He is brought forward at the command of the elders and chiefs of the Jews; the light is surrounded by darkness, and he raises the torch of his answer for the miracle of the Saviour. He is questioned and he answers; he is surrounded and he is not shut in; he is harried and he is not entrapped. 'Who,' they say, 'opened your eyes?' (ibid., 10). 'Were you not the blind man sitting and begging by the way?' 'I was begging by the way, before the Way passed by. My eyes have been opened, because He passes by who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I, I am he; I do not conceal my blindness, that I may confess the freely given medicine. I was cured in a singular place; I bear witness under the light of heaven that it is Christ who made me see. Tell us,' they say, 'the manner of your physician.' 'I tell it, I do not blush.'
'It is a new Gospel to enlighten the blind. I tell it, I tell it—would that you too might catch the love of Him, you who ask the manner of the physician! He made clay mixed with the spittle of His mouth, He smeared my eyes, He sent me to the pool. What I have obtained, my eyes bear witness.' 'What do you say? It is a new thing, you are lying; never, never do we know that the eyes of a blind man were opened from mud.' 'Truly you say it, because you do not know what you have not seen. I know it, I who see, who have believed, felt, and seen.' There was a great contest, because a great light had come. Some said, 'It is not he.' Others said, 'It is he.' All spoke the truth, and it was he, and it was not he. If you regard the man, it was he; if you consider the eyes, it was not he. If you regard the mirror, it was he;
If you behold the light in a mirror, it was not that very thing itself; for his Physician was in the beginning the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 'Your testimony is not enough for us,' they say, 'nor is that image itself yours.' 'It is not that image itself, I know; that is my image. But He came to me who made me after His own image and likeness.' 'You are lying; you are not the same man.' 'I am not the same, because I have been changed.' They order the parents to be brought, so that they might become witnesses against their own son. The parents are brought forward, and the testimonies mount up, and the accusers blush. O what malice! They gather the testimonies against themselves, so that a full victory might be won concerning the blind man. They come, they stand in the midst of the elders, and they question: 'Is this your son, who used to sit blind and begging by the way?' And they answered:
'He is the one; we know our son. And though we should deny it, our natural affection would accuse us; but we see his eyes open, and we ourselves marvel: our own womb brought forth a blind child. Yet we do not know who has made him, once blind, now enlightened. He is indeed our son, but we would justly be compelled to speak on behalf of an infant, if he himself could not speak for himself. But this one has long been able to speak, only now he sees: we knew him blind from birth, we heard him speaking long ago, we see him seeing only now. Question him yourself, that you may be instructed. Why do you slander us? He is of age, let him speak for himself' (John 9:21). For he had been so fashioned that he was not of tender age, but of lawful years, so that the triumph of his testimony might come forth complete. He returns to the struggle and the combat, until he should behold his own Crowner.
'Tell us,' they say. 'What shall I say to you? I have already told you. What do you wish to hear again? Do you also wish to become his disciples?' And they said: 'Be you his disciple' (John 9:27-28). 'O great injustice! What you accuse me of by way of longing, you rebuke me for without cause; yet you do not separate me from the light.' 'But we,' they say, 'are disciples of Moses.' And he: 'Both Moses have I heard, and the prophets have I heard. Since the world began it was never heard that any man opened the eyes of one born blind' (John 9:32). O great defender! He defends before he yet believes; amid the mists stands a single drop of moisture, and it takes its triumph from the living fountain. They were angry, and cast him out. Blessed is he who goes forth from the synagogue of the malicious;
an army of angels leads him out as victor departing from the arena. He fought, he defended, he conquered, and he departed without a crown, because it was fitting that he be crowned by the Lord. The Lord meets him, the Crowner of the innocent, the Enlightener of the blind, and wipes the sweat from his brow. He who had healed with clay now consoles with a word. 'What,' says the Lord, 'O you my mirror? You see outwardly; do you think you see inwardly? You see me in that wherein I appear to you; do you think you see in me that wherein I do not appear to you? You behold that I am man; do you think you behold that I am the Word made flesh? Do you believe in the Son of God?' 'Lord, who is he, that I may believe in him?' (John 9:36-37). 'I behold you, my Physician; I hear a strange word: Who is he, that I may believe in him? I,' he says, 'am he, who speak with you.'
