HOMILY VII

I) HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH of the fight against the Jews? Or do you wish me to take up the same topic today? Even if I have already had much to say on it, I still think you want to hear the same thing again. The man who does not have enough of loving Christ will never have enough of fighting against those who hate Christ. Besides, there is another reason which makes a discourse on this theme necessary. These feasts of theirs are not yet over; some traces still remain.

2) Their trumpets were a greater outrage than those heard in the theaters; their fasts were more disgracefull than any drunken revel. So, too, the tents which at this moment are pitched among them are no better than the inns where harlots and flute girls ply their trades. Let no one condemn me for the boldness of my words; it is the height of boldness and outrage not to suspect the Jews of these excesses. Since they stubbornly fight against GOD and resist the HOLY SPIRIT, how can we avoid the necessity of passing such sentence upon them?

3) This festival used to be a holy one when it was observed according to the Law and at God's command. But this is no longer true. All its dignity has been destroyed because it is observed against God's will. Those who, above all others, treat the Law and the acient festivals with the least respect are the very ones who are ready today to observe the Law and festivals more than anyone else. But we are the one who honor the Law above all others, even if we let it rest like a man who has grown old and infirm, even if we do not drag it, gray with age, to the arena, even if we do not force it to enter the contests which are not suited to its years. In my past discourses I gave adequate proof that today is not the day of the Law nor of the old commonwealth and the old way of life.

4) But come now, let me investigate what remains to be discussed. I did enough to complete my task when I proved from all the prophets that any such observance of ritual outside Jerusalem is transgression of the Law and sacrilege. But they never stop whispering in everybody's ear and bragging that they will get their city back again.

Even if this were true, they could not escape the charge of transgressing the Law. But I gave you abundant evidence to prove that the city will not be restored nor will they get back their old commonwealth and way of life.

5) Once that has been proved, there is no room for disagreement on any of the other points. For example, neither the form of sacrifice, nor of the holocaust, nor the binding force of the Law, nor any other aspect of their old commonwealth and way of life can stand. To begin with, the Law commanded that three times each year every male go up to the temple. But they could not do this once the temple was destroyed. Then, too, the Law commaded that sacrifices be offered by the man afficted with gonorrhea, the leper, the woman in her menstrual period, the woman who had given birth to a child. But this is impossible since the place no longer exists nor is there an altar to be seen. The Law commanded them to sing sacred hymns but, as I showed before, the place they were living in prevented them; the prophets condemnet them and said (917) they were reading the Law and making their confession of praise to God in a foreign land. Since they could not even read the Law outside Jesusalem, how could they observe it outside Jerusalem?

6) This is why God threatened them and said: 'Ishall not visit your daughters when they commit fornication nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery.'

What does this mean? First, I whall read to you the old Law and then I shall try to make his meaning clearer. What, then, does the Law say? 'If a woman transgresses against her husband, disdaining and disregarding him, and if someone sleeps with her the sleep of intercourse, and if she escapes the eye of her husband and there is no witness against her, nor is she caught in the act, nor if a spirit of jealousy comes over her husband when she has not been defiled...'

7) This is what the Law means. If a woman commits adultery and her husband suspects it, or if he suspects her when she has not committed adultery, but there is no witness nor conception to prove the suspiction, 'he will bring her to the priest and take along barley meal as an offering for her.' Why, I ask, must it be barley meal rather than fine flour or the meal of wheat? Since what happened was a source of pain, accusation, and wicked suspicion, the form of the sacrifice imitaded a household disaster. This is why the Lord said: 'You will not pour oil on it nor put frankincense over it.' ''Then'' (for I must cut the account short)

''The priest shall lead her forward and will take pure water in an earthen vessel; he will pick up some of the dust which is on the floor and throw it into the water; he will make the woman stand, will make her swear an oath, and he will say to her: 'If you did not transgress so as to become defiled for your husband, be immune from the water of reproof. But if you did transgress and you are defiled, if someone other than your husband did have intercourse with you, may the Lord make of you an execration and a curse among your people.'

8) What is the meaning of 'an execration and a curse'? As the saying goes; May what happened to that poor woman not happen to me! 'By the Lord causing your belly to swell and the water that brings a curse will enter your belly to make it swell.' And the woman will say: 'Amen, Amen'. And it will come to pass, if the woman is defiled, that the water of the curse will enter her belly to make it swell, and the woman will be an execration. If she is not defiled, she will be unharmed and will conceive offspring.' Once the Jews had gone off into bondage, none of these things could be done because there was no temple, no altar, no Meeting Tent, no sacrifice to be offered. Because this was the case, when God threatened them, he said:

'I shall not visit your daughters when they commit fornication nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery.'



