That mystical senses lie hidden throughout all the gospel readings, and that the secrets of heavenly understanding remain there, only those know who have received the grace of the divine Spirit. Behold, after the heavenly shepherd sought out the lost sheep of the hundredfold flock, found it, and bore back the whole joy of the angels to the heavenly fold, the gospel woman is brought forward as a figure: who, with a lamp lighted, so seeks the one drachma lost of the ten drachmas, that, this being found, she brings from her gain, from her joy, the cause of heavenly joys. For thus He says: 'Or what woman having ten drachmas, if she lose one drachma, does she not light a lamp and sweep the house, and seek diligently until she find it?'
'And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying: Rejoice with me, for I have found the drachma which I had lost. So, I say to you, there shall be joy before the angels of God over one sinner doing penance' (Luke XV). Do you suppose this woman is an ordinary one, or that she is thought by human sense to have had ten drachmas, or is believed to have lost one by worldly chance, or that it simply happens that she seeks it in the night-time, or lights a lamp after the manner of our common usage, or that it is a familiar thing that she lost and found it within the house, or a domestic thing that she calls friends and neighbors together to gladness, whom she is not read to have called together to grief when losing it? A new kind of loss, and one that discloses the drachma not as taken away, but as slipped aside:
and one that speaks of it as hidden by domestic darkness and not buried by outsiders' tricks. You see how singular is the whole thing, how it passes beyond and surpasses human custom, how it breathes and savors a divine sense, how it lifts the understanding of the mind to heaven, how it sets it among things supernal, how it compels us to kindle the lamp of the heavenly heart, and, after the manner of the gospel woman, through the obscure things of the Lord's reading, to seek the drachma of saving knowledge.
Before Christ came to the erring sheep, and lifted it, worn by pitiable wanderings, upon His merciful shoulders to heaven, and, laden with the loving flock, reached the folds inaccessible to wolves; the woman having ten drachmas endured long-lasting darkness, and not only bewailed the one drachma lost, but did not even see the nine drachmas remaining to her. Night was continual for her, deep and persistent gloom was hers; for her a lamp without the divine fire did not shine for the solace of the night.
But after the supernal fire, the fire of the Holy Spirit, poured itself in a flaming shower over the apostles, and kindled with all the heat of its fire the hearts of mortals, no less cold than foul, the woman—that is, the Church—lights her lamp, that is, that inner gaze of her heart, that is, the enlightened, as the Apostle says, 'eyes of your heart' (Eph. I). She lights, then, her lamp, and after the apostolic labor overturns that Jewish house of ignorance, blind with darkness, until now, out of the ten drachmas—that is, the Decalogue of the Law—she might recover the lost drachma in Christ.
Christ is the coin full of the Godhead, Christ is the drachma of our redemption and price, Christ is He who both was in the Decalogue of the Law and lay hidden there, Christ is He whom the Synagogue also had, and yet, with darkness assailing, did not see. The ten drachmas we have said are the ten words of the Law, of which the Synagogue had lost one Word. Which one? That which in the Church John, because he was a burning lamp, first found, the Lord saying: 'He was a burning lamp' (John V), and the evangelist saying: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God' (John I). That this was in the Decalogue, let it now be made plain. 'Hear, O Israel,' he says, 'the Lord thy God is one God' (Deut. VI; Mark XII).
While the Synagogue does not see this in the Son, it loses it in the Father; while it does not believe in Christ, it fatally crucifies Christ; to whom rightly, in consequence, through the Decalogue it is said: 'Thou shalt not kill' (Exod. XX). Since, when the Jew cuts off the very series of the commandments at the head, he stood forth a murderer of Christ before he was a murderer of the Law; whence he turned the whole body of the Decalogue against Christ. 'Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery': condemned is the Synagogue, which, joined to the gods of the nations, repelled Christ, who, having laid aside the power of the ruler, descended to her with a spouse's affection. 'Thou shalt not steal.' She stole the Lord's resurrection, who gave a price to the soldiers to bury and hide the truth of the resurrection (Matt. XXVIII). 'Thou shalt not bear false witness.'
This is she who procured false witnesses (Matt. XXVI), to fulfill that saying: 'Unjust witnesses rising up asked me of things I knew not' (Ps. XXXIV). And truly she could not otherwise betray the Author of truth, because falsehood alone ever assails truth. Thus he falls, thus he falls step by step, who slips and tumbles down from the ladder of the precepts. For if she had believed the Lord God to be one, she would not have come to this abyss of ruins. But let us now follow the lamp of Mother Church, and, walking in the light of the Lord's countenance, let us come to the drachma of Christ; and let us call together friends and neighbors—that is, the Churches of the nations—lest they be ignorant that our Mother has found her drachma; and let us say with the prophet: 'I have prepared a lamp for my Christ' (Ps.
CXXXI). And let us hear what the lamp has profited: 'Behold, we heard of it in Ephrata, we found it in the fields of the wood. We will go into His tabernacle, we will adore in the place where His feet stood' (Ibid.). Behold, what through outstretched fields and scattered groves we were seeking, this let us find in the Lord, this at the lamp of our Mother. Over this let heaven too rejoice, because in one sinner doing penance the fullness of the whole Christian people has shone forth, and the whole form of the Godhead of Christ has gleamed again in our drachma.