Homilies 1 part 5/11

But those excellent judges, those champions of chastity, ordered that she — though modestly veiled with a garment (for even amid the tumult of her troubles she had not forgotten herself, retaining her habit of decorum) — be stripped of her decent covering, that in the courtroom of adultery they might commit adultery, refreshing their shameful desire upon the sight of the accused woman;

and they laid their hands upon her head, which was indeed the symbol of condemnation — those licentious men, defiling with their touch a pure body — and against her they proclaimed the lie in public, those fine champions of truth

But when the people had been led astray, and the verdict had been rendered, and the punishment was near, then the slandered woman lifted her eyes to the Judge of judges;

she carried her case, as on appeal, from men to God, she invoked the tribunal that cannot be deceived, and the truth did not delay

Arise for me now, O blessed Daniel, in this discourse as well, just as you were then roused by the Spirit;

say, you too: 'I am innocent of this woman's blood,' as Pilate likewise said afterward against the raging Hebrews

Bring the people back to the tribunal;

give a fresh beginning to the trial that was wrongly concluded;

set the falsely-named judges to stand as men on trial;

let the order of the presiding officials be reversed, and let the woman now behold the elders, as she herself but a little while ago was the spectacle of the city

Judge, O captive, the citizens;

Lend your holy mouth to the Spirit;

for you do not have unclean lips, as Isaiah says of himself, abasing himself;

nor do you have need of one of the Seraphim, nor of the purifying coal

Wisely separate the falsely-named judges, lest, agreeing with your questions, they leap together just as they did upon the woman in the garden

For let us intelligently observe what sort of beginning the words of that thrice-blessed youth had;

'You who are grown old in evil days;

now your sins which you committed formerly have come upon you — condemning the innocent, and acquitting the guilty'

O the wonder, and the great freedom of the Spirit!

For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom

For observe how he does not hold back even in his opening words;

but having gazed intently into the depth of conscience, and seeing the souls of the elders to be storehouses of sins, he seeks neither witnesses nor proofs;

but summons them with grievous reproach, since the prophet holds the verdict already written upon his own breast

And as far as it depended on him, he would not even have said anything, but would have handed them over to punishment without delay;

but in order to persuade a senseless people and fickle judges who had passed judgment by the grey hair of the accusers, not by the truth, he applies the test of questioning to them separately, and exposes the lie by their disagreeing answer;

and having pronounced the verdict, he does not hand them over as liable to executioners, but summons punishing angels against them

For to such a degree has the dignity of the saints been increased, that they have invisible powers ministering to them

What came next for the vile old men? Judgment was set in motion;

and they departed, paying the penalty by death both for their former lawless deeds and for their new sin;

and all Babylon had on its lips the marvel of what had happened, and hymned God's praises, who had made public the knowledge of the hidden schemes.

And Helkias, rejoicing over his child, was renewed;

Joakim sang the triumphal festival for his wife;

and the children, offspring of a legitimate and chaste woman, leapt about their mother with smiling faces, and the tearful mourning was transformed into joy.

But you, the people of Christ, having heard a most pious and soul-profiting narrative, do not let it pass by your hearing indifferently, but make the account a training and discipline for your life.

Women, emulate Susanna;

guard chastity for your husbands just as she did for her own;

she accepted to suffer and to be endangered rather than to stain her life with adultery;

Adultery provokes God to anger, brings shame upon the husband, destroys households and hearths, and makes children of doubtful parentage.

You elders, hate such old men as these;

you men in power, fear the end that awaited those lawless judges;

you young men, imitate the young man of your own age, so that, each age being thus formed to the pattern of what is good, the whole fullness of the Church may become holy and well-pleasing in Christ Jesus our Savior, to whom belongs glory, power, and honor, together with the Father who is co-eternal with him, and with his all-holy and life-giving Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages.

A homily of Asterius, Bishop of Amasea, on the man blind from the womb. — We have just now heard from the son of thunder, John — or rather, from the Holy Spirit, who made this fisherman and craftsman into a writer and composer of truly divine and lofty subjects.

For he related to us a long and extended discourse of the Lord, by which he taught the disobedient and hard-of-hearing people the knowledge of the Father and the Son, drawing their reasoning away from the Hebrews' notion of a single sovereignty, and opening for them the door of grace out of the legal tradition, leading them gently from the Old Testament toward the New, as one leads first out of the wilderness into a rich and fruitful land.

