As wholesome food is always bitter to the feverish, so too is the Lord's discourse often contrary to the unskilled: yet to both it happens otherwise, either from infirmity of body or of mind. Today the Lord seems to have exasperated the hearing of some, saying: 'I have come to send fire on the earth; and what will I but that it be kindled?' And below: 'Think you that I have come to send peace on the earth? No, I say to you, but separation' (Luke 12). And where is that: 'Behold the Lamb of God' (John 1)? Where is that: 'As a sheep He was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before the shearer He was dumb, so He opened not His mouth' (Isaiah 53)? And also that: 'Tell the daughter of Sion: Behold thy King comes to thee, meek' (Matthew 21)?
And what is it that this Lamb strikes so harshly in His preaching? Why does He so butt with His word, who in His passion keeps silence with such great patience, who in death succumbs in all humility? And truly, brethren, Christ entered His world gentle and meek in all things: while He is born sweet in our seed, while as a babe He is fondled, Himself more fondly, in the cradle, while as a little one He pours and relaxes Himself in the human bosom, while He is clasped on His parent's neck, and clasps her with the whole embrace of charity. And that He might nourish with all affection while He is nourished, He runs through and grows up gradually through all the ages: He acts ever as a poor man, He walks ever solitary, because the poor man is ever common to all; the solitary lies ever open to all.
And what is it that He scatters so much fire by His words, that He inflames such great and mighty things, and spreads conflagrations, saying: 'I have come to send fire on the earth'? What is it? As often as a field, by long neglect, runs to brushwood and grows foul with all the horror of wild rankness, it is surely always opened and purged by the fire of the most skillful cultivator: and by benevolent zeal the cultivator applies the fire, that, the thorns being burned up, the first face of the field may be revealed, that a clear way may be furnished to the husbandman, that the way may become easy for the plowshare, that the long-barren earth may be fruitful of seed, and may now repay with joyful, most joyous fruit its long and sad idleness.
Therefore, where the Jewish soil, exhausted to barrenness by the continual plow of the Law and by constant cultivation, did not respond to seed nor to labor, but rendered tares instead of wheat, brought forth thorns instead of strength, Christ turned the industry of divine cultivation to the sown fields of the Gentiles: and, desiring to purge the fallow lands of the nations long oppressed with briars, the greatest Master first sends fire upon the earth, and whatever natural rankness had befouled, whatever wintry cold had withered, He purges away and consumes with a craftsman's fire; so that the ground, long exhausted by fasting, might, fattened by its very own ash, grow rich, and after long hardness might be rendered tender and soft; and might be made suitable, as fit for evangelical cultivation, for the seed;
and by a happy furrow might now yield thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold fruit. But this very cultivation is not new to the ancient and heavenly Husbandman, for to establish the Law and to sow grace, He has always been accustomed to use the work of fire. About to give the Law, He sent fire before in the bush; but the bush bore the divine flame, it did not catch fire (Exodus 5), even then prefiguring the people full of the thorns of malice and ungrateful to the cultivation of the Law.
And now, when He was destining the apostles into the fields of the Gentiles, He so bathed them with a fiery shower, and fire settled upon them, that they could dry the wet, water the dry, boil down the raw, warm the cold, kindle the extinguished, burn up the harmful, and, in diverse operation by one and the same fire, refine all the deserts of the lands unto heavenly abundance, as the prophet says: 'Their sound went out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world' (Psalm 18). But let us now pass to what follows. 'I have come to send fire on the earth, and what will I but that it be kindled? But I have a baptism wherewith to be baptized, and how am I straitened until it be accomplished?' Water urges fire: such a conjunction, so divided, must be pondered.
The wave urges the flame, the flame multiplies the wave. What is this concord, so harmonious a discord? Here, as we have said, the type of the divine Husbandman is enacted: for all things full of heat germinate, and are nourished by moisture. Whence God, the parent of things, germinates us by the commerce of fire and water, nourishes us, for whom He burns, glows, seethes, and pants with so great affection. 'I have a baptism wherewith to be baptized.' Christ is baptized in His own blood, that whatever He took from our flesh might be washed, renewed, and reduced wholly into the form of His divine majesty. Christ is baptized with the baptism of His Passion, who washed away the sin of the whole world, which could be abolished by none but Him who had made the world. 'Think you,' He says, 'that I have come to send peace on the earth?'
'No, I say to you, but separation.' Why? Because the heavenly conjunction is in this earthly separation. No one can be connected to the earth and be joined to heaven. Let this earthly separation therefore be welcome and dear, which so separates us from earthly things as to insert us into divine things. 'There shall be henceforth,' He says, 'five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three: the father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.' Though He said five in one house were to be divided in number, He named six of those to be divided: father, son, mother, daughter, mother-in-law, daughter-in-law: but because it is the same mother-in-law who is the mother, it is certain that only five persons are found in these names.
