逾越節之歌 第 5 章

Among these riches of power, now the day of Passover was about to be at hand, when the glory of the Lord willed to lay down his mortal life and resume living flesh — not another, but again that same flesh which, full of the gift of light, raising it from the depths below, he led to the stars. And crying out openly, he said: 'Father, save me from this hour — yet for this cause came I to this hour; glorify your name'; and a great voice resounding came from heaven through the clouds: 'I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.' What is plainer than this, with the Father as witness, with heaven as guarantor? Yet not even thus did the Jewish nation will to acknowledge Christ as God; a part declared this to be thunder, a part that an angelic utterance had sounded. O nation blind in its eyes, O nation hardest in heart!

No thunder, nor any angel, could have begotten Christ as his own Author, who, having heard the name of the Father, would give answers; but from the mouth of the Thundering One, acknowledging his Son — that the people standing by might believe — the voice sent forth answered in harmony with his own Word. Then, celebrating the annual Passover feasts through the sacred offerings according to custom, and making himself a humble minister and leaving to his own a pleasing example, he rises up, and gladly serves his servants, and girt with a small linen cloth he bowed down all his honor, willingly washing the feet of all his disciples, nor would he exclude Judas, whom he had known to be the author of wicked betrayal.

But that glory gave you nothing, O wicked Betrayer, to stand on clean feet, you who were polluted in your inner sense, like every sepulcher bearing white coverings of outward shape, but full within of filth and a foul corpse. Nor did the deceits lie hidden from the Lord, and he disclosed the author of the crime to come — to whom he himself handed the bread, who was himself to be handed over as bread: for after he had sanctioned the two gifts of his body and his blood, and given food and drink whereby the faithful souls without stain might never hunger or thirst, straightway into Judas, where envy had its seat, the most foul spirit entered, and taking up arms against the Lord it stirred up a servile war, having bargained for an enormous crime at any price:

nor is the fault imputed to him by reason of the price, but the crimes cling to the deed. He, taking up thirty pieces of silver, bought with a small reward, committed just as much wickedness as he would have committed had he received all the kingdoms of the earth together, and the riches of the sea, and all the air with its wandering clouds: for the goods of the world would not suffice in payment for the blood of great Christ poured out — who is the Father of the world, who had made it, and who had caused this man also to be born.

And would that, condemned from a barren mother, he had been unable to feel the day of his birth, nor to have drawn in the calm breezes of this light with the breath of life, lying hidden in eternal torpor; and that a better lot had been to know not life given, than to lose it; or, ill brought forth upon the ground, that he might at once lose the gifts of light, like dust which a mighty wind casts from the face of the earth, and driven in rapid flights is scattered, darker than mists, into empty shadows. Are you then, bloody, fierce, bold, mad, rebel, faithless, cruel, deceitful, venal, wicked, pitiless Traitor, beast, betrayer, impious robber — do you, going before as standard-bearer, accompany the dreadful swords?

And when you move the sacrilegious battle-line, threatening with swords and stakes, do you press lips upon lips, and insert poison into honey, and betray the Lord under a flattering semblance? Why do you feign yourself a comrade, and greet him with friendly fraud? Does peace ever conspire into terrible swords, or does the wolf hold out savage kisses to the gentle lamb? Handed over therefore to wicked men, the holy Worker did not abandon his accustomed help, and lest the merciful one should ever be empty of mercy, he restored the little ear torn off by Peter's sword. For human vengeance was not fitting to the Thundering One, who could ask of the Father that more than twelve thousand angelic legions be given to himself, had he wished to take punishment for his merits rather than freely to forgive his own wounds.

Then he commands the sword to be spared, because he himself had come to lay down his life for all, not to take it from anyone. For to Peter, who long since had professed with clear voice that he wished to die with the Lord, he says, 'Before the winged cock crows, this very night you will deny me thrice' — not condemning his faith, but foretelling his fear. Immediately he is led to the sad dwellings of Caiaphas.

