But God is mighty, who may exalt you from the gates of death, that you may declare all his praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion. But the gates of the Church are the gates of chastity, the gates of righteousness, which the righteous man is accustomed to enter, saying: Open to me the gates of righteousness, and having entered into them I will confess to the Lord. But just as the gate of death is the gate of hell, so also the gate of God's righteousness is a gate; for this is the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall enter through it. And therefore flee the obstinacy of transgressions, lest the gates of hell be able to prevail against you; for if sin has gained dominion in you, the gate of death has prevailed. Flee therefore strifes, dissensions, clamors, and the tumults of discord, lest, entering through the gates of death, you fall into ruin.
For the Lord Jesus Christ was at first unwilling to be proclaimed, lest any clamor should arise. He charges his disciples that they should tell this to no one — that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the chief priests and elders and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day rise again. And perhaps he added this because the Lord knew that even the disciples would with difficulty believe the passion and the resurrection. And therefore he chose rather to be himself the asserter of his passion and resurrection, so that faith might arise from the fact, and not discord from hearsay. Christ therefore did not wish to glory, but chose rather to seem ignoble, that he might undergo the passion: and do you, who were born ignoble, glory? You must walk by the same way by which Christ walked.
This is the acknowledgment of him, this is the imitation of him, through ignobility and a good report, that you may glory in the cross, just as he gloried. So Paul walked, and therefore he glories, saying: But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. But let us see why, according to Matthew, we find the disciples admonished that they should tell no one that he is the Christ, while here it is written that they were charged that they should tell this to no one — that he would suffer many things and rise again. You see that in the one name of Christ are all things. For he himself is the Christ who was born of the virgin, he himself is the one who did wonders among the people, he himself who died for our sins and rose from the dead.
If you withdraw one of these, you have withdrawn your salvation. For even the heretics seem to have Christ for themselves; for no one denies the name of Christ, but he denies Christ who does not confess all the things that are Christ's. For many reasons, therefore, he bids the disciples be silent: that he may deceive the prince of the world, that he may turn aside boasting, that he may teach humility, and at the same time lest the still untrained and imperfect disciples be overwhelmed by the masses of the greatest preaching. Now let us consider for what cause he bids even the unclean spirits be silent. But Scripture has opened this also to us, because God said to the sinner: Why do you declare my righteousnesses? Lest anyone, while he hears the one preaching, should follow the one erring;
for a wicked master is the devil, who often mingles false things with true, so that under the appearance of truth he may cloak the testimony of fraud. Let us also consider whether he here first commanded the disciples that they should tell no one that he was the Christ, or whether he had commanded it even before, when he appointed the twelve apostles, charging them: Go not into the ways of the Gentiles, and into the cities of the Samaritans enter not; but go rather to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel. Cure the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons; and: Learn who in it is worthy, and there remain. And so not even here does it seem to have been commanded that they should preach Christ, the Son of God.
The order of the discussion, therefore, is the order of the treatise; and therefore we too, when some of the Gentiles are called to the Church, ought to form the sequence of precepts in such a way that we first teach that there is one God, the Author of the world and of all things, in whom we live and are and move, and whose offspring we are, so that he is to be loved by us not only on account of the gifts of light and life, but also on account of a certain kinship of race; then let us destroy that opinion which is held concerning idols, that the matter of gold or silver or wood cannot have divine power in itself.
When you have persuaded them that there is one God, then by his testimony you will build up that salvation has been given to us through Christ, beginning from those things which he did in the body, and describing them as divine, so that he may appear to have been more than a man — death conquered by the power of one, the dead one raised up from the lower regions; for faith grows little by little, so that, when he appears to have been above man, he may be believed to be God. For unless you prove that he could not do those things without divine power, how can you prove that there was divine power in him? But perhaps too little authority and faith may be granted to us: read the discourse of the apostle delivered before the Athenians, who, if from the first he had wished to destroy the ceremonies of idols, the ears of the Gentiles would have rejected his discourse.
From the one God, therefore, the Worker of the world, he begins, saying: God who made the world and all the things that are in it. They could not deny that there is one Worker of the world, one God, one Creator of all. He added to this, that the Lord of heaven and earth does not deign to dwell in things made by hands; then, that within the empty matter of gold and silver it is in no way likely that the power of divinity is enclosed by the craft of man — teaching that the remedy of error is the zeal of repenting. Then he came to Christ, yet he chose to name him a man rather than God, saying: In the man by whom he has defined faith for all, raising him up from the lower regions. For he who treats of these things ought to consider the persons of his hearers, lest he be mocked before he is heard.
