Poems 1 part 3/8

or if great confidence in you should persuade us to go by the long sea, grant us to run over the gentle waves, and to your servants supply servant-winds from the stern, that, borne together to the Campanian shores with Christ as our guide, we may soon be swept by a swift course to your heights, and that there be for us a peaceful harbor at your threshold. There shall we bear the sweet yoke, the light burden, and the gentle servitude under you as lord; and although, being just, you have no need of unjust servants, yet you will both suffer and love those, whatever their kind, who are dedicated to you by Christ's gift, and you will let them serve at your doors, tend your threshold in the morning with cleanliness; and in turn keep watch by night with devout vigils; and in this office, with a body worn out, close a life that has earned its reward. Felix, by this merit, as by name; the same by name as by merit;

the kindly day returns on which the most high Christ took you to himself, having confessed him, as a fellow-citizen into the heavenly hall, and now is the time to pour out thanks to you with full vows. O father, O lord, best to your servants, unworthy though they be, at last my prayer is granted, to celebrate within your thresholds your birthday with us. Three lustres have run their course in long time since at these solemnities, in person, I dedicated to you my vows and my heart in person; and from that time you know what toils, by land and sea, have kept me far from your seat, removed in a distant world; for I have called upon you, ever near to me everywhere, amid the hardships of the way and the uncertainties of life. And I entered the seas with you as guide, because care of peril yielded to love of you, nor without you: for I felt your protections, overcoming the sea's roughness in the Lord Christ:

ever I go safe, both on land and on the waves, for your sake. (Ask, I pray, this day, serene with eternal piety and peace, for your own, you in whose great name you stand—Felix, the blessed. Now it is good to release our minds, poured out into joys: for the dear day has at last arisen here for us who are present, ever and forever to be celebrated by us throughout the world, the day that hallowed you to earth and bestowed you on the stars.) Behold, a varicolored people paints the ways with a many-hued throng: in one city we marvel at countless cities. O Nola, blessed in your Felix, having him as your patron, illustrious in your holy citizen, made firm by your heavenly patron, and after Rome herself allotted the second honors. You who before stood first only by empire and conquering arms, now stand first among the lands also by apostolic tombs.

Be good, O blessed one, to your own, and entreat the mighty Lord, that by the gift of an appeased Christ it may be granted us, after the surges of the sea and the surges of the world driven through, to stand at rest in your station in a peaceful harbor. On this shore I have well moored my fleet drawn up: in you let the anchor of my settled life be fixed. The festal day has come, most celebrated in heaven, most thronged on earth, keeping the birthday of Felix, on which in body he set on the lands, and to Christ was born among the stars on high, gaining heavenly honor, a martyr without bloodshed. For the Confessor died, having won his penalties not of his own will, since God accepted a faithful mind in place of blood;

He who searches the silent heart equates those ready to bear with those who have borne, content to have proved the inward parts, and with just piety remits the punishment of the flesh; martyrdom without slaughter pleases him, if the mind and faith be ready to endure and glow toward God; the will that would suffer suffices, and the highest part of merit is the witness of the vow. Therefore the day which by so great a gift bore Felix back to high heaven is this one, of sacred solemnities: for after the solstice, when Christ born in body changed the seasons of frozen winter by a new sun, and granted to mortals a salvation-bearing rising, and bade the nights, with the advancing day, decrease along with him—from this the twentieth light that rises for us marks the starry honor of Felix's merit.

In short, in nothing inferior to those who shed their blood as witnesses, both by title and by virtue received, he shows the merit of a martyr, when by mighty right he drives out demons and looses bound bodies. For that Felix bears down upon them with unseen penalties, the chiefs of the plague-bearers confess with mournful outcry, and bear witness to hidden crosses with open groaning, and to one veiled from mortal eyes, yet manifest to their ears, and present with much divine power they betray, when, caught within captive bodies, they cry out and prove that Christ shines forth in his holy one; shaken with the convulsing of their limbs and the whirling of their heads, and with their own torments—but they twist bodies not their own, crying out their own pains through alien mouths, begging pardon of the suppliants: the avenger lies hidden, the penalty is seen.

