Saint Maximus, Bishop of Turin in Italy – Sermon on John the Baptist.
Sermon 88. On John the Baptist{1}.
1. Last Sunday, when we were asking pardon for our silence, we said that even if the bishops{2} were silent about the salvation of all, the Gospel teaching would not be silent, and that the divine words would make up for their silence{3}. For the divine Scripture always speaks and cries out, as it is written of John: I am the voice of one crying in the desert (John 1.23). For John did not only cry out at the time when he announced the Lord, the Savior, to the Pharisees and said: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God (Matt. 3.3), but he also cries out today among us, striking the desert places of our sins with the thunder of his voice, and although he has fallen asleep in a martyr’s holy death, still his voice lives. For he also says to us today: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight His paths. The divine Scripture, then, always cries out and speaks; hence God also says to Cain: The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me (Gen. 4.10). Blood, to be sure, has no voice, but innocent blood that has been spilled is said to cry out not by words but by its very existence{4} and to make demands of the Lord not with eloquent discourse but with anger over the crime committed – not to accuse the wrongdoer with words so much as to bind him by the accusation of his own conscience. For although the evil deed may perhaps be excused if it is talkatively explained away, it cannot be excused if it is made present to the conscience, for in silence and without contradiction the wrongdoer’s conscience always convicts and judges him{5}.
2. Today, therefore, John cries out and says: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight, and so forth. We are ordered, then, to prepare the way of the Lord – not a highway, namely, but a pure faith. For the Lord does not proceed along an earthly path but sets out in the recesses of the mind. If, therefore, there is on this way any unevenness of character, any rough unkindness, any filthy habit, we are ordered to clean it, to make it level, and to arrange it so that, when He comes, the Lord may not find in us anything that would make Him stumble but would instead discover a way that was clean because of chastity, easily traversable because of faith, and lofty because of almsgiving. And that the Lord is used to setting out on such a road the prophet mentions when he says: Make a road for Him who ascends over the setting sun; the Lord is His name (Ps. 68.4).
3. But let us see what road John, who orders that a way be prepared for the Lord, himself prepares for the Savior. Clearly he arranged and laid out his own pathway everywhere for the coming Christ, for, indeed, he was given to fasting, humble, frugal, and virginal. All these virtues of his the Evangelist describes when he says: But John had a garment of camel hair, and there was a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey (Matt. 3.4). What greater humility was there in the prophet than, disdaining soft clothing, to wear the harshness of hair? What more devout faith than, girt about with a belt, always to be ready for every serviceable act? What more noble abstinence than, despising the pleasures of this life, to feed on whirring locusts and wild honey? Since all these things were of use to the prophet, I think that there was something prophetic in them. For indeed, inasmuch as the precursor of Christ had a garment sewn out of the harshness of camels, what else does this mean but that Christ Himself, who was to come, would use the covering of a human body that had been made thick with the harshness of sins and that He would Himself, as if girt in the skin of a most unclean beast (that is, of the Gentile people), bear its deformity?{6} And what else does a leather belt show but this frail flesh of ours{7}, which before Christ’s coming was mastered by vices but after His coming would be constrained to virtue, and which previously grew fat through wantonness but would now become thin through abstinence?
4. And we read how blessed his death was – that a dancer{8}, the daughter of a king, should ask for his head in consequence of that enemy, sensual pleasure{9}. What is there to wonder at if a dancer kills a prophet? We know that wantonness is always the enemy of righteousness and that wickedness persecutes the truth incessantly. In this deed a great mystery is contained, for in fact this dancer must be compared to the Synagogue, which kills Christ while it behaves wantonly. That this dancer is the Synagogue the Lord tells the Jews: We sang for you and you did not dance (Luke 7.32). And it is evident why John’s head should have been removed from his body. John, as is known from the Scriptures, was an image of the law, but we read of the Lord that the head of a man is Christ (1 Cor. 11.3). When John’s head is removed from his body, then, Christ is in a certain way separated from the Jews, the practitioners of the law, for without the Savior there was left them a law that was lifeless and truncated{10}. From the moment when they began to be without a head the Jews have been utterly ignorant of divine matters.