For when would the Athenians have believed that the Word was made flesh and that a virgin conceived of the Spirit, when they mocked because they had heard of the resurrection of the dead? Yet both Dionysius the Areopagite believed, and others believed in the man, that they might believe in God. What does it matter in what order each one believes? Perfect things are not sought in the beginnings, but from the beginnings one arrives at those things which are perfect. Therefore he instructed the Athenians by such a precept, and such an order is to be observed by us among the Gentiles.
But when the apostles addressed the Jews, they said that he was the very Christ who had been promised to us by the prophetic oracles, whom they did not at first name by their own authority as the Son of God, but as a man approved, a just man, a man raised from the dead, that man of whom it was said in the prophets: You are my Son, this day I have begotten you. So therefore do you also, for those things which are believed with difficulty, take to yourself the authority of the divine word, and designate his promised coming by the voice of the prophets, and teach the resurrection too, long before known by the testimonies of the Scriptures — not common and shared with the rest, so that in the very assertion of the raised body you may acquire the testimony of eternal divinity.
For when you have proved that the bodies of all others underwent corruption after death, you confirm that this one, of whom it is said, 'You shall not let your Holy One see corruption,' was exempt from human frailty; you prove that he surpassed the deserts of the human condition, and that he is to be reckoned with God rather than with men. But if a catechumen, advancing toward the sacraments of the faithful, must be instructed, it must be said that there is one God, from whom are all things, and one Jesus Christ, through whom are all things; that they are not to be called two Lords; that the Father is perfect and the Son also perfect, yet that the Father and the Son are of one substance; that he is the eternal Word of God, not that which is uttered, but that which works, begotten of the Father, not produced by a voice.
The apostles are therefore forbidden to preach him as the Son of God, that they might afterward preach him crucified. This is the glory of faith, if you truly understand the cross of Christ. Other crosses profit me nothing; the cross of Christ alone is useful to me, and truly useful, through which the world is crucified to me, and I to the world. If the world is crucified to me, I know that it is dead: I do not love it; I know that it passes away: I do not covet it; I know that corruption will consume this world: I shun it as something foul, I beware of it as a plague, I forsake it as a thing that will do harm. But not at once can some men believe through the cross that salvation has been poured back upon the world. Establish, then, by the history of the Greeks that this was possible.
For if it be recalled to memory that the histories of the Greeks affirm that legions and great peoples were often delivered by the offering up of certain men's deaths; if they remember that an emperor's daughter was summoned to sacrifice in order that the armies of the Greeks might be conveyed across; if we consider that saying of ours, that the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkled ash of a heifer sanctifies the defiled for the cleansing of the flesh, as is written to the Hebrews; if a pestilence of regions, contracted by certain men's sins, is affirmed to have been dissolved by the death of some one man—a thing that either prevailed by reason or grew strong by disposition, so that men might the more readily believe in the Lord's cross—it will be easy that those who cannot deny their own should confirm what is ours.
But since no man could be so great as to take away the sins of the whole world—neither Enoch, nor Abraham, nor Isaac, who, although he offered himself to death, was nevertheless preserved, because he could not abolish all sins (for what man so great, in whom the sins of all should die?)—therefore not one of the common people, not one of the multitude, but the Son of God was chosen by God the Father, who, being above all, could offer himself for all. It behooved him to die, that, being stronger than death, he might set others free, being made among the dead free without aid—free, that is, without the help of man or of any creature, free from death, and rightly free, who repelled the bondage of lusts and knew not the chains of death. BOOK SEVEN.
But I say to you truly: there are some standing here who shall not taste death until they see the kingdom of God. Always the Lord, just as he rouses us toward the future rewards of the virtues and teaches that contempt of worldly things is profitable, so also he sustains the weakness of the human mind by a remuneration of present things. For it is hard to take up the cross and to offer the soul to dangers and the body to death, to deny what you are when you wish to be what you are not; and rarely does even lofty virtue exchange the present for the future. For it seems difficult to men that they should buy hope with dangers, and purchase the gain of an age to come at the loss of present things.
