fatted calf was slain (Luke 15). Now we are the younger son, who, while the elder brother—that is, the Jews—delays and is unwilling to enter, return to our Creator in repentance for our sins. For we had squandered and wasted the substance from God the Father. Let us see what substance: that is, the goods of universal nature. For everything by which we live, are wise, think—understanding and reason for the discernment of good and evil—is of God's substance.
God's substance is also the freedom of choice which we had received, whether for turning aside the enticements of sin, or for spurring the free will's affection into the service of its Author, or for guarding the image and likeness of God. These riches, therefore, given to us and implanted within us by the Creator, we transferred to private uses, and had consumed in the exercise of vices, forsaking the fountain of virtues, having journeyed abroad and far too far from the Father (Luke 15)—departing from Him not in places and regions, but in hearts and works. For whoever follows his own pleasures, and is carried off by his own passions, is made an exile from God.
When we return to Him, having taken up the acknowledgment of our sins—and indeed returning not by a step of the body, but by the affection of the mind—He comes to meet us with immense mercy, with ineffable joy and consolation, amid the festivities of the banquet, and orders choirs and symphonies, that is, the exultations of heavenly joys, by which the angels rejoice in heaven over one sinner doing penance (Luke 15). And so, when we return to amendment, this banquet is daily celebrated. Daily the Father receives the Son. Ever is Christ offered for those who believe. This, therefore, is that fatted calf which we are taught to offer in the Old Testament (Num. 29). A calf from the oxen, that is, descending from the generation of the patriarchs, of the prophets.
descending from the generation of Abraham, a male without blemish. A male, that is, strong and mighty against every sin. For it belongs to a masculine and manly spirit to have repudiated the enticement of sin, just as it belongs to the cowardice of feminine frailty to have taken up the wantonness of vice. Whence also that Pharaoh who bore the type of the devil (Exod. 1), oppressing the people of God, enemy of the spirit, friend of the flesh, was choking their strength and perverting their desires. Christ therefore died for our iniquities, and was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb dumb before its shearer without a voice, so He opened not His mouth. This is that Lamb which by the law we are commanded to eat in one house (Exod. 12), with our loins girded.
And to eat it with the feet. What is 'in one house'? That is, we are commanded to take His flesh in the unity of the Church. The Arians, therefore, and the various perversities of the heretics, do not eat Him in one house. And so, just as in the flood no one was saved except he who was found within the ark of Noah, so those of a different faith, not having the Lamb who is Christ outside the house of the Church, cannot be saved. But that Scripture reminds us that we ought to eat the head of this Lamb together with the feet, this means that we should venerate God and man with equal confession. Let us take the head from what blessed John says, 'In the beginning was the Word' (John 1). The feet, indeed, from what the Apostle writes:
'He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man' (Phil. 2). 'And made of a woman, made under the law' (Gal. 4). It behooves us, therefore, that we feed on the flesh of this our Lamb with loins girded, that is, with our carnal passions mortified, with the highest purity of heart and body. The head with the feet, that is, let us believe both that He was begotten of God, and that He was brought forth of man. But as to what I said, that He was begotten of God, perhaps there may be some among the less learned who say in their heart: How did God beget a Son? Let us here think nothing corporeal. For what is it that God begot God, unless that fire appeared from fire, that light proceeded from light?
Therefore, for the sake of some who are slow to understand, let us now take some image or comparison from earthly and visible things. For example: if a lamp is lit from a lamp, if one is illumined from another, does it not seem to you that the flame, in a manner giving birth to a flame, has begotten splendor from splendor? Does it not seem to you that light was born from light by an incalculable reckoning? For when it is transferred from lamp to lamp, although two lamps burn, yet that fire itself is surely the same in the second which was shining in the first. Was that fire made from nothing, or from some new beginning? Rather, it was poured forth from the nature of its own splendor.
Therefore, that illumination which is seen to have been kindled from the first lamp did not begin to be in the second as if from nothing, but proceeded from a kindred splendor which already abode in the origin of the first light; and although in each lamp a native and twofold flame may seem to gleam, yet each is one substance: so too with the only-begotten Son of God—if the character of the person is proper to Him, yet the nature of the kind is common—not beginning from the Father, but subsisting from the Father together with the Father. All things were created from nothing; He alone is God from God.
This One, therefore, when He was in the form of God, took the form of a servant for the salvation of servants, and on the wood of the cross was hung, though He was the wood of life, as if weighing Himself out as the price of the lost. He was struck with blows, He was crowned with thorns. But that He was clothed with a scarlet cloak—in the garments of Christ are the merits of the saints. Even then, therefore, it is steeped in the blood of the martyrs by that scarlet color. But that the Jews, adoring Him clothed in a purple cloak with bended knee, whether they would or not, confess Him King and Lord. But that on the cross He said, 'I thirst' (John 19), He was seeking faith in His own. But because He came unto His own, and His own would not receive Him (John 1), for the sweetness of faith they gave Him faithlessness to drink.
The vinegar of malice is offered, because the wine of wisdom which they had received from Christ they had lost by sinning. He is given to drink of the bitterness of our evils, being about to give the sweetness of His good things. But even now, daily, when He is grieved and provoked by sins, in a manner the drink of vinegar and the food of gall are forced upon Him. The veil of the temple is rent (Matt. 27; Mark 15). The veil is the ornament of the tabernacle. When grace flashes forth, therefore, the Church is built up, the Synagogue is destroyed. The temple's veil is stripped of its honor, the veil of the letter being removed by the coming of Christ, so that with Paul (1 Cor. 13) the inner things of the law may be disclosed with unveiled face. The saints, released from the seats of Tartarus, rise again with Christ, and whom those above did not receive, those below acknowledge to be God.
Whence we, acknowledging the deep mysteries of the divine benefits toward us, let us respond, insofar as we can, to the mercy of the Redeemer. Let us give Him compunction of God, by amendment of our sins, in exchange for His thorns. Let us offer Him our own heart, to be pierced with His fear, in exchange for His nails. Let us render Him the palm of perseverance, in exchange for His blows.