Sermons 2

The evident connexion of this homily with the preceding one, and their linkage, sufficiently shows that both flowed from the same source. But the manuscript codices make us yet more certain—such as the St. Gall, the Lambach, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme 90 and 99, Vallicellian II, the single Vatican 1267 (p. 13), the Novara 27 (p. 18)—which likewise present St. Maximus' name prefixed to it. Nor does John Gillotius dissent, who, reprinting the works of St. Ambrose at Paris in the year 1569 and placing this homily as no. 29 of the sermons, noted in the margin: 'The same is had by Maximus of Milan'—which he said erroneously, for it was Maximus of Turin. But for the firmer confirmation of their authority, the testimony of Alcuin contributes excellently, who in his Homiliary (Venice edition, sermon 4, p. 8) gives it under the name of St.

Maximus, and assigns it to the second Sunday of Advent; and all the later editors conform to him. But if in certain codices it is ascribed to St. Ambrose, these are indeed to be reckoned of least account, since they are to be equated neither in number nor in antiquity with those favouring Maximus. The reader is furthermore to be advised here that there has been added by us to this same homily a fragment not yet published, which we have transcribed from the codices of St. Gall, the Florentine I (Plut. XIV of the Medicean Laurentian library), and the 99 of the library of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Discoursing last Sunday upon the Gospel passage, we touched briefly upon a certain part of it; it remains for us to run through what follows. For we described what it was that the Lord said: 'In that night there shall be two in one bed,' etc.;

now therefore let us see what remains: for the divine sentence says: 'There shall be two women grinding at the mill; one shall be taken, and one shall be left' (Luke 17). First, therefore, it must be considered how the office of grinding is constituted; then, what are the two which are said to grind; thirdly, what the mill is, and what is the effect of grinding. There is no doubt that grinding is not accomplished otherwise than by two stones set in place and fitting to each other, so that the size of the one is imposed upon the other; and that stone which is laid down first is sluggish and slow, and, so to speak, almost idle, and unless it were adorned by the participation of the upper stone, perhaps would not seem necessary.

Thus, while the one works, this one too is found useful. But the other, that is, the upper stone, is whirled about with the whole speed of the work, so that, deceiving the eyes in its very swiftness, it is believed to stand still, and is thought to be motionless while it runs. And the more violently it is driven, the more perfectly is the work completed. So then the first stone stands, lies still, and is of almost no profit; but that other receives all that is put in, embraces all that comes, and through certain little apertures each of the two acquires that which it works.

But he who grinds seems to have this as his office: that, by ever-watchful care, the roughness of the grains being broken, from their inmost and hidden vitals he may produce the fine flour and the marrow, and, the lightness of the chaff being shaken off, may bring forth into the open all that is pure, from which, fashioning most clean bread, he may obtain the favour of his master. These two millstones, therefore, I judge to be the two Testaments, that is, the Law of Moses and the Gospel of the Lord, which are so disposed and prepared that each Testament may agree with the other, as the Saviour says: 'I came not to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it' (Matt. 5:17).

And after the manner of millstones, the one placed first upon the ground, the other set above—that is, the Law first established for men, then the perfect Gospel. Which Law, like the stone of the lower mill, was so slow, sluggish, and utterly idle, that whatever it had received in its working, all this it lost; the prophet saying of the Jews: 'All have turned aside, they are become unprofitable together, there is none that doeth good, no not one' (Ps. 13 and 52). Therefore, unless the Gospel had been placed above it, hitherto the Law, as it were slow and heavy, would lie in the Jewish land, and be covered over by the straits of a single province. Unless, I say, the Gospel had been given, the Law would not be necessary at all.

But this the Law wrought without the Gospel, which can be done by one stone alone: it could crush, but not profit; as the blessed Apostle says: 'The Law worketh wrath' (Rom. 4:15), but does not bestow grace. But while the Law stood, the Gospel was given, which, placed above the Old Testament, adorns them both; and with such speed does it go about the whole world—that is, it visits the lower regions, penetrates the heavens, illumines earthly things. Which Gospel, like the upper mill, receives the well-disposed believers, accepts all who come, and, as it were through certain little apertures of the precepts, transmits them to the interior: so that there, on this side and that, the roughness of heathenism being softened by the saving commandments of the two Testaments, it may produce all that is pure.

This likeness of the Testaments I judge the prophet Ezekiel to have touched upon, when he says that there was a wheel connected in the midst of a wheel (Ezek. 1:16). By the working, therefore, of these mills—that is, of the New and Old Testament—holy Church does this with ever-watchful care, that, the roughness of sins being shaken off, from hidden thoughts she may draw forth the marrow of a clean heart, and, cleansed by the heavenly commandments, may produce spiritual nourishment from the inmost parts. Of which nourishment the apostle Paul says: 'I gave you milk to drink, not meat' (1 Cor. 3:2). And again: 'But solid food is for the perfect' (Heb. 5:14), 'who by reason of habit have their senses exercised'; and, purifying our spirit of all earthliness, she strives to offer it to God as it were fine flour;

as holy David says: 'A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit' (Ps. 50:19). But with such speed is the Gospel whirled about, that none but the wise understand its course; which blessed Paul, understanding, says: 'That the word of God may run and be glorified in you. Amen' (2 Thess. 3:1). But to the eyes of the foolish the Gospel seems to stand still, while they look on; they think it stands still, I say, when they neglect its commandments, when they do not believe that the things which are written are to come to pass. The Synagogue too grinds, but grinds unprofitably; inasmuch as it strives to labour with one stone; and therefore it does not so much grind as scatter and crush. For this reason its work is displeasing, and it is said to the Jews through the prophet:

'And if you bring fine flour, it is an abomination' (Isa. 1:13); and moreover the Lord Himself, reproving the office of its working, says: 'Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees' (Mark 8:15; Matt. 16:6). The Synagogue therefore strives, grinding while upholding error. For inasmuch as Moses had received two stone tablets of the Testament, it esteems itself to work with two necessary instruments, not knowing that that fellowship of the tablets prefigured the coming of the two Testaments cohering with each other; and thereby the holy Church, which grinds out for the Lord the food of holiness, was being taken up unto eternal glory, but the Synagogue is left at the bloody mills, ever to suffer the round of its own perfidy. It ends. The second coming of Christ into the world was foretold in Matthew 24:27:

'For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and appeareth even in the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.' In agreement are the things which Luke recorded in his Gospel, ch. 17:24: 'for as the lightning flashing from beneath heaven shineth upon the things that are under heaven, so shall the Son of Man be in His day.' After these prophecies, both Evangelists testify that others followed; for Matthew says, in verse 40: 'Then two shall be in the field: one shall be taken, and one shall be left; two women grinding at the mill: one shall be taken, and one shall be left.' Luke, however, embraces the same, writing in verse 34: 'I say to you, in that night there shall be two in one bed; one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.' These things St. Maximus proposes to himself to explain in the second and third homilies.

And Maximus, cleaving to the second homily, which is: 'On the coming of the Lord. Concerning that,' etc.—according to the codices of better note—sets out to treat of Him who is to come at the end of the ages. Now, as everyone perceives, Maximus took over neither the whole passage of Matthew nor of Luke for his purpose, but composed as it were one out of the two, that he might frame the theme of his discourse. At the beginning, therefore, of the second homily St. Maximus admonishes,

the bishop admonishes, that Christ foretold that He would come by night; and, in order to reconcile this with the passages of the Gospel in which Christ is said to be about to come with great brightness and as it were like lightning, he understands by the word 'night' the corruption in which the world, seduced by Antichrist, shall be enveloped, the darkness of which corruption is to be instantly dispelled when the true Sun of Justice, Christ the Judge, has revealed the diabolic fraud and the iniquity of Antichrist, and, that one being exterminated, the light of truth and the zeal for virtue shall shine forth again. 'Therefore, to dispel this foul gloom,' says St. Maximus, 'Christ shall come like a certain lightning-flash;'

'and just as, when day grows, night is overturned, so, when the Saviour flashes forth, Antichrist is put to flight, nor shall he any longer be able to disseminate the darkness of his iniquity, when the light of truth has shone forth.' St. Ambrose had already, long before, illustrated the same passage of the Gospel in book VIII, chapter 7, of his Commentary on Luke: 'Well did He say night, because Antichrist is the hour of darkness; in that he pours darkness over hearts, when he says that he is Christ,' etc. 'For he, like flashing lightning, scatters throughout the whole world the orbs of his own light.'

These matters thus concluded, Maximus thereafter discourses no further concerning the Antichrist or the last coming of the Lord, but, imitating Ambrose, descends to unfolding the sense of those words spoken about two men in one bed and about two women grinding at the mill. And here, he says, the reward of the resurrection is shown, namely that according to the quality of one's living there is the grace of rising again; and that there is so great a difference in the resurrection among individuals that, of two sleeping alike and resting in one place, the taking up cannot be equal. Now indeed by the name of resurrection he indicates not the common restoration and quickening of human bodies, which shall take place at the last age of the world, but the raising of the good to glory and the condemnation of the wicked to punishment.

In this matter Maximus admirably agrees with St. Ambrose, whom he had set before himself to follow. Now this is Ambrose's opinion in the place indicated above: Is God then unjust, in that He distinguishes by a differing recompense of merits those who are equal in their pursuits, in fellowship of living, and in an undifferentiated quality of deeds? It is not so; rather, according to a man's deeds there is equity of recompense. Hence it is plainly perceived that both holy doctors here spoke not of the eternal predestination of the saints, but of the execution, as they call it, of that same predestination. That St. Maximus indeed treats of the execution of that same predestination is likewise clear from that homily which is about Judas the traitor. For thus it runs:

