But if we are also commanded concerning our enemies, that if they hunger we should give them food, if they thirst we should give them drink, and by doing these things we heap coals upon their head, how much more concerning those who are not enemies and who are Christians, or holy Christians! Nor indeed is that which is said—'for doing these things you shall heap coals of fire upon his head'—to be taken in a bad sense, but in a good one. For when we bestow benefits upon our enemies, we overcome their malice with our goodness and soften their hardness and bend their angry mind to friendship, and so we heap coals upon their head, of which it is written:
'the sharp arrows of the mighty, with desolating coals,' so that, just as a coal taken by the seraphim from the altar purified the lips of the prophet, so also the sins of our enemies may be purged, that we may overcome evil with good, and bless those who curse us, and imitate the Father, who makes his sun to rise upon the just and the unjust. Therefore you also, since you have not a few sons, have very many; make yourself friends of the unrighteous mammon, who may receive you into eternal tabernacles. And beautifully he said 'of the unrighteous'; for all riches descend from unrighteousness, and unless one loses, another cannot find. Whence that common saying seems to me most true: 'A rich man is either unjust or the heir of an unjust man.'
When the doctor of the law had heard this and could not bear it, because he had many riches, the Lord, turning to his disciples, said: 'How hard it is for those who are rich to enter into the kingdom of heaven!' He did not say 'impossible,' but 'hard,' although he set an example of impossibility: 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.' But this is not so much hard as impossible; for it can never happen that a camel should pass through the eye of a needle. Shall a rich man then never be able to enter the kingdom of heaven? But the camel is twisted and bent and weighed down by a heavy burden;
and we too, when we enter upon crooked paths and forsake the straight way and are laden with the riches of the world or with the weight of sins, are not able to enter the kingdom of God. But if we lay down the heaviest burden and take to ourselves the wings of a dove, we shall fly and find rest, and it shall be said of us: 'If you sleep among the midst of the lots, the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her hinder parts with the paleness of gold.' Let our back, which at first was shapeless and pressed down by a heavy burden, have the greenness of gold, which is interpreted in the sense, and wings silvered over, which are understood in the eloquence of the Scriptures, and we shall be able to enter the kingdom of God.
The apostles say that they have left all that was theirs, and boldly demand a reward for this virtue. To whom the Lord replied: 'Everyone who leaves house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my name's sake shall receive a hundredfold and shall possess eternal life.' O how great a blessedness, to receive great things for small, eternal for brief, ever-living for perishable, and to have the Lord as one's debtor!
But if any widow has children—and especially if she is of noble family—let her not disregard her needy children, but out of equality, so that she may remember first her own soul and count herself among the children, and let her rather share with the children than leave all to them; nay rather, let her make Christ the co-heir of her children. You will answer: 'It is difficult, hard, against nature.' But you shall hear the Lord answering you: 'He who can receive it, let him receive it.' And if you wish to be perfect, he lays no yoke of necessity upon you, but grants a free choice to your own power. Do you wish to be perfect and to stand on the first summit of dignity?
