逾越節之歌 第 4 章

Now likewise having crossed again the placid sands of the Jordan, He followed the way of Judaea: a nameless mingled crowd, and, relieving countless throngs from ruin, He receives the sick and grants the healed to depart. Nothing therefore is ever difficult for the most high God to confer on those who hope in Him, to whom belongs the ready faculty to level the steep and to bring the crooked into the straight; and whatever nature denies, He provides, being Himself the judge.

For just as a camel, for the mass of its limbs, cannot pass through the eye of a needle, so the rich man, swelling with rich fertility, could not approach the slender path that leads to the threshold of the heavenly kingdom, were it not that the Author of things — who restrains the world by law and abides under no law, for whom to will is to create, whom no brow beholds, yet He Himself beholds all — had said, 'This is impossible to man, but to the high God all right is possible,' and at last would make troublesome wealth grow gentle to many of the rich.

For He wills that his own goods, well managed, and his treasures be laid up in heaven, where whatever is held no gnawing rust devours, no moth furrows, nor does ill-buried gold serve thieves — he who bears food to the fasting, drink to the thirsting, shelter to guests, clothing lavished on the naked, who consoles those bound in prison and cherishes the sick, and, bountiful to others, to himself alone remains needy. Nor without doubt does that substance reach heaven which, conferred on Christ, is given under the form of the poor — which from losses takes increase, which is scattered that it may be, which perishes that it may abide, which, dead, grants life.

Besides, the Lord beholds twin blind men sitting while He was passing along a certain road with an accompanying crowd, begging the gifts of their extinguished sight and filling the wandering airs with mournful voices. And His wonted tenderness, not delaying to bring health where it feels faith blaze, soon touching their eyes bids those wake which a vast sleep had pressed, and unbarring the long-closed windows beneath their brow, made night depart at the entering day. Hence, walking again through the walls of the sacred temple, He gave light to the blinded and footsteps to the lame. Such deeds done, He had left the Davidic city, seeking nearby Bethany, and returning thence, as the day grew bright, He hastened to visit its dwellings.

But behold, standing lofty amid the fields, there was a leafy fig tree, on whose trunk, hungering, He found no fruit, the stem searched through; and to the tree's foliage He said, 'Now from your shoot let no fruit be brought forth for the rest of the age.' At once the fig tree, widowed of its sap, withered and remained dead with dry branches. For everyone who nourishes nothing fruitful for God shall be made equal, like a barren trunk, to firewood burnt; but the righteous, like a pleasant palm, shall flourish, ever having leaves, and like a cedar of Lebanon he is present to be multiplied, and with his summit shall touch the stars.

Afterward one brought to Him, lacking speech, felt the Lord's power, whom the shut force of the disease afflicted in his narrow throat, and his fault by silence had betrayed itself; but the Creator, wont to relieve all infirmities, drove the robber from the beset throat and opened a way for the voice, and, the bond loosed, the long-mute tongue poured forth its silent speech. Afterward the Lord, seeking the feasts of the Pharisees, at the banquet imparted Himself to His host's dishes.

Then the woman, whom an injurious reputation and the many sins of her life were gnawing at, suppliant before his mercy, fell down embracing his footprints, and bending low she bathed them with flowing tears; and with her hair unbound she did not cease either to wipe or to kiss his sacred soles, cherishing them with fragrant ointment, until the broad decree of God — who never repents of stretching out his hand, if we repent of having sought our ancient ruin — should have said, 'Go, woman; your faith has saved you from every evil that you may be seen to have done: enjoy my peace.' It is a mighty medicine to confess what does harm to be hidden, since he nurses his own wounds who covers them and trembles to lay the gash bare to the healer.

Behold, long defiled, now a little cleansed, she withdrew through groaning, and washing in the flood of her own weeping she returns clean by her tears and dried by her hair. And now he had entered the synagogue of the city of Capernaum, duly teaching the people. When the wicked spirit, hiding beneath a human heart, had seen him, it roared out with insolent shouting, saying, 'What have we to do with you? Alas, Christ, do you come to destroy us? I know indeed who you are, and I recognize the Holy One of God.' Speaking no more, at his terrifying command it falls silent and left the man, driven out and fleeing it vanished into the empty air. Thus too he set an end to various sicknesses, and forced the demons, once cast out, ever to keep silence, and forbids such a witness to disclose him.

For long ago that harmful serpent, fierce and a lover of black death, cast down from the summit of heaven with his pomps and his companions and the whole host of his accursed soldiery, beholds upon earth in the flesh Christ, whom he had known there, covered with the veil of flesh, and groans that the Lord of power should be a friend to man. And while the Lord, having crossed the road of Tyre and again skirting the fields of Sidon, was treading the calm sands, he healed a wretched man shut up by a double affliction, who gave no voice with his mouth and drew nothing through his ear; and at the touch of his starry hand, the inner barriers being broken, all the doors lay open, and suddenly, rejoicing, he both deserved to be heard speaking and to hear those who speak.

