As often as the holy evangelist records that the Lord endured or did human things, so often he disturbs the perception of carnal minds as with an entire commotion of waves. For feeble minds know not how to hear, to discern, and to dispense the mysteries of the Lord's body, as today's reading shows, which says: 「Going out thence, Jesus went into His own country」 (Mark VII). Whence does He go out, whither does He enter, who is contained by nothing, enclosed in no place? To what country does He go, He who made and possesses the whole world?—the prophet saying: 「Thine are the heavens, and Thine is the earth: the world and the fulness thereof Thou hast founded」 (Ps. LXXXVIII).
But not for Himself, through Himself, does Christ go out and enter, but for you, on your behalf, until He brings you in, cast out as you were, recalls you, an exile, and leads back and carries home you who had been driven forth. Jesus therefore went into His own country. Not to give His own country to Himself, but to give back to you your own country, which Adam had lost. He went into His own country. If He was born, how is He not man? If man, how is He not a citizen? If a citizen, who should marvel that He has a country? But this is the mode of His humanity, not the order of His divinity, which He confesses: for He who is, and who was before the ages, our God, our Parent, willed to be the last through the ages; that those whom He had made by His power, He might save by His mercy; and by suffering-with them might receive back those whom, by rebuking and commanding, He had made exiles.
For whatever we read that Christ did or suffered as taken up through His manhood, let us hear it not to the injury of His divinity, but as having advanced to the glory of His manhood. 「And His disciples,」 he says, 「followed Him.」 Rightly do the disciples follow Christ returning to His country, whom so great an election, so great a fulness of grace, had already made citizens and fellow-townsmen of the heavenly country, enrolled in the register of the supernal order, the Lord saying: 「Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven」 (Luke X). 「And when the sabbath was come, He began to teach in the synagogue, and many hearing were astonished at His doctrine, saying: Whence hath this man these things? and what is the wisdom that is given unto Him? and such mighty works as are wrought by His hands?」
Unhappy and detestable is the wickedness of the Jewish mind, ever readier to dispute than to believe; it is anxiously stirred by divine mighty works, not to faith, but to calumny, or because it deserved to hear so great a wisdom. But whence comes it that, being maliciously curious, or querulous, suspicious toward good things, all too ready toward hurtful ones, it despises the doctrine which it admires? It approves the precepts, yet contemns them; toward God it hesitates, toward idols it is all too prone; in divine things it is crafty, but toward wood and stones it is wholly dissolved; rebellious against prophecy, contrary to truth, given over to auguries and lies.
I ask, to whom is it a matter of caution that a blind man sees? to whom a matter of anxiety that a dead man rises? to whom a matter of doubt that a mute man speaks? Surely, who would not know that He is God, by whose command alone every infirmity is cured? Moses had done many signs, Elijah had shown very great proofs of powers, nor had Elisha done unlike works: why does no one dispute the person? why does no one raise a question of their standing? why did no one so ungratefully inquire out of curiosity whence they were, or who they were, whence these things came, and through whom they did them? But He alone is judged, who alone was unwilling to judge lest He should punish;
He is scrutinized with wicked severity, who, in order that He might bestow pardon, sought out nothing; and although He alone, being innocent, found all guilty, yet, as a token of His immense mercy, He chose rather to look up in supplication than to abrogate the sentence, that He might restore to mortals the life once lost, and repair the slain. Truly, as the Apostle said, 「Great is the sacrament of piety, which is manifested in the flesh of our Christ」 (1 Tim. III). Yet this carnal jealousy still extends its curiosity, being ever an enemy to the thought of truth: nor does it suffer Christ to be believed God by His mighty works and wisdom, but, on the testimony of neighbors, parents, brethren, and kinsfolk, it asserts, exults, longs, and understands Him to be man only, saying:
「Is not this the carpenter's son and of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph, and of Simon and Judas? And are not His sisters here with us?」 Caiaphas prophesies with a profane mouth (John XI); and although he was a priest, he overcame the intent of his own falsity by the office of truth; he proves the sentence not by his own bidding but by that of Him who had appointed him. Balaam, a curser turned blesser, and hired for wickedness, speaks forth all the mysteries of truth (Num. XXIII, XXIV): and as among thorns a rose, that is, upon a bristling bush, little flowers of wondrous fragrance spring up, so sometimes the minds of the most wicked are driven unwilling toward good things by an impulse of the Godhead, so that what they speak is not of their own merit, but of mystery.