II



Do you see that the Law takes its force from the place? And since the city is gone, there can no longer be a priesthood. There can be no emperor if there are no armies, no crown, no purple robe, none of the other things which weld together an empire. So, too, there can be no priesthood if sacrifice has been destroyed, if offerings are forbidden, if the sanctuary has been trampled into the dust, if everything which constituted it has disappeared. For the priesthood depend on all these things.

2) As I said before, it was enough for my purpose to prove that neither the sacrifices, nor the holocausts, nor the other purifications, nor any other part of the (918) Jewish commonwealth and way of life would return. It was enough, finally, to prove that the temple will never rise again. Now that it is no more, everything has been taken away; if something ritualistic seems to be going on, it is against the Law and a reckless crime. In the same way, once I have proved that the temple will never be restored to its former state, I have at the same time also proved that the rest of the ritual of worship will not return to its former condition, that there will be no priest, there will be no king. If not even a commoner of Jewish blood was allowed to be a servant to foreigners, it would be all the more forbidden for their king himself to be subject to others.

3) But since my effort and zeal are here devoted not only to stopping up the mouths of the Jews but also to instructing your loving assembly, come now and let me take another authority and prove this same point. Let me prove that both the sacrifices of the Jews and their priesthood have complitely ended that day will never again return to their former status.

4) Who says this? That great and wonderful prophet, David. He made it clear that the one kind of sacrifice would be abolished and another brought in to take its place when he said:

'Many are the wondrous works you have done. O Lord my God: and in your thoughts there is no one like to you. I have declared and I have spoken.' See how wise the prophet is.

He said: 'Many are the wondrous works you have done,' and he stood aghast at God's power to work miracles. But he did not go on to tell us about the creation of the things we see: of heaven, earth, and ocean, of water and fire; he did not tell us of those strange marvels which happened in Egypt, or of any other miracles like those. What did he say were wondrous works? 'Sacrifice and oblation you did not desire.'

5) What do you mean, David? Is this a strange marvel? No, he said. For this was not the only thing he saw. Inspired by heaven, he saw with prophetic eyes how God would lead the nations to him; he saw how those who were nailed to their gods, who worshipped stones, who were worse off than brute beasts suddenly looked up and recognized the Master of all creation; he saw how these men put aside their foul worship of demons and gave pure and bloodless worship to God. At the same time he saw that the Jews, too, who were even more imperfect than the pagans, would put aside their worship through sacrifices, holocausts, and other material things and be led to our way of life. And he pondered on God's ineffable loving-kindness which surpasses all understanding; he stood aghast at how greatly things had changed, how God had reshaped them, how he had made men from demons into angels, and how he had introduced a commonwealth and way of life worthy of heaven.

6) All this was to take place after the old sacrifice had been abolished and after God had brought into its place the new sacrifice through the body of Christ. This is why David stood aghast and marvelled and said: 'Many are the wondrous works you have done, O Lord my God.'

To show that he made this whole prophetic prediction in behalf of Christ when he said:

'Sacrifice and oblation you did not desire,' David went on to say: 'But a body you have fitted to me.' By this he meant the Lord's body which became the common sacrifice for the whole world, the sacrifice which cleansed our soul, canceled our sin, put down death, opened heaven, gave us many great hopes, and made ready all the other things which Paul knew well and spoke of when he exclaimed: 'Oh, the depth of the riches and of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments and how unsearchable are his ways.'

7) David, then, foresaw all this when he said: 'Many are the wondrous work you have done, O Lord my God.' He went to say, speaking in the person of Christ: 'In holocausts and sin offerings you had no pleasure, and then continued: 'Then I said, Behold I came.' When was 'then'? When the time was ripe for more perfect instructions. We had to learn the less perfect lessons through his servants, but the loftier lessons which surpass the nature of man we had to learn from the Lawgiver himself.

8) This is why Paul said: 'God, who at sundry times and in varied ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world.' And again, John said: 'For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.' And this is the highest panegyric for the Law, namely that it prepared human nature for the Teacher.

9) But he did not want you to look on him as a new God or any kind of innovation. Hear what he said: 'In the head of the book it is written of me.' What he meant was this: 'Long ago the prophets foretold my coming and at the beginning of the Scriptures they opened them a little to give men a glimpse of the knowledge that I am God.'

III

An so, at the beginning of creation, when God said: 'Let us make mankind in our image and likeness,' he was revealing to us in a rather obscure way the divinity of his Son, to whom he was then speaking. Later on the Psalmist showed that this new religious way of life did not contradict the old, but that it was God's will that the old sacrifice be abolished and the new sacrifice replace the old. The new was an extension of the right way of worship; it did not oppose or fight with the old. He showed this when he said: 'In the head of the book it is written of me,' and added: 'That I should do your will, O my God; I have desired it and your law in the mist of my heart.' And when he explained what God's will was, he made no mention of sacrifice or holocausts or offerings or toil and sweat, but said: 'I have declared your justice in a great assembly.'

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