You too felt the gift of the Lord's power, falling prostrate as to your eyes, in whose light Christ spat and took away the appearance of a feigned death. Then, teaching the people greater heavenly things, the True God unveils himself in his discourse; and wishing for a little while to avoid the thronging crowds, which had pressed in too eagerly, he seeks the pools and, sitting in Simon's small boat, from the water he steadied the people standing on the shore. And now there was an end to his words; then he bids the vessel go higher, driven out into the deep, and the fishing nets be let down into the vast abyss — nets which through the whole night had been able to enclose nothing for all their empty toil.

Simon obeys, rejoicing, and pressing upon the watery tribes he casts the flaxen meshes; and so vast a catch filled the open hollows that the overflowing spoil overburdened both keels with heaped-up fish — for there was a companion vessel near. Thus often we cannot bear the greatest joys, and we fear our prayers when they are granted; and what is easy for God, men long for and yet dare not. Distinguished by such mighty deeds, he went into the city which is called Nain, hemmed about by a vast throng and a flock of disciples, when behold, close at hand he beholds a wretched young man being carried out, a cold corpse, who had suffered the sad service of many funeral rites and an empty burial — whose envious lot had long since widowed his already widowed mother with a second urn.

Nor did his compassion, foe of grief, delay long: it brought life-giving aid, and touching the bier he says, 'Arise, O young man'; and obeying at the very word spoken the dead man rises up, and sitting up and speaking he came back to life and departs as his mother's companion. For though numb in death and though he had suffered the perils of life once lost, the servant could not keep silent when the Lord called, nor stay dead when life was present. Soon, the procession reversed, laying aside its anxious mourning on the path now retraced, the shining train called back the happy mother in her joy. Nor was your salvation small, when the Lord was healing, Mary, whose mind, wounded with a manifold hurt, the savage frenzy had invaded with sevenfold arms, drawn up in a demonic squadron;

but the scaly serpent, fleeing the commanding miracles of the sacred word, driven from your heart departs, and through the winged airs, fallen into the chaos of the inner recess of hellish Gehenna, that monster drew seven coils, seven windings. And lest the Lord should suffer the harvest, abounding with heaped-up increase, to languish for want of few laborers, he commands other disciples — whose mind, conscious of right, and whose pure simplicity, shining in number and in merit, was a golden balance — to hasten like lambs among bloody wolves, saying, 'Take up the rights of authority; fear no enemy; tread underfoot with faithful spirit the serpent's threats and the scorpion and all the powers of the hostile force: no adverse savagery shall harm my servants.

Yet rejoice not so much in this, men, that the dark spirit is subject to you, as that the heavenly writing inscribes your names in the eternal book.' For it is the right of God to set life before deeds. For when the good of merit fails, miracles are nothing — miracles which evildoers most often work, to whom the Judge of the world will be about to say, 'I know you not; depart, all you craftsmen of crimes, who in your ever-wicked affairs have feigned a divine work.' Thus in the time of Moses certain men in the regions of vain Memphis gave signs by their spells — not at God's prompting, but by a false semblance they imparted magical figures to human sight. Afterward he enters the house of a certain chief of the Pharisees, to glorify it, not only to take food, to which he had then come at an easy entreaty.

This man swelled, distended with a conspicuous belly, full of water, and his paunch had hung up a heavy skin, destined to bring forth the death enclosed within. Now his limbs were melting away as the swelling grew, and the bloated wasting, breathed through the wretched joints, had thinned the sick man, and into the space of his belly the whole dropsy had gathered. The Father of the world did not endure this sight, and he passes by his Sabbaths, not caring for them, ready to heal the man whom he willed should rather be his own: for the Sabbaths were created for man's sake, man is not for the Sabbaths' sake. Then the merciful one, the body's moisture being dried, bade the wateriness depart; soon the fluid disease leaves the inner parts and the now-empty fibers settle in the breast, and the watery pestilence forsook the fleshly pool.

Meanwhile the Lord, passing through the fields of Galilee, had begun to touch with his holy foot a certain town. When ten leprous men, bearing the spotted prodigies of leprosy upon their bodies — whom a mottled punishment defiled in their foul flesh with hideous shapes — saw him from afar, they cried out together, saying, 'Master, have mercy, for you can do all things, Jesus.' Then the power that bends, which is never empty of compassion, more merciful, begins: 'Go, present your faces to the sight of the priests!' And while they sought the road, the men marvel that their limbs are suddenly cleansed in turn, and looking that there was nothing diseased, they alike behold themselves, and all examine their own forms with mutual gaze.