This we see to have befallen Jewish malice on that occasion, which, to the reproach of the Lord's generation, while by the craft of Joseph it exaggerates the truth of Christ's lineage, confesses and declares the quality of His true Begetter, saying: 「This is the carpenter's son.」 Well did it keep silent about the person, that by the craft it might betray the Begetter, saying not 「Joseph,」 but 「the carpenter's son.」 And what carpenter is such as this One, who out of nothing fashioned so great a world? And what carpenter is such, who alone exists as the author, alone as the bestower, of all good art? Say then, O Jew, 「the carpenter's son,」 that unwilling you may confess Him the Son of God; say 「of Mary,」 that impelled you may confess Him true man, yet the Son of a Virgin; say 「brethren,」 that you may proclaim and set forth so great a condescension of your Creator.
And although by this you strive to hide the virtues of the holy Mother, yet the truth of the evangelist proves and asserts that they existed not as the sons of Joseph and Mary, but as the sons of Cleophas her sister—those whom you call brethren; for the usage even of the present time is known to have named the sons of brothers and of sisters 「brethren.」 For never, against the order of piety, would the Lord have commended His Mother to a stranger, that is, to John, from the cross, if she had had other sons besides Him: but He entrusts the virgin to a virgin, that among such persons only the care of the sacrament, only the fellowship of religion, might be maintained; nor should so great a disciple be enslaved to worldly anxiety, but, being about to preach the virgin birth, he should have at home the means by which to prove this to those in doubt.
But James could not have had the care of one woman and mother, who, in those beginnings and in that Jewish fury of the time, singularly ruled the Church of Jerusalem. Well did the Lord add: 「A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.」 Behold how carnal fellow-citizens are minded; behold how worldly kinsmen feel and honor. Blessed is he who, having merited to have God as his Father, seeks nothing besides the heavenly country. That Christ, in human acts, performed divine mysteries, and in visible things carried on invisible works, today's reading has shown. 「He went up,」 it says, 「into a boat, and passed over, and came into His own city」 (Matt. IX, 1).
Is not He the very One who, having put the waves of the sea to flight, laid bare the depths, that the Israelite people might pass through with dry foot amid the astonished waves, as through the hollows of mountains (Exod. XIV)? Is not this the One who bent down the crests of the sea under Peter's feet, that the liquid path might offer solid obedience to human steps (Matt. XIV)? And what is this, that He thus denies to Himself the sea's service, so as to make His crossing of a tiny lake under a boatman's hire? 「He went up,」 it says, 「into a boat, and passed over.」
And what wonder, brethren? Christ came to take up our infirmities, and to confer His virtues on us; to seek human things, to furnish divine; to receive injuries, to render dignities; to bear weariness, to give back health—because the physician who does not bear infirmities knows not how to cure infirmities; and he who has not been made infirm with the infirm cannot confer health upon the infirm. Christ therefore, if He had remained in His own virtues, would have had nothing in common with men; and unless He had fulfilled the order of the flesh, His assumption of flesh in Himself would have been idle. He therefore endured these necessities, that being true man He might be proved by human necessities. 「He went up,」 it says, 「into a boat.」
Christ went up into the ship of His Church, ever about to calm the waves of the age, that He might bring those who believe in Him through a tranquil voyage to the heavenly country; and might make them citizens of His city, whom He made partakers of His humanity. Therefore Christ needs not the ship, but the ship needs Christ, because without a heavenly steersman the ship of the Church cannot, through the world's ocean, with such and so great peril, arrive at the heavenly harbor. These things we have said, brethren, so far as pertains to the spiritual understanding: but now let us follow the order of the history itself. 「He went up,」 it says, 「into a boat, and passed over, and came into His own city.」
