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SERMON 23: A Second on Tricesima and on the Text: “Do not fear, little flock”
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SERMON 23 A Second on Tricesima1 2 ou have heard today how the Lord has joined the sound of the heavenly trumpet to the shepherd’s song, so that he might raise to divine matters the minds of his sheep that had been stooped down for so long, and immediately lift them up to the heavenly kingdom. Do not fear, little flock, it says, because it has conjointly pleased3 your Father to give you the kingdom (Lk 12.32). Humility has acquired what arrogance lost, and the little and meek flock has subdued every kind of savagery by its own gentleness. The little flock has conquered and crushed as many kinds of beasts as the nations were diverse that it put under the yoke of Christ. The flock that was little and meek, endured being put to death, and for a long time submitted to being devoured, until the cruel pagans, filled up with blood and flesh, after partaking of the pleasant food of the Gospel and the streams of the divine fountain, would shun all sustenance coming from the world of their own kind, and after having deteriorated from being human to becoming beasts they would return from being beasts to becoming human. Moreover, that the prophets experienced 96 1. See Olivar’s monitum in CCL 24.128. Tricesima refers to the thirtieth day before Easter, or the Second Sunday of Lent in some ancient liturgical texts. In a later era in Ravenna the Gospel text from Luke was read on the Second Sunday of Lent (a typographical error in the CCL monitum refers to the “Third” [tertia ] Sunday of Lent). Although the titles of the sermons do not come from Chrysologus himself (see Sermon 7, n. 1), it is possible that this is a Lenten sermon . See also F. Sottocornola, L’anno liturgico, 394–95. Sermons 22, 23, and 25 are on the same Gospel text and were preached in three different years (see A. Olivar, Los sermones, 261, and F. Sottocornola, L’anno liturgico, 394). 2. Lk 12.32–33. 3. The significance that Chrysologus attaches to complacuit (“conjointly pleased”) will be expounded in section 3 of this sermon. this, that the apostles accomplished this, that the martyrs endured this, Scripture attests in that instance where it says: “On your account we are being slain all day long; we are considered as sheep for the slaughter.”4 But for this flock of the new order to engage in battle, whereby the one who had been killed lives, the one who had fallen has conquered, and the one who loses his life finds it,5 it imitated its King, that sheep, and it followed that Lamb who “as a sheep was led to slaughter and as a lamb before its shearer, did not open its mouth.”6 The one who is silent suffers willingly ; he screams who is slaughtered unwillingly; one cannot bewail death if he has deigned to accept death and was not coerced . It is a mark of power when one willingly dies for many; when one is led to death unwillingly it is a matter of great distress : because the first arises out of contempt for death, the second out of one’s natural condition. So Christ is sheared like a sheep that is both willing and silent, in order to cover that nakedness that Adam first introduced . Just like a lamb he is killed so that by his sacrifice he may pardon the sin of the whole world. He lays down his life for the sheep7 in order to carry out both the devotion and the care of the shepherd. For you, therefore, he has become King, for you Priest, for you Shepherd, for you Sacrifice, for you the Sheep, for you the Lamb, for you for whom he had made everything he has become everything; and he who for himself never, but for you so often is changed; for your sake he is shown in various forms, he who remains in the form of his unique majesty. And why should I say more? God gives himself to you as a man so that you can bear it, because you are unable to endure him as he is. But let us hear now what such a Shepherd promises his little flock. 2. Do not fear, little flock, it says, because it has conjointly pleased your Father to give you the kingdom. What abundant goodness! What exceptional devotion! What unspeakable affection! The...