But nevertheless, though he showed in various ways his own existence — that it is before the ages and ever joined to the Father — and though he cried out plainly to those deaf ones:

"Before Abraham came to be, I am";

neither having learned the power of that word, nor having refuted by any skillful counter-argument what they would not accept, they turned to stones instead of words;

and, well before the cross, they were already exercising their murderous hands for bloodshed.

But he, having determined everywhere to bear patiently with the insolent and blasphemous crowd, turned aside from their anger and tumult — not fleeing in a lowly manner, but in a divine way;

for he stood in their midst, and though touched for, he was not seen, and though brushing against those inflamed with rage, he was not perceived; but they stood dumbstruck, murderous in intent, yet unable to find anyone on whom to vent their wrath;

like inexperienced hunters who, when they have startled the quarry too soon, and the deer has run beneath some thicket and slipped away unseen, wander aimlessly through the glen, carrying their nets as a useless burden and dragging their hounds along in vain.

But I, though a poor servant in other respects, have not forgotten at least this: that I am a slave, and that it was fitting for me to rise up against the insolent on behalf of my Master.

Therefore I will cry out against the Hebrews, as though they were present today and moved by that same madness;

...that held together the walls of the New and the Old Testament? For even if you do not believe, God is able out of these stones to raise up children for Abraham — that is, to gather to Christ a people of his own possession from among the Gentiles, the uncircumcised, for whom Abraham also received the promise, when God said to him, "In you shall all the nations be blessed."

For by his ineffable foreknowledge, seeing what was to come, God allotted to the father of the faith, as children, all those who in later times were to believe.

For from that time on he beheld the rebellion of the Hebrews, and saw the stones, and numbered the falsely-named sons among the disowned.

And since, by proclaiming the truth to them in word, he did not persuade them to piety, he, though standing there, hid himself, and though visible, was not seen, so that by such a wonder-working of his he might draw them to agree that he was indeed God, and a God older than Abraham.

"Hear then," he says, "O truly blind and senseless men;

who is this, who is present with you and yet not seen? Or is it perhaps that same one who spoke to Moses and was not seen? For then too a fire and a bush were seen, both of them voiceless things;

yet nevertheless a voice was heard, and a word gave instruction, and the future was surely foretold."

And those who have understanding ought, from the kinship of these events, to recognize the person.

Since the Hebrews were thus irrational and senseless, our Lord and Savior, like some physician at once careful and wise, when the disease did not yield to the first attempt, resorted to another manner of treatment.

And by a blind man he wishes to heal those blind in mind — a man he happened to meet, who had suffered his blindness not through some injury that befell him, but through a fault of nature, having thus been brought into life from the womb.

And having beheld the man, he stood still and was ready for the healing;

a healing greater than human reason and art.

For the medical art, and the science that belongs to it, applies its consideration to those diseases which befall a creature, through certain circumstances, in the course of time after nature has completed it and brought it forth into the light; but it does not profess to heal a defect born together with the body.

Nor indeed does it profess to heal all the afflictions that occur afterward either.

And witnesses to this are those men who have been maimed, whose loss of limbs no physician has ever restored.

For this reason the disciples, taking pity on his affliction and seeing a man who had never tasted the fairest pleasure of light, inquired closely into the cause of his misfortune, and asked the Lord — not very knowledgeably — whether he had been brought into life in such a state because of his own sin, or through the transgressions of his parents.

But on either side the question contains something open to censure;

for the child could not have been condemned on account of his fathers, since God does not punish one person for another;

nor indeed did he pay the penalty for his own transgressions, if in fact this man was born blind.

For no one is a sinner before birth.

The question, then, was not a very sound one;

but let us learn how the Truth, our Lord, answered the question.

"This affliction, O disciples," he says, "is not a repayment for sins, but a preparation for a coming dispensation, so that he who till now was thought an ordinary man might work things beyond man, and the Creator of all things, after the first creation, might now also find occasion to create anew, and might confirm the general truth from particular instances, and that the hard and intractable people, casting away their stones, might be persuaded to worship."

Let, then, the eyes that do not see be enlightened, that the sun of righteousness may shine upon the souls of the senseless.

...those things which a craftsman father teaches his child according to the principle of his trade;

but a part of a human being — and the fairest part, the eye, that which is fashioned by nature with the greatest care — no one else could have made, except him who holds authority over the first origin according to nature.

And if anyone should wish to apply his mind carefully to the members of the human body, it is especially in this part of the body that he will discern the all-powerful and manifold wisdom of God, who has displayed such lavish artistry within so small a compass of a limb.

