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'Let not my soul come into their counsel, and let not my inward parts strive to meet them.' But who is so mighty in virtue as this man, strong in infirmity, who said: 'Cursed be their fury, because it was proud and rash, and their anger, because it was hardened. I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel'? But who is so tuneful in songs as this man in his utterances, who was heard by the whole world, who is heard among all peoples, through all ages? Who has sung the differences of seven voices in such sweet measures as this man, who resounded with the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit?
Though loosened in his limbs, yet raising himself in mind and lifting himself in spirit, despising with a lofty mind the harmony of his body, as it were of a lyre, broken by the dissolved framework of his limbs, he did not seek to recover it, but suffered it to lie idle on the ground; while he himself soothed himself with an inward song and delighted himself with a prophetic strain, saying: 'Judah, may your brothers praise you. Your hands shall be upon the back of your enemies; the sons of your father shall worship you. A lion's whelp is Judah; from a shoot you have ascended to me; reclining, you slept like a lion, and like a lion's whelp. Who shall rouse him?' And further on: 'He shall wash his robe in wine, and his mantle in the blood of the grape. His eyes are more gladsome than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.'
What song is sweeter, what sound more delightful than the remission of sins and the resurrection of the dead? This song that holy David — the organ of the divine voice and interpreter of the Lord's word — sang upon the spiritual lyre. With these measures of grace he soothed that sublime soul and mind. With this song he mitigated the harshness of this world, with this sound he softened the hardness of the age, with this psaltery he broke the terror of death, with this sweetness of strings he trampled upon the nether regions. But let us hear also the other things which the holy patriarch Jacob sounded forth upon that wondrous organ of his mind: 'Naphtali is a vine let loose, putting forth beauty in its shoot.'
'My son, enlarged is Joseph, my son, enlarged; my son, sought after with zeal; my son, the younger, return to me.' And further on: 'He has prevailed above the blessings of the abiding mountains and the desires of the eternal hills.' What is sweeter than a blessing, what more pleasing than eternity? And the very words are a song, and in the words are great rewards of prayers, the summits of merits. What is sweeter than holy Joseph, who freed us from reproach by the sacrament of the Lord's cross?
For just as Christ was made a curse, that he might loose the curse of the Law, and was made sin, that he might take away the sin of the world, so he was made a reproach, that he might take away the reproach of heathenism; but that reproach of Christ was esteemed more precious than the treasures of Egypt. And therefore Moses left the court of King Pharaoh and chose the reproach of faith — for which reproach the seas divided themselves before him. He, then, is Naphtali, the vine let loose throughout the whole world, that he might pour out upon all peoples the abundance of the spiritual cup; he is the one enlarged, having a name above every name, who, because he offered himself to death for all, therefore hears from the Father: 'Return to me.' Jacob spoke, and God was heard.
He blessed, and the Lord resounded, saying to the Son: 'Return to me' — that is, after the Passion, return. Return to your throne, return with the trophy, return to me, that the dead may follow you as you rise again, and by your power and likewise by your example may rise together, that you may become the firstborn from the dead, that you may sit at the right hand of the Father. Whence the Son also said: 'Hereafter you shall see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power.' Would anyone deny that Jacob was blessed in that final hour of death, who poured forth divine oracles? Would anyone deny that Joseph was blessed in prison, where by the spirit of wisdom he interpreted the truth of the dreams he had heard and revealed the sequence of things to come?
Would anyone deny that Isaiah was blessed, when he was sawn in two; Jeremiah, when he was sunk in the mire; holy Daniel, when he stood undaunted among the lions, and a prophet, snatched up by an angel, brought him his meal? Surely he was not blessed merely because he was eating another's meal, but because by his own merits he shut the unfed mouths of the lions. But who would not call blessed the mother of the Maccabees, who to the funerals of seven sons added herself as an eighth, unto the praise of a heavenly triumph? Nor will I pass you by, Eleazar — as priest to priest, but one to be aided by your prayers — who, a priest by birth, skilled in the Law, mature in years, when you were brought before Antiochus the persecutor, could neither be caught by temptations, nor bent by rewards, nor broken by the bitterness of tortures.
In short, he began with blandishments, because he judged that his torments could be overcome. 'I am ashamed,' he says, 'of your gray hairs, I revere your old age, I admire your prudence: why do you think you must abstain from good feasts, which nature bestows? Relax this kind of obstinacy, wake up at last, while I still prefer to persuade you rather than to extort, lest, overcome by tortures, you do what you refuse when invited by reason.' To this the old man replied: 'We, Antiochus, are not led by stubbornness, but are held by reverence for the Law, which has commanded that we abstain from swine's flesh. You judge it a most beautiful creature; yet you cannot deny that temperance is preferable to pleasure, obedience to the Law preferable to transgression.'
