Cheesefare Wednesday

Our Lord and Savior exhorts us through the prophet and advises us how we ought to come to him after much negligence, saying, "Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord who made us"; and again, "Return to me with your whole heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning." If we notice carefully, dearest brethren, the holy days of Lent signify the life of the present world, just as Easter prefigures eternal bliss. Now just as we have a kind of sadness in Lent in order that we may rightly rejoice at Easter, so as long as we live in this world we ought to do penance in order that we may be able to receive pardon for our sins in the future and arrive at eternal joy. Each one ought to sigh over his or her own sins, shed tears and give alms in such a way that with God's help he may always try to avoid the same faults as long as he lives. Just as there never has been, is not now and never will be a soul without slight sins, so with the help and assistance of God we ought to be altogether without serious sins.

(Verse 12 and following) Now therefore says the Lord: Turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning; and tear your hearts, not your clothing, and turn to the Lord your God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and relents from punishing. Who knows if he will turn and forgive, and leave a blessing behind him, a sacrifice and offering to the Lord your God? LXX: And now says the Lord our God: Turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, with sackcloth, with weeping, and with mourning; and tear your hearts, not your clothing, and turn to the Lord your God; for he is merciful and compassionate, patient and full of mercy, and repents of evil. Who knows if he will turn and have mercy on him, and leave behind him a blessing, sacrifice, and offering to the Lord our God? The beginning chapter from the place where it is written: Blow the trumpet in Zion, shout in my holy mountain; let all the inhabitants of the earth be troubled, until that place where we read: Great is the day of the Lord and very terrible, who shall be able to endure it? By the translation of locusts, it announces the coming of the Chaldeans, and what evil things are to come to the people. Now it provokes them to repentance, and exhorts them to turn to the Lord, so that, being corrected in their whole mind, they do not suffer what the Lord threatens, and the sense is: All the things that are contained in the previous discourse, therefore I have spoken, so that I might terrify you with my threat. But convert to me with your whole heart, and show repentance of the mind with fasting and weeping and lamentation; so that now, fasting, you may afterwards be satisfied; now, weeping, you may afterwards laugh; now, lamenting, you may afterwards be comforted. And because it is customary, in times of sadness and adversity, to tear one's garments, as the high priest is mentioned to have done to increase the guilt of the Savior in the Gospel (Matthew 26), and as we read that Paul and Barnabas, upon hearing words of blasphemy, did (Acts 14); therefore, I command you, never tear your garments, but rather the hearts that are full of sins, which, like wineskins, will burst open if they are not torn willingly. And when you have done this, return to your Lord God, whom your previous sins have made a stranger to you: and do not despair of the forgiveness of sins because of their magnitude; for great mercy will wipe away great sins. For He is kind and merciful, preferring the repentance of sinners to their death, patient and abundant in mercy, not imitating human impatience; but waiting for our repentance for a long time: and He is steadfast, whether the sinner repents of his wickedness, so that if we repent of our sins and He repents of His threats, He will not inflict the evils He has threatened, and by the change of our decision, He Himself will change. However, in this place, we should not consider malice contrary to virtue, but rather affliction, according to what we read elsewhere: Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof (Matt. VI, 34). And: If there is malice in the city, which the Lord does not bring (Amos III, 6). Similarly, because he had said above, kind and merciful, patient and abundant in mercy, and excellent, or repentant over malice, lest the greatness of mercy make us negligent, he joins in the person of the Prophet and says: Who knows whether he will turn and forgive, and leave behind a blessing? I exhort, he says, that which is mine, to repentance, and I know that God is ineffably merciful, saying with David: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy, and according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my iniquity (Psalm 50, 1, 2). But because we cannot comprehend the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, I hesitate and wish rather than presume, saying: who knows if he will turn and forgive? What someone says, either it is impossible or difficult must be felt: Sacrifice and offering to the Lord our God, so that after he has given the blessing and forgiven our sins, we may be able to offer sacrifices to God.

I, the messenger of repentance, say unto you, Fear not the devil; for I was sent to be with you who repent with all your heart, and to make you strong in faith. Trust God, then, ye who on account of your sins have despaired of life, and who add to your sins and weigh down your life; for if ye return to the Lord with all your heart, and practise righteousness the rest of your days, and serve Him according to His will, He will heal your former sins, and you will have power to hold sway over the works of the devil.

