That this sermon belongs to the author of the preceding one, the monks of Saint Maur taught in the appendix of the sermons of Saint Augustine, page 182 of the Antwerp edition of 1700. They admit that it was attributed to Ambrose by the older editors, and that it embraces some sentiments of that same Father; nevertheless they assign it neither to him nor to Augustine, because they find in it the style of neither. But since, besides the similarity of expression, there appears a connection with the preceding sermon, and there is added the testimony of the Turin codex, where it is thus inscribed: Likewise on Lent, Sermon VI, and also of the Laurentian codex, Plut. XIV, page 275, the reason is sufficiently established why we too should ascribe this to holy Maximus.
If your love well remembers, dearest brethren, last Sunday we preached that the Lord Himself consecrated holy Lent by abstaining, and that, taking no food at all throughout the course of so many days and nights, He made fasting one whole and solid body—so that not to observe it entirely is sacrilege, and to violate it in part is sin. For He did this for the sake of our salvation, that He might not only teach a profitable thing in words, but also instruct by examples; so that for us, who run to the faith, we might advance to abstinence. But let us see what the reason was that the Savior should enjoin fasts, and Himself fast first, as the good Physician of the human race.
For a good physician first tastes the cup that he is about to give to the sick man, that he may first display before him the skill of his art, so that the sick man, receiving proof of it, may be secure about the cup, and more secure about his healing. Then let us consider in what place He appointed this very time of fasting. For the Evangelist says that the Lord abstained forty days and nights in the desert. I think, therefore, that this is the reason for the fast: that, since the first Adam, set in paradise, had through intemperance of the gullet lost the glory of immortality, the second Adam, Christ, might restore that same immortality through abstinence; and that, since by tasting from the forbidden tree against the command of God he had fallen into the sin of death, now, fasting according to the command of the Lord, He might merit the righteousness of life.
For the Savior did this, that by the same footsteps by which the offenses had been committed, they might be purged: that is, because man had transgressed by eating, He might correct it by abstaining; or because by feasting he had known the woman, now by fasting He might despise her. For Adam knew Eve only with intemperance procuring it. But as long as untainted frugality remained in them, undefiled virginity also remained; and as long as they fasted from the forbidden feasts, so long did they also fast from shameful sins. For hunger is the friend of virginity, the enemy of lasciviousness. But satiety squanders chastity and nourishes enticement. Therefore, as I have said, the Lord does this, that man might be set free from those precedents by which he had been made subject to sin.
For this reason indeed He resolved all the sins of men in all things according to the likeness of Adam. For Adam was born of the virgin earth, and Christ was brought forth of the Virgin Mary. That one's maternal soil had not yet been cleft by mattocks; this one's maternal secret was never violated by concupiscence. Adam was fashioned from clay by the hands of God; Christ was formed in the womb by the Spirit of God. Both, therefore, arise from God the Father; both are born of a virgin mother; both, as the Evangelist says, are the Son of God: but Adam is a creature of God, while Christ is His substance. This, then, the Lord does, as the second Adam, that what the former man had lost by eating, the other might receive by fasting, and might keep in the desert the law of abstinence given in paradise.
For He knew that the precept of God is the law not of one place, but of the world. For it makes no difference to a command of the Divinity whether you keep it at home or in the field, since He who gave the command is everywhere. And so in the desert the Savior fulfills the command of God, and would save Adam wandering, in the very place from which he had been cast down from possession of paradise. For Adam, expelled from paradise, endured the wastes of the untilled world. In the desert, therefore, salvation is first poured back upon man, where there are no feasts, where delights are lacking, where (which is the cause of all evils) the woman too is lacking. For Adam could have stood unshaken amid those delights of paradise, had Eve not been there with her diabolical enticements.
The desert, then, is suited to salvation, where there is no Eve to persuade, no woman to flatter. See a marvelous thing: in paradise the devil contends with Adam, in the desert the devil struggles with Christ; everywhere he lies in wait for man, everywhere he joins battle. But where he finds the woman, he conquers; where he finds no woman, he departs vanquished. God therefore gave us a pattern in this deed, that in the time of fasting, dwelling as it were in the desert, we should abstain from feasts, from pleasure, from the woman, lest Eve be joined to us, lest by enticing persuasion she overturn us from chaste observance. For he in a manner seems to dwell in the desert who in the time of Lent is fasting and chaste.
Plainly, in a certain sense the very body of a Christian is a desert, when it is not filled with food, not watered with drink, but is neglected in the squalor of parching hunger. Our body, I say, is a desert, when by abstinence its heat withers, when it is overspread with paleness through thirst, and when, through contempt of things, the whole appearance of the man grows unkempt and squalid. Then does Christ the Lord dwell in the desert of our breast, when He finds our earth squalid and dry with thirst, according to what the prophet David says: As in a land desert, and pathless, and waterless, so have I appeared to Thee in the sanctuary (Psalm LXII).
For otherwise we cannot appear to Him as in the sanctuary, unless the earth of our body has become a desert to worldly delights, pathless to diabolical concupiscences, and waterless to lustful enticements. Then, dwelling in this desert of our body, the Savior overcomes there all the factions of the devil, and makes His dwelling secret and secure from the thoughts of the world, so that thenceforth we, set within ourselves as it were in solitude, may look upon nothing but heaven and earth—that is, may think of no other than the Lord of the heavenly kingdom and the Author of the resurrection from the earth.