And he said, 'Lord, I believe. I have perceived your majesty, and I have received my brightness, which by nature I had less. I have heard your voice, I acknowledge your glory. I believe, I believe, I believe, Lord.' And falling down he worshipped him (John 9:38). He worshipped what he saw, he believed what he perceived. The enlightened man worshipped the light, giving thanks to the Lord. He it was who said with the prophet, 'With you, O Lord, is the fountain of life, and in your light shall we see light' (Ps. 35:10). SERMON XVIII. Concerning Elisha, where he multiplied the widow's oil. Since the Lord has come who humbles the slanderer, let not the Church fear the moneylender, for He has restored the woman to safety.
O great mystery of the oil that comes to aid, O sacrament by which debt is discharged, life is set in order, and the assurance of the coming Judge is confirmed! O great mystery that is enclosed in the horn! Whence priests are anointed, thence greedy creditors are conquered. Whence the prophets were anointed, thence the mother with her sons need not fear the moneylender. Whence priests were anointed, thence a greater priest is made together with the sweet church of the sons. And as from many things one ointment is compounded, so this mystery made the brethren to dwell in one place together with their mother. O grace of the oil, whereby the weeping mother is succoured, and the violence is taken away from the usurer! O compounding by which the cure is wrought! Thence wounds anointed are cherished:
thence proud hearts grow gentle, so that necks soothed by the oil of chrism take on a meek yoke. Who would not attend to the sacrament of the oil, whereby a woman gains the freedom of her offspring? For it makes all men see, since without oil a lamp cannot shine. And so in the sacrament of the oil is the grace of the Holy Spirit, the fatness of illumination, the chaste succession that follows the night, which drives back the approach of darkness. For amid darkness was this widow. A mother bereft of her husband, weighed down with debt, and bound under a twofold yoke; through her weariness she had lost the sight of the light. She was suffering darkness from the compact of the cruel usurers. Violence without, misery within. Mercy is sought, and there is none to grant it, save the prophet.
The distressed woman appeals to Elisha. 'Help me, my lord, servant of God!' The cause is inquired into and laid open, and the tears are not held back. 'You know, my lord, your servant, my husband, that he feared God' (2 Kings 4:1). 'He has died, with the debt still standing, which he himself could not pay. I am compelled to discharge it. All my riches are my two sons, the groanings of my womb. The moneylenders await nothing else than to make my sons, created for heavenly freedom, subjected to their lust. It was not silver they lacked, which is plain, for even if there were silver, the impious moneylenders would have hastened for nothing but the enslaving of my offspring. Them they wish to carry off, whom God has deigned to grant to me.'
'Can they discharge the father's debt? Shall not the soul that sins, it alone, be punished? They do not desire a maidservant, but they lay claim to my very own flesh to be enslaved. Why did I bring them forth? Why did I bear them with groaning? Why were the gates of my womb opened, and I poured forth into the light those whom I now see in another's power? They seek after them, they despise me, and in the house of the moneylenders what comfort will my sons be able to have? There will be no mother to cherish them when they are feverish, no mother to console them when they languish. Weeping they will weep, and there will be none to console them. I offer them to your sight, blessed prophet; make them servants to their Lord. If you relieve my debt, let not the profane moneylenders carry them off, but let angelic powers nourish them.' And the prophet:
'Cease to mourn,' he says; 'render me an account of your stores. What have you in the house?' (2 Kings 4:2). And she: 'It is shameful to say, my lord, what I have: from that very thing I wretchedly suffer violence. I have nothing but a little oil in a vessel.' And the prophet: 'Woman, it is no small thing that you have. It will conquer the darkness of the moneylenders, and win for you the light of the angels. Concerning the oil I can counsel you, for no one can attain to God without oil.' See, brethren, whither does the prophet direct the weeping mother? To the anointing of chrism, that is, to the most rich mercy of Christ. John cries out: 'I am not the Christ. Attend and see: Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world' (John 1:20, 29). Isaiah cries out:
'Behold our Lord himself shall come, and shall save us' (Isa. 35:4). David cries out to the weeping mother: 'If you wish to be free of the violence of the moneylenders, take the holy oil, that your sons may be able to dwell with you as brethren in one place' (Ps. 132:1). 'And what shall I do,' she says, 'with the little oil that has remained in the small vessel of the Church coming from both peoples?' This is the person of one who worships, and truly little oil had remained to Israel in the Jewish vessel. Now the prophet was drawing near to the end, hoping for the Lord the Saviour, who was in the little remnant of oil. For 'unless the Lord had left us a seed, we should have been as Sodom' (Isa. 1:9). 'Take counsel,' he says, 'woman, concerning that little vessel. Do not utterly despair.'