Of these, scarcely one, turning back along the road by which he had come, in order to give thanks for so great a gift, prostrates himself to the ground, adoring the Lord of power, and offered his face to the true priest. For who, if not Christ, is present as chief of pontiffs and highest priest, author of the twofold offering after the order of Melchizedek, to whom are ever given as gifts the things that are his own, the fruit of the cornfield and the joys of the vine? When the blind son of Timaeus, sitting beside that road by which he had learned the Lord was passing, had sought light with frequent shouting, crying out, and not falling silent though the crowd forbade him, being bidden to draw near to the Lord with groping hand, he received his sight and returns with none to lead him. How strongly importunate faith presses!

Whatever harsh circumstance has refused, constant prayer alone supplies to honorable petitions. So that man asked his friend for bread for them both, who with the doors closed through the dark silences of night, by persistent voices and panting prayers, wrested it from one who long and confidently refused. And the Lord, passing the places of the Samaritan woman's road, had gathered a human thirst in the blazing heat; and the perennial fount of water longs for a little wave, that he might drink in the part where he was body.

Then a woman, a dweller of that nation, standing there, who had drawn a small draught from the well, when she hesitates to give the gift of water that would perish, recognizing her own life shared with many a husband, prays that the gifts of an inexhaustible stream be granted her, about to lay aside an eternal thirst — of which no one will be worthy to be free, unless, plunged in the flood of Christ the Lord, he receives the calm waves of the soul, not of the body. And while the Lord, sitting in the midst of the vault of his temple, thundering with his Father's mouth, was turning the wandering people back to the passable ways of the straight path by friendly admonitions, behold, with a great crowd pressing about, a shameful woman was being dragged, to be stoned for the guilt of adultery, whom the Pharisaic band, setting her before the gentle Judge, when it prepares to condemn, the more sets free;

for among all those people, alike out of the crowds, there was no proper accuser without crime, who as first might take up the hurled stone to strike the defilements of the foul adulteress. Nor could anyone pluck a tiny splinter from another's eye, who knew that a great beam was within his own eye. So that onset withdrew, fleeing, and the merciful sentence pardons the fault, now released under the condition of sinning no more. For whoever, a dog, licks up again his own vomit with his mouth, this man neither strives to have the old pardon nor a future one, holding fast the losses of the one, throwing away the gains of the other. Then passing on, he beholds a man born blind sitting, who, having slipped from the womb of his ill-conceiving parent, rushed into the light without light.

Then that Author of human blood and Origin of the rising world, not enduring that the members of his own work should long be held imperfect, smearing the birth-clay over the barriers of the eyelids, supplies the man from the ancient seed. Yet he does not receive sight before, the command of the bidding Lord being accepted, he had come to the wave of Siloam and, safe by the healing of kindred clay, had bathed his eyes in pure water. Soon, then, twin gleams shine forth upon his face, and at last they merit to behold the unknown day. Learn, all of you, what mystic miracles teach our souls:

We are a blind offspring, from the brood of wretched Eve, bearing the darkness born of long error; but when God deigned to take on a mortal form of human covering, there was made for us from a virgin a saving earth, which, washed in the sacred founts, brightly unbars the breathing-places of reborn light. And returning he had entered the soil of Bethany; and there Lazarus lay buried by a westering fate, now four days without light, and shut in by the marble of the tomb he breathed out a corrupt smell from his decay. His sisters wept, the assembled populace wept, the Almighty too wept — but in body, not in deity — and he grieved for the lifeless limbs in that part where he was about to die; with tears he proved his friend, with majesty he proved God. Why do you delay to believe, Martha? Why, Mary, do you groan?

Do you doubt whether Christ can call back one man from the caverns of hell, who after their deaths will give countless throngs to rise? Therefore when the trumpet of the crying Lord sounded, saying, 'Lazarus, come forth!', Tartarus, shaken with great terror, springs apart, the recesses of Erebus lay open, and the deadly chaos trembled, and the law of profound death perishes; and the soul is suddenly seen to come up to its own marrow, and the living corpse stands before the eyes. And after the sepulchral honor, as if restored, dying he stands forth to himself both posthumous and heir.

And in order that, despising the fleeting heights of the wandering world, he might rightly show himself God, he did not in lofty chariots — which are the honor of mortal pomp — and in rapid four-horse teams furrow a dusty path, nor press the steep back of a snorting horse, which, painted with trappings and purple, tosses the gold that its bleeding mouth champs; but rather the slow conveyance of a lowly little donkey sufficed as honor for the Ruler — whose light hoof, bearing wondrous glory with so great a rider, was the nobler under its burden, not unequal to that ox which, though Christ lay in the open manger, yet recognized him to be God. All the people, adoring, laid their soft garments on the solid roadway. Tell me, you Gentile nations, for what king was such glory in the world?

To what king did a crowd coming to meet him, adorned with palms or ever with the leafy boughs of trees, give praise with heavenly hymns? — save to the Lord Christ together with the Father, who as Prince rules the heavenly kingdom in the Prince; with whom the Holy Spirit ever reigns together equally.