Do what the apostles did: sell all that you have and give to the poor, and follow the Saviour, and, naked, follow naked and solitary virtue alone. Do you not wish to be perfect, but to hold the second grade of virtue? Give away all that you have, give to your children, give to your kinsmen. No one reproaches you if you pursue lesser things, provided you know that she is rightly preferred to you who has chosen the first. You say: 'This belongs to the apostles and to men, but a noble woman cannot sell all that she has, since she has need of many aids of this life.' Hear then the apostle admonishing:
'not that others should have refreshment and you tribulation, but out of your equality let your abundance now supply their want, that their abundance also may be a supplement to your want.' Whence the Lord also says: 'He who has two tunics, let him give one to him who has none.' What if there be the frosts of Scythia and the Alpine snows, which are repelled not by two or three tunics, but scarcely by the skins of animals? Whatever therefore can defend our bodies and succour human weakness—we whom nature has poured forth naked—this is to be called one tunic; and whatever is necessary in present nourishment, this is called the food of a single day. Whence it is commanded: 'Take no thought for the morrow,' that is, for the future time; and the apostle:
'Having food and clothing,' he says, 'with these we are content.' If you have more than is necessary for your food and clothing, give that away, and know yourself to be a debtor in it. Ananias and Sapphira deserved the sentence of the apostle, because they timidly reserved their own goods. 'Then,' you will say, 'is he to be punished who does not give his own?' By no means. They were punished because they wished to lie to the Holy Spirit, and, reserving what was necessary for their sustenance, they pursued vainglory as though perfectly renouncing the world. Otherwise it is permitted freely either to give or not to give, although for one who desires to be perfect present poverty is to be compensated by future riches. But how a widow ought to live the apostle comprehends in a brief word, saying:
'She who lives in pleasures, while living is dead.' And in the two little books which we wrote to Furia and Salvina, we think it has been said more fully. What is the meaning of what is written in Matthew: 'But I say to you: I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father'? From this passage certain persons construct the fable of a thousand years, in which they contend that Christ will reign bodily and will drink wine which he has not drunk from that time until the consummation of the world. But let us hear that the bread which the Lord broke and gave to the disciples is the body of the Lord the Saviour, he himself saying to them:
'Take and eat, this is my body,' and that that cup is the one of which he again spoke: 'Drink of this, all of you; for this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto the remission of sins.' This is the cup of which we read in the prophet: 'I will take the cup of salvation, and I will call upon the name of the Lord'; and elsewhere: 'How excellent is my inebriating cup!'
For if the bread which came down from heaven is the body of the Lord, and the wine which he gave to the disciples is his blood of the new testament, which was shed for the remission of all sins, let us reject the Jewish fables and ascend with the Lord to the great upper room, spread and cleansed, and let us receive from him above the cup of the new testament, and there, celebrating the Pasch with him, let us be inebriated with the wine of sobriety. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and joy and peace in the Holy Spirit. Nor did Moses give us the true bread, but the Lord Jesus, himself both guest and banquet, himself both the one who eats and the one who is eaten.
We drink his blood, and without him we cannot drink, and daily in his sacrifices, from the fruit of the true vine and the vineyard of Sorech—which is interpreted 'chosen'—we tread the ruddy new wine and drink new wine from it in the kingdom of the Father, by no means in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the spirit, singing a new song, which no one can sing except in the kingdom of the Church, which is the kingdom of the Father. This bread the patriarch Jacob also desired to eat, saying: 'If the Lord God be with me and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on.' For as many of us as are baptized in Christ have put on Christ, and we eat the bread of angels and hear the Lord proclaiming:
'My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.' Let us therefore do the will of him who sent us, the Father, and accomplish his work, and Christ will drink his blood with us in the kingdom of the Church. What is the reason that the evangelists have narrated diverse things concerning the resurrection and appearing of the Lord? In these you first ask why Matthew said that the Lord rose in the evening of the sabbath as the first day of the week was dawning, while Mark records that his resurrection took place in the morning, writing thus: 'Now when he was risen, on the first day of the week in the morning he appeared to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven demons; and she went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept.'
And they, hearing that he was alive and that she had seen him, believed. Of this question there is a twofold solution. For either we do not accept the testimony of Mark, which is found in few gospels—almost all the Greek copies not having this chapter at the end—especially since he seems to narrate things diverse from and contrary to the other evangelists; or it must be answered that both spoke the truth: Matthew, as to when the Lord rose, that is, in the evening of the sabbath, but Mark, as to when Mary Magdalene saw him, that is, in the morning of the first day of the week. For thus it must be punctuated: 'Now when he was risen,' and then, after a slight pause of the breath, one must add:
'on the first day of the week in the morning he appeared to Mary Magdalene,' so that he who according to Matthew had risen in the evening of the sabbath, according to Mark appeared to Mary Magdalene in the morning of the first day of the week. This indeed John the evangelist also signifies, showing that he was seen in the morning of another day. How, according to Matthew, did Mary Magdalene in the evening of the sabbath see the Lord rising, while John the evangelist reports that in the morning of the first day of the week she wept beside the tomb? The first day of the week is to be understood as the Lord's day, for every week is divided into the sabbath and the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth of the sabbath, which the heathen call by the names of idols and of the elements.