'But if you think this a light thing, that we should feed on swine's flesh — he who has despised the Law in the least things, how shall he keep it in great things? Or if such a creature is precious, we are vindicated, since we are defrauded of that which is most beautiful. But our abstinence is a discipline of chastity. For we learn to cut back luxury, to conquer desires, to shut out concupiscence, to withstand the delights of the body. It is also an exercise of fortitude not to yield to punishments for the sake of the Law, and a mark too of justice and prudence, that what we have chosen to follow we may preserve, in the fear of God, with death set before us. Who would command food to free men? And who would offer himself to be laughed at, so as to be enslaved in this? But you shall not laugh.'
'I am not so old that the fortitude of my spirit does not grow young in me.' And so, hung up and beaten grievously on this side and on that, when his aged limbs could no longer bear the penalties of the lashes, with the torturers and the rackers wearied out, bent down to the earth he bore an unbending mind. And a certain man, whether pitying his great age or desiring to circumvent him by temptations, said: 'Only answer that you will eat: we will keep you free from that food.' But he, crying out: 'By no means let it befall me that I, an old man, should become an incentive to youthful error, I who up to now have been a saving model of instruction. Shall I then, by these mockeries, gain a little longer life, and condemn the labors of my whole life to a brief provision for old age?'
'Old age ought to be a harbor, not the shipwreck of one's former life. I will not deny you, ancestral Law; I will not forswear you, holy institutions of the fathers; I will not dishonor you, priestly fillets; I will not openly defile you with the dust of faithlessness, my gray hairs.' Why say more? By dying amid torments, he became to the rest a teaching of perseverance — he who had been chosen as an example of infirmity. Blessed therefore is he in whom the torments could not conquer reason. Or is he not blessed who by strength of soul could be victor over punishments, and by the oarage of piety could preserve his passion whole amid such great billows? After him were set seven young men with their mother.
The tyrant may well exult, who—thinking it cunning to begin with the old man—chose for himself a teacher who would only make the disciples braver. Their boyish years, as it were, he provoked toward sin with rewards, and pressed toward dread with terrors. But they, no degenerate sons, answered such a leader: 'Why do you despise us, or trick us as though we were children? Our faith may be grey-haired, but our discipline is strong. Make trial of it, then; subject these boyish bodies to whatever punishments you please—you will not find boyish hearts, nor will the engines of torment prove mightier than the watchful sentries of lawful observance. The youth that rivals old age shall overcome him whom old age has already conquered. We sons follow our father, we disciples our teacher. Gather, then, the instruments of torture you have set before us:'
'They bring a training in patience, not a terror of ignorance, even while they seem to threaten.' The tyrant ordered the eldest to be chosen first. But he, with a smile: 'Rightly do you keep the order of nature. But why do you think the law of God may be violated? In point of piety we are all of us the eldest; yet I rejoice that the beginning is made with me. What do you seek, tyrant? I confess that we serve the Most High God. And you are teaching us what we ought to do. If with such obstinacy you wish to wring the truth from us, why should we not think it must be held fast with all our strength?' Why say more? Various kinds of punishments were applied. But piety overcame the fury of his cruelty: the soul was shut out, but not religion. The second came forward, and, no degenerate, fulfilled the offices of his brother by a holy confession. And while the skin was being torn from his head, he answered:
'You strip off the skin indeed, but I have a spiritual helmet which you cannot take away.' And truly no one can take away this helmet, as the Apostle afterwards taught in the Church of the Lord: for the head of the man is Christ, and we are His members. Rightly did the boy by the divine Spirit foresee that apostolic doctrine. The savage beasts flayed the crown of his head and raged with leopard-like ferocity. But he, as his strength failed, said: 'How sweet it is to die for religion, how pleasant every bitterness of death suffered for piety, since the reward of these labours abides! Yours, O king, are the heavier torments; you are tortured the more violently by your own punishments, because you see yourself overcome in your very power.' And when this one too had died, the tyrant ordered a third to take his stand.
And when he tried him partly with snares and partly sought to strike him down with terror, the youth answered him: 'I will not do your will, nor yield to your command. By that blessed passion of my brothers and by their nobility, I will not deny the holy bond of brotherhood. Apply whatever torments you will; the more you press on with the harshness of punishments, the more you will accomplish only this—that you receive greater testimonies of our brotherhood.' And so the tyrant ordered his tongue to be cut off. But he, crying out, said: 'You are conquered, Antiochus, who command the instrument of my voice to be cut away. You have confessed that you cannot answer reason, and you prove our tongue's scourges greater than your own lashes. For we do not fear your lashes; you cannot endure the scourging of our voice.
