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| On All the Saints.
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On All the
Saints.591
| 591 A
discourse of Gregory Thaumaturgus published by Joannes Aloysius
Mingarelli, Bologna, 1770. |
————————————
Grant thy blessing, Lord.
It was my desire to be silent, and not to make a
public592
| 592 The codex
gives δημοσιεύουσαν,
for which we read δημοσιεύειν. | display of the
rustic rudeness of my tongue. For silence is a matter of great
consequence when one’s speech is mean.593
| 593 The
codex gives ἀτελής, for which
εὐτελής is read by
the editor. | And to refrain from utterance is
indeed an admirable thing, where there is lack of training; and verily
he is the highest philosopher who knows how to cover his ignorance by
abstinence from public address. Knowing, therefore, the
feebleness of tongue proper to me, I should have preferred such a
course. Nevertheless the spectacle of the onlookers impels me to
speak. Since, then, this solemnity is a glorious one among our
festivals, and the spectators form a crowded gathering, and our
assembly is one of elevated fervour in the faith, I shall face the task
of commencing an address with confidence.594
| 594 Reading
θαῤῥούντως
for θαῤῥοῦντος. | And this I may attempt all the more
boldly, since the Father595
| 595 This is
supposed by the Latin annotator to refer to the bishop, and perhaps to
Phædimus of Amasea, as in those times no one was at liberty to
make an address in the church when the bishop was present, except by
his request or with his permission. |
requests me, and the Church is with me, and the sainted martyrs with
this object strengthen what is weak in me. For these have
inspired aged men to accomplish with much love a long course, and
constrained them to support their failing steps by the staff of the
word;596
and they have
stimulated women to finish their course like the young men, and have
brought to this, too, those of tender years, yea, even creeping
children. In this wise have the martyrs shown their power,
leaping with joy in the presence of death, laughing at the sword,
making sport of the wrath of princes, grasping at death as the producer
of deathlessness, making victory their own by their fall, through the
body taking their leap to heaven, suffering their members to be
scattered abroad in order that they might hold597
their souls, and, bursting the bars of
life, that they might open the gates598
of heaven. And if any one believes
not that death is abolished, that Hades is trodden under foot, that the
chains thereof are broken, that the tyrant is bound, let him look on
the martyrs disporting themselves599
in the presence of death, and taking up the
jubilant strain of the victory of Christ. O the marvel!
Since the hour when Christ despoiled Hades, men have danced in triumph
over death. “O death, where is thy sting! O grave,
where is thy victory?”600
Hades and the devil have been despoiled, and stripped of their ancient
armour, and cast out of their peculiar power. And even as Goliath
had his head cut off with his own sword, so also is the devil, who has
been the father of death, put to rout through death; and he finds that
the selfsame thing which he was wont to use as the ready weapon of his
deceit, has become the mighty instrument of his own destruction.
Yea, if we may so speak, casting his hook at the Godhead, and seizing
the wonted enjoyment of the baited pleasure, he is himself manifestly
caught while he deems himself the captor, and discovers that in place
of the man he has touched the God. By reason thereof do the
martyrs leap upon the head of the dragon, and despise every species of
torment. For since the second Adam has brought up the first Adam
out of the deeps of Hades, as Jonah was delivered out of the whale, and
has set forth him who was deceived as a citizen of heaven to the shame
of the deceiver, the gates of Hades have been shut, and the gates of
heaven have been opened, so as to offer an unimpeded entrance to those
who rise thither in faith. In olden time Jacob beheld a ladder
erected reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and
descending upon it. But now, having been made man for man’s
sake, He who is the Friend of man has crushed with the foot of His
divinity him who is the enemy of man, and has borne up the man with the
hand of His Christhood,601
| 601 Χριστότητος,
for which, however, χρηστότητος, benignity, is suggested. [Sometimes are intended
ambiguity.] | and
has made the trackless ether to be trodden by the feet of man.
Then the angels were ascending and descending; but now the
Angel of the great counsel neither ascendeth nor descendeth: for
whence or where shall He change His position, who is present
everywhere, and filleth all things, and holds in His hand the ends of
the world? Once, indeed, He descended, and once He
ascended,—not, however, through any change602
of nature, but only in the
condescension603
of His
philanthropic Christhood;604
and
He is seated as the Word with the Father, and as the Word He dwells in
the womb, and as the Word He is found everywhere, and is never
separated from the God of the universe. Aforetime did the devil
deride the nature of man with great laughter, and he has had his joy
over the times of our calamity as his festal-days. But the
laughter is only a three days’ pleasure, while the wailing is
eternal; and his great laughter has prepared for him a greater wailing
and ceaseless tears, and inconsolable weeping, and a sword in his
heart. This sword did our Leader forge against the enemy with
fire in the virgin furnace, in such wise and after such fashion as He
willed, and gave it its point by the energy of His invincible divinity,
and dipped it in the water of an undefiled baptism, and sharpened it by
sufferings without passion in them, and made it bright by the mystical
resurrection; and herewith by Himself He put to death the vengeful
adversary, together with his whole host. What manner of word,
therefore, will express our joy or his misery? For he who was
once an archangel is now a devil; he who once lived in heaven is now
seen crawling like a serpent upon earth; he who once was jubilant with
the cherubim, is now shut up in pain in the guard-house of swine; and
him, too, in fine, shall we put to rout if we mind those things which
are contrary to his choice, by the grace and kindness of our Lord Jesus
Christ, to whom be the glory and the power unto the ages of the
ages. Amen.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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