This is the last sermon in the Turin codex: On Pentecost, homily XXVII. There it is noted that homilies 24, 25, and 26 are missing. It has been most delightful to us that whatever sermons of Saint Maximus Muratorius drew from the Ambrosian codex and published, have by the authority of other codices also been adjudged by us to belong to the same holy bishop of Turin. Of inestimable goodness, dearest brethren, is the grace which almighty God has bestowed upon us, whether powerfully in creating, or mercifully granted in regenerating. For in creating He brought it to pass that, by a wondrous working having given life to the dust in man, we all, who were not, should be; but in regenerating He conferred that a second birth should confer those things which our first nature had not given:
which second birth indeed, through the sacraments of baptism, begets servants into sons, and promises heaven to the faithful. Noble indeed was that first creation of men; but this that follows is not only nobler in the purity of the mysteries, but is heavenly by the consecration of the blessed Spirit. That birth takes on sins, this lays them aside. There, in being born, we die; here, we live in dying. Finally, that Christ might bestow this nobility upon the human race, He took upon Himself for us an unworthy servile birth, and though unlike in conception, yet by a like manner of being born. And in that conception, although the eternal Father was present, yet neither was the law of childbearing changed for the Mother, nor did the infant's wailing fail the newborn child.
For the Father held in the Son the power of a twofold substance, in such wise that by the majesty of His power the venerable Child-bearer conceived one and the same Christ both to conceive Him as God and to bear Him as man. Does He not seem to have been conceived as the Son of God, where, carnal seed ceasing, He is both believed to have been formed as man in a virginal womb, and is not doubted to be God, who was born? Wondrous is the birth of the Mother inviolate, but far more wondrous is it that virginity remained after the birth to her who bore. For, wondrous to say, flesh born of inviolate flesh preserved the enclosures of natural modesty.
But these things, so holy and so magnificent, that God did, to whom all the works of heaven and earth respond according to the will of His power, for whom to do incomprehensible things consists not in labor or toil, but in the command. Who, that He might give the virgin a new manner of childbearing, acted by that power by which He made all things out of nothing; for that this virginal fruitfulness shone upon this world was a work of the divine, as the angel Gabriel sent to Mary revealed, saying to her: 'The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, and therefore also that which shall be born of thee holy shall be called the Son of God' (Luke 1).
But to that venerable Joseph too, by heavenly dispensation ever a betrothed, yet never a husband, blessed Mary, keeping uncorrupted the seals of her undefiled womb, gave birth not to a son but to the Lord. To whom Joseph it was said by the angel: 'That which Mary hath in her womb is of the Holy Spirit' (Matt. 1). And therefore this very thing the voice of angelic attestation sounded into the ears of the patriarch, lest perhaps at so great a miracle the mind of the astonished young man should be wounded by the stain of sinister suspicion, and he should think there was womanly fault where the saving mystery was being born for us.
Nor could that innocent and anxious betrothed, brethren, believe otherwise so great a newness of the fruitful womb, had not a herald sent from on high proclaimed to him the virginal chastity of the very spouse who was to bear. So the Holy Spirit, as we read, united in the Virgin's womb the flesh of man to the Only-begotten of the Father—united it, not by the skill of a fashioning craftsman, but by the majesty of the One who formed it; and that this Spirit is truly God, the power and truth of the new work attests.
For how in that fabric of our salvation is the same Spirit asserted to be as it were the author in the conception of Christ—where the Father was not absent, where the Son was present, where our flesh was joined in divine fellowship—unless there were in Him the same power in nature with the Father and the Son, and the same communion in will? You see therefore, brethren, that He could not be the co-worker of God unless He were God. For He was, as the Holy Spirit is, both undivided from the Father and inseparable from the Son; between whom, as the faithful word of sacred reading teaches us, there is no distance in power, but a distinction in operation. For Christ says concerning Him to His disciples:
'When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceedeth from my Father, he shall testify of me' (John 15). Likewise the Saviour says of Himself: 'I am the way, the truth, and the life' (John 14). 'I am,' He says, 'the truth'; if therefore the Son, who is the truth, asserts the Spirit to be of truth, who could deny Him to be God, save one who does not believe the truth concerning the truth? Thus the Spirit is truly God, whom Christ attests by equal profession both to proceed from the Father and to be sent by Himself. Now the Son of God sends the Spirit of His own Father; He sends Him, not as one obedient to a command, but as one concordant in the mystery.
And for this reason the same Spirit, proceeding from the Father, is read to be sent by the Son, lest either He be believed to be something other than the Father is, or to will anything different from what the Son wills. Wherefore, brethren, without hesitation it is made clear that there is one will of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Since both the Son sends that which is the Father's, and the Father imparts that which is His own, to be directed by the Son. This Spirit therefore, accomplishing with the Father and the Son the one sacrament of redemption, announces in the tongues of all the nations the majesty of Christ who sends Him, not as rendering an office to a superior, but as intimating the sovereignty of one who reigns together. Who therefore gave to the apostles the variety of tongues, that through them
the saving teaching of the faith might penetrate to the hearing of all peoples. Indeed the Comforter Himself was manifold in speech, almighty in power, diverse in tongues, and one in all. Every hearer marvels that the mouth of a foreign nation utters no foreign speech. And he himself who speaks is astonished that from his own mouth words not his own proceed. And so it came to pass that, while a varied utterance speaks through many one faith, the discordant nations might come together into the fellowship of one faith. And therefore, brethren, turning away from the vanities of the world and treading underfoot the delights of this most brief life, let us continually savor Him, and ever speak of Him, who has granted to mortals to savor heavenly things and to speak divine things to the earthly. To Him be honor and glory unto ages of ages.