Finally, the Apostle too directed that the collection of money which is prepared for the needy should be gathered on the first day of the week. Nor should it be supposed that Matthew and John held differing views; rather, they called one and the same time — the middle of the night and cockcrow — by different names. For Matthew writes 'in the evening of the sabbath,' that is, late, not at the beginning of the night, but when the night was already far advanced and largely spent, that the Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene; and by saying that He appeared 'in the evening of the sabbath as it was dawning toward the first day of the week,' he interprets himself as to what he had meant by 'in the evening of the sabbath' — namely, when the light of the following day was already drawing near. And John did not say without qualification, 'On the first day of the week Mary Magdalene comes early to the tomb,' but added:
'while it was yet dark.' Thus of one and the same time — that is, the middle of the night and cockcrow — the one named the end, the other the beginning. And it seems to me that the evangelist Matthew, who composed his Gospel in the Hebrew tongue, said not so much 'in the evening' as 'late'; and that the one who translated it, deceived by the ambiguity of the word, rendered it not 'late' but 'in the evening' — although common human usage holds that 'late' (sero) does not signify 'evening' but 'tardily.' For we are wont to say, 'You have come late,' that is, tardily; and, 'What you ought to have done before, do at least late,' that is, tardily.
But if this objection is raised — how the same Mary, who had earlier seen the Lord rising, is afterwards reported to have gone weeping to His tomb — this must be said: that both alone and with another, or with other women, mindful of the benefits which the Lord had conferred upon her, she ran repeatedly to His tomb, and now adored the One she saw, now wept for the One she sought as absent; though some contend that there were two Marys Magdalene from the same village of Magdala, and that one is she who in Matthew saw Him rising, another she who in John sought Him as absent. But we read in the Gospels that there were four Marys:
one, the mother of the Lord and Savior; another, His aunt, who was called Mary of Cleophas; a third, Mary the mother of James and Joseph; a fourth, Mary Magdalene — though others contend that the mother of James and Joseph was His aunt. Some, to free themselves from the question, would have it that in Mark she is one of the Marys, but that the surname 'Magdalene' was not added, and that it crept in superfluously through the fault of copyists, since the first evangelist had not written it. To us, however, the answer seems simple and plain:
that the holy women, unable to bear Christ's absence, ran throughout the whole night, not once nor twice but repeatedly, to the Lord's tomb — especially since the earthquake and the split rocks and the fleeing sun and nature thrown into disorder, and — what is greater than these — longing for the Savior, had broken the women's sleep. How is it that, according to Matthew, Mary Magdalene, in the evening of the sabbath, together with the other Mary, having fallen at the Savior's feet, according to John, early on the first day of the week hears from the Lord: 'Do not touch Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father'?
— She who had earlier seen the Lord rising, together with the other Mary, and had fallen at His feet, afterward returned through the night — for out of longing for Him she could not remain at home — and came to the tomb; and when she saw that the stone with which the sepulchre had been closed was taken away, she ran to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus greatly loved, and says to them: 'They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.' The woman's error was joined with piety: the piety lay in this, that she longed for Him whose majesty she had come to know; the error, in that she said, 'They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.'
Finally, when Peter and John, entering the sepulchre, had seen the linen cloths lying apart, and the napkin which had wrapped the Lord's head laid by itself in a place apart, and believed that He had risen whose body they had not found in the tomb, Mary stood at the sepulchre outside, weeping. And when she had bent down, she saw two angels in white sitting in the place of the tomb, at the head and at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been laid — so that, under so great a dignity of guardianship, she might not believe He could have been stolen by men who was kept watch over by angel ministers. And the angels, whom she beheld, say to her: 'Woman, why do you weep?' — after the manner of what the Lord says to His mother: 'What is that to Me and to you, woman?'
My hour is not yet come' — so that by the very fact that they called her 'woman,' they might reprove her for weeping in vain and say, 'Why do you weep?' But Mary Magdalene had grown so numb with astonishment, and, terrified by the miracles, held her faith as it were in a fog, that she did not even perceive the presence of the angels before her, but answered as a woman and said: 'I weep because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.' O Mary, if you believe Him to be the Lord and your Lord, how do you suppose He was carried off by men? 'I do not know,' she says, 'where they have laid Him.' How do you not know Him whom a little before you adored?
