Anti-Arian Works 16 part 11/16

tongues as of fire, and it settled upon each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in various tongues, according as the Spirit gave them to utter (Acts ii, 1 ff.). In that the Holy Spirit, coming upon the blessed apostles, sat in fire, He manifested by that token that He is God. 'For our God,' says the Vessel of Election, writing to the Hebrews, 'is a consuming fire' (Heb. xii, 29). O saving fire! which the Son of majesty, desiring to kindle it in His elect, proclaimed: 'I came to send fire upon the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled?' (Luke xii, 49).

O saving fire, I say, burning up the stubble of vices, flashing with the flame of virtues, it refined, as it were, in the heavenly furnace of that upper room the lips of the blessed fisher-apostles, and like a most skilled goldsmith it wiped away the little bits of dross from every side by careful smelting, so that gold is brought forth pure from such a workshop, to be dispensed to the army of Christ and to profit the whole world by a most generous distribution as its wage. The countenance, glowing in the apostles, displayed the notable adornment of the Holy Spirit, and the tongue, making public its inner riches, soothed with the most sweet eloquence of preaching the multitude of diverse nations gathered together.

But they were amazed with wonder and confused in mind, because each one of them heard those men speaking in his own language. And they said one to another: 'Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how have we heard them speaking in our own tongues the mighty works of God?' (Acts ii, 7, 8). The Holy Spirit today unlocked the great recesses of the heavenly palace, hidden from the ages. How many treasures were thereupon brought forth! How many precious stones were bestowed upon His deserving little servants! How many were enriched with the noblest gold, comparable to no visible metal!

For He did not employ diggers banished into exile, who, having undertaken penal labor, with failing arms and bodies begrimed with black smoke, that they might reach the purest refined gold, should search out the hidden veins of the earth with the striking of the mallet: but upon the chosen apostles the Spirit of truth settled, filled their breasts and mouths, and, as it were, fixing the ornaments of royal gems upon them, distributed the knowledge of diverse tongues, so that while one man speaks in various tongues, the unity of beauty that was to reign might be figured in all the Churches.

But among the others who were then present at Jerusalem, men of every province, and were giving glory to God, some, blinded by the imprudence of their mind, mocked the blessed apostles out of envy, calling them drunk and full of new wine, and jeering said, 'These are drunk and full of new wine' (ibid., 12). Answer me, you hard of heart to believe, prone to disparage: is any man, stupefied by drinking hot new wine, made most eloquent in an unknown tongue? How can one intoxicated usurp the mastery of a language he has not learned, who, with lips confused by wine, begins to stumble in his own speech? You know not, you ravers, what you are saying.

The emptiness of a slander of this kind hurled forth blunts your deceitfulness and refutes your falsehood, while it confirms and establishes our most simple truth. All the venerable apostles, new and whole, patched with no rags of the old, foaming with new wine—that is, overflowing with the richness of the Holy Spirit—both give forth sweet fragrance to others, and preserve within themselves an incorruptible sincerity. Return therefore, you transgressors, to your heart; apply the nostrils of your soul; take in the ineffable sweetness of so great a fragrance; and by drawing from the inward lips, drink the honeyed savor of a blood you have not yet tasted.

This wine heals the inward parts, gladdens hearts, soberly inebriates, and invites its drinkers to the banquet of the eternal Father of the household. But we, my brethren, on this most sacred festival, rejoicing with spiritual gladness, worshipping the one God of the everlasting Trinity and praying to His one name, let us beseech that the serene fire of the Holy Spirit, with which the apostles were filled, may be breathed into our marrow from heaven: so that, driving away every cloud from our inmost dwelling, it may illumine the senses of our understanding with the brightness of its splendor;

so that, by His power flourishing mightily within us, with its light we may be able to enter the Church of the firstborn with shining torches, and, chanting the angelic Alleluia with the choirs of the resplendent saints, may cleave to it in perpetual felicity. SERMON LIII. On the Nativity of John the Baptist. The illustrious nativity of this present day has gathered us together, on which the truthful authority of the Catholic Church testifies that holy John, the forerunner of Christ the Lord, was born.

