Isaac of Stella, Sermons

you are, with Jesus, if you are His disciples. Jesus was invited, it says, and His disciples, to the wedding (John 2:2). But while we have held back the day with our sermon, the hour has almost passed, so that we can no longer discharge the allotted task of the work of our hands without difficulty. So we must hasten now, so that, with the evening's labour, we may taste the little that remains of the sermon like a morsel of fish with barley bread, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, granting us the word. Amen.

SERMON X. ON THE SAME FEAST, II.

Jesus was invited, and His disciples, to the wedding (John 2:2). Since, as we have said, this marriage was made in the zeal of passing over, we ought also to have told you what you heard above, that is, whence, by what way, and whither we must pass, so that we may return to the place from which we fell, and lean upon the place where we fell, so as to rise from there. We must pass, then, as it were on two feet, understanding and affection. With the one from the letter to the spirit, with the other from vice to virtue. Nay rather, we must pass over and over, brother; so that you pass ever from understanding to understanding, and from virtue to virtue, until with perfect knowledge you behold Him Whom your soul loves: and embrace, as it were with certain arms of full love, Him Whom you behold: and because of the knowledge you say, exulting and marvelling: Such is my beloved (Song 5:16), and because of the love you add: And He is my friend; and this: I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine; he shall abide between my breasts (Song 6). This is the way of passing over, which you are to run through not lukewarmly, not fearfully, not slowly, but with heart enlarged, with zeal and fervour, with unspeakable sweetness, and whither the impetus of the spirit shall bear you, may you always be swept along. Consider with what zeal the Son of God passed over below Himself, since He could not pass above: as far as you, since He ought not to go lower still: and wholly for you, so that He might come to this marriage. Have this mind, then, in yourselves, brethren, which was also in Christ Jesus, seeking and understanding whence, why and how far He emptied Himself, from the form of God to the likeness of sinful flesh. But why? Not, surely, from fear of loss, nor from desire of gain, but solely from love of us alone; so that we, step against step, not from fear of punishment, as slaves; nor from desire of the kingdom, as hirelings, but from the love of God alone, as sons, might go out and pass from the pit of sin, into which He could not and ought not to descend; and might meet Him in the likeness of sinful flesh, so that there mercy and truth might meet each other, justice and peace kiss. Let us pass over to the form of God from the pit of sin, through the likeness of sinful flesh, to the Lord from sin through penance, filling ourselves everywhere with understanding and virtue, as far as full knowledge, as we have said, that is wisdom; and full love, that is charity, as it were to the highest angels, cherubim and seraphim, just as He emptied Himself as far as folly and weakness. For it pleased Him, through the folly of preaching, and the weakness

of His passion, to save those who believe, as it were to inebriate those who drink at the wedding. For that folly or weakness is perhaps the water, which nevertheless He turned into wine, that is, into wisdom and virtue; since what is foolish of God is found wiser than men, and what is weak is recognized as stronger (1 Cor. 1:25). The world, it says, could not know God through wisdom, since its wine had failed: therefore it pleased Him to give the guests drink through folly, that is, through water: which, however, He first turned into wine, that is, changed into wisdom.

