HOMILY XCIX – SEVERUS OF ANTIOCH
ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE DAY IN WHICH, BY THE GRACE OF GOD, HE RECEIVED ORDINATION AND PROMOTION TO THE EPISCOPATE
(Translated into English from the French translation by Ignazio Guido (P.O. 22)
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Today some of those whose taste is drawn to the flesh and who are dazzled by the appearances of outward things, perhaps imagine ‘that I am overflowing with happiness and that I am in joy, because I have arrived at this day ‘which completes my fourth year of episcopacy?’ For my part, I acknowledge that I owe thanks to God, who, because of his charity, has not only called me to this dignity, “raised the poor from the earth and lifted the needy from the dunghill,” as David sang, but who has also given me abundant time to prepare myself for repentance, so that I may not perish with my sins and fall from the happy life. I tremble, however, and dread the present day,
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seeing it return periodically each year in the revolution of time, like those who, debtors of a sum of money that they have borrowed, when the interest has equaled the capital and that in this way their debt has doubled, dread the day of repayment when it is present. I cry out with the words of Jeremiah, full of groans, in the secret emotion of my heart and I say: The summer is past, and the harvest is past; and we, we are not saved. I am broken, I am in darkness, I am in doubt, I am oppressed with pains like a woman in childbirth.
For while God, as I said, because of his charity has lifted me up from the earth, I who was poor have not been raised up at the same time by the practices of perfection with him who lifted me up. Poor until now in good works, I am nailed to the ground, and I sit below, not having put to death those members which are on the earth, according to the warning of Paul, nor made my soul exalted and free. But I have taken pride in the episcopal anointing, and have remained in the mire of carnal passions, and as a result I have lost the fineness of my intellectual sense of smell and have let it disappear, so that I can no longer perceive the sweet
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smell of heavenly things. What remains for me, if not to weep, to kneel at the same time, to hide myself and to examine to what end these honorific functions would lead me, if we were to bring about a complete negligence. That the episcopate is a manifestation of spiritual works and not a dignity to which one can elevate oneself and be proud, as many think, we learn from the holy Books: If anyone, says Paul, desires the dignity of a bishop, he desires good works. This word makes it known that this dignity must be desired not by one who has not yet received this honor, but by one who has already received it, and who, being counted among the bishops, must desire and wish for an active and eloquent episcopate. For even he who has not yet obtained this honour, is rich in good works, is purified in himself, is enlightened in his thoughts, is not intoxicated with the madness of cupidity; even if honour comes to him, he flees from it, because no one takes it for himself, but when he is called by God, as the wise Paul says; and, to the one who calls him, he says like Moses: Appoint another who is capable, whom you will send. On the contrary, if someone, empty of beautiful manifestations and
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works of perfection, desires the dignity of bishop, it is certain that he wants to put on the episcopal coat like a lion’s skin and does not desire good works. For, if he desired these, he would have first practiced them in part; and, having first practiced them and being in turn seized by these works themselves, he would be purified; and, once purified, he would not desire a simple honour without action.
For I affirm that episcopal dignity resembles a house that one builds, which rises to a height, which is soon near to being finished and which is going to be covered with joists and boards. Just as he who builds a house, who reaches the upper part and rises little by little, does not uproot and break its foundations, but takes great care both for them and for the construction which advances little by little and makes it very strong and solid, so that it can support the weight that will rest on it; so he who reaches the dignity of a bishop must take care of the first degrees, as of the foundations and the construction, and this by the works themselves and not by word only, so that he sings with the
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singers, that he watches with those who watch, that he reads with the readers, that he serves with those who serve, that he prays with those who pray, that he offers the reasonable sacrifice with those who offer it, that he applies himself to every kind of ascetic works with those who apply themselves to it, that he runs with those who run the good race and that in this way he strengthens those who do not run uncertainly, that he fights with those who fight in the struggles, and that on all sides he makes more solid and that he strengthens at all times both the foundations and the building, so that they can support the weight of the episcopate imposed on them, lest – as the house of him who in the Gospels is called foolish, who had built it on the sand — the rain does not fall on this spiritual house, the torrents do not come and the winds do not blow — this indicates the necessary struggles of temptations — and that they do not beat this house, and that it does not fall and that its ruin is not very great.
