On Lent, Eighth Sermon

We know, dearly beloved, that your devotion is so warm that in the fasting that goes before the Lord’s Easter many of you will have run ahead of our encouragement. But because the right practice of abstinence is needed not only to put the flesh to death but also to purify the mind, we want your observance to be so complete that, as you cut down the pleasures that belong to the lusts of the flesh, so you also banish the errors that come from the imaginations of the heart. For whoever has a heart polluted by no false belief prepares himself with a true and reasonable purification for the paschal feast, in which all the mysteries of our religion meet together. For as the apostle says, “all that is not of faith is sin,” and so the fasting of those whom the father of lies deceives with his delusions, and who are not fed by Christ’s true flesh, will be useless and empty. As we must obey the divine commands and sound teaching with our whole heart, so we must use all foresight in abstaining from wicked imaginings. For the mind keeps a holy and spiritual fast only when it rejects the food of error and the poison of falsehood. Our crafty and cunning enemy plies us with these more treacherously now, when by the very return of the venerable festival the whole church is generally urged to understand the mysteries of its salvation. For the true confessor and worshiper of Christ’s resurrection is the one who is not confused about his passion and not deceived about his bodily birth. For some are so ashamed of the gospel of the cross of Christ that they shamelessly make void the punishment he underwent for the world’s redemption. They have denied that the nature of true flesh was in the Lord, not understanding how the Deity of God’s Word, which cannot suffer and cannot change, could stoop so far for man’s salvation as to lose nothing of its own properties by its power, and to take ours on itself in its mercy. And so in Christ there is a double form but one person. The Son of God, who is at the same time Son of Man, is one Lord. He accepted the condition of a slave by the plan of his loving-kindness, not by the law of necessity, because by his power he became humble, by his power capable of suffering, by his power mortal. This was so that, for the destruction of the tyranny of sin and death, the weak nature in him might be capable of punishment, and the strong nature might lose nothing of its glory. [a]

And so, dearly beloved, when in reading or hearing the Gospel you find that some things in our Lord Jesus Christ were subjected to injuries and some were lit up by miracles, so that in the same person now the humanity appears and now the divinity shines out, do not put any of these things down to illusion, as if there were in Christ either manhood alone or Godhead alone. Believe both faithfully, and worship both most humbly, so that in the union of the Word and the flesh there may be no separation, and the bodily proofs may not seem illusory because the divine signs were plain in Jesus. The evidence for both natures in him is true and abundant, and by the depth of the divine plan it all works together to this end: that, since the Word that cannot be harmed is not separated from the flesh that can suffer, the Godhead may be understood to share in all things with the flesh, and the flesh with the Godhead. So the Christian mind that wants to shun lies and be a disciple of truth must use the Gospel story with confidence. As if it were still in the company of the apostles themselves, it must tell apart what the Lord visibly did, sometimes by spiritual understanding and sometimes by the bodily sense of sight. Ascribe it to the man that he is born a boy from a woman; ascribe it to God that his mother’s virginity is not harmed, either by conceiving or by giving birth. Recognize “the form of a slave” wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, but acknowledge that it was the Lord’s form that was announced by angels, “proclaimed by the elements,” and worshiped by the wise men. Understand it of his humanity that he did not avoid the wedding feast; confess it divine that he turned water into wine. Let your own feelings explain to you why he shed tears over a dead friend; let his divine power be recognized when that same friend, after decaying in the grave four days, is brought to life and raised by nothing but the command of his voice. To make clay from spittle and earth was a work of the body; but to anoint the eyes of the blind with it and give them light is an undoubted mark of that power which had kept back, for the revealing of its glory, what it had not granted at the beginning of his natural life. It is truly human to relieve bodily tiredness with rest in sleep; but it is truly divine to calm the violence of raging storms by a rebuking command. To set food before the hungry shows human kindness and a spirit that loves humankind; but who would dare deny that it is the work of Deity to satisfy five thousand men, besides women and children, with five loaves and two fish? It is a Deity that, through the cooperating functions of true flesh, showed not only itself in manhood but also manhood in itself. For the old, original wounds of human nature could not be healed except by the Word of God taking flesh to himself from the Virgin’s womb, so that in one and the same person flesh and the Word existed together. [c]

Hold firmly, dearly beloved, with an unshaken heart, this belief in the Lord’s incarnation, through which the whole church is Christ’s body. Keep away from all the lies of heretics, and remember that your works of mercy will profit you, and your strict self-control bear fruit, only when your minds are unstained by any defilement of wrong opinions. Throw away the arguments of this world’s wisdom, for God hates them, and no one can come by them to the knowledge of the truth; and keep fixed in your mind what you say in the creed. Believe that the Son of God, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made, is co-eternal with the Father, and that he was also born according to the flesh at the end of the ages. Believe that in the body he was crucified, died, was raised up, and was lifted above the heights of the heavenly powers, set at the Father’s right hand, and that he is to come in the same flesh in which he ascended, to judge the living and the dead. For this is what the apostle proclaims to all the faithful, saying, “If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. For when Christ, our life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” [g]

Relying, then, dearly beloved, on so great a promise, be heavenly not only in hope but also in conduct. And though our minds must at all times be set on holiness of mind and body, yet now, during these forty days of fasting, rouse yourselves to still more active works of devotion. Do this not only in giving alms, which are very effective in proving a change of life, but also in forgiving offenses and in being merciful to those accused of wrongdoing, so that the condition God has laid down between himself and us may not be against us when we pray. For when we say, as the Lord taught, “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,” we ought to carry out with our whole heart what we say. For only then will what we ask in the next petition come to pass: that we may not be led into temptation and may be freed from all evils, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns forever and ever. Amen. [i]