The most savage serpent had driven the firstborn man from the flowery seat, and by the allurements of a beguiling taste had borne bitter death to the wretched one. Nor had the presumptuous one alone felt the deserved wrath, lying under mortal law, but straightway from him the whole human race together. Alas, harmful wife! Are you, the wife, more harmful, or that treacherous serpent? Treacherous was that serpent, but you too were a harmful wife. O grief! There had been two eternal beings. After their origin began to grow, it perishes and took its ruin from the seed. What did the numerous days, what did it then profit in that time, to behold nine hundred years and more in happiness, and to look upon the tenth generation of aged descendants, and now not to know one's own kindred:
when, overcome by its final courses, the irreparable lot of the last hour was to come—though late—and through a long age a brief life was to be nothing, when it grieves at its end? Nor would hope bring back restoring aid, and would the tomb of the first earth-born one swallow his descendants with its blind maw, had not that loving Sower, ready to forgive faults, slow to repay them, lest His own creation should perish and lest each living image like to God should stand by, made unlike, from death—had He not in pardoning mercy restored the work and forbidden the bitter fruits, which the fathers ate while the children's teeth shudder; and, ever appeased, bestowed gifts upon His own, so that from the source whence guilt gave death, mercy might give salvation, and just as the soft rose rises from sharp thorns, having nothing to harm, and overshadows its mother with honour:
so, from the stock of Eve, sacred Mary coming, a new Virgin might expiate the misdeed of the ancient virgin: that since the prior nature lay corrupted under the dominion of death, man might be reborn at Christ's birth and lay aside the stain of the old flesh. After the aged prophets had foretold these things to come, the angel sang in haste to the untouched Mary: and faith accompanied the word, and presently the starry burden filled the maiden's womb, and the Creator of things came under the law of being born. The unwedded Virgin marvels at her stretched bosom and rejoices that she will bring forth her own Parent. And now, the ninth month past, at the threshold of the tenth a hallowed day was shining, when, with the Virgin great with child, the promised work was fulfilled: 'the Word made flesh', willing to dwell among us.
Then the greatest Infant, preserving the inviolate inmost parts of His own temple, emptied out an unharmed passage: for the Virgin, a witness is at hand—the birth—entering the closed and leaving the closed. What new light for the world, what grace for all heaven! What was that radiance, when Christ came forth from Mary's womb with a new splendour, as a comely Bridegroom exulting from His lovely bridal chamber, 'beautiful in form above the sons of men', from whose radiant figure a more winning grace was poured upon His fair lips. O ready piety! That a servile yoke might not hold us, sin reigning, the supreme Lord took on servile members, He who from the very origin of the world clothes all things at their birth with His own gifts, beset with mean swaddling-clothes, had His coverings;
and He whom the moving wave of the stormy deep cannot contain, whom not all the soil of the lands, nor the spacious hall of the wide pole contains, full, remained in a child's body, and God rested in a narrow manger. Hail, holy Parent, who hast brought forth in travail the King, who holds heaven and earth through the ages, whose name and whose dominion, embracing all things in an eternal round, abides without end; thou who, having a mother's joys with the honour of virginity in thy blessed womb, wast seen to have neither a first like thee nor a following one: alone, without precedent, thou as a woman didst please Christ. Then He, first created, shone forth to the ignorant shepherds, because He was the Shepherd, and as a Lamb He gleamed upon the flocks, and the angelic company sang the miracles.
While such signs were being wrought in the borders of Bethlehem, the magi of the East came, and disturbed the savage tyrant with weighty tidings in anxious words: that lately, to the peoples of Judaea, a leader sprung from the axis of the East had shone forth, that the stars from heaven, that a new star, declared this by their radiance. The fierce arbiter of the Hebrew court seethes, supposing that this one could presently succeed to his place—he who was first: then, with serene brow, nursing the clouds of his mind, he secretly orders that the child be sought everywhere as one to be adored, whom he plots to slay by treachery. Why do you rage, Herod? You confess Christ with your speech, and in your mind you desire to slaughter Him; reading the law, you neglect it, and you threaten your own realms against the King of kings.
Yet, lest your name should lack an insane deed, another Herod shall see what you are now contriving, to be perpetrated under the honour of the Cross (but to the crime of his people). Therefore the eager magi, keeping their eyes fixed on the highest heaven and following the gleaming royal star, held to the longed-for way, which by a future law led the adoring nations to the sacred cradle. And, their treasures at the same time unloosed for religion's sake, so that even the kinds of gift might be able to show forth Christ, they poured out golden gifts to the new-born King, gave frankincense to God, bestowed myrrh upon the tomb. Yet why three gifts? Because faith, confessing this number, is the greatest hope of life, and the supreme God, beholding all times—present, past, and future—is ever present, ever has been, and ever will abide in the threefold power of Himself.
