ON THE HYPAPANTE OF THE LORD AND THE PURIFICATION OF THE BLESSED MARY
HISTORICAL COMMENTARY.
Hypapante of the Lord, or Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
By G. H.
§ I. The ancient celebration of this day in Palestine and Phoenicia.
[1] The first mysteries of Christ our Redeemer were accomplished in various places of Palestine, or the Holy Land: the Angelic Annunciation to the most holy Virgin Mary, and the Incarnation of the Divine Word, in the town of Nazareth in Galilee; the solemnity of the same Virgin visiting her kinswoman Elisabeth, in the hill country of Judea; and the most holy Nativity of Christ on earth, the Hypapante of the Lord accomplished at Jerusalem, together with the Circumcision performed on the eighth day, as well as the glorious Epiphany or Manifestation of Christ at the coming of the Magi or Kings, in Bethlehem. There remained the royal city of Jerusalem, destined one day to be ennobled by the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. In this city the mysteries of this solemnity on the second of February, the fortieth day after the birth of Christ, [in the same place, and in the neighboring East, celebrated from the beginning of the Church:] were first accomplished by divine decree, and thereafter from the beginning of the Church commemorated in sacred memory each year, both in that city and in the neighboring Eastern regions. The name imposed on this feast day is derived from the Greek tes hypanteseos, or hypapanteseos, that is, from the Encounter or Meeting then made by the elder Simeon and Anna the widow, and thereafter, as will appear below, renewed each year by the Church with sacred rite.
[2] More ancient than the Jerusalem writers is S. Methodius, first Bishop of Olympus and Patara, maritime cities of Lycia, and later the first Bishop of Tyre in Phoenicia, as S. Methodius, Bishop of Tyre and Martyr, who, as S. Jerome testifies in his work On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 83, composed many works which were then widely read; and among these the Symposium of the Ten Virgins, which S. Methodius himself mentions in a Homily delivered on this day, translated into Latin by Petrus Pantinus and published at Antwerp in the year 1598: which recently Franciscus Combefis of the Order of Preachers reprinted at Paris with his own new translation, together with the remaining works of the same S. Methodius, in a Homily delivered on that day he shows, and of SS. Amphilochius and Andrew of Crete. The title prefixed to this Homily is as follows: Methodiou Episkopou Pataron kai Martyros, eis ton Symeona kai eis ten Annan te hemera tes hypanteseos, kai eis ten hagian Theotokon. That is: Of Methodius, Bishop of Patara and Martyr, on Simeon and Anna, on the day when they met the Lord in the temple, and on the holy Mother of God. From this Homily we excerpt certain passages, following the accurate translation of Franciscus Combefis, in order to confirm that the annual solemnity of this day was observed during the first centuries of Christianity amid persecutions, in the last of which, at Chalcis in Greece, S. Jerome writes that he was crowned with martyrdom, and as we shall report with the Roman Martyrology on the eighteenth of September. Thus, then, it begins.
[3] Since formerly, as briefly as was permitted, we abundantly explained in the Symposiac discourses on chastity, as it were laying the foundations, those things that were to be said concerning virginity; from which these excerpts teach the solemnity of the day: on this present day, behold, the season has brought forth into the open the entire glory and unfading crown of virginity itself from its very root, for the delight of the children of the Church. For today the council of the Divine oracles is openly revealed, and the glorious signs prefigured for this day, together with their outcomes and effects, are recounted by the sacred preachers to the Ecclesiastical assembly. Today the end imposed upon that ancient and true council is manifested splendidly to the world by the very exhibition of events. Today, without any veil, we behold the glory of the Lord and the majesty of His divine Ark, as if in a mirror with unveiled face. Today the heavenly joy, anxiously awaited by the Gentiles, is imparted to the race of mortals, borne upon the shoulders of this most holy celebration... What then shall I conceive in my mind, or what shall I say worthy of this day, striving toward things beyond reach? For the memory of this holy Virgin surpasses and far exceeds all speech. Wherefore... we ourselves, glorying in being immovably vanquished, together with the zealous flock of Christ that loves this feast, let us leap in exultation... We celebrate a feast... which teaches the humble condescension toward us of the unbearable glory of Him who is God over all... The Mother who is above the Law submits herself to the Law; and that holy and pure one observes the period of forty days established for the polluted; and He who absolves from the Law is made subject to the Law; and a pair of clean birds is offered for Him who has sanctified us, as a testimony to those who came forward pure and blameless... Therefore, setting out from the Bethlehem inn, the Ark of God — for there she paid the debt of the forty-day law, a debt not of justice but of grace — came to rest on the mountains of Zion... The holy Mother ascends to the temple, she who is loftier than the temple, clothed with a twofold glory: of inviolate virginity, I say, and of ineffable fruitfulness: the blessing of the Law and the sanctification of Grace... If anyone attentively turns the eyes of the mind to the feast we now celebrate... what manner and quality of veneration ought to be rendered by us, the least, to you who are truly Queen... the elder Simeon... draws forth from his canticle words befitting this joyful celebration... Let heaven rejoice with me today, for the Lord has had mercy on His people... Hence we, the offspring of Adam, henceforth celebrate with festive applause, because that first fashioner of Adam, of His own accord becoming the new Adam, and the splendor of the Lord our God, has dwelt among us... As fittingly and aptly and most excellently, and most suitably for this feast, the words spoken and written by both are. For it was necessary, and indeed absolutely required, that the Elder... should seek a peaceful dismissal from the institution of the Law henceforth... But it was also fitting that the Widow, who had been enriched with gifts surpassing reason, should give thanks to God in festive canticles... since the prophetic teachings and figures bore a fitting relationship to these eminent festivities. Moreover, here as if putting into port a ship marked with the sign of the Cross, let us furl the sails of our discourse, if first we shall have greeted with joyful voices the city of that great King, together with the Ecclesiastical people as though present in spirit, and keeping festival day and assembly together with the honorable Fathers and Brothers stationed there... Hail, O holy city, chosen and elect of the Lord: celebrate your feast days in gladness... Hail forever, our unceasing joy, Virgin Mother; for to you I hasten once more. You are for us the beginning of the festal light, you the middle, you the end, etc. Thus far the excerpts from S. Methodius demonstrate the ancient veneration of this feast.
[4] But let us return from Phoenicia to the neighboring Palestine, and from Tyre to the city of Jerusalem, in which the most ancient writer of the fourth century of Christ flourished, S. Cyril, Bishop of that See, and S. Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, who, as the same Jerome testifies in On Ecclesiastical Writers, chapter 112, was often expelled from and received back into his Church, and at last under the Emperor Theodosius held the episcopate undisturbed for eight years, until the year of Christ 386, when he departed this life on the eighteenth of March. There exists an oration of his delivered on this solemnity, translated by Laurentius Sifanus, and after the Cologne edition of the year 1568, reprinted at Paris in volume 11 of the Greek-Latin Library of the Ancient Fathers, in the Oration on the Encounter of the Lord: and recently recognized and edited from three manuscripts by Combefis in the Supplement to the Library of the Fathers, under this title: Tou en hagiois Patros hemon Kyrillou Archiepiskopou Hierosolymon eis ten hypapanten tou Kyriou hemon kai Soteros Iesou Christou kai eis ton Symeona ton Theodochon. That is: Of our Holy Father Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem, on the Encounter of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and on Simeon, who received God. From the exordium and peroration of this Oration we transcribe certain passages, in which S. Cyril, that great mystagogue of the rites of the Church, also sets forth the ceremony of candles employed in this feast at that time. Thus, then, it begins:
[5] Rejoice exceedingly, O daughter of Zion; proclaim your joy, O daughter of Jerusalem, whose exordium is here given, lead your dances, O people of the city of God; exult, O gates and walls of Zion and all the earth; cry aloud, O mountains, and leap with great signs of gladness, O hills; clap your hands, O rivers, and embrace Zion, O throngs, you who behold God present in her. Let the heavenly things today conspire and agree with the earthly, and the heavenly Jerusalem with that which is below and on earth; on account of Christ, let the heavenly and earthly celebrate that city in canticles. Around the heavenly one, let the spiritual Powers lead their dances; in the earthly one, let the inhabitants of the earth, together with the Angels, bring forth praises and canticles. For today the God of Gods has been seen in Zion. Today, glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God, Jerusalem, city of the great King: open your gates to Him who has opened the gates of all the heavens, and who on the Cross opened the gates of the tombs... Today He who once on Mount Sinai had given divinely fitting responses to Moses, fulfills the Law in servile fashion. Today God has come from Teman to Zion. Today the heavenly bridegroom, with the Mother of God — His own bridal chamber — proceeds to the temple. Go forth to meet Him, O daughters of Jerusalem. With joyful gladness, let us light our torches with the true light; let us fit the tunics of our souls for Christ the bridegroom. Let the peoples of the Gentiles, together with Zion, go forth to meet Him bearing torches in their hands; let us enter together into the temple with the temple, and with God and Christ alike, etc. And at the end of the oration these words are found: and the peroration. Come, you who are zealous for and friends of Christ and God: let us all go forth gladly and in purity to meet the Lord and Master... Thus now let us adorn our torches in festive and joyful attire, so that as children of light we may offer candles to Christ the true light; for the light for the revelation of the Gentiles has shone upon the world... Today, beloved, let us perpetually perform the course of the feast day; let us exult with the Angels and rejoice... with Zion let us go forth to meet Him; with the temple let us be sanctified; with the Virgin let us celebrate the feast day; with Joseph let us make our offering; with Simeon let us receive Christ in our arms: that we may also obtain the eternal blessings of Christ by the grace, compassion, and benignity of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and dominion both now and forever and unto the ages of ages, Amen.