In order to be able to bear the virtues of the episcopate, the bishop must therefore support his house by all these steps, as well as by tall cedars and cypresses which rise high and spread a sweet odor,
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because these degrees rest on the example of joists. It is about such joists that, in the Song of Songs, the bridegroom, who is Christ, says to his own bride, the Church: The joists of our house are cedars, the boards of our roof are cypresses.
Do you understand how the bridegroom called “our house” this house placed under the joists of which he has been speaking? Consequently, have you at the same time necessarily inquired what is its size, and what this house must be in which Christ comes to dwell? Is it not built and strengthened at all times by all these degrees? Did not Paul send such advice to Titus, indicating and prescribing what the bishop ought to be, giving himself in all things as an example of good works? And did he not serve the same things to the Corinthians, saying: I have been all things to all, that I might save men to the full? And let no one, hearing these words, think of me that I affirm something great and serious, and which surpasses power. For it is easy to learn that the things said by the Apostle are confirmed by the very nature of the facts; namely, that he
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whoever becomes a leader must perform the function of those who are subordinate to him, so that he serves as a model for them, so that they know how to be subordinate to the leader.
Please, in fact, let us leave the bishop aside for a bit, and also come to the general in our speech. Will he be able to convince the soldiers by giving them only words and by command ing them to arm themselves, or rather will he not convince them better if he arms himself at the same time as them and does what is proper to the soldier, shooting arrows, sometimes running at their head, sometimes running with them, and simultaneously entering into combat against the enemies, and, to put it simply, being their companion in the ranks and sharing equally their dangers to a great part? For if he does not do this but gives his orders with a proud and domineering spirit, using his tongue, speaking perhaps elegantly, making his words resound, but hiding his hands under his chlamys, his subordinates will mock his order, will envy his salvation which is harmless and contemptible, will close themselves and they will flee. And if they saw him threaten and add one of all
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the manners which are the prerogative of authority, it is perhaps against him, instead of the barbarians, that they would draw their swords, not consenting to submit to a vain and unmilitary pride and to an audacity which does not take up arms. And how would he be supported by the sailors or by the pilot who steers the ship, this owner of the ship who remains seated on the ends of the ship, and begins giving his orders aloud without touching with his men the ropes or the rudder, nor lifting with them the wood of the mast, nor going and coming everywhere on the ship, nor doing all that his subordinates must do? It is therefore certain for all that, if he does not take his care exactly, his ship will sink into the sea; and these sailors, having left him on deck in embarrassment and without any means of salvation, will entrust their own salvation to the waves. And one of two things: either he will perish himself with his ship, not being able to bear this loss and attaching himself to the profit of trade; or, finally, he too, will be one of those who navigate on the water, considering it pleasant to live this life without hope and enduring frequent anguish on the sea.
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After hearing these words, do you not clearly recognize that the leader must do and accomplish the offices proper to those who are ranked under him, without disdaining or despising the degrees of those who are subject, and without keeping himself away from their work as from something partly extraordinary and foreign. Such then is our state, when we compare and examine it with the condition of the general and the owner of a ship.