Then, if a more violent foe has bound any with a heavier evil, this day looses them by divine gift. Then everywhere one may see breasts cleansed by sacred remedy laid out at the thresholds, now restored in mind, now giving thanks with their own voice: a trembling crowd of gaping men runs together; amid the joys tears leap forth, mingled for all: there God is believed present to all; Felix is the glory of the boundless Christ. The kindly day is celebrated by great assemblies; all dedicate ratified vows at the sacred doorposts; all things rejoice, of earth and of heaven; the upper air seems to smile with the heavens thrown open; the breezes seem to breathe spring with their silent blasts, and the milky tract to gird the glad sky.

Nor is there any limit to the peoples coming together in a dense column, nor any rest; they hasten from night into the light, and it irks them to wait for the day; with eager vows the delay of night is broken, and torches with their flames conquer the night; it delights one to behold a single city packed with many cities, and so many swarms drawn together by one vow. The peoples of Lucania come together, the Apulian youth comes, and the Calabrians, and all whom either tide washes—who on left and right Latium resounds about with its wave:

and where glad Campania through its twice-three cities rejoices as in its own festivals: those whom rich Capua holds within its ample walls, and those whom fair Neapolis, or those whom Gaurus feeds, who till the glad Massic vineyards, and who drink the Ufens and the Sarnus, who till dry Tanager's banks, and who cultivate the fertile farms of well-watered Galaesus, those whom mighty Atina, those whom mother Aricia sends. And Rome herself, mighty in Peter and Paul by the sacred monuments of her heavenly princes, rejoices to grow thin in honor of this day, and pouring out thousands from the mouth of the Capene gate toward the walls of friendly Nola, sends them forth, twelve times ten thousand, in a dense column: the Appian Way lies hidden far and wide beneath the crowded throngs.

No less, with peoples setting out from another region, are the rough pavements of the mountainous Latin Way trodden by those whom lofty Praeneste, whom fertile Aquinum feeds: and those whom ancient Ardea sends from its suburban shores, and those who have left the city of Cales, and twin Teanum, which heavy Auruncus, or which the rough Apulian inhabits: hither too the crowd hastens from olive-bearing Venafrum, and the hardy Samnites leave their mountain towns. Piety has conquered the hard journey; the love of Christ conquers all things, and kindly faith: it persuades those stiff in spirit and in place to suffer bitter things, and at once to lay aside their hard hearts. One day calls all together, one Nola receives them, and wholly filled with her own, her thresholds are spacious for all; you would think the walls were widened for the countless guests, so does Nola rise up in the image of Rome.

You too, after the City, have been allotted the second honors. For before, you stood first only by empire and conquering arms; now you stand first among the lands also by apostolic tombs. You too, under a twofold honor, embracing for all time the perpetual crowns of your Felix—first of the priest, then of the martyr—rightly touch heaven by a twin merit, mother of the divine friend. First the presbyter, celebrating your kindly altars with devout worship, established them, and ruled them with peaceful governance. Hence too Felix adorns you with a perpetual name. For, consecrated in your bosom, having merited his honor, he leads his devout bones, buried in a fragrant tomb. Now the golden thresholds are adorned with snow-white veils, the bright altars are crowned with dense lamps.

The fragrant lights are kindled with waxen tapers; night and day they gleam, so that night shines with the splendor of day: and the day itself, made bright with heavenly honor, gleams the more, doubled in light by countless lamps. We too are blessed, to whom it is granted to behold this day in person and to celebrate it, and to look upon our patron's rewards, and to give thanks to Christ who bestows such great things on his own, and to rejoice glad amid the joyful throngs. Bring praise to God, ye children, pay your devout vows, and likewise give festal songs in chaste dances; strew the ground with flowers, fringe the thresholds with garlands: let winter breathe forth purple spring, let the year be flowery before its day; let nature yield to the holy day. Even you, O earth, owe garlands to the martyr's tomb.