[6] There also exists, in the same Cologne and Paris editions and translated by the same Sifanus, The same, like the others, a Greek-Latin homily of Timothy, Presbyter of Jerusalem, delivered on this feast, which together with the aforementioned oration of S. Cyril, as also the homilies of SS. Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, and Amphilochius, about which we shall presently treat, have been included among the Lives of the Saints for the second of February, with the works of Simeon Metaphrastes, published by Lipomanus and Surius: rendered into Latin by Gentianus Hervetus, and published by Aloysius Lipomanus and Laurentius Surius for this second day of February: but subsequently polished with more accurate diligence by various scholars, they have been reprinted many times, and are therefore to be omitted by us here. In place of all of them we give the Homily of S. Sophronius, Archbishop of Jerusalem, hitherto unpublished, [here alone is given the hitherto unedited homily of S. Sophronius, Bishop of Jerusalem,] obtained from a Greek manuscript of the Medici collection formerly belonging to the Kings of France, which, to relieve us of that labor, Joannes Scapelingus, one of our own, translated into Latin, while we ourselves have furnished the remaining divisions and annotations. S. Sophronius flourished in the seventh century of Christ, under the reign of Heraclius, who, as Anastasius testifies in his Ecclesiastical History transcribed from Theophanes at the twenty-sixth year of Heraclius, adorned the Church of Jerusalem in word and deed, and fought against the error of Heraclius and his supporters the Monothelites, namely Sergius and Pyrrhus: as will be set forth more fully on the eleventh of March, the day of his birth into heaven. There exist four of his Orations in the Library of the Fathers: on the Angels, on the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, on the Adoration thereof, and on the Nativity of Christ; to which last this one, which we have discovered under the following title, is similar in its diction: Tou en hagiois Patros hemon Sophroniou Archiepiskopou Hierosolymon logos eis ten Apanten tou Kyriou hemon Iesou Christou. In this oration he expounds the entire Gospel narrative in a splendid paraphrase, and sets forth all the Ecclesiastical ceremonies of that day. There exists in Combefis's Supplement to the Library of the Fathers a homily of S. Athanasius the Bishop on the Encounter of Christ the Lord, in which near the end certain of the same passages are read which are here repeated concerning Anna the Prophetess, the return of the Virgin Mother of God, and in the epilogue. Combefis judges this homily to be a genuine product of S. Athanasius, [was the homily of S. Athanasius on the Encounter of the Lord augmented from this one?] yet acknowledges that it was necessarily augmented by later writers, on account of the inserted names of the heretics Eutyches and Nestorius: about which S. Sophronius treats at great length: so that the remaining portions could appear to have been added from this oration, while it was being read aloud in the Church according to the custom of the Greeks. It is also possible that S. Sophronius borrowed those few passages from S. Athanasius, whose fervor in assailing heretics he imitated. Many passages in it indicate the veneration of this day, such as these words in the exordium: Let the Evangelical trumpet sound forth the sacred solemnities of the present day; and let Luke... declare to us all the signs of the festal light, and show them more clearly to us who love the feast.
§ II. The veneration of the same feast among the Syrians, Cypriots, and Asiatics.
[7] Syria is neighbor to Palestine and Phoenicia, and so from Jerusalem and Tyre we pass to Antioch, On the same solemnity, S. Chrysostom delivers homilies at Antioch, where we believe S. John Chrysostom delivered to the people a homily on the solemnity of this day, which after other editions was collated with manuscripts by Henry Savile and published in Greek in volume 5 of the works, Oration 137: and again reprinted by Fronto Ducaeus, with a new Latin translation added, in volume 6 of the works, under this title: Eis ten hypapanten tou Kyriou hemon Iesou Christou, kai eis ten theotokon kai eis ton Symeona logos. That is: On the Encounter of our Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Mother of God and on Simeon, an oration. In the margin of Savile's edition is written menos phebrouar. b., that is, the second day of the month of February. Syria is contiguous to Cappadocia, in which flourished S. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, brother of S. Basil the Great, whose Life we shall give on the ninth of March. S. Gregory of Nyssa in Cappadocia, He published an oration under almost the same title as Chrysostom's, rendered into Latin by the aforementioned Sifanus, and reprinted many times with his other works: On the Encounter of the Lord, on the Virgin Mother of God, and on the righteous Simeon: and immediately in the exordium he makes mention of tes parouses hagias kai despotikes heortes, that is, of this present holy and lordly feast: ten panegyrin agesthai semeron, that is, that a solemn assembly and gathering is being held today: and then koine panegyrizein syn tois epigeiois ta ourania, that the Heavenly Spirits are communally celebrating the feast days together with those on earth. And presently he inquires into the primitive and original time of the institution of the present feast day, when Christ was an infant then forty days old, and resolves that the memory of the mystery of the fulfilled prescription of the legal letter is celebrated today with festive worship. And he repeats that we today celebrate the memory of this sacred feast day, and that this spiritual explanation of the mystery gathers together the present holy and solemn assembly, etc.
[8] Finally, S. Amphilochius, as is related from S. Jerome in the Roman Martyrology for the twenty-third of November, a companion of SS. Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus, S. Amphilochius at Iconium in Lycaonia, Bishop of Iconium in Lycaonia near Cappadocia, wrote an Oration: Eis ten hypapanten tou Kyriou hemon Iesou Christou, kai eis ten theotokon kai eis ten Annan kai eis ton Symeona. That is: On the Encounter of our Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Mother of God, and on Anna and Simeon. This Oration exists in Greek and Latin in volume 11 of the Library of the Fathers cited above, translated by the same Sifanus, and from a more emended codex among the works of Amphilochius, published by Combefis with his own new Latin translation: who also adds a second oration of S. Amphilochius hitherto unedited, from a copy of our own Jacobus Sirmondus, is there another Amphilochius at Side in Pamphylia? eis hagian theotokon kai eis ton Symeona, that is: on the Holy Mother of God and Simeon. But he doubts, on account of its combat against Nestorius, whether it might perhaps belong to another Amphilochius, Bishop of Side, the metropolis of Pamphylia near Lycaonia and Cappadocia, who participated in the general Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon.
[9] To Asia is joined the island of Cyprus under the Patriarchate of Antioch, in which during the seventh century of Christ flourished Leontius, Bishop of Neapolis, by whom the Life of S. John the Almsgiver, which we gave on the twenty-third of January, was written. Leontius in Cyprus. Before it, in §2, number 7, we said that in the second Council of Nicaea, session 4, it is related that many commendations and festive sermons of his are preserved. Among these is one delivered on the Encounter of the Lord, and on Simeon when he received Him in his arms. The author calls this day theian kai despotiken heorten, that is, a Divine and Lordly feast: and immediately summons heaven and earth alike to joy and exultation, because when the heavenly God and King comes, it is fitting that all nature created by Him, both that which is subject to the eyes and that which is visible to the mind, should rejoice and exult, and fulfill the Encounter with every joy and veneration. Combefis presents the remainder of the oration in the new Supplement to the Greek-Latin Library of the Fathers.
[10] There is, as Baronius testifies in his Notes on the second of February, one who affirms that the celebrated homily of S. Gregory of Nazianzus, inscribed To the Holy Lights, Baronius's judgment on the oration of S. Gregory of Nazianzus, was delivered on this feast day of the Encounter of the Lord: but Baronius objects, both in that place and at the sixth of January, that it was delivered on the day of the Epiphany, on which the Greeks were also accustomed to celebrate the baptism of Christ. On this matter we more readily agree with Baronius than when he adds that none of the Fathers who lived before the Emperor Justinian (about whom we shall presently treat) and of other Fathers. left any sermon written on the feast day of the Encounter of the Lord: namely, that it is one thing entirely to praise the deeds of Christ the Lord, and another to proclaim and celebrate feast days on their account: which judgment of Baronius Combefis, in his notes on the indicated Oration of S. Amphilochius, declares to be too hasty. We have demonstrated by the words of the Fathers adduced above that the ancient veneration of this day flourished in Palestine, Phoenicia, Syria, and the rest of Asia during the first centuries of Christianity: nor do we find its institution recorded anywhere. In the Calendar of the Syrians, which is found in the Breviary of the Maronites, it is called the Entry of our Lord into the temple.
§ III. The sacred memory of the same solemnity in the Greek Church of Constantinople and the Coptic Church of Egypt.
[11] Constantinople, the seat of the Patriarchs, under whom are numbered the provinces of Lycia, Pamphylia, Constantinople, the capital of the East, Lycaonia, and Cappadocia, in which SS. Methodius, Gregory of Nyssa, and both Amphilochii, illustrious heralds of the feast of the Hypapante or Encounter of the Lord, lived as Bishops. Constantinople, the royal city of the Eastern Emperors, in whose dominion were the Patriarchal Sees of Antioch and Jerusalem, where the above-mentioned Homilies were written by SS. Cyril, Sophronius, and others previously named. At Constantinople, S. John Chrysostom flourished as Archbishop, although we think the cited oration of his was delivered earlier at Antioch. Finally, Constantinople was celebrated for its singular devotion to Christ and the Mother of God. There is seen, as Nicephorus testifies in book 14 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 2, the work of the Empress Pulcheria, dedicated to the Virgin Mother of God, the sacred temple of the Mother of God, which is called Blachernae, judged a dwelling worthy for that very Mother of God to inhabit, just as for her Son is that which is called the temple of Wisdom, in Greek tes Sophias. There, then, Pulcheria, besides many other temples, especially built and consecrated to the Mother of God the church at Blachernae, when Marcian had recently entered upon the empire. So Cedrenus writes concerning Marcian, who was assumed to the Empire in the year 450 by S. Pulcheria, of whose illustrious deeds we shall treat on the tenth of September.
