講道集 第 1 章

We are engaged with a great variety of manuscript codices, as far as concerns the author, the title, and the opening of this homily. The Florentine codices, indeed I and X, Plut. XIV of the Medicean Laurentian library, adorn it with the name of St. Ambrose, as also do all the older editors of that same Father. But far more, and of greater authority, agree in ascribing it to St. Maximus. First we shall review the most ancient Helvetian codex of St. Gall, then the Roman 99 of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, the Regensburg codex of St. Emmeram (homily 1, p. 3), the Lambach 1 (p. 1), the Vatican no. 1267, the Vatican Palatine 1276, the Vallicellian I, and the Monza marked E III. In agreement with these, among the editors, are Gymnicus (homily 1, p. 1), Galesinius (homily 1, p. 35), and Theophilus Raynaudus (p. 193).

The author of this homily having been established, I shall treat briefly of the title. And to begin with the St. Gall codex, it bears this title: 'Here begins an exhortation to the people, and concerning that which is written in the Gospel: As lightning from beneath heaven, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man; and concerning the two in one bed.' The same title the ancient editions of Ambrose have; but the Benedictine fathers of the Congregation of St. Maur, in the index mentioned above, report that it is found in Maximus of Turin, in the Library of the Fathers, homily 1, with the title: 'On the coming of the Lord, concerning that which is written,' etc. The same stands in the Regensburg codex of St. Emmeram. The Lambach codex, however, presents a different one, namely this: 'Sermon 1 of blessed Maximus the bishop, at the time of the Advent.' We have preferred the former title, designated by the fathers of St. Maur.

and that of the Regensburg codex, so that we may be in conformity with the other editors of Maximus. We follow the same in the opening of the homily, and place the differing openings of some others in the eleventh note. 'It moves you perhaps, brethren, why the Lord, when indicating His coming, showed that He would come in the time of night, when surely His coming ought to be received by all with great brightness of day, with great splendour and fear.'

For we have often heard it preached in the sacred Scriptures that, before the Lord Christ comes, the Antichrist shall reign, who will so pour out the darkness of his own depravity upon the human race that almost no one will look upon the light of truth; and, covering the minds of men with his own gloom, he will present a certain blindness to their spiritual eyes. Nor is it any wonder if the devil sends forth the darkness of iniquity, since he himself is the night of all sinners. Therefore, to dispel this foul gloom, Christ shall come like a certain lightning-flash. And just as, when day dawns, night is overturned, so, when the Saviour flashes forth, Antichrist is put to flight; nor shall he any longer be able to disseminate the darkness of his iniquity, when the light of truth has shone forth. But as to what He says:

'In that night there shall be two in one bed; one shall be taken, and one shall be left' (Luke 17; Matt. 24)—here now the reckoning of the resurrection is shown, that according to the quality of one's living is the grace of rising again, and that there is so great a difference of resurrection in each several person, that even for two who are sleeping alike and resting in one place, the assumption cannot be equal. For although they be held by the same bed of fellowship, yet according to their merits the one of them shall be caught up to heaven, the other left on earth. Our common bed, indeed, is the most ample soil of this earth, in which our bodies, laid down, rest in a most secure abode. But in this bed he sleeps the more softly, whoever has borne himself the more harshly in life.

For we can call our very members our own beds, in which our souls dwell most sweetly upon a certain couch; which indeed I think the holy prophet perceived when he says: 'Thou hast turned all his bed in his infirmity' (Ps. 40:4). For blessed is he whose couch the Lord converts in his very infirmity; so that he who a little before had been wrathful, an adulterer, and wanton, and full of the infirmities of all crimes, the Lord, turning his body accustomed to evil, makes chaste, humble, and modest: concerning which couch it was said spiritually by the Lord to the paralytic: 'Arise: take up thy bed, and walk' (Matt. 9; Luke 5).

For there was not so much a matter of wonder in this, that the paralytic should carry the wooden frame of a broken-down couch, as that the paralytic himself should bear the limbs of a body dissolved and shattered by weakness, as if the couch necessary to his soul, and, before the Jews standing by, should go away on his own feet, he who had been brought by the hands of others. In this, plainly (as I have said), was fulfilled that prophetic sentence: 'Thou hast turned his bed in his infirmity'; and, conversely, he was to carry the bed in which a little before he had been carried, and his soul, which was formerly borne by the little vessel of the body, afterward should more usefully carry about its own body. It can also be taken thus, what He says: 'There shall be two in one bed; one shall be taken.'

'and one shall be left'—the people of the Christians and the people of the Jews, who are held as it were in one bed, that is, in one Law of the commandments, and who glory as it were in a like appearance of resurrection. Then, therefore, the blessed people of the Christians shall be taken up into glory, but the assembly of the Jews shall be left on the earth.