'for our sighs called you, our abundant laments sought you: you are hope for the despairing, consolation in torments. At your coming our chain fell, the night fled. When life comes death dies, and there is no tormentor pressing, no striker. The damned seize their wishes: the Creator commands, not an invader. On the tyrant a chain is fastened; and our tormentor is racked with punishment. Loose, Redeemer of the world, the dead and the captives of hell.' You descended for us to the lower regions; do not fail us when you shall have returned to the upper regions. You have set up a title of glory in the world; set up a sign of victory in hell. 5. They turn their torments upon the tormentors. There is no delay;
after the petition and pleading of the innumerable captives had been heard, at once by the command of the Lord all the ancient just receive the rights of power, and they themselves forthwith turn their torments upon their own tormentors, crying to the Lord with humble supplication and ineffable joy, and saying: 'Ascend, Lord Jesus, hell being despoiled, and the author of death being ensnared in chains, restore now gladness to the world. Let your faithful rejoice at your ascent, beholding the scars of your body.' Christ did this, as was said above. His prey being made in hell, He went forth alive from the tomb: He raised Himself by His own power, and again clothed Himself with immaculate flesh.
He appeared to His disciples, that He might take away doubt from the unbelieving: He showed the wounds of the nails, that He might leave no suspicion to the Manichaeans. Manifestly He ate and drank; and afterward He appeared in the sight of many. Through a cloud He ascended into the heavens, and set Himself on His throne at the Father's right hand, whence the Word had never departed. Let the Christian peoples therefore exult, for whom the blood of Christ was shed. Let us all rejoice in the Lord, we who solemnly celebrate the resurrection of the flesh in Christ. Let the whole Catholic Church throughout the whole world give thanks; because Christ the Lord both diminished nothing of His divinity, and set free the man whom He had made.
Whence, exulting, let us supplicate with humble voice, that He for whom He endured these things, when He came into the world, may deign to raise us up with Him into heaven, delivered from the hand of hell: to whom is honor and glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit unto the ages of ages. Amen. SERMON 161, On Easter, 3. 1. The effect of Christ's descent to the lower regions. Worthily, dearest brethren, let us exult in Christ with pious zeal under the present solemnity, in which the third day, rich with the spoils of the lower regions, has been restored to us—height out of the depths, light out of darkness, life out of the dead. Behold how greatly the kindly solicitude of the loving shepherd runs about for the salvation of the lost sheep.
Under one and the same time He both deigns to recall man even to paradise, and pursues death even to the lower regions, to be more gloriously taken captive in His kingdom and more magnificently triumphed over in His own seats. At the descent, therefore, of the heavenly Lord, the depth of hell is opened, and the eternal night of hell marvels at the light that is a stranger to it. The night therefore suddenly dreaded not its own dead, nay rather it dreaded its own death. For there was present He who long before had said through His prophet: 'O death, I will be your death; I will be your bite, O hell' (Hos 13:14). And therefore not only could it find nothing in Him that it might hold; but it also beheld those whom it before retained recalled to the upper regions against its will:
and Him whom it thought its debtor, it experienced rather as an exactor; and Him whom it believed must be bound like a captive in the chains of hell, it marveled to return like a liberator, with the captivity received back; and thus Him whom in His descent it had judged a man, it recognized in His return as God. 2. Without the incarnation of the Word man could have been set free: but it was not fitting. Our Lord indeed could have, dearest brethren, laid low the enemy of the human race by majesty alone, without the humility of the incarnation, without the contest of the passion: but man, who was held guilty by his own crime of transgression, who through his own fault had incurred servitude, was not to be freed by violence, but redeemed by mercy.
And because God is equity and justice, He is a law to Himself: and because man is endowed with the will of judgment and of his own right and of free choice; he who had willingly fallen, it was unjust that he should be raised up unwilling. It was more just and more wholesome that he who through pride had been persuaded by the devil to death should through humility be solicited by God to life. By a just order therefore, he who through the cunning of the malevolent serpent had been not compelled but seduced to perdition, is again through the wisdom of the benevolent Redeemer not compelled but led to salvation: that he who was seen to have fallen with his own will might again with his own will be restored; that there might be place for virtue and for reward. Therefore He does not seize him beforehand by violence;
but rather through just benevolence He solicits and instructs him to life: because the kindness of Him who calls forth desires also the merit of him who assents, and the endeavor of the most gracious physician requires the consent of the sick man. Whose ineffable condescension to instruct us the present reading of the Gospel also has declared. 3. Christ, born of the Virgin, was able to enter through closed doors. For He says, as you have heard: 'When it was late that day, the first of the Sabbaths, Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst of the disciples.' What wonder, if the Lord admitted His glorified body to the disciples through the barriers to their amazement, who, with the seal of His mother's modesty unharmed, entered the gate of this world, whose birth nature did not know?