And when she saw the angels and, panic-stricken with amazement, did not recognize those she beheld, she turned her face this way and that, desiring to see nothing but the Lord; and turning back she saw Jesus standing, and did not know that it was Jesus — not because, as Manichaeus and other heretics hold, the Lord had changed His form and countenance and appeared diverse and various at will, but because Mary, dumbstruck by the miracle, supposed Him to be the gardener whom she was seeking with such great zeal. And so the Lord too speaks to her with the same words as the angels: 'Woman, why do you weep?' and adds of His own: 'Whom do you seek?' But she answered: 'Sir, if you have carried Him off, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away.'
Here she calls the Savior 'Sir' not out of confession of true faith, but out of humility and fear she renders deference to a gardener. And see how great her ignorance! Him whom a cohort of soldiers was guarding, at whose tomb angels kept watch, she supposes to have been carried off by a single gardener; and, ignorant of feminine weakness, she promises herself such great strength as to imagine that the body of a man of full age — which, to say nothing else, had been anointed all round with a hundred pounds of myrrh — could be carried by a single frightened woman. And when Jesus had called her by name and said 'Mary,' so that she might recognize by voice the One she did not recognize by face, she, persisting in her error, calls Him by no means 'Lord' but 'Rabboni,' that is, 'Master.' And see how great her confusion!
She who, supposing Him a gardener, had named Him 'Lord,' now names the rising Son of God 'Master.' And so to her who was seeking the Living among the dead, who out of feminine error and womanly weakness was running to and fro and seeking the body of a slain man, whose feet she had held while He lived, the Lord speaks and says: 'Do not touch Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father.' And the sense is: 'You who seek Me as dead are not worthy to touch Me living. If you still think I have not ascended to the Father but have been carried off by men's deceit, you are unworthy of My touch.'
But He said this, not to blunt the zeal of her who sought, but that she might know that the dispensation of the flesh He had assumed was changed into the glory of divinity, and might by no means wish to be with the Lord corporeally, whom she ought to believe reigns spiritually with the Father. Hence too the apostles are of greater faith, who, without the sight of angels, without the sight of the Savior Himself, after they had not found His body in the tomb, believed that He had risen from the dead.
Others think that what John narrated is first: that Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw the stone rolled away, and afterward, having returned with the apostles Peter and John, remained alone at the tomb, and therefore, still unbelieving, was rebuked by the Lord; and having gone back home, she came again to the tomb with Mary, and, warned by the angel and going out of the tomb, adored the Lord and held His feet — when they alike heard from Him: 'Hail!' And they came near and held His feet and adored Him, and so far advanced that they were sent to the apostles and heard first, 'Do not be afraid,' and secondly, 'Go and tell My brethren that they should go into Galilee; there they shall see Me.'
How, while a throng of soldiers was guarding it, did Peter and John enter the sepulchre freely, with none of the guards forbidding them? — For this reason, evidently: because 'in the evening of the sabbath, as it was dawning toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came, and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre. And behold, there was a great earthquake. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and coming near rolled away the stone and sat upon it; and his appearance was like lightning, and his raiment like snow. And for fear of him the guards were terrified and became as dead men.'
Those, then, who had been so terrified with fear that they were thought dead, must be believed either to have abandoned the tomb and fled, or to have been so benumbed in body and mind that — I will not say men, but not even weak women desiring to enter the tomb — they dared not forbid them. For a great fear had terrified them as they saw the stone rolled away and the earthquake occurring not in the usual manner but great, one that shook all things and threatened the utter overthrow of the earth; and the angel of God descended from heaven with a countenance so bright that it imitated not lamps and light kindled by human art, but the lightning of heaven, by which all things are lit up. Hence too they were able to see in the darkness. And so they enter freely;
for Mary Magdalene had come, who had announced to them that the stone was rolled away and the Lord's body taken from the tomb. But let us not think that the angel came for this purpose — to open the tomb for the rising Lord and roll away the stone — but rather that, after the Lord had risen at the hour He Himself had willed, an hour known to no mortal, the angel made known what had happened, and showed by the rolling away of the stone that the tomb was empty, and revealed his own presence. All these things were seen by the shining of his face, his brightness overcoming the horror of the darkness with the splendor of its radiance.
