And yet we have said many things about His generation, but about that which is from the mother. As for how He was born of the Father in heaven, who can explain it? who can declare or investigate it? Let us hold fast to that human nativity, through which God bestowed grace upon us. Grace, I say, given, not a reward repaid; for He who created, heals. Through it He raises the falling, through it He cures the sick, through it He crowns the victor. This is faith, this is truth—this is the foundation of the Christian faith: that by one man came ruin, by another man, Christ, came the building up. He fell who did not abide; He raises up who did not fall. That one collapsed, because he forsook the One who abides; Christ, abiding in the Father, came down to the one lying prostrate. 8.
The divine generation of Christ. He Himself is the little child of the seed of Israel, and He Himself is God-with-us, Emmanuel. What is that generation of our Saviour, by which He is co-eternal with the Father who begets Him—when the world stood amazed at this generation from a virgin, which devout faith acknowledged and held, but unbelief mocked, and pride, overcome, feared? What is that generation by which 'in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God' (John I, 1)? Or what is this Word, which He who was about to utter did not before keep silent, and, once uttered, He who was speaking did not fall silent? What is the Word without time, through which the times were made—the Word which the lips of none opened when begun, nor closed when finished;
the Word which has no beginning from the mouth of those who speak, yet opens the mouths of the dumb; the Word which is not made eloquent by the tongues of the nations, yet makes the tongues of infants eloquent? What, I say, is that generation, to which the father does not yield by dying, because he does not precede it by living—a generation foreign to all intervals of places and times, to all extension of spaces, such as we are wont to perceive either in days or in bodies? 9. He who meditates on this must lift his mind above all created things. A man is far from God in proportion as he is unlike Him. Let us lift up our souls to Him, as far as by His help we are able, that we may grasp, as best we can, both the One born who does not come before the Begetter, and the One begotten who does not come after the Begotten;
the Father and the Son neither equally fathers nor equally sons, yet equally eternal; not both begetting, nor both being born; but the one not existing without the other; and the Father having eternally begotten, and the Son having been eternally born. Let us think, if we are able; if we are not able, let us believe. That which we wish to speak of is not here; and yet it is not placed far from any one of us: for 'in Him we live, and move, and are' (Acts XVII, 28). Let us transcend our own flesh, in which parents live before their children—because, in order to be able to beget children, they grew, and as their children grow they now grow old. Parents lived when their children were not yet born, because children too will live on when their parents are dead.
Let us transcend also our own souls; for they too bring forth something by thinking, which they hold with themselves by knowing; but they can lose it by forgetting, because they did not have it before by birth. Let us transcend all things bodily and temporal and mutable, that we may see, above all things, Him through whom all things were made. Our ascent is in the heart, because that also to which we ascend is near; yet we are far from Him in proportion as we are unlike Him. There ascends therefore to Him His own likeness, which He both made and remade in us; because the weak sight does not yet palpitate perfectly, and cannot behold the ineffable brightness of the eternal light. Whose radiance therefore the eye of the mind does not yet grasp—'Who shall declare His generation?'
But 'the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us' (John I, 14). This generation, therefore, whose day we celebrate today—this in which He deigned to come through Israel and to be made Emmanuel, God with us, in the infirmity of flesh, not with us in the iniquity of heart, approaching us through that which He assumed from what is ours, and setting us free through that which remained in what is His own (for the Lord visited His servants through a mortal infirmity, that He might make them free through His unchangeable truth)—this generation, therefore, of which human frailty is somehow capable, not that which abides without time, without a mother, above all things, but this which was made in time without a father among all things;
let us praise, love, adore this Son of the Virgin and Bridegroom of virgins, born of an uncorrupted mother and bringing forth in incorruptible truth: that in His mercy we may triumph over the cunning of the vanquished devil. Let us come to Him by believing, let us make progress by giving thanks, let us acknowledge Him by persevering. Let us come to Him, and let us be at concord among ourselves. Why do we quarrel over His nativity? Is it that we may not hear the physician who calls? O unhappy infirmity! The physician comes to the sick man, and the sick man is at leisure for quarrels. Let us therefore celebrate the Nativity of the Lord, dearest brethren; let us celebrate the advent of God and man, that we may return to God. Let us therefore celebrate the festal day, not of human devotion, but of divine condescension;
not of infirmity, but of eternity; not of the formation, but of the reformation of our Lord Jesus Christ: who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, etc. SERMON CXXIX. On the Kalends of January, I. 1. Who Janus was. The origin of idolatry. Whence Janus has two faces. The superstition of the January Kalends. The day of these Kalends, dearest brethren, which they call the Kalends of January, took its name from a certain Janus, a lost and sacrilegious man. Now this Janus was a certain leader and prince of pagan men: whom ignorant and rustic men, while they feared him as it were a king, began to worship as a god; for they paid him unlawful honour, while in him they dreaded the royal power.