Do not doubt, if you see Him exercising power in triumph, whom you perceive to have wrought such astonishing things at His birth. What will the Jews answer here, who departed after the Lord was buried, sealing the stone and posting guards? Since these things are so, how could the barrier of a bolt keep Him out, whom the weight of the sepulchre had not confined? Nay, how could a locked house shut Him out, whom the gate of death could not shut in? What wonder is it, if He passed the substance of our body through closed doors, to whom even the innermost recesses of the heavenly places and the secret intimacy known only to the Angels are wont to lie open? 4. In Thomas there was the disposition not of one doubting, but of one inquiring. His inquiry becomes the instruction of all. Why Christ showed His scars.
When therefore the other disciples had said, We have seen the Lord, Thomas answered and said to them: Unless I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe. How good an ignorance, which instructed the ignorant, which taught the unbelieving! How good an unbelief, which served the faith of the ages! Unless I shall see, he says, in His hands the print of the nails. This is the voice of one inquiring, not of one denying. In saying this he wished to be taught, he desired to be confirmed; and therefore the Lord said thus to him: Put in your finger here, and see My hands;
and reach hither your hand, and put it into My side. While the Truth gave a kind and moderate answer, in His Apostle He formed not the vice of doubt, but the disposition of earnest care. Because at that time the newness of so great a mystery was at hand, the diligence of curious searching was rightly not shut out. Moreover, in these words of the Apostle the profit of the world is at stake: the questioning of one is the instruction of all. He showed therefore His hands and His side. For it was necessary that the present manifestation of the visible scars should establish faith in the crucified body; because the splendour of the new light had overlaid the former truth, and brightness had in a manner obscured recognition.
Having seen therefore the scars, Thomas answered and said: My Lord and my God (John xx, 19-28)! In a new manner the traces of the wounds bear witness to the divinity; for the garment of the wounded body was the temple of God. Marvel here at the two substances in Christ. He perceives the piercing of the body, and he proclaims the God of majesty. 5. We shall rise with these same bodies. Therefore death is likened to sleep, and the resurrection to a grain of wheat. Where are those who say that souls must be clothed with new bodies, in which they had not before lived? Behold, in the Author of the resurrection I see this very thing to have risen again which had fallen: and therefore the dead are said to sleep, according to the prophet, Shall not he that sleeps rise up again (Ps. xl, 9)?
Why did He liken death to sleep? Because in one and the same man, is it perhaps one who is loosed in sleep, but another who is roused from the stupor of that same sleep to the duties of waking? Not so at all; but without doubt the very members must be believed to have awakened, which were relaxed by the stupor of slumber. So the death of the body, whatever it has received to be reduced to dust, that same thing, once shaken off, it will restore: nor will the kindred spirit recognize a raw vessel, but one brought back to life. And therefore the Apostle, expounding the mystery of the resurrection even from the least of things, speaks thus, comparing the resurrection to a grain of wheat: For that which you sow is not made alive, unless it first die.
If ever, as is the custom, the crops are entrusted by the husbandman to the mouldering furrows to yield increase, is that which is buried as seed anything different from that which grows green as sprouts? But individual bodies are produced not out of nothing, but from their own origin, and things fresh are renewed from things old. Now when the Apostle spoke concerning the resurrection, saying: What you sow is not made alive unless it first die, you see that death gives back what it has received? And to each of the seeds, he says, its own body (1 Cor. xv, 36, 38): not alien from its own kind, but proper to its own nature, and restored from the quality of its own matter.
There shall therefore be recalled into their former fellowship the union of soul and body, and a kinship never in any age to be dissolved. It is ours to lean upon the grace of the Author and Redeemer: that we may be seen to belong to that number of whom the Apostle says: We shall be caught up together to meet Christ in the air and in the clouds, and so shall we ever be with the Lord (1 Thess. iv, 16). For He judged it worthy that the true substance of body and soul should reign together with Christ in heaven, which had served Christ upon earth. SERMON 162. On the Pasch, IV. 1. The earnest care of Thomas strengthened the faith of all. Thomas the faithful did not doubt.