How is it that Matthew and Mark write that it was commanded to the apostles through the women that they should precede the Savior into Galilee and there see Him, whereas Luke and John record that He was seen by the apostles in Jerusalem? — It is one thing that He offered Himself to the eleven disciples, who were hidden for fear of the Jews, when He entered to them through closed doors and, to those who thought they saw a spirit, offered His hands and side wounded by the nails and the spear; and another thing, when, according to Luke, He presented Himself to them with many proofs, appearing to them over forty days and speaking of the kingdom of God; and eating with them, He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem.
For in the one case He was seen for the consolation of their minds, and was seen but briefly and again withdrawn from their eyes; but in the other there was such familiarity and perseverance that He ate with them together. Hence too the Apostle Paul relates that He appeared to five hundred disciples at once; and in John we read that, while the apostles were fishing, He stood on the shore and ate part of a broiled fish and of a honeycomb — which are proofs of a true resurrection. But in Jerusalem He is narrated to have done none of these things. What does it signify, that in the evangelist Matthew it is written: 'But Jesus, crying with a loud voice, yielded up His spirit,'
'and the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom, and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep arose, and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they came into the holy city and appeared to many'? — We have discussed this passage in the same commentaries. And first it must be said that it is a sign of divine power to lay down the soul when He willed and again to take it up. Finally, the centurion, seeing that He had said to the Father, 'Into Your hands I commend My spirit,' and had at once of His own accord yielded up the spirit, moved by the greatness of the sign, says: 'Truly this man was the Son of God.'
The veil of the temple also was rent in two, that there might be fulfilled that which Josephus relates the guardian powers of the temple to have said: 'Let us pass over from these seats.' But in the Gospel which is written in Hebrew letters we read not that the veil of the temple was rent, but that the lintel of the temple, of marvelous size, collapsed. 'The earth,' he says, 'quaked' — unable to bear its own Lord hanging — 'and the rocks were split' — to indicate the hardness of the Jews, who would not understand the present Son of God — 'and the tombs were opened' — as a sign of the future resurrection — 'and many bodies of the saints, coming out of their sepulchres, came into the holy city and appeared to many.'
By the 'holy city' we ought to understand Jerusalem, in distinction from all the cities which then served idols; for in this city alone was the temple, and the worship of the one God, and true religion. And they appeared not to all, but to many, that is, to those who received the rising Lord. Then, according to the anagogical sense, it must be said that, when Jesus cried out and yielded up His spirit, the veil of the temple was rent in two from the top to the bottom, and all the mysteries of the Law were revealed, so that what before were kept hidden might be brought forth to all the nations.
Now 'in two parts' — into the Old and the New Testament; and 'from the top to the bottom' — from the beginning of the world, when man was created, and the rest which sacred history relates as done in the middle, down to the consummation of the world. And it must be asked whether the veil of the temple that was rent was the outer or the inner; and to me it seems that in the Lord's passion that veil was rent which was placed on the outside, both in the tabernacle and in the temple, and was called the outer, because now we see in part and know in part; but when that which is perfect shall have come, then the inner veil too must be torn asunder, that we may see all the sacraments of the house of God which are now hidden from us:
what the two cherubim signify, what the oracle, what the golden vessel in which the manna was stored. For now we see through a glass, in an image; and, though the veil of the historical sense has been rent for us so that we may enter the court of God, yet His secret things and all the mysteries which are kept shut up in the heavenly Jerusalem we cannot know. Therefore in the Lord's passion the earth was moved, according to what is written in Haggai: 'Yet once more I will move the heaven and the earth, and the desired of all nations shall come,' that they may come from the east and the west and recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And the rocks were split: the hard hearts of the Gentiles;
or the 'rocks' are all the oracles of the prophets, who themselves also, together with the apostles, received the name of 'rock' from the Rock Christ, so that whatever in them was shut up under the hard veil of the Law might, being rent, lie open to the Gentiles. The tombs also, of which it is written, 'You are sepulchres whitewashed on the outside, which within are full of the bones of the dead,' were opened for this reason: that from them might come forth those who before had died in unfaithfulness, and might live with the rising and living Christ, and enter the heavenly Jerusalem, and hold their citizenship by no means on earth but in heaven; and, dying with the earthly Adam, might rise with the heavenly Adam.