show your loving-kindness, A that the Jews may not boast to the end, and that the nations may not say concerning us: Where is their God? Where is their Christ? Where is their cross? Where is their hope? Where is the faith of the Christians? That they may not say these things, may they quickly behold your mercies toward us. Let your mercies quickly overtake us, O Lord, because we have become very poor, because we have been humbled very much, because we have become few. Finally, let the groaning of the prisoners enter before you; let the tears of the innocent infants who are being slaughtered prevail upon you; let the lamentation of the mothers who are bereaved of their children implore you. Saying these things, we entreat, we do not fight, O Master; we entreat, but we do not contend against you in judgment. We entreat, because we are reproached by the wicked, because we are oppressed by the Gentiles; we do not fight, but we confess. We weep, because the rest also are in danger. For even if we are sinners, yet we are Christians; even if we are humble, yet we are a people of your faith; even if we are unworthy of loving-kindness, yet we are sheep of your Church, gathered together as one. This supplication for the multitude of the captive people we offer to you on your three-day resurrection, priests and people, young men and virgins, elders with the younger, infants with mothers, every soul of those who believe in you; all of whom deliver from every threatening danger, and make them worthy of your kingdom, by the grace and loving-kindness of your only-begotten Son and our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, with your all-holy and life-giving Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen.
IV. Discourse of our Holy Father Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, on the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ
Blessed be God.
The ornament of the body is the head set upon the body; but the ornament of feasts is today’s feast. For why? he says. B We celebrate the ascension of Christ in the flesh, as it is shown to be the fulfillment of the Lord’s feasts. For just as a radiant head, so also today's feast sheds the beauty of divine grace; but the many, not knowing its greatness, think little of it. And if you wish to learn, ungrudgingly stretch your mind to me. Only cooperate with me by your prayers, I entreat; and settle the leaden gusts, C and calm the waves of nonsense, and grant me your ears at leisure. For according to the wise Solomon, the words of the wise are heard in rest. First, therefore, D
A among the festive and solemn days, the venerable and clearly admirable birth of Christ the Lord according to the flesh vindicates its place. For who would not seem worthy of the highest veneration and admiration regarding the descent of the most high God from the heavens to us, or rather, his admirable condescension? Who would not marvel that the Lord of all should clothe himself in the form of a servant, and that he who encompasses all things absolutely should not disdain to be born of a poor mother? In this order follow the Theophany, or Feast of the Epiphany, which offers a subject for contemplation more sublime than the first. For in the nativity of Christ, a star merely gave evidence of the dawning of the divine Word. But in this celebration of the Epiphany, John cries out to all: "Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sin of the world." And this testimony of the Baptist, exhibited to Christ already initiated by the baptism of John, was publicly confirmed by the voice of the celestial Father. For a voice was heard from heaven, saying: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
But not even this solemnity encompasses joy perfect in all respects, B since the mortal body of Christ had not yet, through the resurrection, put on immortality. The third among the anniversary solemnities of Christ is the Lord’s Resurrection: which (existing as a limb of the same body) follows immediately upon the saving passion of the Savior. This vivifies those who shine with the splendors of his own blood through baptism, and who are regenerated by water and the Holy Spirit. Through this he restored the fallen world, and bestowed eternal life upon Adam himself, who had once fallen. From a tree Adam had plucked death; by the tree of the Cross, in turn, the world recovers life. And this feast is indeed not without reason preferred as more illustrious than the two preceding C ones. For in this, the Immortal, through death, destroyed death, and procured immortal life for the dead. But not even that state, which kept Christ still on earth after being raised from the dead, offered joy complete in every part. The joy of Pentecost, in which the Holy Spirit was given to the apostles, is indeed great; nay, rather, greater than any speech can easily attain. But today, in the feast of the Ascension, all things are filled with the most abundant pleasure and joy. Today Christ the Lord, opening the heavens that glitter and shine with light, and spreading the most subtle air beneath himself for a step and a mounting, and transferring man, formed from the earth, above the vaults of heaven: then bringing immense joy to all angelic natures, shows a new and clearly strange spectacle to the world: namely, our own flesh raised above the royal throne. Where are those now who are captivated by the circus games and the races of horses? Whom the swiftness of the charioteers delights: Come, D I pray you, and behold the charioteer moving wondrously through the spaces of the heavens; be present, I beseech you,
and behold the Creator of all creatures using human nature as a kind of vehicle; He who does not drive His chariot unsteadily upon the earth, but who, in a new manner and mode, attempts a course through the heavens, and hastens to occupy the celestial goal with all speed, while powerfully shaking off and overthrowing Belial, who runs alongside A Him.