For first, a certain grace is poured over it, and it is most delicate and, one might say, without flesh — having firmness within tenderness, and tautness within softness — and it is adorned with varied colors.

Its center, at any rate, has the outline of black, and this not uniform throughout, but bound together by certain varied circles;

the very center-point having the deepest hue, while the outer circumference, part by part, shades off into a more golden-brown tint.

Around this, on the outside, the white is wrapped — glistening and translucent, its whiteness not unmixed, but fashioned in a certain crystalline and radiant form.

The red lies around the pupil, so that it may blend its grace with the white and the black.

Besides this, it is so translucent and smooth in its density that it forms images of the shapes of those who draw near, and, like an exact mirror, has the features of those conversing with it imprinted upon it — for which reason the very center of the circle, the pupil, is called "kore" [maiden], since it always shows a human form to the one gazing directly into it.

For just as one who looks into a mirror cannot but immediately cast his own image upon its surface, so a man standing face to face cannot but imprint his own form upon another's eye.

Thus, at any rate, when people look at one another, they become mirrors of one another.

The eye, then, is worthy of wonder among created things.

For it is this that interprets God to me, learning precisely the whole of creation, and from its working pointing to the Craftsman;

it is this that, from things visible, interprets to the soul the things invisible;

through it I have knowledge of the sun; I have learned the order of the heavens, and have surveyed the beauty of the stars, and the substance of the earth and the nature of the sea, the variety of seeds and the diversity of plants, the varied dye of colors, the gloom of darkness and the brilliance of light — and simply all the things that God, having created, pronounced good.

For if the eye did not exist, creation would have grown old without a witness, with no one beholding the wisdom and power of God preserved within it.

For the sake, then, of this wondrous construction of sight, eyes were now also created afresh, so that we might lay aside the petty notions concerning the Only-Begotten that arise in us from the flesh, casting out of the soul, by the greatness of the deed accomplished, every mean and lowly supposition;

and let us recognize that the blessed light and beauty of the Godhead took on an earthen vessel, ministering its brightness to us as lamps do.

But the Lord performs the healing entirely by his own hand, and does not use word alone for the working — he who by a command established the whole order of creation, he who healed the paralytic with two brief words;

but now he heals the blindness with mouth and hands and much other forethought, so that through the [visible] facts he might produce firm faith in the unbelieving.

He spits on the ground and makes clay with his saliva, employing earth in this way for the healing, in order to show that from that same dust from which, in the beginning, the whole living creature was formed, the part now lacking is also being fashioned.

With spittle he takes up this scattered and unbonded dust and binds it together, that he might clearly show us that by the power of his mouth the Word set all things aright.

For by the word the heavens were established, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.

By spitting he heals, that he might sting to fear those who, a little later, would insult him with their spittle;

and yet this did not restrain the audacity of the raging men, but he who accomplished such things by his spittle was himself spat upon many times.

By this first act he intimates his creative power; and by commanding him to wash in the pool of Siloam, he shows us the salvation that comes through water, which the "Sent One" (Siloam) has granted to all.

For then do we see well, when we have been cleansed by the mystical water;

then does the light of grace shine round about us, when the power of baptism washes away the filth of our sins and their stains.

And all of us who wash ourselves at the command of Siloam behold the spiritual light, which enlightens every man coming into the world.

O the wonder, and the great working of power!

He who a little before had been blind went away from the pool, his face now adorned by the addition of eyes, seeing clearly toward the sun's ray.

The event astounded his neighbors and acquaintances.

The novel manner of the healing threw common life into an uproar;

the man went about the city, seeing, so that by all he might be seen as a work new and extraordinary, wrought by Jesus who was born in Bethlehem, that little infant who was wrapped in swaddling clothes in the manger.

For these are the things which made the Jews disbelieve in his divinity.

Therefore, O senseless and dull-hearted men, apply your reasoning to the men of every age past;

beginning from Adam, search out all who followed after, to see whether you can find that what has now happened was also done in another's case before, whether human life has any precedent of such a healing;

and again, to mock my Lord, you bring up "the carpenter's son," whose brothers you know, whose house you know;

Enumerate all his lowly circumstances, contend contentiously, pour out upon us a flood of reproach;

but if no man has ever done such a thing, and human life has no such tale to tell, then, condemning your own ignorance, look up at last toward the truth.

Wash yourselves too in Siloam, lest you die in your blindness.