Let each one confess his sin, I beseech you, brethren, while he who has sinned is still in this world, while his confession can be admitted, while the satisfaction and remission effected through the priest is pleasing with the Lord. Let us turn to the Lord with our whole mind, and, expressing repentance for our sin with true grief, let us implore God's mercy. Let the soul prostrate itself before him; let sorrow give satisfaction to him; let our every hope rest upon him. He himself tells how we ought to ask. He says, "Return to me with all your hearts, in fasting and in weeping, and in mourning, and rend your hearts, not your garments." Let us return to the Lord with a whole heart; let us placate his wrath and displeasure by fastings, weepings and mournings, as he himself admonishes.

How well does the holy prophet teach that the seeds of good works must be watered by a river of tears! No seeds germinate unless they are watered; nor does fruit come forth from the seed if deprived of the aid of water. Accordingly, we too, if we wish to keep the fruits of our seeds, let us not stop watering our seeds with tears that must be poured out more from the heart than from the body. Therefore it is said to us through the prophet that we rend "our hearts and not our garments," something we can do when we recall that we ourselves, even if not in deed, frequently sin at least in thought. Because the "earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind" and our land does not cease to produce thorns and thistles for us. We are unable to get to eating our bread, unless we will have been worn out by weariness and the sweat of our brow.

Another disease is added to the original cause and a new wound inflicted, and all that is contrary is applied, all that is dangerous is drunk. Under this evil especially does this brotherhood toil, adding new sins on top of old faults. Therefore it has burst forth into vice, and more grievously still, is now racked by a most destructive wasting disease. What then shall I now do, I who as priest am compelled to cure? It is very late in such cases. But even so, if there is any one of you who can bear to be cut and cauterized, I can still do it. Behold the scalpel of the prophet: "Return," he says, "to the Lord your God and together with fasting and weeping and mourning rend your hearts." Do not fear this incision, dearly beloved. David bore it. He lay in filthy ashes and had his appearance disfigured by a covering of rough sackcloth. He who had once been accustomed to precious stones and to the purple clothed his soul in fasting. He whom the seas, the forests, the rivers used to serve, and to whom the bountiful land promised wealth, now consumed in floods of tears those eyes with which he had beheld the glory of God. This ancestor of Mary, the ruler of the Jewish kingdom, confessed that he was unhappy and wretched.

"Rend your hearts, not your garments," that is, have recourse to thoughts of compunction, soften the obduracy of your thinking, accept beneficial advice, abandon the way of vice and travel by that way which leads directly to God. After all, many are the founts of compassion and mercy that flow from him, and in his exercise of longsuffering he is not in the custom of putting his threats into effect. In fact, he indicated as much by saying "repenting of the troubles," that is, by instilling dread by the threats of punishment, and by the changes in human beings for the better transforming the threats into something pleasant. The God of all, you see, does not intend one thing at one time and another thing at another, or like us repent of what he does. Rather, while making threats he has mercy within himself, and he offers it to those who are sorry for their sins, and while making promises of good things he knows those who are good and those who are unworthy of his gifts, extending them to the former and giving to the latter the opposite of what he promises.

We should enter his house in sackcloth and lament night and day between the porch and the altar, in piteous array, and with more piteous voices. [We should] cry aloud without ceasing on behalf of ourselves and the people, sparing nothing, either toil or word, which may propitiate God. [We should] say, "Spare, O Lord, your people, and give not your heritage to reproach," and the rest of our prayer; surpassing the people in our sense of the affliction as much as in our rank, instructing them in our own persons in compunction and correction of wickedness, and in the consequent longsuffering of God, and cessation of the scourge. Come then, all of you, my brethren, "let us worship and fall down, and weep before the Lord our maker"; let us appoint a public mourning in our various ages and families; let us raise the voice of supplication. Let this, instead of the cry which he hates, enter into the ears of the Lord of Sabbaoth. Let us anticipate his anger by confession;13 let us desire to see him appeased, after [his wrath]. Who knows, he says, if he will turn and choose again, and leave a blessing behind him?