His venerable father Zacharias, in the time of his priesthood, when he entered into the Holy of Holies to burn a pleasing incense to the Lord of virtues—as the Gospel of Luke, just now recited to our ears, has taught—was suddenly terrified as he beheld an angel flying through the air in the snow-white raiment of divinity, and, in a glittering descent, standing at the right of the altar amid the sacrifices. O offering of the sacrifice of salvation, and oblation of a sincere immolation well-pleasing to God! The most fragrant sweetness of his prayer ascended, the Lord of majesty dwelling on high was delighted, and, according to the counsel of His inscrutable will ordained before the ages, the entreaty of the simple priest received an answer.

But when the angel Gabriel had beheld the high priest terrified at the visitation of his coming, he straightway soothed the trembling man with gentle address. 'Fear not, Zacharias,' he said, 'for your prayer is heard, and your wife Elizabeth shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name John, and he shall be joy to you and exultation, and many shall rejoice at his nativity. For he shall be great before the Lord; he shall not drink wine or strong drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb' (Luke i, 13 ff.), and the rest.

Zacharias was astounded—he who had entered the secret places of the temple not to ask for offspring, but had stood as an envoy to commend the people to the Lord—and, wavering in doubtful deliberation until his face was suffused with color, he began first to reckon the time of his own age already spent, then also that of Elizabeth his barren wife, now inclining by the downward slope of her days into extreme old age; and, moved by a twofold doubt, he proved incredulous of the angelic promise (which was not fitting). 'Whereby,' he said, 'shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in her days' (ibid., 18): as if he were saying, 'The assertion of your promise seems impossible to me, O blessed messenger;'

for in my loins the strength of begetting has withered, and in my wife too there has never appeared any hope of bearing; the age suited for childbearing has passed away in the members of us both. How shall a decrepit old woman conceive from an aged husband, or how, when the root of the aged shoot is already dried up and covered with hard bark, shall a barren sapling put forth buds?' 'Do not, Zacharias, do not resist the heavenly will; the word of God runs swiftly wherever it has been sent. It is hindered by no obstacle from accomplishing the commands of the divine ordinance. Have you not read (1 Sam. i, 20) that Anna, being barren, after a series of many years bore a son, Samuel?

Was it in her only the union of carnal concupiscence that prevailed, or did only male insemination bring forth fruit? and did not faith rather obtain the power in the conception of the seed? Rachel, joined in marriage to Jacob your father (Gen. xxx, 23), was groaning with no fruit of offspring granted to her. It pleased the Creator, and, made a mother of patriarchs, she was found worthy to bear that most chaste and industrious man Joseph: who, refusing the defilement of unchastity, and forgetting the wrong of the brothers who sold him, in the time of famine generously ministered grain to his father alike, and to the whole family of the kinsmen who had plotted against him.

Abraham likewise, like you growing old in the dignity of a whitening head and the maturity of age, when he was already passing the long years of his hundredth year, the ardor of goading desire growing cold, hoping for himself no future successor of a lawful line—did he not, from a ninety-year-old old woman, receive Isaac, conceived by holy means from himself, as his heir (Heb. xi, 11)? The devout father obtained the possibility of begetting, because he believed Him faithful who promised. Therefore, because you, O Zacharias, have said that what you heard from the words of my mouth is incredible, until your once-barren rib is made fruitful, your lips shall be kept fettered, thrust into the prison of silence.

And when Elizabeth shall have borne you the son promised out of despair, then shall the office of your mouth's speaking be restored to freedom of tongue. O vengeance pregnant with mystery, O beneficent vengeance filled with miracle! The father of the Voice is deprived of voice, and the sentence of punishment lasted in the father just so long until the Voice of the Word should be born from the mother. For John is the Voice, Christ the Word. Hear the same John confessing that he is the Voice. 'I am,' he says, 'the voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God' (Matt. iii, 3; Isa. xl, 3). You have heard John, the voice crying in the wilderness; understand the Word to be Christ, reigning with the Father in undivided eternity. And that you may be able both to believe and to grasp this, listen to another John.

I mean that John, the son of Zebedee the fisherman, once occupied with mending nets, intent upon the sea's waves, given by native skill to hauling fish from the deep; but now the disciple of Christ, chosen by Christ along with the rest, loved before the rest, likened by Christ, apostolic and evangelical, to the eagle by an outstanding similitude—cleaving the air in swift flight, penetrating with vehement whir in his flight all lofty things, passing beyond heaven and the stars, leaving behind the powers of the invisible thrones, transcending the angelic dominions, and contemplating with the fearless gaze of his mind, with undimmed vision, the Word who is God from God and abiding in God.

