These things Isaiah foretold; these things were laid down concerning us of old in the sacred books; and it was needful, surely, that at some time we should receive the truth of these things by deeds.
But indeed, when the Bridegroom-Word utters such things to His own bride, the sacred and holy Church, fittingly did this bridal-attendant, by the common prayers of you all, stretching out your own hands, raise up and set upright the very desert, the one lying as a carcass, the one despaired of among men—by the nod of God the universal King and by the manifestation of the power of Jesus Christ; and having raised her up, he established her such as he was taught from the inscription of the sacred oracles.
This indeed is a very great wonder, beyond all amazement, especially to those who fix their mind only on the outward appearance of things. But more wonderful than wonders are the archetypes, and the prototypical intelligible and God-befitting patterns of these—I mean the renewals of the divine and rational building in souls;
which the divine Child Himself, having created after His own image, and having bestowed in every way and in all things the God-likeness—an incorruptible nature, bodiless, rational, alien to all earthly matter, a self-intelligent substance—having once at the first brought it into being from non-being, fashioned for Himself and for the Father a holy bride and an all-sacred temple. This too He plainly confesses and makes manifest, saying: 'I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.' And such is the perfect and purified soul, so generated from the beginning, as to bear the heavenly Word as an image.
But indeed, through the envy and jealousy of the demon that loves evil, having become, by her own free choice, a lover of passion and a lover of evil—the divine Protector having withdrawn from her as from a desert—she was proved easily captured and an easy prey to the plotting of those who had long borne her envy; and being cast down by the siege-engines and devices of the invisible enemies and intelligible foes, she fell with an extraordinary fall, so far that not even stone of virtue upon stone remained standing in her, but she lay wholly throughout upon the ground, dead, utterly deprived of the natural conceptions concerning God.
Her, then, lying fallen—her who had been fashioned after the image of God—it was not such a boar from the visible thicket among us that ravaged, but a certain corruption-bringing demon and savage intelligible beasts, who, having set her ablaze as with the fire-tempered darts of their own wickedness through the passions, burned with fire the truly divine sanctuary of God, and profaned to the ground the tabernacle of His name; then, having buried the wretched one under a great mound, they turned her to the despairing of all salvation.
But her Guardian, the Word, the God-shining and saving One, when she had paid the worthy penalty of her sins, took her up again anew from the beginning, being persuaded by the love of the all-good Father for mankind.
Choosing first, then, the very souls of the supreme rulers, He cleansed the whole inhabited world, through those most beloved of God, of all the impious and destructive men, and of the dreadful and God-hated tyrants themselves; then, having brought into the open the men known to Him, those who had long been consecrated to Him throughout their lives, yet secretly, as in a storm of evils, sheltered beneath His covering, and having honoured them worthily with the great gifts of the Spirit—again through these He cleansed and scoured, with the picks and mattocks of the smiting teachings of doctrine, the souls a little before defiled and heaped over with all manner of matter and rubbish of impious commands.
And having made bright and translucent the ground of the understanding of you all, he then handed it over to this all-wise and God-beloved leader, who, being in other respects discerning and judicious, and well distinguishing and sifting the understanding of the souls allotted to him, has, so to speak, been building from the first day until now, and has not yet ceased—now fitting in among you all the translucent gold, now the approved and pure silver and the precious and costly stones—so as again to fulfil by deeds the sacred and mystic prophecy toward you, through which it is said:
'Behold, I prepare carbuncle for thy stone, and sapphire for thy foundations, and jasper for thy battlements, and crystal stones for thy gates, and choice stones for thy enclosure, and all thy sons taught of God, and thy children in great peace; and in righteousness shalt thou be built.'
Building, then, in righteousness, he duly divided the people according to their capacities: to some he assigned only the outer enclosure to fence round, walling them about with unerring faith—and great and numerous is such a people, not strong enough to bear any better building; to others he entrusted the entrances to the house, appointing them to keep the doors and to guide in those entering, who are not unreasonably regarded as the gateways of the temple; others he supported with the first columns of the square outside court, introducing them to the first portals of the letter of the four Gospels; while others again he yoked on either side about the royal house, those still catechumens and established in growth and progress, yet not far off nor greatly separated from the inmost vision of God enjoyed by the faithful.
From among these, taking the unsoiled souls that have been scoured like gold by the divine washing, here too he supports some with columns far better than the outermost—from the inmost mystic doctrines of the Scripture—and others he illuminates with the openings toward the light.
Adorning the whole temple with one great gateway—the glorification of the universal King, the one and only God—and providing on either side of the Father's supreme authority the second beams of light, of Christ and of the Holy Spirit; and showing throughout the whole house the abundant and richly varied clearness and brightness of the truth in each part; and having selected on every side and from every quarter the living and well-set and firmly fixed stones of the souls, he builds out of them all the great and royal house, bright and full of light both within and without; because not only soul and mind, but their body too was made resplendent with the much-flowering adornment of purity and self-control.
And there are in this sanctuary also thrones and ten thousand benches and seats, in as many souls as the gifts of the divine Spirit rest upon—such as were seen of old by those about the holy apostles, to whom there appeared tongues parting asunder as of fire, and they sat upon each one of them.
But perhaps in him who is ruler of all, Christ Himself sits enthroned whole; and in those who hold the second places after him, proportionately, in so far as each has room for the distributions of the power of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. And the benches may be of angels and of the souls of certain ones, those handed over to each for tutelage and guard.
And what could the grave and great and only-begotten altar be, but the sincerity and holy of holies of the soul of the common priest of all? Standing beside it on the right, the great High Priest of all, Jesus Himself, the Only-begotten of God, receiving with bright countenance and upturned hands the fragrant incense from all and the bloodless and immaterial sacrifices offered through prayers, sends them up to the Father in heaven and God of all, Himself first worshipping, and alone rendering to the Father the worship that is due; and then also entreating that He may remain gracious and propitious to us all for ever.
Such is the great temple which throughout the whole inhabited world under the sun the great Maker of all, the Word, has established, having Himself again wrought this intelligible image on earth of the vaults beyond the heavens, that throughout the whole creation and the rational living beings upon earth the Father might be honoured and worshipped by Him.
But the supercelestial region and the patterns there of the things here, and the so-called Jerusalem above and Mount Zion the heavenly, and the supramundane city of the living God, in which ten thousands of angels in festal gathering and the church of the firstborn enrolled in heaven honour their Maker and universal Ruler with theologies unspeakable and not to be reckoned by us—no mortal is able to hymn worthily; for eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and into the heart of man it has not entered, these very things which God has prepared for those who love Him.
Of which having now in part been counted worthy, let us—men together with children and women, small and great—all together with one spirit and one soul, not cease confessing, and giving praise to the Author of so many good things to us: who is gracious to all our iniquities, who heals all our diseases, who redeems our life from corruption, who crowns us with mercy and compassions, who fills our desire with good things; for He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor recompensed us according to our iniquities; for as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our iniquities from us; as a father pities his children, so the Lord has pitied them that fear Him.
Rekindling these things in our memories both now and unto all the times to come, and beholding in our mind, night and day, through every hour and, so to speak, with our every breath, the Author and President of this present festival and of this bright and most radiant day—loving and worshipping Him with the whole strength of the soul—now also let us arise and with a loud voice of devotion entreat Him, that He would shelter and keep us under His fold unto the end, awarding the unbroken and unshaken eternal peace that is from Him, in Christ Jesus our Saviour, through whom be glory to Him unto all the ages of the ages. Amen.