Homily on the Martyr Mamas

to try to recall the past when it will no longer be of any profit to those who are distressed. As for me, I have told you what I judge to be the best for the present, and for the rest of your life I shall continue to advise you; but you, since there are three types of illness, do not appear to be like the one which is incurable, nor show that the sickness of your mind is similar to the sickness of those who are suffering in their bodies. For those ^A who suffer from minor ailments come to the physicians themselves; those who have been overtaken by greater sicknesses summon the physicians to them; but those who have fallen into an entirely incurable malady of black bile do not even allow those who approach them to come near. See that this does not befall you now, by avoiding those who are of sound mind and reason.

HOMILY XXIII.

In Saint Mamas the Martyr.

1. I do not ignore the magnitude of those things which are done in public assemblies, the difficulty and the weight; but as I know this, so I myself am also keenly aware of my own weakness. For the subject itself demands ^B that something worthy be said, both for those who have gathered and for the hope that they have in us, and for the subject matter. For since we are celebrating the memory of the greatest of martyrs today, every mind is uplifted and every ear is prepared, expecting that something worthy of that martyr should be said, and it constrains the sermon through the very desire for him. For grateful children demand magnificent praises of their fathers, and would not suffer the magnitude of those things to be praised to be endangered by the meagerness of the speaker. Therefore, by how much the eagerness is greater, by so much is the danger. What, then, shall we do? ^C How shall we fulfill your desires, and ourselves not depart having left the matter at hand unfinished? I shall exhort every soul: whatever you had in memory when you came here, renew that in your mind; provide for yourself from your own home, and depart gladdened by your own provisions. Remember for me the martyr, all you who have enjoyed him in dreams; all you who, having happened upon this place, have held him as a helper for prayer; all those whom he served when called by name; those whom he brought back from journeys; those whom he raised from sickness; ^D those to whom he restored children already dead; those to whom he extended their allotted time of life. Gather all these for me, and compile a eulogy from a common contribution. Distribute to one another what each person knows to the one who does not; what he does not know, let him receive from the one who does; and thus, having fed one another from a mutual contribution, forgive me for my own weakness.

2. For these things are the praises of the martyr, the wealth of

^A spiritual gifts. For we cannot honor him according to the law of worldly praises; we cannot bring forward illustrious parents and ancestors. For it is shameful for one who is manifest by his own virtue to be adorned with another's finery. For such things are assumed in panegyrics by the laws of custom. Since the law of truth requires the specific praises of each person. For neither does a father’s good fortune in the race make a horse swift, nor is it the praise of a dog to have been born of the swiftest parents. But just as the virtue of other living beings is observed in each of them individually, so also is the true praise of a man that which is testified by his own right actions. What does the father’s fame contribute to the son? Thus, this martyr did not borrow his splendor from elsewhere; but he himself through his own manner of life kindled the torch of good fame. The rest are ennobled by Mamas, not Mamas by others. The children who have been taught piety by him may well glory in him. For he himself pours forth virtue abundantly from within himself. He does not glory like some torrent flowing together with the contributions of others; rather, he is a spring pouring forth beauty from his own depths. Let us admire the man, not adorned with another’s finery, but illustrated by his own. Do you see the famous horse-breeders? Do you see their white ^B monuments, how they are but stones, and neglected at that? But at the memory of the martyr, the whole region is stirred, and the entire city has been transformed for the festival. Not even his kin run to the tombs of their own ancestors, but all flock to the place of piety. They call him ‘father’ as the leader of truth, but not as fathers and authors of their bodies. Do you see how virtue is honored, and not wealth? Thus the Church, while honoring those who have gone before, encourages those who are present. "Do not," she says, "strive for wealth, nor for the wisdom of the world which is being brought to nothing, nor for glory which fades away; these things vanish together with life: but be a cultivator of piety." For this will both raise you to heaven, and this will prepare for you an immortal memory and everlasting fame among men.