[12] From all of which, as if converging into one, we infer with sufficient certainty that this feast of the Hypapante, or Encounter of Christ and of His Mother Mary, was customarily celebrated at Constantinople at that time with a particular solemnity: the feast of the Hypapante was formerly celebrated: indeed, that the succeeding Emperors, when in some places negligence crept in regarding the observance of this feast, established that worship by their decree and confirmed it with a new enactment. Certainly, when on the twenty-ninth day of May, a Friday, a violent earthquake began, by which nearly all of Antioch was overthrown, in the eighth year of Justin the Elder, the year of Christ 526, then, Justin the Emperor prescribes this, says Cedrenus, etypothē heortazein hēmas kai tēn heortēn tēs hypapantēs, tēs mechri tote mē heortazomenēs, that is: a rule was given for us to celebrate the feast of the Hypapante, which had not been celebrated up to that time — that is, not with such public authority. Anastasius Bibliothecarius writes from Theophanes that in the fifteenth year of Justinian, the year of Christ 541, and Justinian: a plague occurred at Byzantium in the month of October, and in the same year the Hypapante of the Lord began to be celebrated at Byzantium on the second day of the month of February. Which Nicephorus explains thus in book 17, chapter 28: tattei de kai tēn tou Sōtēros hypapantēn arti prōtōs apantachou tēs gēs heortasesthai, hōsper ho Ioustinos tēn tou Christou hagian gennesin. That is: Justinian then for the first time instituted that the Hypapante, that is, the Encounter of the Lord, should be celebrated with a feast day throughout the whole world, just as Justin had done concerning the holy Nativity of Christ. [just as the feast of the Nativity of Christ, though always previously celebrated.] But Baronius, who on the authority of these writers maintains that this solemnity began to be celebrated at Constantinople under the Emperor Justinian, would never admit that the feast of the Nativity of Christ also first began to be celebrated under the Emperor Justin: whence we conclude that these authors are to be understood as referring to some stricter enactment decreed against those who did not celebrate these feasts with due veneration. The words cited by Baronius from the Chronicle of Sigebert are taken from Anastasius, and are absent from the more emended copies.
[13] Theophylact Simocatta, in book 8 of his Histories, chapter 4, treating of Mauritius, who became Emperor in the year 582, calls this feast of the Encounter of the Lord tēn tessarakostēn hēmeran tēs genethlakēs panēgyreōs tou megalou theou Iēsou, hon Christon ta kata tēn oikoumenēn ethnē gegairousin. Simocatta calls it the Fortieth Day: He calls it the Fortieth day from the celebration of the nativity of the great God Jesus Christ, whom the nations throughout the whole world venerate. Codinus Curopalata, in his work On the Offices of the Church and Court of Constantinople, chapter 15, lists this solemnity among the feasts on which the Emperor is accustomed to proceed in state, if he is residing at Constantinople, which he narrates as follows, number 8: On the feast of the Encounter, or Purification, the Emperor betakes himself to the temple of Blachernae, the Emperors celebrate with solemn procession: accompanied by the Varangians: who always accompany the Emperor when he rides on horseback, carrying their axes on their shoulders, and escort him as far as the high steps: but on this feast they also accompany him to the temple; where, however, they do not remain until the Emperor's return, but await, as is customary, at the gate of the High Steps, where they receive the Emperor and escort him as far as the church of the Holy Spirit. In the constitution of the Emperor Manuel Comnenus, Comnenus renews the observance: issued in the twelfth century of Christ, as found in Balsamon's scholia on chapter 1 of title 7 of the Nomocanon of Photius, the second day of February, on account of the Encounter of the Savior, is enumerated among those days which, after the manner of the ancient Emperors, he decreed to be free from all business and legal proceedings. So Constantine the Great by law commanded the veneration of the Lord's Day, long since instituted in the time of the Apostles, as Eusebius relates in book 4 of his Life, chapter 18.
[14] The Greeks in all their Martyrologies, Horologia, and Menologia celebrate on the second of February the Hypapante of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Greeks celebrate in the Menologia and Menaea: at which time (as is added in the Menologion of Canisius) the blessed Simeon received Christ the Lord in his arms. Moreover, in the Menaea and Anthologion this eulogy is appended: Forty days having elapsed after the saving humanity assumed by the Lord, and the ever-Virgin's childbirth conceived without a man, on this most holy day our Lord Jesus Christ was brought and offered in the temple by His most holy Mother and by the righteous Joseph, according to custom and the Law, which was a shadow of the new Law; when also the venerable elder Simeon (who had received an answer from God that he would not see death before he had seen Christ the Lord) received Him in his arms, and giving thanks to God in turn confessed and exclaimed: Now You dismiss Your servant, O Lord, etc. And filled with joy he departed this life. The celebration, moreover, is performed in the venerable church of our immaculate Lady, the Mother of God and ever-Virgin, which is at Blachernae. In Greek it is said of Simeon that tōn epigneiōn antallaxamenos ta ourania kai ateleutēta, that is, he exchanged earthly things for heavenly and everlasting ones: in common parlance, although consigned to the limbo of the Fathers, he waited until Christ opened heaven by His death and ascension. The Emperor Leo Augustus, in an oration delivered on this day On the Lordly Presentation, published by Combefis, splendidly relates that Simeon was Christ's herald among the dead.
[15] The ancient worship of the Egyptians is indicated in the Coptic Martyrology, and the Copts in Egypt. in which on the eighth day of Mechir, which corresponds to the second of February, the following is recorded: The entry of the Lord into the temple forty days after the Nativity. The Feast of the Purification. The same solemnity is also found in the Calendar of the Ruthenians.
§ IV. The ancient celebration of the same day among the Latins: was it introduced when the sacrifices to Pluto or the Lupercalia were abolished?
[16] The method of celebrating this feast which the Greek and the rest of the Eastern Church had adopted, The Latins celebrate this feast under the name of the Hypapante of the Lord, the Western Church prescribed for itself following that example; in whose more ancient Martyrologies the Greek word hypapantēs was retained, which abundantly attests to this fact. Thus the ancient Roman Martyrology published by Rosweyde, Usuardus, Ado, Bellinus, the Liege manuscripts of S. Lambert, and the Aachen manuscript read: On the fourth day before the Nones of February, the Hypapante of the Lord. In the Trier manuscript is added: A high feast of lesser rank, that is, according to the modern rite of the Roman Church, a Double of the second class. The manuscript of Centula, of S. Richarius, bearing the name of Bede: The Hypapante of the Lord, that is, the embrace or reception of the Lord and Savior. But our manuscript under the name of the same Bede, as well as the Trier manuscripts of SS. Maximinus and Martin, the Utrecht manuscript of S. Mary, and the Cologne manuscript at the Steps of S. Mary, of the Purification of S. Mary, and Galesinius, write thus: The Purification of S. Mary; to which is added ever-Virgin in the manuscript of the monastery of S. Cyriacus. Other Martyrologies combine both terms. Thus the Brussels manuscript of S. Gudila, the manuscript Florarium, the ancient Cologne manuscript, and very many manuscripts for the use of Belgian churches under the name of Usuardus: The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Hypapante of our Lord. The Roman Martyrology: The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which by the Greeks is called the Hypapante of the Lord. The printed Bede: or of both, The Purification of S. Mary, when she was presented in the temple with the infant: Rabanus adds, where the Lord Jesus Himself was received by the elder Simeon into his arms and blessed. Notker: The Hypapante of the Lord, or the Purification of the Blessed Mary, when she presented the Lord Jesus with sacrificial offerings according to the Law in the temple, and Simeon and Anna recognized in the Holy Spirit that He was the Christ, and proclaimed this to those who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem. More briefly, the Reichenau manuscript: The Solemnity of S. Mary, when she presented our Lord in the temple. The Liessies manuscript: or also of the Presentation of the Lord: The Festivity of the Purification of the most blessed Mother of God Mary, and the Presentation of the Lord in the temple. Similar entries are read in the Tournai manuscript of S. Martin, and the Cologne manuscript of the Carmelites, and in Maurolycus. Wandelbert proposes these verses:
The fourth of the Nones declares the Lamb brought into the temple, Where the faithful people, purifying the living God, With pious mind place Him received upon the throne and lay it before Him.
[17] The author of the Martyrology which is entitled Viola Sanctorum relates that this feast is called by three names: of the Purification, of the Hypapante, and of Candlemas. Others name it from the candles carried in procession. But this last name is included in the preceding one: for SS. Cyril and Sophronius, Archbishops of Jerusalem, teach in their Homilies that one must go to meet Christ with lighted candles or tapers or torches, from which encounter or hypapante most peoples in their vernacular languages name this feast, which we Belgians and Germans call Licht-Misse, that is, the Mass of Lights, just as the English call it Candle-Masse, that is, the Mass of Candles. In the Book of Sacraments of S. Gregory the Pope one reads, at whose Collect on the fourth day before the Nones of February, the Purification of S. Mary the Virgin, with the first prayer at the Collect, that is, at the synaxis or gathering for the pouring forth of common prayers and the performance of the divine office. So S. Jerome in the Life of S. Paula the widow, the twenty-sixth of January, number 32, says: After the Alleluia was sung, by which signal they were summoned to the Collect, no one was permitted to remain seated. So also we noted in the same place that this assembly is called the Collect by the same Jerome in the Rule of S. Pachomius which he translated into Latin. Here, however, the Prayer prescribed at the Collect indicates a gathering for a procession to be made with burning candles, of this kind: Instruct, we beseech You, O Lord, Your people, this prayer was read. and grant that what You bestow outwardly to be venerated with annual devotion, they may inwardly attain by the light of Your grace, through our Lord, etc. In the Roman Order and Missal, the same prayer begins with Exaudi, quaesumus (Hear, we beseech), with only the first word changed. Baronius in his note on the Martyrology understands this as the collection of alms, which although we grant was often done, is here less satisfactory.
[18] Sacred lights customarily lit therefore adorned this day; which solemnity the Latins, having received together with the feast of the Hypapante from the Orientals, celebrated with even greater piety and ardor of spirit, so that the superstition of the pagans, by which the Romans in honor of Februus, that is, Pluto, according to S. Ildephonsus, used to lustrate the City with burning candles, might be utterly abolished. S. Ildephonsus, Bishop of Toledo, who died in the year of Christ 667, treats of this matter, as we noted in his Life on the twenty-third of January. In Sermon I on the Purification of S. Mary, he reports the following: It is not without purpose if we say something more concisely about the name of the solemnity. It is called by the Greek word hypante, which in Latin can be rendered as meeting: for hypantan in Greek means to meet. Therefore this festivity is designated by such a term, because, when the Lord was brought to the temple by his parents on this day, we believe that the Saints, of whom there is no doubt that very many were at Jerusalem at that time, went to meet Him. This festivity, moreover, is celebrated in the month of February, which the Romans, while still pagans, named from Februus, that is, Pluto, in place of the lustration of the City and the sacrifices to Pluto, whom they believed most powerful in purification. For we say februare means to purify. In this month the city was lustrated. For when the Romans had subjugated all nations to themselves, they imposed a tribute upon them on these terms, that every fifth year the same tribute should be paid. When this was completed and the census paid, the city was lustrated, as has been said, by all the people, and they offered sacrifices to the gods of the dead, by whose help and power they thought they had subjugated the whole world. This custom of lustration was fittingly and religiously changed by the Christian religion, it is said they introduced this feast: since in the same month, that is, on this present day, in honor of the holy Mother of God and perpetual Virgin Mary, not only the clergy but also all the people of the churches go about the places with candles and various hymns of lustration, no longer in memory of a five-yearly earthly empire, but in remembrance of the everlasting heavenly kingdom, when, according to the Gospel parable, all the Saints with the torches of their good works, going to meet Christ the bridegroom at the end of the world, are to be admitted by Him into the bridal chamber of eternal felicity. Matt. 25.