The best wine, it says, and truly. In comparison with it, and in praise of it, the first is found fault with, that is, the wisdom of this world, which the wisdom of God has made foolish; namely the wisdom of the philosophers, which failed in itself. For truths are diminished among the children of men: hence they have spoken vain things, every one to his neighbour, master to disciple. The philosophers of the Gentiles, joined to the rock, that is, to Christ, are set free. Where is the wise man, where the scribe, where the disputer of this world? The wise are caught in their own craftiness: they were troubled and staggered like a drunken man, and all their wisdom was swallowed up, and the wine they drank failed. It is good and useful for you too, brother, that your own wine should fail you, and that you should not follow your own understanding. Let Jesus first have your vessels filled with water: which afterwards He may turn into wine for you. Hear the teacher of the Gentiles, hear one of the servants, who know whence it is and how the good wine was made. If anyone among you, he says, seems to be wise, that is, to have wine, let him be well emptied, so that he may be filled excellently, that is, let him become a fool, that he may be wise (1 Cor. 3:18); let arrogance be emptied out, since he who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know (1 Cor. 8:2). Nay, woe to those who are wise in their own eyes. For, saying they were wise, they became fools. Let him be filled with water, that is, let him know his own foolishness and weakness; and so let what he is appear to him, so that what he is not yet he may the sooner become. Let him receive water, so that he may drink wine; let him fail from himself, that is, from his own understanding and his own will, so that he may advance in wisdom and charity through the virtue of obedience. In this sense, brethren, we understand what is said: Thou shalt take away their spirit, and they shall fail, and shall return to their dust (Ps. 103:29), so that what there is dust, here is water: what there is their own spirit, here is the former wine: what there is the Spirit of God, here is the wine of Christ. Send forth, it says, Thy spirit (ibid.), as if: hold out Thy wine, and they shall be created into the new man: as if: they shall be inebriated. And the mother of Jesus was there; she, surely, who prompted her son, interceded by prompting. She obtained the miracle, and was not ignorant of the mystery. For when her son answered: What is it to Me and to you, woman; as if He said: Of the powers, it is for Me and the Father; of the weaknesses, for Me and My mother: understanding the whole, she forewarns the servants to obey in all that Jesus says. Many wise men of this world, treating at length of the soul and God, of its creation by Him, of its cleansing through Him, of its beatitude in Him, failed,

searching with their searching, since they had presumed to be groomsmen without Jesus, as it were did not invite Jesus to the wedding, and therefore wandered far from the truth. That Christ may dwell, says the Apostle, by faith in your hearts (Eph. 3:17). But whence comes this Jesus to us, that is, this faith, and who is His mother, who bore it for us? What merits went before? Let us go back to the Apostle: let us hear the disciple who was present most deeply at the mystical marriage. By grace, he says, you are saved through faith (Eph. 2:8).

This, then, is the mother who brings forth Jesus within, in our hearts; grace, which goes before the unworthy; the depth, which is not seen; whence is born and rises all the length, breadth and height which is seen. To her justice, as it were, answers: What is it to me and to you, woman, that is, you who are kind, and tender, and full of charity? Yet it obeys mercy. Embracing all this in a few words, the Apostle says: Not by works of justice which we have done; but according to His mercy He saved us (Titus 3:5). Grace, then, was there as mother, through whom faith is created, which is the first of the virtues, and is roused to working through love: lest the just man be idle, and the disciples not believe in Him. But who are these disciples who follow Jesus, if not the other virtues, which follow faith, which obey faith, without which they avail nothing? They can have the appearance, they cannot have the truth without faith. For without faith it is impossible for them to please God: nay, all that is not of faith is sin. And the six water-jars, hard and cold, what do they mean? Such perhaps were the works of men. For the number six signifies working, as seven signifies rest from work, and eight the resurrection after all work. So the cults of the Gentiles, by which they honoured demons, and the traditions of the Jews, by which they purified themselves, were made insipid by faith, as if filled with water, since in the former a useless and insipid vanity was detected, and in the latter a useful and savoury truth was found. For such is the office of teaching, that it first drives the perverse away from folly, then instructs the converted unto wisdom. Hear all this in the Apostle. Circumcision, he says, is nothing (1 Cor. 7:19), as if he said, it is water, and uncircumcision is nothing (ibid.).