3. Wherefore, if anyone remembers the pastor, let him not ^C admire wealth. For we have not gathered to praise one because he is rich; do not leave admiring a rich man, but rather poverty joined with piety. The shepherd bears no great or exquisite manner of life about him. Would you not, if angered, say in place of an insult to one who provokes you: Are you a shepherd? The shepherd possesses nothing more than his daily sustenance, having a wallet slung over his shoulder, carrying a staff and his daily provisions, having no concern for the morrow, an enemy to wild beasts, a companion to the most gentle of animals, fleeing the market, avoiding the courts, not knowing false accusers, unskilled in commerce, ignorant of wealth, not having a shelter of his own, but living under the common shelter of the world. ^D

^A living at night, looking up to heaven, and reading in the stars the miracle of the Creator. He is a shepherd. Let us not be ashamed of the truth. Let us not imitate those who invent myths from without, let us not cover up the truth with the embellishment of words. Naked is the truth; without a patron it shows itself. If you say more, you diminish it; you will admire it more through a simple proclamation. Shepherd and poor man: these are the boastings of the Christian. If you seek the leaders of the school of piety, you will find fishermen and tax collectors; if you seek the disciples, they are poor leather-workers. No one is rich, ^B nowhere is there pomp; all these things have been done away with along with the world. See, therefore, whose day we are celebrating, for whose sake we are all rejoicing, through whom our life has been transformed. Since we are reminded of the shepherd, do not despise this title. You have heard that Abel, who first found favor, was a shepherd. Who has imitated him? That great lawgiver, Moses, who fled the trial from Pharaoh and detested the treachery of his companions; he was a shepherd on Mount Horeb, and while he was tending his flock, he entered into conversation ^C with God. He saw the angel in the bush not when he was sitting in judgment, but while he was tending sheep; he was deemed worthy of that heavenly discourse. Who was after Moses? Jacob the patriarch, who in his shepherding demonstrated the patience regarding the truth, characterizing his whole life in a small image. To whom did he pass on this zeal? To David. David passed from the shepherd’s art to the kingship. For the art of shepherding and the art of kingship are sisters, except that the one has been entrusted with the oversight of irrational beings, the other with that of rational ones. Thus, this is the foundation of the greater science.

The Office of Shepherd

^A *I am the good shepherd*. I am, and I have not changed. How, when he says great things: *I have verified the earth with my hand; I have alone stretched out the heaven*, as when he brings forth other magnificent things worthy to be said about God, he thus says: *The good shepherd?* He drives away the spurious ones, and draws the truth to himself. *I am the good shepherd*. Learn who is the shepherd, and who is the good one. He himself acts as interpreter. *The true shepherd lays down his life for the sheep; but the hireling, and he who is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, he does not care when he sees the wolf coming.*

4. Here the Church asks, if the Lord is the shepherd, who is the hireling shepherd? Is it perhaps the devil? And if the devil is a hireling shepherd, who is the wolf? But the wolf is truly the devil, that savage beast, rapacious, treacherous, the common enemy of all. Let the hireling shepherd therefore have his own proper designation. ^B The Lord was speaking of hireling shepherds when he turned to those who were present at that time. And there are also now—would that there were not!—those who acquire for themselves the name of hirelings. At that time, the high priests and the Pharisees and all that Jewish sect were pointed out. He called those shepherds hirelings, who had seized the power of shepherding not for the sake of truth, but for the sake of their own gain. Those who pray under a vain pretext, in order that they may devour the bread of widows and orphans, these are hirelings. Those who serve their own utility, and who pursue the present, not looking toward the future, these are hirelings and not shepherds. And now there are many hirelings, who sell their own life for a miserable bit of glory, who even now foment schism by explaining the sound words of the Lord. For when the Lord had said these things, a schism arose among them ^C. Some were saying, *He has a demon*; others, *A demon cannot make the eyes of the blind see*. Do you see how ancient is the vice of dissension? But immediately the winnowing-fan distinguishes the chaff from the wheat; and that which is light and unstable is separated from that which has the power of nourishing, while that which is suitable for spiritual nourishment is given to the husbandmen. For this reason a schism arose, and some disagreed one way, others another. It is proper for the Jews to be divided; but the Church of God, which has received the seamless tunic, woven from the top, preserved without tearing by the soldiers, and which has put on Christ, let it not tear the garment. *And I know my own, and my own know me*. The heretic has seized upon this to confirm his own blasphemy. Behold, he says, it is written: *My own know me, and I know my own*. What, therefore, does that signify, to know? To understand the essence, or to measure the magnitude? Or those things concerning the divini- ^D