For he alone thus thundered forth concerning Christ at the beginning of his preaching: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was made nothing' (John i, 1, 2, 3). Behold of what a Judge, and how great a one, on this present day was born a most illustrious herald, proclaimed before his father's sight, through whom he was to be borne in his mother's womb. What is this ineffable grace? What are these incomprehensible riches of bounty? He is kept enclosed in the secret organs of generation, and there he is adorned with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Not yet does he begin the beginnings of living among men, and already he is designated the Prophet of the Most High.

For thus Gabriel, the illustrious chancellor of the heavenly palace, gives his attestation: 'Many,' he says, 'of the sons of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God, and he himself shall go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the unbelieving to the prudence of the just, and to prepare for the Lord a perfect people' (Luke i, 16, 17). For because there was to come the Savior for the redemption of the world, from the purest inward parts of a virgin's womb, not sown by lust but conceived by faith, there went before, born of a barren woman, one than whom none among those born of women, being chosen, is greater.

This one is measured out as great before the Magnificent One, as wondrous before the Most Exalted, the friend of the Word, the groomsman of the Bridegroom, who, beholding the Virgin of virgins—that is, the Lamb of God—as a bridegroom crowned with the royal diadem, about to proceed from the virginal bridal chamber, recognized that the nuptials of Christ and the Church, long and most ardently desired by the fathers, had arrived: and, gazing from the bond of a chaste womb upon his own Creator being carried in the hall of a consecrated womb, saluting Him not with bodily steps but with all the movements of his soul—his mother being aware, though late in her childbearing—exulting with singular gladness, he leaped for joy, and, leaping in the womb, from the womb he saluted Him.

For thus Elizabeth answered holy Mary as she came in to her: 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, as soon as the voice of your salutation sounded in my ears, the infant leaped for joy in my womb' (Luke i, 42, 43, 44). And so, because Christ, the King and Physician of the earth, God and man, offering the most precious antidote of His heart and mouth, was coming into man for the sake of man, who was to be restored, wounded by the long sickness of sins, the most noble forerunner of so excellent and skilled a chief physician was preparing a level way and a most straight path, not in the valleys of the earth, but in the minds of men:

he was preparing a royal dwelling for the Lord of the heavens in the souls of believers, ivory houses being despised, gilded ceilings scorned, and marble palaces renounced. Rejoice therefore, rejoice, blessed Zacharias, priest and father, because for the brief space of three months, the scourge of correction being laid upon you, when you were least able to speak, you received back with amplified interest. You doubted a little when you heard the archangel foretelling the child to be born; going out mute from the holy things to the people, you bore the tolerable punishment of an amending silence; and, with the boundary of the terminating day rolling round, you received a son great before the Lord, brought forth from an aged womb.

Being asked by what name the newborn child should be called, just as the angel had brought you the good news, taking a writing tablet you wrote down the name of John. Immediately the bond of your muteness was loosed, and, heaped up with the Lord's blessing, the service of your melodious voice was restored to you. Let us also rejoice, brethren, we ourselves too, celebrating with devout throng on this most solemn day the wondrous nativity of the servant, awaiting with all reverence the unspeakable nativity of the Lord: so that to those for whom the coming forth of the forerunner through a barren woman procured joy, the perpetual security of the Redeemer may be granted by the fruit of the undefiled Virgin that follows. SERMON LIV. Again on the same subject as above.

The illustrious solemnity of this day has gathered us together, on which the truthful authority of the Catholic Church testifies that holy John, the forerunner of Christ the Lord, was born. His merits the very beginnings of his nativity display, the Lord testifying and saying that among those born of women none has arisen greater than John the Baptist (Matt. xi, 11). For no Church celebrates the day on which he assumed flesh; rather it keeps in frequent observance that on which he left all things carnal. The illustrious and blessed nativity of the Lord, therefore, is celebrated, which a star made known and Herod dreaded, which the same holy John, filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb and in the womb, recognized with leaping and saluted most reverently.

Therefore a herald is sent to announce the Judge, a forerunner is dispatched to proclaim the Saviour. For of him it was said: 'Behold, I send my angel before thy face, who shall prepare thy way' (Malachi 3:1). Of him too the prophet Isaiah prophesies, saying: 'The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways plain; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God' (Isaiah 40:3-5). Behold, the voice sounds in the wilderness, humility is enjoined upon the mountains, and to the lofty ways and winding paths uprightness and levelness are commanded.