From the same clay of our body God, according to the merits of individuals, keeps some for punishment, others for glory; and again: For although they are held in the same bed of companionship, yet according to their merits one of them shall be caught up to heaven, the other shall be left on earth—which surely accords with Ambrose's words, who says in the same place: He who is taken is caught up to meet Christ in the air; but he who is left is reproved. Secondly, in the third homily, concerning the two millstones, of which the one placed upon the other grinds the grain and produces the flour, St. Maximus writes that a figure is set forth of the two Testaments, namely the Old and the New: These two millstones, therefore, I judge to be the two Testaments, that is, the law of Moses and the Gospel of the Lord;

which are so arranged and prepared that each Testament agrees with the other, as the Saviour says in Matthew 5: I came not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it; and he thereby teaches that the law of the Gospel was placed upon the Mosaic law as the thinner and less laborious one, and thus at last he concludes his opinion: Unless the Gospel, I say, had been given, the law would not have been necessary at all. But what the law worked without the Gospel—which can be done by a single stone—it could crush, not profit. In these words Maximus comprises two things. One of them is about the old law, which he says would not have been going to be necessary, had the Gospel not been given;

the other concerns that very old law, which would bring so heavy a burden that without the Gospel it could oppress and crush, but could not profit. The first pertains to those things which the Apostle teaches in chapter 10 of the Epistle to the Romans, likewise in chapter 10 of the Epistle to the Corinthians, and in chapter 4 of the Epistle to the Galatians, concerning Christ as the end of the law, concerning Christ Himself as the rock that followed, and concerning the vain and beggarly elements of the Old Testament. The second requires this: that the law, which, while it commanded, yet conferred no strength for its fulfilment, alone without the Gospel—that is, without the help of the Saviour's grace—could by its own weight oppress and crush.

It is clear to us that some abuse this passage of Maximus and thence conclude that God, who required of man a perfect obedience to the law and a flight from sins, deserted him in his own powerlessness. But these err grievously, and lest they should deceive others, we declare that St. Maximus taught far otherwise. And that we may attain to what his mind was, we must inquire of him who under the figure of the two millstones compares both the old and the new law. Now by the lower stone, lying and inert, he professes that the Mosaic law is to be understood, and he asserts that in the upper stone the Gospel was foreshadowed. The office, therefore, of each stone is that the lower should hold the grains of wheat;

for many precepts were given to the Jewish people which, though good and holy, of themselves did not suffice for works of righteousness and holiness, but needed the impulse and motion of a higher agent, namely the grace of the Saviour who was to come; which grace St. Maximus indicated in the upper stone, recalling that saying in Romans 8:14: As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. Wherefore also he mentions that Christ said in Matthew 5: I came not to abolish the law, but to fulfil it—that is, to furnish grace, that it might be fulfilled. In this sense the holy

prelate affirmed that both agreed with the Gospel—namely this, that the roughness of the grains, that is, the commandments, was broken by the Spirit of life which is in Christ Jesus (as the Apostle likewise says a little above), rendered sweeter and easier, and produced the fine flour and the marrow; that is, to bring into the open what from the origin of the world lay hidden under figures and mysteries, and to make manifest the most wise providence of the merciful God, whereby He so ordered it among men, even before Christ, that His grace should work through faith in the Redeemer unto salvation. Wherefore Maximus added that the mobility of the upper stone, or the power of the heavenly help, went round the whole age—that is, profited those placed under the law.

But what is that which he says: that the law would not have been going to be necessary, had the Gospel not been given? For when was the old law ever necessary to observe, except while it was given and while it was in force? Then, therefore, when the promulgated commandment enjoined obedience, there was also given—Maximus being witness—the aid of the grace of the Saviour who was to come. This Maximus confirms in a still greater degree in his first homily on the Pasch, in which he discoursed concerning the saints of the Old Testament. And who would not see that these things are like those which St. Leo, contemporary with Maximus, embraced in sermon 22, the third on the Nativity of the Lord, chapter 4, page 50 of the Roman edition of the year 1753, against those who complained that the divine Word had assumed human nature too late? Let them cease, says St.

the pontiff, from their complaint—those who with impious murmuring cavil against the divine dispensations, complaining of the tardiness of the Lord's nativity, as though what was accomplished in the last age of the world had not been bestowed in past times. This incarnation of the Word conferred, in the doing, what was done; and the mystery of human salvation ceased at no time in any antiquity, nor was that fulfilled too late which was always believed. Indeed the wisdom and kindness of God, by this delay of the saving work, made us more capable of His calling... But from the foundation of the world He established one and the same cause for all.

For the grace of God, by which the whole company of the saints has always been justified, was increased at Christ's birth, not begun; and in place of great piety the sacrament, with which the whole world is now filled, was even in its foreshadowings so powerful that they obtained no less who believed in it when promised than those who received it when granted. St. Thomas embraced the same teaching more briefly, in the Prima Secundae, question 98, article 1, reply to the fourth objection: Although, he says, the old law did not suffice to save men, yet there was present another help from God to men together with the law, through which they could be saved, namely faith in the Mediator, through which the ancient fathers were justified... and thus God did not fail men, but gave them helps of salvation.

But what need is there of many words? This is the teaching of all the holy Fathers, drawn from the writings of Paul and the Gospels, from which no one among the orthodox will believe that St. Maximus departed.