The prophet in effect says what you need to do. I know, however, that you will not really repent before you are deported. But, when you would have done penance for your sins after being punished by captivity, then God will take care of you and will bring you back to your land.

Since, as I said, there are many kinds of proclamations, let us listen to the trumpet blast of the prophet: "Blow a trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast." This is a warning trumpet, and it earnestly commands us that when we fast, we should do it in a holy manner, for God is holy and has pleasure in his holy people. Not everyone, however, who calls upon God honors him. Some defile him—although they don't actually defile him: that's impossible. But they do defile their own consciences concerning him. The apostle Paul tells us how it is that some people dishonor God: those who break the law dishonor God. So the prophet said, in order to point out those who pollute the fast, "Sanctify a fast." Many people, though they go through the motions of a fast, are still polluted in their hearts because they do evil against their brothers and sisters or because they dare to cheat. And many, if nothing else, think more highly of themselves than of their neighbors, thereby committing a great offense.

If these [vessels] were approved by the Lord it was at a time when the priests had to offer victims and when the blood of sheep was the redemption of sins. They were figures typifying things still future and were "written for our admonitions upon whom the ends of the world are come." But now our Lord by his poverty has consecrated the poverty of his house. Let us, therefore, think of his cross and count riches to be but dirt. Why do we admire what Christ calls "the mammon of unrighteousness"? Why do we cherish and love what it is Peter's boast not to possess? Or if we insist on keeping to the letter and find the mention of gold and wealth so pleasing, let us keep to everything else as well as the gold. Let the bishops of Christ be bound to marry wives, who must be virgins. Let the best-intentioned priest be deprived of his office if he bears a scar and is disfigured. Let bodily leprosy be counted worse than spots on the soul. Let us be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, but let us slay no lamb and celebrate no mystic Passover, for where there is no temple, the law forbids these acts. Let us pitch tents in the seventh month and noise abroad a solemn fast with the sound of a horn.

(Verse 15 and following) Blow the trumpet in Zion: sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people: sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and those who still nurse at the breast. Let the bridegroom come out of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet: between the porch and the altar let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say: Spare, O Lord (Vulgate adds, spare), your people, and do not let your heritage become a reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why do they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?' LXX: Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes; let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, and the bride from her dressing room. Between the vestibule and the altar, let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep and say: 'Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not give Your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'" } Still he exhorts them to repentance, before the enemy army comes. Above, he said: Blow the trumpet in Zion, wail on my holy mountain, and so on, because the day of the Lord is coming, the day of darkness and gloom, the day of clouds and whirlwinds, announcing to you a numerous and powerful people that will come, which will overthrow your possessions and cities. Now because I am kind and merciful, patient, and abundant in mercy, I again command and say: Blow the trumpet in Zion, and preach repentance to the peoples; sanctify the fasting, preach healing, or gathering, of which we have already spoken: gather the people, so that the one who had sinned by being dispersed, having been gathered, may cease to sin. Sanctify the Church so that no one in the Church is not holy, lest your prayers be hindered and a small amount of yeast corrupts the whole batch (I Cor. V). Unite or choose elders, so that it is not age but holiness that is chosen in them. Also gather little children and those nursing at the breast, so that there is no age that does not turn to the Lord. Little children and infants, of whom we read in the Psalms and in the Gospel: 'From the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise' (Psalm VIII, 3; Matthew XXI, 16). Petrus says about those who are nourished with milk without guile or deceit (1 Peter 2), to whom Paul also speaks: I gave you milk to drink, not solid food (1 Corinthians 3:2), whom the Savior also mentions: Do not despise one of these little ones (Matthew 18:10). Let the bridegroom also come out of his chamber, and the bride out of her bridal chamber, so that in the time of fasting, calling, assembly, sanctification of the Church, election of the elders, gathering of the little children and those who suck the breast, the bridegroom and bride do not serve the wedding work, as it is allowed by the Law, not to go to war. Therefore, the Apostle commanded that we should temporarily abstain from sexual relations in order to devote ourselves to prayer (1 Corinthians 7). So, someone who claims to be doing penance through self-discipline, fasting, and almsgiving, promises in vain unless they leave their bed and fulfill chaste repentance with a holy and pure fast. And what follows: 'Between the vestibule and the altar, the priests will weep.' For the vestibule, some have interpreted it as 'seventy steps,' others as 'the porch,' and Theodotion as 'the entrance hall.' It is what we can call the area in front of the temple doors and portico. And note what the (others, that) priests who are ministers of the Lord should do, that they should weep between the temple and the altar, and say with the Apostle: Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is scandalized, and I am not burned? (II Cor. XI, 29) And: Weep with those who weep. And the suitable place for repentance and confession is the temple and the altar: and it teaches what the priests should say, or rather how to pray to the Lord: Spare, O Lord, your people; when they sinned, they were called not your people: now that they have turned away from vices, they are called your people. And do not give your inheritance into disgrace, so that nations may rule over them. The hidden riddle has been revealed. For that people, numerous and strong, who are described by the names of locusts, and caterpillars, and worms, and rust, are now shown more clearly who they are: So that nations may rule over them, He says. But the inheritance of the Lord is given into disgrace when they have served their enemies and the nations have said: Where is their God, whom they boasted to be their ruler and defender? We can interpret nations and opposing powers, which as long as we do not repent, dominate us, and reproach and say: Where is their God? The Jews refer this place to Gog and Magog, the most savage nations, which they say will come against Israel in the last days, as is more fully written in Ezekiel.

