Blessed Isaiah, an evangelist no less than a prophet, laments that he has unclean lips and dwells in the midst of a people that has unclean lips, saying: 'Woe is me, for I am pricked to the heart, because, being a man and having unclean lips, I dwell also in the midst of a people that has unclean lips, and I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of Hosts' (Isaiah 6). He is here struck with a more-than-human grief, because what he perceives and sees concerning God he is not able to speak, cannot announce, cannot confess.
As much as the flesh is narrow, so much are the lips cramped to his mind; so much is the tongue too short an interpreter of his mind. In the flesh a fire pants shut up within, it heats the veins, it inflames the inward parts, it boils up in the marrow, and it ever kindles the whole inner man, because what the mind contemplates in its feeling, it does not suffice to bring forth by mouth, to pour out through the lips, to distinguish by the tongue, and altogether to breathe forth into speech. Hence it is that Isaiah, when he saw the King of heaven, that is, Christ, and beheld in clear vision that he himself is the Lord of Hosts, bewailed the unclean lips of himself and of his people; because, just as the confessed divinity of Christ enlightens hearts, purges mouths, and cleanses lips, so his denied majesty defiles them. But let us hear what this groaning of the prophet accomplished.
'And there was sent to me,' he says, 'one of the seraphim, who had in his hand a coal, which he had taken with tongs from the altar, and he touched my mouth, saying: Behold, this has touched your lips, and has taken away your iniquities, and has purged round about your sins.'
It is not for this present time to say why one is sent, and who this is that is sent, and how great is he who thus fearlessly carries in his hand a coal of the fire from on high, nay, so tempers it by his touch that he purges the lips of the prophet and does not scorch them; but now let us also be pricked with our whole heart's affection, and let us confess that we are wretched in this misery of the flesh, and let us with devout groanings bewail that we too have unclean lips, so that this one of the seraphim, with the tongs of the grace of the law, may bring to us the fiery sacrament of faith received from the altar on high, and with such control may touch the mouth of our lips, that he may take away iniquities, purge away sins, and so kindle our mouths into the flame of full confession, that this searing may be of salvation, not of pain.
Let us also pray that the heat of this coal may reach even to our hearts, so that from so great a sweetness of the mystery we may receive not only a taste on the lips, but the whole fullness in our very senses and mind; and just as Isaiah, after the cleansing of his lips, spoke of the ineffable childbearing of the Virgin, saying: 'Behold, a Virgin shall conceive in her womb and shall bring forth a son' (Isaiah 7), so let us relate the sacrament of the Passion and the glory of the resurrection: I believe in God the Father almighty.
You rightly confess today that you have believed in God, since you rejoice that you have fled from gods and goddesses diverse in sex, confused in number, common as a mob, base in origin, foul in reputation, greatest in impiety, first in wickedness, singular in crime, accused even by the very faces of their own sepulchres; for it belongs to misery, grief, and unhappiness to have had such and so many petty masters as you have hitherto endured to be your lords. But rejoice that you have come to the one, living, true, sole—yet not solitary—God, by saying: I believe in God the Father. Now let him confess the Son, who names the Father:
for he who willed to be called Father, and to be named Father, graciously showed that he has a Son, whom he did not receive out of time, did not beget in time, did not take up for a time. The Divinity neither has a beginning, nor admits an end, nor allows anything to come after, since it knows no setting. God does not bring forth the Son with pangs, but manifests him to exist by his powers; nor does he make outside himself what is from himself, but begets; and while it is in himself, he opens and reveals it. From the Father the Son proceeded, but did not depart; nor did he come forth from the Father as one to succeed the Father, but came forth to remain ever in the Father. Hear John saying: 'This was in the beginning' (John 1). And elsewhere: 'That which was from the beginning' (1 John 1). What 'was' assuredly did not come to be; what 'was' assuredly appears not to have begun.
