The Oration on the Holy Lights was preached on the Festival of the Epiphany 381, and was followed the next day by that on Baptism. In the Eastern Church this Festival is regarded as more particularly the commemoration of our Lord's Baptism, and is accordingly one of the great days for the solemn ministration of the Sacrament. It is generally called Theophania, and the Gospel in the Liturgy is S. Matthew iii. 13-17. The Sunday in the Octave is called meta\ ta\ Fw=ta (After The Lights), pointing to a time when the Feast was known as the "Holy Lights," as seems to have been the case in S. Gregory's day. This name is derived from Baptism, which was often in ancient days called Illumination, in reference to which name (derived from the spiritual grace of the Sacrament) lighted torches or candles were carried by the neophytes. It would appear that the solemnites of the Festival lasted two days, of which the second was devoted to the solemn conferring of the Sacrament. Accordingly we find two Orations belonging to the Festival. In the first, delivered on the Day itself he dwells more especially on the Feast and the Mystery of our Lord's Baptism therein commemorated; and proceeds to speak of the different kinds of Baptism, of which he enumerates Five, viz.:-
1. The figurative Baptism of Israel by Moses in the cloud and in the Sea.
5. The preparatory Baptism of repentance ministered by S. John the Baptist.
3. The spiritual Baptism of water and the Holy Ghost given us by our Lord.
4. The glorious Baptism of Martyrdom.
5. The painful Baptism of Penance.
In speaking of this last he takes occasion to refute the extreme rigorism of the followers of Novatus, who denied absolution to certain classes of sins committed after Baptism.
In the second Oration, delivered next day, he dwells on the Sacrament of Baptism and its spiritual effects; and takes occasion to reprove the then still prevalent practice of deferring Baptism till the near approach of death. He likewise dwells on the truth that the validity and spiritual effect of the Sacrament is wholly independent of the rank or worthiness of the Priest who may minister it; and he concludes with a sketch of the obligations which its reception involves, with a very valuable exposition of the Creed, and of the Ceremonies which accompanied the administration of the Sacrament.
I. Again My Jesus, and again a mystery; not deceitful nor disorderly, nor belonging to Greek error or drunkenness (for so I call their solemnities, and so I think will every man of sound sense); but a mystery lofty and divine, and allied to the Glory above. For the Holy Day of the Lights, to which we have come, and which we are celebrating to-day, has for its origin the Baptism of my Christ, the True Light That lighteneth every man that cometh into the world,hyperlink and effecteth my purification, and assists that light which we received from the beginning from Him from above, but which we darkened and confused by sin.
II. Therefore listen to the Voice of God, which sounds so exceeding clearly to me, who am both disciple and master of these mysteries, as would to God it may sound to you; I Am The Light Of The World.hyperlink Therefore approach ye to Him and be enlightened, and let not your faces be ashamed,hyperlink being signed with the true Light. It is a season of new birth,hyperlink let us be born again. It is a time of reformation, let us receive again the first Adam.hyperlink Let us not remain what we are, but let us become what we once were. The Light Shineth In Darkness,hyperlink in this life and in the flesh, and is chased by the darkness, but is not overtaken by it:-I mean the adverse power leaping up in its shamelessness against the visible Adam, but encountering God and being defeated;-in order that we, putting away the darkness, may draw near to the Light, and may then become perfect Light, the children of perfect Light. See the grace of this Day; see the power of this mystery. Are you not lifted up from the earth? Are you not clearly placed on high, being exalted by our voice and meditation? and you will be placed much higher when the Word shall have prospered the course of my words.
III. Is there any such among the shadowy purifications of the Law, aiding as it did with temporary sprinklings, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean;hyperlink or do the gentiles celebrate any such thing in their mysteries, every ceremony and mystery of which to me is nonsense, and a dark invention of demons, and a figment of an unhappy mind, aided by time, and hidden by fable? For what they worship as true, they veil as mythical. But if these things are true, they ought not to be called myths, but to be proved not to be shameful;hyperlink and if they are false, they ought not to be objects of wonder; nor ought people so inconsiderately to hold the most contrary opinions about the same thing, as if they were playing in the market-place with boys or really ill-disposed men, not engaged in discussion with men of sense, and worshippers of the Word, though despisers of this artificial plausibility.