When I say our state, I mean the state of each one, rather than that of a great number, of which I am the first. Does he not think, he who from the group of cantors, has been inserted among the readers, fleeing like a trap the hymns and the office of the night, that he has found freedom, because he lies on his bed all night and says: “I will rise now,” while he lets out the snoring from his throat? And that other who, from the readers or cantors, has passed to the deacons, does he not set any store by singing or reading? Does he not hypocritically seek the functions of the diaconate, for the sole fact that he is clothed in a splendid tunic and is adorned and resplendent with a sumptuous and remarkable linen garment that the deacon wears on the shoulder? He forgets
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that this is the symbol of the wings which denote the agility, the speed and the mobility of the angelic armies which serve, and which are incorporeal. I also know many subdeacons who blush at this degree; and if it were not for their food which comes to them from the daily distributions, they would flee, as a dishonour, the charge of lighting the lamps of the holy house. They do not think that, if those who serve kings on earth and carry the lamps in their hands or perform any service, taken from among those who are not in sight and who are common – and who often have no other aim than to satisfy the belly! — if these are reputed to be happy, and, appear to those who are outside as resplendent and very beautiful, because they have a share in the honor that is attached to the royal house, those who serve the Creator of the universe and the King of kings enjoy a much greater honor — one cannot even say at what interval and at what distance — and they will enjoy a greater glory, when, in exchange for this service and the place occupied here below in the Church, they will receive another place before the judge of all the era, in this spiritual temple, which is holy and admirable by justice,
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about which David sings, saying: Happy are those who dwell in your house, they will glorify you forever; and: Happy is he whom you have chosen and led; he will dwell in your porches.
And that the charge of lighting the lamps of the temple of God does not belong at all to those who are small nor to those who are contemptible, I will clearly show this with the help of the sacred Books. For it was the high priest who was anointed first, the brother of Moses, Aaron, who was clothed in the priestly robe resplendent with gold and precious stones, and he received the order to perform this service himself with his own hands. In Numbers, in fact, it is described thus: And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to Aaron and you say: When you place the lamps of the church, it is on the front of the candlestick that the seven lamps shall give light. And Aaron did so; it is on one side only, on the front of the candlestick, that he lit the lamps, as the Lord had ordered Moses.
But for us, priests and bishops, the name of priest and bishop is thus as sufficient for us as the throne, and we have totally forgotten to attend to our service. And the example, of preferring to be known by names without action, has passed
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to those who are among the laity; and if by chance someone frequently enters the church, he calls himself a perseverer, and he puffs himself up and boasts of this title, while we do not even see him at night and he never goes with us to the oratories of the martyrs, and leaves as soon as he has said only the evening prayers with us.
But you will say in any case that you sing in your own way. Therefore, go out of the city, show perfect strength and in accordance with the law, and apply yourself to a philosophical separation. Why do you mix together the two kinds of life, that which is proper to the monastery and that which is proper to the city, which cannot be confused in their works? As long as you are in the city, you are bound to come to the church, so as not to deny the composition and unity of the members, to make complete at all times the body of Christ, which is the assembly of the faithful, so as not to break the bond by which the union of the Holy Spirit subsists, as Paul says. Or do you not hear Him say: One body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope of your calling? Why, by showing yourself, are you not also profitable to us by your example? Do you not think
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that, I woud rejoice in prayer and service more than you, which is done in tranquility? But I do not disturb the order, I know how to distinguish places and times, and I am not ignorant of what philosophy and solitude require, nor of what promises the life that Christians lead in the world as well as the feasts and the assembly in the church which are common to all ages. I pass over in silence those who have chosen for themselves the monastic life, both men and women, who say and who write in their letters and in their manuscripts: “such a one who is clothed in sackcloth”, “such a one who wears chains of iron”, “such a one who is a recluse”, and who forget that the Legislator says: Let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Such is the attention and care we have for names, and not for actions. All men, so to speak, seek to be seen as such, and not to be so. The cause of all this goes back to the head, to the bishop, on whose account the other members also have been corrupted. For if I were concerned with actions and not only with names, the others themselves would be concerned. Now if anyone calls me “bishop,”
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and not “archbishop” or “patriarch”, if you remove from me these two syllables, I suffer from it like someone whose extremities of the principal and necessary members of his body are cut off. But if I knew that when one desires the dignity of bishop, one desires good works, and that the increase of honour is an increase of works and not a renunciation of the previous degrees of the hierarchy, necessarily the deacon also would know that when one desires the diaconate, one desires a good work, and it would be the same for the priest as well, so that the honorary functions which are added afterwards and the elevation in the priestly order do not strip the one who is honored and do not deprive him or empty him of the previous degrees.