Therefore the good and moral Master, lest anyone be broken by despair or by weariness—since the sweet enticement of life soothes even a steadfast disposition—promises the faithful continual successes in living; for consolations grow cold under the fear of death, and the great love of life scarcely balances the allurements of hope against the dread of the salvation it seeks. You have, then, nothing of which to complain, nothing for which to excuse yourself: the Judge of all has given both a reward to virtue and a remedy to weakness, so that weakness might be sustained by present things, and virtue by things to come. If you are strong, despise death; if you are weak, flee it. But no one can flee death unless he follow life. Your life is Christ; he himself is the life which knows not how to die.
And so, if we wish not to fear death, let us stand where Christ is, that he may say of us also: 'Truly there are some standing here who shall not taste death.' It is not enough to stand, unless one stand where Christ is; for they alone cannot taste death who are able to stand with Christ. In which it is permitted, from the very quality of the word, to weigh that they will not have even a slight sense of death who shall be seen to have merited the fellowship of Christ. Surely let the death of the body be tasted only by sipping, but let the life of the soul be held by possessing. But what is it to taste death? Lest perhaps, just as bread is life, so also bread should be death? For there are those who eat the bread of sorrow; there are also the peoples of the Ethiopians, who took a dragon for food. Far be it from us to devour the venom of the dragon.
For we have the true bread, that bread which came down from heaven. He eats that bread who keeps the things that are written. There are therefore those who do not taste death until they see the kingdom of God. There are also those who do not see death, as it is written: 'What man is he that shall live and not see death?' But what man is there who does not die, since there can be no resurrection except of one who has died? Although we have received no death of the body concerning Enoch and Elijah, and the Lord said concerning John the Evangelist, 'If I will that he remain until I come'—yet since we do not think this was uttered of John alone, but is a general precept concerning many, here it is not the death of the body, but of the soul, that is denied.
For there are those who, though dead, live, since there are those who, though living, are dead—as that woman who, living, was dead, as it is written: 'Let death come upon them, and let them go down into hell alive.' If therefore anyone descends into hell alive—for by the sin of death he descends into hell as his dwelling—there are assuredly those for whom, even in the death of the body, the order of living is not interrupted, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom we know to live by the authority of the divine sentence; for since he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he is surely not the God of the dead, but of the living. And so he speaks not of one, but of many.
For neither is Peter dead, against whom, according to the Lord's sentence, the gate of hell could not prevail; nor are James and John dead, the sons of thunder, for whom, having been taken up for the use of heavenly glory, earthly things do not prevail but lie beneath. Be you also therefore a Peter, devout, faithful, peaceable, that you may open the gates of the church and escape the gates of death. Be a son of thunder. You say: How can I be a son of thunder? You can be, if you recline not on the earth but on the breast of Christ. You can be a son of thunder, if earthly things do not move you, but you rather shake those things which are earthly by the power of your mind. Let the earth tremble at you, not seize you; let the flesh fear the power of your mind and, shaken, be made subject.
You will be a son of thunder, if you are a son of the church. Let Christ say to you also from the gibbet of the cross: 'Behold your mother,' and let him say to the church: 'Behold your son'; for then you begin to be a son of the church, when you behold Christ victorious on the cross. For he who thinks the cross a scandal is a Jew, he is not a son of the church; he who thinks the cross folly is a Greek. But he is a son of the church who thinks the cross a triumph, if he recognizes the voice of the triumphant Christ. Therefore, that you may know that Peter, John, and James did not taste death, they merited to see the glory of the resurrection; for these three alone, after about these words, he took up in eight days and led into the mountain. What is it that he says: 'in eight days after these words'?
Perhaps because he who hears the words of Christ and believes shall, at the time of the resurrection, see the glory of Christ? For the resurrection took place on the eighth day, whence also very many psalms are inscribed 'for the eighth.' Or perhaps that he might show us that he had said that he who, for the sake of God's word, shall have lost his soul, shall save it—since he restores his promises in the resurrection. But Matthew and Mark recorded that these were taken up after six days.
Of which we might say: after six thousand years—for a thousand years in the sight of God are as one day—yet more than six thousand years are reckoned, and we prefer to understand the six days through the symbol, namely that in six days the works of the world were created, that through time we may understand the works, and through the works the world. And therefore, the times of the world being fulfilled, the future resurrection is shown; or because he who shall have ascended above the world and transcended the moments of this age, set as it were on high, shall await the eternal fruit of the future resurrection. Let us therefore transcend the works of the world, that we may be able to see God face to face. Ascend the mountain, you who bring good tidings to Zion.