5. He makes a road for the Lord, then, who, among the other virtues of continence, does not go outside the bounds of matrimony nor sully the prescribed limit of marriage by an adulterous union. For there are some who, when they have married wives in lawful fashion, associate with concubines contrary to the divine law, not realizing that by acting against marriage they have bound themselves by their own fetters. For one who marries a wife in lawful fashion professes that he will not act against the law. Consequently one who ignores his promise by taking an adulteress to himself declares himself guilty. But suppose someone says: “I have no wife; therefore I have taken a little serving girl for myself.” Hear what the Scripture says to Abraham: Drive out the slave and her son! For the son of the slave shall not be heir with the son of the free woman (Gen. 21.10). If, therefore, the son of the slave is not an heir, neither is he a son. Why, then, is such a union sought, whose offspring can be an heir in terms neither of succession nor of blood? For one who does not have the right of birth cannot have a participation in inheritance either. Why, I say, is such concubinage sought, from which are born not the children of matrimony but witnesses to adultery? Why are such children conceived, who are not an honor to their father but a shame? Scripture says: The children of adulterers (Wisd. 3.16), and so forth. Your companion{11}, then, if she is endowed with such character that she merits your company, should also merit the name of wife. Offer your concubine liberty and the name of wife, therefore, so as not to be an adulterer but rather a husband{12}.
6. But that Christian also makes a road for the Lord who offers Him the faithful service of his profession and guards the chastity that he has promised as much in mind as in body. For there are many who, while intending a single life, are unable to be single but seek concubinage for themselves – and that among the brethren! For you find a Christian monk who does not endure a brother but more willingly endures a sister, who does not hearken to his senior who advises beneficial things but hearkens to a young woman who laughingly says unbecoming things, whose soul cannot be incorrupt even if his body is incorrupt{13}.
And that cleric also makes a road for the Lord who lives according to the gospel and submits to the bishop in all things. For some, since they are less submissive, act in an annoying way when they are reproached by their seniors and say: “The bishop{14} is very angry; he should be more patient.” Listen, then, excellent cleric! Do you demand patience of the bishop and not demand discipline of yourself? Do you not know that it has been granted to me to make a reproach occasionally for the sake of salvation, but that you have never been conceded the right to sin? For the Apostle says: Rebuke when convenient and inconvenient, reproach (2 Tim. 4.2). Be submissive to the bishop in all things, then, if you wish him to be mild in all things.”
The Sermons of St. Maximus of Turin, trans. by B. Ramsey, New York 1989, p. 208-211.
1 The latter half of §3 is reminiscent of Ambrose, Exp. evang. Luc. 2.69-70.
2 sacerdotibus, forms of which are also used in §6, except in the one instance noted: cf. Sermon 3 n. 2.
3 The previous sermon, preached “last Sunday,” cannot be placed.
4 Cf. Sermon 16.3.
5 Cf. Sermon 58.2 ad fin.
6 On the camel’s deformity cf. also Sermons 32.1 (withn. 3), 88.3, 95. On the camel as an image of the Gentiles cf. Hilary, In Matt. 19.11. Christ is Himself compared with a camel in Augustine, Quaest. evang. 2.47 (cf. Maximus, Sermon 32 n. 1); Enarr. in ps. 110.6; Sermon Caillau-Saint-Yves II.19.5 (MLSuppl. 2.438).
7 Leather, obtained from a mortal animal, symbolizes mortality: cf. Gregory of Nyssa, V. Moysis 2.22; Jerome, Ep. 23.4; Augustine, Enarr. in ps. 103, serm. 1.8. The idea is ultimately a Pythagorean one: cf. J. Quasten, “A Pythagorean Idea in Jerome,” Amer.Jour. of Philology 63 (1942) 207-15.
8 psaltria, which is used in the following case as well.
9 Cf. Matt. 14.6-11.
10 On John’s decapitation as an image of the Jews’ separation from Christ cf. Origen, In Matt. 10.22; Jerome, In Matt. 14.11.
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12 Maximus’ first argument against an unmarried man who takes a concubine is that the offspring of such a union would have no right to inherit, which is a declaration consonant with Roman law: cf. Cod. Theod. 4.6.8, which, however, made it possible for illegitimate children to inherit if they were actually included in a will. From there Maximus goes on to argue further that these offspring would be “the children of adulterers” – a false statement, strictly speaking, if neither parent were married.
13 Maximus is perhaps alluding here to the practice of virgins of both sexes living together in what was professedly a spiritual relationship. The women involved in such a situation were called variously agapetae, syneisaktoi, and virgines subintroductae. The custom, which seems to have had its roots in the second century, was repeatedly denounced by the official Church. Cf. DACL 10.2.1881-88.
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11.09.2024