It is necessary to say, in this regard, also the word of Paul: Because we do not want to strip ourselves, but to put on the previous garment. For it is not the case that because we have put on the ministry of the priesthood over the previous degree, that now the deacon has disappeared, nor because the ministry of the diaconate has been added, that the cantor has gone away, and the reader has died out. This one person is all that, obliged to accomplish the work proper to all. And if this thought were
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really in our minds—I mean the accounts to be rendered and the terrible trial which will take place before the tribunal of Christ—necessarily, when an honour is added to us, we would not be puffed up by the names; but, fixing our eyes on the burden, we would drag ourselves along the earth and think with trembling: “What will happen to us then on the day of judgment?” What shall I do then? How can I not groan and weep bitterly, for not having hitherto touched the things which are before the entrance to the episcopate, and set foot on the threshold? For how great is the power of the first word, so to speak, which we address to the people, when we cry: “Peace be with you all”? And how far I remain from it! Or rather, I did not even imagine it in my dreams. For, as far as his own is concerned, each one must be peaceful, showing gentleness and gentleness towards his neighbor, according to the word said by the sons of Jacob to their brother Joseph: We are a peaceful people, and your servants are not spies; and according to this
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word which is sung by the prophet David: With those who hate peace, I was peaceful; and again, according to what is said by Paul by way of advice or warning: Covet peace with everyone; and let the peace of Christ abide in your hearts.
As for the one who announces peace to the Church of God, he is required to be not only peaceful, but also peacemakers, so that in the hearts of his hearers he may make peace, tranquility and calm in the manner of acting. He represents, in fact, Christ, the great supreme priest, according to the word of the economy, the one who is mediator between God and men, the one who has brought peace by the blood of his faith, as the Apostle says, whether what is on earth or what is in heaven; “what is on the earth”, on the one hand, because he has united the other peoples to Israel and he has made of the two categories one single Church, calling equally and with equal honour those who were part of these two categories; and “that which is in heaven”, on the other hand, because he has reconciled the heavenly Father with the entire human race, which was his adversary and which was justly
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detestable, and that he draws down from heaven the angels who glorify him saying: Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth, good will among men. Wherefore, when he made known that those who are peaceable hold his own place, he said: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God, as if he had said: “Because they shall be like me.”
How then am I a peacemaker? How shall I make peace in others, when I have not procured this peace for myself, and I have not yet obtained that the outward man be at peace with the inward man, the flesh lusting against the spirit, and the spirit being in opposition to the flesh without being able to overcome it, so that it is overwhelmed by the overflow of pleasures and gives way to anger and inclines toward the passions, their sisters? Who is the patriarch in this? Where is the archbishop? Let his character as a leader show itself in his time! Let his character as a leader dominate the shameful passions and let him not be dominated by them servilely! Let him take care of himself just like a servant, he who takes care of others! You see how far we are from the designation of peaceful; this designation is very vast and full of many divine meanings, and it requires much sweat and great struggles to be explained correctly,
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and it is a little difficult to understand. For the peaceable one who is so not only in speech, but also in conduct and in his appearance and in his attitude, and who distinguishes what is true peace from what is not, takes care to give peace to others. To have peaceful feelings towards everyone, this the property of the peaceable one. How? Not at all. For not being moved and not rising up in a sharp and abrupt manner against the one who lives in debauchery, if this happens, but closing and turning away our eyes and tolerating the pernicious loves of passion, this is not the property of the peaceful one, but, on the contrary, of him who increases and multiplies the combat with the passions, and delivers this unfortunate person to complete corruption and to ruin. But rebuking the fallen one, pricking him with remedies that instruct him, leading him to knowledge, having pity on him in this way, extinguishing the fire of concupiscence,
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to deliver and save him from madness, and to put calmness in his soul, this is truly the work of the peacemaker. With this thought in view, David sang: Let the righteous reprove me and rebuke me with mercy but let not the oil of sinners anoint my head. For mercy and peace consist in this, that you come as an adversary against the passions to cut them off; that you subdue the arrogant and proud by means which humiliate and that by means and artifices full of instruction and wisdom, gently and not all at once, you make him bow his high brow; that you do not take up the miser, all at once, to teach him renunciation, but that you first speak to him about the right processes and profits and that you then draw and extract from them the matter of his passion, and that you exhort him to share with the poor, and that you make him glimpse the spiritual profit, the kingdom of heaven. But to give power to the passions and to pass them under silence, to hide them in oneself, is the characteristic of a negative peace which does not know God, of the peace which is the mother of war and
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discord, which cannot but be divided and be unstable in a certain manner; for nothing is yet well established which has not a foundation in God. It is against such a peace that David guarded himself by saying: I envied the wicked, seeing the peace of sinners. This also leads us to the words of our God and our Saviour Jesus Christ who said: Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives, give I to you.