of the Godhead, which you in your effrontery profess to know? Or do you not understand from what follows the measure of this knowledge? What do we acknowledge of God? *My sheep hear my voice.* See how God is understood: from our hearing His commandments; from our doing them once we have heard. This is the knowledge of God: the keeping of the commandments of God. Why is there not an over-curious investigation regarding the essence of God? Why not inquiry into things beyond the world? Why not a grasping at invisible things? *My own know me, and I know my own.* It is sufficient for you to know that He is the good shepherd, that He laid down His life for the sheep. This is the boundary of the knowledge of God. But how great God is, and what is His measure, and what is His quality according to essence—such things are perilous to the one who asks, and inexplicable to the one who is asked; silence, however, is the remedy for such things. ^B *My sheep hear my voice,* He said, they do not dispute. That is to say, they do not disobey, they do not contend. You have heard "Son"; do not you yourself craftily argue with me about the modes of generation, nor refer to a cause things that have no cause, nor through schism separate what is joined. For this reason the Evangelist took the lead and secured you. You heard before, and now you hear again: *In the beginning was the Word,* so that you might not think the Son to be a human offspring that has passed into being from non-existence. He said "Word" to you on account of His passionlessness. He said "Was" to you on account of His being outside of time. He said "Beginning" to you, so that He might join the Begotten with the Begetter. You have seen how a tractable sheep hears the voice of the Master. *In the beginning,* and *was*, and *Word*. And do not say, "How was He?" and, "If He was, He was not begotten," and, "If He was begotten, He was not." It is not a sheep that says such things. It is a sheep's skin; ^C but inside is a wolf that is speaking. Let the plotter be recognized. *My sheep hear my voice.* Have you heard "Son"? Understand the likeness He has with the Father. I say "likeness" because of the infirmity of the more powerful bodies. For the truth indeed—for I do not fear to approach the truth—is that I am not prone to sycophancy. I speak of identity, while guarding the property of the Son and the Father. In the hypostasis of the Son, understand the paternal form, so that you may preserve for me the precise reason of the image, so that you may understand for me piously: *I am in the Father, and the Father is in me*; not a confusion of essences, but an identity of characters. But indeed it seems, beloved, to be a matter most contrary, that one should even dare, given the weakness of our own hearing, to ^D say something in the midst and to utter it, so that the power

of God might shine forth most especially in the weakness of the instrument. For perhaps on this account our weakness has abounded greatly, so that He who strengthens what is infirm might be glorified the more. And He who has brought around this gathering of ours, and has given an end to the prayers of the past year, and granted a beginning to the coming time (for the same day concludes for us the past cycle, and becomes again head for the incoming one)—He, therefore, who has gathered us and bestowed the use of the future, may He preserve us in Himself unharmed, uninjured, secure from the rapacity of the wolf; may He keep this Church, which is fortified by the great towers of the martyrs, unshaken; may He avert every snare and assault of heretical madness; and may He in tranquility grant to us that we might learn the divine oracles, and teach the grace of the Spirit that is bestowed upon us; for to Him be the glory and the power, with the Holy Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

HOMILY XXIV. Against the Sabellians, and Arius, and the Anomoeans.

1. Judaism fights with Hellenism, and both with Christianity, just as the Egyptians and Assyrians were hostile both to one another and to Israel. So too in vice we find cowardice and audacity both fighting against each other and opposing manliness. Such a kind of battle is also arrayed on both sides against the right confession, on the one hand from Sabellius, and on the other from those who preach inequality. But we, just as we fled from the Greeks and turned aside from the wicked worship of idols and condemned their polytheism as atheism, so too we have fled from the blasphemy of the Jews who deny the Son of God, fearing that threat: “Whoever denies me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. x, 33). Let us flee, then, as is fitting, those also who devise dogmas akin to these against the doctrine of the truth. For since that cunning devil, who seeks to harm, saw the alienation of Christians from Greeks and Jews—and that we are at once, because of our names, hostile to them—by imposing our name upon both, he attempts in this way to introduce again the Jewish denial and the Greek polytheism. For those who say that the Only-Begotten is a work of God and a creature, and then adore Him and profess Him as God—these, while they worship the creature and not the Creator, openly