But it seems that none of this availed with them.

No word instructed them, no deed taught them, no working of wonders abashed them;

but on the contrary, because of their arrogant ingratitude, they attempted in countless ways to obscure and disparage everything;

but their malicious contrivance turned back upon them to the opposite effect.

For the more they disbelieved and by their repeated questioning strove to overturn it, the more the truth was confirmed;

and they suffered the same thing as those wild beasts which, when struck by someone, and not yet having received the whole point in their belly, by their very charge and struggle against the man drive the whole blade into themselves.

whether this was truly that same blind man, and not another substituted in his place;

though the man clearly testified and cried out, and clearly reported the whole course of the healing—that clay had been smeared on as the remedy for his blindness, and that the pool, by washing off the clay, had granted him sight.

These things the neighbors busied themselves investigating and came to learn;

the Pharisees kept searching into it, and would not be persuaded.

A second stratagem was adopted for discrediting what had happened: the attempt to show that it was not Christ who had wrought the healing.

But since the man kept crying out "the Savior" and, by his confession and proclamation, was rendering back gratitude and making his benefactor known publicly, they, stopping up their mouths, their minds reeling, not knowing what else to do, ... run back again to the inquiry about his affliction—whether he was blind from birth—and busy themselves investigating this, and seek out the man's parents, and become meticulous examiners of every particular, not in order to confirm what had been done, but in order to find, from somewhere, some overturning of the wonder, and, having fabricated some false contrivance, to turn back the impulse of the believing multitude.

To fight against the truth, and not to worship him who did these things, but to disparage the benefactor;

not to marvel at the power, but to attempt to belittle the facts.

Be convinced, then, O Pharisees, even by the testimony of the parents, that the man was born with his blindness;

and again you run back to the blind man, seeking full assurance from him a second and a third time, out of your malicious devices and plots.

But whenever you fail in your first attempt, you proceed to a second;

whenever in the second, to a third;

whenever in the third, to the next after that.

You run the crooked courses of a mischievous fox, yet everywhere the nets of truth have hemmed you in on all sides;

and there is no escape from the wonder.

Yet you neglect no manner of weaving, spinning a spider's web—plotting variously indeed, but weakly and to no purpose.

Children like unto their unbelieving fathers.

Such too were those fathers in their manner regarding the wonders in Egypt.

They were saved from wars in a new and unhoped-for manner, yet disbelieved him who gave them salvation;

they were fed with food surpassing nature, and yet were more ungrateful than the starving.

they received manna sent down from heaven, and yet longed for the reek of Egyptian garlic and onions;

by day they were overshadowed by a pillar of cloud, that they might not suffer from the heat of the sun's ray, and by night they were illumined by a pillar of fire, receiving another new and extraordinary luminary besides the moon; and yet, as though enjoying no divine working at all, they thus demanded and sought after new and high-flown gods, when Moses, detained a little while on the mountain in the giving of the Law, delayed his return.

You are truly heirs of their ingratitude—you who have not loved the Law and hate grace, and who need not the oversight of a rod of walnut wood, but of iron.

You see a man who came into the light, yet remained in darkness far into his years, his eyes without function, led by the eyes of others, sitting daily before the temple, publicly displaying his misfortune, so as to draw many to pity, having the whole city as witness to his affliction—now seeing, and healed swiftly, not by any compounding of various medicines, nor by cuttings of the knife, but by clay alone, and that clay made by means of spittle;

and how is it that you are not amazed, are not astonished, do not fall down upon the earth and worship him who out of earth fashioned eyes, and revere the divine working? Instead you burst with envy, and are jealous of God as though he were a rival craftsman, as craftsmen envying a fellow craftsman, as kinsmen envying an equal in honor.

Now when you read the ancient books—those written concerning the governance of the people, and those which clearly instruct us in the reigns of the kings and the history connected with them—you readily accept what is said about each of them: so that you all but reckon Moses to be God, and marvel exceedingly at Elisha, and hymn his teacher the Tishbite;

and you exalt in honor to the rank of angels all the saints of every generation who were empowered by God and accomplished great and celebrated deeds;

and you raise no quarrel at all about the ancients, nor do you reject the account handed down by the fathers—even though it is the nature of men not to be led very easily to belief on the strength of hearsay alone;

but that which you have seen with your own eyes—concerning the eyes he later received—and what you may touch with your fingers and apprehend precisely by sense-perception, this you treat with malice, faithlessly and ungratefully alike, both trampling underfoot the prophecies and overturning the fulfillment of what was foretold.

