Isaac of Stella, Sermons

the humanity clung, inseparable, by a personal bond, and the soul did not for an instant depart, through any foreign love, from delight in and love of the Word. He therefore lived when dead, who died living: at one and the same time living and dead. The humanity lived with the divinity by virtue: the rational soul lived with the Word of God by love. The flesh alone died, by the separation of the soul; and by its return the flesh alone rose again.

If, then, dearly beloved, you have risen, for the present in the soul alone, together with Christ who rose in the flesh alone, seek the things that are above, by the intention and desire of the soul, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, even in the body (Col. 3:1). For many seek below the things that are above: such are those who seek dignity and favour, sufficiency and delight, in earthly things. These are they who have set their eyes to bend down to the earth, seeking the highest things in the lowest. Others, again, seek above the things that are below; that is, vainglory in virtue, boasting in wisdom, curiosity in truth, and finally, in spiritual study and the religious habit, some temporal gain, whether of praise, or of dignity, or of money, or of licentious liberty. Others seek below the things that are below, namely earthly things in earthly things, and carnal things in carnal; who all mind entirely the things that are upon the earth, and not those that are above. Others, however, seek above the things that are above, that is, true things in true, spiritual in spiritual, heavenly in heavenly, and divine in divine, minding the things of God and walking in newness of life, planted together in the likeness of Christ's death, while they are dead to sin and the flesh and the world, conformed to Christ's resurrection, while, estranged from the life of their former corruption and of sensuality, they live in the flesh in a certain manner above the flesh, sitting together with Him also in the heavenly places, while their rest and their conversation is in heaven, and reigning together with Him, while they compel all that is theirs to serve their spiritual progress. Further, those who seek a heavenly reward in earthly actions are surely praiseworthy in seeking the highest things in the lowest, just as those are blameworthy who seek the lowest in the highest, who [seek] what is earthly in spiritual things. Less blameworthily than these, indeed, do they act who seek the lowest things in the lowest; but most praiseworthily of all those who [seek] the highest in the highest, which, dearly beloved, is our profession and our purpose. May He deign to fulfil this in us, whose resurrection we celebrate and imitate as far as we can: without whom we can do nothing, and in whom we can do all things, Christ the Lord: who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

SERMON XLI. ON THE SAME FEAST II

The Lord said to me: You are My Son, today I have begotten you (Ps. 2:7). You ask, dearest ones, why blessed Paul, when he was speaking of the resurrection, used the testimony of this little verse: since

it seems to fit a birthday better than a resurrection. But we do not hesitate to call the resurrection itself a birth, above all because we are not unaware that the Saviour calls it a regeneration. For if the first resurrection, which is of the soul, is called regeneration, why should the second too, which is of the body, not be called regeneration? So the resurrection of Christ, though it can be only one, yet signifies the first of our resurrections, which are two, as the same Apostle witnesses where he says: As Christ rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4). The second it begins, and hence Christ is also called the first-fruits of those who sleep. There are, then, in a certain manner three births of men, and two resurrections. For we are born as men from men through men in the flesh, flesh from flesh: and nowhere do we find this birth called a resurrection. We are reborn from God as gods through the Spirit spiritually, where what is born of the Spirit is spirit; and this is the first resurrection, the second birth: but we shall be regenerated from corruptible to incorruptible, from mortal to immortal, from the dust of the earth to a heavenly quality: which is the third birth, the second resurrection. The first birth Christ did not know; the second He received from the Virgin, the third from the tomb. For such as we are reborn from the font, such was Christ born of the Virgin: such as Christ was regenerated from the tomb, such shall we be reborn in the world to come. And this is the state for which man was made: nor will man be consummated until that is perfected in him for which he was begun. For then will he properly be said to be begotten, when he has been fully begotten; then made, when completed. Meanwhile, in the first two births he is being begotten and made, who in the third alone has been begotten and made. Hence on the day of His resurrection Christ is fittingly and subtly said to be begotten, as being fully begotten on the day of His perfection and consummation. Hence He Himself also says: Today and tomorrow I accomplish cures, and on the third day I am consummated (Luke 13:32).