But the children of the Jews, blinded by envy, hearing how Christ was assumed into the heavens, and wishing to cast shadows upon that paradoxical miracle of the Sun of Justice, bring forward Elijah, saying: "Why do you boast so greatly, O Christians, that Christ has been assumed, as you say? For Elijah, too, being a man, was deemed worthy of the same glory and was assumed into the heavens." To whom we shall speak with boldness: Why, O Jews, do you plunder the scriptures like blind men, and do not look with accuracy upon what is written therein? Why do you read, and not understand? For what does the divine Scripture say? "And Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind as if into heaven." Now, the phrase "as if into heaven" contains an ambiguous meaning; but the phrase "into heaven" demonstrates the truth clearly. That neither Elijah, nor anyone else, ascended into heaven, but only He who descended from heaven, the only-begotten Son of God—He Himself bears witness to this concerning Himself in clear words, saying: "No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven." B Assuredly, that Good Shepherd, having left the ninety-nine sheep, that is, the angels, upon the heavenly mountains, sought the wandering sheep, and having found it, and mercifully laying it upon His shoulders, brought it to the heavenly harbor; and having brought it, He offered it to His heavenly Father as a gift, saying: "Father, I have found the wandering sheep, which the serpent, that impostor, the devil, had cunningly and fraudulently led into error, and taught it the ways of wickedness, and had defiled the purity of the knowledge of God with the mire of polytheism. Since, therefore, I saw it suffocated in the mire of life, I quickly snatched it away with the right hand of my divinity; and with the bowels of my compassion I washed it in the streams of the Jordan, and having anointed it with the sweet fragrance of my Holy Spirit, I have now come through the resurrection, offering to you a gift not unworthy of your divinity—a rational sheep." C Today the devil laments his own defeat, seeing our bodily nature being led up into the heavens; today sin, through the assumption of Christ Jesus, vanishes like smoke; today the devil mourns, saying: "What shall I do, wretch that I am? Like a swift-winged hawk he has snatched from me all those whom I held captive from the beginning of time; he has made me desolate, and having plucked my wings from every side, he has dashed me to the ground. The son of Mary has deceived me. I knew not that God was hidden in a human body. I saw him clothed in a mortal body, and thinking him to be merely a man and nothing else, I stirred up the Jews against him; and what I did not dare to perpetrate myself, these things I accomplished through the Jews." D
A I devised against him all manner of false accusations; I dishonored him with blows, I fastened him to the cross with nails, and finally, subjecting him to death, I celebrated a feast day with the Jews as though I had attained victory. But when I saw that he had risen from the dead on the third day, as he had foretold, I fell down suddenly, as if pierced on all sides by a sharp spear. Seeing him eating and drinking again, I prepared another cross for him. But while I was contriving these things against him, I saw him flying up with great glory and majesty into heaven, from whence I had fallen with great shame and disgrace. Regarding this, the Psalmist David was crying out long ago: *Clap your hands, all ye nations, shout unto God with a voice of exultation, for the Lord is high, a terrible king, great over all the earth*; and a little later: *God has ascended in jubilation, the Lord with the voice of the trumpet.* I wish to pursue him, and lo, I am dragged downward like lead. I wish to hold him back, and lo, I am hindered by a power that does not fall under my sight.
What shall I do, wretched as I am? He drives me away from every place and region. From the heavens he cast me down to the earth like a tiny stone whirled from a sling. When I had fallen, I wished to hide in the waters, but he, finding me hiding in the channels B of the Jordan, caught me like a foul dragon and lashed me in unworthy fashion. I strive again to obtain at least some small corner on earth, and all men, as if they were guards of the Lord's pasture, rise up against me with raised voices and cry out aloud: *The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and all those who dwell in it.* That the earth is the Lord’s, that great earthquake showed. For the earth, fearing the sight of God and its Lord, and having been savagely beaten on account of the perversity of its children, was shaken with a mighty trembling when Christ suffered. The same earth, opening up rifts and chasms like a mouth against the elements, testified with a heavy roar to the magnitude of its hidden grief, and, as a mother for her children, it supplicated that the sinners might be forgiven. *Who shall speak of the mighty acts of the Lord? Who shall make all his praises to be heard? The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.* For Christ took to himself the flesh formed from the earth, and placed it in the heavens. C The devil creeps up, wanting to defile it through fornication. But do you, as a faithful guardian, having the eye of your soul ever watchful and awake, not allow that thief to violate the lights of your mind, so that, being confident, you may say to him: "I have not betrayed the Lord’s possession, O devil. For the earth and the Church of Christ are the Lord’s, which is everywhere cultivated and irrigated by heavenly rain, and pours forth to him various and perpetually green fruits—namely thirty, sixty, and a hundred." The sower, he says, went out to sow; and some fell upon the way, that is, the deception of the Greeks. And the birds came, the ravenous robbers among the demons, and devoured it. Another fell upon rocky ground, by which I mean the stiff-necked inclination of the Jews, and immediately it sprang up. D
a plant of temerity A and lawlessness. For such is the way of the Jews. For when they were being given the law in the wilderness, they said to Moses: "All that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will hear." And those who made such promises worshipped a lifeless calf, and preferred the dead to the living God. Other seed fell upon the thorns, that is, the prickly and blasphemous heresies which choke the seed of piety day by day. Other seed fell upon the good ground, the Church of Christ, which is fertile and brings forth fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundred-fold. The thirty refers to the modest yoke of marriage; the sixty to the angel-like virginity; the hundred to divine justice, purity, and the courage of the martyrs.
For the heralds of piety, B proclaiming to all the final coming of the Lord, said: "As you saw him going into heaven, so he will come." For two men were seen in white raiment. Two, so that the truth might be confirmed; men, so that they might strengthen the disciples for manly courage; in white raiment, so that they might illuminate the minds of those who heard. What, then, did those who appeared proclaim? "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? Why do you gaze into heaven?" Rather, considering the Creator of heaven, praise the greatness of him who is being taken up, and marvel at the condescension of his loving-kindness, because he united to himself the earthly man, revealed him a citizen of heaven, and appointed him a dweller in the heavens; oh, the wonder! to what heights he has raised him who lay below. "Why do you stand looking into heaven? So he will come. So. How? Clothed in our body, showing forth the side wounded by the spear, so that the Jews may see him whom they pierced; but we may be deemed worthy to behold his countenance with confidence, and obtain the promised blessings, by the grace and loving-kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ: with whom to the Father and the Holy Spirit be glory, power, and honor, now and always, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Of our holy Father Epiphanius, Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, an encomium on the holy Theotokos.
The effulgent radiance of the Theotokos, the D awesome and incomprehensible powers, the mystery of heaven and earth, the wonder, the propitiation—I, a wretched man, am [failing to grasp]...