Embracing in these two words all the cult of the Gentiles and the carnal rites of the Jews, and filling them with water, that is, with uselessness and folly, he at last changed them into wine, saying: But the keeping of the commandments of God. Under this figure Jesus loosed the carnal Sabbath, and the disciples eat with unwashed hands (Matt. 15:2), drawing all things to a spiritual sense and turning water into wine. Hence Peter too, asking what the parable might be, hears: Are you also without understanding? (Matt. 15:16) The jars hold two or three measures each, since the heathen interpret a natural and an ethical sense in their sacred writings, and we in the Jewish scriptures search out, beyond the history, the moral, the allegorical too, and sometimes the anagogical understanding. That wise Solomon, the length of all things and words

compressing as it were into a very narrow cask of wine, says, in accord with Paul: Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole man (Eccl. 12:13). For fear itself too is perhaps water. For he who falls away from his own presumption, readily acknowledging his folly and weakness, begins to fear, and advances towards wisdom; for the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But wisdom perfects charity, which casts out fear, and turns water into wine. Fear, moreover, is understood as twofold, or threefold, when on account of guilt we fear to fall from glory into punishment. Likewise penance from dead works (for the number six signifies works) may rightly be taken as the water, as the kingdom of God is the wine. Hence the beginning of the preaching of Jesus, like the beginning of His signs, was: Do penance; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matt. 4:17). Penance itself too is marked as twofold or threefold, that is, by contrition of heart, confession of mouth, and, if it may be, satisfaction in deed. The servants who fill the sinner with knowledge of himself, or with fear of God, or with sorrow for evil, are taken to be the angels, the apostles, the preachers, who, knowing the sacrament, draw where and when Jesus bids, and carry it to whom He bids. When the chief steward had tasted, and so on. Let them blush who sit first and drink last. It ought to be offered to them, that they may taste it first and approve it. But, drunk with the former wine, they still stoop down: chosen as masters of spiritual things, they have become traders in worldly things. Going almost into the inner parts of the desert, they do not drive the sheep but force them; worthless to themselves, indulgent to others; caring for their own bodies and for others' souls, worthy that it should be said of them: What they say, do; what they do, do not do (Matt. 23:3). So, my brethren, of a community where he deals in worldly business and looks after what is not his own, it has seemed to me, while he forces his subjects into order, as if I had seen a man of handsome body walking head downwards. Would that in judging another's servant we might at some time hold back our mouth, which it would perhaps have been altogether better to have kept shut. This ruler of the feast is understood by us to be the free will of man, to which faith is first offered, to which alone belongs, with God, the judgement of contempt or obedience, and which presides over the whole soul: which is threefold, by reason of rationality, irascibility and concupiscibility.

SERMON XI. ON THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY I

When Jesus had come down from the mountain, and so on (Matt. 8:1). Heaven is the mountain, earth the valley. God is the mountain, man the valley. The form of God is the mountain, and the form of a servant the valley. When, then, God in the form of God had come down from heaven to earth, He emptied Himself into the form of a servant, and was found in habit as a man. The crowds which awaited Him could no longer follow Him: they could not go without Him where He Himself goes. Yet whither does He lead them? First to the healing of a leper, which perhaps they themselves were, and knew it not. The first misfortune of a sick man is not to have health; the second, not to know his infirmity; the third, not to seek

medicine; the fourth, to neglect it when offered. Therefore the wise physician and kindly God leads them thither where He teaches, where there comes to meet Him a man who sees his own infirmity, and on that account seeks health, confessing His power, beseeching His will; so that from what the crowd beholds outwardly it may be instructed, and the blinder blind man may follow the sick man who sees. The Apostle says: The promises were made to Abraham and to his seed; therefore Christ also was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises of the Fathers; but the gentiles honour God for His mercy (Rom. 15:8–9). I therefore understand these two peoples in the crowd, which waits and follows, and in the leper, who comes to meet Him and is cleansed: namely the circumcision, which, awaiting His bodily presence, saw Him first; and the uncircumcision, which, coming to meet Him afterwards, readily believing the preaching of the apostles, truly confessing its leprosy, humbly beseeching the physician, deserved to receive the benefit and the grace first. For He had not yet healed anyone out of the crowd that followed. But what does it mean that the crowd follows? Just as the Pharisees watched Him, but in order to find fault; questioned Him, not in order to learn, but to catch Him in speech; sought Him, not in order to keep Him, but to destroy Him: so assuredly the circumcision followed, not in order to attain [to Him], but to pursue Him; not in order to lay hold [of Him], but to catch Him out. For those of it who, uncovering their sins, adoring His majesty, entreating His goodness, came to meet Him, are mystically numbered with this leper. As once, to provoke the gentiles to emulation, the circumcision held forth the worship of the one God, so afterwards, to provoke the Jews to faith in the divine Trinity, the gentile world was set before them; which may be seen even today, and the last become first, and the first last, the masters disciples, the disciples masters; those who did not see, see; those who saw have been made blind.