As, then, for the first man, before he was born, God had prepared that by which he should be sustained: so for the second, before he was reborn, He fashioned beforehand that by which he should be fed. Therefore before His one resurrection, which is the figure of our first and the pattern of our second, namely on the day of the cup, He turned bread and wine into the sacrament of His body and blood. For as from the old man He created the new man, so too from the old food of the old [man] He transformed new food for the new man. Behold, He says, I make all things new (Rev. 21:5). A new creature, new food; a new life, a new birth; a new death, a new resurrection. For as man, first made a living soul, has need of nourishment, lest he fall from life, but that through it he may be sustained, and grow, and be strengthened in it, not that he may take another life through nourishment, but that he may not perish from it through want: for the soul alone can give life, but alone it cannot keep it. So too the new creature in Christ, before it is perfected by the second

resurrection into a life-giving spirit, after the first regeneration has need of nourishment, by which it may live, and grow, and be strengthened in that life by which it was regenerated: not that after the grace of baptism it should take up another life, but that it may not through want lose the life it has received. For we are regenerated and fed for the same life by diverse sacraments, and yet we are not perfected in it until we are born a third time into a life-giving spirit, into which Christ was born, or made, from the tomb, as the Apostle says: The second man was made a life-giving spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). For then the whole flesh will live immediately and sufficiently from the soul alone, and the whole soul immediately and perfectly from God alone, where neither will the flesh be in need of food, nor the soul of sacraments. Then truly, securely and fully, all who are sons of God shall hear: You are my son, for today I have begotten you, for I have fully begotten you. In the beginning I began [you], where it is said: God made man to His image and likeness (Gen. 1:26). In the middle I repaired [you]: whence it is said: In the midst of the years bring it to life (Hab. 3:2). In the third I consummated [you], whence it is said here: Today I have begotten you. Today I have begotten you such in the third state, for the sake of which I created you in the first, and gave you life in the second. In the first I created you into a living soul, in the second I re-formed you into a life-giving Spirit, in the third I consummated you into a life-giving Spirit, which is to give life to the flesh without food, and is itself to live from my face without sacrament. This is the grace, this the fruit of the second resurrection, in which no one will have part who has not been a partaker of the first: but no one can be a partaker of the resurrection unless he has been [a partaker] of death; nor can he be [a partaker] of death who has not been [a partaker] of the passion. If, then, we suffer with [Him] and die with [Him], we shall rise with [Him] and reign with [Him]. May He Himself deign to grant this, Who lives and reigns, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

SERMON XLII. SERMON ON THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD.

No one has ascended into heaven, except He who descended from heaven, the Son of man, Who is in heaven (John 3:13). These, my brothers, are those heavenly things that are hard to believe, harder to understand, hardest to explain. If I have told you earthly things, says the heavenly Master, and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? The heavenly one speaks heavenly things subtly; and the earthly one is slow to believe even earthly things; and he who can be a master of the carnal is not equal to a heavenly schooling. But to us, dearly beloved, whose conversation has long been in the heavens, heavenly things ought not to be unknown. For it is exceedingly shameful to be ignorant of the things in which you dwell; and foolish to dwell where you are ignorant. He designates Himself, therefore, Son of man, by a familiar humbling. For the Son of God alone descended from heaven, by His own will as much as by His own power: from which [place] the devil, driven out, fell; the good angel, obedient to the power set over him, withdraws for a time. But how did the Son of man descend from thence,