But him the heavenly glory of sacred light encircles, flourishing with the twin crown of war and of peace. Ask, I pray, this day to be serene for us with eternal peace, and grant that it be permitted to rejoice again when it returns, and here to render yearly both vows to your own and songs at your festivals, by the tranquil power of an appeased Christ. This is our love, this our labor; receive these vows of your own, and commend them to God, that when our service shall have been paid to you with diligent care through a long age, then at last you may release your nurslings, gentle through the piety of their labor, with a hand that sends them forth; and do not refuse, when the souls of your own are set before your face, to carry them in a fatherly bosom to the countenance of the shining Lord:

entreat him, kindly in goodness, yet terrible in majesty, that with full prayers and merits he may forgive our debts to your own, when you too, a great portion of the godly, O Felix, shall accompany the reigning Lamb: ask that we be set among the flock of sheep, so that the sentence of the highest Judge may grant us this too again, as your gift, lest it adjudge us, ill-favored, to the goats on the left, but rather, placed on the right hand, may join us to the bountiful flock of salvation, and to the lambs that are praised. The yearly vows return to me, and likewise the yearly debts of my tongue—your birthday, O Felix most renowned in Christ, dearer to me than my own birthday; on which, however much there may be public joys for countless throngs, there is something special for your own, in that Christ gave us to belong to you, granting us, vile, to a dear friend.

Not because you were worthy of servants so vile, you who were deemed worthy to go as companion of God in eternal triumphs; but because the good Father willed thus to enrich us, poor, unjust, and unworthy of salvation, so that we, ill-rich in crimes, by a change of riches turned to the better, in place of all wealth and all affections, and in place of noble titles and honors—all of them vain—might receive Felix as our riches, our country, and our home. You are our father, and country, and home, and substance; into your bosom our cradle has been carried, and your embrace is to us a nest; well nourished by this, we grow, and changing our bodies into another form, we are stripped of our earthly stock, and with rising wings we are turned into birds by the seed of the divine word.

With you lifting the load, we know Christ's yoke to be light; in you Christ is gracious even to the unworthy, and sweet to the bitter. Therefore this day is to be held solemn by us also, the day which is your birthday: because, you abolishing our evils, we die to the world, that we may be born to good in Christ. Rise then, O lyre, and be stretched with all your strings; rouse the strength of soul, my inward parts, with a silent song; not with the silent lute-shell of the heart, but with teeth struck, let love smite the tongue, let the lyre ring out from the mouth with its plectrum. I will not summon the Castalian Muses, phantoms of the poets, nor deaf Phoebus from the Aonian crag: Christ is for me the kindler of song; by Christ's gift I, a sinner, dare to utter holy and heavenly things.

Nor is it hard for you, O Almighty, to loose my mouth in learned measures—you who bid the dumb to speak, the dry to flow, the hard to be loosed. For you made the she-ass bray with speech, and from sucklings to compose perfect praise for you, and you loosed the solid rock into rivers, and bade the land without water remain with sudden streams, watering the deserts in hope of the peoples, into whose parched souls devout grace flowed, whom Christ, the living rock welling forth, refreshed with a living fount. Wherefore I, the least portion of men, relying on this gift, thirsty, beg, O Christ, the living draughts of your dew. Give the word from your fount; I cannot utter what is yours without you;

for the praise of your martyr is also your praise, you who, O Almighty, make men prevail in divine things, and overcoming the strong by the weak, triumph from the flesh, conquering the princes of the air in our body. Therefore be present, that with you as guide, going back to the beginning, I may proceed to tell of your Felix, whose noble lineage was drawn from the East: for no other land more befitted the homeland of Felix than that which had borne the patriarchs, and the holy ones, the prophets, the sacred vessels of Christ. Whence too, pouring out its streams in apostolic tongues, the sound of the Gospel went forth into the whole world. Owed thence to God, Felix, his father having set out for Italy though not yet begotten, yet came in his father: that as a citizen he might arise by affection on our shores; nor would he have remembered himself born to any save us.

Thus father Abraham, following the Lord's precepts, changed his ancestral lands for foreign soil, and laid down the sacred seed in Canaanite fields; whence, his offspring entering foreign lands, a mystic origin transmitted Felix to us, whom, sprung from that root, perfect faith brought forth, that he might be for us a devout vein of faith. Felix now also, with his flesh laid aside, rests, his spirit living in Christ, and by the working merits of high virtue, from Abraham's seed he changes the hardness of stones, which he rouses to the good of life. Therefore, begotten in this city of a Syrian father, he cherished beloved Nola under the image of a homeland, blessing it with a chosen seat: and left amid much gold, rich in wealth he flourished, though not the only heir.