IV. We are not concerned in these mysteries with birth of Zeus and thefts of the Cretan Tyranthyperlink (though the Greeks may be displeased at such a title for him), nor with the name of Curetes, and the armed dances, which were to hide the wailings of a weeping god, that he might escape from his father's hate. For indeed it would be a strange thing that he who was swallowed as a stone should be made to weep as a child.hyperlink Nor are we concerned with Phrygian mutilations and flutes and Corybantes,hyperlink and all the ravings of men concerning Rhea, consecrating people to the mother of the gods, and being initiated into such ceremonies as befit the mother of such gods as these. Nor have we any carrying away of the Maiden,hyperlink nor wandering of Demeter, nor her intimacy with Celei and Triptolemi and Dragons; nor her doings and sufferings ... for I am ashamed to bring into daylight that ceremony of the night, and to make a sacred mystery of obscenity. Eleusis knows these things, and so do those who are eyewitnesses of what is there guarded by silence, and well worthy of it. Nor is our commemoration one of Dionysus, and the thigh that travailed with an incomplete birth, as before a head had travailed with another;hyperlink nor of the hermaphrodite god, nor a chorus of the drunken and enervated host; nor of the folly of the Thebans which honours him; nor the thunderbolt of Semele which they adore. Nor is it the harlot mysteries of Aphrodite, who, as they themselves admit, was basely born and basely honoured; nor have we here Phalli and Ithyphalli,hyperlink shameful both in form and action; nor Taurian massacres of strangers;hyperlink nor blood of Laconian youths shed upon the altars, as they scourged themselves with the whips;hyperlink and in this case alone use their courage badly, who honour a goddess, and her a virgin. For these same people both honour effeminacy, and worship boldness.
V. And where will you place the butchery of Pelops,hyperlink which feasted hungry gods, that bitter and inhuman hospitality? Where the horrible and dark spectres of Hecate, and the underground puerilities and sorceries of Trophonius, or the babblings of the Dodonaean Oak, or the trickeries of the Delphian tripod, or the prophetic draught of Castalia, which could prophesy anything, except their own being brought to silence?hyperlink Nor is it the sacrificial art of Magi, and their entrail forebodings, nor the Chaldaean astronomy and horoscopes, comparing our lives with the movements of the heavenly bodies, which cannot know even what they are themselves, or shall be. Nor are these Thracian orgies, from which the word Worship (qrhskei/a) is said to be derived; nor rites and mysteries of Orpheus, whom the Greeks admired so much for his wisdom that they devised for him a lyre which draws all things by its music. Nor the tortures of Mithrashyperlink which it is just that those who can endure to be initiated into such things should suffer; nor the manglings of Osiris,hyperlink another calamity honoured by the Egyptians; nor the ill-fortunes of Isishyperlink and the goats more venerable than the Mendesians, and the stall of Apis,hyperlink the calf that luxuriated in the folly of the Memphites, nor all those honours with which they outrage the Nile, while themselves proclaiming it in song to be the Giver of fruits and corn, and the measurer of happiness by its cubits.hyperlink
VI. I pass over the honours they pay to reptiles , and their worship of vile things, each of which has its peculiar cultus and festival, and all share in a common devilishness; so that, if they were absolutely bound to be ungodly, and to fall away from honouring God, and to be led astray to idols and works of art and things made with hands, men of sense could not imprecate anything worse upon themselves than that they might worship just such things, and honour them in just such a way; that, as Paul says, they might receive in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet,hyperlink in the very objects of their worship; not so much honouring them as suffering dishonour by them; abominable because of their error, and yet more abominable from the vileness of the objects of their adoration and worship; so that they should be even more without understanding than the objects of their worship; being as excessively foolish as the latter are vile.
VII. Well, let these things be the amusement of the children of the Greeks and of the demons to whom their folly is due, who turn aside the honour of God to themselves, and divide men in various ways in pursuit of shameful thoughts and fancies, ever since they drove us away from the Tree of Life, by means of the Tree of Knowledge unseasonablyhyperlink and improperly imparted to us, and then assailed us as now weaker than before; carrying clean away the mind, which is the ruling power in us, and opening a door to the passions. For, being of a nature envious and man-hating, or rather having become so by their own wickedness, they could neither endure that we who were below should attain to that which is above, having themselves fallen from above upon the earth; nor that such a change in their glory and their first natures should have taken place. This is the meaning of their persecution of the creature. For this God's Image was outraged; and as we did not like to keep the Commandments,hyperlink we were given over to the independence of our error. And as we erred we were disgraced by the objects of our worship. For there was not only this calamity, that we who were made for good workshyperlink to the glory and praise of our Maker, and to imitate God as far as might be, were turned into a den of all sorts of passions, which cruelly devour and consume the inner man; but there was this further evil, that man actually made gods the advocates of his passions, so that sin might be reckoned not only irresponsible, but even divine, taking refuge in the objects of his worship as his apology.
VIII. But since to us grace has been given to flee from superstitious error and to be joined to the truth and to serve the living and true God, and to rise above creation, passing by all that is subject to time and to first motion; let us look at and reason upon God and things divine in a manner corresponding to this Grace given us. But let us begin our discussion of them from the most fitting point. And the most fitting is, as Solomon laid down for us; us; The beginning of wisdom, he says, is to get wisdom.hyperlink And what this is he tells us; the beginning of wisdom is fear.hyperlink For we must not begin with contemplation and leave off with fear (for an unbridled contemplation would perhaps push us over a precipice), but we must be grounded and purified and so to say made light by fear, and thus be raised to the height. For where fear is there is keeping of commandments; and where there is keeping of commandments there is purifying of the flesh, that cloud which covers the soul and suffers it not to see the Divine Ray. And where them is purifying there is Illumination; and Illumination is the satisfying of desire to those who long for the greatest things, or the Greatest Thing, or That Which surpasses all greatness.