That man was then at last the chief of the priests, and the chief of crimes; for while he sat upon that pestilent seat, the council, stirred up by false witnesses, blazes; and now, even now, a thousand lies fly against the Lord, kindled from the empty embers of men, and they perish by their own lightness, like a wandering fire over dry stubble, whose feeble fuel snatches away its full strength to burn, and, its fury overcome, the deformed glory slips away from the weakened flame. After no path lay open to their wiles, savage fury arms its arms to be lifted against the innocent one: alas for me! with how many tears am I hindered to recall the rabid tumult, that the sacrilegious hands stirred? For the execrable mob did not at all cease, here and there, to strike his head with blows, or to beat it with palms, or to spit in his face.

Yet he, patient, with his body submitted, endured the whole, and gave his members for our salvation. For through these blows our head is made healable; these spittings washed our likeness through the Lord; through these slaps the greatest liberty applauded us. But the elder, to whom the all-powerful Author had foretold all things, what was to come — since it could not be that what Christ said should pass away unfulfilled — denied utterly that he was present, one of his own companions, once, and twice, and three times; and the cock crowed; Christ's appointment was completed, and Peter's senses returned: mindful of his evils, he condemned the work of his forgetful self, and with groaning that followed, the fault flees, the sins yield to tears poured forth, and you, bitter weepings, brought forth sweet pardon.

And now the day was at hand, sadder than the nocturnal shade, about to see a new outrage, and with the darkness removed, it laid bare to the peoples the crimes of the Jewish nation. Soon therefore the Lord is led to the walls of Pilate. When wicked Judas saw him bound fast in fetters, he grew rigid, and returning the wages of his crime in vain, he gave back the price of the deed, not the deeds. For what indeed does it profit to tremble with fear there where there is no fear? Or what confession shines in the foul nether-world, when now the axe, plunged into the roots of the unspeakable tree which bore the deadly fruit, may overturn the funereal shoots from their foundation, and the evil oaks perish in worthy flames? And immediately, seized in mind by a fierce frenzy, he seeks death also for himself;

although he was then saner, when he hastened to avenge his crime, and, choking with knotted gullet his unhappy soul, hanged it from on high by a noose — that very channel of his voice, the throat, which had dared to sell the Redeemer of all the world. Milder indeed was his wrath for so great a crime of guilt, to which no punishment of all evils could be equal. Yet this end of death, and the lofty corpse, showed to the peoples from how great a height he had fallen, the disciple of old, who is now the accused, who, leaving the high stars, descended even to the depth of Tartarus; then an apostolic man, now made a vile apostate.

But the patient Lord, when he stood before the tribunal of the governor, like a most gentle lamb led to the slaughter, the hostile cohort, finding nothing worthy of the innocent blood, casts up against him that he, a king, had called himself to be a king, and being a liar leads the truth as a charge. Nor is it a wonder if a faithless nation shuns the laws of God and denies his rule — a nation that always loved the groves, loved the idols; for raging in like manner, then they worshipped Baal, now they have chosen Barabbas; and the godly being condemned and the insolent preserved, by either deed the sentence changed the just path. The author of death was he who was bidden to take up life; the author of life was he who was bidden to take up death. Believe now in Christ, believe that he suffered for all. Why do you still doubt?

Behold, his back cut with scourges, subjected to insults, he embraces all punishments, lest, deemed worthy to feel death, even a robber should perish. Alas, grim sickle of the fathers, about to cut down the harvest of their descendants! Alas, Pilate, your deed! How many crimes you committed in a single judgment, if with watchful mind you had marked it — you ought to have hoped to wash not your hands alone, but with your whole body, the sacred laver of forgiveness. You seize the innocent, you set the king before a governor, you set human things before God; by what death are you held, who fasten the Lord to the cross through many wounds? And when the Holy One, given over to the savage soldiers for punishment, went away, he is clothed in a cheap mantle under the covering of red scarlet, that the whole appearance might be an image of bloody death;

a twined crown surrounded his ample head with thorns, since he in his kindness had taken upon himself all the thorn-thickets of our evils; a reed fills his hand, a scepter that is ever movable, weak, fragile, empty, light. And soon, laying aside the alien garments, he took up his own robe, namely about to lay down the covering of human flesh, and to take it up again, so that he might now bear nothing changeable, rising after death with his own majesty, laying aside the mortal flesh under its human covering. Nor does it stand done without divine governance, that, receiving the wine given with gall and the bitter taste, he touched it with his lips and removed it from his mouth. For he was about to taste the bitter death for a little time, which he was preparing to despise with flesh restored.

