On the Lord’s Resurrection, Second Sermon

The whole of the Easter mystery, dearly beloved, has been set before us in the gospel narrative, and the ears of the mind have been so reached through the ear of the flesh that none of you can fail to have a picture of the events. For the text of the divinely inspired story has clearly shown the treachery by which the Lord Jesus Christ was betrayed, the judgment by which he was condemned, the cruelty of his crucifixion, and the glory of his resurrection. But a sermon is still required of us, so that the exhortation of the priests may be added to the solemn reading of Holy Scripture; and I am sure that you, with devout expectation, are asking it of us as your accustomed due. Because, then, there is no room for ignorance in faithful ears, the seed of the Word, which consists in the preaching of the gospel, ought to grow in the soil of your heart, so that, once the choking thorns and thistles are removed, the plants of holy thoughts and the buds of right desires may spring up freely into fruit. For the cross of Christ, which was set up for the salvation of mortals, is both a mystery and an example: a sacrament by which the divine power takes effect, and an example by which human devotion is stirred up. For to those who are rescued from the captive’s yoke, redemption further gains the power to follow the way of the cross by imitation. For if the world’s wisdom so prides itself on its error that everyone follows the opinions and habits and whole way of life of the one he has chosen as his leader, how shall we share in the name of Christ except by being inseparably united to him who is, as he himself declared, “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”? He is the Way of holy living, the Truth of divine teaching, and the Life of eternal happiness. [a]

For when the whole body of mankind had fallen in our first parents, the merciful God purposed to help his creatures, made in his image, through his only Son Jesus Christ, in such a way that the restoration of our nature would not be carried out apart from it, and our new state would be an advance on our first one. Happy, if we had not fallen from what God made us; but happier, if we remain what he has remade us. It was much to have received our form from Christ; it is more to have a substance in Christ. For we were taken up into its very self by that nature (which stooped to the limits that loving-kindness set, and yet underwent no change of any kind; we were taken up by that nature), which did not destroy what was his in what was ours, nor what was ours in what was his; which made the person of the Godhead and of the manhood so one in itself that, by this joining of weakness and power, the flesh could not be made inviolable through the Godhead, nor the Godhead able to suffer through the flesh. We were taken up by that nature which did not break the branch off from the common stock of our race, and yet shut out every taint of the sin that has passed on to all men. That is to say, weakness and mortality, which were not sin but the penalty of sin, were undergone by the Redeemer of the world by way of punishment, so that they might be reckoned as the price of redemption. So what in all of us is the inheritance of condemnation is in Christ “the mystery of godliness.” For, being free from debt, he gave himself up to that most cruel creditor, and let the hands of Jews be the devil’s agents in torturing his spotless flesh. He willed that flesh to be subject to death, up to his (speedy) resurrection, for this purpose: that believers in him might find neither persecution unbearable nor death terrible, remembering that there was no more doubt about their sharing his glory than there was about his sharing their nature. [b]

And so, dearly beloved, if we believe without hesitation in the heart what we profess with the mouth, in Christ we are crucified, we are dead, we are buried; on the very third day, too, we are raised. That is why the apostle says, “If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, sitting at God’s right hand. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. For when Christ, your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” But so that the hearts of the faithful may know that they have the means to spurn the desires of the world and be lifted to the wisdom that is above, the Lord promises us his presence, saying, “Look, I am with you all the days, even to the end of the age.” For not in vain had the Holy Spirit said through Isaiah, “Behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel, which means, God with us.” So Jesus fulfills the proper meaning of his name. In ascending into the heavens he does not forsake his adopted brothers; though “he sits at the right hand of the Father,” he still dwells in the whole body, and from above he himself strengthens them to wait patiently while he summons them upward to his glory. [e]

