We indeed acknowledge that the homily described is held among the sermons of St. Ambrose, number 5 of the Paris edition, and is attributed to that same holy doctor by the Laurentian codex X, often mentioned. But since both manuscripts of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme—namely 90 and 99—assert it for Maximus, relying on their testimony, we judge it must be adjudged to St. Maximus the bishop of Turin, and we hope it will be a useful thing for readers to present this homily corrected from the variant readings. There is added the similarity of Maximus's style, and the same ingenious ease in expounding the Gospel. And you yourselves know, brethren, that from the day I began to be with you, I have not ceased to admonish you all with the Lord's commands, and partly by exhorting, partly by rebuking, to press the precepts of the Divinity upon you;
so that to most I have been more of a father, but to some I have appeared a harsh master. For whoever willingly embraced my discourse congratulated himself that I was a father to him; but he who grieved that his conscience had been struck by my preaching felt me a harsh master—provided that, whether by tenderness or by censure, Christ be announced to you; although even that very censure is tenderness, which is applied to the more negligent sons for this reason, that they may learn by fear what they had neglected out of love. For a father does not love all his sons equally; rather it belongs to a father's indulgence to show the affection of a father according to the diversity of their characters, so that he may urge on the gentle son by exhortation, but reprove the stubborn one by severity;
yet secure concerning the correction of both, since he chastises the one out of love, and disciplines the other by severity; as the Apostle says: 'Now all discipline in the present seems not to be of joy but of sorrow; but afterward it will render the peaceable fruit of justice to those exercised by it' (Hebrews 12). Therefore, since I believe that you have profited by so many of my treatises, it pleases me to discourse to you on certain matters of the divine Letters, that I may understand that what I have said, you grasp with the liveliness of faith. The Lord says in the holy Gospel: 'To what shall I estimate the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in meal, until the whole was leavened' (Luke 13). That the force and power of leaven is known to all, there is no doubt.
For although it is small in size, simple in appearance, common in nature, it carries within so great a strength that when it has been hidden away, its juice makes the whole mass to be what it itself is, and thus it always diffuses the entire heap by the vigor of its sprinkling, so that the leaven makes the whole magnitude of the fine flour ferment, and thus the thing itself acquires for itself, by its strength, a bulk of its own vigor. And this women do, that they may diligently provide for their husbands a more wholesome bread and useful food. But since the law is spiritual, and the Gospel spiritually subsists by the method of parables, let us see what the leaven is, who the woman, what the meal. We read in the Gospel:
'Unless the grain of wheat falling into the ground die, it remains alone; but if it die, it brings forth much fruit' (John 12). Therefore, if the Lord is wheat, and the Lord is leaven—since leaven is usually made only from wheat—rightly then is Christ compared to leaven, who, though he was in appearance a man, small in humility, cast down in weakness, yet within was so mighty in the power of wisdom that the world itself scarcely contained his teaching; who, when he began to diffuse himself throughout the whole world by the vigor of his divinity, at once drew every kind of men by his power into his own substance, so that he might pour the yoke of his Holy Spirit upon all—that is, make all Christians be what Christ is.
For inasmuch as the Lord Jesus, though a man and alone in the world, like leaven hidden away in a mass, made all men to be what he himself is. Whoever, therefore, clings to that leaven of Christ, is himself also made leaven, as useful to himself as suitable for all; both certain of his own salvation, and secure concerning the acquisition of others. Just as, then, leaven, when it is to be sprinkled into a heap of flour, is broken, crushed, dissipated, and itself wholly dissolved, in order that it may bind that scattered multitude of flour into one vigor, and reduce it into a solid body, which was languishing in the manner of dust by its own diminution; and by its own joining it makes into a useful mass what by its own dissolution seemed useless.
So too the Lord Jesus Christ, since he was the leaven of the whole world, was broken, torn, and dissolved by various sufferings, and his juice—which is his precious blood—was poured out for our salvation, that by the admixture of himself he might make solid the whole human race, which lay dissolved before through various things. For thus, as a kind of leaven, we who seemed to be flour from the nations clung to him. We, I say, who lay scattered and utterly diminished throughout the whole world, have been reduced into his body by the vigor of Christ's passion; as the blessed Apostle says: 'For we are the body of Christ and members' (Ephesians 5).
We therefore, who from the nations were tossed about like dust from the face of the earth, are gathered by the sprinkling of the Lord's blood into the mass of his solidity. But that woman who is said to hide leaven in meal—who is she but the holy Church, which daily strives to hide the teaching of Christ in our hearts? She, I say, is the woman who in another place is also said to grind, as the Lord says: 'There shall be two grinding; one shall be taken, and one shall be left' (Matthew 24). For the holy Church grinds through the law, through the apostles, through the prophets, when she makes catechumens, and scatters and crushes the harshness of paganism, so that, having ground them into the manner of flour, she may make them fit to adhere to the Lord's blood.
For by 'leaven' he would mean the whole of the Lord's Passion, which belongs to faith. For the leaven of our salvation is the Creed itself, which is handed down; and without this leaven, that is, without the Creed, no one can merit the substance of eternal life. And since the Gospel describes two women grinding, and we have said that the one, the Church, grinds unto salvation, who is the other but that whom we must understand to be the Synagogue? For she too grinds, through Moses and the prophets, but she grinds to no profit, just as the Apostle says of the Jews: 'They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.' To no profit, I say, does the Synagogue grind, because she does not season her dough with the teaching of Christ. And therefore the Lord commands that the leaven of the Synagogue be shunned, saying: 'Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.'
For it is tempered with the blood and cruelties of the Jews, who said concerning the Lord: 'His blood be upon us and upon our children.' Whence the Gospel says: 'There shall be two women grinding; one shall be taken, and one shall be left.' For the holy Church shall be taken into eternal rest, she who has ground out for the Lord the food of holiness; but the faithless Synagogue shall be left at the mill, forever to suffer the round of her faithlessness.