Straightway suspended upon the summit of the spreading wood, changing the wrath of his peril by pious devotion, he himself was the peace of the cross, and illumining the violent timbers with his own members, he clothed the punishment with honor, and made the torment to be rather a sign of salvation, and sanctifying the very tortures, he blessed them in himself. And lest anyone should be ignorant that the figure of the cross is to be venerated, by which he triumphantly bore the Lord, by a powerful reason it gathers thence the four regions of the square world. The bright eastern point shines from the Author's head; with the western star his sacred soles are licked; his right hand holds the North, his left raises the central axis; and all nature lives from the members of the Creator, and Christ, embraced by the cross, rules the world on every side.

And a title is written, 'This is the King of the Jews,' that nothing might be void of deity: for that this was done from heaven the Hebrew tells, this the Greek, and the Latin tongue. This one faith teaches: to call him King thrice with one accord. Over his spoils the lot is cast, that the sacred garment, remaining undefiled, might forbid schism on Christ's part. Moreover, on either side of the innocent one they set up bloody men, though one merit does not make all alike, however like the sentence; for among the executioners, with the Holy One hanging, were robbers — the punishment of the three is equal, but the cause of the two is unlike. For these indeed are guilty before the world for much crime; to this one the world is guilty, saved by righteous blood. Yet in the very punishments the Ruler of things did not lose the rights of his power:

for the equitable Judge, beholding each one, chose this one, rejected that one, weighing the merits of both in his lofty examination. For the one, whom a fierce life did not forsake even in death, moving wicked revilings against the Lord, was gnawing with his own words, and like a bristly he-goat with venomous mouth he was tearing at the pleasant vine; the other, having adored Christ with entreating words, cast down, was bending his wounded eyes — only his eyes, for the fetters held back his two hands.

Whom the Lord, as a shepherd a sheep through deserted fields, gathers in his wandering, and rejoices to lead him with himself into your meadows, O Paradise — where with perennial bloom the grassy field allures, and the delight of the groves is nourished by watering streams; and amid the gardens conspicuous with fruits that never fail, the kindly serpent groans that the ancient settler dwells there. Both robbers, therefore, by different paths, having attacked a varied deed, perpetrated a great violent crime. The one goes to the infernal gates, the other to the gates above; the one, following the depths, penetrated the barriers of Gehenna; the other carried off for himself the kingdoms of heaven by his plunderings. Meanwhile dreadful darknesses suddenly came, and held the whole sky, and with mournful obsequies veiled the blackening day;

the sun, hiding its glittering rays in a cloud, veiled in a foul mantle, lay hidden, and stained the sorrowful world with mournings. The elements deserved to behold this countenance, bereft of the aid of their Father, gladdened at his rising, mournful at his setting. For as light shone forth at the time of the Lord's birth, so, as he dies, it withdrew — not to be long absent, but signing mystic secrets through its span; for just as for three hours the blind stars of the dark sky lay hidden, so for three days the Lord bore the caverns of the closed sepulcher. Nor was the earth without disaster, which, beholding such things, trembled from its depths, and at the doubtful end nature dreaded the supreme limit, lest the highest summit, seeking the nether parts, should compel the whole mass to sink down, and the world, following its Author, should depart through Tartarus.

But measureless compassion was hastening to the wandering shades, restoring the lost, not losing what stands firm. Yet they feared no signs of so great a peril, who fixed the Lord to the cross; nay, moreover, when thirsting he sought a draught, one of the wicked rabble held out vinegar poured upon a sponge by a reed. For the bastard peoples, rolled down into worse things, that liquor was fitting: for as sweet wines, while they are turned into hideous vinegar, lie thrown out from the tables, so in ancient time a nation accepted of God is now a hated offspring.