What Israel sought, it has not attained, nay rather [it has] persecuted: the election has attained it. Strangers devour its lands daily before its face, and newcomers eat the deserts of the letter, turned into the fruitfulness of spiritual understanding. The kingdom of God has been taken away from them, and given to a nation bringing forth its fruit. In the presence of those who are badly healthy, the one who is well sick is healed, and, acknowledging his sin, he speaks first, that he may be justified. For the just man is first of all his own accuser, that is, at the beginning of his justification he accuses himself, that is, by accusing he begins to be just. For the first part of the sinner's justice is the accusation of the offence, the second the correction, the third the keeping. And I shall be, he says, spotless with Him, and I shall keep myself from my iniquity (Ps. 17:24). Therefore the leper, coming, speaks first: Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean (Matt. 8:2). He confesses two [things], his own uncleanness, the Lord's power; the third he implores, that is, His beneficence. Praising, he calls upon the Lord; therefore he is sent away healed of the leprosy. Praising the power, he calls upon the grace: which cannot be altogether wanting to the first two confessions, that is, of the offence and of praise. For everyone who thus calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, and shall hear: I will: be made clean. Whence the blessed

prophet: Praising, he says, I will call upon the Lord, and I shall be saved from my enemies (Ps. 17:4). Touched by Jesus, he is cleansed; but he is forbidden by Him Who cleansed him to say that he is clean, until he has shown himself to the priest and offered the gift of the law. What, brethren, do these things mean? Shall one cleansed by Christ be able to keep silent the praises of Christ? He praised the power before he had experienced it; shall he keep silent the grace once he has experienced it? One cleansed by Christ, does he perhaps stand in need of an unclean priest? Or does [Christ] command idle things (God forbid!), or does He speak mysteries? There are two [things] which befit God alone: the honour of confession, and the power of remission. Confession is to be shown by us to Him; remission is to be awaited by us from Him. For it belongs to God alone to forgive sins: and therefore confession is to be made to Him. But when the Almighty had espoused to Himself a weak one, the Most High a lowly one, He made the handmaid a queen: her who was behind, beneath His feet, He took up to His side. For from His side she came forth, whence He betrothed her to Himself with a pledge. And just as all [things] of the Father are the Son's, and those of the Son the Father's, since they are by nature one: so the bridegroom gave all His [things] to the bride, and the bridegroom shared with Himself all [things] of the bride: her whom He made also one with Himself and the Father. I will, says the Son to the Father, interceding for the bride, that, as I and Thou are one, so these also may be one with us (John 17:21–22).

