There is no reason why I should think that this sermon is not to be attributed to holy Maximus. For it is so like the diction and style of the other sermons of the holy bishop that nothing more alike could seem to be desired. I am the more confirmed in this opinion because I see this same sermon, complete and bearing the name of the same Maximus, presented together with other sermons of Maximus in an old codex of the Medicean Laurentian library, no. 1, Plut. XIV, p. 144. This very sermon some interpolator of ancient documents, I know not who, dared to tear into pieces, and thence, at his own discretion, to fashion two sermons on Saint Eusebius — which Muratorius published among the Maximian sermons, and which I have judged ought to be relegated to our appendix.
To the solemnity of this present day, dearest brethren, our devotion invites us to come running with all eagerness — a devotion of a twofold festival, which we manifestly hold from the triumph of the Maccabees and the victory of the confessor (2 Macc. 7). For we have over the Maccabees a joy shared in common with the rest, and through blessed Eusebius a joy of domestic congratulation, proper and peculiar to us; and although they contended at different times and in a different combat, yet one and the same spirit fought in them. For who would doubt that in them there was one mind, one will, one spirit, since they suffered for the law of the Lord, while he offered up his passion for the Lord Himself?
Let us now attend more diligently, dearest brethren, to what was specially the cause of the Maccabees' contest, and what was the cause of blessed Eusebius' struggle. In ancient ages, then, when the heathen world burned, kindled with the firebrands of diabolical envy against the servants of God, and impious madness above all filled the most ferocious breast of Antiochus, he orders the Maccabee brothers and their most religious mother to be seized and brought before his savage tribunal, in order that by fear of death, by the terror of punishments, by the offering of gifts, he might persuade them to pass over into his error. But that most devoted youth neither the threats of the world call back from their God, nor do the royal blandishments seduce.
And so the first of them, by the disposition of divine justice, enters the arena of the heavenly contest, so that he who went before in age should also precede in suffering, and the order of birth should hold in the brothers the order of triumphing. This first-born, then, of the brothers is ordered by the king to be fried in a heated pan, but he is cooled by God; his hands and feet are cut off, yet greatly assured of his own restoration, because he knew that he suffered these things for the law of Him with whom alone he believed lay the power of forming and restoring the body. For this reason indeed the most valiant youth is cut down in his whole body and limbs, that he might perceive, by God's granting, that he had as many martyrdoms as members.
One is deprived of his tongue, another has the skin of his head stripped off, so that the diversity of punishments might beget a variety of rewards. Cruelty, therefore, exasperated by the virtues of the saints, gnashes its teeth in every kind of savagery. The tormentor's hands grow weary, his bloodstained eyes waste away, and impiety itself now blushes at itself; and, the order of the interrogation being reversed, the torturer groans, and the tortured insults his own torturer. When, then, six brothers had thus been cut down and laid low, the seventh, who was the younger, is brought forward to be examined; him that tyrannical king, having spent so many and such great torments in vain, strives with the gentlest address to soothe. He promises riches, offers honors, and moreover pledges his own friendship, if he can obtain treachery from the boy.
But that most steadfast youth, despising the king and the king's gifts, walking in thought through paradise and running through heaven in his mind, judged the torments more advantageous to himself than the rewards, and chose to die for God rather than to live with the tyrant; nor indeed could the royal promises bend him whom his brothers' torments had not turned. Rather, as the outcome showed, that most faithful boy seemed to be tormented the more in this respect, that he was tortured too late. Amid all this, the noble mother, divinely inspired, rejoiced over the tortures of her sons, certain that she would be adorned with as many crowns as she had endured funerals in her sons. Who, hearing this, would not marvel?
For the honor of God the inborn affection grows cold in the maternal breast, nature is overcome by faith, and the woman, stronger than her sex, teaches her sons to love their torments. Having therefore sent her pledges ahead to God, she too, despising the world, succumbs by a most glorious death. And it was truly fitting that the mother of martyrs should end her life by martyrdom. After these things, most beloved, let us now recount, as we are able, what our most blessed father Eusebius endured for the defense of the faith, that we may perceive how great a labor and what merits raised him to this great glory of confession. This man, then, as the account handed down by our father instructs us, was seized from this our city and led to Scythopolis, and there handed over to the Arians to be slaughtered.
It is not unknown, brethren, how great a wickedness the liberty granted for raging can exercise upon an enemy. For, to run through the sequence of his sufferings, it is said that after that, so to speak, prophetic drawing of the ladders, such a punishment was appointed for him by the Arians: that in the upper part of the house they prepared for him a most confined chamber, so small, so low, and so cramped, that it did not so much contain a man as torture him, and the Arian lodging was rather a punishment than a rest. For they say it was so narrow that the martyr, lying in it, could not stretch out his foot, and, standing, could not raise his head, but was always bent, stooping and lowly, and bore nothing free except the spirit of faith.
His feet indeed grew numb, fixed in one place, but he walked through paradise with the steps of faith; his head lay bowed low in it, but Christ raised up his head within him. These things, therefore, the blessed martyr endured in the lodging of the heretics — not because such things were owed to a martyr, but because such is Arian hospitality, that its dwelling is the punishment of a prison, not the lodging of humanity. And although there is no satiety for us in mutually telling and hearing of the sweetness of his deeds, yet the victory of the most blessed Maccabees must not be passed over in silence; for this same day sent them too, snatched from the world, to heaven with great triumph.
And although that most valiant company passed over to their God amid torments, Eusebius is nevertheless not unequal to them, who, having confuted the perfidy, passed over to the same God after the torments were overcome. And that we may more clearly perceive that Eusebius' victory was not inferior, they contended of old for the Law, he served as a soldier for the new Gospel. They indeed underwent punishments for the precepts of God; but Eusebius contended for the very truth of the Godhead. They resisted King Antiochus, that they might not then eat forbidden flesh; he stood against the devil, that the heretic might not, with the leaven of his teaching, defile for us the Lord's bread.
Let us therefore exult, brethren, giving thanks to our God, because under the devotion of this present day we rejoice in a twofold festival, receiving as we do the triumph of Eusebius and admiring the torments of the victorious Maccabees. Are not the Maccabees admirable, whom, by the fellowship of their birth and passion, we see to have been both brothers in the eyes of the world and true brethren in Christ, who from the most abundant breast of their excellent mother drew both the substance of living and the virtue of conquering? For they grew up to such perfection by their mother's milk and word that both wisdom in their hearts and fortitude in their body were inseparable.
Finally, Antiochus could neither, by the most bitter torments, terrify, nor, by great promises, lure away those choice young men, steadfast in their own faith and in their mother's exhortation, so as to turn them from reverence for the ancestral law. For so great was the vigor in their limbs, so great the spirit in their breast, so great the learning in their reply, that both by despising the punishments and by confuting the perfidy of the impious king they conquered both his terror and his fury. And the venerable mother, having died by a like confession and a similar death, departed the more joyful from this world to her pledges. Nor is it wonderful if she magnanimously endured the king's savagery upon herself, who could so bravely bear it also in her sons.
Truly a blessed woman, and to be extolled with the praises of all — whom no affection of the flesh broke down for the faith of her God and amid the deaths of her sons, and whom neither her sex nor her old age could call back from the torments of her own body. These, then, dearest, are the votive joys of the faithful on this day. Let us always render these observances to blessed Eusebius and to the most glorious Maccabees, whom a different time indeed, but the same faith and one day, advanced into the eternal kingdom.