So we must not give ourselves to folly amid empty pursuits, nor give way to fear amid adversities. On the one side, no doubt, we are flattered by deceits, and on the other weighed down by troubles. But because “the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord,” Christ’s victory is certainly ours, so that what he says may be fulfilled: “Do not fear, for I have overcome the world.” Whether, then, we fight against the ambition of the world, or against the cravings of the flesh, or against the darts of heresy, let us always arm ourselves with the Lord’s cross. For our paschal feast will never end if we abstain from the leaven of the old wickedness (in the sincerity of truth). For amid all the changes of this life, full as it is of various afflictions, we ought to remember the apostle’s exhortation, in which he instructs us, saying, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men and found in appearance as a man. That is why God also exalted him and gave him a name that is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, of things on earth, and of things below, and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.” If, he says, you understand “the mystery of great godliness,” and remember what the only Son of God did for the salvation of mankind, “have that mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” whose humility is not to be scorned by any of the rich, nor thought shameful by any of the high-born. For no human good fortune whatever can rise so high that a man should count it a shame to himself that God, remaining in the form of God, did not think it unworthy of himself to take the form of a slave. [f]

Imitate what he did; love what he loved; and, finding in yourselves the grace of God, love in him your own nature in return. As he was not stripped of his riches in poverty, did not lessen his glory in humility, and did not lose eternity in death, so you too, treading in his footsteps, must despise earthly things so that you may gain heavenly ones. For taking up the cross means the slaying of cravings, the killing of vices, the turning away from vanity, and the renouncing of all error. For though the Lord’s Passover can be kept by no immodest, self-indulgent, proud, or miserly person, none are kept so far from this festival as heretics, and especially those who hold wrong views about the incarnation of the Word, either belittling what belongs to the Godhead or treating what belongs to the flesh as unreal. For the Son of God is true God, having from the Father all that the Father is, with no beginning in time, subject to no change of any kind, undivided from the one God, not different from the Almighty, the eternal only Son of the eternal Father. So the faithful mind, believing in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the same essence of the one Godhead, neither divides the unity by suggesting degrees of rank nor confuses the Trinity by merging the persons into one. But it is not enough to know the Son of God in the Father’s nature only, unless we acknowledge him in what is ours without his losing what is his own. For that self-emptying, which he underwent to restore man, was a work of compassion, not a loss of power. For though, by the eternal purpose of God, there was “no other name under heaven given to men by which they must be saved,” the Invisible made his substance visible, the Timeless made it subject to time, and the One who could not suffer made it able to suffer: not so that power might sink into weakness, but so that weakness might pass into indestructible power. [h]

That is why the very feast that we call Pascha is called among the Hebrews Phase, that is, Passover, as the evangelist bears witness when he says, “Before the feast of Pascha, Jesus, knowing that his hour had come to pass out of this world to the Father.” But what nature was it in which he passed over like this, if not ours, since the Father was in the Son and the Son in the Father inseparably? But because the Word and the flesh are one person, the nature that was taken up is not separated from the nature that took it up, and the honor of being raised up is spoken of as belonging to the one who raises it, as the apostle says in a passage we have already quoted: “That is why God also exalted him and gave him a name that is above every name.” There, no doubt, the exaltation of the manhood he took up is spoken of, so that he in whose sufferings the Godhead remains undivided is likewise coeternal in the glory of the Godhead. And to share in this unspeakable gift, the Lord himself was preparing a blessed “passing over” for his faithful ones when, on the very threshold of his passion, he interceded not only for his apostles and disciples but also for the whole church, saying, “But I pray not for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us.” [i]

In this union they can have no share who deny that the nature of man abides in the Son of God, who is himself true God. They attack the mystery that brings salvation and shut themselves out of the Easter festival. For since they dissent from the gospel and contradict the creed, they cannot keep it with us; for although they dare to take the Christian name for themselves, they are rejected by every creature who has Christ for his Head. But you rightly exult and devoutly rejoice in this sacred season, as those who admit no falsehood into the Truth and have no doubt about Christ’s birth according to the flesh, his passion and death, and the resurrection of his body. For without any separation of the Godhead you acknowledge a Christ who was truly born of a virgin’s womb, truly hung on the wood of the cross, truly laid in an earthly tomb, truly raised in glory, and truly set at the right hand of the Father’s majesty; “from where also,” as the apostle says, “we look for a Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will refashion the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of his glory.” He lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen. [k]