Therefore when all the passion of good Christ was completed, he himself dismissed the holy soul from his own body, he himself again about to take it up, because the same one was dead, the same was living, his members perishing in himself, but God not perishing — by whose power the infernal ways lay open backward, and the rocks, their structure broken, gape, divided; the revived bodies of the prostrate saints departed from their shattered tombs, restored to life in their own ashes; and at the sudden crash, that temple, rejoicing, seeing the heights of the greater temple fall down, in the manner of a mourning foster-child, laid bare its wounded breast with the veil torn, teaching that its inner secrets were now to be unbarred to the peoples to come; for the law, long covered with the veil of Moses, when Christ came, is laid open to us.

Say, where now, O Death, is your sad victory, say, where now is your dreadful sting? You who, never sated with rich evils, are wont to invade all the nations under your deadly dominion: behold, most wicked one, it is not you who reach Christ, but Christ who reaches you; for whom it was permitted to die without dying, and who, begetting all things and establishing all things, did not fashion you to be. From the serpent's seed, with guilt for your mother, you were created, and, when pardon reigns, you perish. Now the spirit had left the limbs for a time; already the cold flesh hung from the open wood, and still the fury, supplying weapons, with a spear-point violates the pierced side; and from the gaping wound a crimson gore, and at the same moment water, ran forth.

For these indeed are sacred for the honour of our religion: body, blood, water, the three gifts of our life. Born anew from the font, we feed on the members and blood of Christ, and therefore we are held to be a temple of the Deity: which may God grant us to keep undefiled, and make us, frail as we are, capable of so great an Indweller. Therefore, when that noble place received the ample treasure of the laid-down body, the Lord lying there, yet nobler when He rose, the lying race was heaping up wickedness beneath their hearts: that in the silent night the disciples might steal away Christ, and report that He had departed, when the day returned for the third time, just as He Himself had foretold. Goaded by this fear, they demand that more guards be set, and that the place be held under cruel blockade.

If not even after the bonds of the cross, after the wounds of the iron, after the passing of death, you executioners have filled up your bloody work of manifold slaughter, nor do you believe that He, who so often brought souls forth from the lowest shades, is the more able to recall His own: arm your guiles with worse counsels, fitted for such men; seal the tomb, set guards, roll a stone before the sepulchre. Who shall be able to keep prisoner God, to whom all things lie open at the hinge of the world? He dwells in the waves, He reigns through the nether regions, and from the cloud of heaven He thunders. Why, savage tumult, do you waste your work on watchmen? Why do you strive to test that faith which you are unwilling to trust by believing?

Meanwhile, after the sad sabbath, the happy day began to shine forth, which draws the crown of its lofty name from the Lord who is Lord, and which first earned to see the world born and Christ rise again. For when Genesis speaks of the seventh sabbath, it is clear that this day is the head of the world, the day to which the glory of the King, now also granting it the splendour of His own trophy, gave to hold the primacy. At the rising of this light the Virgin mother, and with her at the same time the other mothers, mourning, came with their gift, with the sweet harvest of spices, to the known tomb, and they see it now made empty of the body, but a place full of power. For an angel sent from the stars was sitting upon the summit of the rolled-away stone, flaming in aspect, conspicuous in snow-white raiment.

He, bearing in twofold appearance both terror and joys, and dispensing all things, had come in a form menacing with fire to the guards, but white to those seeking Christ. They therefore learned by angelic faith that the Lord lives, having trodden down death; but the terrified soldier, in doubtful peril, clings to life, fleeing from his abandoned post, and a witness of his own fear, reports the truth for nothing; afterwards, gifts having been given, the cunning pretender, ready-made, says that the band of disciples, in the time of quiet sleep, secretly stole Christ away by a nightly theft. Speak, wicked guard, answer, criminal cohort: if Christ, as you dare to say, was secretly brought forth from the closed cave, and lay hidden from the sleeping men, whose garment lies within, by whose cast-off wrappings does the angel sit?

Or did the remover of the blessed Body think it quicker to loose the wrapped corpse than to carry off the bound one? Since delay is contrary to theft, more cautiously, therefore, could the linen cloths have been taken away along with the Lord. The vain voice has lied to itself; yet this matter holds a striking figure: it is plain that He is taken away from the Jews, the Christ whom we bear in a devoted heart. Weep, Judea, for your priests who shall perish, weep for your ministers and your people, for daring such deeds. Neither trumpet, nor Anointed, nor is your sacrifice any longer pleasing. What wars shall the trumpet sound for you, the King being slain? Who shall be your Anointed, when you have lost the true Anointed? What victim shall be given, when the shepherd is held as the victim?

