In three Casinensian codices — 103, folio 1 verso; 406, folio 57 verso; and 117, page 3 — the title of this sermon is: 'On the third Sunday of Advent'; which we have said on page 394 of this volume must be referred to times later than Maximus. But now in codex 106 the name of Maximus is seen to have been erased, and the name of Augustine substituted for it; and the style of this sermon differs from that which Maximus uses. From which tribe Christ was to be born, we are taught from the prophetic reading. That he was to come from the stock of David according to the flesh through the Holy Spirit was thus foretold in the Psalms: 'The Lord has sworn truth, and he will not make it void: of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne' (Ps. 131). And again:
'Once I have sworn by my holiness that I will not lie to David: his seed shall endure forever, and his throne as the sun in my sight, and as the perfect moon forever, and a faithful witness in heaven' (Ps. 88). Likewise in the book of Paralipomenon: 'And the word of the Lord came to Nathan the prophet, saying: Go and say to David my servant: Thus says the Lord, I will announce to you therefore that the Lord will build you a house. And when you have fulfilled your days, that you may go to your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you, which shall be of your sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build me a house, and I will make firm his throne forever. I will be to him
a father, and he shall be to me a son, and I will not take away my mercy from him, as I took it away from him who was before, and I will set him in my house, and he shall reign forever, and his throne shall be most firm in perpetuity' (Paralip. 17). Whoever supposes that all these things were fulfilled in Solomon seems to err greatly. For what is to be understood in Solomon is otherwise, that which was said: 'And when your days are completed, and you sleep with your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you, which shall go forth from your womb, and I will establish his kingdom' (2 Kings 7). Is it believed that this was prophesied about that Solomon? By no means. For he began to reign while his father was still alive. For here it is said:
For when your days shall be fulfilled, and you shall sleep with your fathers, I will raise up your seed. From this it is understood that another was promised, one who had been declared to be raised up not before his death, who would build the house of the Lord not of walls made by hands, but of living and precious stones, that is, of the holy and the faithful. For as to that which he added: His house is faithful, and his kingdom shall be forever before me, let anyone consider and observe that this was not foretold of Solomon. For Solomon's house was full of foreign women who worshipped idols, and the king himself was seduced by them into idolatry and led astray; and though he had been good in the beginning, he came to an evil end.
Therefore who is this whose house is faithful forever, and who after David's death was promised to be raised up? He is surely the one of whom David himself proclaims, saying in Psalm 88: But you have put off your Christ. It is therefore not Solomon, nor even David himself, but Christ who was deferred. Behold, the foretold preachings appeared to have been fulfilled not in Solomon, but in Christ the Lord, who was born of the lineage of David, of whom the Lord himself says through Jeremiah: And I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, and a king shall reign and shall be wise, and shall execute judgment and justice upon the earth; in his days shall Judah be saved, and Israel shall dwell securely;
and this is the name whereby they shall call him, The Lord our Righteous One (Jeremiah 23). Isaiah also speaks of Christ, that he was born of the seed of David according to the flesh. Thus he says in what follows: In that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which stands as an ensign of the peoples; him shall the nations beseech, and his sepulchre shall be glorious (Isaiah 11). The root of Jesse stands as an ensign of the peoples, because Christ imprints the sign of the cross upon their foreheads. Him shall the nations beseech, since it is seen with the eyes to have been fulfilled. And his sepulchre is so glorious that, apart from the glory we display as those redeemed through his death, even the place itself, shining with miracles, draws the whole world to itself for the sake of its glory. This place in the Hebrew has:
And his rest shall be glorious. Surely because his flesh in dying saw no corruption, according to the saying of the psalm: For his soul was not left in hell, neither will you give your holy one to see corruption (Psalm 15). This is he who is promised through Nathan from the seed of David, who is likewise proclaimed through the prophet Isaiah thus: There shall come forth, he says, a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root (Isaiah 11). This rod out of the root of Jesse is the Virgin Mary, sprung from the root of David, who bore the Flower, the Lord and Saviour, of whom it further follows:
And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and fortitude, the Spirit of knowledge and godliness; and the Spirit of the fear of the Lord filled him (ibid.). But so many gifts of the Spirit are proclaimed upon him because the Holy Spirit dwells in him not by measure, as in us, but in him is the whole fullness of the Godhead and of graces. This is he who judges not according to the sight of the eyes nor the hearing of the ears, but justice is the girdle of his loins, and faith the belt of his loins (ibid.). In whose Church the wolf dwells with the lamb, that one indeed who was wont to snatch prey from her, when he is converted to her;
he dwells among the innocent, and in whose fold the leopard lies down with the kid. That is, the crafty are mingled with sinners there, so that even the calf from the circumcision, the lion from worldly power, and the sheep from the common ranks dwell together, because in faith there is a common mingling of all. But the little child leading them is surely he who humbled himself for us as a little one. And the ox and the lion shall eat straw together, because the prince and the subject peoples share a common doctrine. The infant also shall delight over the hole of the asp (ibid.), when the nations, who once were wont to spew forth venoms, being converted, delight even as little ones to hear the faith of Christ.
For the den of the basilisk is the hearts of the unfaithful, in which that tortuous serpent used to rest, whom the weaned child, having seized him, dragged thence captive, so that on his holy mountain, that is the Church, he might do no harm. But now, since by the mouth of the prophet a testimony is given concerning Christ to be born from Moab, the same Isaiah bears witness: I will set, he says, over those who have fled from Moab a lion, and over the remnant of the land. Send forth the lamb, O Lord, the ruler of the earth, from the rock of the desert to the mount of the daughter of Zion (Isaiah 15:9 and 16:1). For out of this nation of the Moabites came forth the immaculate Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, who rules over the whole earth.
Now the rock of the desert signifies Ruth, who, bereft of her husband by death, bore Obed of Boaz, and Obed begot Jesse, and of Jesse David, and of the stock of David Christ was born. And the mount of the daughter of Zion he calls either, in the historical sense, the very city of Jerusalem, or, according to the tropological sense, the Church set upon a watchtower, that is, consoled in the loftiness of the virtues.