For foolish men, ignorant of God, then most of all esteemed those to be gods whom they perceived to be more exalted among men. And thus it came about that the worship of the one true God was transferred to the many names of gods, or rather of demons. Therefore they named the day of the present Kalends after Janus, as has already been said; and desiring to confer divine honours upon that man, they reckoned him the end of one year and the beginning of another. And because among them the January Kalends were said to complete one year and to begin another, they placed this Janus as it were at the beginning and the end, that he might be said to complete one year and to begin another. And hence it is that the worshippers of idols themselves fashioned two faces for Janus;
one before him, the other behind him; one that seemed to look upon the past year, the other upon the future: and thus foolish men, by assigning two faces to him, while they desired to make him a god, made him a monster. Pagan men wished there to be in their god something that is monstrous even in beasts. And so, by the best declaration and proof of their error, while with religious folly they wish him to be seen as a great god, they proclaimed him a demon. 2. Those who play the little stag. Men putting on women's clothing. Hence therefore it is that in these days pagan men, with a perverse disorder of all things, are covered with obscene deformities; that they may make themselves such as is he whom they worship.
For in these days wretched men—and, what is worse, some who are baptized—take on adulterous forms, monstrous shapes, in which indeed there are things that are first shameful, or rather to be lamented. For what wise man could believe that any of sound mind can be found who, playing the little stag, would wish to change themselves into the guise of wild beasts? Some are clothed in the skins of cattle; others put on the heads of beasts, rejoicing and exulting if they have so transformed themselves into the likeness of wild beasts that they do not seem to be men. By which they indicate and prove that they have not so much the guise of a beast as the mind of one. For although they wish to express in themselves the likeness of various animals,
yet it is certain that in these there is rather the heart of cattle than their form. And now, how base and how shameful is this, that men born as men are clothed in women's tunics, and by a most disgraceful transformation effeminate their manly strength into girlish figures, not blushing to thrust their soldierly arms into women's tunics: they wear bearded faces, and wish to seem women. And rightly they no longer have their manly fortitude, who have passed over into a woman's dress. For it must be believed to have come about by the just judgment of God, that those should lose their soldierly virtue who had disfigured themselves in the guise of women. 3. Other superstitions. New Year's gifts.
And because God, being appeased, has deigned to inspire you, for love of the faith, that this wretched custom should be wholly removed from this city, I beg you, dearest brethren, that it should not suffice you that you yourselves, by God's gift, do not do this evil: but wherever else you see it being done, reprove, chastise, correct, and by your wholesome counsel remove foolish men from this wretched sacrilege. And that you may consecrate yourselves wholly to the divine mercy, spurn also, as it were the poisons of the devil, those other observances which—and this is worse—many are not ashamed to observe among the Christian people.
For there are those who from the January Kalends observe auguries, so that they will not grant fire from their house, or any other favour whatsoever, to anyone who asks for it. They also receive diabolical New Year's gifts from others, and themselves hand them on to others. Some rustics too, on that night which has just passed, setting out little tables full of many things necessary for eating, wish them to remain thus set out all night, believing that the January Kalends can grant them this, that throughout the whole year their feasts may continue in such abundance. And because, as it is written, 'A little leaven corrupts the whole lump' (Gal. V, 9), these also, and other things like them—which it would be long to tell—which by the unlearned are believed to be either small
or no sins at all, should be removed in orderly fashion from your households; and command this, that they should keep these Kalends just as they are wont to keep those of the other months. For those who wish to observe anything of the pagan custom in these days, it is to be feared that the Christian name may not be able to profit them. 4. A fast once appointed on the January Kalends. Masked men not to be looked upon. And therefore our holy fathers of old, considering that the greatest part of men in these days give themselves over to gluttony or luxury, and rave with drunkenness and sacrilegious dancing, decreed throughout the whole world that a public fast should be appointed through all the Churches.