With Hermias his brother, who bore their father's name, he divided the earthly wealth; the heavenly Felix alone obtained; a discordant decision divided the twin brothers: the world drove off Hermias, Christ took up Felix for himself: the one preferred the perishable, this one the solid; the one clung to present things, this one alone exchanged the ground for heaven, patrimonies for kingdoms: the one was heir only of his own father, this one co-heir of Christ. But who would marvel at so varied an offspring from one blood, who reads, amid the holy pledges of the ancient forefathers, that Rebecca, fruitful, grieved over the struggles of her womb, and complained to God of the wrestlings of her pregnant belly? When even then there raged within the inward parts of the holy mother that discord which now rages within the womb of the world.

The rough perfidy is for the Jews, who follow shaggy Esau, doomed to serve the lesser people. But for us is smooth Jacob, through the gentleness of peace, where the way of light leads, as we follow by a better birth. Therefore unlike is blood from the equal blood of the brothers: Hermias, like rough Edom following earthly things, lay squalid, a captive in the empty image of the world, and chose the hard fields of his Idumean parent—living by his own sword, and bearing the barren toil of a vain warfare, who succumbed to Caesar's arms, deprived, while serving for Christ's offices. But my Felix, sown to take up the arms of the eternal King, passed over into the name of father Israel: and from boyhood, a devout mind, devoting himself to heavenly things, set himself to serve God;

nor was grace poor in coming, and as much as his soul, gaping for light with a capacious heart, thirsted, so abundantly he drew in the inflowing gifts of God. In his first years he served as a lector. Thence he took the grade whose office is to adjure the wicked with a faithful voice, and to drive them off with sacred words. And because he discharged this with the conspicuous virtue of merit, he rightly obtained the venerable insignia of the priesthood; with a mind worthy of the place, he adorned the merited honor. But lest the priestly fillet alone should adorn that sacred head of his, there arose also a stronger cause for a crown to be doubled. The dread madness of profane furies broke out; when the holy Church was shaken by sacrilegious war, and impiety demanded above all those from the whole people whose piety was the more distinguished:

then the elder bishop Maximus was shaping the city of Nola by holy laws with peaceful utterance, mighty through Felix the presbyter; whom, having embraced with a fatherly mind as though a son, he cherished as heir of his seat; but, put to flight by the sudden storm, his faith not yielding, he sought out the deserts of the place. Then more and more, the prelate being sought, Felix shone bright, set against the swords, and alone affected by the malice of his faith: nor was he regarded with honor; faith greater than honor only because it was the cause of faith. Then he is sought, when the livid dragon stirs up his own arms, eager to overthrow that by which we rise, while he himself falls. Therefore, the prelate fleeing, Felix alone—or first of the people, as the crown of the body—is challenged to savage penalties. All strive to overcome him;

and as men attack a lofty citadel in besieged walls, raising a siege-mound, they make for him; whose defense once conquered, the rest of the city, now laid low, would fall in easy ruin. O madness worthy of the faithless! It is believed that the faith which the whole world has believed can be extinguished in one man. Alas, wretched impiety! blind in infernal shadows, whither do you rush? against whom do you move your weapons? Do you believe that God consists in one mortal? And, if you dissolve bodies, that the divine force and mind can together be abolished? That force which passes through the members of the world, by which you yourself are born, and, unworthy, are nourished, on whose power it depends to conquer or be conquered; by whose virtue even one is stronger than countless many:

armed with unarmed piety, those armed with steel, but unarmed in heart toward Christ, he lays low by overcoming faith, which, conscious of the heavenly truth, weighs life to come against the present mountain, and, conquering in conquered body the mind, gladly bearing it back to God, conveys it to the rejoicing stars. What avails it then, O madman, that with so great a mass of fury you assail the devout Felix? Within remains the mind unconquered, hidden in God; nor now does the nature of earthly man alone resist you; God himself fights back, whom you assail, and, O ancient serpent, by your own venoms Christ himself offers himself through the bodies of his servants, and, binding you with your own snares, in the slaughter of his own he lays you low, triumphing over death through the appearance of death.

