Famous in Gratian, Distinction 77, chapter 8, is the description of this homily under the name of Ambrose: 'Throughout these fifty days we have a continual and unbroken festivity: so that during all this time we neither appoint fasts to be observed, nor bend our knees in supplicating God.' First I shall speak of the custom of not fasting, and of not kneeling in prayers, from the solemnity of Easter to Pentecost; then of the author of the homily. Some conjecture that this usage was derived from the apostles, in that of Tertullian, who flourished in the second century, in his book 'On the Crown,' chapter 3, there seems to be clear testimony on this matter. 'On the Lord's Day,' he says, 'we hold it unlawful to fast, or to worship kneeling.'
We rejoice in the same exemption from the day of Pascha until Pentecost. To this the holy Epiphanius adds his authority; for he says, in his Exposition of the Faith, no. 22: 'Throughout the fifty days of Pentecost neither is the knee bent nor is a fast enjoined.' I pass over Saint Irenaeus, bishop and martyr, whom Pseudo-Justin mentions—one about whom the critics greatly hesitate, as may be seen in Massuet, dissertation 2 on the books of Irenaeus, article 3, § 60, page 105. But that Pseudo-Justin the monks of Saint Maur reject altogether, not only because they judge him no older than the fifth century, but also because he shows himself infected with Pelagianism. See the Paris edition of Justin, 1742, and especially the admonition of Prudentius Maranus, page 434.
The reason for this custom is said to have been received not so much from joy at Christ's resurrection as from the memory of the benefit conferred upon us through him, since Christ in rising overcame death and sin, that he might free us from both. There is added also the fact that it was commanded to the Hebrews in the law of Moses that they should keep those fifty days from Pascha to Pentecost as festal and solemn, and should call to mind their freedom from Egyptian bondage. A greater cause, then, seemed to be present in the Christian people from the very earliest times of the Church, that, freed from the captivity of the devil, they should heap joys upon joys.
Fully assenting to this holy exultation, Maximus delivered this homily on the same rejoicing to his people, and gave the reason why during those fifty days they both prayed standing and were exempt from fasting. Now this homily is to be assigned not to Ambrose, to whom it was once attributed, but to our Maximus, since in six ancient codices it bears the name of Saint Maximus inscribed. These are the two most ancient codices, the Sangallensis and the 90 of Holy Cross in Jerusalem, homily 41; the Ratisbonensis of Saint Emmeram; the Taurinensis, homily 15; the other codex of Holy Cross in Jerusalem, 99, homily 65; and the Laurentianus x, Plut. XIV, page 55, on the reverse—the title of all of which is: On Pentecost.
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SedprætereundusnonestGennadius, quiMaximumTaurinensemhomiliasmultasdePaschaetdePentecostefecissescripsit. Benedictiniquoquemonachicongregat. S. MauricumhanchomiliaminterAmbrosianossermonesaveteribuseditoribusrelatamcomperissent, apud'MaximumvidendaminBibl. Patrumadnotarunt. HauddissimilefuitCaroliSebastianiBerardijudiciuminGratianicanones, part 3, cap. ii, tom. IV, pag. 124, edit. Taufinen. 1757, etcumincertaeauctoritatisdicatilloscanonesdejejunioPentecostesaGratianorecensitos, monetlocaillanonAmbrosii, sedMaximiesse, utconstatexBibl. Patrumtom. VI.
But Gennadius is not to be passed over, who wrote that Maximus of Turin composed many homilies on Pascha and on Pentecost. The Benedictine monks too, of the congregation of Saint Maur, when they had found this homily listed among the Ambrosian sermons by the older editors, noted that it was to be looked for under Maximus in the Library of the Fathers. Not unlike was the judgment of Carlo Sebastiano Berardi in his work on the canons of Gratian, part 3, chapter ii, tome IV, page 124, Turin edition of 1757; and while he calls of uncertain authority those canons on the fast of Pentecost recounted by Gratian, he warns that those passages are not of Ambrose but of Maximus, as is clear from the Library of the Fathers, tome VI.
Relying therefore on the number of the codices and on the verdicts of most learned men, I shall depart from the Vatican codex 6451, and from codex II of the Minorite Convent of Holy Cross, now Laurentian, and from the Roman editors and the Parisian one of the year 1569, who ascribe the homily to Saint Ambrose. Before me went Gymnicus page 174, Galesinius page 134, Cumdius tome III page 202, Raynaudus page 223, Margarinus in the Great Library tome VI page 23, who called this the third homily on the same solemnity, that is, on Pentecost; but I shall entitle it the first, since I have just given the second under the title On the Ascension of the Lord, and the one that stands first with them follows after this.
Your holiness ought to know, brethren, this holy day of Pentecost—by what reason we observe it, and why by the count of these fifty days there is for us a continuous and unbroken festival; so that throughout the whole time we neither appoint fasts to be kept, nor bend to our knees to entreat God, but, as we are wont to do on the Lord's Day, standing and at leisure we celebrate the Lord's resurrection. This Lord's Day is for us the more venerable and solemn, because on it the Savior, like a rising sun, having scattered the darkness of the underworld, shone forth with the light of resurrection; and therefore that day itself is called by the men of the world the day of the sun, because Christ, the sun of righteousness, rising, illumines it.