The Creator of things, the Lord of the world, after He had for our sake straitened Himself in the flesh, began to have a human country, began to be a citizen of the Jewish city: He who is Himself the Parent of all began to have kinsmen, that love might invite, charity might draw, affection might overcome, humanity might persuade those whom domination had put to flight, whom fear had scattered, whom the force of power had made exiles. He came into His own city, and behold, they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed, and Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic: 「Be of good cheer, son; thy sins are forgiven thee.」 The paralytic hears the pardon, and is silent, nor returns any thanks, because he was straining more toward the cure of the body than of the soul;
and he so bewailed the temporal hardships of his dissolved body, that he did not bewail the eternal punishments of the dissolution of his soul, judging the present life more welcome to himself than the future. Rightly does Christ not regard the faith of those offering him, and does regard the folly of him lying thus, so that by the support of another's faith the paralytic's soul might be cured before his body. 「Seeing,」 it says, 「their faith.」 You perceive in this place, brethren, that God does not seek the wills of the foolish, does not look to the faith of the ignorant, does not scrutinize the foolish desires of the weak, but comes to aid another's faith, which He conferred by grace alone, since He would deny nothing that is of the divine will.
And in very truth, brethren, when does the physician of the sick either seek or accept the wills of the languishing, since the sick man always desires and requires the contrary? Hence it is that now he applies iron, now fire, now bitter draughts, and sets them before the unwilling, that they may feel, once whole, the cure which, while ailing, they could not feel. And if a man despises injuries, contemns curses, that he may of his own accord confer life and health upon those stricken with disease, how much more does Christ, the physician, by His divine goodness draw to salvation, even against their will and unwilling, those stricken with the diseases of sins and laboring under the frenzy of crimes? O if we would, brethren—O if we would!—perceive the whole paralysis of our mind, and discern our soul, destitute of virtues, lying upon the couches of vices;
it would shine upon us how Christ daily regards our hurtful wills, and draws us to saving remedies, and presses on the unwilling. 「Son,」 He says, 「thy sins are remitted thee.」 By saying this, He wished to be understood as God, who through the manhood still lay hidden from human eyes; for by mighty works and signs He was compared with the prophets, who through Him themselves also had wrought mighty works; but to grant pardon for sins—since this is not within man's power, and is the singular mark of the Godhead—implanted Him as God in human breasts. This the Pharisaic envy proves: for when He had said, 「Thy sins are remitted thee,」 the Pharisees answered: 「This man blasphemeth; for who can forgive sins but God alone?」
O Pharisee, who by knowing art ignorant, by confessing deniest, who while thou bearest witness dost assail: if He is God who remits sins, why is Christ not God to thee, who by the gift of His one indulgence is proved to have taken away the sins of the whole world? 「Behold,」 he says, 「the Lamb of God; behold Him who taketh away the sins of the world」 (John I). And that thou mayest be able to grasp the greater tokens of His divinity, hear that He penetrated the secret of thy breast; behold that He came to the hiding-places of thy thoughts; understand that He lays bare the silent counsels of thy heart. 「And when Jesus,」 it says, 「had seen their thoughts, He said: Why think ye evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee, or to say, Arise and walk?」
「But that you may know that the Son of Man hath power to forgive sins, He said to the paralytic: Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house; and he arose and went into his house.」 The Searcher of souls forestalled the malignant counsels of their minds, and showed the power of His Godhead by the attestation of the work, while He composes the members of the dissolved body, tightens the sinews, joins the bones, fills up the inward parts, strengthens the limbs, and rouses to running the steps already buried in a living corpse. 「Take up thy bed.」 That is, carry the thing that carried thee, change all thy conditions, that what is a testimony of infirmity may be a proof of health, that the bed of thy pain may be a token of my healing, that the greatness of the weight may attest the greatness of the strength received. 「Go,」 He says,