where no man has ever been? Is the Son of man not a man? Although not every man is a son of man, yet every son of man is a man. How then did the Son of man descend from thence, where He was neither born nor had yet ascended? Or perhaps was the son of man born in heaven in the same way as the Son of God on earth: the son of man, [though] bodily, everywhere, just as the Son of God, [though] not bound to place, somewhere; the temporal [one] eternal, just as the eternal temporal? But be it so: the things that are wonderful are wonderful for this reason, that one and the same is before Himself and after Himself, prior and posterior to Himself: lesser also and greater, made by Himself, His own maker, servant and Lord; one and the same is God and man: one person, two natures; or rather in two natures three substances. According to the man God ascended, Who according to God descended [as] man. That the Son of man, Who according to the Son of God is at once in heaven and on earth, altogether everywhere, and truly nowhere, is God [and] man: all this the admirable principle of the personal union demands; and the heavenly [man], comparing heavenly things with heavenly, as spiritual things with spiritual, or even divine things with divine, discerns all these things. Yet what is the profit of the descent of the Son of God, if the ascension of the same son of man is a singular one, or where is He going to place us, who, having set all things aside, follow Him the more closely? We who flee hell, who despise the world, where are we to go, if we do not ascend into heaven? But no one ascends into heaven except He who descended from heaven?

Therefore either we have descended from thence, and are still there, and are that Son of man there; or we shall by no means ascend thither, and cannot be where we wish: and so we have surely been made more wretched than all men. Yet, dearly beloved, to those who attend to the force of the words and the freedom of the spirit in the divine utterance it readily appears that the Son of man, or the Son of God, or the Word of the Father, or Christ, or by whatever like term He is designated Who speaks these heavenly things, does not have a simple meaning, nor is spoken of according to a uniform acceptation. For Christ is sometimes called that simple nature itself which neither began nor ceases, nor can be changed or moved; which, from the Father alone, is with the Father, in the Father: neither itself He Who is the Father, nor other than the Father, it always is: according to which He Himself, speaking to the Jews, says: The Beginning, who also speak to you (John 8:25). And elsewhere: I and the Father are one (John 10:30). For the Son of God Himself and the man are thus one [person], not one [thing], just as He and the Father are one [thing], not one [person]. Here two natures, one person; there two persons, one nature. So likewise: Before Abraham was made, I am (John 8:58); and six hundred other things, which cannot be true except in this sense, and belong to the property of the higher nature, although they are said without distinction of Him Who, as we have said, is both higher and lower than Himself. Over against these, however, He is sometimes designated by those things which can in no way truly be said of the person except with respect to the lower nature,

such as the being made a little less than the angels, and the temporal birth, and the like. Some things, too, [are said] with respect to the soul alone, and some with respect to the flesh alone; some, however, with respect to both at once, that is, to the whole humanity, but alone; and some with respect to the whole person of Christ at once, that is, to the divinity together with the humanity, as when the Apostle calls Him mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus: for a Mediator cannot be between both unless He be of both. But in all these, what gain is there for wretched men, if the divinity of that man so descended from heaven that with it alone the humanity of that God ascends? Whence we are compelled to draw yet another understanding out of what has been set down, in which by the name of Christ, or of the Son of man, is understood not only the whole Christ, or [Christ] with respect to a part, or parts, as was set down above: He, in short, Who once, rebuking the persecutor from heaven, says: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? (Acts 9:4), [and] Who will one day say: I was sick, and you visited me (Matt. 25:36). And on what principle are these [said], unless on account of the unity of bridegroom and bride, or of head and body? Just as the head and body of one man are the one man himself, so that Son of the Virgin and His chosen members are the one man Himself and the one son of man. The whole and entire Christ, says Scripture, is head and body, since all the members together are one body, which with its head is one son of man, which with the Son of God is one Son of God, Who Himself also with God is one God. Therefore the whole body also, with the head, is son of man and Son of God, and God. Whence is that saying also: I will, Father, that as I and Thou are one, so these also may be one with us (John 17:21–22).