For what is now seen in actual experience, Isaiah long ago, arriving before it, taught by his words;

"Behold, our God renders judgment, and he will render it;"

"he himself will come and save us."

"Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear;"

"then shall the lame leap as a deer, and the tongue of the stammerer shall be clear."

Nor are these the words of any novel and dubious persons, that you should suspect them of being flattering praise and so reject the truth—but the words of your own prophet: if you recognize the Tekoite, the son of Amos, a prophet, child of a prophet, a man Israelite by race, the very summit of the way of life according to the Law.

But to God be glory, dominion, and honor, now and always and unto the ages of ages.

Of Asterius, Bishop of Amasea, an encomium on the holy and chief apostles Peter and Paul. — All these customary honors paid to the martyrs, celebrated according to due order, are sacred festivals, and everlasting monuments of those who achieved manly virtue in accordance with God;

at which festivals the presiding officers of the churches, whenever they come to speak, weighing their own powers against the greatness of the subjects, immediately at the outset take refuge in a plea for indulgence and excuse, and say that they diminish the magnificence of the matters by the smallness of their discourse.

But if those men, when about to deliver an encomium upon each of the martyrs individually, decline the task of praise and confess with a loud voice their own weakness, what then should I become today, I who have set before me for a eulogy the very teachers of the martyrs—the genuine and first disciples of Christ, the fathers of the churches, the only trustworthy heralds of the gospel, those who spoke with God and received into their own ears the voice that came from God? Yet, since the discourse is exceedingly lofty and the undertaking hard to attain, let us not, for that reason, embrace an idle and inactive silence, like those cowardly men unaccustomed to the sea, who, refusing at the mere sight of the sea, neither endure to set foot upon the ship in the first place, nor even, for the sake of trial, to sail a little way along the shore;

but rather, entrusting our undertaking to those thrice-blessed men themselves, for whose sake we have gathered together today, let us attempt to contribute, according to our power, to the joy of others.

For I know that only so much will be required as can be found possible with us, who are poor, and not as much as is owed to those great and divinely inspired men.

I would wish, then, that a small portion of that grace might be granted to me today, of which each of these two saints partook—the one, who in Jerusalem taught those who were disobedient; the other, who, coming to the Areopagus in Athens, turned back the superstitious from their polytheistic error, showing them Christ and proclaiming to them the mystery of true piety.

For thus we would show that we accomplish something of what lies before us, and do not fall far short of its greatness.

But since the great gifts of the Spirit belong to great men, and I am unworthy to be enriched with such graces, I will add my poverty together with my eagerness for you, as Elisha added the meal to the herbs—since I too shall not be without some share of honor in having, at any rate, contributed something good.

Let none of you who are about to listen suppose that I, having undertaken the praise of noble men, will follow the rules of worldly wisdom.

For we are not fabricating flattery by a contrived art, but we are eager to set before you, with truth, the virtue of souls that love God.

Therefore lineage shall be passed over in silence, and the renown of ancestors shall not encumber our discourse.

Flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Nor shall we honor citizens of heaven by earthly and worldly things; rather, quite the contrary — an obscure ancestral life, menial trades, and the reproach that goes by the name of poverty: these are what will be remembered in our praises;

lowliness is what is our own.

And when I observe the eulogies of the pagans as well, I find grave fault with them, because, wishing to glorify whomever they have chosen, as if they had nothing outstanding and good to say, they linger vainly at tombs and needlessly disturb those who lie there, and make the dead an ornament for the living;

by which practices they invoke the departed, thereby admitting that no good quality of their own belongs to those whom they are praising.

And besides this, if it were agreed that those descended from illustrious fathers are themselves necessarily good, and inherit virtue as though it were a kind of nature, it might perhaps have been fitting to make some mention of parents;

but since the diversity of ways of life very often gives the lie to hereditary succession — for the son of a philosopher turns out profligate, and the son of a pleasure-lover turns out a philosopher — it is a vain labor to make mention of one's forefathers;

one ought instead to display, if a man has them, the achievements of virtue.

And that this is indeed so, one cannot learn by inquiring elsewhere, but only from our own sacred Scripture itself, which affords manifold and varied benefit.

We surely know that priest, that elder, the nurturer and teacher of the great Samuel —

yet though he himself was most excellent, he profited his own sons nothing;

and this though they were reared by their own father, and daily learned the ordinances of the priesthood.