He addressed them piously. "Have you not read," he said, "what divine authority has prescribed to a sinful people through the prophet: 'Be converted to me with all your heart, in fasting and in weeping,' and a little later: 'Sanctify a fast,' he says, 'call an assembly, gather the congregation,' and all that follows? Therefore, fulfill with worthy actions what you teach, that you may perhaps escape the evil of the present time. And let nobody, on any account, go out on his field as if he could ward off the locusts by human effort, lest God's wrath be provoked even more." Without delay everybody gathered in the church, and they all, each in his place, recited the psalms, as was the custom. Every age and sex, even those who could not yet speak, offered a prayer to God with tears, alms were given unceasingly, and every good work that the present emergency demanded was carried out as had been prescribed by the servant of God.

Devout fasting has a very great value for gaining the mercy of God and for strengthening human frailty. We know this from the teaching of holy prophets, dearly beloved. They insist that the arousal of divine justice—which the people of Israel frequently brought upon themselves in punishment for their wickedness—could not be placated except by fasting. Joel the prophet warns us in saying, "The Lord God says these things: 'Turn to me with all your heart, in fasting, in weeping and in mourning. Rend your hearts, and not your garments. Be converted to the Lord your God, because he is merciful and patient and magnanimous and rich in mercy.' " At another point, the same prophet says, "Make a holy fast, preach healing, call together the people, make holy the assembly." This exhortation, dearly beloved, is what we must embrace in our times also. We must of necessity preach the remedy of this healing, so that Christian devotion in the observance of that ancient means for sanctification might acquire what the Jewish transgression lost.

Who will cry aloud, "Spare your people, O Lord, and do not give your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them"? Noah, Job and Daniel stood together as men of prayer. Who will pray for us, that we might have a slight respite from warfare and recover ourselves?