Your Holiness remembers, brethren, the former discourse, in which we wrote that the holy Apostle Thomas, to confirm the faith of all, after the resurrection touched the members of the Lord's body, and to repel the doubt of all, willed to examine the scars of His wounds. For the blessed Apostle did this not for himself alone: but what he did for himself, profited all. For when he exercised his own earnest care, he confirmed the faith of all. For who would doubt from this that the Saviour had returned from the dead, whose presence after the underworld the eye recognizes, the hand handles, the finger examines?
Although therefore a man of little faith, although a Christian of feeble understanding, he could never have equalled his own care to the inquiry of Thomas. For never after acquaintance, familiar intercourse, and conversation would anyone have dared to ask that he might even by touch examine Christ within Christ, and in that very man whom he beheld inquire after the body of a man, and believe His resurrection not so much from the glory of miracles as prove it from the injury of the passion. Thomas therefore, being holy, faithful and just, sought all these things with earnest care; not that he himself doubted anything, but that he might shut out every suspicion of unbelief. For was it not enough for his own faith to have seen Him whom he knew:
but he acted for us, that he might touch Him whom he saw; so that if perhaps we should say that his eyes had been deceived, we could not say that his hands had been mistaken. For in the manifestation of the resurrection one may be doubtful about sight, but about touch one cannot doubt. For it stands established by the testimony of Truth itself, that the Saviour returned from the underworld. 2. Christ the firstborn from the dead. The birth of the resurrection. Who would not place his hope in Christ? Who would not set his faith in the Lord; that while he believes Him risen from the underworld, he himself may rise from the dead? The blessed Apostle says: For if the dead rise not, neither is Christ risen (1 Cor. xv, 13). Because therefore Christ is risen, the dead also shall be raised:
because the Lord is risen again, the servants too shall live again. For He Himself, as the Apostle says, is the Firstborn from the dead (Col. i, 18). For as He is among those above the firstborn among many brethren, so also from the underworld He is the firstborn from the dead. Now He is called firstborn who is begotten first, before the others that are to follow. Christ therefore is called the firstborn from the dead, because He first brought Him forth from the darkness of hell into the light of the birth of resurrection. For it must be called a birth, when by a certain exchange the soul dies to the laws of the underworld, that it may be reborn to the renewed use of the body. For the nativity of the resurrection among those above is a certain death of those below. 3. Who dies by death.
Death consumed in victory. Hence death itself in a manner suffers death, while from it the multitude of the departed is withdrawn into life. For thus the blessed Apostle says, The last enemy, death, shall be destroyed; and again, Death is swallowed up in victory. When therefore death is consumed in victory, it is destroyed by a certain slaughter of its own failing. Now it suffers failing, when its power is emptied out by the rising again of all. But let us see what this means, that he says death was consumed in victory. Death is plainly consumed in its own victory, while in subjecting Christ to the laws of hell, it overwhelms itself when it conquers Him.
For in that very thing in which it possessed Him whom it believed itself to have overcome, by Him it was conquered when He rose again. We ought therefore to place our whole faith in the glory of the resurrection, and to hope in the Lord rather for the life to come. For thus the blessed Apostle says: If in this life only we hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable (1 Cor. xv, 19). Miserable therefore is he who hopes in the Lord only in this life. Plainly miserable he is; because his hope is quickly taken away, since quickly this brief life is ended. For his hope is made fleeting, while by the passing of time the pleasure of its sweetness slips away. For of such a hope the Apostle says, But hope that is seen is not hope (Rom. viii, 24).
Let us therefore hope in the Lord for the life to come, which is solid and everlasting: that we may be able to be not more miserable than all men, but better, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. SERMON 163. On the Pasch, V. 1. The tokens of Christ's divinity. Rejoice, dearest brethren, because the price of our redemption has been paid in full. We are of no small worth, for whom He Himself was made the price who redeemed. For Christ the Lord and Saviour was therefore born, that He might lead; therefore died, that He might heal. The cross was death-bearing to Christ, but salvation-bearing to the Christian. The Saviour rose again, manifest with all the tokens of His divinity.
for the glory after the sepulchre followed Him, as the star followed after the womb. The angel who had announced that He would be born guards His return. The nether regions render up the Victor, and the regions above receive Him in triumph. Being born, He bore away error; being slain, He trod down death; He called back from the underworld Him whom He had created: upon His cross hung both our price and our kingdom. The creature returns into the light with the Lord. For you have been counted worthy to receive light from light, which you had lost when Christ closed His eyes. Let the powers above cast away the darkness which our Saviour denied even to the underworld. Let the elements which had mourned here rejoice together; because Christ lost nothing of His majesty, and set free the man whom He had made. 2. The necessity of Christ's death.