That wretched men might recognize that they do such evil that, for their sins, it was necessary for all the Churches to fast. Let us fast therefore, dearest brethren, in these days; and with true and perfect charity let us bewail the folly of wretched men, that even so they may understand their evil, while they see a public fast observed on their behalf. For it is not to be despaired of that God can correct, by our prayer or chastisement, those who through His apostle promised with ineffable mercy, saying, 'He who shall have converted a sinner from the error of his way, shall save his soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins' (James V, 20).
Whoever, moreover, on these Kalends shall have shown any kindness to foolish men playing wantonly, let him not doubt that he is a partaker in their sin. For he who thinks happily concerning the salvation of his own soul ought rather to grieve or to weep over them, than to relax his mind with them or over them to his own unhappy laughter. But you, brethren, who by God's favour are wont daily to cry, 'Mine eyes are ever toward the Lord' (Ps. XXIV, 15); and again, 'To Thee have I lifted up mine eyes, who dwellest in the heavens' (Ps. CXXII, 1): it is not fitting that your eyes, which, constantly watching in the church, are sanctified toward God, should be polluted by seeing the wantonness of many men. Rather you ought to disdain and despise the works of the devil;
that in you the charity of Christ may remain whole. Cry therefore with the prophet, saying, 'Turn away mine eyes, that they may not behold vanity' (Ps. CXVIII, 37): fearing that which the Apostle says, 'You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot be partakers of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons' (1 Cor. X, 20, 21). But I trust in the mercy of God that, through your chastisement, their folly is so to be corrected that not only on your behalf, but also for the correction of those who will profit by your example, a double reward will be repaid you by the Lord: our Lord Jesus Christ Himself granting it, to whom is glory and honour for ever and ever. Amen. SERMON CXXX.
On the Kalends of January, II. 4. Pride and error the sources of all sins. Error. How it passes into pride. The madness of masked men. How the demon lords it over them. Every sin, dearest brethren, the devil brings in either through pride or through error: error through ignorance, pride through contempt. These two things are the origins of all sins. Error is as it were the lighter crime, such as the craving of pleasures, intemperate gluttony, the base delight of wanton jesting, the pursuit of the spectacle, a loose tongue, thoughtless and disordered presumption: error also is the useless observance of auguries, the cult of days of ancient superstition, the inquiry into things to come.
But these things turn into pride when, once known, they persist without amendment. For thus it comes about that, under the guise of a foolish merriment, while the days of the Kalends or the vanity of other superstitions are observed, through the license of drunkenness and the shameful songs of games the demons are, as it were, invited to their own sacrifices. For that sacrifice is sweet to them when something is either said or done by us whereby honesty, which is the friend of justice, being violated by wicked deeds, departs. For what is so mad as to change the male sex into the form of a woman by a shameful garb? What so mad as to deform the face and to put on countenances at which the very demons themselves shudder?
What is so mad as to sing the praises of vices with disordered movements and shameless songs in unblushing delight? To be clad in a beastly garb and to become like a she-goat or a stag, so that a man, made to the image and likeness of God, should become a sacrifice of demons? Through these things that craftsman of evils insinuates himself, that little by little, by means of the semblance of games, he may lord it over minds once taken captive. Therefore, when these things that have been mentioned above have gained strength, pride, the enemy of God, succeeds them:
this, through neglect of religion and contempt of the fear of God, first introduces contentions even against the holy Scriptures, and then, raging with ambition, swelling with vanity, seeking after dishonorable things and despising honorable ones, it rages with a spirit of self-exaltation into the shipwreck of morals, like some immoderate tempest of a whirlwind. Hence envy, the root of all evils, which is consumed as by its own ills at another's advancement, with an inextinguishable flame, like the future fire of Gehenna, even now consumes the souls of the living with a secret burning, and torments them with gnawing cares. For what can be more wretched than he whom another's happiness makes unhappy? Or where shall he find a remedy who is wretched not only by his own evil but by another's good?