(Verse 18 and following) The Lord was zealous for His land, and spared His people. And the Lord answered and said to His people: Behold, I will send you grain and wine and oil, and you will be filled with them, and I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations. And I will remove him who is from the north far away from you, and I will drive him into a dry and desolate land: his face will be towards the eastern sea, and his end towards the western sea. And his stench will rise up, and his rottenness, for he has acted arrogantly. LXX: And the Lord was jealous for his land and spared his people and the Lord answered and said to his people: Behold, I will send you grain and wine and oil, and you will be filled with them, and I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations, and I will drive away the one from the north and bring him into a land that is without water, and I will destroy his face in the first sea and his hind parts in the last sea: and his stench will rise, and his decay will rise, because his works are magnified. After the priests prayed for the people and said: Spare, Lord, your people, and do not give your inheritance into reproach, and the people did what was commanded, to sanctify the fast, to preach healing, to gather (or compel) the multitude, to sanctify the Church, to choose the old men, to gather the little ones and those suckling at the breast, and for the bridegroom to go forth from his bed, and the bride from her chamber, and to serve not the flesh and pleasure, but the soul and tears. The Lord was zealous for his land, which he had previously treated as if it were foreign, and he had allowed the locusts to devastate it. He had spared the repentant ones so much that he made them worthy of his response and said, 'Because the locusts, the cankerworm, and the mildew have destroyed all your crops, I will give you grain and everything else that the prophet has described, and I will not deliver you to captivity again. I will also keep the Assyrians and the Chaldeans from the north, especially those from Babylon, far away from you.' As it is written, 'A numerous and mighty people, with fire devouring before them and flames burning behind them, like the appearance of horses.' And I will cast him into a land of solitude, says he, and his former parts shall fall into the Eastern Sea, and his latter parts into the Western Sea, and his stench shall ascend, that is, the one from the North, and his decay, because he has acted arrogantly. Often I have heard it said under the figure of the flight of locusts to describe the assault of the Chaldeans, by which Judaea was laid waste. Therefore, he keeps the metaphor in the remaining parts, and he speaks in this way, according to the location of the province, as if he seems to refer not to enemies, but to locusts. Even in our times, we have seen swarms of locusts cover the land of Judea, which later, with the mercy of the Lord, were driven by the wind into the sea, between the vestibule and the altar, that is, between the place of the cross and the resurrection, while the priests and the people were praying to the Lord and saying: Spare your people. The first and the last were cast into the sea. Understand the first sea that is near the desert and faces the East, which is the place where there were once Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which is now called the Dead Sea because no living creatures exist there." } But the western sea, which leads to Egypt, has on its shore Gaza, Ascalon, Azotus, Joppa, Caesarea, and other coastal cities. And when the shores of both seas were filled with heaps of dead locusts disgorged by the waters, the stench and decay of them was so harmful that it corrupted the air, and a pestilence arose affecting both animals and humans. The learned reader may inquire where this was done literally regarding the Chaldeans. Not long after these prophecies were made, as we read in Isaiah, one hundred eighty-five thousand Chaldeans were struck down by a raging angel in one night under the reign of King Hezekiah (Isa. XXXVII). This we will say according to history. However, according to allegory, every soul is the Lord's earth, in which the father of a family sows his seed, which when it grows among the wheat produces weeds, that is, oats and darnel, and offends its Lord. But afterwards it repents, and with weeping says: Spare, O Lord, your people. The Lord is zealous for his earth, and he will spare it, which he had previously despised, and he addresses it with his own words, saying: I will send you grain, of which it is written: Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it produces many fruits (John XII): and wine that gladdens the heart of man, and oil that makes the face shine, so that the old sorrow of sins may be tempered by the joy of wheat and wine and oil, that is, the joy of virtues, and they will have such an abundance of all good things that they will be filled and satisfied. And when they have achieved this, they will never be handed over as a reproach to the nations about whom the Apostle speaks: Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual wickedness in the celestial places (Ephesians 6:12). Also, the one who is from the north (about whom Jeremiah speaks: From the north evil will be kindled on all the inhabitants of the earth (Jeremiah 1:14): about whom Solomon also writes: The north wind is extremely harsh). I will remove him far away from you, and I will expel him into an uninhabited and deserted land, which has no knowledge of God, in which the Holy Spirit does not dwell. And his appearance will be in the first and last sea, among those who have opened the door of sin for him, and with whom he will remain until the end of his life, and its stench and decay even rises against those who promise great things to themselves, and they fall because of their pride: for human frailty is never secure, and the more we grow in virtues, the more we ought to fear falling from the heights. According to the letter, the swarms of locusts are more often brought by the south wind than the north wind, that is, they do not come from cold, but from heat: but since he was speaking about the Assyrians, putting the similitude of locusts, he included the north wind, so that we understand not a true locust, which usually comes from the south, but under the locust we understand the Assyrians and Chaldeans.

Joel, the prophet, offers evidence about [the devil] with these words: "And I will remove far off from you the northern one, and I will drive him into the land thirsty and desert, and I shall expel his face into the nearest sea and his hinder parts into the utmost sea." We thank you, Lord, for this arrangement. What would the devil do if free, when he afflicts the world when bound?