But their savage hearts, with their own goading furies and their error, urged them to blaze with bloody thirst and to press for the holy blood, as though to demand the palm of crime. Therefore when Nola received the sacrilegious furies, and trembled at the swords aimed at her devout citizens, the venerable Felix is sought in the shaken city. Nor does he flee, now breathing the stars with lofty spirit, and whetting his mind for battles with silent goads, the dauntless shepherd was guarding the trembling sheepfold, by the Lord's example ready to give his life for the flock. Therefore eager he stands fast like a wall against the savage foes; and, hoary, with faith flowering, he grows young again in years, wholly toward the stars in spirit, mindful of Christ, unmindful of his age, bearing God in his heart, and full of Christ in his breast. Nor now does he contain himself;

sacred and seeming greater, with a starry honor flashing in his eyes and on his face. Forthwith he is seized, rejoicing; and is dragged forth by the savage hands of the raging ones, but (such is the custom of the wicked foe, whose greater labor it is to destroy our souls rather than our bodies), the sword being deferred, he first tries him with terrors, and rises into death by the steps of penalties. First the order of torment is woven from the prison-cell. Iron chains are joined to the dark cells; steel stands upon his hands and neck, and his feet stiffen with the stretching cord: fragments of potsherd are strewn, that a penal bed with its sharp points might keep off sleep. Yet he is not void of rest, nor bereft of light, the Confessor, with whom now Christ, associated in all things, suffers together, for whom a heavier penalty multiplies green crowns;

he who traverses the heaven with a roaming mind. And his free spirit, though in a bound body, flies ahead into the inner sanctuaries of the most high Christ, his soul premeditating its own rewards with sure vows. Therefore the blessed passion pressed Felix with sacred penalties, with heavy chains and a blind prison: and as many penalties as the subjected flesh had put on from the man, so many palms of patience does he receive from Christ. Meanwhile Maximus, sick in the lonely mountains, content to have fled the hands and the deadly mouths of the executioners, was bearing a different but no lighter martyrdom of the cross than if he had given his neck to the sword, and his limbs to torments or to fires: a sharper care of his own flock burns and afflicts him;

he is burned with the fire of cold, and stiffens with the icy dew of heaven, lacking bread and shelter alike; sleepless, he joins both night and day with intent prayer. While, stretched on the brambly ground, his limbs are pricked by thorns, and his mind by cares, he struggles within and without, and bears the thorns of the field in his body, he suffers the thorns of sorrow in his grieving breast. Covering hard things with hard, by the bitter torment of his mind he lightens the torments of his limbs, and the pain of his heart shuts out the sense of bodily pain.

Yet the sick material of earth (although the force of his soul remained unshaken, his faith spurning the failing things of the flesh), conquered by winter and hunger, and worn down by the hard bed, with failing body was leaving its own mind behind; the cold, drawn the deeper from the empty marrow of the weary old man, with frozen blood was driving out his life. The piety of the highest Father, moved by so great a prelate, did not endure that his body be consumed by an obscure death. Although he could feed this man too as he fed Elijah, sending food-bearing birds through the fasting wilds; and could cover him too with a secret tomb, as he did Moses. But God had given this gift to one friend alone, to cover him in a hidden land, because it was rightly fitting.

So great an honor was due that body, which face to face had shone with mouth, and, having discharged mortal duties with the speech of God, might enjoy God alone as the witness of its tomb. Therefore, looking with serene light upon the priest and confessor, the gentle Father did not endure that he waste away further in the silent woods; and because he was preparing to associate a worthy companion to such worthy merits, he chooses Felix out of all the prison's number, that he might add this work to his merits, namely to relieve the limbs of the kindly old man, and recall his soul, and bring him back restored, and render to the astonished sheep the solace of their dear shepherd. Therefore there came, gleaming now in the silent night, an angel, and in all the people of the bound and accused, he addresses Felix alone, for whom holy piety had made a charge: the horror of the black prison fled.

At once, struck by both the voice and the light of the sacred minister, Felix trembles, and draws the word with a faithful ear. And at first, as though he received God's commands in the image of a mocking dream, he stands amazed, anxious: and pleads that he cannot follow, the chain forbidding, and moreover that he is held both by the bar and the guard of the besieged prison. But the divine voice, chiding him as he lingers, bids him rise, the chains shaken off. And suddenly, as the chains flowed soft from his hands, of its own accord his neck, stripped of the iron yoke, is lifted, and his feet leap forth, the cord of the stock loosened. Wondrous faith! the cells unharmed, the prison unbarred, the guard lulled to sleep, undaunted he goes out by the doors, and the way is made for him through those very things by which the way is shut; the angel went, and through the friendly silences of the quiet night, the light and the road of Felix was.

