講道集 第 126 章

This sermon is in the appendix to the works of St. Ambrose, vol. IV, p. 529, now the twenty-seventh, and the eleventh On Lent. The monks of the congregation of Saint Maur in the preface to the same sermon say it is credible that both this and the one that follows next are to be attributed to one Maximus. And that sermon indeed is on the first temptation of Christ, the other on the second. The third is lacking, which was on the third: about which matter I wish the same monks to be consulted. In two ancient codices of Holy Cross in Jerusalem, 90 and 99, of these sermons which are extant, each bears the name of Maximus, as also in the Taurinensis.

Your love ought to remember that I preached this last Sunday, and gave the reason why the Lord fasted forty days, or why He spent those very fasts in the desert. For we said that He observed all these things, not for the sake of His own justification, who was virgin in all respects, but for the sake of our salvation: that those whose race had sinned through intemperance might be healed through abstinence. Let us see therefore what was done at that time, or in that very solitude. For the evangelist says that the devil was there present, and that the Saviour was tempted by his craftiness. For the sacred Reading says that the Lord hungered, and that the devil said to Him: If Thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread (Matt. 4).

Behold the skill of the Lord, by what skill He circumvents the adversary. After many fasts He feigns Himself to hunger, that He may solicit the devil -- whom He had already conquered by fasting -- again by hungering. For in a certain way He grants him hope of engaging from the weakness of hunger, and, while as it were He engages against a feeble one, He may be more gloriously overcome. For this is the true victory, that, whereas Adam had overthrown the immortal, glorious, and feasting one, He might now be conquered by a mortal man, humble and hungering. For the devil, seeing the Lord hungering, thinks Him a man, doubts the Saviour, and therefore says: If Thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread (Matt. 4). O wretched and utmost engagement of Satan!

The devil in the desert of temptation finds no solid weapons; he lacks the pleasantness of the trees of paradise, he lacks Eve his counsellor, he lacks the specious deception of the apples, and because he finds no food which he might offer to the hungering one, he asks that the rocks be changed into food. Everywhere shut out, everywhere cheated, he betakes himself to the pavements. For he shows plainly enough that the vastness of the wilderness withstood him, since he supposes that on account of the scarcity of things even the elements can be transformed. He asks therefore that the stones be changed into bread. Cunning and crafty, he knows what he asks, he knows that what he says has been done. For he remembers in the Old Testament that water flowed forth for the thirsting from the rock; he wishes here too to minister food from a stone to the hungering one.

He also retains in mind the hardness of the rock dissolved into the liquid of fountains. He desires also here that the roughness of the stone be transformed into the sweetness of bread. For he suspected Him to be Christ, who was wont to work such things from the nature of rocks, as the apostle Paul says: And they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10). He suspected, I say, that He was Christ, when he demanded that He make bread from a stone; but he thought Him only a mere man, when he saw Him hungering. But the Saviour condemns his craftiness with a wondrous answer. Nor does He do what the devil says, lest He seem to display the glory of His power at the will of the adversary.

Nor yet did He answer that it could not be done, He who could not deny what He had already often done. Therefore He neither yields to the petitioner nor denies the tempter, and through this both reserves the power of His might to His own will, and refutes the craftiness of the adversary with divine speech. He answered him therefore: Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word of God (Matt. 4); that is, not by earthly bread, not by material food, by which you deceived Adam the first man, but by the word of God, in which are the nourishments of heavenly life. But the Word of God is Christ the Lord, as the evangelist says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God (John 1). Whoever therefore is fed by the word of Christ requires not earthly food.

For he cannot desire the bread of the world, who is refreshed by the bread of the Saviour. For the Lord has His own bread, nay, the Saviour Himself is the bread, as He taught, saying: I am the living bread, which came down from heaven (John 6). Of which bread the prophet says: And bread strengthens the heart of man (Ps. 104). Why then to me the bread which the devil offers, when I have the bread which Christ bestows? Why to me the food through which I remember the first-formed man was cast down? I have seen Esau defrauded of the birthright; Judas Iscariot branded with the crime of betrayal. For Adam through food lost paradise, Esau through lentils lost the honour of primacy, Judas through a morsel laid down the height of the apostolate: for from the moment he took the morsel, he began no longer to be an apostle, but a betrayer.

For so you have it written, the Lord saying: He to whom I shall give the dipped bread, he shall betray Me. And immediately after the morsel Satan entered into him (John 13). Not good is the food, after which the Lord is denied, after which the enemy enters in; not good is the food, after which Christ is spurned, Antichrist is devoured. Not good is the food which lacks blessing, is filled with cursing. That food therefore is necessary for us which bestows life, which feeds the soul, after which Christ follows, the enemy is shut out. That food we ought to receive which the Saviour, not the devil, follows, which by its reception makes a confessor, not a betrayer.

How well, moreover, in the time of fasting He said that the word of God is that which refreshes, so as to show that our fasts ought not to be occupied with the affairs of the world, but exercised in the sacred Writings. For he neglects the hunger of the body who intends upon the food of reading; nor will he be able to have care of the belly who acquires the nourishment of the heavenly word. For that is the refreshment which fattens the soul, which enriches the inward parts, when from the divine Scriptures we acquire the food of everlasting eloquence. That is the food which bestows eternal life, and excludes from us the snares of diabolical temptation. But that the reading of the sacred Writings is life, the Lord testifies, saying: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life (John 6).