[19] Thus S. Ildephonsus, together with the term hypapantēs, traces the origin of the feast as received from the Eastern Church. However, when he adds that the Christian religion changed or abolished the custom of the Romans in the lustration of the City, we judge this should be understood so that in place of idolatry, the true worship of Christ might stand. in the same way in which the Christian religion also changed the idolatry of Jupiter Capitolinus and of the other gods, by substituting the true worship of Christ our Savior, which worship would have had to be introduced even if Jupiter and the other gods had never been invented. Moreover — and this is very much to be observed here — that lustration was celebrated at Rome alone, and not among the Greeks or other Eastern peoples, who had other names for the months; and for them the month which the Coptic Egyptians called Mechir and the Latins February was generally called Peritios in the first centuries of Christ, as our Petavius excellently demonstrates in book 1 of the Doctrine of Times, chapter 29. Finally, that lustration of the City was not performed on the second of February, but, so that the year might end in a state of expiation, the Februa were celebrated during twelve consecutive days, as the month was drawing toward its close near the Kalends of March, as S. Eligius, who was made Bishop of Noyon in Gaul in the year 646 and died in 665, explains, having drawn a parallel comparison with this lustration, in Homily II, on the day of the Purification of S. Mary concerning the Gospel and the use of lights, as the title indicates:
[20] S. Eligius relates the same things. Because, he says, it is the Ecclesiastical custom that on this day, holding lights in our hands, we celebrate the solemnities of the Masses, it should also be briefly stated what the origins of this practice are. When the Romans held dominion over the entire world, they decreed that the subjugated tripartite world should make payment of the census through three five-year periods, in this manner: that gold should be paid in one, silver in the second, and bronze in the third five-year period. Each five-year period, moreover, was called a lustrum, because when it was completed and the census paid, with the Roman people assembled together, a sacrifice was celebrated, and the city of Rome was lustrated with candles and torches, in honor of the infernal gods, and especially of Februus, that is, Pluto, who was called the Lord of the underworld, from whom the month of February takes its name; and this was performed at the end thereof, that is, at the Kalends. The reason they then sacrificed to the infernal gods was that they believed they had subjugated the nations of the world under the protection of those gods. Now, therefore, the error of vain superstition has been beautifully converted by Christian devotion to the true religion of the faith, since no longer after every five years, nor as formerly near the end of the month of February, is a single Roman city lustrated in honor of Februus, who was falsely thought to be powerful in lustrations, that is, purifications, and the god of the underworld, and on account of the dignity of that earthly Roman empire, which has now ceased; but every year, around the beginning of the same month, the entire city of God, namely the holy Church, is illuminated: signifying by the light of candles, which is carried in the hands, the light of faith that shines in the hearts of her children, in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the one true God of heaven, earth, and the underworld, and who, having been truly made man for us, on this day willed to be presented in the temple, and though He was without the stain of sin, willed that the legal purification with offerings of victims be performed for Him, and that He be received into the hands of the holy elder Simeon, and be confessed by him and by the blessed Anna and the other righteous who awaited His coming. Let us therefore, dearest ones, solemnly recalling the memory of this event today, and being about to offer Him together with our Lady, the glorious Mary, His Mother, or to receive Him together with the blessed Simeon, with candles and hymns, resplendent in purity of mind and luminous works, stand devoutly in His sight, diligently remembering the dignity of the everlasting and blessed kingdom promised to us, namely the heavenly kingdom, which all the elect shall receive when, according to the Gospel parable, going to meet the immortal Bridegroom with the torches of good works, themselves made His bride, they shall enter the most loving bridal chamber, etc. Matt. 25.
[21] Thus S. Eligius, entirely contemporary with S. Ildephonsus, adheres so closely to his words cited above that he seems to have adorned the same material with amplification, unless both are drawing from some more ancient author, which appears to us more probable, since S. Bede also sets forth the same things in volume 2 of his works, in the treatise On the Reckoning of Times, chapter 10, S. Bede, where he writes: Numa dedicated the second month to Februus, that is, Pluto, who was believed powerful in lustrations: and it was necessary that the city be lustrated in that month: in which he decreed that sacrifices should be paid to the gods of the dead. But the Christian religion well changed this custom of lustration, since in the same month, on the day of S. Mary, the entire people with the priests and ministers, singing hymns, devoutly process through the churches and through suitable places of the City, and carry in their hands burning candles given by the Pontiff; and as the good custom has grown, the same practice has been learned for the other feast days also of the same Blessed Mary ever-Virgin; not indeed in a five-yearly lustration of the earthly Empire, but in the everlasting memory of the heavenly kingdom, when, according to the parable of the prudent Virgins, all the elect, with the shining torches of good deeds, coming to meet their Bridegroom and King, shall soon enter with Him into the nuptials of the heavenly city. Matt. 25. The same things, citing Bede, are reported by Alcuin Flaccus in his book On the Divine Offices, chapter 7, and by Amalarius Fortunatus in book 3 of his work On Ecclesiastical Offices, chapter 43; and others. but without mentioning Bede's name, Rabanus Maurus in volume 6 of his works, book 2 of the Instruction of Clerics, chapter 33, where he discusses the same things about the Greek words hypantē and hypantaō that we have reported above from S. Ildephonsus. Having carefully compared all these, who followed the idea of one author, the entire rationale of comparing this carrying of candles and lights on the feast of the Hypapante with the lustration of the ancient Romans seems resolvable into the ingenious invention of a single writer.
[22] Baronius in his Notes on the Martyrology adduces another occasion for the institution of this solemnity: It is established, he says, that Gelasius, the Roman Pontiff, who presided over the Roman Church thirty years before the times of Justinian, opened the way for the celebration of this day in the western Church, when he abolished the Lupercalia, which were customarily held in the month of February (as Varro writes in book 5 On the Latin Language) and which at Rome had persisted to those times, by Ecclesiastical laws. not indeed was this feast introduced by abolishing the Lupercalia; There exists of the same Pontiff a most learned commentary on this matter, against Andromachus the Senator and the other Romans zealous for the Lupercalia. We have it in manuscript in our Library, and we have copied it entire in the Ecclesiastical Annals: its exordium is: Certain men sit in their houses, not knowing what they say, etc. Rightly, therefore, we think that when the Lupercalia were abolished, at Rome, as has happened in many cases, such a solemnity was introduced, which a little later, in the times of Justinian, as we have seen, the Eastern Church received on that occasion. Thus Baronius. But it has been proved above that this feast of the Hypapante, even with lights, was celebrated among the Orientals several centuries before the times of Justinian, and was introduced into the Western Church from the Eastern. We know that S. Augustine, in book 18 Against Faustus, chapter 5, writes that February was named from the sacred Februa of the Luperci. We have also read the mentioned commentary of the aforementioned S. Gelasius the Pope in volume 6 of the Annals at the year of Christ 496, from number 30 to 45. But without any mention of the Hypapante, or of the name of the most blessed Mary, the Mother of God. Whence, then, shall we conclude that this solemnity of the Hypapante was then instituted? Why not rather propose here this rule of S. Augustine from book 4 On Baptism against the Donatists, chapter 24, but rather handed down by Apostolic authority. by which that which the universal Church holds, and which was not instituted by Councils but has always been retained, is most rightly believed to have been handed down by no other than Apostolic authority? Thus it will be shown on the twenty-fifth of December that the Nativity of Christ was celebrated from the times of the Apostles, which nevertheless we have reported above was written by Nicephorus to have been instituted by the Emperor Justin, and the feast of the Hypapante by Justinian, in the same manner.
§ V. Particular veneration of the Purification in various churches.
[23] To the solemnity of this day a procession was rightly added, because on this day many venerable persons in the Gospel are read to have gone forth in procession. The procession of this day. Joseph and Mary, as S. Bernard testifies in Sermon 2 on the Purification, offer the sacrifice of praise, the morning sacrifice; Simeon and Anna receive it. By these four a procession was celebrated, which throughout the four regions of the world is recalled today to memory with solemn rejoicing. S. Ildephonsus and other Fathers indicate that many others of both sexes went forth to meet Him. S. Sophronius treats of the same procession below. The manner, moreover, that S. Sergius the Pope prescribed for the Romans, ordered by Pope Sergius, who presided over the Church from the year 687 to 701, is indicated in the book which is entitled the Roman Order, published in the Library of the Fathers among the writers of the eighth century, which Michael Hittorpius affirms in his Preface to the ancient Authors on Divine Offices published by him was written in the time of King Pippin and Pope Stephen. There, concerning the Purification of S. Mary, the following is recorded: Concerning this festivity, that is, the Hypapante of the Lord, and the other festivities of S. Mary, it is read in the Pontifical Acts that Pope Sergius commanded that Litanies should be held on the day of the Presentation of the Lord in the temple. For thus it is written: that on the days of the Annunciation of the Lord, the Dormition and Nativity of the holy Mother of God Mary, from the church of S. Adrian to S. Mary: and of S. Simeon, which in Greek is called Hypapante, they should go forth with Litanies from S. Adrian's, and the people should gather at S. Mary's. On that very day, therefore, as dawn rises, let the entire clergy and people proceed with litany and antiphons to the church of S. Adrian, awaiting the Pontiff. The Pontiff, entering the sacristy, puts on black vestments. Alcuin, cited above, has the same, and adds: After this, all receive individual candles from the hand of the Pontiff, etc. The aforementioned Amalarius Fortunatus touches briefly upon the same matters.