Then, warned from heaven through a dream to scorn the tyrant's commands, walking through the by-paths of an altered route, the magi returned into their own homeland. So we too, if we long at last to reach the holy homeland, after we have come to Christ, let us no longer seek again the wicked one. Therefore, when he discovered that he had been mocked, the impious king lays bare his wrath (if indeed he can be rightly called a king, who lacks piety, who does not cover his own anger), and groaning that the deed had been snatched from him, like a gnashing lion, from whose mouth, when the tender lamb suddenly slips away, he moves his arms against the whole flock and tears and drags the soft cattle—and the trembling dams call for their offspring in vain and fill the empty air with bleatings—
not otherwise does Herod, goaded by Christ being taken away, in his cruelty not cease to lay low the dashed-together throngs of little ones in undeserved slaughter. By what crime does the innocent multitude perish? Why do those who could scarcely yet be created already deserve to die? In the bloody king there is fury, not reason; and slaughtering their first cries and daring to perpetrate a countless crime, he butchers thousands of children and gave to so many mothers one single wailing. This one tore her cheeks with her uncovered head; that one cut her cheeks; another strikes her bare breast with her fists, and the wretched mother (now no longer a mother), bereft, presses her breasts in vain over her cold child. What feeling was then yours, butcher, as you beheld such things?
What roarings did you give forth, when you looked out from your high citadel and saw the wounds seething far and wide, and saw, before your eyes, the vast sea stirred up with such great lamentations? And yet, though the infants were slain, Christ, though absent, was present, who ever takes up holy perils and feels the penalties in another's body. But when He had reached twice six years of age, drawing this span from the flesh, and bore the passages of life for the human part, He seemed to the elders to be older in heart, and among the teachers of the law He sat as a veteran master by right. Nor was there delay (for what delays does the world, flitting through the times, know how to have?)—having entered upon a greater youth, bearing as it were six lustres, He came to the gentle wave of the Jordan, that He might receive that which He had Himself come to give.
When the mighty Baptist John saw Him from the river—Him whom, while John lay hidden in his mother's womb and not yet created, the prophet had already perceived, then in stifled speech, flowing as it were from his dumb father, to whom the gifts of the tongue, long silent after the ninth month's breathings, were rendered when his son was born—soon he proclaims: Behold the Lamb of God, coming to take away the sin of the world. When He says 'to take away' what He does not have, this He takes away from me: not that He Himself should bear evils, but that He Himself should destroy harmful things. Just as when the bright light is poured into the midst of the darkness and, its own serenity not dimmed, shakes off the shadows driven away, with its face unharmed, so the Saviour, putting our offences to flight by His action, wiped them away and bade them vanish far off at His touch.
Then, simply entering the fords of the rushing waters, He washes in Himself all the contagions of our life, He Himself having nothing that He should lose; and with His holy body He cleansed the flowing waters and blessed the fame of the stream, and consecrated the rivers with His own members. The elements felt God: the sea fled, and the Jordan itself turned its course back into refluent waves. For the prophet, singing, says: 'What is it, O sea, that you flee, and you, O Jordan, that you draw your stream backward?'
Therefore, when, after the mystic gifts of the river-washing, the Lord, coming forth, trod the dry sands, immediately the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit, in the likeness of a dove, clothed Christ with honour and teaches Him to be gentle and to walk very meek, through the bird that lacks gall; and, the Son being called by the voice of the Father, God is proved by a threefold reasoning, because the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit is there—whereby he remains unworthy who has not counted them one. Thereupon, after now forty nights and days fasting from food, full of the sacred Breath, the tempter approaches Him with snares, taught by his craft to offer deceitful banquets:
'If you are seen to be the Son of God,' he said, 'command that this stone be suddenly turned into the support of bread' — as though He who quickens the rocky bowels of the earth and makes them fruitful with grain-bearing ears, and creates bread from the crag, did not always work these very same miracles. Repulsed therefore by the prior word, that man lives not by bread alone but by every utterance of God, the tottering and maddened foe, refurbishing other weapons with his serpentine poisons, sought the mountains with the Lord and showed Him all the wealth of the kingdoms throughout the world: 'All these things,' he said, 'you shall have by my gift, if you fall down and adore me.' As perverse as he was, so perversely did he speak:
Namely, that He who prepares eternal kingdoms for the peoples should grasp at the kingdoms of frail honour, and that He whose seat is above the heavens, whose footstool is the earth, whom no one beholds yet every power praises on high with lowered voice, should bow down and adore an abominable monster. To this Christ replied: Scripture commanded that the Lord and God alone be adored, and that one alone be served. Failing even in these encounters, the wicked one dares — lifting himself thrice in his proud spirit to persist in his haughtiness, and thrice rolled to the ground to trust in feeble warfare — then the criminal took Him into the holy city, and setting Him upon the pinnacles of the lofty temple, said: 'If you assert yourself born of God the Father, leap nimbly and glide down from the topmost roof.'
