HOMILY IV
A ...yet not wordy, honoring God with the voice, but by quickly ending, showing favor to the festival. But that you may be a worthy celebrant for God, do not desire a drunken table after a fasting one. Crown the vessel with a mixture of sobriety for God. Our God is wisdom and the Word. A vessel that disturbs the spirit, that perturbs one who is thinking, belongs not to the Word. There is a relaxation appropriate to God, and there is a relaxation appropriate to demons. "Rejoice in the Lord with fear." (Ps. II, 11) When you banquet, he says, remember God. For then the great slippage into sin occurs. When the body grows fat with fleshly things, it turns the soul away from wisdom. "A cup in the hand of the Lord, full of pure wine mixed; and he poured from this into that; nevertheless the dregs thereof were not emptied." (Ps. LXXIV, 9 - Septuagint translation)
Drink of that cup, and you shall have become worthy of the bridegroom’s banquet. That cup is a breakfast-maker, full of wine; for the very thing that is pledged for us deserves to be awakened in our mind. And straightway the word is clear here, but it does not need many things from the mind. "A cup, in pure wine, full of mixture; and he poured from this into that." If it is pure, how is it full of mixture? And if it is one, how did he pour from this into that? The things said appear entirely absurd, but not the things understood by them. God has no care for wordiness in divine speech, and rejects the anxious attention of scribes regarding petty details. B Does divine Spirit despise literary micrology? But do you wish to behold the harmony in the discord? Of what cup, he says, does it speak? Of the word which, having been drunk previously by men from God, we possess in the Old and New Testaments. For with this drink the soul is irrigated. That it is the word, each is pure. For it is mixed, while being twofold. For it is one thing, being composed of both, acting as the perfection of knowledge. The Old had the promise; the New brought forth the Apostle. But the phrase, "He poured from this into that," hints at the succession of the teachers, of the Mosaic law and the Lord’s law; and the cup is one. For one and the same Spirit breathed both into the prophet and into the Apostle. And according to the good painters, C formerly He sketched in outline, but afterwards He perfected the features of knowledge: "Nevertheless its dregs were not emptied."
D
Notes of Dionysius Petavius
(35') In this homily Synesius shows that feast days should be celebrated piously and soberly, and that the Spirit of the New and Old Testament is one and the same.
HOMILY II
A 297 Sacred night, which has brought such light to those who were cursed, as much as no sun has ever illuminated the day. For it is not right, certainly, to consider anything, even if it be the most beautiful of all things on earth, as comparable to the almighty Maker of all things. Yet that light which illuminates souls, and which has illuminated this visible sun, is not even a created thing. Acknowledge the blessedness that is present, and which now abides. If you remain firmly in this state, you will observe this solemn day as more desirable and more fortunate for yourselves for as long as life is granted to you. For now, certainly, each of you walks as an angel or messenger of God in the city; and even now consider that what has been said applies precisely to you: living on earth, but having your citizenship in heaven. But fear lest you fall from this dignity; for a stain that occurs after purification and expiation is a sin that is scarcely washed away.
B The Leontopolitans have decreed something milder than their own nature allows, since, abstaining from one another, they have accused their neighbors of broken laws. For yesterday and the day before, brothers were calling the executioner against brothers, and a son against a father, and a father against his own kin. And yet what they are now attempting is not for the sake of men casting off that ancestral slaughter of one another; but rather, while individuals make their attacks privately against one another, the city collectively persecutes its unlucky neighbors, those who are not happily or to their own benefit the city's neighbors. For they would not believe that they were being treated well, if the structure of the city did not also publicly serve as an accuser and assume the role of a slanderer. But for us, the very things they bring against us as accusations provide clear proofs, for we have a judge who lends a patient ear to those who do no injury. Yet we have learned to till the fields, not to plead cases in court. Why then, when things have long been thus, do they think it right to exceed the appropriate tasks and times for themselves, and come against us, who are more inflamed than they are themselves? And, caught up in greater wrath and affected by the injury of our location, do they always eagerly expose for sale that which remains? C But since this year there has been no money left over, they wish to convert our miseries into profit. Indeed, these recent denunciations tend towards this; nor is there any other purpose to their inquiries. They even confess a second thing, which is worthy to be stated by us first and alone, since it is of such a sort that it places their most unjust practice before our eyes. For since they long ago laid the foundations of their slander deeply, for the sake of their own security, because they use waters that do not belong to them, they have made a path for themselves to this venerable praetorium. D
SYNESIUS OF CYRENE — CATASTASIS
Spoken at the time of the greatest barbarian incursion, Gennadius being Prefect and Innocentius being Duke.
A I for my part do not know what one ought to say concerning the calamities that are before our eyes; for there is neither leisure for speaking to those who are under the necessity of weeping, nor could any speech be commensurate with the events. Although, for some, even the capacity to weep has failed, struck dumb by the magnitude of the evils that have befallen them. But since God has regard for those who weep, and yet those who hold the Roman scepter must also be informed, write you to those of the powerful to whom you can bring a report to the Emperor’s council. Let someone announce to them in brief that, as far as the day before yesterday, the Pentapolis was still a good possession for the Emperor; even if it was lacking in power compared to others, it was more loyal than those more powerful than it. B Those of them who have held public office with proper attention to affairs know this; among whom I hear that the great Anthemius holds the preeminent place, and I easily persuade myself of it. He, therefore, is not unaware how many and at what times, especially those times in which tyrants have ravaged, we have become subject to kings who gave us no pretext for revolt. But until these days, the Pentapolis was, as of yesterday and the day before, to the Romans—in terms of assessing the provincial losses of their empire—a nation. The Pentapolis is now gone, truly; into the final...