If he ascends the mountain who brings good tidings to Zion, how much more he who brings good tidings of Christ, and of Christ rising again in glory? For perhaps many may see him in the body; for many of us have known Christ according to the flesh, but now we no longer know him so. Many of us have known him, because many have seen him—we saw him, and he had no form nor comeliness—but three only, and three chosen, are led to the mountain. I would have thought that in the three was mystically comprehended the human race, since from the three sons of Noah the whole human race flowed down, were it not that I see them chosen. Or perhaps because those alone of all shall merit to attain the grace of the resurrection who shall have confessed Christ, since the impious do not rise to judgment, but are punished as though judgment had already been held.
Three therefore are chosen to ascend the mountain, because two also are chosen to be seen with the Lord. On both sides a sacred number. And this perhaps for this reason, because no one can see the glory of the resurrection except him who shall have preserved the whole mystery of the Trinity with the uncorrupted sincerity of faith. Peter ascends, who received the keys of the kingdom of heaven; John, to whom the mother is committed; James, who first mounted the priestly throne. There appear Moses and Elijah, that is, the Law and the prophet with the Word; for neither can the Law be without the Word, nor is he a prophet save one who prophesied concerning the Son of God.
And those sons of thunder beheld Moses also and Elijah in bodily glory; but we too daily see Moses with the Son of God; for we see the Law in the Gospel, when we read: 'You shall love the Lord your God'; we see Elijah with the Word of God, when we read: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb.' Whence Luke well added that they spoke of his decease, which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem. For the mysteries teach you concerning his decease. And today Moses teaches, and today Elijah speaks, and today we can see Moses in greater glory. For who cannot, when even the people of the Jews could see him—nay, did see him? For he saw the face of Moses in glory, but received a veil; but he did not ascend the mountain, and therefore he erred.
He who saw Moses alone could not see the Word of God at the same time. Let us therefore unveil our face, that, beholding the glory of God with unveiled face, we may be transformed into the same image. Let us ascend the mountain, let us beseech the Word of God, that he may appear to us in his beauty and comeliness, and be strengthened, and go forth prosperously, and reign. For these too are mysteries, and are referred to a higher meaning; for indeed, according to your capacity.
According to your capacity the Word is either diminished or increased for you; and unless you ascend the summit of a higher prudence, wisdom does not appear to you, the knowledge of the mysteries does not appear to you, there does not appear to you how great is the glory, how great the beauty in the Word of God; but the Word of God appears as it were in a certain body, not having its own beauty nor comeliness, and appears as a man under stripes, who can bear our infirmities; it appears to you as a certain discourse born of man, wrapped in the coverings of letters, not shining with the power of the Spirit. But if, while you consider the man, you believe him to have been generated of a virgin, and faith gradually breathes in that he was born of the Spirit of God, you begin to ascend the mountain.
If you see him set upon the cross triumphing over death, not slain; if you see that the earth trembled, the sun withdrew, darkness was poured over the eyes of the faithless, the tombs were opened, the dead rose again, that it might be a sign that the Gentile people, who had been dead to God, rose again as if the sepulchres of its own body were unbarred, the light of the cross being poured in—if you see this mystery, you have ascended a lofty mountain, you discern another glory of the Word. His garments are partly below, partly above. And perhaps the garments of the Word are the discourses of the Scriptures and certain vestments of the understanding.
Divine, because just as he appeared to Peter and John and James in another form, and his garment shone white, so also to the eyes of your mind the meaning of the divine readings now grows white. Therefore the divine words become as snow, the garments of the Word exceeding white, such as a fuller upon earth cannot make. Let us seek this fuller, let us seek this snow. We read that Isaiah ascended to the fuller's field. Who is this fuller, unless perhaps he who is wont to wash away our offenses? At length he himself said: 'If your sins be as scarlet, I will whiten them as snow.' Who is this fuller, unless he who is wont to offer to the divine Sun the garments of our understanding, the garments of the virtues, our bodies, their stains washed away?