'Take to yourself many new vessels. Enter, you and your sons, the private chamber in silence, and shut your door. Enter into your storerooms; hide yourself a little while, until the fury of the moneylenders passes by.' So the woman did as the prophet commanded. The woman took new vessels: the Church took from all the neighboring nations of men her members, from the Lord's clay-work. Within enter the mother and the sons. Within that chamber, what is done? There I see the sacrament of Passover: it is the Holy of Holies. There the horn flourishes, there the moneylender withers. It is Passover, with mother and sons, with Church and peoples.
I see the fountain, I consider the chrism, I adore Christ. Time and again the woman took the vessels from her ministering sons, and poured, and setting another to it poured again, and the oil did not cease. Is it not made plain what is being done, when the new vessels are filled? The woman became rich and secure. She who had poured out tears gives thanks. 'Go,' he says, 'sell and pay the debt, and of the rest live, you and your sons.' Of the rest life is to be lived. By the grace of Christ life is to be carried on: for Christ came in humility, and is sufficient for the Church, for the oil never grows dark. O sacrament of the oil! Thence the wise virgins are proved: thence mothers too are made secure. Thence virgins merit to enter the fatherland:
thence the mother merits to render service to the Lord, and to rejoice in perpetual freedom with her sons. SERMON XIX A. Again concerning Elisha. Sweetly has the freedom recited sounded in our ears, while bitter captivity rages against us. Just as when, amid grievous stenches, sweet odors are kindled, and in the house of the sick the coming of the physician is announced: so the groaning of the fettered has found rest, because the resurrection of the dead has been recited. Hence David cries out, fittingly with the sentence of divine vengeance: 'Avenge, O Lord, the blood of your servants which has been shed; let the groaning of the fettered come in before you' (Ps. 78:10-11).
Here the pitiable mother, enclosing the funeral, shutting out death, with the mountains as witness, heaps up her mourning before Elisha, and asks back her son now dead, whom she had not hoped to have conceived so suddenly. Hence the loving sisters plead their sent embassy. 'Lord,' they say, 'behold, Lazarus, whom you love, is sick.' Between the sisters and the mother you have no way, O death, of fulfilling the will of your cruelty. Your dire condition is emptied out, whether upon the bed, or, what is greater, in the tomb: for a brotherly and a motherly embassy succeeded. In vain did you pour out your venom; it was brought to nothing through the mercy of the tears. You hasten to bend your sting: they shall crush it, the servant from the mountain, the Lord from the cross.