The Bridegroom, therefore, one with the Father, one with the Bride, took away what He found alien in the Bride, fixing it to the cross, where He bore her sins upon the tree, and took them away through the tree. What was natural and proper [to her], He assumed and put on; what was proper to Himself and divine, He bestowed. For He took away what was of the devil, assumed what was human, bestowed what is divine, so that all [things] of the Bride might be the Bridegroom's; for which reason He Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth, may say: Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak, etc. (Ps. 6:3), so that He Who has her weakness may have also her lament, and all [things] of the Bridegroom may be the Bride's. Hence the honour of confession and the power of remission: on which account it must be said: Go, show yourself to the priest (Luke 5:14). For they are no less Christ's alone if they are the Church's; but they are not the whole Christ's if they are not the Church's: just as they are no less God's alone if they are Christ's, but neither are they the whole God's, so to speak, if they are not Christ's. Let the sinner therefore say to no one that he has been healed, when he has groaned within, where Christ forgives alone but not whole, if he has scorned to show himself to the priest, to whom the dispensing of remission has been entrusted, and to whom on this account the honour of confession is owed: for if he does not tell it, the leprosy returns; and he is now deservedly called more unclean, by whom He Who cleanses is scorned: Who cleansed on this condition, that the leper should by no means call himself clean unless he showed himself to the priest and offered the gift. For just as [sins] forgiven return to one who does not forgive, so [sins] pardoned within profit nothing to one who scorns to confess them without. As he who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father Who sent Him: so he who scorns the Bride dishonours the Bridegroom Who took her up: and he who scorns the Bridegroom, that is, the Son, scorns assuredly the Father too, and offends the Holy Spirit: without Whom neither the Father nor the Son,

nor the Church forgives sins. Almighty mercy has its own rules, according to which it gives and forgives. Give, He says, and it shall be given to you (Luke 6:38); otherwise even what you have [as] given will be taken away from you. Likewise, forgive, and you shall be forgiven (Luke 6:37): otherwise [the debts] forgiven you will, with anger, be demanded back from you to the last farthing. According to these rules this too is not undeservedly taken: Behold, you are made whole; now sin no more, lest something worse befall you (John 5:14). And that [word]: Neither will I condemn you: now sin no more (John 8:11). This also, which is in our hands: I will: be made clean: go, show yourself to the priest, etc. (Luke 5:13–14); so that what is often said is always to be understood even where it is not said.

The Church, therefore, can forgive nothing without Christ: Christ wills to forgive nothing without the Church. The Church can forgive nothing except to the penitent, that is, to him whom Christ has touched; Christ wills to keep nothing forgiven for one who scorns the Church. Christ, being almighty, can do all [things] by Himself, that is, baptize, consecrate the Eucharist, ordain, forgive sins, and the like: but the humble and faithful Bridegroom wills nothing without the Bride. What therefore God has joined, let man not separate. I say, this is a great sacrament in Christ and in the Church. Do not wholly break off the head of the turtledove; do not cut off the head from the body. For Christ willed not to be beheaded, but to be stretched out upon the cross, stretched apart, hung up, that He might join together the lowest, the highest, the middle. Do not therefore withdraw the head from the body, so that the whole Christ be nowhere: for neither is the whole Christ anywhere without the Church, just as the whole Church is nowhere without Christ. For the whole and entire Christ is head and body: on which account He says: No man has ascended into heaven, but the Son of man, Who is in heaven (John 3:13). This is the only man Who forgives sins: Who first touches within, that He may work repentance of heart; afterwards sends him to the priest without, for confession of mouth; and the priest [sends him] to God, that he may offer the gift of satisfaction. For these three make perfect cleanness: contrition of heart, confession of mouth, satisfaction of work; so that before [they are done] it is not lawful for anyone to say that he has been cleansed.

But I see, brethren, that I have not satisfied your expectation: you who drink in more eagerly the moral sense, by which you may be built up upon the foundation on which you have been set. We shall therefore humour you, so far as the ability granted us allows; but, I confess, against our own habit, we whom mysteries delight more everywhere. Nevertheless, since the kingdom of God is not in speech, let us rise to the labour which remains to be wholly completed today. For we ought not to give ourselves to discourse for this reason, that we may not labour, but rather at times to refrain from labour for this reason, that we may give ourselves to the word of God. And since man is neither flesh alone nor spirit alone, nor yet wholly spiritual in the life-giving spirit, he is not able to live whole on bread alone, for which we labour, nor on the word alone, to which we give ourselves, so long as he still lives in part a beast and in part an angel, until, all animal likeness being consumed, he be made equal