St. Peter Chrysologus: The Holy Feast of Easter: Sermon 75

 

St. Peter Chrysologus: The Holy Feast of Easter: Sermon 75

 

TODAY'S FEAST, brothers, does not connect the old with the new, nor does it keep the flesh of the lamb for tomorrow, but while it makes the past a partner with the present in solemn devotion, and joins our Passover with the Passover that returns, it weans the infants newly regenerated, because as the Apostle says, "The old has passed away, [and] see all things have been made new." The year of the Lord progresses through seasons, it does not grow old, since it repeats its cycle for as long as it takes to lead us to the day of recompense.  Today's solemnity of Easter now withdraws from milk those whom it bore earlier, so that they might be strengthened by eating more solid food and be made into the perfect man of Christ.

 

2. That Abraham held a great banquet, and that he spread joy throughout all his house when Isaac was weaned, we know from what divine history relates.  And if the child born to aged parents,  indeed and only child of a barren mother, prompted and moved the hearts of the whole family to rejoice with dancing choruses, lyre, timbrel, and the psaltery all playing in harmony, how much more today is it appropriate for us to exult in spiritual hymns or canticles, when the numerous offspring of a fertile virgin are weaned?

 

Anna, barren like Sarah, wet her dry body and nature with the tears of her prayers for as long as posterity had been denied her over the lengthy period of her life. Since she had received Samuel as a gift from God, she soon returned him weaned as a gift to God, and she added her own happiness to the sacrificial victims to make a plentiful libation; all the more is it right for us to offer a sacrifice of praise, 10 to pay our vows, and to present sweet incense and offerings, as ample as any holocaust, to God the Father, since the Virgin Mother presents to the Father children from throughout the whole world who have been nourished and weaned and are as numerous as the stars of the sky, so that the words of the prophet might be fulfilled: 'You will bless the crown of the year with your bounty, and your fields will be full of a fertile harvest. "

 

3. So let no one believe that the saving mystery that we celebrate in this feast is of no benefit, nor think that we sew a new patch onto an old cloak,  where we join none of the old Jewish ways to the new Christian ones, knowing, as the Apostle teaches, that for us the whole of creation has emerged new in Christ,  but we contribute to their growth in heavenly virtue and in the knowledge of God. Consequently, while the recently born are trained in what they ought to do, and at the same time those who were born earlier15 are instructed in how much thanks they owe to God on account of their being perfected, those who have just been born  cleave to the neck and completely devote themselves to clinging to the breasts of their Mother the Church, they' swallow the food of innocence in their tender throats, give thought to extending their arms in holy work, and strive to make their trembling steps firm on the journey of faith. Are those who have been nourished now to be abandoned? Shouldn't they instead be governed by the care of the Father, by the hand of the Father, and by the will of the Father, and likewise be protected by the counsel of the Mother and by the faith of the Mother, such that they take and make off with not merely human things but even the saving divine wisdom?

 

4. Thus Jacob, very timid on his own, but quite daring when his mother provided her counsel, more symbolically than deceitfully came forward to make off with his father's blessing, for he did not lie when he said that he was the firstborn, since he was the first that heavenly grace, not mortal nature, generated. When he was wearing goatskin, he prefigured us who, in order to die to sin, at the encouragement of our Mother the Church put on the clothes of a mortified body and reek of the odor of the field with the continuous and abundant fruits of professing our faith, until we profit from deluding the Jews in their blindness and make off with the Father's blessing by the completely mysterious workings of faith, as the Apostle says: "Blindness has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the gentiles come in.”