The servant by appointing, the Lord by foreknowing. The servant descending to the house, the Lord coming to the tomb. Everywhere your dire condition is emptied out, whether upon the bed, or, what is greater, in the tomb. But we have partaken of the joy of Lazarus raised, together with the piety of the sisters. Let us now come to the maternal mourning, and to the only son to be raised up. That woman who received the prophet concerning her dead son had received him beforehand with worthy hospitality (alternatively: with recognized dignity). The grade of hospitality was the merit of the resurrection. For since the prophet frequently (alt.: always) had his goings-out and comings-in through them, and had been content with a common dwelling among them, being for them a devout guest and a better advocate:
the woman took counsel, pondering in her heart, wrestling with her conscience, preparing her mind along with the lodging, and entreating her husband: 'Behold,' she said, 'the man of God frequently comes to us, and greatly surpasses us. He is righteous, we are sinners. He is heavenly, we are earthly. He is singular in hope, we are joined without fruit. It is hard that he should have walls of a dwelling in common with us, with whom we have no like manners. Let us make for him, my husband, a chamber in the upper parts, where coming he may turn aside as to his own lodging. Our dwelling ought to be lower, because lower also are our merits. The martyrs lie beneath the altar of God. Ought we not to remain (ms.: to lie) beneath the dwelling of the man of God?'
The holy counsel pleased them in common, and after the likeness of bees they began to build a lodging for receiving him. That woman, loving good hospitality, did not disdain to pour water or to carry timbers (ms.: wood). For sweet was the labor which the love of charity had prompted. She plans with her thoughts, she builds with her labors. She prepares the house with adornments. She sets out a table, a chair, a bed, and a candlestick, and made ready a lodging worthy of him who was to come. 'Where are you,' she says, 'servant of my Lord? A house prepared with your adornments awaits you, that the sweet affection of your hosts may rejoice.' He is received, cherished, honored, and he ponders how to return the kindness. 'Say,' he says, 'Gehazi;
say, boy, call this Shunammite, that we may render her some recompense, who has shown us such great charity.' The boy comes, calls the woman. And the prophet: 'Say, woman, what perhaps is your need of any necessity, that you may be able to receive the fruit of your piety? Ought not our embassy to work on your behalf before the king or the princes, lest any importunate disquiet come to you?' And the woman: 'There is nothing, my lord, that is importunate to me. I dwell in the midst of my own people; far from us is public strife, since you deign to be our guest. We lay upon you no injurious labor: we ask of you before the Lord one prayer only, a delicate one.' And the boy: 'My lord,'
he says, 'indeed she has no son, and her husband is now old.' And the prophet: 'By this day a year hence you shall see yourself granted a son.' She, full of longing, was afraid in her senses out of modesty, trembled for joy, and yet received the fruit. A son is born to her, late conceived, soon to die. For being scorched by the heat of the summer sun, sighing upon his mother's knees, he closed his eyes in death. And she patiently laid her dead son upon the bed of the man of God, and begs her husband to hasten more swiftly to the man of God, and conceals the necessity, lest out of one hope she should make a despairing grief. 'I know,' she said, 'that fathers grieve more heavily over the death of their sons, and sometimes with bitter lips blaspheme the Lord in their grief.'
'It is better that I be silent, and not provoke my husband into the sin of sorrow, lest, losing my son, I should begin to lose my husband too.' Having disposed things in silence, she climbed the upper chamber, and bade farewell to her son with tears. 'My son, late-born and full of grief, before you I learned to lament rather than to nurture. Grant pardon; thus I go forth, that I may quickly come to you. I leave you alone, going alone, but not returning alone to you, nor finding you alone without the Lord. Quickly I come, I will not delay, though I make myself an object of pitiable envy to my guest. Why should I make you a place of burial, not knowing what may please my Lord? Small is your body; if there be no effect, in a moment a place of burial will be prepared for you. How much labor is there in a pit where the limbs are small?'