Yet the perfidious Jews sealed the tomb with a stone, that Christ might have no way out: but if the world cannot contain Him, how does the sepulchre keep Him? He is held there, yet everywhere He reigns. Hardly would He rise, if before He rose He did not raise up others. For how could He fail to come forth from the sepulchre, who came forth from incorrupt inward parts with virginity preserved? He deceived the guards, He leaped out of the sepulchre, He appeared to the disciples with the doors not open. Thence He went out enclosed, hither He entered shut out. The hidden secret of His immeasurable majesty He made a mystery even in death. The Crucified returns from the underworld, and triumphs. Put in your hand, Thomas, into the Saviour's side: touch the wounds which our sins have made:
search out whence the blood flowed forth, that He might offer us the cup of health. Behold, Thomas, our price; carefully attend to the marks of the nails; and in those very wounds recognize the medicine or the treasure of the human race. Unless He were fastened to this wood, the transgression of that other wood would in no way have been taken away. But therefore He willed Himself to be smitten, that our sins might no longer smite us: He delivered up the innocent, that He might absolve the guilty. Who could worthily proclaim so great a mercy? The innocent is afflicted, that the guilty may be set free; that the servant may be redeemed, the Son is slain. He fulfils the office of a devout and most valiant king, when He shows the scars which He received for the salvation of His people. 3. Why Christ kept the scars.
Behold, Pharisees, the empty tomb, and acknowledge the sacrilege of your impiety. We recognize the nails which you had fixed, and we adore Him whom you slew. See Him whom you pierced. The Lord could have composed the prints of His nails by His resurrection: but they are reserved for this reason, that those who had committed this sacrilege might see and be confounded. O Pharisees, we see you impious and perfidious. To one death was given, that it might be taken away from all. But Christ the Lord, when He underwent death, so felt no corruption, as when He was born, His virginity lost no integrity. Hasten, disciples, and having received power, run through all the nations. Let them be reborn in the Spirit, who are born in the flesh:
let the water of the laver wash away whatever transgression has defiled. Let all nations be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: that this may be fulfilled which is written, Unless one be born again of water and of the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God (John iii, 5). But we, dearly beloved, who by no preceding merits have deserved to be set free from the prison of the underworld and from the darkness of eternal night, let us strive to live so soberly, chastely and piously, that, keeping the robe of Baptism whole and unstained without any blemish of luxury, we may come happily to the bridal chamber of the eternal Bridegroom, and to that heavenly nuptial banquet, resplendent with charity, adorned with the pearls of good works;
with the help of Him who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. SERMON 164. On the Pasch, VI. 1. The figure of the paschal lamb of the law is fulfilled. The old priesthood is abolished. That lamb of the law, by whose immolation the ancient people of the Hebrews cast off the yoke of Egyptian servitude, how it might contain in figure of itself the truer Victim of the holy Church with its manifold sacraments, was then most fully proved by the very truth of things, when our Pasch, Christ, was sacrificed (1 Cor. v, 7): who as a sheep was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer, so without voice He opened not His mouth (Isa. liii, 7).
This is the Lamb who, offered on the altar of the cross as a living victim to God the Father for us in an odour of sweetness, opened for us a passage from the region of the shadow of death to the land of promise. This is He, I say, who at once Victim and Priest, revealing with clear light every shadow of the old priesthood and sacrifice, put an end to figures and enigmas: but for the new people of the Church He inaugurated a new priesthood and a new sacrifice; namely, that new wine might be put into new wineskins (Matt. ix, 17). 2. All things are renewed and smile: the earth with fruits and flowers, the heaven with a gladder face. The sun is now brighter. The moon full. And this is for man's sake: how much more then ought man himself to rejoice.
But if a grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying so wonderfully renewed all things (John xii, 24); much more, rising again alive in itself with fruit multiplied, has it made fertile all things around it. And not only has it given at this time an ampler increase to the spiritual growths of the rational earth, but also to the very earthly seeds. Whence now the whole gladder face of the earth, bursting forth into sprouts, with the varied adornment of its fruits, raises up together with its rising Lord all the nature of things hitherto as it were dead: where the pleasing beauty of trees and herbs, with the diverse gift of buds yet with equal gesture of gladness, comes forth festively to meet this singular solemnity.