Now three are divided against two, when, the bride being joined to the bridegroom, the mother-in-law, who is the third, remains divided in the house. Therefore this Synagogue, in which the Church is joined to Christ, and who is the mother and the mother-in-law, remains now wholly divided from her own husband.
Two therefore are thus divided against three, when, from this fellowship of Christ and the Church, the Synagogue, as the other heir, is cut off and divided, so that Christ and the Church, divided from the heretics, may remain one and be joined in the Spirit. The father too is divided against the son, and the son against the father, when the Jewish people, which through the carnal generation of Christ obtained the paternal name, is separated through envy from Christ the Son; the livid father turns his affection to hatred, to whom the son's glory is a perpetual punishment, is a continual torment, as the Apostle says: 'Whose are the fathers, from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed forever' (Rom. 9). The mother too is divided against the daughter:
For the Synagogue is the mother, from whom, through Peter and the other apostles, is born the Church the daughter; who, when she merited to have fellowship with the divine King Christ, endured her mother as both rival and stepmother. And what mother to a daughter is such as the mother-in-law to the daughter-in-law? For this mother Synagogue, when she saw the Church the daughter-in-law come from the Gentiles, wickedly slew the Son, that she might not see the fellowship of the daughter-in-law: she slew Christ, if perchance she, raging, might thus avail to extinguish the love of the daughter-in-law. But from death Christ rose again wholly into the wedlock of the Church; to prove that charity is not separated by death, but grows. But the Lord reproved those who strive with excessive curiosity to search out the face of heaven, the rising of clouds, the courses of the stars, the regions of the world, and the time of their salvation;
'Hypocrites,' He says, 'you know how to discern the face of heaven and of the earth; and how is it that you do not discern this time?' An eye poured out loses its light, because the whole vision of man is contained within the pupil. Do not therefore be eager to see many things, that you may see yourself; do not presume to gaze at lofty things, nor covet to behold far-off things, because the narrow eye does not grasp many things, does not penetrate lofty things, does not discern far-off things, and thus sees nothing, who thinks that he sees everything. Recognize therefore the day of salvation, the accepted time, through Christ Jesus our Lord, if you wish to be saved from yourself.
I profess indeed that I owe veneration and most faithful service to all Churches; but I am compelled to serve the Church of Cornelius more particularly, for love of the very name. For Cornelius, illustrious in life by most blessed memory, everywhere shining with all the titles of the virtues, known to all by the greatness of his works, was a father to me: he himself begot me through the Gospel, he himself, pious, most piously nourished me, he himself, holy, instituted me in holy service, he himself, a pontiff, offered me at the sacred altars and consecrated me: and therefore the name of Cornelius is to me illustrious, worthy of reverence, wonderful.
The love of the shared name, therefore, compels me to meet longingly the desires of the Church of Cornelius, and more lovingly to consecrate as pontiff the venerable man Projectus. I said Projectus, but not abject, according to that word: 'Upon Thee was I cast from the womb; from my mother's belly Thou art my God' (Psalm 21). And truly this Projectus, cast forth from the womb of a human mother, remained continually in the womb of the divine mother, who, unmindful of his own house, persisted in being a dweller of the house of God. But how, brethren, from the very cradle he ascended the grades and offices of the ecclesiastical service, because it is long for me to tell, as the Lord says, 'he is of age; let him speak for himself' (John
chapter 11), through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Holy Spirit unto ages of ages. Amen. The simplicity of one's innocence has indeed its grace, it has the fruit of its faith; but it cannot have the reward of knowledge, it cannot have the palm of the virtues. It is one thing to live for one's own leisure and security, another to bear watches and labors for all. Simplicity makes a good citizen, it does not make a brave soldier: hence it is that the one pays tribute, the other receives pay and honors. The citizen either yields or succumbs to adversities; the soldier sustains and repels adversities; the former has not learned to fight, the latter not to fear; the former is ever on guard, the latter conquers.
These things we have said, that we might show what distance there is between him who simply accepts and follows the sacrament of the Christian faith, and him who studies both to apprehend knowingly the mystery of that faith and to know it. Behold, the fast of Lent, which with solemn devotion the universal Church takes up tomorrow: many think that it was handed down to us, or that the Lord performed it for us, only for the zeal of abstinence, and that it contains no mystery of higher understanding, but that it was provided solely for chastising bodies, cutting back vices, and tempering minds.
