ADMONITORY SERMON AT THE BEGINNING OF THE HOLY FORTY DAYS. FIRST HOMILY.
1. I rejoice and am glad to see today the Church ornamented by the multitude of her children, and that you have all come together with such great joy. For when I look upon your cheerful faces, I form the highest conjecture of the joy that is in your souls; even as someone wise once said, "When the heart is glad, the face flowers" (Prov. 15.13). Therefore, I too have risen today with great readiness, to be a participant with you in that spiritual joy, and to be the announcer to you of the arrival of the holy Forty Days, a remedy, I say, for our souls. For the Lord of us all, desiring as a loving father toward his children to wash away those things we have ever sinned, has discovered this cure for us through the holy fast. Let no one, therefore, be mournful, let no one appear sad, but let all exult and rejoice, and give glory to the curator of our souls, who has opened this excellent way for us, and let them receive its arrival with great readiness. Let the Gentiles be confounded, let the Jews hide themselves in shame, seeing our charity greeting and receiving the arrival of this time with such joyful zeal, and let them learn by experience how great an interval exists between us and them. And they may indeed call holidays and feasts drunkenness, and every other intemperance, and the shames which it is likely they draw from such things: but the Church of God calls those things which are adverse to them—namely fasting, the despising of the belly, and all other virtues which are its companions—feasts. For these are the true feasts, where there is salvation of souls, where there is peace and concord, where all the apparatus of this life is cast away; where clamor and tumult, the discourse of cooks, and the slaughter of beasts are removed from the midst: but all is quiet, and tranquility, and charity, and joy, and peace, and meekness, and countless goods are in use instead of them.
The true end and use of sermons.—Therefore, I beseech you, let us speak a few things about this to your charity, and this we ask first: that you receive those words of ours placidly, so that you may return home having attained some notable fruit. For we have not come together here rashly and in vain, that one may speak and another receive what is said with applause, and that we may thus depart hence: but that we may speak something fruitful and conducive to your salvation, and you, having received profit from our words and gained the fruit of ample utility, may leave from here. The Church is truly a workshop of spiritual medicine; and it behoves those who come hither not to return home before they have received the appropriate remedies, and have applied them to their own wounds. For since hearing alone, and performing nothing by works, will profit nothing, hear blessed Paul saying: "For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified" (Rom. 2.13). And Christ, when preaching, said: "Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 7.21). Therefore, knowing, beloved, that there is no utility from hearing unless good works follow, let us not be hearers only, but also doers, so that the very works following the sermons may be an occasion of great confidence for us.
Therefore, with the recesses of your mind laid open, receive the sermons about the fast. And just as those who are to wed a chaste and noble bride ornament the chambers on all sides with tapestries, and, the house being cleansed throughout and forbidding entry to all dishonest handmaidens, introduce her into the bedchamber: I would wish you likewise, with your mind purged and having said farewell to delicacies and voracity, to receive the fast—the mother of all goods, and the mistress of chastity and of all other virtues, I say—with the recesses of your mind laid open, so that you may both enjoy greater pleasure and it may confer upon you its own appropriate medicine. For if physicians, wishing to give drugs that they may purge a putrid and corrupt humor, command one to abstain from bodily food, so that there may be no obstacle to the efficacy of the drug, but it may be able to display its own power in working: much more does it behove us, who are about to receive this spiritual remedy, that is, the utility which is from the fast, to purge our mind with the tenuity of our diet, and to render it lighter, so that it may not, buried in drunkenness, forfeit the utility which proceeds from it.
2. Moreover, the things which are to be said by us today seem wonderful: but, I beseech you,
A observe the excess of His condescension; He does not discuss the invisible powers, nor does He say, "In the beginning God made the angels or the archangels." Not simply, nor in vain, has He cut this path of instruction for us. For because He was speaking to Jews who were enthralled by present things and were unable to imagine anything intelligible, He leads them by degrees from sensible things toward the Creator of all, so that having learned of the craftsman of the whole from His creations, they might worship Him who made them, and not remain stuck in the creatures. For if, even with this being done, they did not cease from deifying the creatures and displaying their worship toward the lowest of irrational animals, where would they not have run into madness, if He had not used such great condescension?