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eInstarergodominicaetotaquinquagintadierumcurriculacelebrantur, et 193 omnesistidiesvelutdominicideputantur. Resurrectioenimdominicaest; namindominicaresurgensSalvatorreversusadhominesest; etpoStresurrectionemtotaQuinquagesimacumhominibuscommoratusest. Æqualisergoeorumnecessariumutessetfestivitasquorumæqualisessetetsanctitas. SicenimdisposuitDominus, ut, sicutejusfpassioneinQuadragesimæjejuniiscontristaremur; itaejusresurrectioneinQuinquagesimæteriislætaremur. NonigiturjejunamusinQuinquagesima, quiainiisdiebusnobiscumDominuscommeralur; non, inquam, gjejunamuspræsenteDomino, quiaipseait:
In the likeness of the Lord's Day, then, the whole course of the fifty days is celebrated, and all these days are reckoned as though they were Lord's Days. For the resurrection is the Lord's; since on the Lord's Day the Savior, rising, returned to men; and after the resurrection he remained the whole of the fifty days with men. It was necessary, therefore, that the festivity of those days should be equal whose sanctity was likewise equal. For thus the Lord ordained, that, as by his passion we are made sorrowful in the fasts of the forty days, so by his resurrection we may rejoice in the leisure of the fifty days. We do not fast, then, during the fifty days, because in those days the Lord tarries with us; we do not, I say, fast while the Lord is present, because he himself says:
'Can the children of the bridegroom fast, so long as the bridegroom is with them?' (Luke 5). For why should the body abstain from food, when the soul is fed full with the presence of the Lord? For one cannot be fasting who is refreshed by the grace of the Savior. For the fellowship of Christ is, in a certain manner, the food of the Christian. We are refreshed, therefore, during the fifty days while the Lord dwells with us. But when, after these days, he ascended into heaven, again we fast; as the same Savior says: 'But the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them; and then shall they fast in those days' (Luke 5). For when Christ ascended into heaven, he is taken from our sight; we suffer hunger, not of the body but of love; and we labor not so much from a fasting from food as from longing.
For our eyes endure certain longings while they do not behold him whom they seek, as the prophet says: 'My eyes have failed while I hope in my God' (Psalm 68). For the prophet's eyes failed, because he did not yet see him whom he hoped he would see; so too the eyes of the apostles failed, when they could no longer gaze upon the Lord going into heaven; according to what Luke says: 'And while they beheld, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight' (Acts 1). For the blessed apostles stood with their whole body strained upward, and, since they could not by the going of their feet, they followed with their eyes the Lord ascending into heaven; and although human sight failed to escort the Savior, yet the devotion of faith did not fail;
for as far as the cloud they escort Christ, but as far as the heavens they accompany Christ with the devotion of faith; whence the Apostle says, knowing our faith to be in the heavens with the Lord: 'But our conversation is in heaven' (Philippians 3). A cloud, then, received the Savior from the eyes of the apostles. Let us see, therefore, what that cloud may be—how splendid, how illustrious—which merited to receive Christ, the light of the world. For it could not be dark and foul or shadowy, since it is written: 'And the darkness comprehended it not' (John 1). For darkness could not bear the light; that cloud, then, which received the ascending Christ, which also bore witness to Christ upon the mountain, of which the evangelist says:
'A voice was heard in the cloud, saying: This is my beloved Son: hear ye him' (Matthew 17). Not a cloud, therefore, received Christ, but God the Father took back the Son, and, meeting him with a certain tenderness as he ascended, embraced him in a softer bosom. For the Father is therefore said to receive the Son beneath the shade of a cloud, that it may be shown that with a certain refreshment he cherishes the wounds of his passion. For after the cross, after the injuries, after the underworld, there is no greater refreshment for Christ than that he should be overshadowed by the power of the Godhead, as at his nativity it is said to Mary: 'And the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee' (Luke 1). The Most High Father, then, who overshadowed at Christ's birth in the power upon Mary, received him ascending in a cloud;
for God always protects with the shade of a cloud those whom, after injuries, he brings to rest, just as he protected the freed sons of Israel from Egypt with a pillar of cloud, and, that after much labor he might lead them into the land of promise, he cherished them with the shade of refreshment, as the prophet says: 'He spread out a cloud for their protection' (Exodus 13; Psalm 104). For he spread out a cloud lest they be parched by the drought of the desert and also by the burning of the sun. Let us rejoice, then, on this holy day, as we rejoiced at Pascha; for on both days there is a like and the same solemnity: for at Pascha all the nations are wont to be baptized, but at Pentecost the apostles were baptized, as the Lord said to his disciples when about to ascend into heaven: 'John baptized with water:
but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit, whom you are to receive not many days hence' (Acts 1). And therefore Luke says: 'When the days of Pentecost were accomplished, suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty spirit coming, and it sat upon each one of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit' (Acts 2).