I have also heard—that, to refute them, we may take an example from things contrary—that the eloquence of two wise men was compared to snow and to bees. I have also found that David said: 'How sweet are your words to my throat, above honey and the honeycomb to my mouth!' and below: 'Your word, O Lord, is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my paths.' The word of God is light, the word of God is snow. The word of God is also above honey and the honeycomb, because the discourse that flowed from the divine mouth is sweeter than honey, and like clear snow the words fall in softer maxims. Truly this alone is a discourse to be compared to the snows, which, sent from heaven to the earth, made fruitful the hungry fields of our breasts. And this was not presumptuously usurped, but derived from the very sequence of the reading; God himself bears witness, saying:
Let my speech be looked for as the rain, and let my words descend as the dew, as the shower upon the grass, and as the snow upon the hay. Would, O Lord Jesus, that my mind might grow green with the moisture of your rain. Would that you might sprinkle my land with the whiteness of that snow, lest by the too-hasty heat of the burgeoning body the fields run riot, but rather that, pressed by the snowy warmth, the seeds of the heavenly word might bear fruit! When the snow falls, the birds of heaven have nowhere to dwell, and a richer-than-usual yield of wheat abounds. Peter saw this grace; they too who were with him saw it, although they had been heavy with sleep. For the incomprehensible splendor of the divinity presses upon the senses of our body.
For if the bodily keenness of beholding eyes cannot endure a ray of the sun directly opposite, how should the corruptible state of our members bear the glory of God? And so the bodily condition, purer and subtler, the accretion of vices being drained away, is formed in the resurrection. And perhaps for this reason they were heavy with sleep, that after repose they might see the form of the resurrection. And so, awaking, they saw his majesty; for no one save him who is awake sees the glory of Christ. Peter was delighted, and the grace of the resurrection enticed him whom the alluring things of this world could not capture. 'It is good,' he says, 'for us to be here'—hence also that other saying:
For to be dissolved and to be with Christ is much better—and, not content to have praised, but more outstanding not only in affection but also in the devotion of deeds, the tireless workman promises the service of a common compliance toward the building of three tabernacles. And although he knew not what he said, yet he promised the office, by which not ill-considered impudence, but a premature devotion, heaps up the fruits of piety. For that he was ignorant belonged to the human condition, that he promised belonged to devotion. But the human condition does not admit, in this corruptible, in this mortal body, of making a tabernacle for God. Whether in mind, whether in body, whether in some other place, forbear to seek what it is not lawful to know. If Peter knew not, how can you know?
If he knew not, who promised, and who knew not the bounds of the body through the greatness of his soul, how can we know, shut up by a certain sluggishness of mind within the enclosure of the flesh? At length so great a devotion pleased God. And amid these words a cloud was made and overshadowed them. This overshadowing is of the divine Spirit, which does not darken with the affections of men, but reveals hidden things. This was also known in another place, the angel saying: 'And the power of the Most High shall overshadow you.' Whose advance is shown by the voice of God heard, saying: 'This is my beloved Son, hear him,' that is: not Elijah the son, not Moses the son, but this is the Son, whom alone you see; for those had withdrawn when the Lord began to be designated.
You see that this faith—to know the Son of God—is perfect not only of those beginning, but even of the perfect, nay even of the heavenly. But since we have already said these things above, recognize that this cloud is not the kind formed by the misty moisture of smoking mountains, nor the pitchy gloom of condensed air, which veils the sky with the horror of darkness, but a bright cloud, which moistens us not with rainwaters and the flood of a dripping shower, but from which the minds of men, the voice of almighty God being sent forth, drip the dew of faith. And while the voice was made, Jesus was found alone. And so, whereas there were three, one was made. Three are seen in the beginning, one in the end; for by perfect faith they are one. At length the Lord prays the Father for this too, that we all may be one.
And not only are Moses and Elijah one in Christ, but we too are one body of Christ. Therefore they also are as it were received into the body of Christ, since we too shall be one in Christ Jesus, or perhaps because the Law and the prophets are from the Word, and the things that began from the Word end in the Word; for Christ is the end of the Law unto righteousness to everyone that believes. 'The foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven nests, where they may rest; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.' It does not seem to accord with reason that we should suppose that simple and faithful man, who is rejected by the Lord's regard, to be rejected, when he had promised the compliance of unwearied service; but the Lord seeks not the appearance of services, but the purity of affection. At length he says above:
'Whosoever shall receive this child in my name.' In which place the Lord teaches that simplicity ought to be without arrogance, charity without envy, devotion without wrath; for the mind of a child is to be received with the affection of one more advanced, because, while the child claims nothing for himself, he follows the form of virtue, and, if he knows not reason, he is ignorant of fault. Yet because to many it seems not virtue but weakness, this simplicity without reason, that you may receive the true simplicity you are admonished, that is, that you may follow up with diligence the gift of nature. And therefore he says: 'Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receives me. And he who receives me receives him who sent me.'