"I will remove the northerner," both the Assyrian and Babylonian. Someone may ask, "Since for its position Babylon is not situated north of Jerusalem, why does God say through the prophet, 'I will remove the northerner far from you' and 'Out of the north evil shall break forth upon' these people"? And we answer that first of all, these words are not said in consideration of the geographical position of Babylon and Jerusalem but of those northern nations subject to the Babylonians—the Arzanites, the Araratites2—who will come down to Jerusalem with the Babylonians. Second, it is because those who want to reach Jerusalem from the regions of Babylon, Persia and the east go up toward the region of the north and then come down toward Jerusalem in the south.

(Verse 22 onwards) Do not be afraid, O land; rejoice and be glad, for the Lord has done great things. Do not fear, you animals of the field, for the pastures in the wilderness are becoming green. The trees are bearing their fruit; the fig tree and the vine yield their riches. Be glad, O children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for he has given you the autumn rains for your vindication. He sends you abundant showers, both autumn and spring rains, as before. The threshing floors will be filled with grain; the vats will overflow with new wine and oil. I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten— the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm — my great army that I sent among you. My strength is great, which I have sent upon you: and you will eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of your God, who has worked wonders with us, and my people will not be put to shame forever. And you will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and I am the Lord your God, and there is no other, and my people will not be put to shame forever. Rejoice, O earth, and be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has magnified and done great things: believe, O animals of the field, for the meadows of the wilderness have put forth their greenery, because the tree has produced its fruit, the fig tree and the vine have given their strength. And the children of Zion, rejoice and be glad in the Lord your God, for He has given you the food of righteousness, and has showered upon you a timely and late rain, as in the beginning, and the barns will be filled with wheat, and the vats will overflow with wine and oil. And I will compensate you for the years in which the locust, the beetle, the mildew, and the caterpillar have consumed your crops. My great strength, which I have sent upon you, will sustain you and you will eat and be satisfied. You will praise the name of your God, who has done wonders with you, and my people will never be put to shame. You will know that I am in the midst of Israel, and I am the Lord your God, and there is no other besides me. And my people will never be put to shame. He now promises the opposite of what he had threatened above. He had said before: the fire consumes the beautiful things of the desert, and the flame sets ablaze all the wood of the region, and the beasts of the field, like a dry patch of land, look up to you as they thirst for rain: because the springs of water have dried up, and the fire has devoured the beautiful things of the desert. Now he mitigates sadness with joy, and turns tears into laughter. Do not be afraid, he says, animals of the region: because the beautiful things of the desert have budded forth: because the tree has brought forth its fruit, the fig and the vine have given their power: and there will be such abundance of all things, that there will by no means be a lack of wheat, wine and oil for you to be satisfied with; but the threshing floors will be filled with wheat, and the wine presses will overflow with wine and oil, so that you may not only eat for yourselves, but also be able to provide for others. To the sons of Zion also He speaks specially, that they may exult and rejoice, not in any trivial thing; but in the Lord their God, who has given them the nourishment of righteousness. And as the Seventy have translated it, He gives them both the early and the late rain, that they may eat and be glad, and praise the name of their Lord God, who has done wonders with them, and that they may by no means be put to shame; and that they may know that the Lord God of Israel dwells among them, and besides Him there is no other, for the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father; and His people will not be put to shame forever. We believe that these things happened literal, because they were promised by the Lord, and that the past sterility was compensated by new crops: so that whatever the locust, the cankerworm, the mildew, and the caterpillar had consumed, would be replenished in the following years. We wonder why the caterpillar is called the strength, or virtue of the Lord, and not only virtue, but great virtue? How was the power of God shown in the plagues of the Egyptians by small animals, especially the gnats, which are such small mosquitoes that they can hardly be seen with the eyes. Thus, now, in a small and slow-moving little worm, which can barely move and is crushed by a light touch, the power of God and the frailty of humans are demonstrated. Not that God cannot overturn the earth and cover everything with a flood, or consume everything with lightning at His command and the majesty of His power; but He shows human frailty through small, and, so to speak, tiny