Hence anger, which is ever the enemy of counsel, weaves the pit into which it may fall and the snares by which it may itself be caught. 2. Such persons are to be restrained. But you, dearest brethren, to whom God has deigned to grant honorable and sober manners, pour forth the holy conversation which you have received by the divine gift into your neighbors or your households by constant correction, and do not permit them to utter base words or lascivious songs; for every sin redounds upon that man who is unwilling to forbid those who sin, when he is able to do so.
Whoever therefore, on the Kalends of January, shall have shown any kindness to those wretched men who rage rather than play with sacrilegious rite, let them know that they have given themselves not to men but to demons. And therefore, if you are unwilling to be partakers in their sins, do not permit the little stag or the heifer, or any other monstrous shapes, to come before your houses; but rather chastise and rebuke them, and if you can, restrain them even with severity, so that, God rewarding you, you may receive a twofold recompense, both for your own salvation and for the correction of others.
But I beg you, most beloved brethren, that since, God being favorable, we have confidence concerning your faith and the honesty of your morals, it should not suffice you that you yourselves are good; but, as I have already suggested above, be zealous that by your admonition you may correct the negligences of others also; so that you may receive eternal rewards not only for your own holy conversation but also for the correction of others. Admonish therefore your households not to observe the sacrilegious customs of the wretched pagans. 3. New Year's gifts. One must fast on the Kalends of January. For there are some, which is worse, whom this hostile observance so perverts that on the day of the Kalends, if perchance there be need for their neighbors or travelers, they even feign to refuse to give fire.
Moreover, many are accustomed both to offer New Year's gifts themselves and to receive them from others. Above all, brethren, in order to confound the carnal and lascivious merriment of the pagans, let us all, with God's help, fast—excepting those who by reason of infirmity are not able to abstain—and let us, as much as we can, beseech God on behalf of those wretched ones who keep these Kalends by sacrilegious custom, for gluttony and drunkenness. And while we shudder at the things they themselves do, let us moreover pray for them; and let us rejoice doubly, God granting it, both in our own kindliness and in their correction.
By God's favor, most beloved brethren, you so faithfully and gladly listen to us for the salvation of your souls, that we strive with charity to suggest freely and with all confidence those things which we know to be necessary for your salvation, and to show what you ought to do or what you ought to avoid. And therefore I beg you, brethren, that since, by God's inspiration, you yourselves despise the ancient custom of the pagans out of religious devotion, you would chastise with charity and gentleness any others whom you see observing it. 4. Vain honor rendered to the planets. Whence the days are called by the name of the planets. Their first appellation. Such a designation should be resumed.
For some fall into these evils, so that they diligently observe on what day they should set out on a journey, rendering honor either to the Sun, or to the Moon, or to Mars, or to Mercury, or to Jupiter, or to Venus, or to Saturn. Not knowing, wretched ones, that unless they amend themselves through penance, they will have their portion in hell with those to whom they seem to render vain honor in the world. Above all, brethren, flee all these sacrileges, and shun them as the deadly poisons of the devil. For God appointed both the sun and the moon for us and for our benefit, not that we should worship these two luminaries as gods; but let us render as much thanks as we can to Him who gave them to us.
For Mercury was a wretched man, greedy, cruel, impious, and proud. Venus, moreover, was a most shameless harlot. And these monstrous portents, that is, Mars and Mercury and Jupiter and Venus and Saturn, are said to have been born at the time when the children of Israel were in Egypt. If they were born then, surely these days, which are called by their deities' names, already existed at that time; and according to what God had instituted, so they had their name, that is, first and second, and third, and fourth, and fifth, and sixth day:
but wretched and unlearned men, who worshipped these most filthy and most impious men, as we said above, rather out of fear than out of love, in honor of their sacrilegious cult, as though to honor them, consecrated the days of the whole week each to their several names; so that those whose sacrileges they venerated in their heart, they might seem to have their names more frequently in their mouth.
