Today the evangelist thus began: 'Jesus,' it says, 'seeing great crowds about him, commanded them to go across the strait' (Matt. 8:18). As often as an undisciplined crowd pours itself about the Lord, and is tossed about in the storm of conscience, forsakes quiet, seeks the waves, deserts the harbor, enters shipwrecks, and, striving after lofty things, is plunged into the deep; then Christ commands this sea, troubled by such crowds, to be crossed over. 'Jesus,' it says, 'seeing great crowds about him, commanded them to go across the strait.' Not that he might flee men, he who had come for the salvation of men; but he gives to the unwise a respite for believing. He waits for the erring, that they may return; he offers patience and pardon, he who does not wish to pronounce sentence;
he bears with the obstinate, he who wishes not to destroy, but to save what he made. 'There came,' it says, 'one of the scribes, and said to him: Master, I will follow you wherever you go.' He who promises to follow the Lord incautiously departs, he does not draw near. But who promises that he can do all things? He would have spoken more cautiously: 'I will follow you wherever you bid me': that certainly more befitting a man. 'Wherever you will'—'I will follow you wherever you go.' Thus speaks he who is ignorant of what difference there is between himself and the Lord; thus speaks he who understands Christ not as God, but as a master. 'I will follow you wherever you go.' Peter follows across the sea, but he is submerged; he follows unto the passion, but he denies. And if Peter thus fails, sinks under a few things: who is this, who thus promises to follow the Lord in all things? 'I will follow you wherever you go.'
Thus speaks this man, as though he could undergo the conflict with Christ, attain glory through the ignominy of the cross, enter the citadel of death, mortify death through death, penetrate the unknown recesses of hell, burst the chains of the netherworld, recall to their own bodies souls already hardened for ages, forgetful of the light; shake the earth, split the rocks, unseal the sepulchres, lead forth the buried from the lower regions, and bring witnesses of his resurrection. Let this man further add to go wherever Christ goes, to be borne upon the shoulders of angels, to ascend the heavens, to sit with the Father, to hold the summit of all heavenly dignities: why does this foolish scribe, this proud home-born slave, promise that he will follow the Lord to these things, to these, the Lord?
But he receives from Christ a reply so worthy of so great a presumption: 'The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.' What is this? The fox, weak in strength, powerful in craft, a belly of guile, an artificer of fraud, a mistress of pretense, void of simplicity, full of tricks, a plunderer of domestic birds, an enemy to familiar dwellings—rightly does Christ form this into a type of Herod, the prince of the Jews, who, forgetful of his ancient liberty, existing under the Roman power, ruled by art, reigned by craft, commanded by fraud, presided by deceits, prevailed by dissimulation;
And because he could not carry off booty from foreign nations, he devoured his own household folk, the people bred within his borders, his native populace, like domestic fowl. Christ proves this when he charges Herod: 'Go, tell that fox' (Luke 13:32). A fox indeed, who seizes by cunning a kingdom which he deserved neither by his birth nor by his life. This Herod, then, dug for himself in the hearts of the Scribes down to ten pits of Christ, dens for his own crimes; nor did he leave a place where Christ might lay his head, which is God (1 Cor. 11:3). The foxes have holes and the birds of heaven have nests. Here too by 'birds' he calls the demons that fly about in the air, who likewise built the nests of their malice in the breasts of the Scribes, where they might bring forth all the seeds of their wickedness.
Hence it is that when the devil insinuated himself into the mind of Judas, he at once both conceived the fruit of deceit and gave birth to the crime of a betrayer. You see that Christ did not repel the Scribe when he was willing, but exposed him when he was feigning, and shrank from his presumption. Otherwise why would Christ, the author of holiness and the giver of salvation, forbid this man from coming when he wished, seeing that a little later he held back another disciple who longed to go, lest he should depart? 'Another disciple,' it says, 'said, Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said to him, Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.' Does Christ in this way deny the last office of piety? Does he forbid the final gift owed to one's parents?
He does not deny the office of piety, but sets the divine service above human affections. Hear what the disciple said: 'Permit me first to go and bury my father.' This ought not to have been for him first, but second; the earthly father is to be put after the heavenly Father. 'Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.' This is to say: Follow me to the shame of the Passion, that with me you may be able to attain to the glory of the resurrection. 'Let the dead bury their own dead.' Why should a son of faith return to the house of faithlessness? Why should the offspring of salvation weep over the lost among the lost? Why should the pledge of the resurrection concern itself with a father's tomb? 'Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.' How do the dead bury their own dead?
Brethren, he himself said: 'I am the life' (John 14:6). What the soul is to the body, that is Christ to the soul; without the soul the body does not live, nor does the soul live without Christ. When the soul departs, at once there follow for the body stench, corruption, rottenness, worm, ashes, horror, and all things loathsome to look upon; when God departs, immediately there come upon the soul the stench of sins, the corruption of crimes, the rottenness of vices, the worm of conscience, the ashes of vanities, the horror of unbelief, and in the tomb of the body a living funeral of a soul already buried takes place. It added to the case that the corpse of faithlessness was attended with faithless services, and piety was being tended by the ministry of impiety. 'Jesus,' it says, 'entering the house of the ruler, saw the flute-players' (Matt. 9).
Do not such people make a mockery of piety, who bring music to mourning and hired laments of strangers to the funerals of their own? For where there is no genuine grief, there is a bought and mercenary dirge. It is not the artful flute that mourns the dead, but simple affection. Christ therefore did not wish his disciple to be absent from his father's obsequies, but was unwilling that he should take part in profane lamentations.