But these are the scourges of piety; your scourges are those of treachery. Yet even when my tongue is removed, it will scourge you more grievously as it falls with its own murmur. Do you think to escape, Antiochus, if you snatch away my voice? God hears even those who are silent, and hears them the more. Behold, I have opened my mouth, I have loosed my tongue. Cut off the tongue, but you will not cut off constancy, you will not take away virtue, you will not blot out reason, you will not snatch away the testimony of truth, you will not snatch away the cry of the heart. If the tongue be cut off, the blood will cry out, and it will be said to you: the voice of your brother's blood cries to me.
For He who hears the inner thoughts hears the voice of blood. Though the impious man should say, 'Let the darkness cover me and the enclosing walls surround me, for no witness stands by me'—God searches out all things, sees all things, and there is no crime that can lie hidden from the Judge of all, who knows all things before they come to pass. Why do we waste words? Our wounds are more eloquent: even if the wounds be covered, even if the scar be hidden, faith is not hidden. Nor yet should you applaud yourself as though by taking away the tongue you snatch away the confession of praise. We have praised God enough already by our speech; now let us praise Him by our suffering.' And when this one was slain, the tyrant ordered the fourth to be bound to a wheel, so that by its whirling all his limbs might be torn apart.
But he, while he was being tortured monstrously, said: 'You dissolve the members of my body, but you add grace to my passion and do not snatch away the solace of death.' For there is the voice of thunder in the wheel, since in the good and unoffending course of this life the heavenly oracle resounds, just as it resounded in John and James, the sons of thunder. And so I now more clearly recognize what I have read: that the wheel runs within the wheel and is not hindered. For a life that is rounded and smooth turns without any offence in whatever suffering, and within this too the wheel runs. The Law runs within grace, and the keeping of the Law is within the course of the divine mercy: for the more it is turned, the more it is proved.
'It is better here to endure adversities from the impious, that there we may be able to find consolation from the Lord.' And this one, completing his course, broke off his breath and, victorious, poured out his soul. When the fifth was set before him, he was first beaten, and then the tyrant ordered fires to be brought to him and flames placed beneath him. Gore flowed from his wounds, and the blood poured out from his gashed sores quenched the very globes of flame; but he, amid the crackling of the fires, was heard saying: 'I give You thanks, O Lord, that You have granted us to say: We have passed through the fire, even as elsewhere Your prophet likewise says: You have tried us with fire, as silver is tried by fire. I shall stand before You like gold purified in the burning, and if there was any fault, the fire has burned it away.'
And so this one too, transfigured from corruption to incorruption, breathed out his life. To the sixth also torments were applied. But he said: 'Do not err in vain and ascribe to your own power the fact that you wreak these things against us. This is the price of our own offences, that we sinners are punished; and thanks be to the Lord, that here a double penalty for our sins is exacted from us, so that there consolation may be brought to us. Thanks too to you, that you are so hard and pitiless, so that by such sufferings of ours the Lord, against whom we have sinned, may become favourable to our nation. We too lighten our burden, while we delight in the sufferings of our faith.' And this one, mangled with hard and cruel torments, was laid beside his brothers.
There remained the youngest of the brothers, and Antiochus was already ashamed to have been thus made a mockery by one of immature age. And so, desiring to deceive him by guile, he promised honours, riches, his own friendship, a share in his secret counsels. But the holy mother admonished her son, saying to him as to the others: 'I know not how you came into my womb; neither did I give you the spirit nor form your members, but these are the gifts of Almighty God.' Antiochus, seeing the mother anxious, supposed that she feared for his safety, and began to urge her too to call her son back from his purpose. But she, in her native tongue, said to her son: 'You alone, my son, remain, the height of my desires;
you, the last, closed up my child-bearing; you, the last, close up my joys. Have pity on me, who carried you in my womb through so many months' courses; do not in one moment confound my old age, do not tarnish the trophies of so many of your brothers, do not forsake their holy company, do not desert their fellowship. These triumphs still await you. Look up to heaven, whence you drew your breath, to the Father of all; look down to the earth, which first ministered nourishment to you; look to your brothers, who seek their comrade; look to your mother, who gave you milk. Repay the wages of holy blood: do not be torn away from your brothers, do not be torn away from your mother. The wealth that Antiochus promises is temporal, the honours temporal: everlasting is the crown that is bestowed by God Almighty.
For us the Lord gave seven days' lights; the sixth day I have now closed, and the works of all were very good. You owe it to me, my son, that for what I laboured in those six, I may rest in you on the seventh, as one now keeping holiday from the works of this world.' And so the youth, springing forward, said: 'What are you waiting for?' And crying aloud that he could in no wise be torn from the fellowship of his brothers—whose funerals were far more blessed than the king's commands—while he pressed upon the king with reproaches, he too, racked with bitter kinds of torments, discharged the debt of this life. Last of all the mother was offered to death. Who would deny her blessed, who, as though walled about by seven ramparts, stood among the bodies of her sons, feeling no assault of death?