[24] The Greeks inaugurate the month of February in their Menaea from this solemnity with these words: Eis tēn prōtēn, proeortia tēs hypapantēs tou Kyriou kai Theou, The first of February is the Profestum, kai Sōtēros hēmōn Iēsou Christou. On the first day, the Profestum of the Hypapante or Encounter of the Lord and God and our Savior Jesus Christ. The same profestum is treated in the Horologion of the Greeks and in Molanus in his Additions to Usuardus. Saussaius in the Gallican Martyrology has thus: The Profestum of the Hypapante, or Encounter, or Vigil, of the Lord, otherwise the Vigil of the Presentation of Christ and the Purification of the most holy Virgin. For Locrius in the Calendar of Feasts of the Blessed Mary notes that the Vigil of the Purification is observed among the Parisians. But Bernardinus Gomesius, in book 1 of the Life of James I, King of Aragon, testifies that this vigil with fasting was customarily observed also in Spain. In the Agenda of the Church of Mainz, printed in the year 1551, under the title on the observance of fasts, all the Vigils of the Blessed Virgin Mary are prescribed, with fasting as a devotion, the Assumption alone being of precept, the others to be kept from custom. There are enumerated, moreover, seven feasts of the Blessed Mary: the Purification, Annunciation, Visitation, Assumption, Nativity, Presentation, and Conception. These vigils, or fasts, are moreover customarily observed as a pious practice in many dioceses of Poland, Germany, and Belgium. Hence in the Synod of 's-Hertogenbosch, celebrated in the year 1612, title 12, canon 10, it is so decreed: That we may give occasion for increasing piety to Pastors and curators of souls and other subjects of ours, we command and enjoin that in those same places they keep that laudable custom of fasting on the eve of the feasts of the Virgin Mother of God Mary solemnly celebrated, which has been received, and that they make it known to the people, so that they keep the pious custom. The Abbey of Tongerlo, of the Premonstratensian Order, situated in the same diocese, among the ancient diplomas of foundation published by Miraeus in his Notice of the Churches of Belgium, presents in chapter 217 one dated in the year 1277, on the Vigil of the Purification of the Blessed Mary. In the neighboring Gelderland and Holland, before the Catholic faith was suppressed there by the Calvinists, the pious custom of fasting on the vigils of the Blessed Virgin Mary used to be announced by the Pastors and observed by the people. Hence Hesselius, in his Explanation of the Decalogue, chapter 106, treating of fasting, writes thus: On the Vigils of Pentecost, the Ascension of the Lord, the Purification, Annunciation, Nativity, and Conception of the Blessed Mary, the custom of the region or city is to be followed. Rogerus de Hoveden in the latter part of his Annals of England, cited by Locrius in book 1, Maria Augusta, chapter 31, and by Colvenerius in his Marian Calendar at the Kalends of February, who pursues this argument at greater length, teaches that Henry II, King of England, imposed upon the English a suspension of legal proceedings every Saturday from the ninth hour until the following Monday and on all Vigils of the Virgin Mary. even on bread and water: The Blessed Walter de Birbeke (as is said in chapter 2 of the Life we gave on the twenty-second of January) was accustomed to fast on bread and water on the vigils of all the solemnities of the blessed Mother of God, and for him the water was even changed into wine. The Blessed Margaret of Hungary ate only bread with a drink of water on the Vigils of the solemnities of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as Ranzanus relates in her Life, chapter 2, number 8, which we gave on the twenty-eighth of January.
[25] The Brothers of the Order of Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity, of the Order of the Blessed Mary of Mercy, and of the Order of the Carmelites celebrate this feast with an Octave, adding proper Lections; likewise the Cluniacs, Cistercians, the solemnity in some places extended through an Octave, the Virgins consecrated to God at Fontevraud, and the Order of the Blessed Mary of the Annunciation. The same is noted in the Course of the Blessed Mary for the use of the Order of S. Benedict, and in the Breviary of Bologna composed in the year 1258, as Colvenerius reports at the third of February; and in the ancient Breviaries of Amiens, Langres, Toul in France, Burgos and Siguenza in Spain, Antwerp and Brussels in Belgium, Hildesheim in Germany, the Canaries in the Ocean, and Hermannus Greuen in the Supplement to Usuardus at the ninth of February: on which day Saussaius also writes thus: In the Pontifical Church of Saintes, the Octave of the Purification of S. Mary, on account of a miracle which they report occurred there in this manner, according to the sacred records of that Church. In that principal church there is an altar of the Mother of God, sacred by ancient devotion, and a very old statue, which on account of the marvelous tokens of frequent assistance the citizens have long called Blessed Mary of the Miracles. as at Saintes on account of a miracle: It happened, indeed, long ago in the deep silence of the middle of the night, when deep quiet held the entire city, that suddenly, with no one moving them, the bronze bells of the greater church rang out with a wonderful sweetness of harmony. Roused by this unusual ringing, the sacristans of the church, rising at once from their beds, beheld the temple gleaming with lights on every side, and a numerous assembly of people venerating the Virgin with an august lustration and prayer, and with the sweetest hymns, in humble supplication. Approaching them with timid step, they asked the one who brought up the rear of this celebrated procession to give them, as testimony of so great an event, the remainder of the burning candle which he carried in his pious hands. This he willingly did. And when this matter became known at first dawn to the leaders of the Church, not only through the custodians but also through many citizens who had seen the event through the translucent cracks of the doors, they ordered the candle to be religiously preserved among the sacred relics, and on account of so extraordinary a prodigy, proclaimed this day to be remembered by all posterity. Furthermore, Joannes Gerson, in Part 4 of his Works, mentions the day of the Octave of the Purification in a letter on instituting the Feast of S. Joseph, written in the year 1416 at the Council of Constance to Lord de Parvi, the Cantor of Chartres and Professor of Sacred Theology.
[26] The Church of Prague today exhibits a singular devotion on account of the reverence for two portions of the girdles of the Blessed Mary, concerning which the following is recorded in the manuscript Martyrology of Prague: [At Prague, a more solemn veneration of the day on account of portions of the girdle of the Blessed Mary:] The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Hypapante of the Lord. She is not called purified because she contracted any stain from her childbirth, since she was a Virgin, but because the Lord Himself and His glorious Mother, although they owed nothing to the Law, wished to subject themselves voluntarily to the legal decrees. It is also called Hypapante, that is, of lustrations: for Christians, changing for the better that lustral worship which was performed at the beginning of February in honor of Pluto, today carry burning candles in their hands in honor of the true Light and of the Lamb, whom the Virgin Mother presented in the temple, going to meet the Lord presented in the temple. Of His glorious Girdles, the illustrious Prince Charles IV, Emperor of the Romans, ever Augustus, and King of the Bohemians, obtained two portions at the church of Augsburg, and, decorated in a crystal monstrance, donated them to the Church of Prague.
[27] Peregrinus Merula in the Sanctuary of Cremona relates that Stephanus Borsellus, a Canon of the greater church, built a church at Cremona in the year 1472, churches erected under the title of the Purification of the Blessed Mary. commonly called the Incoronata, under the title of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. At Rome also there is a celebrated temple of S. Mary of the Purification on the Esquiline, with a monastery of nuns of S. Francis founded in the year 1600. There is another temple at Rome belonging to the Lotharingian nation, which is called S. Mary of the Purification, situated in that part of the city which is commonly called in Banchi. Antonius de Balinghem, one of our own, treats of these Roman temples in his Marian Calendar at the second of February, where he recounts many heavenly visions and various miracles performed for the commendation of this feast and its candles, as do recent authors everywhere. We gave the ecstasies of the Blessed Veronica de Binasco on the thirteenth of January, chapter 5 of her Life, as also on the twenty-fifth of January the pious meditations of the Blessed Henry Suso in chapter 12, which they had on the feast of the Purification. Similar exercises and miracles, to be given throughout this entire work, which — although it was our intention to collect them together for the honor and devotion of the Virgin Mother of God Mary — the plan of our undertaking and the constraints of time do not permit.
ORATION ON THE HYPAPANTE OR ENCOUNTER OF THE LORD,
By S. Sophronius, Archbishop of Jerusalem. From a Greek manuscript of the Medici collection belonging to the King of France.
Hypapante of the Lord, or Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
By S. Sophronius, from a Greek manuscript.
CHAPTER I.
The mysteries of Christ are to be celebrated. The solemnity of this feast.
[1] This is another mystery of Christ, this is another magnificence of Christ our God. For His miracles are always great, the ineffable eminence of the mysteries of Christ, since they surpass the approaches and avenues of all discourses and exceed the power of all wisdom, not only human but also of the Angelic and invisible Powers. For a certain speech and tongue, which cannot be comprehended by us mortals, has been given separately to the heavenly Angels. Wherefore I too shall cry out with a great voice together with the great Paul: Where is the wise man? 1 Cor. 1:20. Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Where are the ornaments of the rhetoricians? Where are the problems of the philosophers? Where are the clever arts of the grammarians? Surely God has made foolish the wisdom of this world, and has shown it to be all the more superfluous, vain, and useless: because this wisdom was also a gift and bounty of grace, given to the unbelieving nations for the observation and investigation of God, and for coming to their senses from vain error. ibid. But because through the wisdom of the world the world did not know God; it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. 1 Cor. 1:21. And these things I rightly cry out with Paul, and I myself will even now exclaim in wonder: O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways! Rom. 11:33. For no one has known the mind of the Lord, nor has anyone been His counselor. For how can a created thing see the mind of the Creator, or comprehend His genius and understanding? Or how can the thing fashioned give counsel to the one who fashioned it, as if he were committing himself to the counsel of his creation and, being imperfect, were in need of it for perfection? it destroys the wisdom of the world, Therefore, among the foolish, what is preached is foolishness: because the wisdom of men has been made foolish. Therefore the Academy has fallen asleep, a the Stoa has fallen silent, the Peripatetic school is idle, b the Lyceum sleeps, Athens has been trampled underfoot: lest, having forsaken God the Creator of all things, they make gods of the things created by Him. For these things war against God and the wisdom of God, which judge the things that are seen to be greater than God, and do not desire to see God as the Creator of those same things. Therefore they have been consigned to silence and cast into the abyss of oblivion.