In the hearts of men the herald of faith is set in order, and human mortality is admonished. O carnal weakness, what wilt thou do at the coming of the most serene Judge, when thou shalt begin to render account of thy deeds—thou who art now unwilling to receive the preaching of so great a herald crying out and saying: 'Behold, now the axe is laid to the root of the tree; and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire' (Luke 3:9)? How great was the loftiness of this herald even at his birth appeared in this: for while the mother was barren, the father had been a most eloquent advocate for the people; but when the barren mother was made fruitful, the father was rendered mute and voiceless.

When in the time of his priesthood he entered within the Holy of Holies on behalf of the people to offer incense to the Lord, behold, suddenly, troubled, he beheld that Gabriel, most intimate with the divine secrets, flying through the air and standing among the altars. And when he saw him, with a gentle countenance he cheered the trembling man with this address: 'Zacharias, fear not: for thy prayer is heard, and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. He shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb, and many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God' (Luke 1:13ff.), and the rest.

But he began to ponder within himself, and, changed even to the suffusion of his face, in wonder he said: 'Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in her days' (Luke 1:18). And the angel: Believe the angel, Zacharias, believe the heavenly minister; grant faith to the messenger, if thou wilt not lose thy voice. Behold, where thou hast fallen into the guilt of unbelief, straightway thou hast received a chain at the door of thy tongue. This angel bears both joy and a bond: he observes both the strife and the voice. If thou believest, thou hast earned joy; if thou believest not, thou hast incurred the binding of thy tongue. And Zacharias: Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in her days. And the angel:

Is God then powerless to bring forth a son from the barren—he who from the material of clay made the first man? And Zacharias: Whereby, he says, shall I know this? And he: I am, he says, Gabriel, who stand before the Lord, and I am sent to speak unto thee, and to bring thee these glad tidings. And behold, thou shalt be silent, and shalt not be able to speak, until the day when these things shall come to pass, because thou hast not believed my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season (Luke 1:19-20). O wondrous power! Zacharias believes not that a barren woman will bear at the Lord's command, and by the divine precept he earned a chain to bind his tongue. It is taken from the father until the child is born of the mother, that he may then receive speech when he has received his son.

The plectrum of the voice fell silent in the harp of the body, and while all the members lived in the body, the tongue alone lay in the sepulchre of the teeth. There was therefore in the angel's hands both a gift and a sword. Zacharias denied his assent to the gift, and the angel exacted punishment upon his tongue. He believed not, and was silent; the angel spoke, and Zacharias was bound in the openness of speech. He wavered concerning the promised son; the angel awaited faith. When Zacharias believed not, straightway he received in his mouth the fetters of silence. Speech was rolled about in the wicker-work of his breast, and could not be heard without, because the doors of its power had been shut by a key. Behold, the angel placed a bar upon the lips of Zacharias, and enclosed the lodging of the word.

He ascended whence he had come, sealing what he had bound by the divine command. It is loosed then, when John is born. His tongue then received its release when Elizabeth brought forth the Voice. For John himself is the voice of one crying in the wilderness, who had not yet come forth from his mother's womb, and yet already displayed an example through faith. The prophet therefore is present in the light; from the maternal bowels the lamp is brought forth; there is doubt about the name. The father is asked what he should be called, and since he could not speak, he asks for a writing-tablet that he may receive it. He wrote the name of John, and immediately the knot of his voice was broken. And that a name might be given to the Voice, the door of the voice which had been shut is unlocked. Zacharias inaugurates the voice within the voice. The son is born, and the mute father is loosed.

The Voice is brought forth from the mother, and in the father's mouth speech is created. And him whom unbelief had made mute, the rising nativity of his son granted the benefit of speaking. The Voice went before the Word; the lamp preceded the Sun of righteousness. The voice is begotten of a barren old man, and the Word is born of a most pure virgin. Here in dry bowels the Creator renews youthful vigour; but in the virgin's members Christ changes the law of nature. In Elizabeth the heat of desire drew near; but in Mary the fervour of virginity did not depart, because the Holy Spirit, coming, fitted out the divine temple. Before the Lord a servant is born; before the Judge a surveyor runs ahead. In John the condition of the conjugal covenant is changed; in Christ it is done away:

for the union of aged barren parents gave John to the world, but virginal integrity bore the Saviour for the age. Yet in the mother of John carnality is recognized to have been infused; but in the mother of Christ the majesty of the Holy Spirit was at work. Let us therefore celebrate this day, dearest brethren, in the increase of faith, hope, and charity, not of frivolity, wickedness, and vanity; lest, when we have grieved the forerunner of the Lord, we should feel the Judge himself angry when he comes. SERMON 55. On the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist. The narrative of today's Gospel reading, brethren, affords a fitting comparison to our understanding. We have heard that virtues met vices head-on, since the wickedness of Herod,

the lust of Herodias, and the venerable justice of holy John were displayed—so much so that he willingly received death rather than seem to despise the truth. See what three things came together in one cause. Wondrous matters, if you rightly examine them: the gravity of the prophet, the lust of the woman, and the most savage ferocity of Herod. Tell me what you have to do with John the Baptist, O Herod and Herodias, whom the impurity of your crimes has brought into fellowship of names? Do you fear this, lest you who are joined by names should perhaps be separated in your lust? Be most certain that, just as by one consent you fall into lust, so by one name you shall receive sentence. You hold the just man in prison, because he lawfully forbade you incest:

as though the truth could be bound. And though it may bind all the members with the fastenings of chains, the tongue alone cannot be guarded, which is free to have the truth defiled by the impious. But thou sayest: Why does he hinder our desire? He is able to hinder desire, to whom it is permitted to remove disgraceful acts in time. But now, when the prophet declares this to thee—that it displeases the will of the Lord—hardly any wise man blushes to hear what he was not ashamed to perpetrate without modesty. O human madness! That Herod may indulge his lust, John is slain. Did he then terrify thee deservedly by his prophet, and not by divine judgment? It is a matter of extreme madness to hate the one speaking and not to fear the one judging;

as though for this reason you would no longer fear the Judge who is to be silenced, if you could slay the herald who cries out, of whom Isaiah bore witness, saying: 'This is the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight his paths' (Isaiah 40:3). Now we must come to the summit of the passion. The theatre of the banquet is made ready; forth is brought the wanton executioner-woman, who would lay low the prophet not by the sword but by dancing. With soft step the girl advances into the midst, about to seek a murder and to please an adulterer; carrying another's blood upon her feet, and about to demand the wages of a crime. So she dances that she may please; so she pleases that she may kill—O wickedness!—that a woman, for the wantonness of her own body, should seek peril to another's head. What are we to do, John?

Shall this womanish dancing terrify him whom the vast solitude of the desert did not terrify? A woman is about to seek thy head. But it is better, says the Lord, that thou cut off one of thy members, than that thy whole body be delivered to the fires of hell (Matthew 5:29). And again: Fear not them that kill the body (Matthew 10:28). Behold, now by the devil's contriving the girl began to take delight in her play, for this one end only—that she might slay the prophet. I know not what the name of woman ever has to do with the saints. Even Elijah, in whose spirit the Lord testified that John had come (Luke 1:17), suffered Queen Jezebel as a grievous enemy (1 Kings 19:1), and while he fled from her, he wore out his whole life in flight;

whose sword he so feared that he fled alive into heaven. In whatever way a woman persecutes, if she is pleased she cuts the throat; if she is displeased she tortures worse. But it is better to displease with the death of the body, lest she take away the health of the soul, which is the greater thing. What I have long shuddered to say: the dancer too was pleasing. Yet what wonder, if amid lavish feasts and the frequent storms of the cups, a wanton girl should soothe the senses and bend the affections? Wine and dancing—the double conflagration of pleasure. Moreover, luxury is offered whatever reward it might demand, to be given at once, even if the woman had asked for half the kingdom, Solomon attesting that there is no head above the head of a serpent, and no malice above the malice of a woman.

And again: To dwell with a lion and a dragon will be more pleasing than to abide in the desert with a wicked woman (Ecclesiasticus 25:22, 25). Therefore, despising the crown of the kingdom, she sought the head of John on a platter, hating more him who forbade incest than loving him who had promised a kingdom. She execrates the master of discipline; she presumes upon the merchant of luxury. O the wickedness of the woman! She chose to despise honour, that she might make gain of blood. Truly, because she cares not for empire, to her the shameful thing is dearer. The freshly-severed head's blood flowed upon the platter, provoking the good to piety, striking terror into the wicked—this alone, forsooth, had been lacking to the royal tables.