講道集 第 60 章

No discrepancy presses upon us here, neither among the manuscript codices nor among the editors, since with an inscription entirely alike they present St. Maximus as the author of this homily. The enumeration of them will be long, from which the more certain will be the faith accorded to them. The Vatican Library has furnished us four codices, namely 6451 (page 136), 1146 (page 209), 1269 (page 59, on the reverse), 1277 (page 42, on the reverse). Three other codices we collated with our manuscript in the Cassinese archive: 12 (page 321), 104 (page 166, on the reverse), CXI (page 70). We also saw in the Vallicelliana two codices, 7 A, and XV (page 153, on the reverse), and in the Cistercian codex of Holy Cross in Jerusalem, XII, a lectionary (page 63).

To these succeed the confirmations of two Augian codices, XV and XVI, the Novariensis 42 (page 76), the Ratisbon codex of St. Emmeram, the Martinensis, the Ambrosian marked C 98, the Veronensis 431, and finally the Breviary of the Church of Esztergom. Before the editors we place Alcuin (page 317). For far later than he are Gymnicus (page 193), Galesinius (page 247), Cumdius (volume IV, page 393), Combefis (volume VI, page 122), Raynaudus (page 317), Margarinus in the Bibliotheca Maxima (volume VI, page 32), the inscription of all of whom is: 'On the day of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist,' which we too have adopted. The setting of the present life and the passion they underwent for the name of Christ, most beloved brethren, has consecrated for us the solemnity of the various martyrs.

For by the manifold report of the ancients we have learned that some of the martyrs were laid low by the sword, others consumed by fire, very many torn by the teeth of beasts, and countless ones, already afflicted with the various torments of torture, having despised the death of their body, rendered the testimony of the Christian faith. But the blessed Baptist John, in whose festival we now rejoice, born today from a barren womb, brought heavenly joys into the world. And those indeed were granted to see the Son of God reigning in glory now beyond doubt; but this one both foresaw the Lord to be born by the illumination of the prophetic spirit, and showed him once born by the privilege of a singular grace.

So greatly, moreover, did a special election shine forth in him, that he deserved to announce the Lord before he received either the beginning of birth or the tongue with which he might be able to speak. In short, that old woman and new mother Elizabeth, who before her own delivery rejoiced over the office of her future son, at the very meeting of the greeting, said to the blessed Mary as she came to her: 'Behold, from the moment the voice of your greeting was made in my ears, the infant leaped for joy in my womb' (Luke 1). What miracle is this, brethren? What novelty of such great joys, that Elizabeth testified she had in her womb an infant who, while not yet feeling himself, already felt the Lord's coming?

Truly this one is the most blessed of all little ones, who, still enclosed within his mother's womb, revealed with prophetic joy that the Saviour of the world was present, since he could not yet do so by speech. No one is ignorant, most beloved, that every little one, coming forth from the mother's womb, resounds within the very beginnings of light with mournful wailings; John the Baptist of the Lord alone, beyond the law of those being born, forestalled his own birth with an exultation of gladness. And how fitting it was, brethren, that he should be born of a barren mother, who was to reveal the fruitfulness of a virgin, so that, wondrously born, he might show forth a wondrous birth. This too, how astounding and how magnificent, that Zechariah the priest, the future father of the prophet;

because he did not believe the angel who spoke to him concerning this very thing that was being wrought, lost the use of speech, until, the promise being fulfilled, the born herald of the new man loosed the bonds of his father's tongue. For the mouth that the angel had closed, the son promised by the angel unsealed. For when the judgment of kinsmen and neighbors wavered concerning the naming of the little one, the mute father, the faculty of his former speech suddenly restored, disclosed the property of the child's true name, which he had learned at the angel's dictation; so that he who in silence awaited his nativity by heavenly injunction might speak the name of the newborn, and the anxious old man might recognize that through him he was restored to himself, whom he had not believed would be born of himself.

Nor would he doubt any longer that this one had either been promised from heaven or been born, on whose account he proved that he had both lost and recovered his speech. What is more glorious than this piety, brethren? What is more distinguished than this faith, in which a barren woman conceives, a mute man speaks, and in the secret of a mother's inward parts the future joys of the whole world are preluded by a little one? For mortal nature could not preserve its own order under the old law, when through the new grace of the Divinity a new mystery for the salvation of all was being prepared. This, then, is John, of whom Isaiah prophesied, saying: 'A voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God' (Isaiah 40). 'A voice,' he says, 'of one crying';

how well is he called a voice, who with a full and joyful mouth cried out the Only-begotten of God coming from the heavens in the flesh of man. Rightly is he called a voice, at whose thundering proclamation mortality, long deaf, began to hear the mystery of human redemption. For as the venerable Baptist opened the tongue of his mute father, so he renewed for the ears of men the hearing of saving grace.

But he cries in the wilderness, where no insolent crowd might drown out his preaching, no unbelieving hearer might laugh at it, but only those could hear it who sought the word of salvation being preached with the care only of divine worship, and who perceived that he proclaimed true things concerning Christ, who, by his assertion of justice—so that he rebuked the unlawful marriage of Herod—neither feared to offend the king, nor shunned the squalor of prison, nor fled from being slain by the tyrant's sword. Let us hear yet a little more, brethren, what the herald of the Saviour preached for the advancement of us all: 'Prepare,' he says, 'the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God.'

Truly worthy was the blessed John, whose nativity should be prophetic, who was born by God's gift from those parents whose posterity was despaired of. For with such great authority and such weight of teaching did he burst forth into the voice of holy preaching, that he both announced the imminent coming of the Lord and directed into straight paths the perversity of those living wickedly. For what is 'Prepare the way of the Lord,' but to prepare a dwelling of a simple heart, with the breast purged of vices, for the Judge coming from heaven? What is 'Make straight the paths of God,' but that you fortify for yourself such ways of your deeds along which the Lord, coming graciously to you, may delight to walk?

He prepares the way for his Lord who, spurning the pleasures of luxuriating flesh, with all the spirit of his mind suspended toward God, girds himself with the vigor of chastity. He best prepares the way for the Lord who checks his thoughts, seething with the waves of avarice, with the tranquility of a serene conscience. He prepares the way for the Lord who, trampling the vanities of idols and the fictions of all superstitions, seeks out the one worship of the living God and the faith of truth. But whoever languishes amid the voluptuous allurements of this world, rages with the cupidities of burning avarice, is inflamed with the beastly jaws of envy toward fraternal hatreds, and, to the insult of Almighty God, advances as an errant wayfarer over the broken paths of demons:

he does not prepare the way for the Lord, but, wretched, he lays open against himself a deadly entrance to his enemy. These morals and this kind of life open wide roads and most spacious highways to the barbarian nations, into the exile of the common salvation. These morals subject the people of God to the enemy peoples under the yoke of a wretched captivity. These morals scatter armed peoples and demolish fortified cities. What need is there to say more, most beloved? Whatever of power, whatever of strength we see in our enemies, is nourished by the corruption of our life and by our unfaithfulness; and hence it is that we obtain nothing by supplication poured out to God, because, incessantly clinging to impious and depraved desires, we do not prepare the way for our Lord according to the prophetic admonitions.

Wherefore, returning to the precepts of the most blessed John, let us prepare the way for the Lord, let us make straight the paths of our God; so that the Lord, seeing meanwhile in us the roads of a good will, may seek out his little sheep, now wearied by many perils—he the most kindly Shepherd: so that, just as today we rejoice over the nativity of the Lord's Baptist, so we may be glad over our reconciliation with our God: to whom be honor and glory.