[2] Hence rather Nazareth is proclaimed, in which the Gospel tidings of God were recited: hence Bethlehem is heralded, it illuminates the places in which these things were accomplished, where God is born in the flesh c... where God, working miracles, spent His life. Hence Golgotha is signified, where God accepts the cross. Hence the Resurrection is sung, in which God rises again from the tomb: hence Zion is proclaimed and the sides of the North are signified, where Christ, having risen from the dead, appears: hence the Mount of Olives is graced with glory, from which God returns to heaven with His human nature. The former things are taken away, and other things introduced: those were made foolish, these demonstrated: those were reduced to ashes, these illuminated: those were justly despised because they did not honor God; it casts down the Gentiles, these were fittingly commended to glory because they gave glory to God as was fitting. For those things were a stumbling block to men, they drew them to destruction, they bore them down into the abyss of hell; but these are for the salvation of men, and bring them back from death to life, and convey them from earth to heaven. Those having been cast into oblivion, we now celebrate these with a feast: on this present day we all celebrate them together: by these, as is fitting, we are initiated. For they are the feasts and mysteries of God, which, they perfect their worshippers. when they are fittingly performed according to the condition of men, then they mystically perfect the very one who performs them.
[3] But what this mystery now is (for the present celebration belongs to it), or what this magnificence of Christ is (for this pomp and procession belongs to it), someone might presently ask us, those mysteries are to be set forth on their proper feast days, whether detained by unbelief, or even affecting ignorance of the religion. For to the children of the Church, and those initiated by the Holy Spirit, all things pertaining to Christ are manifest and known, and there is nothing of what is performed that is unknown. But I shall cry aloud and speak, and proclaim what is proper to this feast. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, as Paul proclaimed before us, but through it I put to shame the pride of the alien sages. Rom. 1:16. For the power of God, which cannot be comprehended, is unto salvation to all who believe. And indeed how could it be that I should be ashamed to set forth the ineffable power of the Divinity? Let d the Aristagoras, Anaxagoras, Anaximanders, Pythagorases, Aristotles, and Platos, while the Gentiles protest in vain, the wisest defenders of a wisdom now corrupted, who do not know what they say and cannot understand what they assert, vainly accuse our mysteries: whom e the fisherman's pen rightly branded with its mark, and the cobbler's knife cut down, and showed to be dead and senseless dregs of the earth: but having dismissed these from our wise celebration (for they both expelled the wisdom of God from themselves and filled themselves with empty and vain foolishness), let us all with Theological voice sing the wonderful and rightly-ordered works of God, and celebrate them with pure minds. For this is most conducive to the divine feasts of God, and here He requires those who would join in celebrating His feasts.
[4] After the feasts of Christ born, The eternal Christ was born in the flesh, and in our manner took a mother for Himself, who undoubtedly and ineffably bore Him: and we, who have plucked salvation from her, mystically celebrated her recently on a feast day. After which, duly, the eighth day received the expected circumcision of the flesh: and circumcised, and then, as initiates and clients of God who have received the divine gifts of God, we again mystically performed this. But now another mystery succeeds those, and God bestows another gift upon mortals. For nothing proceeds from God who was born that does not entirely redound to the benefit of mankind: assuredly out of desire to exalt the humble and lowly, He was born for our sake as men. a procession occurs from Bethlehem to Jerusalem: What, then, is this mystery that we now celebrate as befits God? The most admirable procession of Christ, the arrival of Christ most full of happiness, the offering of Christ most difficult to explain, the passage of Christ departing from the most divine Bethlehem and arriving at f this city of Jerusalem, a transition from place to place.
[5] Who can utter this migration of God from one place to another? Wherefore, O men, filled with the same wisdom as ourselves, the mysteries of Jesus Christ are ineffable, and of such a nature that the stream of discourse cannot encompass them. the true procession of the incarnate God is explained, For how will one who hears of the procession of the uncircumscribed God, and His passage from one place to another, not immediately laugh at the speaker, as one introducing incredible things into the minds of men that can in no wise be received? Yet the uncircumscribed One does go forth (let the Gentiles reprove this proclamation, noting its foolishness), He goes forth who does not sustain natural limits (since He is God), indeed who is by nature and power infinite (for this created nature is finite and of finite power), He goes forth in our human manner: let him burst who says the Son is one who went forth, and raves about another who did not go forth, and thus dreams in his wretchedness of a pair of sons and Christs for us, that wretched Nestorius. against Nestorius, He rather both impiously persuades himself from his own mind, and tears apart the mystery of Christ with nefarious audacity. For he wished only the one born of the Virgin to go forth, and not the Son born of the Father, the eternal Word. But God made a true and manifest procession. For truly He had become flesh and body, and Eutyches, and had been enclosed within the circumscription of a body: let him who denies the nature of the flesh in the Word which was made flesh be exasperated, and who dreams that the procession was a mere phantom, the wretched Eutyches. For if the nature of the Word made flesh had remained a single nature, what appeared would have been a phantom, and a bare shadow would have been this mystery of Christ, and the Word would not have been truly incarnate. For how did the Word, if it did not assume the nature of flesh, immutably become flesh? But the Word truly became flesh, and in no way underwent conversion into flesh; and inviolately received from the Virgin the nature of flesh, according to which it was also born of her. The same admits no dissolution of natures, and is known in two natures: neither divided on account of the difference between them, as the mad Nestorius raged: g nor confounding the substance of those whose union has been made in the hypostasis. Thus one and the same, existing in the same person, is known as God and man, presenting a single person, constituted from and consisting of both natures; yet not confounding the properties of both: for in the natures from which He was immutably composed, He appears indivisibly in the same, neither confounding His mystery nor dividing His person.
NotesCHAPTER II.
The Encounter of Christ. Lights presented. The day of purification.
[6] Thus that heavenly Bethlehemite goes forth: thus He appears visible, who eludes the keenness of the eyes: thus He who is without body is shown in the flesh: thus He comes circumscribed, an Encounter must be made for Him, who cannot be circumscribed. But let us all run to meet Him, who so piously worship and venerate His mystery; let us all go with ready hearts. Who will be the first to meet Him? Who will first behold God with his eyes? Who will first receive God? Who will first carry God in his arms? Let no one be wearied by an accelerated course, let no one limp at a quickened pace, let no one break off his pious going forth, let no one be slow to the divine Encounter: let no one be seen lacking in the tasted celebration, let no one appear deprived of the mysteries, let no one be deprived of the light-bearing joy: with Simeon and Anna: let no one become more languid than the very swift course of the aged Simeon, let no one be judged slower of foot than that aged woman Anna, lest the aged and truly advanced in years not only rebuke him whom they see flagging in pace and failing in swift running, but also reproach his remiss and perhaps faithless spirit with prophetic words. Let no one therefore be without share in the Encounter, let no one be a a stranger to bearing the light.
[7] We also add the splendor of candles, both to show the divine splendor of Him who approaches, from whom all things shine forth, a light is to be carried in the hands, and by whose abundant eternal light the worst darkness is dispelled; and especially to manifest the splendor of the soul, with which we must go to meet Christ. For just as the Mother of God and most pure Virgin carried the true light in her arms, and was present to those who lay in darkness; so too we, illuminated by His radiance and holding in our hands the light that is manifest to all, let us hasten to go to meet Him who is truly the light. John 3:19. For indeed, because the light has come into the world, and has illuminated it when it was enveloped in darkness, and because the Dayspring from on high has visited us, and has shone upon those who sat in darkness, this is our mystery; therefore we go bearing torches, therefore we hasten bearing lights, Luke 1:78. both thus designating the light that has shone upon us, and signifying the splendor that will come to us from Him. Wherefore let us all run together, let us all go to meet God: lest, if we should be reluctant to do so, we be at some time accused either of an ungrateful mind toward Him, or of the fearsome crime of contempt for Him; and let us hear what those Jews, enveloped in darkness and not about to be illuminated, had previously heard Him say: Because the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light: John 3:19. for their works were evil (for wickedness always darkens the mind to Christ the illuminator, and does not allow it to see the light), or even those words (as the sacred Gospel says): the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. John 1:5, John 1:9. That light, therefore, the true light, which enlightens every person coming into this world, has come. Let us all therefore, O brothers, be enlightened; let us all be illuminated. Let none of us remain uninitiated in this splendor, let none persist filled with its darkness; but let us all go forth resplendent: illuminated, let us all go to meet Him together, on account of the Evangelical light, and let us receive that bright and everlasting light with the elder Simeon: and exulting with him in spirit, let us sing a hymn of thanksgiving to the Father and Begetter of the light, who sent the true light and dispelled the darkness and made us all radiant. For the salvation of God, which He prepared before the face of all peoples and manifested to the glory of us, the new Israel, we too have seen through Him, thanks are to be given. and we have been immediately absolved from that ancient and dark sin, just as Simeon was freed from the bonds of the present life upon seeing Christ. Luke 2:31. We too, having embraced by faith Christ who came to us from Bethlehem, have been made from Gentiles the people of God (for He Himself is the salvation of God the Father), and with our eyes we have beheld God made flesh, and having admitted the presence of God into the arms of our minds, we are called the new Israel, and we celebrate it with annual festivals, never to come into forgetfulness of Him.
