Selected Sermons, Volume 3

77 A Fourth on the Lord’s Resurrection

SERMON 77 A Fourth on the Lord’s Resurrection1 t is an unmistakable indication of complete and perfect devotion that at the time of the Passion all creation suffers together with its Creator. When the earth trembled, what flesh did not tremble, what mind did not become paralyzed, what innate talent has not been found wanting , when the sun set ahead of time, and when light dissipated? And so, brothers, our body also slumped over at that time, our capacity to understand died with him, our speech has been buried with its Creator, so as to be raised up to give him all the glory. This was the reason for my silence, this was why I was delayed in paying what I owed you, as I promised.2 And it is no wonder, brothers, if with all due respect and affection my preaching providentially followed its Provider even to the underworld, because without him I had nothing to give back to you, such great and good creditors as you are. But if there is anyone who is eager and zealous to exact his due and complains about the tardiness of the payment, let him not cease from raising objections about time, because my rich Lord increases the interest rate and pays back far greater interest on 25 1. This sermon was preached on Easter Sunday morning, when the Resurrection account from the Gospel of Matthew was read. As indicated below in n. 2, Sermons 74 (FOTC 17.128–32), 75, and 77 all refer to Chrysologus’s lack of preaching at the end of Lent, making it very likely that it was his custom not to preach during Passiontide (see Sermon 72a, n. 2). I agree with the assessment of F. Sottocornola, L’anno liturgico, 86–87 and 170–73. By contrast, V. Zangara, “I silenzi nella predicazione di Pietro Crisologo,” Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 32 (1996): 228–30, claims that the references to the preacher’s silence in Sermons 74, 75, and 77 are exceptions to Chrysologus’s usual practice of preaching during Passiontide, but Zangara fails to provide convincing evidence for this assertion. 2. See Sermons 74.1 (FOTC 17.123) and 75.1 for other examples of Chrysologus ’s not preaching in the period immediately preceding Easter. this very loan. So let the bountiful kindness of the Gospel reading now absolve us whom the obligations of our office have led and put into such great debt. 2. On the evening of the Sabbath, it says, which was beginning to dawn on the first day of the week (Mt 28.1). In the rising of the Lord not only is the law of human nature altered, but even the very order of creation is changed in a remarkable way. It is the evening that was beginning to dawn. Notice that when the Lord rises, evening does not bring darkness, but it begins to dawn, and what had been accustomed to be the start of night becomes the beginning of light.3 The evening that was beginning to dawn on the first day of the week. Just as mortality is being transformed into immortality, corruption into incorruption, flesh into God, so darkness is being transformed into light, such that night itself rejoices that it did not perish in this circumstance, but has merely been changed; it has surrendered its hold on gloom rather than on time; it was more than happy to lose the periodic cycles of its enslavement, so as to flow freely and burst forth into the liberty of unending light, as the prophet says: “And night is my illumination for my delights.”4 3. In the evening, which was dawning on the first day of the week. The Sabbath is happy that it has become second; the Sabbath, which by the command of the Law was groggy with leisure, now on account of the primacy of the Lord’s day is wondrously roused for works of divine power. The inactivity based on Jewish observance was making it a stranger to beneficial works of power, as the Lord says: “Is it unlawful on the Sabbath to grant a cure to the sick, aid to the afflicted, sight to the blind, and life to the dead?”5 And by interpreting it in this fashion they had 26 ST. PETER CHRYSOLOGUS 3. This alteration of the order of nature as a result of Jesus’ Resurrection is also indicated in Sermons 74.2 (FOTC 17...