Therefore, according to this sense, much frequented in the Scriptures, neither is there a body without a head, nor a head without a body; nor is the whole Christ, head and body, without God. For the head of the woman is the man, the head of the man is Christ, the head of Christ is God. The head of the woman, then, by the mediation of the man, is Christ; the head of the man, by the mediation of Christ, is God. Therefore the head of the woman, of the man, and of Christ, is God. And so all things too, with God, are one God; but the Son of God with God by nature, and with Him the Son of man personally, [and] with Him His body sacramentally. Alone, therefore, the Son of man descended from heaven by reason of the divinity, but not whole, by reason of the humanity; Who ascended alone and whole, by reason of the unity of head and body. No one therefore ascends, except He alone and whole, Who descended alone, and not whole. If, whenever a poor man is fed, Christ is fed, how, when a poor man ascends, does Christ not ascend? What God has joined together, let not man put asunder (Matt. 19:6). This sacrament is small in man and woman, but great in Christ and in the Church. As, therefore, if my foot could speak as the tongue does, it would say what the tongue says, namely, I am Isaac, so the faithful and rational members of Christ can truly say that they are what He is, even Son of God, and God. But what He is by nature, they are by fellowship; what He is in fullness, they are by participation; in short, what the Son of God is by generation,

this His members are, not only by appointment, as Moses was the god of Pharaoh (Exod. 7:1), or merely by name, as there are many gods and many lords (1 Cor. 8:5), but by adoption, as it is written: You have received the spirit of adoption of sons, in which we cry, Abba, Father (Rom. 8:15). According to which spirit He gave them power to become sons of God, so that they are taught, as a chosen few, by Him Who is the firstborn among many brothers, to say: Our Father, Who art in heaven (Matt. 6:9). And elsewhere: I ascend to my Father and your Father, etc. (John 20:17). For while He is the common Father and God of all by creation, yet He is ours in a special way by free adoption, as He is also [Father] of the Only-begotten Himself by a singular generation.

The generation of Him, therefore, the nativity of Christ, according as from the beginning He is the Son of God, and according as at the end He is the Son of man, and [as] in the mystery head and body are one Christ, must needs be understood as in a certain manner threefold. The first, then, is of the Father without a mother; the second of a mother without a father; the third, according to substance, neither of father nor of mother, but according to the sacrament, of God the Father through the Holy Spirit, and of the Church, the virgin mother. For by the Spirit by which the Son of man, our head, was born of the womb of the Virgin, by that same [Spirit] are we, the sons of God, His body, reborn of the font of baptism. And as He [was born] without any sin, so we too [are reborn] unto the remission of all sins. For as He bore upon the wood, in the body of His flesh, all the sins of the whole body, so to the spiritual body, that no sin may be imputed to it, He has granted this through the grace of regeneration, as it is written: Blessed is the man to whom the Lord has not imputed sin (Ps. 31:2). This blessed man is without doubt Christ, Who, according as the head of Christ is God, remits sins: to Whom, according as the head of the body is one man, nothing is remitted; but according as the body of the head is many, nothing is imputed. Just in Himself, and Himself justifying Himself. Alone the Saviour, alone the saved; alone ascending, alone descending; Who with the Father bestows the gifts which He Himself received in men. Thou hast received, it says, gifts in men (Ps. 67:19); Who bore in His body upon the wood what He took away from His body through water. Saving again through wood and water, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sins of the world which He bore; priest and sacrifice, and God, Who, offering Himself to Himself, reconciled Himself through Himself to Himself, as to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. The first nativity, then, is eternal, where God is born of God; such as the Father, such the Son. The second temporal and brief, where man is born of man; such as the mother, such the son. The third temporal and long, where that which is born of the spirit is spirit; as that which is born of God is God, and that which is born of the flesh is flesh. This nativity of Christ, then, or life, or death, or resurrection, or ascension, is indeed begun, but not yet completed. It is begun with the first just man, and it is consummated with the last; and through every [age] between it is carried on, as someone elegantly says: Under Noah, under David, under