'For Scripture teaches that the Thunderer gave charge concerning you, that, more safely upborne, you should go carried on angelic arms, lest perhaps you dash your foot against a stone.' O how dark a heart that mind bears beneath its black breast, obscured by its own shadows! It believed that He shuddered headlong at the steep summits of the temple and the pinnacles of the raised turret — He who bent the vast frame of the highest pole, and borne through all the heavens descended to the lowliest depths of the farthest earth, seeking the lower places and yet not abandoning the heights. He had spoken, and pierced by the point of the mighty word — that he could not tempt his own Lord and God — the foe fled groaning from the Victor's face. Then, the enemy driven off, the heaven-dwelling chiefs and gleaming throngs stand by; the angelic ministers duly serve Christ.
Straightway therefore He bids that men chosen from fishermen be His disciples, to fish for human souls — souls which, chasing the slippery joys of the world, swim headlong across uncertainties as blind and treacherous as the wandering blue of the sea and the deep — and He reconciles to the supernal life such men as no windy glory of speaking, nor blood proud of empty nobility, nourishes, but silent fame and a brightness shining with humble mind makes near to heaven though drawn from the common folk. For God in His power chose the foolish things and the lowest things of the world, shattering the strong, and confounding wisdom. Moreover, desiring to confer swift salvation, He gave precepts of prayer, and as a kindly judge bids that what is to be granted be sought briefly, that He may grant it quickly, saying thus: Pray to the Father — ours by baptism, His own by right;
and He granted to man His own proper honour, and what He alone possesses He permitted all to possess. We who call the Lord of heaven 'Father' ought now to be brothers in Him, and not to harbour kindred hatred from the origin of the flesh, but, ablaze with the fire of the Spirit, to abolish the records of ancient deceit and to bear the new man, lest perchance earthly things degenerate from the lofty God, who through Christ our leader made us by heavenly grace His adopted sons. Where is the Lord hallowed — He who in creating all things hallows all — save in a pious heart, save in a chaste breast? That we may deserve to hallow Him by worshipping, He has granted, He Himself first, even as He bids that He Himself be blessed by us, by whom we all are blessed.
May that kingdom come, even now and now indeed — free of death and lacking end, to which no times succeed throughout the ages, since the continuous day, without night, knows no possession of time: where, with Christ as Prince embracing the noble head with a perpetual crown, the victorious soldier shall rejoice, bearing the rich rewards. For this with constant vows, for this by night and day let us pray, that His will be done in heaven and on earth — He who wills that nowhere be wickedness, and that the harmful enemy be driven from the ground as from the sky, lest the savage water-serpent claim our bodies for himself as a worthless soil; but may the Almighty, who cherishes all things, overflowing with full tenderness, preserve alike our souls and limbs: for we are one part of heaven, another part of earth.
We hope for the sustenance of faith by the daily bread, lest our mind ever feel hunger for the teaching, fasting from Christ, who by His own body and mouth feeds us, Himself remaining at once both Word and food. For the Lord's sweet utterances cling in our throats and surpass honeycombs and all honey. We who ask that all debts owed to us be loosed, let us also loose them; for the surety of our own word holds us bound by manifest pledges, and we, when loosed, are gravely fettered to another, if we refuse to loose the chains of another:
And the merciful Lord, who remits ten thousand talents, will begin — if He perceives that we afflict any fellow-servant over a hundred denarii — straightway to hand us over to the tormentors, and, bound in a savage prison, we shall not be permitted to depart until we have repaid all, down to the last farthing. Not that the Lord, the way of light, the path of peace, drives us into the snares of the tempter; but when He forsakes our evil deeds, He lets it go its way. For whoever, following the world's nets, loving delights and the luxuries and joys of alluring perdition, him God, the lover of virtue, abandons, and he enters where temptation leads. From this, therefore, let us draw back our foot, and seek with the heart the narrow road, where the slender path shows the way to go through the strait gate unto the heavenly kingdoms.
If we desire to shun evil, we ought to approach and pursue the good: for the one delivers, the other slaughters; the one nourishes, the other kills. For as far as the stars are from the earth, fire from waters, light from darkness, concord from wars, life from burials, so far are good things distant, set apart from evils. Whoever must walk either the right road or the left. But the right path of the good calls the conspicuous righteous into its joys, and into your bosom, O patriarch; while the left, of the wicked, exacts punishments and sends them to impious Tartarus. Therefore for the lambs and sheep of God this alone is the will and good liberty: to escape the grim jaws of the bloody wolf and to enjoy life through the pastures of Christ.