Sermons 64

In the previous sermon we said that Mary and the other Mary had the figure of the Church coming from two peoples: today we desire to confirm this from what follows, if only your kind hearing be granted us. 'Answering,' it says, 'the angel said: Fear not ye, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified: He is not here, He is risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord was laid' (Matt. 28). The angel proclaims the name, speaks of the cross, tells of the passion, confesses the death, but straightway confesses the resurrection, straightway the Lord. And if the angel, after such great torments, after the sepulchre, acknowledges the Lord, speaks of his own servitude, and perceives that the whole wrong of the passion has passed over into the glory of the resurrection;

why does man either judge God to be diminished in the flesh, or think that His power failed in the passion, or believe that His dominion was consumed by servitude? Fittingly, therefore, he says 'crucified,' he shows the place where the Lord was laid, lest another, and not the same One Himself, should be believed to have risen again from the dead. And if the Lord returns in the same flesh, brings back His wounds, resumes the very holes of the nails, and makes them the very testimonies of His body, the tokens of His resurrection, which had been the shame of His passion; why does man think that he will return in another flesh, or not in his own, or does the servant perhaps disdain his own flesh, when the Lord has not changed ours?

Rest assured, O man, that you yourself will be in your own flesh, lest you yourself be not yourself, if you rise in another's flesh. The angel added, saying: 'And going quickly, tell His disciples that He is risen, and He goes before you into Galilee; there you shall see Him.' Here the angel sends not the women, but the Church in two women; he sends one, that by sending her he may thus spread her far and wide. Here the angel sends the bride to the Bridegroom; then, as they went, the Lord met them and greeted them, saying: 'Hail.' He met them, and did not terrify them with power, but forestalled them with the ardour of charity; He did not disturb them with authority, but greeted them by the law of the Bridegroom; He did not burden them with the right of a lord, but honoured them with the love of a consort: He greeted them, 'Hail.' He Himself had said to His disciples:

'Greet no one on the way'; and what is it that here on the way so festive a greeter meets them? He does not wait to be recognized, He does not require to be understood, He does not admit that He be questioned, but goes wholly into the greeting, goes fervently, and Himself fulfils His own command by the greeting? He did it, He did it, because the force of love conquers and surpasses all things: at the same time, because Christ greets Himself in the Church, which He has made to be His own, and thus received His own inward parts, His own members, into His body, as the Apostle says: 'But He is the head of the body, the Church' (Col. 1).

But that in these women the full figure of the Church remains, the matter itself shows evidently, because Christ rebukes His own disciples who wavered concerning the resurrection, strengthens them as they tremble, and scarcely recalls them to faith by the showing of His side, the hollows of the nails, the taking of food (Luke 24). Whence also He rightly calls them 'little children,' being little ones in faith, by saying: 'Children, have you any meat?' (John 21). And elsewhere He calls that same Mary, weeping as over one dead, 'woman,' and denies her the liberty of touching Him (John 20): but these women He finds so perfect, so believing, so not trembling because of their sex, so running to the mystery, so seeking the Lord with all the ardour of faith, that He gives Himself to be held by them with such a greeting, saying, 'Hail.' The angel had said:

'For I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified'; and to those who sought Him, Christ answered, 'Hail'; but elsewhere to Mary not even the faculty of touching is given (John 20), while here not only of touching, but of holding, full leave is granted. 'But they,' it says, 'drew near and held His feet.' These hold the feet of Christ, who in the Church hold the type of evangelical preaching, and merit it by their running; and thus by faith they touch the footprints of their Saviour, so as to reach unto the glory of the whole Godhead, and attain unto honour. But that other rightly hears: 'Touch me not' (ibid.), she who weeps for the Lord upon earth, and so seeks the dead man in the sepulchre, that she knows Him not to reign in heaven with the Father.

'Touch me not,' that is, do not seek to serve by the touch of the flesh Him whom you ought to reach by the touch of faith; nor presume to touch Him on earth as a mere man, whom you do not yet know to adore as God in the heavens; let feminine care cease, let womanly anxiety desist, let manly belief ascend into your mind, let the breadth of your heart receive My ascent, that in the heavens you may enjoy the eternal blessedness of touching Me. According to that saying of the prophet: 'Blessed is the man whose help is from Thee, O Lord; he has disposed ascensions in his heart' (Ps. 83). He touches not Christ on earth, who by faith ascends not to Christ in heaven.

That therefore the same Mary, now set at the summit of faith, now exalted at the pinnacle of the Church, both touches Christ and holds Him with the whole affection of holiness, and now, cast down by the weakness of the flesh and feminine infirmity, doubts and does not merit the touch of her Author, raises no question: for the one is of figure, the other of sex; the one is of divine grace, the other of human nature. Because when we know the same things divinely, it is the gift of God; when we perceive them humanly, we are blinded of ourselves. Thus blessed Peter, when he confesses Christ to be the Son of God, knows Him by the Father's revelation; when he denies Christ, he feels and suffers the blindness of the flesh (Matt. 26). Amid these things the Jews, in their crimes, either buy their own things badly, or dispose of another's worse, while they reckon sins at a price.

while they weigh out and compensate for their offences with money, while in their crimes they pour out what by utter crime they had gathered. Thus they buy Judas, the betrayer of his Lord, and weigh out the blood of the Redeemer of the world at a price; thus they shut up the faith of the opened sepulchre in a money-bag, that with the coins of their crimes they might purchase the crime of denying the resurrection. 'They gave,' it says, 'much money to the soldiers, saying: Say that His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were sleeping; and if this should come to the governor's ears, we will persuade him and make you secure. So they, taking the money, did as they had been taught; and this saying was spread abroad among the Jews unto this present day.' Among the Jews — but surely not among the Christians?

O Jew, that which you were darkening with gold in Judea has by faith wholly shone and blazed forth in the world: the disciples received Christ, they did not steal Him; you bought treachery, but you did not steal the truth; O Jew, Christ has risen, you have lost your money. 'His blood be upon us and upon our children.' O Jew, Christ lives; you have slain both yourself and your descendants.