Furthermore, this number forty is found to be so sacred from the ages, so mystical, that it is always employed in the accomplishing of divine things, and prescribed by inviolable law for the unfolding of God's greatest affairs. That this may shine forth to purity, let us run through it with most abundant examples. When the world, in the primordial times of the human race—to be deeply bewailed—grew foul with the abominable filth of vices, and reeked all over with the horror of crimes, and by the very smoke of its iniquity strove to darken the great brightness of heaven, then, to expiate the earth for forty days and forty nights, the heavenly shower was poured forth (Genesis 7):
So that, since the world which had been made was now destined to perish for itself, it might rejoice to be reborn by such a baptism, and might know that it now owed itself no longer to nature, but to the grace of its own Author; and that the earth itself, the origin of our body, might foretaste the very form of our baptism, so that she who before the birth of men had brought them forth unto death might now bring these forth unto life, reborn. Consider, brethren, how great is that number forty, which then opened heaven to cleanse the lands, and now by the font of baptism spreads open the whole world for the nations to be made new. Rightly do we run for forty days through fasting, that we may arrive at the font of baptism and of salvation. For forty years the bread-giving shower fed the people of the Jews in the wilderness (Exod. XVI):
Nor by the customary tillage did it bring forth the increase of the seed from the earth, but rather He Himself rained grain upon the lands; and He took away the whole toil of human bondage, who with a gentle dew provided and lifted up heavenly provision for the hungry. For forty days the reconnaissance sent by God went about the land of promise (Num. XIII): that this sacred number might summon the promised lands to the people of Israel, He who by our forty-day courses of fasting summons us, and leads us through to heaven. For even now the heavenly inspection explores and goes about the earth of our body for forty days, so that, when the nations of vices have been conquered and driven out, the throng of virtues may possess the region of our heart.
And since nothing must be omitted: Moses himself was so purified by a forty-day fast and so emptied of the body (Exod. XXIV), that he was wholly changed into the glory of the Godhead; and there shone forth, still within the darkness of our body, the whole light of the deity; nor could the sight of mortals gaze upon him, since, long nourished on the substance of God, he had wholly forgotten the supports of mortal food: whence he learned that before God, and among those who dwell with God, the sustenance of life is not lacking. And truly, brethren, he who has God for his bread and for his life knows not weariness and cannot die. Rightly did such a man deserve to sanction the Law, who had wholly lost whatever in man the Law could constrain. Perhaps a continual fast had already granted Moses this;
but it had not yet rendered him such, had this sacred number forty been lacking. Fasting lifted Elijah up to heaven (IV Kings 11), and to a body thus purified assigned the service of the fiery chariot: to show how that Gehenna which burns the guilty ministers to the innocent; but that even Elijah might come to this, he first ran forth the mystical way of the number forty (III Kings XIX). Ezekiel, the eminent among the prophets, lying forty days upon one side—I speak to those who know the Law—while he prefigured the captivity to come, completed it (Ezek. IV): which sacred number takes up iniquities, that it may blot them out; enters upon captivities, that it may loose them; suffers bonds, that it may release them.
This, then, is why the Lord, the Author from the ages of the mystery hidden in this number, within that very number of the forty days of fasting (Matt. iv)—so that what Truth itself had foreshadowed in His servants, He might now through Himself accomplish once done and begun, might make firm what was tender, might supply what was but begun, and might strengthen by example what He had established by precepts; for it had not sufficed merely to command by words the mystery of so great a number, unless He had also commended it by deed. And yet, brethren, from the time of the flood we strive to open the mystery of this sacrament, not daring to touch things earlier, to probe things higher, to speak things that are kept silent, to bring forth things so long, and rightly, laid up:
especially since it seems to me rash, and to you not necessary, to search out such and so great origins of causes. It belongs to true devotion, to most faithful service, to inquire what the Lord wills to be done, not why He wills it. If, therefore, we are fully taught by so many testimonies a simple, pure, equal fast of forty days, handed down to us by the Lord under the sacrament of so great a number, whence comes this variety, whence this novelty, whence weeks now relaxed, now rigid, now overly indulgent, now severe? Whence this practice of an ill-tempered fast, which either afflicts without indulgence, or gives way to gluttony?
That is, to prepare separately for one's own uses hot things, separately cold, separately remedies of salt, separately of food, and to neglect altogether the Founder of life? Surely those who season the foods of the body should learn wisely to temper the nourishment of the soul, lest the salutary food, either too salted or entirely insipid, breed a deadly loathing. Let the fast be equal: and, as it has been handed to us (Matt. II), let it be kept for the discipline of body and soul. Surely he who cannot fast, let him not presume to introduce a novelty: but let him confess that what he relaxes is of his own frailty, and let him redeem by alms what he cannot make up by fasts; for the Lord does not require the groan of that man who has so redeemed for himself the groaning of the poor.