Is not the one Christ present in every saint? Just as the same Spirit thrives in all who are begotten in Christ, so the very Grace of the godly is in harmony. I see an ancient scene returning in this recent history: that scene in which the lofty Peter, bidden to depart from the twelvefold band of disciples, while his chains fell away of their own accord, went forth from the closed prison, the angel going before him as his guide, stealing the prey from Herod and leading him on. So too my Felix, with God leading him out, passed unharmed through the doubled darkness of prison and of night—obscure to all others, but lit up for him alone—through the very midst of his guards, pressing his footsteps with steady pace, guided along unknown paths, and sought to fulfil the commands he had received. And after he had traversed the trackless wilds, the secret glades and fields, he found the place of the weary old man;

and sorrowful he beheld him already drawing labored sighs with faint breath. And as soon as he recognized the limbs of his dear father, flinging himself into an embrace, he kissed the familiar face, and tried by warming to call back heat into the cold limbs, and by repeated breaths from his panting mouth to restore living sense to the cooled body. But the body would not move at any call or any nudge. It was already like a corpse: yet a slight last breath of life, and the trembling of the inner fiber, betrayed it. Anxious at such a sight, Felix in his godly heart spread apart the bloodless limbs, and seeing the face livid with hunger, and having nothing with which to bring help to such want—no fire at hand, and no food nearby—so that he might revive him, wasting away, with food, and warm him, stiff with cold, with fire.

As he sought and besought Christ with much prayer, by what means or by what way he might fulfil the service commanded him, the Almighty suddenly brought forth a grape-cluster from the brambles, and bade it hang close to his head, so that he might easily pluck the food that grew of its own accord from the neighboring branch. Restored therefore by divine means, Felix in his godly mind rejoiced at the gift offered him; and he brought the cluster plucked by hand to the mouth of the dying man: and since with his teeth already clenched the old man could neither feel nor take in sweet food, Felix squeezed the moist berries, and instilled the flowing juice, parting the dry lips with his finger;

until, with God breathing upon his feeble efforts, and his hand struggling, the old man for a little while relaxed his rigid jaws, and gave a slender opening of the parted mouth, through which the loosened grape might pour a tiny dew. From this came sense to the soul, warmth to the bones, light to the eyes, and all his life returned: and the tongue, which had clung dry-stuck to his parched throat, now plies its accustomed speech, after the slippery moisture opened the path of his voice. So, reviving, he sees close at hand the most familiar face, the face of his own Felix, and embracing him in turn he complains of his delay: "For the Lord had promised me," he said, "that you would be at hand long ago, Felix, my portion; my chief pledge, Felix—what or where, I ask, has held you back so long?"

"If for a time I yielded in my frail body, yet I have held firm in being faithful with a steadfast heart. Both the place and my very condition teach it—in which you behold me dragging out the dregs of this life—that I did not flee out of fear of death, and that I set my soul before myself for Christ's sake: I fled not from love of the light, but fearing this frail and infirm body; and yet, seeking shelter, I could have lived safely in another city, had faith been cheap to me, and this life been dear. I sought out unknown mountains and the bare deserts, laying my dear neck in the bosom of the Lord, that I might fail with Him as witness, or be fed by Him. Nor was this trust in vain for us—behold, you see it: the Almighty was present, and chose to send you to me, through whom He would render me His gifts:"

"do, my son, the work that the precepts of piety enjoin, and taking me upon your shoulders, carry me back to the common fold." Tireless, rejoicing in the longed-for gift, Felix takes up the dear burden, as the light weight of Christ, and bears it with so swift a course, as though he himself were the more being carried rather than carrying; and truly Christ Himself bears the bearer, and God added wings to feet made swift by piety. On that same night the one man, Felix, receives and at once fulfils so many gifts; bidden to break his own bonds, he refreshes the priest, and carries back the one refreshed, and lays him down safe under the roof of his own dwelling, which a single old woman alone kept; so exalted and supreme a Confessor did Maximus stand in merit, that for him a single old woman remained as the throng of his house, its sum total and wealth. Knocking at the doors, Felix rouses her;