IX. Wherefore we must purify ourselves first, and then approach this converse with the Pure; unless we would have the same experience as Israel,hyperlink who could not endure the glory of the face of Moses, and therefore asked for a veil;hyperlink or else would feel and say with Manoah "We are undone O wife, we have seen God,"hyperlink although it was God only in his fancy; or like Peter would send Jesus out of the boat,hyperlink as being ourselves unworthy of such a visit; and when I say Peter, I am speaking of the man who walked upon the waves;hyperlink or like Paul would be stricken in eyes,hyperlink as he was before he was cleansed from the guilt of his persecution, when he conversed with Him Whom he was persecuting-or rather with a short flash of That great Light; or like the Centurionhyperlink would seek for healing, but would not, through a praiseworthy fear, receive the Healer into his house. Let each one of us also speak so, as long as he is still uncleansed, and is a Centurion still, commanding many in wickedness, and serving in the army of Caesar, the World-ruler of those who are being dragged down; "I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof." But when he shall have looked upon Jesus, though he be little of stature like Zaccheus of old, and climb up on the top of the sycamore tree by mortifying his members which are upon the earth,hyperlink and having risen above the body of humiliation, then he shall receive the Word, and it shall be said to him, This day is salvation come to this house.hyperlink Then let him lay hold on the salvation, and bring forth fruit more perfectly, scattering and pouring forth rightly that which as a publican he wrongly gathered.
Footnotes
1 John i. 9.
2 John viii. 12.
3 Ps. xxxiv. 5.
4 John iii. 3.
5 I.e., the condition of man before the fall.
6 Ib. i. 5.
7 This is the same word which in S. John i. 5., is rendered by "comprehend."
8 Heb. vii. 13.
9 I.e. Zeus, who was said by some to be a deified man, once tyrant of Crete, where his tomb was shown.
10 The allusion is to the birth of Zeus. Kronos the Titan, father of the gods, was the husband of Rhea, who bore him children. But an oracle having declared that Kronos should be dethroned by his children, he swallowed them immediately after they were born. Rhea, however, on the birth of Zeus, aided by the Curetes, a wild band of Cretan Priests, concealed the child, and substituted a atone, which Kronos swallowed in his haste without perceiving the difference. The stone made him very sick, and he vomited forth the children whom he ad previously swallowed; and by them and Zeus the prophecy was fulfilled. Kronos was deposed and imprisoned in Tartacus.
11 There was a temple of Rhea in Phrygia, in which at her festivals people mutilated themselves to do her honour. The flutes alluded to served to turn the thoughts of the sufferes from the pain of the operation. The Corybantes were the ministers of the goddess, who led the wild orgies of her worship. It is believed that there is an allusion to this practice of self-mutilation in Galat. v. 12. So at least S. Jerome, S. Ambrose, and all the Greek Fathers take the passage. S. Thomas Aquinas, understanding the word in the same sense, applies it mystically; and Estius, who here follows Erasmus, refers the "cutting off" merely to excommunication, a sense which he calls "Apostolico sensu dignior,"through why "dignior" it is not easy to see. Yet he acknowledges that those who interpret it literally do so "non immerito."
12 The mythus of the Rape of Persephone and its consequences.
13 Dionysus was said to have been born from the thigh of Zeus, as Athene to have sprung full-grown and armed at all points from his head
14 These myths and practices are too shameful to be described.
15 See the Iphigenia In Tauris of Euripides.
16 It was a custom of the Spartans that at their great festival of Artemis the youths who were just coming of age (Ephebi) should scourge themselves cruelly on her altar in honour of the goddess, and to prove their manhood.
17 The gods came to dine with Tantalus, and he, to do them honour, boiled his son Pelops for their food. They, however, found it out, and restored him to life; not, however, before Demeter had unwittingly eaten his shoulder, in the place of which they substituted one of ivory.
18 S. Jerome, commenting on Isaiah xli. 22, says:
"Why could they never predict anything concerning Christ and His Apostles, or the ruin and destruction of their own temples? If then they could not foretell their own destruction, how can they foretell anything good or bad?"
19 These Mysteries were of Persian origin, connected it is said with the worship of the Sun. The neophytes were mad to undergo twelve different kinds of torture.
20 The Egyptian Mysteries.
21 Zeus fell in love with Isis, and carried her off in the form of a heifer. Here, discovering the fraud, sent a gadfly, which drove Isis mad.
22 Apis, the sacred bull, worshipped at Memphis.
23 i.e., that the prosperity of the country was proportionate to the annual rise of the River.
24 Rom. i. 27.
25 cf. Orat. in Theoph. c. 12. The explanation seems to be, that the "Knowledge of good and evil" was a necessary part of the development of man's intellect, but that a premature attempt to attain it per saltum instead of by a gradual progress would prove fatal. Had human nature gone through its originally intended educational stages, it might have reached to the knowledge of evil without having that knowledge alloyed and deteriorated by the experience of evil, but might have known it, as God does, without taint. (Boount, Ann. Bible on Gen. ii. 7.)