[8] But does Christ, who is b everywhere present, approach? Or does the light that fills all things come forth into the open? Christ proceeds according to the law of Moses. For nothing of His, since His nature is uncircumscribed and cannot be excluded from anything, and He wishes to fulfill the ancient law, is void of His brightness. Indeed He does approach, and foreshadowing His supremely exalted birth, He prophesied of Himself through the mouth of Moses. Exod. 13:2. And what is this prophecy? Every male that opens the womb, He says, shall be called holy to the Lord. Luke 2:23. Which commandment — or rather prophetic declaration — He alone also fulfilled, when He alone looked forth from the womb of the Virgin, and yet did not deprive her of her virginity, and when He came forth did not loosen her seal: which was clearly foretold of Him alone. God born of a virgin. For He alone was born of a sole Virgin, and was begotten alone from a womb free of seed, and alone, having come forth from the Virgin's womb, preserved the Virgin herself; not corrupting her grace by being born, not diminishing her splendor by coming to light, not loosening her bond by going forth: which things both show that He who is born is God, and declare that she who gives birth is properly called the Mother of God. truly Mother of God. Here the accursed Nestorius again appears, who neither wishes to call Him who is born God, nor endures calling her who gave birth the Mother of God: here also the execrable Eutyches is seen, who denies that the flesh of the Lord is of the same nature as ours. For in what way did the Word, which condescended to become our flesh, become Flesh, if the nature of flesh was neither truly assumed by Him from us, and the Word truly man. nor so joined to Him as to show clearly that the Word, formerly without body, assumed the same nature as ours, and thus was truly made man together with us, if it neither has a body of the same kind as our bodies, nor a soul of the same nature of which ours consist? John 1:14. But the Word, truly made Flesh, desires to save us: and God, truly made man while existing in the same, presents nothing false, nor has He deceived us mortals; but having assumed our nature, He has graciously bestowed upon us His own.
[9] For if this were not so as we believe, how does the Evangelist who writes these things say: Luke 2:22. And when the days of their purification were fulfilled? The days of purification. What purification, O abominable Eutyches, if the flesh in Christ was not real? If human nature was not united to the Word? For what purification does the Divine nature, which is without body, need? why indicated: What contamination is seen in a Divinity that has no flesh? Although this was written in a humbler fashion as the human condition required, especially because of you and your imaginary madness, and your stupor like that of the Manichaeans. neither of them needed it. For neither did Christ, who is the expiator of all, need any purification, especially having taken that flesh which alone is immaculate: nor did she who bore Him, that inviolate and truly undefiled Virgin, who bore the expiation of all, need the purification prescribed by the Law. Luke 2:22. Although this was written "according to the law," lest Christ be thought to be a destroyer of the law.
NotesCHAPTER III.
The orthodox are admitted to the Encounter; heretics are repelled.
[10] What did she herself carry in her inviolate arms, or what did Simeon receive in his, other than God made flesh and body? Simeon meets Him. And the Prophet received God with religious affection, and presented Him to the Father and God, and fulfilled the law in spirit. Now, he says with joyful lips, You dismiss Your servant, O Lord, according to Your word, in peace. Luke 2:29. For it had been told him by the Spirit that he would not see the entrance of death until he first saw the Christ of the Lord, and the bond of the law would be dissolved. Luke 2:26. For that elder held the person of the law. Because, he says, my eyes have seen Your Salvation. Luke 2:30. For that Mosaic law was not the Salvation. But the law, old and aged and infirm, having seen Christ, that is, the Salvation of God, indicating the Mosaic Law by its old age: was both restored from infirmity to health; and fittingly, being renewed from the old age that was upon it to newness, was delivered: for the light that frees the old Israel from all old age and leads the Gentiles to it was beheld with the eyes. Therefore he cries out, and crying out proclaims: Now You dismiss Your servant, O Lord, according to Your word, in peace: because my eyes have seen Your Salvation, which You have prepared before the face of all peoples; a light for the revelation of the Gentiles and the glory of Your people Israel. Luke 2:31. Becoming new from old (and Galilee of the Gentiles is illuminated, and a new Israel is shown forth), he beheld Christ, the light.
[11] And what did he also see with his eyes, but a body akin to us and visible, refuting the ignorance of Eutyches produced from Manichaean seed? From this Encounter heretics are to be expelled: Eutyches, Nestorius, For by its own nature the Godhead flees from sight and cannot be perceived by human eyes. Let therefore Eutyches and Nestorius, enemies and adversaries of this our celebration, and striving to violate its joy, depart together from it: the one dividing Christ who is indivisible, the other impiously confusing those things which cannot be confused: for our celebration never permits itself to be adorned by such persons. Therefore be purified, therefore be made clean, therefore worship the mysteries of Christ as friends of Christ: for otherwise He neither admits those running to meet Him, nor endures to see them with His eyes: but commands them to be exiles from His celebration, and constitutes them profane, Eunomius, Eudoxius, Asterius, and others, and strangers from the encounter with Him. Let the followers of a Eunomius, b Eudoxius, c Asterius, and with them the Manichaeans and followers of d Apollinaris, e Severus, and f Dioscorus, and the entire wretched and truly headless gangrene of the g Acephali depart together with them. The former because, on account of the visible flesh of Christ and the invisible and perfect Godhead, they have endeavored to diminish and abolish it, and to make it of another nature, and have contended that its substance is different from the nature which is in the Father who begot Him, boldly numbering it among created things, and decreeing that Christ is a created God, and is to be worshipped according to both natures, the Divine, I say, and the human. The latter because, on account of that unseen Godhead of Christ, they wish also to deny and counterfeit His flesh: who, seizing upon those things which are proper to one nature alone, imagine a confusion of the united substances: and willingly accept the wretched deceits of Apollinaris and h Polemo. With whom let the i Ebionites and Samosatenians, Samosatenians. the followers of k Paul and Bardesanes, be placed, and let them be driven out of this our feast. The former, because they deemed Christ to be merely a naked man and our equal, lacking the properties of the Godhead and not even called God in any way. The latter, because they affirmed that Christ was not the eternal God and co-eternal with the Father, but only from Mary, supposing that He existed as God solely from that ineffable Incarnation.
[12] And if indeed all, as many as either impiously raged according to their own way, or according to the same became insanely impious, Let the orthodox Christians go to meet Him, let them be repelled from the divine Encounter of Christ, so that we who think rightly, all celebrating this day with a feast, having incurred no stain of manifold heresy, may go to meet Christ God, and receive Him with the aged Simeon and with the aged prophetess Anna. For both were being antiquated — both the law, that is, and the Prophets who followed it — and were awaiting their dismissal. For until the manifestation of Christ filled with lights, both the law held sway, and the Prophets prophesying foretold the mysteries wisely accomplished by God regarding Christ, and the wondrous oracles concerning Christ. gathered from the Gentiles, We, translated from the multitude of the pagans into a new Israel and called the new people of God, let us confess in turn, and singing Psalms, let us sing to the Lord a new song. Psalm 97:1. We, beautifully renewed and exalted on high by the presence of Christ, having cast off all the splendor and antiquity both Gentile and legal, let them sing praises to God: and everything unworthy of this most brilliant celebration of Christ that savors of the flesh, let us sing to the Lord a new song. For we have been renewed, and made new from old, and commanded to sing a new song to God the Father, who by the presence of Christ has both renewed us all and shown us to be His new people. Psalm 97:1. Let us sing to the Lord a new song: for He has done marvelous things, and more marvelously through the presence of Christ, through which all things are renewed, lost things of old are recovered, new things are seen, and things raised up to God are transferred into their first youth.
[13] But what these things may be, the lyre of the Spirit clearly teaches: His right hand has saved Him, says it, and His holy arm. Psalm 97:2. And what, I ask, was this right hand of God the Father, saved by the right hand of Christ, and His holy arm, if not He alone through whom He made all things, His Son? Through whom He founded those things that before did not exist, and brought them from non-existence to existence: and those things which afterward were tending to destruction and old age (for each thing, growing old and aging from its own natural condition, always inclines toward destruction), He also preserves with His omnipotent right hand and His exalted and wholly holy arm. For those enriched with the splendor of divine knowledge, and illustriously illuminated both in body and soul and understanding, confess and recognize that Christ alone is He who came to us through the likeness of flesh for the recovery of all created things; through whom we are both manifestly saved and delivered from our ancient old age, and redeemed and made for God a new lump, appearing no longer of the old and sour leaven. 1 Cor. 5:7.
[14] For we are truly the creatures of God said and called to be preserved in an unexpected manner by His right hand, and renewed by His mighty arm: of whom David prophesying and singing tenderly sang: His right hand has saved Him, and His holy arm. and renewed by His arm. For we were in need of salvation, and we sought retreat and redemption from our deadly old age: for whom the Psalmist, together with those in need of salvation at the advent of Christ, promises the strengthening of the Father's right hand and arm for a glorious renewal, as is set forth in this divinely inspired canticle: The Lord has made known His salvation: in the sight of the nations He has revealed His righteousness. Which also Simeon (that is, the Law), receiving and crying out to God, was gratifying Him who granted him salvation, that is, Christ: Now You dismiss Your servant, O Lord, according to Your word, in peace. Psalm 97:3. Luke 2:29. For Christ is truly signified as peace for those in heaven and on earth. Because my eyes have seen Your Salvation, which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light for the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel. Luke 2:30. The prophecy has been fulfilled: the promise perfected: what was wandering has been illuminated: what was without glory has been invested with glory: and I (and in me the Law) have departed from old age, and have not only become new, but having beheld Your Salvation, O Lord, and having gazed upon Your glory with aged eyes, I have received a vigor entirely free of wrinkles and youthful. For Christ has become a light to the Gentiles, and has graced the new Israel, begotten and called new, with an excellent and wondrous glory, distributing to it a glory truly free of old age, and illuminating it with a light that never grows old, nor from the law produces wrinkles.
NotesCHAPTER IV.
The prophecies of Simeon and Anna explained.
[15] And that aged Simeon, having seen the Salvation of God, gratefully spoke these words with Him; bearing in his arms that Salvation of God the Father, by which He transmitted salvation to all and gave an excellent redemption. And turning also to the Virgin, who bore and brought forth the Salvation of God in the flesh, and to Joseph, who was thought to be the father of this light, but was known to be entirely unconnected with the carnal begetting of the light, Behold, he said, this child is set for the fall and the rising of many in Israel: for the fall of the servants of the letter, Christ set for the fall of the law and the rising of the Gospel, for the rising of the children of grace; for the fall of those still cultivating the old age of the law, for the rising of those who love Evangelical newness; for the fall of those who glory in the carnal paternity of Abraham, for the rising of those made children of Abraham through faith; for the fall of those clothed in the prudence of the old Adam, for the rising of those who are wise in the garment of the new Adam; opposed to the old Adam, for the fall of those who are wise in dusty and earthly things, for the rising of those who desire exalted and heavenly things. Luke 2:34. For the first Adam, made from the earth, was of dust and had an earthly disposition. But this second Adam, who is also carried in my arms in the flesh, and who divinely carries me who carry Him, came to us as a stranger from heaven, and to all who faithfully admit His coming, and who spurn the garment of the first Adam and desire the nativity of the new, He bestows a heavenly understanding. John 1:12. For as many as have received Him with faith, to them He confers the immortal adoption of children with God the Father, who are neither born of the will of the flesh, nor constituted by the will of man, but are born of God according to grace: for they do not originate from His substance and nature.