'I am,' he says, 'the first, and I am the last' (Isaiah 44). He who is the first is not himself after another; he who is the last leaves no other after himself; but when he says these things, he does not exclude the Father, but concludes all things in himself and in the Father. But let us come to the things which follow: And in Christ Jesus his only Son our Lord. Just as kings are named from the titles of their triumphs, and from the names of subjugated nations acquire most numerous surnames, so Christ is named from the titles of his benefits: for from chrism (anointing) he was called Christ, who as a devout physician poured the ointment of divinity into the already dried-out members of mortals;
and as from chrism he is Christ, so from salvation he is called Jesus, who for this reason poured upon us the divine ointment, that to the sick he might render sure salvation, and to the lost perpetual health. And in Christ Jesus his only Son. For although there are many sons by grace, he is the one and singular Son by nature. Our Lord. Who, having freed us from the servitude of so many, so cruel, so foul lords, seeks not to claim us back to our former condition, but to set us free unto perpetual liberty. Who was born of the Holy Spirit. Thus and in such a manner is Christ born to you, until for you the man changes the order of birth, so that there may be for you a new rising into life, for whom the old setting ever remained in death.
Who was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary. Where the Spirit begets and the Virgin gives birth, all is done divinely, nothing humanly; nor is there any place for infirmity, where power is joined to power. Adam was put to sleep, that from the man a virgin might be taken (Genesis 2); now the Virgin was struck with amazement, that from the Virgin man might be restored (Luke 1). What can nature claim for itself out of so great, so remarkable a birth, where, while it sees its own order renewed, it beholds all its laws changed, and perceives and marvels that its own Author has come into its own offspring? Let this seem cheap to the faithless: to believers it is a great sacrament. Who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried. You hear the name of the judge, that you may also recognize the time of the Passion;
you hear 'crucified,' that you may recognize that salvation lost to us has been restored through that very thing by which it had perished, and that you may see the life of believers hanging there where the death of the faithless had hung. You hear 'buried,' lest death be thought to have been mocked. This is the mark of divine power, when death dies by death, the author of death is cut down by his own sword, the plunderer is captured by his own prey, hell is torn asunder by the life it had swallowed. On the third day he rose again from the dead. Christ spent the three days of his burial in three dwellings, being about to profit hell, earth, and heaven; to restore the things that are in heaven, to repair the things that go upon the earth, and to redeem the things among those below, so that at once he might unfold to men, by the sacrament of the three days, the grace of the Trinity given unto salvation. He ascended into the heavens.
He ascended, not that he might carry himself back into heaven, he who ever remained in heaven, but that he might carry you thither, whom, so bound, he loosed and drew forth from hell. Understand, O man, from where and to where you have been raised up by God, that you might be stable in the heavenly places, you who were slippery and ever tottering on earth. And he sits at the right hand of the Father. But the Father has nothing on the left with respect to his own. Our confession assigns not places of divine granting, but tokens of power: God knows no places, the Divinity admits nothing on the left. Thence he is to come to judge the living and the dead. Let the living be so; but how will he be able to judge the dead? But those live who are reckoned dead to us. Therefore confess that those will rise again unto judgment, whom unbelief thinks to have perished;
so that those who shall have been dead, and those who shall be found living, may alike render an account of their deeds and their life. I believe in the Holy Spirit. After you have confessed the sacrament of the flesh assumed, it behooves you to confess the deity of the Spirit, so that the equal unity of the Trinity—of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Spirit—through all things and in all things may guard and hold in our confession the whole truth of the faith of the one power. The holy catholic Church. Because neither are the members separated from the head, nor the bride from the bridegroom; but then by such a conjunction the Spirit becomes one, becomes all things, and in all things God. Therefore he himself believes in God, who confesses the holy Church in God.
And the remission of sins. He himself grants pardon to himself, who trusts that his sins can be remitted to him through Christ. The resurrection of the flesh. You believe well, if you believe that you can rise again from death through God, for whom the elements ever rise again; so time from time, so day from night, so the seeds from their own burial. Nor will you be able to perish, when those come back to life: nor is it difficult for God to do with you in your old age what you yourself ever do with the seed. Life everlasting. This faith, this sacrament, is not to be committed to paper, not to be written with letters, because paper and letters proclaim the cause rather than the grace; but where the grace of God, the divine gift, subsists, faith suffices for the covenant, the depth of the heart suffices for the secret:
so that this symbol of salvation, this covenant of life, the divine Judge may know, and the false witness be ignorant of. Sign yourselves. And may the Lord our God himself guard your senses and your hearts; and in the things which he has commanded you, may he himself be present as your helper.