Γ. And do not be surprised, beloved, if Moses comes by this path, speaking in the beginning and in the fore-words to the cruder Jews, seeing that even Paul, in the time of grace, when such an increase of the proclamation had taken place, being about to speak to those in Athens, makes his instruction to them from things seen, saying thus: "The God who made the world and all things in it, He, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made by hands, nor is He served by human hands." For because he knew that this instruction was appropriate for them, he came by this path. For toward those accepting the teachings from him, he thus used to make his instruction, being guided by the Spirit. And so that you may learn that the difference of the persons and the crudeness of the hearers is the cause of this, hear him, when he was writing to the Colossians, no longer coming by this path, but speaking to them differently and saying: "Because in Him were created all things in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and invisible, whether thrones, or lordships, or rulers, or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him." And John, the son of thunder, also cried out, saying: "All things came to be through Him, and without Him not one thing came to be." But Moses is not like this; reasonably so; for it was not logical to dispense solid food to those still needing to be fed with milk. For just as those teachers who receive children from parents deliver to them the first elements, while those who receive the children from them intone to them the more perfect subject-matters; in the same way, the blessed Moses, and the teacher of the nations, and the son of thunder have done. For the one, having taken up human nature from the beginning, taught the listeners the first elements; but these, having received [the foundation] from Moses, in turn delivered the more perfect things. For the time being, therefore, we have learned the reason for the condescension, and that, speaking by the Spirit, he set everything forth appropriately for the hearers, overthrowing from below all the heresies budding up as weeds in the Church by means of saying: "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." For if a Manichæan approaches, saying that matter pre-existed, or Marcion, or Valentinus, or the sons of the Greeks, say to them: "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." But he does not believe the Scripture. Then turn away from him as insane and deranged. For what forgiveness would he ever obtain who disbelieves the Creator of the whole, as if convicting the Truth of being a lie? Those men have a feigned mask and, putting on a face of moderation, they hide the wolf in a sheep's skin. But you, do not be deceived, but rather hate him all the more for this very reason, that toward you, a fellow-servant, he feigns moderation, but toward the Lord of all, God, he maintains war, and running against his own salvation, he does not perceive it.
But let us hold to the unshakable rock and return again to the beginning. "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." See how even from this mode of creation the divine nature shines forth, as it makes the creation contrary to human custom, stretching out the heaven first and then spreading out the earth under it; first the roof and then the foundation. Who has seen this? Who has heard it? For in the case of human craftsmanship this could never occur; but when God commands, everything yields and gives place to His will. Let us not, therefore, curiously investigate the things of God with human reasoning, but being guided by the works, let us wonder at the craftsman. For "the invisible things of Him," as it says, "from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made."
Δ. But if the enemies of the truth persist, saying that it is impossible for something to be brought forth out of things that were not, we shall ask them: Was the first man fashioned from earth or from somewhere else? They will absolutely say that it was from earth, and they will agree. Let them tell us, therefore, how from earth the nature of flesh came to be. For from earth mud, and brick, and tile, and pottery might come about; how then did the nature of flesh come to be? How bones, and sinews, and arteries, and fat, and skin, and nails, and hair, and the qualities of distinct essences from one underlying matter? But they would never be able to open their mouths against these things. And why do I speak of our body? Let them tell us about the bread which we eat every day, how, being of one sort, it is transformed into blood and phlegm and bile and distinct humors. And the bread is often of one color; but the blood is red or black. If, therefore, they would never be able to tell us of these things seen daily before our eyes, they would far less be able to speak about the other creations of God. But if, even after such an abundance of proofs, they persist, desiring to strengthen their own contentiousness, we shall not even then cease saying the same things again to them: "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." For this word alone is sufficient to overthrow all the towers of the opponents and to tear up all human reasonings from their very foundations; and if they should wish at some point to refrain from contention, it might guide them to the path of truth.