And of the heaven, till now in a manner sorrowful, but at length of glad face, what shall I say, which for some while now, overcast with the dense murk of clouds, had troubled all the space of this air? And behold, suddenly, as if righteousness looked down from heaven upon the earth (Ps. lxxxiv, 12), a wondrous serenity smiles upon the world, and the vows of heaven and earth run together into one gladness: that they may receive God and man, Christ, with common exultation, who had come to bring the common peace of both, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, made both one (Eph. ii, 14). Hence the kindling source of all the stars, that solar splendour, now clears its brow much wrinkled:
and like a king conspicuous in the diadem of his head, on the day of his espousals, and on the day of the gladness of his heart, bestows upon the rest of the stars as upon his companions ampler gifts of his light. For the moon, from the very day of its rising ever set in a certain waning of itself, prepares itself with full light for the paschal joys. And to touch upon all things briefly: as everything that subsists in the world serves by divine dispensation the dominion of man, so upon man's salvation one exultation presses upon all. Since therefore for man's sake every creature shows its joys with such tokens, it follows that from men themselves testimonies of such gladness should not be lacking. 1. The resurrection of Christ prefigured in Adam, in Noah, and in Jonah.
The resurrection of Christ was prefigured in the first-formed Adam: for as he, rising after sleep, recognized Eve fashioned from his side (Gen. ii, 23), so Christ, rising from death, built the Church from the wound of His side. Noah also, a man of husbandry, when he had planted a vineyard, and being made drunk with wine had fallen asleep, and lay uncovered in his tent, awakened from sleep, imposing the curse of perpetual servitude upon his son who did not conceal his shame, signified Christ: who made His vineyard the Church, and being made drunk with the cup of His passion, and having laid aside the covering of assumed flesh, rose again from the dead, as He Himself says in the Song of Songs: I have put off my tunic, how shall I put it on (Cant.
v, 3)? But Jonah, in what manner he too expressed in himself the death and resurrection of the Lord, the Gospel word openly declares (Matt. xii, 40). 4. The celebration of the spiritual Pasch. Since therefore, brethren, every creature by a certain office of charity rejoices together at our salvation, it is ours to draw from this something for our use in living: lest the common gladness of all should lose its right in us, whom the sum of the whole cause regards as the head. And first indeed, as sheep of the Lord's pasture, roasted on the altar of the heart by the fire of charity, let us offer ourselves a living victim, holy, pleasing to God (Rom. xii, 1):
and with the unleavened bread of continence, already having our members mortified which are upon the earth, that is, fornication, uncleanness, and the rest, let us turn aside from the prison-houses of the vices, and fit ourselves a seat in the station of the virtues: renouncing also dead works. Let us bring forth the best fruit, like good ground, and by the example of the good tree let us bear fruit in all goodness and righteousness. And that the brightness of the sun may not be lacking to our manner of life, let our light shine before men, that they may see our good works, and glorify our Father who is in heaven (Matt. v, 16). If therefore, so acting, the last day shall find us, there shall be for us one day as a reward the very resurrection of our bodies:
where, when Christ our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory (Col. iii, 4), who lives and reigns, God, through all ages of ages. Amen. SERMON 165. On the Pasch, VII. 1. The death and resurrection of the Lord variously prefigured. In Adam, in Noah. Divine providence, most beloved, willed the sacrament of the Lord's resurrection to be prefigured several times in various figures of things and oracles of the Prophets: so that through all the ages of this passing world the whole hope of the saints might tend toward Him alone, who is the expectation of all nations. Whence that which in the very beginning of the nascent world, the mother of all the living, Eve, was produced from the rib of the sleeping man (Gen.
ii, 22), shows the mother of believers, the Church, sprung from the side of Christ dying on the cross: as in the act of the awakening Adam there is a figure of the Lord rising from death. Whence the Apostle says, The first man was made into a living soul; the second man into a quickening spirit (1 Cor. xv, 45). But Noah, who both in the work of the ark and in his very name signifies the rest of God in the saints (Gen. ix), represents the figure of our Redeemer chiefly in this, that being a husbandman, he planted a vineyard, and being made drunk with the cup of wine, was stripped naked in his tent. Which thing regards Him properly, who was made so drunk with the cup of the passion, that He was stripped of the very covering of His body for a time;