bodies. Therefore, we often respond to Marcion and other heretics who tear apart the old Testament, that God made even fleas and mosquitoes and bugs, and creatures like them, in order to show the frailty and weakness of our flesh, which is so insignificant that it is wounded by such small things. But if a slow and tiny caterpillar is stronger than a human, why does the earth and ashes, being from which man is called, boast? Some interpret this place as follows: On the right and on the left, we read the virtues and powers of God, which the Greeks call δυνάμεις. On the right, Seraphim and Cherubim, and all the angelic powers; on the left, opposing strengths, of which it is written: He sent upon them the wrath of his indignation, anger, and tribulation, by sending evil angels (Ps. LXXVII, 49); of which Micheas also speaks in the book of Kings: I saw the Lord God of Israel sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left (3 Kings XXIII). I think the left spirit was the one who went out and stood before the Lord and said, 'I will deceive Ahab and go out and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets.' To the power that was suitable for deceiving and skilled in causing destruction, and had deceived many before, God speaks: 'You will deceive and prevail, go out and do so.' That spirit who tormented Saul, about whom his servants said, 'Behold, an evil spirit from God is afflicting you' (1 Samuel 16:15), was from the left side, they minister to the Lord to punish those who have deserved to suffer for their sins. For not only are men ministers and avengers of His wrath upon those who do evil, and not without cause do they bear the sword; but there are also contrary powers, which are called the fury and wrath of God, which the prophet, declining, says: Lord, do not rebuke me in Your fury, nor chastise me in Your anger (Ps. 6:1). The Apostle delivered such (so to speak) interrogators and torturers to destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved (1 Cor. 5), of whom Satan is, to whom he delivered others to learn not to blaspheme (1 Tim. 1)." } These things about the caterpillar, why it is called the power of God. Let us move on to the order of spiritual intelligence: Do not be afraid, O earth, indeed trust and rejoice, you who had previously lost the Lord's seed with your dryness: for the Lord has magnified, so as to show mercy to you, to such an extent that even the animals of the region and the deserted solitude are filled with joyful new growth, and the wood of the cross bears its fruit, and the sweetest gifts of the Holy Spirit bestow their abundance to all. You also, whom I rightly call sons of Zion and of the Church after repentance, rejoice and be glad; for God the Father has given you a teacher of righteousness or has granted you the nourishment of righteousness, and has caused the rains of temporal and late (Isa. XXX) to come down upon you. Rain is said to be late when we first receive the rain of doctrine; it is said to be late when we receive the fruits of our labor and attain to a perfect knowledge of the holy Scriptures. There may be temporary and late rain, the old and new Testament received. And not only that, he said, he did not only give this; but he made you abound with new fruits of virtues, and be satisfied and intoxicated with wheat, wine and oil, of which we have often spoken. And the years that you had lost in disturbances under the previous rulers, when your works had been consumed by locusts, weevils, rust and caterpillars, God did not allow you to perish. Then you shall eat the fruits of righteousness, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has done wonders with you. But if after such great repentance God promises such abundance of all things, what will Novatus, denying repentance and the possibility of sinners being restored to their former state if they perform worthy works of repentance, answer? For God receives penitents to such an extent that He calls them His people and does not in any way claim that they are to be confounded; and promises to dwell among them and that they shall not have any other God but Him; rather, they will trust in Him with their whole hearts, who will abide in them forever.

For the fig tree, on account of its sweetness and richness, represents the delights of humankind, which they had in paradise before the Fall. Indeed, not rarely, as we shall afterwards show, the Holy Spirit takes the fruit of the fig tree as an emblem of goodness. But the vine, on account of the gladness produced by wine and the joy of those who were saved from wrath and from deluge, signifies the change produced from fear and anxiety into joy. Moreover, the olive, on account of the oil which it produces, indicates the compassion of God, who again, after the deluge, bore patiently when people turned aside to ungodliness, so that he gave them the law and manifested himself to some, and nourished by oil the light of virtue, now almost extinguished.

David said that "the Lord would reign from the tree." Elsewhere too the prophet predicts the fruit of this tree, saying, "The earth has given its blessings"—of course that virgin earth, not yet irrigated with rains or fertilized by showers, out of which humanity was of old first formed, out of which now Christ through the flesh has been born of a virgin. "And the tree bears its fruit"—not that tree in paradise, which yielded death to the first humans, but the tree of the passion of Christ, whence life, hanging, you did not believe!