Who, I ask, would doubt of her blessedness—she who, encompassed by seven towers, lifted up her head to the seat of paradise; who, girt about with seven sons, brought a most holy choir to God upon the heavenly altars, attuned to sing the praises of the Lord not only with melodious voices but also with their sufferings? How good a child-bearing of faith, how safe a harbour is that of piety, how splendid a lamp of the Church, gleaming with sevenfold light, and from an eighth womb supplying oil to all those lights! Of whom it is beautifully said:
'Give a portion to those seven, and indeed to those eight,' because in either number they obtain the fellowship of grace—nourished under the Law, crowned through grace; seven as in the Sabbath, eight as in the Gospel—with the holy mother added as the supplement of the passion, who in such sons both brought forth and gave birth to the perfect form of piety. There come back to memory the words of the holy woman speaking to her sons: 'I bore you, I poured into you the juice of milk: do not lose your nobility.' Thus other mothers are wont to call their sons back from martyrdom, not to call them to it. But she set her maternal affection in this—if she should persuade her sons to a life eternal rather than temporal.
And so the holy mother watched the contests of her sons; and although she was shaken with the compassion of a mother's heart, by her zeal for piety she repressed her grief, and when Antiochus offered—when she could have chosen the safety of her sons—she preferred their peril; and stifling the groans of nature, she wished the punishment of her sons to be increased, that death might draw nearer the sooner. We see the marks of a mother turned upon her sons, that she might leave none surviving, but acquire them all as holy coheirs of death. Nor were the sons lesser than such a parent—they who exhorted one another, who said with one zeal and a certain keenness of spirit: 'Let us crush the onslaught of hostile death. For then shall we live, when we have died. Let no one abandon the order of piety, let no one withdraw himself from the triumphant battle.
Not to man, but to Almighty God have we devoted our souls. Not for man, but for the Author of all do we war. Such is this combat, that he conquers the more gloriously who has been the more cruelly slain.' And so no one feared, no one trembled, none of so many brothers was more sluggish toward death, but all ran to death through bitter torments as though to the path of immortality. And the mother, beholding in harmony the ranks of her sons, like a devout soul offered up the members of her own body in her sons, and through her own limbs she seemed to herself to undergo the longed-for torments.
The sons fell, mangled by the torments; the dead were rolled upon the dead, bodies were tumbled upon bodies, heads were hewn off upon heads, the place was filled with the corpses of her sons: yet the mother did not weep, did not lament, did not close the eyes or the mouth of any one of the dying, did not wash their wounds—knowing they were more glorious if they were seen disembowelled and caked alike with dust and blood, as victors are wont to return from war, as men are wont to bring back trophies from the enemy. She judged that no coverings should be cast over them, no funeral rites should follow, save in the company of her own death as well. What harp could pour forth sweeter songs than the sons had uttered as they admonished one another amid such grievous torments?
For nature's groan burst forth even from the unwilling. You might have gazed in order upon the corpses of the slain, like the strings of a lyre. You might have heard the seven-stringed psaltery resounding with triumphant groans. Not so would those alluring songs of the Sirens, as they say, draw on the listener; for those drew men to shipwreck, these to the victory of sacrifice. Nor so would the swan's songs charm the ears and the mind; for swans die by the lot of nature, these were dying for love of piety. Not so do the hoarse murmurings of doves resound in the secret grove, as the last words of the dying resounded with the utmost sweetness.
Nor does the moon shine so among the stars, as the mother among her sons; and as she led them out, about to illumine them for martyrdom, she shone, and when, embracing her victors, she lay in the midst of her sons. O mother truly stronger than adamant, sweeter than honey, more fragrant than any flower! O indissoluble bond of piety! O love truly mighty as death, a zeal of devotion and faith hard as hell! No floods of so many sufferings could quench your love, no rivers of such great bitternesses could overwhelm it. As the ark in that flood of the world was borne unharmed over the spaces of the whole earth, so you too stood immovable in piety against the surge of such grievous sufferings, and, when you could have chosen the safety of your sons, you would not.
With what affection shall I follow after you, holy pledges of a holy mother? With what brush of my speech shall I depict the likeness of your forms and of your souls? You stood among the royal armies, to which the whole world was subdued, which even India, fleeing into the hidden recesses of the farthest sea, shunned; and you alone carried off the victory over a proud king without any martial conflict. In you the arms of piety alone conquered; the tyrant paid the penalty both because he could not conquer you and because he was destroyed by a horrible death.