That no other than Maximus, bishop of Turin, was the author of this sermon, was noted by the Maurine monks in the Paris edition of the works of Saint Ambrose, sermon 18, both from the style and from the Sangallensis codex, where sermon 61 bears before it the name of the same Saint Maximus. We add the codices of Holy Cross in Jerusalem 90, number 33, and 99, number 22, and the Laurentian, Plut. XIV, page 230, in which the title is: On Fasts. The holy Apostle bears witness, saying of the prophets: In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you; and he himself subjoins: Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6).
Therefore I too bear witness to you that these are days of redemption, that is, a time as it were of heavenly medicine, in which time we shall be able to heal the corruption of all our vices and every wound of our sins, if we faithfully entreat the physician of our souls and by no means despise His precepts, being, as it were, fitting patients received into His care. For then does the sick man find the cure of his ailment, if with all diligence he keeps the physician's orders; but if he does one thing when another is commanded, and the disease grows worse, it is not the physician but the transgressor who is at fault. Now the physician is our Lord Jesus Christ, who says: 'I will kill, and I will make alive; I will smite, and I will heal' (cf. Deut. 32:39). For the Lord in a certain manner kills before He makes alive.
For He first kills in us, through baptism, murders, adulteries, crimes and thefts, and thus makes us alive as new men in the immortality of eternity. We die therefore to our sins, namely through the washing; but we are regenerated unto life through the Spirit, as the Apostle says: 'For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ' (Col. 3:3). 'For you have been buried together with Him through baptism into death' (Rom. 6:4). For we are in a manner slain, when we cease to be what we were. For by a new kind of piety, in one and the same man, death and life are both at work. For we die to the lust of sins, and the order of the virtues is made alive.
For in one and the same man the impious and the adulterer is slain, that the merciful and the chaste may be reborn. Idolatry is put to death, that religion may spread. The fornicator and the drunkard is extinguished, that the continent and the sober may come forth. So then the Lord mortifies, that He may make alive; so He kills, that He may profit; so He scourges, that He may amend. This, then, is all His severity toward His own people: that in them the sins may be punished but the soul preserved, that detestable vices may be taken away but the best virtues nourished.
And so far do we see that very many have been converted by this holy slaying of the Lord, have so advanced toward the better, and have thus been made the best out of the worst, that when you behold them you would believe them to be changed men, even though you do not see the persons changed. For so far is that which we formerly were slain, taken away, and extinguished in us, that we believe what we afterward are to have been born anew; whence this second birth signifies that the force of the former has already come to an end. But as for His saying, 'I will smite and I will heal' (cf. Deut. 32:39): the Lord plainly smites sinners by His precepts that He may heal; He scourges by His commandments that He may amend.
He enjoins fasting, He commands continence, He threatens judgment, and by rousing the grim dread of hell He applies His medicine, so that while we fear things to come we may correct things present. For thus did He restore the Apostle Paul to health by smiting him. For when he was an impious persecutor and blasphemer, and was indeed hastening to Damascus to lay waste the Churches, suddenly He struck him with the terror of a heavenly brightness, that He might flood him with the light of the evangelical splendor; and He changed the blindness of his carnal eyes, that He might illumine the sight of his spiritual eyes. For He terrified him with the weakness of his body, that He might save him by the devotion of faith.
So Paul, rising from the ground, with his outward eyes indeed saw not men, nor the air, but with the eyes of his mind he beheld Christ from heaven. In short, this smiting of the Lord so profited him that from a Jew he became a Christian, from a blasphemer an apostle, from Saul he became Paul, and He so changed the old man together with his ways that He even changed his name. Having therefore such a physician, who heals by smiting and makes alive by mortifying, let us submit ourselves to Him with all patience to be cured, so that whatever He shall perceive in us to be shameful, whatever soiled with sins, whatever fetid with ulcers, He may lance, cut off, and excise, in order that, when all the devil's wounds have been remade, He may cause this alone to remain in us which is of God.
Now this is His first precept: that in these forty days we give ourselves to fasting, prayers, and vigils. For by fasting the wantonness of the body is chastised, by prayers the devout soul is nourished, by vigils the snares of the devil are driven off. Then, when this time has been fulfilled with these observances of the commandments, the soul, at length purged and wearied by so many observances, coming to baptism is refreshed by the inundation of the Holy Spirit, and whatever the fever of its various sicknesses had dried up is drenched by the dew of heavenly grace. Thus, laying aside the corruption of the old man, it acquires the character of a new youth. And in a wondrous manner, in one and the same man, holiness succeeds to sins, righteousness to iniquity, infancy to old age.
And by a new kind of birth he who is reborn is another, though he himself is the one who had sinned. For thus Elijah, by a continuous fast over a course of forty days and nights, merited to quench with the dew of rain the long and excessive drought of the whole world, and to drench the parched thirst of the lands with the bounty of a heavenly downpour (cf. 1 Kings 18). This, indeed, we recognize was done as a figure of us, so that we too, in the cycle of these forty days, may merit the spiritual rain of baptism, so that a heavenly shower from above may pour upon the whole world's earth, now long arid in our brethren, and the saving flood of the laver may bedew the long drought of the Gentiles.
For whoever is not watered by the grace of baptism suffers the drought and burning of his soul. By the fasting also of these days and nights holy Moses merited to speak with God, to stand and abide with Him, and to receive from His hand the precepts of the law. For although the human condition withdrew him from the sight of God, yet the grace of fasting made him near to the fellowship of the Godhead. For this portion of the virtues in us is God's: that we fast frequently, since God Himself ever fasts. In whomever, therefore, He shall perceive more of His own works to be present, to that one He is the more familiar, an intimate friend, as the Scripture has said: 'And Moses spoke with God face to face, as a man speaks with his friend' (Exod. 33:11).
Whence also the Lord Jesus Christ, being about to receive the glory of the resurrection, consecrated His mighty deeds by a fast of forty days and nights, that He might show that bread is not the life of men, but the precepts. And so by this fast of forty days God is reconciled, the heavens are opened, the nether regions are unbarred. Therefore let us also, most beloved brethren, fast continually and devoutly during this span of time, that the Lord may be propitious to us, that the heavens may lie open to us, and that the nether regions may not prevail against us. Here it ends.