[16] For He alone, [o] O inviolate Virgin Mother, was begotten of God according to nature and is consubstantial with God the Father; He alone, born of God the Begetter, is recognized as His only Son, and certainly incarnate from you, the Virgin, He received His human generation from you. Luke 2:35. And your own soul — you who have both beheld the great mysteries of God and brought forth for us this treasure of grace — a two-edged sword will pierce, and a blade will course through your mind, struck with amazement, when you shall behold Him with your eyes willingly nailed to the Cross with nails and raised up in the midst of thieves, whose sword at His death pierced through the soul of His Mother, slaying death itself, by which we were being slain; and granting life to us, who were justly dying; and binding the legions of demons, releasing man from the bonds of sins, man who had been bound by the demon from of old. But the sword piercing through will not persist, nor will it remain at all in you: for never, O Mother of God, will you be brought to forgetfulness of the divine conception from you, and the wondrous generation from you. You will certainly be seized by a certain human amazement at those things which are to happen at the time of the unspeakable Crucifixion: how God, who by nature can neither die nor even suffer, endures being driven to the cross; how He who is borne up by the Angels with everlasting glory is insulted in the midst of thieves; how He who gives food to all the hungry and drink to all the thirsty, drinks gall and vinegar! How that Life which gives life to all who lack it undergoes death! How His side is pierced with a spear, He who with a lance escaping all perception of the eyes has pierced death itself! How He who buries death and corruption, who draws the entombed from their graves, who restores life by raising from the dead those who bear about the bodies inherited from Adam and dead on account of the sin contracted from Adam the first parent, endures a three-day burial! For you will be somewhat stricken seeing all these things; but you will not long remain in doubt: for the sword of such great and terrible shocks will pierce through your soul and mind. But it will not persist: nor will it occupy a place of habitation or station, for it will be most swiftly driven away by that seed-free conception of yours, and by that ever-virginal childbirth of yours.
[17] Nothing at all is either more terrible than these things, or, to those who do not understand, more incredible to behold. Therefore from many hearts thoughts are revealed, which cannot perceive Your divine and wonderful mysteries, and from many hearts thoughts are revealed: which not even the powers of heaven could see. Luke 2:35. Therefore he falls who does not believe the proclamation: but he rises and is illuminated to life and immortality who believes in Your offspring, and proclaims Him God with his mouth, and perceives that You who bore Him are the Mother of God. Therefore Christ, thus born of You, will truly be set as a sign for those ignorant of His mysteries, set as a sign that is contradicted. a sign that will be contradicted, and those who share in unbelief will suffer a fall from which they cannot be raised; and the raising from the dead and the life that is in heaven they will never behold, because they did not believe in eternal life. Luke 2:34. Having said these things, he ceases, and having beheld the master of the law — the lawgiver Himself now arriving and standing perfectly by the counsel of His own law — he likewise comes to a halt. For Christ went forth, the fulfillment of the Law; and there is no one to contradict the opinion of Paul. Whence for the believer it is indeed unto salvation, but for the one who has an unfaithful soul, unto destruction and ruin. Rom. 1:16.
[18] Anna too is present at this work, walking with aged steps. Psalm 97:2. For the mystery also summoned her to fulfill the grace of prophecy, while with prophetic spirit she testifies that the Lord has made known His salvation, Anna proclaims the redemption of Israel: and that in the sight of the nations He has revealed His righteousness: and that it is not the law, which prevailed in shadow and figure, imposing unbearable burdens upon men, now that grace has been revealed to all, having a yoke that is sweet and a burden that is light and easy to carry. Matt. 23:4. And that it is not the law — the Prophets prophesying about Christ — when He who inspired their prophecies and sent them to prophesy has Himself already arrived. Matt. 11:30. And Anna, since she was resplendent with the grace of prophecy and spoke to those who were awaiting the redemption of Israel, engendered in them on every side a divine consolation: that the Redeemer of all had come, that the Savior of all had appeared, who wished to redeem His own image and desired to confer salvation upon the man He had created. Luke 2:38. For therefore Christ's name is Jesus: for Jesus is interpreted as Savior.
[19] But when all these things were both happening in reality and being made known in words, Mary the Mother of God was amazed, the Mother of God and S. Joseph are filled with wonder. and Joseph who was present with her was astonished. After, however, they had accomplished those things which were enjoined by the law (for Christ had come to fulfill all the things of the law and to put an end to the legal precepts), they returned to Nazareth, where she who bore the Savior to the world had been greeted by the Archangel Gabriel, both pregnant from a seedless conception and remaining a Virgin after childbirth, and declaring to all who beheld her that the Salvation of God had been made known, that a light had shone upon the Gentiles, that the righteousness and redemption of God had appeared to all the ends of the earth: and that divine glory and eternal brightness, knowing nothing of all destruction and corruption, had clothed those who awaited Him. Luke 3:7.
CHAPTER V.
The mystery of the turtledoves and pigeons offered. Epilogue.
[20] What then do the turtledoves signify, or why were the young pigeons accepted, which Christ, going to Jerusalem to present Himself to God the Father, brought as a sacrifice? Turtledoves and young pigeons. Or why did He offer one pair from either kind, if she who bore Him remained a Virgin? He offered these animals to the Father on His own behalf, which are found to be pure and eminent among birds: and, besides the fact that both are clean and not profane, each kind of these together contains a certain distinctive virtue: and those birds show that there is something eminent and select, beyond other qualities, innate in them, which brings no little profit to those who contemplate them spiritually. For the commandment of observing the law does not consist within the letter alone: they judge mystically: it also contains something hidden, more eminent than what appears, and exceeding it in incomparable value. Therefore the letter kills me, who follow the letter alone; but the Spirit gives life to one who obeys the spirit well: and while the letter somehow opens up from the veil, the spirit perfects one who goes beneath to the depths and lays bare the treasure hidden there, and thus has acquired those infinite riches. 2 Cor. 3:6. continence. The birds, turtledoves and doves, were pure, as has been said; and the turtledoves indeed are marked by the greatest temperance, which they embrace to such a degree that, if death befalls the mate, the survivor does not endure to join with another, but lives the rest of its life in celibacy, and cultivates widowhood rather than suffer conjugal contact with another male. purity. Doves, moreover, are most pure from malice and free of all harm, which for this reason Christ calls simple on account of their simplicity and freedom from malice, and which return even to their own persecutors as though having suffered no evil: which is a sign of the highest innocence and, as it were, an indication of great simplicity. Matt. 10:10. And indeed the chaste turtledoves live secluded and solitary; but the innocent doves are not only tame and dwellers in houses, but also lovers of men. Let that most lovable dove persuade us of this: returning to Noah in the ark, the mercy of God in Noah, carrying an olive branch in its beak, and declaring the mercy of the Lord and the end of the flood; but mystically, as it seemed to the Father and the Spirit, and given to Christ: the benign coming of Christ, which He exhibited in the last times through a love truly full of mercy. For it was then also evening, when that leafy dove flew back prophetically to Noah, the second begetter of life after Adam the author of the race; and foretold the mercy of Christ God that would come to us as the age drew to its close.
[21] Christ therefore most manifestly desires that those who approach Him should above all possess the purity of temperance and savor the splendor of innocence, and be illuminated by these all the more; these virtues are to be expressed by Christians: and that they should gladden Christ Himself, who created them and descended to save them out of the mercy He had toward mankind; so that He both may see and rejoice, and willingly receive them all meeting Him together. For God is honored by no other thing so much as by the perfection of temperance, chastity, and all innocence. Moreover, it is honorable, pleasant, and tranquil, free from the heat of business, to adhere to God as far as can be done, and to be more zealously entangled in nothing, being detached, that is, and torn away from worldly occupations: to whom also that canticle seems to say: Be still and know that I am God, as if always lovingly showing His sanctity that illuminates to those who will be at leisure for Him in a solitary life. Ps. 45:11. With honor likewise do meekness shine forth, as also communion and mutual love, by which one can act rightly, and the mercy with which one is fittingly disposed toward one's neighbor, together with the humaneness naturally joined to it, in which there is a very great resemblance to God Himself.
[22] The pair of birds signify the twofold nature in Christ. But why did He bring a pair of birds? For thus the law commanded them to be brought: because one and the same Christ is seen to be twofold in natures, united indeed from two natures, and known in two without division or confusion, both divine and human, from which He is also composed. But we ourselves also, consisting of soul and body, are constituted as twofold, and appearing in both soul and body, so that with both we may do what is honorable; and the perfection of all virtues. and not fulfill virtue in one part while limping in the other, and lacking the splendor of the virtues. And the Lord Himself, who is recognized as the good giver of all virtue, when teaching this, said: Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matt. 5:48. For if anything is imperfect and incomplete, it is immediately judged to be unacceptable to God as well.
[23] Knowing this, therefore, most beloved, let us thus together go to meet Christ God: bringing temperance, carrying chastity, bearing innocence, showing forgetfulness of injuries, separating ourselves from worldly cares, Peroration. and presenting ourselves pure to God, bringing gentleness of character, having benevolence and mutual love toward all, and adding to all these a heart that has mercy on all, and abounding in the mercy that proceeds from a compassionate spirit, let us thus receive Christ as He approaches, let us thus behold Christ, let us thus embrace Christ with a kind of divine embrace in our arms, and let us confess before Him with prophetic words, praising His coming to us, and let us proclaim with our mouths and with great voices the mercy He has exercised toward us, so that we may both attain the kingdom of heaven and enjoy eternal blessings in Christ Himself our Redeemer and Savior and God, with whom to the most excellent God the Father and the most holy Spirit be glory, honor, and adoration on every side, both now and forever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.