But we, brethren, who are known to have our hope not in lost and sacrilegious men, but in the living and true God, let us judge no day to be worthy of the demons' appellation, nor let us observe on what day we ought to set out on a journey; but let us disdain even to utter those most filthy names with our mouth, and let us never say the day of Mars, the day of Mercury, the day of Jupiter; but let us name the first, and the second, or the third day, according to what is written. Concerning these names admonish also your households. For then a perfect health of soul will remain in you, if through your admonition the spiritual medicine reaches those who are wounded by many sins.
Wherefore not only those who are your own, rebuke frequently with severity; but also strangers admonish continually with charity, so that the merciful and loving Lord may repay you eternal rewards not only for your own salvation but also for the salvation of others—to whom be honor and glory unto the ages of ages. Amen. SERMON 131. On the Epiphany of the Lord, I. 1. The singular star. It did not point out Christ, but stirred men to seek Him. Just as the present day, by its anniversary return, reminds us that the Magi adored our Lord Jesus, as it were the firstfruits of the Gentiles, so to this solemnity, concerning so great a mystery, our sermon also is owed.
Wherefore I admonish your Charity: recall the recent day, that former one on which the Lord was born, and join to it this present day, on which He was adored by the Magi. The star could not tell them whose it was, or whose excellence it foreshadowed; yet a new and singular constellation shone forth, and terrified with a new marvel even those who are wont diligently to gaze upon the stars. For never was anyone signified by such a star, because never was such a one born. Nevertheless, who He was, where He was, whose king He was—that constellation, though it was silent, was shining. But God, not defrauding hearts that seek and knock, revealed in another manner, without doubt, to those who asked, that which the star could not indicate.
What manner this was, Scripture indeed does not say, but leaves it to the prudent to understand; and yet in the very narrative it shows whence we may understand this. 2. Then another revelation made it manifest. For when the city of Bethlehem, according to the Scriptures, had been mentioned by the Jews as the place where Christ ought to be born—because the house lay hidden where the Word of God lay as an infant—that same star led the Magi to the house, under whose roof was He who had made the world, and whom heaven had announced; thus far did the splendor of the preceding star reach. But that they should not return to Herod, king of the Jews, who had said he wished to adore the One whom he desired to kill, they are recorded to have been admonished through a dream.
Thus, what the star could not utter, God showed by another revelation. So it is to be understood that not by the star alone—although it shone with a light unusual and untried to their eyes—could the Magi in the East have recognized who was worthy of the signification of so great a constellation, of whom that splendor stood as witness, whom so great a brightness announced as illustrious, where He should be sought, whither they must go, so that when found He might be adored. But by another revelation, doubtless, it was indicated by the divine will, what was silently signified by the light of the star.
And when, with great wonder, men asked what it meant, and to what it pertained that something new appeared in the heaven, it was made known—not indeed by the constellation itself speaking, but in another way—who it was that had descended from heaven, and who, presiding over heaven by His divinity, lay in the flesh beneath heaven. For then, it is understood, it was indicated whose was the star which had long been seen, when He was born who was signified by it. 3. The star appeared for two years. For it was seen for almost two years by those who wondered what it was. But after it had been revealed to the Magi, once Christ was born, that the constellation was no longer to be wondered at, but that He who had been foretold by the star was to be adored, and that He was the king of the Jews:
they came from the East, and on this present day adored Him whom they learned to have been born a few days before, and that that star, which had appeared to them for two years, was His. Here someone says: Whence is it shown that that star appeared for two years? Let us recall the words of the Gospel. Herod, of course, king of the Jews, when he had been mocked by the Magi—because, warned in a dream, they were unwilling to return to him, lest it be pointed out where Christ had been found—slew the infants from two years old and under. But for what cause he did this, that is, why he ordered little ones to be killed from two years old and under, the Evangelist, not being silent, says: 'according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the Magi' (Matt. 2:16).
Behold whence it is shown that the star did not then first appear when Christ was born, that is, a very few days before; but that it had shone with a starry foretelling over a two-year period: which was then recognized as to whose it was, when they were sent to adore on earth Him whom they had already seen foreshadowed in heaven. 4. What is signified by the two-year appearance. The two precepts of love. The two Testaments. The two comings of Christ. The two births of man. But if anyone asks why the star shone foretelling Christ for two years, there can be seen signified in the two years two precepts: one of the love of God, the other of neighbor, on which two precepts hang the whole law and the Prophets (Matt. 22:40).