'Yet I will not pass by my guest, lest he impute to me the sin of silence.' She goes the mournful way, to return with mercy. Swift is the course that grief urges on: swift will be the way, that the medicine too may be swift. But when she came to the mountain, from afar she began to show her tearful face, and to attest her maternal grief. 'Did I ask for a son, Lord? Was an importunate suggestion made to you by me? Yours was the promise, yours through God the fulfillment; let the healing too be yours. My womb had fasted, and fasted too was my mourning. Through you I learned to lament, through you may I merit also to rejoice.' Here the prophet hastens, with the mother going before, and marvels within himself, and ponders. 'Why has the Lord God hidden it from me? He reveals all things to me,'
'the Holy Spirit from heaven: and has he kept silent from me about my little guest?' He sends the boy as a forerunner, to touch the dead child with his staff, that he might have lived. And she: 'The Lord lives, and your soul lives, if I forsake you. Restore what you have given: for that I should have him, you promised not through a disciple. As testimony I have your bed, where I laid my dead son, if you should despise my grief. Come with me, either raise the dead, or at least commend the departed.' But when the prophet descended from the heights to higher things, from the mountain to the house, from the desert to silence, he groaned to the Lord, who is Judge of the living and the dead. 'Lord,' he said, 'look upon me, and upon this my host:
'let me not be accused in your mercy, that you may be praised in your medicine.' He climbed upon the bed, straitened by the size of the limbs. He breathed upon the one lying there seven times, and gave him back to his mother living. What joy in the house? How humble and gentle the medicine ought to have been! He who would heal one who labors, let him take on humility. From the proud there is no fruit, for God humbles the exalted. The prophet was humbled, and gave the child back his life. So too our Saviour Jesus Christ, making a shortened word upon the earth, was humbled, made a worm and no man, the reproach of men, He who is the Lord of angels; He rose again, ascended into heaven, and all the army of angels rejoiced. Amen. SERMON XX. Concerning Elijah and Elisha.
The Jordan opens to those who presume, because the fountain of life opens to those who believe. It is good and delightful to see the channel of the Jordan divided by the receding of the waves, and by the company of the harts, when the thirsty flocks pass over, which longed even as the hart for the fountains of waters. It is familiar for the Jordan to be divided by a rod, and to be parted by a sheepskin cloak. Joshua the son of Nun divided it (Josh. 3:15) when the ark of the covenant shone forth; Elijah divided it while the goatskin filled men with awe. Joshua the son of Nun divided it with the angel standing with a sword; Elijah divided it (2 Kings 2:8), a fiery chariot meeting him with great triumph. He passed through the water, he came to the flame. He knows that neither did the water cleanse, nor the fire scorch; the wave receded, the flame carried him.
There baptism with victory: here fiery triumph with a crown. So that he might say, singing amid the winds and the upper airs: 'We have passed through fire and water, and you have brought us out into refreshment' (Ps. 65:12). For after water and fire he was borne to paradise. At the bank of the Jordan stood Elijah with the disciple of his love, and Elisha, master and disciple, the Lord Christ and the people acquired. For as Christ passed through the channel of the Jordan, all the people of the candidates began to pass over the floods of waters.
The Lord went up from the Jordan, and went out to the fiery temptation, the flaming contest in the desert, that from his own conquering victory he might make delightful the whole burning world, and refresh with the verdant triumphs of temptations the world that was aflame. A fiery and cloud-bearing four-horse chariot met him, while the chariots of God descend, of rejoicing angels, and they minister to the conquering Lord after his triumph: as the evangelist Matthew testifies (Matt. 4:11). The candidates follow the Lord, passing through the midst of the Jordan. And it is said to them, when the flame meets them on the bank, that is, the fiery combat, that from the flames a delightful crown may flourish.
'My son,' it says, 'you who draw near to the service of God, stand in righteousness and fear, and prepare your soul for temptation' (Sir. 2:1). But let us return to Elijah the triumpher, and Elisha his most beloved follower: the one the testator, the other the heir. The heir requests a testament, the other dictates it; the pen was a tongue, not a reed; the inkhorn, not the blackness of smoke, but the whiteness of baptism. What does the testator-master say, of his own free will? 'Ask of me something before I am taken from you.' And he: 'Let the spirit that is in you be doubled in me.' And the master: 'A hard thing is what you have asked; but amid the waters what is asked is not denied' (2 Kings 2:9). What do they not receive, when they pass through the fountains of waters, that they may be able to enter the kingdom of heaven?
So then, what did Elijah answer his greedy disciple, without the vice of greed? For the greedy man in the kingdom of God is not reproved, but praised. 'If,' he says, 'you shall see me taken up from you, it shall be so for you.' The one promises, the other follows. The master strikes the wave of the Jordan with the skin; the disciple does not desert the living charity of his master. The garment of the prophet who is carried up in the fire is not silk with the moth, but a dead skin with a new life. For he wore a skin, because he mortified his members upon the earth. It was the skin of a dead goat, which Christ wore, who came in the likeness of the flesh of sin (Rom. 8:3). The petitioner and the promiser pass through, the offerer and the presumer. The wave was poured back, and the meeting four-horse chariot appeared with flame.
The air is troubled, the winds are stirred, the storms are stilled, the demons flee, the princes of darkness are scattered. The disciple is held in suspense, and the master is lifted up. O wondrous conveyance, where there are not Cappadocian horses, but burning horses! A chariot of fire, not of wood. A four-horse chariot of no light worth will not be clothed with a mass of silver, but with a golden curtain of flame. I ask, what kind of horses were they? They seemed to be living creatures, but the fire could not be touched. Delightful in chastity was he who sat there. Where did the wheels run? Where the hoof of the horses struck. What sort of field? Air and wind: where the whirling wheels flashed and sounded with a spiritual rotation. The air was his field, the fire his ascent, his fatherland paradise. But as much as it delights the master
to receive the one ascending, so much does it delight the disciple to behold him hanging behind his master in tearful expectation. He cried out, he called: 'Father, Father, charioteer of Israel!' (2 Kings 2:12). And he cast down the skin, that he might console the one who loved. He received a great treasure of inheritance, the skin of the mightiest testator. In that skin he obtained the power that he himself might divide the Jordan, cut through the torrent, cleanse the leper, raise up two dead men, free the widow from the debt of usury, and rescue the orphans from the chains of servitude. These were the riches of the skin, of which the testator stripped himself; and the heir was clothed.
For Christ the Lord also, whose prophet Elijah was, stripped himself of the flesh through a living death, and the whole world was clothed with the newness of grace through the Jordan. SERMON XXI. Concerning the sons of Zebedee. Blessed be the Lord who alone does wondrous things, who sits upon the throne of his kingdom, who deigned to visit the abysses of our sin, that he might both snatch us from the throne of death and place us with himself and in himself at the right hand of the Father. But who could reach the One seated, unless we should see the One passing by, whom Stephen saw standing? This blessed David begged, as we have sung in the present psalm, and afterward, singing with concordant voice, we responded: 'You who sit upon the cherubim, appear before Ephraim, and Benjamin, and Manasseh' (Ps. 79:2).
This the blessed mother of the sons of Zebedee had heard and had learned by reading, and she understood the Lord sitting upon the cherubim, that he possesses great dignity. She approaches to be enlightened, she worships as a handmaid. She asks not for earthly gifts, but for heavenly wishes. For he is Lord of the heavens, from whom she demands a heavenly desire. 'Say,' she says, 'that these two sons of mine may sit, one at your right hand and the other at your left hand in your kingdom' (Matt. 20:21). 'Say,' she says, 'in your word: and the effect fulfills my wish. You said, and heaven was made: say, and thrones shall be prepared for my sons, the brightness of thrones. O woman by condition! But because you are a mother by piety, you have surpassed human dignity.'
Christ was preaching from the cross, and she was acknowledging his empire. He was saying, 'Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be delivered up to be crucified' (Matt. 20:18). And she, the intercessor, had approached on behalf of her sweet sons. O blessed mother of holy sons! You have gone before the merit of the blessed, and surpassed the honor of the angels. Is it not enough for you that I made your sons lofty preachers, whom you had reared as needy fishermen? After the nets, heaven; after the hook, the Gospel; after the little boat, do you ask for a throne? Have you not heard in your fathers' scrolls what the angel of glory said? Raphael said: 'I am one of the seven angels who stand and converse before the glory of the most high God' (Tob. 12:15).