Let the synagogue depart, darkened by her own colour; Christ joined the Church to Himself with fair love, she who shines in the conspicuous honour of Mary: who, while she is ever mother with a glorious name, ever remains a virgin. Standing before her sight, in open light the Lord first offered Himself, that, as a good mother, proclaiming great miracles, she who was once the way of His coming might also be the herald of His returning. Soon, a mighty fellow-diner with others, He shone forth, recognized in the breaking of bread, He who is the true bread ever present to open eyes, whom the grace of faith makes clear-sighted, that they may be able to behold the living Lord.

Often thereafter, manifest, He approached His own disciples at the hours of various times, while they were eating, now at once presenting His face, now eating the food of roasted fish and honeycomb, that He might duly teach that the meals were bodily things, and that He was seen in the very members in which He was before. Again, through fear of the apostate populace, who had blindly denied the Lord, when the company of the faithful sat with doors shut, He brought Himself in, greeting them with peace, and, baring His pierced palms, He lays open His side; but there Thomas, whose surname was Didymus, had not been together with his brethren, and was carrying a doubtful faith in his heart, until again, He who had never been withdrawn should come, while Thomas likewise was sitting there.

Then, the threshold being shut, He stood in the midst, not disdaining to show the open side to the disciple, and to be proved by the touch of the wound, and patiently to bear the mind of the wavering one. Hence He was recognized the more, in that He is the friend of the doubting. For whoever contrives deceitful artifices under a hidden image, and desires to practise empty disguises, does not wish to be recognized, does not wish his deeds to be searched out, that the tricks may lie hidden under a cloud; and the dissembler, shutting up all things in mist, hates anxious friends. Likewise the Lord, knowing that Peter, fishing with his companions across the sea, had caught nothing, urges them to cast the nets into the waters on the right; soon, the gulf being closed in, the hanging nets drew up their wave-wandering prey, to be known by a figurative way:

for the shining nets are the worthy precepts of God, by which everyone remaining on that right side is enclosed, and at the same time is borne in the apostolic arms to the footsteps of Christ the Lord. Nor are fish and live coals lacking, and bread, found in one place for the disciples; who could doubt that here one faith consists in these things, since the fish is water, Christ the bread is present, and the Holy Spirit the fire? For from this we are washed, with this we are fed, from that we are consecrated. Then the Teacher invites them to the meal to be eaten, with kindly discourses after His custom, and as they seek the table, with one accord they enjoy the known goodness of the Lord, and perceived their own Christ; and after, with slender provision, hunger being overcome, and they had risen, the couches duly left behind, the Lord examines whether Peter loves Him in the depth of his heart:

Peter assents: therefore the loving Shepherd, eager to increase His shining flocks, commits the sheep to the worker good in every part, and commits the lambs also. Warning this with a threefold word, that the recent guilt of the one who denied, purged in an equal number, might remain. Then teaching what was to be followed, He says, 'Have peace, all of you; bear my peace, carry quiet peace, scatter peace among the peoples with holy admonitions, and empty the world of evils: and I charge by my commands that the nations be called from all the bounds, wherever the breadth of the world extends, and that all be washed in the font.' When the Lord had completed these sayings in holy discourse, soon He sought the fields of Bethany: and in the sight of the blessed men who alone deserved to behold so great a triumph, lifted up on high, He departs into the airy heights.

He Himself sits at the right hand of the Father and governs all things by His own right, who, holding all things both high and low, penetrates the depths after heaven, and heaven after the depths. But they, beholding with joyful faces the Lord go above the lofty clouds, and tread the gleaming tracks with His footsteps, reverently adore Him, and carry back the starry ways in their eager hearts, that they might teach all men: for they were faithful witnesses by right of the divine power, who, seeing many things, wrote few of innumerable goods. For if they had wished to hand over to the sacred pages all the deeds of the Redeemer, not even the whole world would suffice to contain the books crowded through so many volumes.