The peacemaker must also have a bearing in accordance with his works. Because the acceptance of persons or hypocrisy is enough to implant in the souls of the spectators a false air of combat, to make them fall on the obstacle and to lead them into the pit. For, such a one, when you show by black clothes a false appearance of piety and you let your beard grow and lower your eyelids and look toward the earth, taking on an appearance of sadness which does not exist, while you covet the goods of others and are quicker to ravish them than the wolves of Arabia, as the word of the prophet says, and while
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you are greedy to amass money, what peace will you give to those you are the leader of? On the contrary, what disturbance will you not cast among them? It is the property of the peacemaker not only to contrive to teach completely and properly what relates to the teaching of the preaching as regards the manner of conduct, but also to resolve learnedly and properly the questions which, in the sacred Books are supposed to present contradictions at times, to harmonize the doctrines of the Old Testament with those of the New, like the different strings of a single cithara which produce a single beautiful symphony, and which show that the God of the two Testaments is one and shut the atheistic mouth of Marcion and that of Mani, the miserable father of the Manicheans. To draw by the words of truth, as by the hands, the opposing heresies which stand as adversaries against each other and which break away on each side and arise one from the other by opinions which clash, for example that of Sabellius and that of Arius, that of Eutychus and that of Nestorius, to drag them here and there and to lead them to the intermediate path of the orthodox faith from which, blind, they have gone down and fallen, is still the work of the peaceful one and of him who knows how to reunite
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wisely those who are divided. Let Sabellius, indeed, be covered with confusion before the one essence of the Holy Trinity and let him pretend and present in vain the division of the divinity which does not exist! Let Arius blush at the beautiful distinction of the three hypostases and, because there is one and the same essence, let him not bring confusion! Let Eutyches reject imagination, seeing that one nature of God the Word is confessed, who was incarnated by taking flesh which is of the same essence as ours and is animated by a reasonable and intellectual Soul and which is not divided by the duality of natures after the union! Let him also approach and unite himself to the Church who trembles and is unreasonable in the horrible reasonings of Nestorius, seeing that God suffered in that which was capable of suffering — it is clear that it is in the flesh — and that the same one remained impassive! These are (there) the marks of the pacifics. For to anathematize only in an unreasonable manner through ignorance and lack of instruction, to call oneself orthodox, to exalt oneself with great words, to speak as a master as of the ramparts of a city and to neglect the salvation of others without extending a hand to those who are in error, this is not proper to peacemakers.
Because I am devoid of all these beautiful qualities which have been
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enumerated and which must be found in those who stand before the entrance to the episcopal dignity I pray to you all and I beg you to lend me tears and prayers, so that I am not asked to render a deficit account of each one, and so that, at whatever moment and even late, I have my eyes turned towards repentance and a complete conversion. For it is for this reason that I have applied towards you in different ways all the things that have been said, because it is upon me that the risk rests of the things that concern you all. By doing this, in fact, you will receive the reward from above and the kingdom of heaven; may we all obtain it by the grace and charity of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, to whom belongs praise, glory and power as well as to the Father and the holy and good and life-giving Spirit, now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen!